Cole nodded and focused on the platforms. A moment later, the light over each pilot switched from red to green. There was a loud beeping sound from the row of control consoles followed by a pop as the five large cages in the back of the room—cages Cole had designed and helped build—vanished.
A moment later, the pilots followed, winking out of existence with a muted pop, as air from the room crashed together to fill the void they had left behind. The row of navigators jumped up to take their place on the platforms. They turned, fell to their butts and tucked their chins, only having three seconds between jumps to prepare themselves.
Cole glanced over at the navigator in Mortimor’s line. A lock of bright red hair spilled out of Penny’s hood as she settled into place. Her eyes met Cole’s for a brief moment just before her head went down. There was a soft pop, and she too disappeared from the room, leaving Cole awash in a tremble of nerves.
It was all happening so fast.
Cole’s heart missed a beat as he took a step forward, shuffling the steel decking ever duller. He chanced a glance to the side at the neighboring line. Mortimor was looking straight ahead, the man’s beard and combat hood hiding whatever he was thinking. Cole wished he’d known Molly’s old man was going on the raid. He would’ve switched places with someone to be in Mortimor’s group and been able to keep an eye on him—
The lines surged forward again. Cole felt Larken’s hand on his back, pushing him along. Suddenly, Cole found himself beside the console operator, right in front of the jump platform. Marx, the Callite swordsman who would help Cole clear the Bern ship’s corridors, plopped down on the platform. The alien looked up and time slowed down to a crawl. Cole watched Marx’s arms wrap around his shins, saw the man’s scaly chin tuck against his knees—and then the alien was gone. More air crashed together so close, Cole felt the sucking breeze on his cheeks. He jumped up to the platform and sat down as quickly as he could, then spun around to face what he hoped would be an exit once he popped inside the steel cage. In the back of his mind, he counted:
Three.
He grabbed his shins and tucked his head, squeezing his buckblade as tightly as he dared without crushing it. A thousand sword fighting tips from his practice sessions with Penny flashed through his mind.
Two.
A sickening sensation clawed at Cole’s stomach as he wondered if the raid was a mistake. He tried to remember what the Seer had said about free will, but then the silent counting in his mind clicked down to—
One.
•• 2 ••
The ready room of the Underground Headquarters disappeared. One moment, Larken was standing before him, looking down at his sword and waiting his turn. The next, Cole was seeing the interior of a metal box. He fell half a meter out of the air and landed on his ass, smacking solid steel. Cole felt a rush of adrenaline—the raid had really begun! He sprang forward and launched himself through the clean hole the pilot had cut in the side of the cage. It was a couple meters to the ship’s deck below. Cole hit the plating in a roll and looked around.
Marx stood off to starboard, his buckblade drawn. The Callite turned and glanced over his shoulder at Cole.
“Go,” the alien said. Marx spun and ran down the corridor, looking for Bern crewmen to kill. Up ahead, Cole could hear the pilot and navigator stomping forward to secure the cockpit. Cole felt a sick lurch in his stomach as he imagined where they were: His squad had just jumped across hyperspace and into the belly of an enemy ship flying in formation with thousands of other enemy ships. He looked once more to Marx, but the Callite was already out of sight, disappearing around a bend in the corridor. Cole remembered his duty, that he should be running in the opposite direction. He spun and headed off, catching a glimpse of Larken as the translator leapt out of the suspended cage.
The image of the metal box stuck with Cole as he ran aft. Protruding from a solid bulkhead—twisted sheets of metal peeled back from the expanding grav plates—it had worked exactly as he’d imagined. No matter where the box had ended up in hyperspace, those expanding sheets of steel in its center would’ve provided a safe pocket of emptiness for them to arrive inside of. The first part of his plan had worked flawlessly. Cole felt a surge of hope wash away some of his anxiety. He was that much closer to Molly.
As he ran down the ship’s corridor—his thoughts straying from his duty—Cole finally remembered to flick off the safety on his buckblade. He reminded himself of the grisly task that lay before him: he would need to kill without hesitation.
He ducked through a passageway, the thick airtight door left open and secured to the bulkhead. There was a funny script of writing above the hatch in neat red ink, the shape and style of the language resembling nothing Cole had ever seen. The peculiar writing stood in stark contrast to the rest of his surroundings. Otherwise, Cole could’ve been running through a Navy ship. The size of the passageways, the spacing from ceiling to floor, even the height and ergonomics of the control pods on the walls—they were all identical to a Human craft.
Cole turned a corner and was reminded why this was so. The figure strolling down the hallway in his direction looked perfectly Human. Even the confusion and shock on the Bern’s face were familiar, and much easier to read than the red script had been.
The Bern crewman fumbled at his belt—whether for gun or radio or what else, Cole didn’t wait to find out. He continued his run and flicked on his buckblade, unleashing the molecule-wide wire made stiff by the hilt’s exotic magnetic field. He swung up in an angle four as the Bern pulled something from his hip—
The Bern’s head fell sideways, removed from his torso in a slanted wound from neck to ear. Cole danced out of the way, cursing himself for being so sloppy, and not just for the fountain of gore erupting from the Bern’s neck and splattering the wall, but the poor reflex of going for a soft spot. He needed to remember the power of the weapon he was holding. The goal was to aim for the torso, or anything difficult to miss or hard for the enemy to pull out of the way. There was no such thing as a “soft spot” for the buckblade. There were just spots. Any spot would do.
As the Bern’s body finished slumping to the ground, Cole gathered himself together. He took one look at his artificial arm, remembering the stakes. He then turned and ran deeper into the ship, stopping to check every turn, nook, and corridor.
He took his next two victims by surprise. Both deaths were uniquely horrific, but neither felt as personal as he’d feared they would. The blade slid through their bodies, and even some of the ship’s equipment that got in the way, without an ounce of resistance. It felt more like casting a spell on someone from a distance than a physical strike. All he did was wave a wand—and a body was split in two.
Cole took every right turn as he headed aft to make sure he covered the entire deck. He went through a dozen Bern in the process. He tried to remember Mortimor’s warning to do minimal damage to the ship with follow-throughs, a real concern when fighting in close quarters with buckblades. An accidental swipe could easily destroy something crucial in a ship they needed in order to escape hyperspace.
Rounding another corner, Cole nearly collided with Marx, who was jogging the other direction. Both swordsmen flinched, readying to strike—but they were able to restrain themselves. They stood in the passageway panting, splattered with alien blood, holding their invisible swords and smiling grimly at each other.
“Any stairs or lifts?” Cole asked, out of breath more from the adrenaline dump than the long run.
“No,” Marx said, his English accented with the coughing sound of a Callite. “Looks like a single deck design. Lucky we didn’t end up in mechanical spaces.” Marx nodded the direction Cole had come from. “Let’s get to the cockpit. Sweep your side again.”
Cole gave Marx a thumbs-up, then wondered if the Callite even knew how to interpret the gesture. “Gotcha,” he said, and ran off the same way he’d arrived. Once again, he couldn’t believe how well the raid was going.
•• 1 ••
The last thing Penny saw of the ready room was Cole, the poor boy’s face drenched in nerves. Then she closed her eyes and waited for the drop in her stomach, followed by the crashing down to the deck.
As soon as her butt hit cold steel, she launched forward, expecting to find a clean hole cut in the side of the cage. What she found instead was Jym, her pilot, pressed up against one wall and cursing at his clearly malfunctioning buckblade.
Penny felt a wave of panic; she barely remembered to jump to the side and get out of the way of her next squad mate, but self-preservation moved her just in time. She powered up her own blade and pushed it through the cage wall. As she began making a wide circle through the solid steel, she heard a pop of air behind her, followed by the sound of Stella gasping with alarm at the sight of the cramped cube, a cube that should’ve been empty.
Penny turned to warn her, to drag her out of the way, but it was too late. A few heartbeats later, Gregury jumped in and fused with Stella. The squadmates became a sickening, two-headed monster—half Serral and half Human. Screams of raw agony blared out of them both—fading to gruesome moans as intertwined organs ceased to function.
Jym threw down his sword and grabbed Stella’s boots. He threw his hands up, flipping the tangled mass of limbs backwards and out of the way. Penny pressed herself to the wall as Mortimor fell out of the air in a tight ball, missing by inches having some part of him fused with one of the others.
The screaming from Stella and Gregury fell silent. Penny thought about putting them out of their misery with her blade, but they were already dead before she could steel herself. Jym, the group’s pilot and therefore responsible for cutting an exit out of the box, cursed and kicked his dead buckblade in disgust.
Mortimor scanned the tight confines of the box and seemed to take it all in. He reached down and picked up one of the dropped swords from the two dead squadmates. “Jym, you go forward alone and clear the cockpit.” He handed him the retrieved sword. “Penny, you take Starboard. I’ll clear Port. Go!”
Penny nodded. Translator and navigator had instantly become swordsmen, she and Mortimor reverting to older, more comfortable roles. She finished her cut in the wall and kicked the center of the crude circle. The heavy steel fell away, exposing the Bern ship’s decking half a meter above the floor of the box. Two sets of legs stood there—Bern crewmen studying the strange cube that had appeared inside their starship. Penny swiped through all four limbs with a wave of her hand. She jumped out to the deck and silenced the screaming forms before they hit the ground.
It was a messy start, blood slicking the deck around the box, but Penny didn’t pause to help the others. She ran aft along the port side, thinking of the look on Stella’s face before Gregury had jumped in, and how different she had looked just moments later with her wide, lifeless eyes. The horrific sight—the suddenness of the switch from life to death—gave Penny fuel for moving swiftly through the craft, slicing down all the bewildered Bern who stood in her way.
•• 5 ••
The windshield of the impounded Bern craft was dusted in a never ending torrent of snowflakes. The flurries impacted right in front of her and slid to the side, gathering in miniature drifts. The sight of the stuff, coupled with the harsh whiteness beyond, made it easier to fly by the instruments than stare into the mesmerizing sameness.
And so Anlyn Hooo—Drenard Princess, member of the Great Circle— kept her head down as she piloted the Bern craft through hyperspace. It had been two weeks to the day. Two weeks of exhausting one-hour shifts, causing her to develop a powerful antipathy to the sight of the relentless snow outside. She preferred to rest her chin on her chest and monitor beneath drooping eyelids their ship’s position within the vast invasion fleet, following everything from the instrument readouts.
Edison snored beside her in his gruff and intermittent way. The massive Glemot, her co-pilot and fiancé, was fast asleep with the radio mic clutched in his paws. Anlyn checked the ship’s clock, dreading the answer to her weary and eternal question: How much time left on my shift?
Forty minutes.
It filled Anlyn with guilt and dread. Dread for the perceived hours and days it would take for those forty minutes to tick down and guilt for knowing that Edison would have to take over for her once they did.
Another ship passed through the open rift ahead, and the fleet adjusted accordingly. Anlyn felt a rush of adrenaline as she leaned forward, gripped the control stick, and matched the precise movements of the Bern. It took every ounce of her will to fly like a fresh pilot, alert and ready, rather than the half-dead thing she had become. A thousand times over the past weeks, Anlyn had foreseen the end to hers and Edison’s endurance: There would be a wobble and a gradual falling out of formation. Barked orders full of suspicion would follow, and Edison’s sleep-deprived lies would not wash them away. The final stage would be missiles and plasma bolts to end their fitful ruse—
A loud bang in the rear of their ship interrupted Anlyn’s thoughts. Edison bolted upright, the radio coming to his mouth in reflex. He scanned the dash before looking to Anlyn in confusion.
“Diagnose!” he said in his native English.
Anlyn shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. She tried to force the cobwebs aside and think clearly. “It sounded mechanical, but none of the gauges have so much as twitched.” She looked to the SADAR, but it was nearly useless in the driving snow. “The fleet is moving again. Maybe it was a collision?”
Edison began to rise from his seat to go inspect the cause of the noise, but Anlyn placed a hand on his chest and attempted to push him back.
“I can’t speak Bern,” she reminded him. She glanced at the mic in his hand. “Stay here in case the fleet calls. I’ll go see what it was.”