Chapter Twenty-three

[68850] Frederik

Low Vas Orbit

It took almost three days for the Delightful Death to reach low Vas orbit. Three marathon days stuck in the storm cellar with Ninya Blanca and her crew. And there was still no sign that Ninya Blanca even suspected Vis was lying about the aliens being in control of the Grayson spacecraft’s transponder, from which they could take over the main engines. Instead, Ninya Blanca had sent even more of her surviving crew into a meat grinder. The tempo of senseless violence aboard the Delightful Death increased.

In description, their treatment was approximately humane. Frederik, Io, and Vis received minimal rations of food and water. Grayson would escort them to the propcan-style water closet to use three times every twenty-four hours. Yet, the tension in that storm cellar was its own form of anguish. They were at the complete mercy of a group of people who seemed to give very little value to any living thing in the universe—not even their own lives seemed to be a priority.

Frederik’s plan, however, fell into place. Omolara had stayed out of sight with her Shade as she prepared to breach the storm cellar. Betty Blue was preparing the propcan. And when they were close enough to Vas, they would get themselves and the prototype to the propcan and then to safety—all the seals and controls of Delightful Death locked by Vis as they left.

Frederik, Io, and Vis were making the final touches to the plan. Vis would tumble the spacecraft once it was on orbit over Vas. It would be unexpected and knock the guards off balance, or at least distract them long enough, so one of the three of them could secure the closed time-like curve computer.

A well-timed reversal of Delightful Death’s tumble and the three of them might keep Grayson Services Group out-of-balance as Omolara helped them get to the docking bay. High risk, but they all thought it was their best shot at securing their lives, and the prototype.

They ran through the plan one more time on their EAR chat, going through every conceivable detail, but Frederik couldn’t focus. He was sweating. His heart was pounding. It was easy to hide in the overall tension of the storm cellar, but he was certain at any moment Ninya Blanca would catch on to what they had done. They would spring their plan into action, and it would turn out not to be a surprise at all.

[Vis]: Point of no return is here.

Everyone ready?

[Io]: Now or never.

[Frederik]: Ugh.

[Io]: You can’t get cold feet, F.

This is mostly your idea!

There was no sign Grayson had caught on to their plans. There was no more thrust from gravity pressing Frederik into his acceleration flat. The surrounding guards had not yet fully secured themselves with gecko grip. It was now or never.

[Frederik]: Oke oke, wi gah make tsow gahdah.^{[148][Di Lingua]: Let’s fucking go. ↑}

[Frederik]: Go!

Vis began the wild tumble. Unseen, unfelt, reaction control jets across Delightful Death were bursting into life. Full thrust, with a pattern to maximize torque, even using the main engine to add to the tumble. Frederik was already in the air, alongside Io, flying toward the prototype CTCC.

Grayson was unprepared. Bodies were already lurching, hitting the floor or ceiling. Some seemed to float in midair as the center of rotation was in the middle of the storm cellar. Click click.

He was on the ceiling. Io was across the prototype from him. Vis gripped on the floor underneath. Frederik disconnected his side of the CTCC, pulling out connectors in the order directed by flashes on his EAR.

Loud warning alarms signaled the hatch to the storm cellar was opening. There was a gap of light from outside.

“Got it!” Io said.

Io shot toward the exit with the prototype, then he shoved off to follow. Vis was already at the opening storm cellar hatch.

Pop. Omolara used the exoskeletal strength of her Shade, bursting open the bottom flap of the exit hatch. Frederik was a meter behind when Io and Vis slipped through the opening like eels. He ignored the shouts and chaos behind him.

Less than two seconds after the tumble started, he was at the hatch.

“Get clear!” Omolara’s disembodied voice ordered.

Out of instinct, he grabbed a microgravity handhold, torqued himself out of the way. Pop pop pop pop. Supersonic rounds zipped past him, making wet metal slapping noises as they struck Grayson soldiers.

He turned just in time to see a black blur lunge at him. He was far too slow. Ninya Blanca smashed into him at full speed. His fingers were burning with pain as her boot ground his hand into the handle he was holding.

Pop. Ping. Omolara fired at Ninya Blanca. There was an explosion on the ceiling, missing Ninya Blanca’s hand by millimeters. Sparks ricocheted. Frederik flinched and brought his left fist up to his face.

Bam. His head rang like it had exploded from the inside. Then pain from the hard metal boot smashing into his left eye. Colors sparked across his EAR display from concussive force. It felt like someone had split open his head along his eye socket. His body reverberated like a rung bell.

The reverse tumble started, throwing everyone besides Ninya Blanca off balance. Frederik’s situation had not fully registered, only the pain had. An arm in a strong, armored biosuit wrapped around his throat. A machine pistol braced against his shoulder. Ninya Blanca forced him in front of her. She was gecko gripped securely to the ceiling. Less than three seconds since their plan had begun, and it was already in shambles.

Brzzt. Frederik lost all hearing from his right ear, replaced by a dull ringing buzz, as red tracer rounds sprouted out from Ninya Blanca’s weapon just centimeters from his head. Thumping from the weapon shook him through his shoulder. The occasional whomp as a hypersonic round collided with metal rattled his blood.

Blue tracers shot back. Jets of sparks bounced around like deadly firebugs, filling the storm cellar. Bubbles of blood and thick fogs of metallic dust quickly filled the air. Debris glowed and flickered in the continued crossfire. Ninya Blanca cut a red wave of death with a back-and-forth shake of her weapon, peppering the thick storm cellar hatch with dozens of fist-sized craters.

Ten seconds since the first tumble. Frederik gasped for breath, his only unwounded hand punching uselessly at Ninya Blanca’s armored forearm.

“Stop!” she screamed at him in his good ear.

He struggled more. Red hot heat touched his ear from the barrel of Ninya Blanca’s gun. He screamed, but it sounded muffled and far away.

“What are you even fighting for, huh? You don’t even know,” Ninya Blanca shouted, though it was barely audible to him. “At least I am fighting for something besides animal instinct. I fight for that pale blue dot. I fight for all terrestrial life.”

“Arte steh gapjil!”^{[149][Di Lingua]: Earther ignorance. ↑} he said as he tried to wiggle free from her stranglehold.

“Everyone who matters is an Earther,” she said with such viciousness bubbles of spit flew into the air, then she lifted the hot barrel of her weapon and threatened to press it against Frederik’s other ear. “Play your role, astroplaag, be a good human shield for me!”

There was an unbearable heat next to his ear. He flinched. Being burned was a terrible pain. His hands fell limp.

“Oke.”

“Good,” Ninya Blanca cooed.

It was then the third pre-program tumble began. Both he and Ninya Blanca lurched toward the devastated hatch.

“Oof,” he gasped as his chest slammed into the edge of the hatch’s remains.

His legs dangled out into the hall. He tried to push away, roll off, get to the hallway and away from Ninya Blanca. Recover and return to the plan. Intense pressure in his left shoulder turned into stabbing pain as claws sliced through his shoulder blade.

He screamed again. More red streaks of tracers shot out from Ninya Blanca’s weapon, reached out to lick the hallway’s metal walls, first up the winding path then down it. Another back-and-forth sweep. Blindly seeking to strike out at the Shade.

Sharp metal debris and twisted ribbons of the bulkhead rained down the hallway, bouncing down from the tumble’s artificial gravity. Down was toward the docking bay. If only he slipped free, maybe he would roll his way to safety.

There was the sucking wind of decompression, but he watched as self-assembling patch seals oozed out of burst pipes along the spiraling hallway. Smoke spiraled down the hallway like corkscrews as the emergency self-sealant solidified and welded itself to bulkhead material. He winced his good eye shut and coughed on the hot metallic-tasting dust.

Frederik’s left eye closed from the swelling and his right ear throbbed, accompanied by a high-pitched squeal that filled his hearing, but he was gradually regaining full hearing in his left ear. Blood was dripping out of his shoulder.

“You’re rusty Shade,” Ninya Blanca taunted with a shout out into the hallway as she slid another magazine into her machine pistol with a clack.

Ninya Blanca pulled her claws out of his shoulder, wrapped that arm around his neck, and held her machine pistol millimeters above his temple. He was her human shield. She shoved off the ledge of the storm cellar and slid down the hallway. When she wanted him to go somewhere, she simply kneed him in the back and torqued him around with the arm around his neck.

With the tumble, the spacecraft experienced a definite up and down—a simulated gravity—despite not being designed for it. The designers had anticipated it would be under thrust or in microgravity only, at least if the hallways were in use. During combat, they expected the storm cellar to tumble and spin, so they made it robust. However, they did not design the Delightful Death to sustain this long of a tumble, and everything in either direction from the center of the spin, the storm cellar, was both upside down and in the spin-down direction.

Every few meters she would knee him in the back, tell him to hurry forward. Through the twisting, apocalyptic, upside-down hallways. Frederik thought he could hear the hiss of escaping air, or the creak as one of the alien forms moved around in one room along the spiraling path. Along the way, he saw no sign of Io, or Vis, or Omolara. No trail to follow. Just Ninya Blanca blindly pushing him ahead toward the docking bay, blood dripping from his eyebrow.

[Frederik]: She’s got me.

We’re heading to the docking bay.

We’re on deck twenty-three now.

Just two more.

[Omolara]: Let her take you to the docking bay.

We have a plan.

Trust me.

He had little choice. He wondered why Omolara couldn’t flank Ninya Blanca, especially with her Shade. But there had been a lot of weapons fire. Perhaps she had taken a hit. Either way, he trusted her enough to go where Ninya Blanca pushed him. She seemed dead set on getting to the docking bay, and Frederik looked at it like a mad, desperate, attempt to escape Delightful Death, and less like she was following Omolara’s invisible trail.

Limping along the spiral slope of the hallways, crunching on the ceiling lights that were not designed to take a significant force of a human body under spin acceleration, it only took a minute to reach the docking bay. Each step forward was a step further from the center of rotation in the storm cellar, which meant more apparent weight. Covered in sweat and panting, Frederik reached the large docking bay hatch as Ninya Blanca’s hostage. His body seemed as dense as lead in the higher than standard spin-gravity.

“You’re going through first,” Ninya Blanca said in a near-whisper into his good ear. “Hey!” She yelled out into the emptiness of the docking bay’s open hatch. “If you try anything, Shade, just know I have set our remaining nuclear howitzers on a timer. If I die, I will take you all with me. You hear that?”

“Is that true?” he asked.

“Shut the fuck up.”

She hesitated a few moments, took a deep breath, and then loosened the arm around Frederik’s neck. Sharp claws grabbed at the scruff of his neck, painfully, and then she kneed him forward through the entrance.

“Look inside for me,” she said as a demonic Oni mask slid out from the collar of her obsidian black armor, swallowing her face.

[Omolara]: Look left.

Slowly.

He turned his head. There was a familiar gecko grip holster.

[Omolara]: We’re going to shake the spacecraft in a second.

Fall forward.

Grab the gun.

When she pulls you back to her, aim and squeeze the trigger.

Safety is off, and it’s loaded.

Don’t kill her, just distract her.

Frederik looked down into the docking bay. The space was voluminous, open, and sideways. To his left and right was the nominal floor and ceiling in microgravity. Above and below him was a vast expanse of the floor, going maybe ten meters above, and ten meters below. There were three propcans, held in place with over-engineered grapple arms near the large double membraned airlock flaps. If he jumped, he would fall. Below him there were only piles of junk and empty biosuits. That was the propcan they had planned to use. It was near the top of the deck, axial-wise, but under spin that meant it was like falling. He gulped, stricken by an unexpected acrophobia.

[Frederik]: The gravity won’t kill me?

[Omolara]: No.

Look, trust me, please?

[Frederik]: Fine.

Ninya Blanca was vulnerable. Her gun and attention were elsewhere. She did not see his left hand as he dangled into the docking bay.

[Omolara]: Now!

The spacecraft shook. Frederik fell forward. His left hand gripped the pistol.

There was a stabbing pain in his neck as Ninya Blanca flexed her sharp glove claws and pulled him back toward the ledge of the hatchway like a mother cat carrying its kittens. He slid the pistol free with the force of Ninya Blanca’s pull, quickly bringing it close and low to his body, hoping she would not see it.

Just then, there was a commotion as equipment fell down the hallway behind him. Ninya Blanca turned, her grip on his neck loosened. She pointed her machine pistol at the source of the noise. Frederik turned. She exposed her flank to him. Frederik was right in her blind spot, still framed in the docking bay hatchway.

He gritted his teeth, turned, aimed at the gap in the joint armor at her elbow, and fired.

Pop. Her armor blossomed in a red flash at the elbow. Ninya Blanca dropped her gun. His hand recoiled, and he tried to aim again. Her boot kicked up, knocked Frederik off balance, and he fell into the docking bay. It was now less than standard gravity, and he fell slowly in a twisted, curved trajectory resulting from a steep spin gradient, but he landed safely in a pile of softer biosuits next to one of the propcans. He gasped, letting go of the breath he had not realized he had been holding.

Ninya Blanca’s silhouette loomed in the hatchway above him. A weapon pointing in his general direction, held in her unwounded left arm. A symphony of bangs surrounded him as shots from all over the docking bay, not hypersonic boom snaps, rang out.

Ninya Blanca’s body spasmed in time to the beat of the gunfire. Showers of sparks, then blood. Her shoulder, her ribcage, then a vicious gouge in the Oni mask façade, a spray of crimson. She fell to her knees, then back into the hallway away from the ledge.

Hands grabbed his shoulders, pulled him away and into a propcan.

“We got you, Eff,” Io said with a grunt.

With the aid of Io, he scrambled to his feet and strapped himself into the propcan next to Vis and her prototype. A few moments later, Omolara in her vantablack lizard armor appeared in the hatch, pull it closed, and clambered into the pilot’s seat.

“Is she dead?” Betty Blue asked, grimly.

“Didn’t check,” Omolara said. “Instead, dropped flashbangs right on top of her.”
“What about the nuclear howitzers?” Frederik asked.

“I took care of them earlier.” Omolara said.

They ran through the last of the pre-flight check. A few moments later, his ears popped. There was a roar of wind as the docking bay depressurized, then a click pop and kick of acceleration as the propcan exited the docking bay and they burned to freedom.

***

“We’re cleared to land,” Vis announced a few hours later.

The acceleration pressed Frederik’s body into the flat in the propcan. Vis had given it the handle: Baff Up En Baze. A nice, inconspicuous, Di Lingua name to hide the fact they had just left a spacecraft that had destroyed aliens with a nuclear thermal lance, went to Vas, spun itself around in unhealthy ways like a drunk tumbling pigeon, and then had gone completely radio silent. Fortunately, the propcan had enough power in the fuel cells for Vis to smooth things out using her computer.

She told the authorities that this was all just a drill. A continuation of the special Cooperative Defense operation Grayson had already fabricated. It was a thin cover, but the valid seals Vis produced erased skepticism, despite the ridiculousness of the story they had woven.

There were no windows on this propcan, only ink displays showing exterior views. A dusty white Vas loomed as desolate as the deep deserts of Ahtash. Its ground covered in bumps that glittered in the bright Ya Ke starlight, broken only by large jet-black solar power stations. It evoked a deep sense of loneliness in its apparent desolation.

“Why does anyone live here?” Betty Blue asked from the flat next to Frederik.

Frederik sighed, looking down at his aching hand, jammed into a biosuit glove. “People need food even in space. You could feed all of Ya Ke just through the farms of Domot Get Grond Dey and the domes of Vas.”

Io gave him a nudge, then looked at Betty Blue. “Where are you from, Blue?”

“Sipapu.”

“Aren’t you an Upper?” Frederik asked.

She nodded. “Yes. From the special political zone. Where are you from, Io?”

“Chiron. Victory City.”

“You’re far from home.”

Io smiled crookedly. “Ye, the homeworlders who leave do a thorough job of it.”

“Technically, not as far from home as us,” Omolara said as she waved toward Vis.

“Only by a tenth of a light-year,” Io said. “If we’re going to be technical about it.”

“My home is wherever Chaeyoung is,” Vis said as she focused on an unseen EAR window.

Omolara and Betty Blue looked ashamed by what Vis had said, each looking down at their boots. Frederik tilted his head, wondering what they had to feel guilty about. Io tapped his shoulder to grab his attention.

“Ye, Eff, but food aside—why would anyone come here? Unless they were desperate.”

He laughed. “Being desperate is why we’re here, Io.”

“Exactly! So why is it the second most populous moon of Jin?”

“People enjoy it when things are quiet and predictable. Simple as that.”

***

Their propcan landed with a series of loud clicks, the sound of a rushing river of liquid, and a kick in the back from hard acceleration. Dust billowed up around the ink display windows, obscuring the view. They touched down with a gentle thump.

Outside was the dusty yellow, lifeless expanse, the ever-present Jin in the night sky, and the stretch of farm domes, radiators, and solar panels.

“Helmets on,” Omolara said.

“Here, let me,” Io said as she rushed to help Frederik.

Frederik winced at the pain in his crushed hand, and smiled weakly. “Thanks.”

With Io’s help, he stumbled out into the dusty void of Vas. His faceplate polarized to block out the bright Ya Ke starlight. They were on a dusty stone landing tarmac at one of the largest hospitals on Vas.

It was deceptively simple looking. Constructed from material the same yellow-gray dust that covered everything on Vas, with silver-mirrored coating on spinel ceramic windows to filter most of the Ya Ke daylight. It was barely larger than the plentiful farming domes, cooling structures, or solar panel columns built all around it, but it was the only flat and rectangular structure across the entire horizon. There were no seal checks at airlocks and people wandered in and out of the airlock’s vestibule, heading to or from various dust covered rovers.

“Are we sure this is safe?” Frederik asked over their radio, with a slight slur from his healing tongue.

“With our new seals,” Vis said, pointing to her left wrist. “And our new identities, we’re as good as ghosts.”

“You need to see a doctor, Eff,” Io said stoically, but Frederik could hear a slight inflection of concern beneath.

“If they know to look for someone with my injuries, they’ll—”

There was a bright flash in the sky. Everyone besides Omolara gasped. There in the black pool void sky of Vas’s daylight, there was a large, artificial nebula. Two cones of gas escaping from a common center. It was a nuclear howitzer detonation.

“I don’t think we need to worry about anyone from the Delightful Death coming after us,” Omolara said in a detached and cold tone that made Frederik shiver.

He glared at Omolara’s vantablack form, but he did not openly object. He merely shrugged it off with the others and continued toward the hospital.

***

Frederik was lying in a medical flat in a large, open-floor hospital space. Io was sitting in a chair next to him. The medical staff had already wrapped Frederik’s hand in medical weaves, connected his arm to a drip-line and an auto-doc, placed a patch over his left eye, and dressed him in a hospital gown.

The hospital space was a massive rectangular room, divided by neat rows of medical flats. Each row was about six flats long and two flats wide, with each flat facing into the hall. There was a dividing wall separating back-to-back flats, with rubber grating between the rows and underneath the flats, translucent sheeting connected to piping that ran along the tall ceiling to separate each area into a semi-private cubicle. In front of Frederik, there was a walking space, and across that walking space, there was a row of medical flats facing him.

Yellow gray Vasian dust packed with a sealant finish was used to create a concrete analog for the floor under the mats. Along the perimeter of the room were equipment lockers, medical test benches, chairs to sit in, and other quotidian items for any large medical facility.

Out of the nearly hundred medical flats in the room, Frederik had seen less than five blurry figures visible behind the curtains. Only the barest fraction of the hospital’s capacity was being used. The hospital could care for a significant portion of the Vasian population, but in regular situations, it only used a small fraction of that capacity. Frederik wondered what might cause stress on medical infrastructure that they would plan for such large volumes of wounded, and he shuddered remembering some of his own ordeal.

Omolara was standing only a handful of rows down, talking to Vis outside Betty Blue’s cubicle. Io waved, Vis smiled, but Omolara gave a curt nod and continued her conversation.

“Think she is responsible for that explosion? That last one we saw?”

“Absolutely,” Io replied so immediately Frederik had barely finished asking his question. “She rigged a nuclear lance to detonate once we were clear and on the ground.”

When he saw Omolara, a frown appeared on his face. His heart filled with an intense desire to hate her and everyone from the Solar system for unilaterally making such a large decision—after all, the aliens left onboard had done nothing to Frederik directly, but Omolara had killed them alongside any Grayson Services Group survivors. He wanted to hate the Uppers for all the messiness of this job and blame them for the very existence of Grayson Services Group. But he couldn’t help feeling that he was forcing the anger, and as soon as he noticed it, the feelings would fade away, leaving him merely unsettled.

Omolara was a stellah steh. She was from a culture that had the same roots as his. Stellah steh was born from Mars. Martians built and grew all the Upper habitats. Even if he thought all the worst parts of United Planets culture came from Earth—the Arte steh—that was the ultimate source of all cultures. Zealots and violent extremists like Grayson Services Group weren’t so much a unique Arte myawn problem, but a latent possibility everywhere, in all people. A shadow that lurked, even in the beautiful and peaceful spaces of the Domot Get Grond Dey.

“Vis helped me send a message to Diya,” Io said.

Frederik pulled out of his introspective gloom.

“How is she?”

“She’s fine, but worried. I told her to wait for us at Azure Arcbeam, back on Skarda. Don’t expect it to take more than a week to get you out and make the trip.”

He nodded. “If they discharge me today, we can be there within four days if we burn hard.”

“And… after that? After we get you back to Diya?”

She reached out and rested her hand on his knee. Frederik placed his good hand over hers and squeezed.

“I’m not sure.”

She flicked an EAR window over at him. “Maybe this message from Taliya will help you decide.”

“She’s giving us one hundred and forty thousand swawn? And locked Kirk out of his cut?”

Io leaned back in her chair and laughed. “You ended up getting a lot more than just triple pay, Eff.”

“Di plenti treasure.”^{[150][Di Lingua]: The universe provides. ↑} Frederik said sarcastically. “And I won’t lie. Seeing Kirk’s reputation burned from the root was a pleasant surprise. Thank you, Io.”

“I was just the messenger,” Io blushed and smiled.

“Any other surprises for me?”

“Just one more,” she pulled his family’s Martian shawl out and draped it over his shoulders.

“Nawa oh!^{[151][Di Lingua]: Woah! ↑} How did you find this?”

She nodded toward Betty Blue’s blurry silhouette behind one of the spinel ceramic curtains. “She found it in the docking bay. Held on to it, forgot about it until today.”

Frederik yawned, warm and tired beneath the shawl. “Can you thank her for me? I am getting tired.”

“Of course,” she gave Frederik a crooked smile. “So, what’s next? You have enough Tonn to do anything you want.”

“Maybe we could settle down on Skarda…” he sighed. “But, yu gah sabi, maybe we could travel.”

“To Celosia?”

“Just for a week,” Frederik chuckled. “I think I would get bored after any more than that. But maybe we leave Ya Ke entirely? I want to see what life is like around other stars.”

“And what about stability? Settling down?”

He put his good hand over hers. “That would be good for me, and Diya—”

“And me.”

“You would settle down? Become a farmer?”

Io laughed. “I think we’ve had enough adventure for a lifetime. It’s time for me to find a home.”

“My home is with Diya…and you. If we are together, we will have stability,” Frederik sighed contentedly and leaned back in his medical flat, closing his eyes, suddenly exhausted. “But I am not sure Ya Ke has to be a part of that anymore.”

Io kissed his forehead lightly as he drifted off to sleep.