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THEY RACED DOWN ANOTHER corridor, the smell of leaf litter and fall rot staining the air. In an Earth ship or even a Ribelian one, Tyce could judge the health of the ship by the air. Were the carbon dioxide scrubbers working? Did the air smell of oil? Was there a distinctive staleness that meant the air handlers had stopped moving air at all?
But on this ship, Tyce had no idea what any of these smells meant. The room with the rotting wall had needed repairs of some sort, but the faint smell of leaf rot—was that normal or a sign that the ship hull was about to rupture? The lack of information made him more jittery than the alien invasion.
“Wait.” He caught Ama’s arm and pulled her toward the wall.
She brought her weapon up. “What?”
Tyce shook his head, unable to explain his feelings.
“Tyce?”
“I don’t know,” he said in a hoarse whisper. The wall behind him felt solid. He couldn’t hear anything or see anything out of the ordinary. The smell of leaf litter didn’t appear dangerous, yet a sense of foreboding echoed in his soul.
Yoss appeared from around the bend in front, walking backward and keeping his weapon up to guard the hall. “What?” He had a quiet fury that radiated off every sharp word and tense muscle. The aliens were in trouble, assuming Yoss could find them.
“Tyce simply stopped.”
“I don’t know what’s wrong.” Tyce hated feeling so fucking out of control. He didn’t want to act based off gut feelings or vague impressions planted in his brain by a ship sensor. “I don’t think we should go down that corridor.”
With a narrowing of his eyes and a toothy grin, Yoss said, “Then I want to go down it.”
Tyce stepped close to Yoss. He couldn’t match Yoss for height or bulk, but he wasn’t about to back down. “But Ama shouldn’t.”
“Ama?” Yoss glanced over toward her.
“I know you aren’t questioning my gun skills,” she said darkly.
“No!” Tyce would never do that, especially when she was the best damn gunner on the ship. She talked about how she wasn’t young enough to keep up with the kids on the ship, but he would rather have her steady aim than their ability to race to the end of a corridor without getting out of breath. “You’re the captain now. The crew needs you to stay in a more secure location.”
She raised an eyebrow.
Yoss scoffed before saying, “That’s the most Command-stupid shit you’ve said in a long time.”
“Did you stay in a secure location when you were captain?” she asked.
“No, but...” Tyce closed his mouth. She wouldn’t want to hear the real answer. He hadn’t been Dragon crew the way the others had. He’d been expendable, and if someone was going to die carrying out some outrageous scheme he’d cooked up, it should be him. Besides, he’d vowed to give his life to the Ribelian cause. He’d vowed his next life as well, so if he died, Ribelian belief said he was just hitting a big, old reset button and starting out again, this time without the background of a traitorous Command officer.
Ama sighed. “Captain’s job is to protect the families. Either we all go down this corridor or we all avoid it.”
“We avoid it,” Tyce said firmly.
“I say we go,” Yoss said.
Tyce held his breath. Ama had taken the captainship back, so the call was hers. She gave a single, definitive nod. “We go.”
Yoss loped off without any hesitation. Tyce said softly, “This is a bad idea.”
“I have followed more of your bad ideas in the last three years than I did in the fifty before that. Sometimes bad ideas are the only alternative left, and I should not have to tell you that.” She brought her weapon up and hurried after Yoss.
“If my ideas have worked out so well, you might listen to me this time,” Tyce muttered. He must have spoken more loudly than he meant to because she gave him a quick look full of sympathy.
“When you speak, I don’t know how much is Tyce Robinson and how much is the ship.” Tyce opened his mouth, but she held up a hand to stop him. “I am not disrespecting the ship and zir right to speak. Given that we are walking inside zir, ze has every right to be heard and I am listening. However, I do not know the ship and I must focus on my obligation to the crew.”
“Without any alien influence, I can conclude that walking toward an unknown danger is stupid,” Tyce said.
She moved down the corridor again. “I would expect you to say as much whether or not you did. But you know me, Tyce. You know us. Assure the ship that we have as much respect for zir life as the lives of any sentient creature.”
“You’re assuming it’s sentient now?”
“You’re assuming it’s not?” she shot back.
Given the Ribelian definition of sentient, that would be a difficult obstacle to overcome. Since he couldn’t argue with her, he hurried to take the second spot after Yoss. At least he could make sure she was as defended as possible. No matter what she said, she was not expendable. The Dragon crew needed her calm voice to balance the more volatile personalities on board, including Yoss. He rarely listened to anyone else.
Yoss waited at the curve, his weapon pointed toward the far end, but Tyce hesitated. He kept his weapon trained at the smaller corridor intersecting the main hall. After a second, Yoss eased his way back, his weapon still at ready. “Problem?”
“No problem, which is the problem,” Tyce said. Yoss frowned at him, and Tyce clarified. “I don’t have a problem going down there.” He nodded toward the curve where Yoss had been standing. “I don’t want to go down this branch.”
Yoss looked over Tyce’s shoulder.
Ama peered down the corridor. Nothing seemed dangerous. It was narrower than the main passage, but it was still larger than any corridor on a human ship would be. “Take the smaller branch,” Ama ordered.
Cold panic ran through Tyce’s brain like a small rodent racing in circles.
Tyce tightened his grip on his weapon. “For the last time, all I’m doing is getting vague impressions that something is truly wrong in that general direction. As far as communication goes, this is about as effective as smoke signals.”
“Smoke signals work fine,” Yoss said before he headed down the narrower corridor.
“If I said space was black, that man would stick his head out a window to check,” Tyce said softly. He felt like he’d rewound their relationship by at least a year.
Ama patted his arm. “He doesn’t like change.”
That was the understatement of the universe. However, for all his cantankerousness, Yoss slowed, he kept his weapon up and his every movement communicated his wariness.
Yoss was at the top of a set of oversized stairs when he dropped into a crouch. A half second later, Tyce heard the scream. A series of popping noises followed, and Tyce raced up the stairs to take a spot next to Yoss. He lost his balance and fell to one knee. Yoss grabbed him by the waistband and jerked him back. A flash of heat blasted the hallways, and Tyce shivered as a tremor ran up his spine.
“Don’t get dead,” Yoss said—then he aimed his weapon and fired three quick shots. The shrapnel loads Yoss favored wouldn’t damage traditional ships, not unless they hit exposed wiring, but the sharp projectiles were designed to cut through tissue, and this ship was made of organic matter.
“Watch your shots.”
“I got plenty of ammo.”
Tyce caught Yoss’s arm. “You don’t know if your rounds will damage the ship or how much more damage the ship can take. Command blasted a hole in the side, so the hull is vulnerable to projectile weapons.”
“We’ve got bigger worries than a hull breach,” Yoss said. He wasn’t normally one for ridiculous statements, but that made no sense. If weapons fire breached the hull, they could die in minutes if the ship didn’t have containment protocols or if those functions were offline. Maybe his confusion showed on his face because Yoss eased back and gestured for Tyce to take point. “Go on. See for yourself.”
Tyce traded looks with Ama, and she gave him a subtle nod of encouragement. When Tyce eased into the spot Yoss had abandoned, he saw the back end of a huge beast. Despite the lack of any air currents in the corridor, the grayish green hair undulated. It fired again, and Tyce spotted the movement at the creature’s belly. It held a gun in one of many legs along its stomach.
Ama took the spot directly behind him. “Who does the creature fire at?”
“I can’t see,” Tyce whispered. The monster swung its head around, only it lacked a head. It had a blunt front end with eyes running along a shoulder ridge where the two huge legs with hooked claws attached. The eyes were as large as plates and shot through with red veins that made it appear demonic.
A Command soldier came out a doorway and opened fire. The buzz of a Command energy weapon made all the hair on Tyce’s arm stand on edge. That used to be the sound of target practice, and the academy, and challenging friends, so the person with the lowest score bought the first round of drinks. And now it was the primary soundtrack of his nightmares.
The alien swung his front end around again and fired. The screech of the weapon made Tyce flinch, and the soldier fell to the ground. Then John appeared. John. The idiot had his weapon up, firing blind as he grabbed the soldier’s vest.
Tyce moved before he could process the stupidity of his own actions. He stepped into the corridor and fired. Rather than target the body, the obvious and huge target, he aimed at the alien’s legs. He got two shots off before the creature turned, that blunt, headless front end squaring off against Tyce. Yoss stayed within the partial protection of the curve of the wall, but he began firing as the whole ship shivered.
The alien reared back so it squatted on those enormous grasshopper back legs, and six center legs each stilled, two with obvious weapons and three more carrying devices that didn’t have an obvious purpose. Tyce expected to feel the heat of the alien weapon, and he hoped death would be quick, but the alien simply rattled its front legs against the floor strongly enough that the vibrations travelled up Tyce’s legs.
Then the alien turned to an intersecting passage and leaped into it, vanishing in a single bound. Left standing in the empty hallway, Tyce’s brain blanked out. For a second, he couldn’t process thought. Terror turned to something so cold that it froze his brain. Then Yoss was there, beside him, his weapon pointed at John where he still stood over his injured soldier.
Tyce forced his reluctant limbs to move. He grabbed Yoss’s arm. “Hold your fire!”
Two Command soldiers burst out of the room behind John, their guns up. They hadn’t been willing to take on an alien, but give them a fight they assumed they could win, and they were more than willing to engage. John turned his back on Tyce and Yoss and physically blocked his men with his own body. Fear washed through Tyce so strongly that he couldn’t breathe for several seconds.
“Weapons down. Now!” John ordered.
The taller one, a woman with mismatched eyes protested, “But sir!”
“We have bigger problems than each other,” Tyce said. “Yoss, lower your gun.”
Of course he got stubborn. “I will when they do.” He gave them a wolfish grin that was not lowering tensions in the least.
Ama appeared at his back. “Enough. We will not fight each other. Not now,” she said firmly. Yoss pressed his lips together in an unhappy line, but he slowly let the barrel of his weapon drop.
John grabbed the gun of the woman who had protested and pushed it toward the floor. “Put them down. Now!” None of the soldiers were happy, but they all lowered their weapons without holstering them. Tyce couldn’t call this a peace—it felt more like the microsecond of silence between a trigger being pulled and the resulting explosion.
“Tyce, would you like to introduce the enemy?” Ama asked. At least she was staying behind Yoss, but calling Command the enemy wasn’t helpful. He understood that she wanted to make it clear she wouldn’t feign friendship or forgiveness even if they were forced into an alliance, but sometimes Tyce hated her honesty.
“Ama, I’m fairly sure the alien who was shooting at us was the enemy. This is John Burden, a sub-commander from Earth.”
A new soldier appeared from the room behind John. The side of his face was red and blistered and one eye swollen shut. “Ribelian bitch,” he said with a snarl.
Ama pushed, forcing Yoss to allow her through. “I’m not nearly as nice as a dog.” Ama turned her attention to John. “John, what is attacking this ship?” She had her mother-voice turned on full-volume. Tyce winced, even though he wasn’t her target.
John ignored her, focusing on Tyce. “We need to talk.”
Tyce shook his head. “Not without Ama, we don’t.”
“She’s not going in without me,” Yoss said sharply.
John frowned and studied them. A sane man would’ve retreated behind his soldiers and suggest they all go their separate ways. That was what Tyce would’ve recommended. After several long minutes filled with shuffling feet and the occasional nervous cough, John nodded. “Fine. We all need to speak.” He turned to the Command soldiers. “Hold position. Call the doctor down to treat the injured.”
“Yes, sir,” the tall woman said. As John strode away, his soldiers shifted warily. The burned man retreated only to be replaced by a soldier who had guarded Tyce, the young and easily panicked one. It concerned Tyce that these soldiers hadn’t offered to escort John to the meeting or protested having their commanding officer leave with Ribelians. Tyce knew John was safe, but the soldiers couldn’t. Yet, they watched with barely hidden resentment as John passed Tyce.
Ama followed him back toward the stairs they had climbed, but Yoss held position until Tyce had retreated. Tyce half-feared Yoss might open fire on the Command people—he had a feral edge that Tyce rarely saw in him.
Ama and John waited at the top of the stairs, and Tyce moved into position to guard them from anything coming at them from below.
“Let’s talk quickly,” John said.
Ama leaned against the wall and surveyed the room. Part of Tyce wanted to warn John to be careful. Ama had an ability to get under someone’s skin and rearrange the parts until a person didn’t recognize himself. At least she’d done that with Tyce. Ama had pulled him apart until he could cut out pieces of his own psychology that he’d stopped liking.
If John and Ama faced off, he feared the damage either could do to the other.
John turned his back on Ama. “Tyce, does she speak for you?”
Ama’s expression was guarded as if she wasn’t sure of the answer. Tyce nodded. “She does. If you have something to say, you say it to her.”
Ama’s smile was little more than a hint of an upturned corner of her lips. “Yes, John. If you want to speak, you speak to me. So, what has Earth gotten into that has brought these aliens down on us?”