Hecate Page 4

  He took the morphaux injector from Shin once she finished loading it. Jammed the needle hard against Sikuuku’s shoulder and dropped it to the floor. Wrapped his arms around the gunner after and just held him, cradling his heavy body against his chest while he shuddered and shook, the two of them waiting together for the painkillers to kick in.

  Long time before the morphaux took hold, and even then, it only dulled the pain. Sikuuku twitched and whimpered, one hand shaking badly while the other clutched the sleeve of Henricksen’s uniform, twisting the fabric until it threatened to tear.

  “It’s alright,” Henricksen told him. “You’re alright.”

  He wasn’t—Sikuuku, the ship, pretty much this entire situation was pretty damn far from “alright”—but Henricksen repeated the lie because the crew needed to hear it. Needed that hope to get through this, and come out on the other side.

  “There ya go,” he said, cradling the gunner’s burnt and bleeding body. Holding him close until the trembling eased, and that desperately clutching hand let go. “There ya go, buddy. Just gonna turn ya over to Shin for a moment.” Henricksen caught Shin’s eye and scooted backward, gently laying the gunner back down. “Bandage him up,” he said. “Best you can.”

  “Aye, sir,” she whispered, voice muffled by the cloth covering her nose and mouth, wide eyes locked onto Sikuuku’s bloody, weeping arms.

  Henricksen gripped her shoulder, squeezing until she looked at him. Nodded once and stood, glancing around to orient himself before walking unsteadily over to Helm.

  Pushed Shaheen’s body from her seat—murmuring apologies to her corpse, knowing this was no way to treat fallen crew—and flopped down in front of Helm’s panel. Pressed a hand to the polyglass surface, and a second when that first failed to convince the system to wake. “Work. Please work,” he begged, but the panel remained dark, the system beneath off-line. Nothing but his own blurred, bloody visage reflecting back from the glass. “Dead,” he whispered, staring in dismay.

  Dead as Shaheen. As countless others scattered throughout the ship.

  He turned his head, scanning the bridge around him. Dim lighting everywhere, making it hard to see much of anything, especially with all that smoke hanging in the air. But the stations were obviously—dark shapes in the blood and grey misty, panels empty as Helm’s. Not a system on that bridge working, which was hardly surprising, really. Considering the pounding the ship had taken.

  The ship.

  “Hecate.” Henricksen raised his head, searching for her camera. “Hecate. What’s our status?”

  “Engines are offline, Henricksen. Navigation, Artillery—”

  “Are dead, and dead, and dead. I get it,” he said, waving a weary hand. “We’re in a world of shit. Forget the other systems, just focus on getting the engines back online so we can get the hell outta here.”

  “I can’t, Henricksen,” Hecate said quietly. Voice calm—so very, very calm even now.

  Henricksen envied her for that. For that level of emotional control. Some argued AI didn’t experience true emotion. That it was all just an output of advanced emulation routines, but any officer who’d commanded a ship would tell you differently. AI—old AI like Hecate—understood fear. Felt it, though differently than humans. Buried it, in times of crisis. Glossed it over with that oh-so-calm demeanor. That icy-cold serenity that no human could ever touch.

  Scared as shit—that’s what that calm voice meant. Worried about her crew. About herself, because she needed to protect them.

  “I’m sorry,” Hecate said in her softest, most gentle voice.

  A voice that cut through him, keen as the sharpest knife.

  Henricksen’s hands fell away from Helm’s panel, piling uselessly in his lap. “It’s not over,” he whispered, klaxons screeching on a last bit of power, sputtering as they died. “It’s not over. It can’t be.”

  Smoke drifted between them, obscuring Hecate’s camera from his eyes. Filling his nose with the stench of ash and charred clothing, burnt skin and melted plastics—a cloying, sickening combination that reminded him of death.

  Sikuuku shrieked in agony, screams battering at Henricksen’s ears. Shin scrabbled at the med kit for more painkillers, reloaded the injector and slammed the shot against the gunner’s shoulder. Cupped his tattooed face between her hands after, murmuring softly until he settled. Finished bandaging his burns once she could touch him without causing too much pain and just sat with him once she’d finished, holding the gunner’s hand.

  A whir from overhead as the fans kicked in, chugging away at the smoke-filled room. Fresh air poured in, a frosty, hiccupping breeze filtering downward in fits and starts.

  Henricksen closed his eyes and tilted his face toward the ceiling, letting the cool air wash over his cheeks.

  Environmentals were the most important of Hecate’s systems. Her first priority for restoration in any emergency event. There’d been many of those over the years—Henricksen had personally seen Hecate parked in spacedock getting repairs more times than he could count—but this time…

  This one was worse. Much, much worse than anything they’d been through before.

  “Henricksen.”

  “I know,” he said, sighing as the fan overhead died. He lowered his head, eyes drifting to the windows as a flash popped off and yet another ship disappeared.

  Just a handful left out there now, including that ominous, silver orb. The Cepheid floated serenely, the cloud of shining, metal objects it gave birth to spreading in a diffuse cloud around it. Sparkling and silver, like starlight and moondust.

  “Henricksen.”

  He glanced at her camera and moved closer to the windows, staring hard at that cloud. Realized it was moving quickly. Not just drifting, propelled somehow.

  And closing in on Hecate. Fanning to either side.

  “What is that?” he asked, pressing a hand to the windows. “What the hell are—”

  “Henricksen!”

  He jumped, snatching his hand from the windows, Hecate’s sharp, angry tone drawing his eyes back to the camera.

  “Nothing you can do about that.”

  Softer this time. Calm and reasoning. The Hecate he knew. The Hecate he’d served all these years.

  “The crew needs you, Henricksen.”

  “Crew,” he repeated, scanning his eyes across the bridge.

  Poor, dead Shaheen lay crumpled where he’d left her. Shin knelt beside Sikuuku, holding tight to his hand. Duclos…almost missed Duclos, sitting still as a statue at Scan. Hands resting on the panel, eyes fixed on the polyglass surface, staring intently, as if expecting it to wake at any moment. And behind him, a shadow, wandering around the bridge. A ghost that resolved into Farrow, clutching her broken visor in one hand.

  Crew. His crew. Crew that needed him, just as Hecate said.

  Right now Henricksen had no idea what to tell them. What to do to get them out of this mess. “Hecate,” he called, eyes lifting to her camera.

  “Abandon ship,” she said, comms system crackling to life. Hecate cast her voice across the ship, speaking to all ten tiers at once. “All crew to the lifeboats,” she ordered in her serene, AI voice. And more gently, to Henricksen, “That means you, too, Captain.”

  “No,” he told her, refusing Hecate’s orders this one and only time. Refusing the title she gave, because it wasn’t his. Not yet. “We’re not leaving.”

  “You don’t have a choice.”

  Henricksen raised his head, staring in confusion. Glanced to one side as the bridge door shut with a sibilant hiss, locking system kicking in as the gaskets sucked tight, sealing the room up.

  A whir and clunk and the mooring bolts burst free—deafening noise in the confined space of the bridge, pod shuddering and shaking as it separated from the rest of the ship.

  “No!” Henricksen turned from the windows, moving closer to the camera. “Hecate. Please. Don’t do this.”

  “Goodbye, Henricksen,” she whispered, fondness in her voice. “You’ve earn
ed your stars. Don’t let anyone take them.”

  “Hecate!”

  She ejected the bridge pod with Henricksen still screaming, calling out her name. Emergency beacon kicking in automatically, squawking for attention, calling out to Seychelles and Anatolia, Shiloh and Centrix and Gogmagog, just arriving. Pleading with them to help as the bridge pod moved away.

  They would, eventually—that was the way of things, Fleet left no one behind—but right now those ships were far too busy to worry about little things like lifeboats and escape pods. Danger stalked the stars—deadly and pernicious, random in its intent. The Fleet ships registered the bridge pod’s request, logging it for action later, focusing the sum total of their attention on the booby-trapped ships attacking them for now. Slicing through the droned ships one-by-one, until only the Cepheid remained—a silver orb surrounded by a stardust nimbus, like winking grains of metallic sand.

  Helpless, purposeless, Henricksen stared through the bridge pod’s windows, watching the Cepheid’s spawn divide. One cloud of shining objects becoming two, then many, gaining speed as they moved away from their host.

  Surrounded Hecate. Moved past her to the other Meridian Alliance vessels.

  “No,” he breathed, filled with sudden fear. Overwhelmed by a sense of foreboding. “No, Hecate!” he yelled, beating at the windows. Screaming her name over and over as Gogmagog opened fire, targeting the Cepheid with every last one of his cannons.

  Missiles released, sliding silently through space. Struck the Cepheid on one half moon side and the other, pounding through silver-sided hull plating, exposing the nuclear reactor inside.

  “Run,” Henricksen whispered, palms pressed to the windows, eyes locked onto Hecate’s shredded shape. “Get out of there,” he begged.

  But Hecate never ran from anything. Not once in her two centuries of life. And with her engines crippled, she couldn’t run, even if she’d wanted to. Instead, she just floated there, alone and all but helpless as the Cepheid’s silver sphere bulged, metal skin melting, hull plating shredding as the reactor inside it overloaded and catastrophically failed. Creating a vast shockwave that spread outward in a wave of destructive energy.

  Roaring over Hecate. Destroying her in an instant.

  “Hecate.”

  Henricksen stared at the stars, feeling cold—impossibly cold, incredibly empty—now that Hecate was gone.

  Ten seconds later, the shockwave reached them, its energy largely dissipated, bled off in huge chunks as the ring expanded, traveling across the stars. The force that obliterated Hecate bumped her bridge pod almost gently, rocking it like a deep ocean wave before continuing on to parts unknown. Carrying the shredded remains of Hecate with it. The debris from the Cepheid, the other dead ships that stayed behind.

  And all the while, the emergency beacon kept shrieking, calling out to the Valkyrie, the Titans and Auroras, that hulking Dreadnought Gogmagog who’d destroyed the Cepheid, dooming Hecate to death.

  But Gogmagog never answered. Instead, it was Seychelles who eventually came to get them, Gogmagog having lost interest in the entire affair once the fighting ended. He stuck around long enough to blast through the last of the droned ships, chewing the dead vessels and any sizeable chunks of wreckage into teeny-tiny bits of space junk before spooling up his hyperspace drives and jumping back to whatever Fleet base spawned him. Taking his entourage with him. Leaving Seychelles and crippled Ostea, Hoarfrost and Timpani and Coriolanus with his missing tail to finish the mission.

  Search for survivors. Bring Hecate’s remaining crew home.

  Four

  Henricksen slammed the door to his borrowed barracks quarters, kicked over a chair and threw the reader against the wall.

  The device hit and rebounded, blanking as soon as it clattered to the metal decking, shock resistant case dented heavily on one side. Powered down and lay there, doing a pretty decent impersonation of a doorstop.

  Apparently “shock resistant” didn’t mean “throw resistant”. Engineering specs failed to account for the devices being chucked in anger and fits of despondent, despairing rage.

  “Well, that was brilliant.” Henricksen folded his arms and leaned against the door, shaking his head in disgust.

  Venting his frustration on an innocent piece of electronic equipment… not exactly his proudest moment. Hopefully the damn thing wasn’t broken.

  “Probably dock my pay if it is,” he muttered, pushing away from the door.

  Voices in the hallway made him glance over his shoulder, ears perking as the loud, jocular tones of the group of people out there dropped to a whisper. Footsteps slowing as they approached his quarters, speeding up as they hurried on by.

  Officers’ quarters, this section of the station. Most of them junior—ensigns and lieutenants waiting for their ships to pull in so they could take up their new assignments. Young, all of them. Skittish around the hard-eyed, scar-faced, scowling senior who’d come among them—angry when he arrived here, angry ever since.

  Scared, the lot of them. Shied away whenever they happened to cross Henricksen’s path. Avoided him like the plague in the mess hall, slinking away in terror whenever he entered one of the common spaces where the junior officers liked to hang out. Hardly dared to even look at him because they knew Henricksen’s reputation. The rumors about what had happened to his last ship.

  Infamous—that was Henricksen. No mistaking the grim-faced officer in the dark blue uniform. Torch and key patch on his shoulder a reminder of the AI he’d left for dead.

  “Hell of a legacy,” he muttered, eying the grey walls around him. The cheap plastic-and-metal, overly utilitarian barracks furniture crammed into the tiny room.

  Depressingly dull, the lot of it. “Thrifty”, if he was feeling generous. Exceedingly military either way. And the quarters themselves… tiny spaces compared to his berthing on Hecate. The smallest room he’d inhabited in a long, long time.

  Since I was one of them, he thought, listening to the junior officers’ voices fading as they moved down the hall. Since I was stuck in one of those four-bys the enlisted all envied because at least you didn’t have to hot rack it like they did in the barracks bunks.

  Hard to remember those days, sometimes. What it felt like to be that young and unblooded. Wide-eyed and naïve about the universe. Was a time when he too stood in awe of the senior officers. The battle-scarred, grey-haired men and women who’d seen so much war.

  Scared of them as an ensign. Scared of ending up like them. Of turning that cold and hard.

  But life happened. And death. Nearly twenty years he’d served in the Fleet, and cold, hard, well that just sort of came with the territory. As inevitable as time.

  Still…

  He bowed his head, touching his shoulder. Fingering the torch and key patch.

  Hard to believe he’d ever been that innocent. Then again, maybe he never was. Pusher kid, after all, and pushers saw their fair share of death. Lost crews on the shipping lanes to DSR and pirates. To the scavengers that preyed on the freighters way, way out. Father went that way. Mother too, eventually, leaving Henricksen to raise himself.

  Learn the ropes. Earn his place among the stars. Fight his way through the pusher ranks to that shit Officer Candidate School on Aerelon. Keep fighting until he clawed his way to Hecate’s commanding officer’s chair.

  Gone, he reminded himself, rubbing wearily at his eyes. Hecate’s gone now.

  And Henricksen’s assignment with her. That was the problem. The source of his current foul mood.

  “Dammit,” he sighed, casting his eyes across that depressing-as-all-get-out room. “God fucking dammit to hell.”

  He pushed away from the door, forgetting the junior officers in the hall for now. Stalked across his tiny room and scooped the dented reader from the decking. Keyed it on—silently relieved to find it still working—and settled into a chair in front of a desk shoved in the far corner.

  Sat there for a long time, just staring at the screen, thinking of the bar on
the opposite side of the station and how he hadn’t gotten blind, stinking drunk in a long, long time. Too long, to be honest, considering he couldn’t quite remember when that last time even was.

  Commanding officer assignment came with certain expectations, and getting tipsy with the crew was a definite no-no. Sociable drink now and then was fine, but a drunk and disorderly—no matter what the circumstances—was a sure way to torpedo his career.

  Later, maybe.

  Once Sikuuku made his decision. To celebrate his new assignment.

  Speaking of which…

  A touch of the reader’s screen and Henricksen pulled up a file. Scrolled through a roster of ships’ listings, searching for a billet, any billet that, by some miracle, he might have missed.

  “Nothing,” he muttered, reaching the end of the roster. “Nothing, and nothing, and more nothing.” He tossed the reader aside, lip lifting in disgust. Leaned back and stared at the ceiling, fingers knitted together behind his head. “I’m fucked. Twenty years of service and I’m well and truly fucked.”

  A knock at the door did nothing to improve his mood. Didn’t want company, especially right now. But a second knock and Sikuuku barged his way in—bottle in hand, smile plastered across his face, looking like he’d already enjoyed a little liquid cheer along the way.

  “Drink?” he offered, holding the bottle up.

  Still wasn’t in the mood for company, but a drink was tempting. Exactly what Henricksen wanted at the moment. “Why the hell not,” he decided, hooking a chair over, backing his own up against the wall.

  Just two seats in here, plus the desk and a rock-hard couch. Too much furniture, honestly for such a tiny space. Made a tight room that much tighter. Almost claustrophobic with two people inside it, sucking up all the air.

  Three long, striding steps and Sikuuku plunked down in the chair across from Henricksen, setting the bottle on the desk beside him. Patted his pockets, looking around for something, smiled and nodded as Henricksen opened a desk drawer and pulled two glasses out.

  Dusty glasses. The dregs of the last drink they’d held crusting the bottom.