Parts 1, 2, and 3 of this story can be found at:
Salvar Station’s upper security bay was split into two sections: from the entrance a long central gantry led to the skiff docks, arrayed around the gantry on spinning mountings. Every hundred paces, long supporting walkways spidered out to the station’s inner walls in a multilayered web of steel. The gantry ended just short of a set of massive hexagonal doors closed to the void beyond.
The area’s other distinct section was a security command pod which sprouted like a glass tumor from the ceiling. It was only accessible by two precarious-looking stairways – one near the entrance, one by the void-doors. Hiss peered around the area for a moment before nodding and signing, it’s as clear as it’s going to be.
Gravity was set to half-standard, and the group took a great hopping leap onto the gantry. Spectra giggled as they landed on the balls of their feet.
Polk’s vessel was close to the docking bay’s entrance. The skiff was a long, bulbous thing, vaguely reminiscent of a beetle. The fore-end of the craft was studded with weapons and scanners where the voidports should be – entirely sealed, entirely armored. To Granté it seemed a bit like a coffin with jets. The dock’s doors were closed, another maddening steel hexagon between them and freedom.
“Shit,” Paola snapped, looking from the skiff, to the doors, to the security pod hanging pendulously from the ceiling.
“Going,” Granté said, offering Spectra’s sagging form to Hiss. The other man nodded somberly and hefted the girl into the skiff. Then Granté was leaping down the gantry, the control pod bouncing in his vision. An armored guard stepped out to the top of the nearest staircase; as he raised his weapon, gunfire slapped against the stairs at his feet, sending him scrambling back into cover. Granté took the steps five at a time, guiding his leaps with gentle touches on the thin railings. As he reached the final landing, he drew his pistol and flicked the safety.
“Hiss – is that guard still waiting for me up there?”
“Sss.”
“Put a couple more shots into the doorframe, would ya?”
“Ssss.”
Bang-bang and Granté was moving up around the last landing, planting his foot for a leap that would put him even with the security pod. He saw an armored leg spinning around the smoking doorframe and fired at it three times. At least one shot hit – blood sprayed in a slow crescent from a blown-out knee – and Granté dove low, firing blind, muzzle flashes staining his vision purple. His shoulder clipped the doorframe and sent him spinning, his right arm and hip crashing into someone’s leg and the floor, respectively. He blinked frantically, eyes clearing just enough to see the guard floating back to the floor, gunbarrel eyeing Granté with lethal intent. The guard landed on his wounded leg and it buckled with a scream and the awkward scraping of armor plates moving in a way they weren’t supposed to. His gun bucked and fired wide right, striking a control panel adjacent to the doorway. Granté scrambled forward, firing straight-on into the guard’s chest, the sparking impacts keeping the man off-balance. The security man’s armor was too thick to penetrate from the front, even at this range, and Granté realized the space was too tight for him to effectively flank his opponent.
The guard caught himself on a console by the big, curving windows overlooking the dock doors. Granté hucked his pistol into the man’s visored face and jumped right, bracing his legs so he could spring off as soon as he made contact with the wall. Bulletholes stitched across the consoles behind him and alarms began to wail. Granté leapt, hand outstretched, and found his gun, floating lazily down and away from the security man’s head. With his left arm, Granté swatted the guard’s gun aside, a shrieking burn of muzzle flash searing his forearm, and buried his pistol in the gap between the guard’s gorget and helmet. He squeezed the trigger and the inside of the guard’s visor turned red. Granté let the body drift to the floor as he scanned the damaged consoles – gravity control, maintenance settings, emergency lighting…void hatches. He ran his fingers along the switches until reaching the one labeled “PRIMARY” and flicked it.
The big hexagonal hatch at the end of the dock groaned open. A hail of small objects flew into space like the station had sneezed them out.
“Good work on the doors,” Paola said. “Now how about those turrets?” Below, Polk’s skiff lifted from the gantry and nosed its way through the docked security craft circling the central walkway.
Granté eyed the consoles. “Sure.” A panel two paces away displayed a gridded outline of the station with its turret mountings highlighted with white circles. He cycled through the command options until the words “System Shutdown” appeared. After swiping through several warning screens, he tapped the icon reading “Commit” and let out a breath as the hardpoints on the grid changed from circles to X marks. “Turrets should be out.”
“Granté, two security squads are converging on the control pod,” Paola said hurriedly. “Their boots are mag-locked for zero-g, so they’re moving slow.”
“How close?”
“Too close to run for it.”
Granté closed his eyes and knelt, putting a hand to the floor. He could faintly feel thundering vibrations, dozens of feet pounding up the stairs toward him. He checked the ammunition counter on the guard’s gun – six rounds – and the bullets remaining in his own pistol – two.
Eight bullets. At least twelve guards. Granté knew there was a reason he’d never liked math.
“Peak – you remember that thing we did with the Tantalus?”
“I’ll have the cargo bay open,” the ship chirped.
He stood and cast an eye out the transparent side of the bubble, saw Polk’s skiff disappear into the dark.
“I fucking hate doing this,” Granté muttered. He slung an arm beneath the guard’s armpit, raising the body to chest height, pressed the dead man’s gun to the nearest viewport, and pulled the trigger. The plastiglass exploded outward into a docking bay now half a g lower than the inside of the security pod. Granté swung the guard’s body underneath him and let the corpse take the brunt of the ragged glass shards emerging from the lip of the viewpane as they were sucked out into the security dock, over the gantry and rotating skiff bays. Gunfire spat from both staircases; Granté felt the guard’s body shudder and let it fall. He flew away, between the yawning doors and into the cold bleakness of the void.
Alone, floating inside Spectra’s endless black winter…
But only for a moment. The Pequod, spinning on its horizontal axis, rotated up in front of him, cargo bay open. Granté tucked himself into a ball and hoped the impact wouldn’t hurt as much as last time.
It did, in fact, hurt as much as last time. More, actually, since he managed to get himself twisted around and hit the back of the cargo bay with enough force to dislocate his shoulder. Drooling with pain, he stumbled to his feet – the bay was already closed, artificial gravity engaged – and slammed his shoulder into the wall until it shifted back into place with a pop like an old champagne bottle. Still numb with pain, he staggered up the staircase to the exit doors, cycled the internal airlock, and stumbled to the bridge.
Paola was leaning forward in her chair, staring intently at the ship’s bridge comm unit. Hiss and Speck were absent – Granté figured the silent man was taking the girl to the medical bay.
“If you want to start a fight, Control, we’re happy to finish it,” Paola said, and the glint in her eye made Granté feel vaguely ill.
“I’m calling your bluff,” said Salvar Control. “You haven’t got it in you…and we have too many skiffs.”
“Peak,” Paola leaned forward to stare steely-eyed out the voidscreen, “Mark all commuter and cargo ships as friendly. The station, too. Set engagement parameters to minimize collateral.”
The voidscreen lit up with green target markers blocking out the station’s spindle and solar panels, the moving blobs of commercial freighters and short-range trawlers. “Done.”
“Kill everything else.”
Red squares bloomed to life across the voidscreen, one, four, eight, a dozen.
Granté squinted into the dark. “That’s a lot of – ”
“Firing.” Peak engaged both of its Icarus-9 units, and the red squares started to blink out.
“What were you saying, Salvar Control?”
Silence.
Flecks of movement by the security dock – more skiffs launching. Red targeting matrices swept across the voidscreen, squares settling into place across every skiff that hove into view.
Paola muted the comms. “Peak, space another dozen.”
“My pleasure.”
Granté felt a shiver at the ship’s cold tone – Peak was never this calm, this collected, this clinical.
Exactly twelve security skiffs detonated into the void.
Paola reactivated the comms. “We can sit out here and dust your skiffs until the stars go out,” she said, a tinge of smugness coloring her voice.
“Cease fire, Pequod. We’re withdrawing our security forces.”
“Space another two,” Paola said calmly. Then, “Sorry, Salvar Control. Repeat?” The two foremost security skiffs vanished in puffs of orange.
Control was scared now. “Pequod, please cease fire! I repeat, cease fire! We are withdrawing all security forces – ”
Paola killed the comms and sat back with a beatific smile on her face. The grin lasted all of three seconds. Then she sat up, cursing, and stormed off the bridge toward the medbay, Granté in tow.
Lady Spectra was unconscious on the exam table, the Pequod’s automed already at work on the wound through her side. A large bag of blood dangled from the ceiling, a thin IV line trailing down to the crook of Spectra’s arm. Hiss paced along the side of the table, gnawing on his fingernails.
“How is she?” Paola asked.
Alive, Hiss signed.
“Stable,” Peak replied. “Her loss of consciousness was unfortunate, but I don’t anticipate any negative aftereffects.”
The room let out a breath they’d all been holding. “Well…” Paola said, the exultation and nervousness and adrenaline bleeding from her voice.
“Out of the frying pan, into the fire?” Peak suggested.
“Shut the fuck up, Peak.” Paola stalked out of the medbay.
“Your hand is still injured…” the ship said quietly.
“It’ll keep.”
“She’s just on edge,” Granté murmured. “You did good, Peak.”
“I know,” the ship said primly. “But thank you.”
“Thanks for saving the girl.”
“To be fair, I was the one who shot her,” Peak said guiltily.
“Well, ask her how she feels when she wakes up. She might be in a forgiving mood.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. Paola’s setting a new course – might want to join her on the bridge.”
“In a minute.” Granté let the comms lapse into silence. He and Hiss stood looking at the wounded figure of Spectra Vestal.
“Why’d you want to stick with her?” Granté asked conspiratorially.
Why’d you?
“I asked first.”
It was the right thing to do. You?
“Same.” Granté forced a grin. “And the trouble we’ll catch having her around?”
Yeah?
“It’ll be a hell of a lot more interesting than crab fishing.”
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