7

In the hatch of his tank, Colonel Ikeda threw his helmet down with disgust. “What the fuck is going on?” he swore. “Only the goddamn navy would be stupid enough to lock us inside a ship smack in the middle of a landing operation.”

He pushed himself up and out of the hatch, and saw his second-in-command step out of a jeep farther down the bay.

“Stay here,” Ikeda ordered. “I’m going to find out why they closed the loading ramp. Make sure the rest of the formation is on the move as soon as it drops.”

“Yes, sir,” the younger officer agreed.

Ikeda dropped down from the tank’s armored deck, landing on the steel plating of the cargo bay with a grunt. He adjusted his pistol in its shoulder holster, and then strode off between the parked vehicles, cursing under his breath.

At the back of the cargo bay, he hurried along a short corridor, stopping at an elevator. He jabbed the button impatiently with his thumb. Then he heard a faint, metallic clank, from down the corridor to his left. Ikeda frowned. The elevator chimed, and the doors slid open in front of him, but he ignored them, and walked down the hall.

Some instinct made him pause at the intersection with the next corridor, and he ducked quickly around the corner, glancing down the hall. He saw one of his medics – the female prisoner, he realized – standing in the hall, holding an auto-rifle awkwardly. Below her, a man knelt with his back to Ikeda, pushing down on a wrench. As Ikeda watched, the man turned and said something to the medic, and Ikeda caught a glimpse of his face.

No! It can’t be!

 

* * *

 

Rath pulled open a cabinet labeled Firefighting Equipment, and rummaged through a tool box on one shelf. He took out a pair of wrenches, handing one to Jaymy. Then he knelt next to one end of the auxiliary fuel tank, setting the wrench over a nut on the tank’s release valve.

“Nope, wrong size.” He handed the wrench to Jaymy, who gave him the larger one.

This time, the wrench fit. He pushed down hard, but the valve wasn’t budging.

“The valve’s pretty tight,” he told Jaymy, grimacing as he pushed on it again. “Not sure this is going to work.” Then he felt the valve give, ever so slightly, shifting a fraction of a turn.

“Drop the rifle,” Rath heard. Jaymy gasped.

Ikeda stepped out into the hallway, covering them with his pistol.

“Drop it,” he repeated, pointing the weapon at Jaymy. She let it clatter to the floor. Rath saw that she still had the wrench in one hand, holding it carefully behind her arm, blocking it from Ikeda’s view.

Good girl.

“Now push it over here,” Ikeda ordered.

Jaymy pushed the auto-rifle with one boot, and the weapon slid across the floor, coming to a rest by his feet. Ikeda smiled cruelly, and flicked his pistol upwards. “On your feet, 621.”

Rath stood slowly, holding both hands up.

Ikeda shook his head. “You should be dead,” he said.

“I’m not,” Rath told him. “Something else to add to the list of things you managed to fuck up.”

Ikeda lined the pistol up. “This time I’ll make sure. But first: drop the landing ramp.”

Rath shook his head, inching closer to Ikeda. “No. You’ll have to shoot me.”

“If that’s what you wish,” Ikeda said. He took a step back, keeping his distance from Rath.

“Probably not a good idea to shoot me from that angle,” Rath observed, nodding his head toward the fuel tank behind him. “That round will go right through me and explode the tank.”

“I doubt it,” Ikeda said, but he took another step to the side, moving closer to Jaymy.

Rath accessed his internal computer, pulling up the control for his vocal implants. He changed his voice to General Yo-Tsai’s, and then a sophisticated diagram appeared overlaid on his heads-up display, showing an acoustic rendering of the corridor.

“Ikeda,” he breathed, barely moving his lips. The whispered sound echoed off the far end of the corridor, bouncing back to Ikeda’s ears. The colonel looked sideways, quickly, confused, and Jaymy swung the wrench upward, smacking it into the underside of the pistol. The weapon went flying. Ikeda bellowed in anger and surprise, and grabbed the wrench, simultaneously landing a vicious kick on Jaymy’s stomach. She fell over with a cry of pain. Rath leapt for the auto-rifle on the floor, but Ikeda kicked it aside – it clattered under the auxiliary fuel tank, out of reach. Rath straightened, backing up.

The two men faced each other, and Ikeda dropped into a fighting stance, twirling Jaymy’s wrench in one hand.

“I’ve always wanted to test myself in combat against a guildsman,” Ikeda observed.

“It’s hardly a fair test if you’ve got that wrench,” Rath replied.

Ikeda ignored the comment. He swung the wrench in a wide arc, and Rath danced back out of the way.

Ikeda twirled the wrench idly. “While you were murdering unsuspecting civilians in their sleep, I was killing armed insurgents in battle, boy,” he said. “And this won’t be the first time I’ve killed an opponent in close combat, either.”

Rath kept his eyes fixed on the wrench.

“No witty remark?” Ikeda asked. “Fine. Come, 621. Show your girlfriend how skilled you are against a real warrior.”

Ikeda lashed out suddenly, jabbing the wrench at Rath’s eyes. Rath identified it as the feint that it was, and ducked aside, closing with Ikeda. The older man swung the wrench again, but Rath was too close in – he let Ikeda’s blow land beneath his armpit, and caught the man’s arm beneath his own. With a business-like twist, he broke Ikeda’s arm, then grabbed him by the throat and slammed him to the deck. Ikeda’s eyes went wide in surprised panic, but the wind had been knocked from him, and his mouth worked in silence. Rath raised his knee high, and brought his boot down hard on Ikeda’s skull.

He turned and saw Jaymy pushing herself to her knees. She coughed as Rath knelt next to her.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” she nodded. “Are you?”

“I’m fine,” he said.

She nodded toward Ikeda’s corpse. “It scares me every time I see you do that,” she told him, taking his hand as they stood up.

“Sorry,” Rath said.

“No,” Jaymy said frowning. “Don’t apologize. I’d rather be scared than dead. It’s just … hard to watch. Is it easy for you?”

Rath knelt by Ikeda’s body, taking a grenade off of the man’s tactical vest. “It’s easy when I’m doing it. It’s hard afterwards.”

He moved over to the auxiliary fuel tank, and set the wrench back in place. The valve twisted as he pushed. Rath checked over his shoulder. “Stand behind me,” he told Jaymy. “Closer to the hatch. Yeah, good. When this thing opens,” he grunted, pushing down again, “it’s gonna spray everywhere.”

On cue, the valve released, and a high-pressure jet of fuel blasted into the corridor. Rath wiped fuel from his face and pushed one more time on the wrench, and the jet became a gushing flow, running down the corridor toward the vehicle bay at the far end. Rath stood up and led Jaymy toward the exterior hatch. After a few seconds of fiddling with the controls, the hatch slid open, and they found themselves in the open air, standing several feet above the waving grasses of an open field. Rath helped Jaymy clamber down, then he pointed at a small group of vehicles idling near the front ramp of the ship.

“Head for those tanks,” he told her.

“Head toward them?” Jaymy asked, incredulous.

Rath shifted his face and hair again, taking on Ikeda’s likeness. “Yeah: we’re going to need a ride out of here. I’ll be right behind you.”

Jaymy gave him a worried look, but pulled her medic kit on and set off toward the vehicles. Rath ducked back inside, glancing down the hallway. The tank was still spewing fuel down the corridor – some had started to pool back toward the hatch, but the majority was still flowing toward the cargo bay, full of Jokuan troops and vehicles.

They must have seen the leak – or smelled it – by now. He felt a twinge of guilt, then shook it off. They tried to kill me. They kidnapped my girlfriend. They invaded my home.

Rath armed the grenade and then threw it down the corridor. It bounced off of the fuel tank once, then rattled along the floor for several feet, coming to a rest in a pool of fuel near the vehicle bay. Rath was already out of the hatch, slamming it closed behind him. He dropped to the earth and broke into a run, hurrying to catch up with Jaymy. As he reached her, he heard a muffled thump, which was quickly followed by a much louder explosion. Several of the portholes along the ship’s side burst outward, spewing jets of flame. From inside, he heard more explosions – sympathetic detonations, as the flames and intense heat reached the ammunition and battery cells in the armored vehicles in the hold.

Welcome to Tarkis, assholes.