“… but she stayed behind to hold Mr Truth off,” Charlotte said. “I really hope she’s okay.”
She had made it back to her mother’s bar, Roger and Michelle in tow. Sue was asleep in a back room; April was snoring on the counter, to Charlotte’s and Roger’s quiet embarrassment, but Michelle had the decency not to say anything.
“I hope Sue’s okay,” Roger said. “It sounds like she might have a concussion, and we don’t have a lot of medicine around here. Well, we probably do, but nobody who knows where it is or how to use it.”
At that moment, there came a crash. Bottles rained off the shelves and shattered, covering the floor with mixed drinks and glass shards. A siren began blaring in the distance. April jerked awake.
“What fresh hell is this?” she mumbled.
“Probably another meteoroid,” Michelle said wearily. “They’ve been getting bigger.”
“I don’t really trust this ship to survive too much longer,” Charlotte said. “Earlier, I was thinking we could try to sabotage Mr Truth’s ship, but now it might be a better idea to escape in it, if we can find it.”
Michelle exchanged a look with Roger. “We did find it. It was just off where you found us.”
“It was?!” She blinked. “Well, we needed to come back here to fetch Sue anyway. So why don’t we wake her up and go?”
“If someone might have a concussion, you should let them sleep it off,” April said.
“I don’t know,” said Michelle, “what’s that CPR mnemonic? DR ABC, Danger Response something something something? I think being stuck on an exploding spacecraft in an asteroid field might count as danger.”
April shrugged, conceding the point. She opened a slat in the bar and they all trooped through, careful to avoid the broken glass and slippery alcohol mix. In the back was a mixture of thick, plush carpets; leather-upholstered couches; and satin pillows. All this was lit by warm reddish lights swinging overhead.
Sue was curled up on a pile of pillows. She opened a bleary eye as they approached. “I pretty much gave up sleeping when that alarm started ringing,” she said. “Can you turn it off, or are we going out again already?”
“The latter,” said Michelle. “Do you think you can walk?”
There was another meteoroid impact, and everyone except Sue was knocked over.
“Not if that keeps happening,” she said, as the others picked themselves up. Roger offered her a hand and pulled her to her feet. “Thanks.”
They made their way back to the bar. April stayed behind it.
“Aren’t you coming?” Roger asked.
“I have emergency contact buttons here,” she said.
“And you didn’t hit them an hour ago because …?” said Michelle.
“I’ll get fined if press them when it’s not an emergency, but I think it counts now.”
Michelle gave her a look.
“I don’t have a lot of money,” April said defensively.
Michelle gave her a look.
“Look. I can maybe get a repair team out of cold sleep, or I can activate the security systems. I’ll try that from here. The rest of you should go on ahead. Try to disable Mr Truth’s ship, or if I can’t get anyone to wake up soon enough, steal it and get out of here.”
“What about you?” said Charlotte.
“There are airlocks everywhere. I’ll find a way out.”
The other four exchanged glances.
“Good luck,” Charlotte said, and moved forward to hug her. “Love you.”
There was a crunch, then a second, smaller one a moment later, and a water tap behind the bar began gushing.
“We really need to go,” Michelle said.
Outside, the lights were flickering. Charlotte hurried toward the elevator. Jill was waiting there for them.
“Jill!” said Charlotte. “Rog, Michelle, this is Jill. She helped me and Sue out earlier. Uh, are you okay?”
Jill’s face and her black bodysuit were dusty, and a bruise was developing on her cheek. She was still wearing the jetpack. She waved the question off. “I’m fine.”
Roger squinted at her. “Don’t I know you from somewhere?”
She blinked, as though something was tickling the edges of her memory. “Maybe, but put a pin in that thought and worry about it later. Mr Truth is waiting for you,” she said to Charlotte, “in the hangar.”
“Huh,” said Sue. “If he’s there, what do we do now?”
“I think you should probably go there anyway,” Jill said. “Where else are you going to go? He’s breached the hull. We’re running out of air.”
Charlotte blinked. She felt bad, like the top half of her head was inside a microwave, vibrating and steadily getting hotter. She didn’t think that was how a pressure drop felt, though.
“What else did he tell you?” Roger asked.
Jill shrugged. “Just to tell you to go to him. If it’s not clear, I don’t mind if you don’t, and I don’t think it’ll be safe, exactly. I’m just letting you know.”
“How did you even find us?” Michelle asked.
“What do you mean, if you don’t?” Charlotte asked at the same time. She glanced at Michelle, then pressed the point. “Aren’t you coming with us now? If the entire ship runs out of air, you need to escape too.”
Jill looked from Roger to Michelle and back again. “It looks a little crowded here, to be honest,” she said. “No offence, but I prefer smaller groups. I think I’ll find my own way out.”
“Are you sure?” Charlotte asked. “His ship is probably the only safe place right now.”
“I’m hard to kill,” Jill said. “Don’t worry about me.”
And she turned and walked off down the hall.
“What’s with the Batman routine?” Michelle undertoned.
“She was that way last time, too,” Charlotte said, worried. “Should we go after her?”
There was another crash, then a crunch. The previous times, there had been a single hard shock, but this time, the ground kept shaking. A second siren blared in counterpoint to the first.
Michelle leaned against a wall, trying to keep her balance. “Lottie, this place is falling apart! You said she can spacewalk, but at this rate, the entire ship is going to get torn open! We’ve got to go!”
They managed to make it to the elevator. It was another nice, chrome-plated car. With the elevator cable acting as a shock absorber, it was invitingly stable inside.
“Do we trust this not to fall while we’re in it?” Roger asked sceptically.
“It’s like a three hundred metre climb,” Sue said. “If you can even find a ladder or stairs anywhere.”
He sighed, and they all filed in and Michelle pressed the button for the middle floor. The elevator began going down.
“Do we at least have a plan?” he asked. “Truth is tough.”
“If worst comes to worst, I could always surrender,” Charlotte said.
“No,” he said flatly.
She met his gaze. “I really don’t want to either, but if it’s the only way off here for all of us …”
“He doesn’t work that way,” Roger said. “You know that. It’ll be you and only you.”
“Do we have a chance in a fight?” Sue said, leaning against a wall. “For the record, I don’t think I could make a difference, and Lottie sucks at fighting.”
“I know,” said Roger, thinking back to one time when she’d balked at even playing a first-person-shooter video game. He looked at Michelle. He knew she was in great shape, but that didn’t make her a fighter. “Unless you’re secretly a world-class martial artist, I don’t think we have a chance.”
“There’s a giant android mecha thing in there,” she suggested. “If you three all run interference, I might be able to get inside and stomp him.”
“What, like an EVA?” Sue asked, wide-eyed.
“Do you know how to operate it?” Roger asked, ignoring this.
“No,” Michelle said. “And it has an open cockpit. ‘Might’ was the key word there.”
They thought about this.
“This kind of sucks,” Sue observed.
“Yeah,” said Charlotte. “I guess we’re winging it.”
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Roger really wanted to say that they shouldn’t do this, but there was another crash, the elevator rocked, and the lights dimmed.
“You know,” Michelle said, “if we can stall for long enough, one of those meteoroids might hit hard enough to knock him down. We’re all probably lighter on our feet than him; if he falls and one of us gets close enough before he gets back up, we could kick his gun out of his hand and someone else could grab it.”
Roger frowned. It sounded like an action movie plan: something that would work wonderfully with perfect choreography, and which could get them all machine-gunned if someone slipped or was just a little too slow.
“There were crates all over the place,” he said. “We’ll split up and try to draw him out, cancel out the gun’s range. Sis, you stay in the centre, but at the back. I’ll go left. You two go right. Wait for him to lose his footing, then Sue throws something to distract him. I charge him, get the gun, and throw it to Michelle. Aim for his legs.”
“You don’t want me to kill him?” Michelle asked.
“More that I don’t want you to miss and kill me. You said you’d never fired a gun before.”
Michelle opened her mouth to object to this, but shut it without saying anything. He wasn’t wrong.
The elevator slowed to a stop and the door opened. Their ears popped, and they noticed a wind current in the hall.
“Hurry,” Roger said. They walked out and into the corridor, and Charlotte cried out in pain and sank to her knees. “Charlotte! What is it?”
“Headache,” she said through gritted teeth. “Ow. It’s a bad one.”
“Heck of a time to get one,” Sue said, stroking Charlotte’s hair soothingly. “It’ll be okay. Maybe Truth has some aspirin on his ship?”
“Uh, can we keep moving?” Michelle said. “Lean on me; we’ll get you something later. Come on.”
The ground was shaking even harder down here. The sirens kept ringing as they walked down the hall toward the landing bay, Michelle taking most of Charlotte’s weight. They reached the hatch.
“Sue, can you take her?” Michelle asked, pushing Charlotte over. Charlotte gave a soft moan of protest as Sue caught her.
“Just a little bit longer,” Sue promised.
Roger and Michelle went in first. Mr Truth was waiting by his ship with an access ramp down, his machine pistol held casually at his side. He watched them enter.
“Wasn’t sure you’d come,” he said. He motioned them in.
Sue rubbed Charlotte’s shoulder. “She’s hurt,” she said. “Do you have medical supplies on board?”
He stared at them for a moment. Feigning a medical emergency is one of the oldest tricks in the book. “Yes,” he said.
“Bring them out here first,” Roger said. “I don’t trust you.”
“That’s your problem,” Truth said.
The ship rocked under another heavy impact. A couple of catwalks fell and clattered against the ground, but Truth kept his footing and didn’t let them distract him.
“I’m not letting her go anywhere near you if I don’t know you’ll take proper care of her,” Roger said.
Truth said nothing, but brought his gun up; Roger and Michelle split up and dived behind boxes. Sue was stuck in the open, burdened by Charlotte’s weight. She slowly raised her free hand.
“Uh, please don’t shoot?” she said. “I’m just helping carry my friend here.”
“Release her,” Truth said. “Back away. Lie on the ground, hands on your head.”
“Sure,” she said, and set Charlotte down, as gently as she could, but Charlotte still whimpered.
There came a hiss from behind them, making Truth pivot and aim his gun. It was Jill, climbing awkwardly out of a tight airlock in the far wall.
She was wearing a space helmet again. She tapped it, and her voice came from a PA, badly distorted by static and clipping. “Hello, everyone,” she said, with a small wave. “Should I come back later?”
“Get down on the ground,” Truth ordered.
“Or what, you’ll shoot?” she asked. “When I’m standing right in front of an airlock? I don’t think so.”
Roger moved around, getting a clear line at Mr Truth’s back, but the larger man apparently had eyes on the back of his head, because he whirled, and Roger barely had time to duck back before a bullet pinged off his crate. Truth turned back to Jill without missing a beat.
“Yes,” he said. “It’d be a small hole, and this is a large ship. Decompression takes time.”
She opened her mouth to say something smart, then realised it would actually be very stupid, and lowered herself to the floor. Mr Truth nodded approval and began walking toward Charlotte, his footsteps echoing off the floor.
As he did, there came a humming from the walls above them, that quickly grew into a rattling, and then a roar. There came a blast: a ventilation grate near the veiling blew out, and out came a stream of octopus-tipped rockets.
Mr Truth was fast. He stepped backward into a crouch, aimed, and fired into the mass, blowing a dozen rockets out of the air. Jill took the opportunity to roll to her feet and hit a big red button on a control panel next to her airlock. It beeped angrily; she hit it again.
“Hold on,” she said, but she was drowned out as the entire wall began opening up.
Air blew out like a hurricane wind with a noise like a continuous explosion, throwing everyone toward the opening. Everyone grabbed for the first solid object they could reach: a crate for Roger, the mech for Michelle, the airlock control panel for Jill. Sue couldn’t get anything from a prone position; she tumbled forward and smacked into Charlotte, who skidded along the ground and somehow managed to hold on, maybe being too low for the wind to hit properly. Only Mr Truth had nothing. He grabbed at a protrusion from his ship, missed, and somersaulted out into space, stray rocket squids exploding around him.
Jill smacked more buttons, and the wall began shutting again. “Just a moment!”
Michelle had a grip on one of the mech’s feet, which were made of rubbery material molded to look like boots. She felt it tilt: something had bashed into it and knocked it slightly off balance. It teetered, then came crashing down and bounced off the floor, tossing Michelle like a ragdoll. Jill leapt and caught her, sending them both to thud harmlessly into a corner. At the same time, the mech crashed into the open wall a moment before it closed. The impact twisted the mech and dented the opening, keeping it from closing fully, leaving a gaping hole. A third siren began ringing. Michelle and Jill stared.
“Oops,” Jill murmured.
The hole wasn’t as wide as before, so the wind was weaker, merely a powerful gust, no longer enough to knock a human off their feet. Roger got up, staggered, and made his way over to Charlotte and Sue. He shouted something inaudible, threw Sue over one shoulder, took Charlotte’s hand, and dragged them toward Truth’s ship. Jill shoved Michelle toward it and ran back over to the control panel; Michelle moved with the momentum and made it to the ship. They climbed up the ramp into an airlock. Roger fumbled, found the controls, and raised the landing ramp. The airlock hissed as it sealed.
It was a small chamber, about the size of an old telephone box. The outer door was integrated into the landing ramp, but there were plastic windows on either side, so they could still see the landing bay, although Jill wasn’t visible from this angle. On the opposite side was a pneumatic door. The airlock hummed, and the door opened, letting them into the rest of the ship, but they stayed where they were for a moment.
“Is everyone okay?” Roger asked.
“Could do with a breather,” Michelle panted. “I think I have pressure sickness.”
“Yeah, me too,” said Sue. “Also, Lottie’s on top of me.”
“Charlotte?” Roger asked.
“Nngh,” Charlotte said, clutching at her head. “It’s getting worse.”
“It’s okay, sis,” he said, giving her hand a squeeze. “We’re clear. Let’s look for a first aid kit.”
He walked through the door and did a double-take. It didn’t look like any spacecraft he’d ever imagined.
“What the crap?” Michelle said, following.
It was a wide circular room with a high-vaulted ceiling, bigger than Truth’s ship had looked from the outside. Around the tiled white-and-grey walls were stone pedestals on which there burned hundreds of smokeless candles. For every five or six candles, there was a photo. In the centre of the room was a long white altar with a grey silk shroud. The ceiling was decorated with a huge stained glass wasp.
“I don’t understand,” he said.
Sue walked in, half-carrying Charlotte. “Uh. What?”
“Is this an elaborate joke?” Michelle asked. “Or are we literally in a … shrine ship?”
“Maybe it uses space-warping technology?” Sue said. “I mean, if the Aquinas has been going for a while, you’d need a faster-than-light drive to catch up and get back to … wherever it was that Mr Truth wanted to take Lottie. And most FTL tech works by warping space somehow.”
Roger looked around. “I don’t see any controls, or any medical supplies.” He walked over to a pedestal to take a closer look at the photo. It was of Charlotte. It looked like she was playing snap with someone, but the other person’s face was blurred out. “I can believe this was Mr Truth’s, though. Let’s keep looking for –”
There came a rapping behind them, and they turned. Jill was at the outer airlock, waving to be let in. Sue went over to the inner door and pressed a button, shutting it and beginning the cycle to let Jill into the shrine.
“– for medicine,” Roger finished.
He went to the altar and began poking at it: it was the largest object in the room, so maybe there was a hidden compartment in it or something. Michelle looked around at the pedestals and photos, while Sue sat with Charlotte. Presently, the door opened, and Jill walked in.
“–” Jill said, looking around. She realised, took off her helmet, and tried again. “Déjà vu,” she murmured.
“Do you know what sort of ship this is?” Roger asked. He shot a worried look at Charlotte, who was breathing hard.
“This isn’t a ship,” Jill said. She walked over to him and brushed her fingertips along the altar.
“What,” he said, “are you saying he brought a decoy or something?”
“No. It’s been replaced,” she said.
There was another rap at the airlock. The lights had dimmed outside, so they could only see the face and silhouette. It was a pale young girl with black hair and golden eyes, wearing a white gown tinted red by the landing bay lights, with a weird shadow behind her.
Jill’s eyes went wide. She dashed to the door and held down the lock button.
“Hey, what are you doing?” Sue said. “Let her in.”
“That’s not a she,” Jill said. “I opened the main door before I came in, so we could fly out. It’s hard vacuum out there, and she’s not wearing a suit.”
“All the more reason to let her in,” Michelle said.
Jill stared at them, and Roger took the opportunity to shoulder-check her away from the control panel and shut the inner door. There was a clunk as the girl entered, and a hiss as the cycle began.
“Aw, jeez,” Jill said.
The inner lock pressurised, and the door opened. The girl walked into the shrine. Closer to, they could see that the shadow was actually a pair of wings like a dragonfly’s, sprouting from her shoulder blades. Her gown was cut away to leave her back bare down to her tailbone. Jill backed away as she passed.
“Thanks,” said the girl. She gave a yawn. “It’s a real hassle out there.”
“Hey, no problem,” Roger said.
“Sorry we don’t have anything to give you,” Sue said. “Blankets or a snack or something. If you find any –”
Charlotte screamed and keeled over. Roger, Sue, and Michelle rushed to her side.
“It keeps getting worse.”
“I don’t understand. Is she sick or hurt or something?”
“She shouldn’t be. We were near an explosion earlier, but I took it worse than she did.”
“What if someone takes Jill’s helmet, goes back, and looks for supplies on the main ship?”
“Take her to the altar,” said the winged girl.
Roger nodded. “That makes sense. You two take her legs, I’ll take her arms?”
“Right,” Michelle nodded, as she and Sue moved into position.
The three of them stood up, lifting Charlotte, but Jill was between them and the altar, arms spread wide.
“Don’t do it,” she said.
“What are you doing?!” Roger asked. “She needs help!”
“Don’t you see what’s happening?!”
“What’s happening is that my sister is in pain!”
“That girl isn’t human! Look at her!”
They turned to look at the winged girl, who yawned again before she noticed.
She fixed her eyes on Jill’s. “Haven’t I seen you before?” she asked. She blinked slowly. “Yeah. You’re that troublesome one who keeps getting in my way.”
Roger, Michelle, and Sue quietly set Charlotte down, watching the exchange.
“And I still don’t know what you are,” Jill said, starting to circle her.
“Mm,” said the girl. She stayed where she was. “Well, you know a little bit of what I can do. Want to leave? I won’t stop you.”
Jill glared. “Not going to happen.”
The girl tilted her head and regarded her coolly for a long moment. “Whatever.”
Four long, rusty harpoons appeared above her. They twisted in space to face their targets, then shot forward. The first three all struck home, and Roger, Michelle, and Sue all crumpled, bleeding out.
Jill was expecting it. She twisted to the side and snatched the harpoon as it passed her; it shook in her grip for a moment before stilling. She dashed at the winged girl, bringing the weapon up.
The girl was abruptly on the opposite side of the room, and where she had been was a giant bear trap. Jill skidded into it, and it snapped shut around her midsection, the steel teeth locking in place but unable to puncture her bodysuit. She struggled against it.
Over the winged girl’s head appeared a golden object like a Slinky, wrapped around in a doughnut shape. Inside it, a wire-thin ring of light glowed red, then quickly turned yellow and then incandescent white. There was a high-pitched hum that crescendoed to a shriek, and a flickering corona developed in the air around it.
“Next time,” she said, “don’t come back.”
A stream of blinding light blasted out from the particle accelerator and through Jill’s chest.