The cargo bay was opening, and Hope’s face looked down at them. “Come on!” she yelled. Or that’s what her lips looked like they said, the Tyche’s rage having taken Grace’s hearing away. Penn was the first to the ship, pulling himself into the cargo bay. Kohl was still in the street, Nate pulling on the big man’s arm. Some reason returned to Kohl’s eyes, and he came to the Tyche too, but still clutching his rebar club. Grace looked back at the Tyche, expected her to be pulling away, now that Nate knew what she was.
But there he was, still on the ground. Hand out to her.
She ran, took his hand, and they boarded the Tyche. Together.
Hope was yelling something into the comm, slamming the cargo bay door control closed. The ship shook around them, then pushed at the ground, leaping for the sky. They hugged the floor of the bay, thrust pressing on them.
Penn was looking up, trying to see around the cargo bay. “What kind of crazy pilot flies in a meteor shower?” he said.
Nate was grinning. “Well, Rear Admiral Penn, that would be my pilot.”
El’s voice came over the speakers. “Tyche to crew. Strap in. Shit’s gonna get real.”
Grace laughed. Because now it would get real. But at least they were together.
Grace Grace Grace Grace Grace…
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
They had a little time.
Kohclass="underline" in sickbay. Not a full medbay like the Gladiator had. Just a small room, a few medical supplies, most of them past their use-by dates. A low-end scanner Nate had scammed from someone was telling them what they already knew. Kohl might be dying, or he might be recovering. He'd lost blood. He’d been poisoned. There were several unidentified stimulants in his blood. He was unconscious. Stupid machine, thought Hope.
Eclass="underline" on the flight deck, arguing with Penn. That was a thing she wouldn’t have got to do in the actual military. They were arguing about who would fly the ship, and where it would get flown to. About how fast and far they would push it. About whether taking off was even a good idea, what with the sky full of burning rocks — the bugs were still shelling the planet — and a hostile alien spacecraft orbiting the planet.
Penn: also on the flight deck, but full of bad ideas and desperation. The man had been sweating, moving too fast from foot to foot, like he had a powerful need to use the head, but didn’t know where it was. He kept talking about the mission and acceptable collateral damage, like he was telling a story that would help them sleep at night. He had hard eyes.
Nate: asleep. Out like a baby in a coma, cabin door open, arm draping over the edge of his crash couch. Still in his clothes. Twitching while he slept, whimpering, dreams that were too bad for real rest but too soft to wake from. His dreams might have been about freedom. All their dreams might have been.
Grace: missing. Not in her cabin. Not in the ready room, eating, having a coffee, or something stronger. Not in Engineering, and not next to Kohl in the sickbay. She wasn’t on the flight deck, supporting El, or supporting Penn. She wasn’t in Nate’s cabin, although that was a crazy thought, but Hope had had to check anyway.
And, finally, Hope. Here, in Grace’s cabin, holding the hilt of Grace’s broken sword. It had been thrown into the recycler, where Hope had found it. Hope drew the blade, ten centimeters of steel glinting from the scabbard before a jagged stump covered in alien slime told the full story. She’d come to find Grace, to say would you like it fixed, or..? because Grace looked tired, just as tired as Hope was, and she looked like she’d had a bad day.
Hope didn’t have many friends. She couldn’t. But she had plenty of stims, and she could always sleep later. This friend, she’d try and look after.
• • •
Since no one else was watching Kohl, Hope tried it for a while. She wasn’t a Guild Healer, although it was all mechanics at some level. Hope had read a little on how the body worked, and then went down the Engineer path because machines didn’t leak so much. She didn’t know people like she knew drives and reactors and fabricators, but maybe if she talked to the sickbay machine enough, it’d talk back in a way she could understand. She could bring Kohl back. Kohl didn’t like her, and she didn’t like Kohl, but Hope had taken some time — never enough, always something to do — to watch the recordings from their suit cams. She’d seen him at work, doing what he did best. She’d also seen the number of Ezeroc arrayed against them. That was a powerful force to face, but especially when you were down a man.
It didn’t matter what kind of man. It was about numbers. It was about survival.
Nate had plugged Kohl into the right tubes, set the medical machine to ping and sigh at the appropriate times, put his hands on his hips, then said fuck it before walking off. Because none of them knew how to fix a person beyond putting on a field dressing. Kohl had been poisoned by the Ezeroc, some kind of alien toxin injected under his skin to fester and boil.
Hope had watched the holos. She’d seen people with bugs where their brains should have been. Was this how it started? Stabbed while you were at lunch, or on a bus, or shopping for new clothes. Pain, blood, and then … what? Oblivion? Madness before the end?
Penn had a data sliver. There might be more on that data sliver.
Hope leaned forward, putting a cool hand on Kohl’s sweat-slick brow. “Let’s see what we can see,” she said. She pumped the sanitizer a few times, then wiped her hands dry on her flight suit. Because, while Kohl needed their care, God only knew how you caught that kind of sickness.
• • •
“As the senior ranking officer—”
El’s peal of laughter came down to Hope as she approached the Flight Deck. “Oh, Penn. Penn, Penn, Penn. We’ve been going at this for an hour or more. And finally, you drop the senior officer card?”
“I’m a Rear Admiral in the Republic Navy—”
“You’re a spy,” said El. “You might also be a Rear Admiral. But you’re a spy, because I’ve seen people like you. Last man standing. Got the big scary data, got to get it out! Seriously? It’s old. Also, this is not a Navy ship.”
Hope reached the airlock, sticking her head through. She watched El playing with her console, checking the Tyche out after their run of fire and death. The LIDAR was still down, and that’d need fixing. Hope then looked at Penn, who had one hand on his hip and the other hand on the butt of a blaster he’d scrounged up from somewhere.
Penn hadn’t finished, or he hadn’t seen Hope, or he didn’t care either way. “It’s under Navy charter—”
“No,” said El, not looking around.
Hope could see Penn’s hand tighten on his blaster, the muscles in his jaw clenching. He was about to do something that couldn’t be undone, because he was used to getting his own way, used to being in charge, and he probably felt close to freedom. Like that was a thing you could be close to, rather than have, or not have. She cleared her throat.
Penn startled, a little, his hand dropping from his blaster. El didn’t even look around as she said, “Hey, Hope. How’s my LIDAR coming along?”
“It’s coming,” she said. She paused, then said, “but I’ve got a comm line up to the Gladiator. I found a few satellites up there still talking, routed around the planet, and viola.” El had parked the Tyche on the opposite side of the planet to the Ezeroc ship, and thus also the Gladiator. No line of site was no problem if you had patience and skill. Hope had a theory that said the satellites were how the Ezeroc had jammed their comms, but she was missing some important vectors, like how had they gained access to the satellites or where was the signal’s point of origin. Later; there’d be time enough for that after the immediate threat of a horrible death had passed.