Rexiel returned twenty minutes later, his face grim. I perked up and paid close attention, because his previous expressions ranged from “irritated dissatisfaction” to “unvarnished bloodthirst.” Grim was new.
He had spent a good deal of time observing other skirmishes occurring across the engineering end of the ship, marking the behavior of the overseers and their guards. It was a well-coordinated collapsing retreat, which all but confirmed my suspicions. A few of the others— Ereia and Messec in particular—gave me sidelong glances. I saw their eyes move out of the corners of my own, but I wasn’t going to let them know I noticed. Matching their gaze might be misconstrued as gloating, which I wasn’t doing: I would have rather been wrong in this case.
Rexiel believed that their strategy was to funnel people toward certain avenues of attack and whittle us down by reducing our resources. Certain bulkheads had been reduced to slag or had their entrances and exits welded shut and reinforced with additional material, which forced encounters on our enemy’s terms. A few of the other teams encountered the same traps that we did but weren’t nearly as successful at clearing them. By the time they had been patched up and were back on the warpath, additional blockades were in their way.
The bad news didn’t stop there. All of our efforts were being funneled into a long, narrow corridor that connected the main part of engineering to the Lifewarden Nexus. The corridor had been stripped to bare metal, and at the other end was a newly installed pair of anti-personnel guns trained down the hallway.
I didn’t know what those looked like, but the way everyone else got quiet told me everything I needed to know.
“…Are there any alternative routes that we could take advantage of?” Heshae said, staring down at the map Messec had laid out before us. “Perhaps other access tunnels that we could use to bypass the corridor? It’s a large ship.”
Messec’s helmet cocked sideways before he responded. “No. The Nexus is part of a series of modules that are built separately from the ship itself and attached after the framework is laid in.” His hands gestured across the bracing in the map he had drawn. “Later, they build connectors from the purpose-built sections to the engineering modules.”
“You tend to see it with the mass-produced transport frigates coming out of the Commonwealth,” he continued as he started pacing, ”Allows you to buy them cheap. Hire some mercenary escorts or keep out of the shipping lanes while you’re hauling cargo, and you’ve got a fly-by-night transport company.”
That answered a few questions, but caused a few more to sprout up. The pragmatic part of me piped up and said, That’s why we’re doing this, right? So we have the time to get our questions answered? That part of me wasn't wrong, just incomplete.
Other groups filtered into our little forward base in twos and threes. Over the next twenty minutes, we went from a meager group of six to nearly three dozen people. My eyes wandered to the other occupants of this ship’s mechanical guts: those varied, strange people of different shapes and sizes. Many of them were dirty. Half of them were bloody and bandaged. But I could see it in their eyes and the set of their shoulders: they were ready for more.
The general consensus was to rush the corridor; we would build a shield and push forward. I hated the idea. It was a terrible plan that only leveraged their frustration and anger since they had no other useful way to channel it.
I knew that feeling. I felt it whenever I talked with my teacher or spoke with the soldiers. I’d take my turn at distributing rations in the habitat and would overhear small conversations about retaking what was ours. Those feelings of jubilation and righteous anger soaked into the Gossamer, and when I’d sleep, the hopes and dreams and determination would carry me to slumber. The next morning, I’d wake up with the fuel I needed to go exploring for just one more day. The will to save just one more person.
What others feel and think and what they’re willing to say or do because of it can impact how humans act. Sometimes, you should resist those influences, and other times, you need to give in to them. This time was one of the latter.
I stared at Messec’s diagram and let their hope and anger wash over me like rain in a storm-tossed sea. I felt it seep into my bones, settling like a new weight on my shoulders. I wasn’t going to just sit by and let these people get recaptured and put back into chains—and if we continued with the half-baked scheme to rush the gun emplacement, that’s what was going to happen. Or worse. We needed a game-changer, some way to shake things up and push us over the finish line.
The small conversations around me faded out as I traced the edge of the paper, leaning closer to get a good look. The charcoal drawing was made with care and precision, with no flourishes or embellishments. Messec did good work. While it didn’t show everything, I got an idea of the scale of the ship itself, and it was huge. A titan swimming through shadow. It felt… beautiful, somehow. Beautiful and lonely.
Surrounding the Lifeweaver Nexus was a spider’s web of bracing, suspending the module in an arrowhead-shaped bay that pointed towards the front of the ship. Two causeways bridged the gap from the Nexus to the angled sides of the arrowhead. From there, the engineering subsections grew outward into other parts of the ship. A jumble of bracing, conduits, pipes, and other connections attached the Nexus with the base of the arrowhead and continued towards the reactor.
It was a lot of empty space. That might be useful.
“Hey Messec, does the empty space surrounding the Nexus have air?” I asked.
His helmet's visor looked across the table at me, and I looked back down at the paper, pointing, “Here. It looks like a lot of scaffolding between the Nexus and engineering, but does that space have air and gravity?”
Messec tapped his knuckles on the tabletop and thought, pacing on his bench. After a turn, he rounded back and said, “I believe it does on both counts. The gravitation envelope is pretty basic if we ignore the cargo bay, and all interior volumes are designed to hold air. I think I know where you’re going with this: any attempt to cut through the Lifeweaver Nexus from the exterior would take time.”
“…And that is time that Selema-vass and Ulketh will use to eliminate hostages,” Ereia piped in.
“I would rather not console any more family members if it can be avoided,” Heshae said, placing her hand on my shoulder.
Taga gently shouldered closer to me through the throng, his face expectant, all four of his eyes bright with curiosity.
I cupped my chin in my hand and closed my eyes, calculating what it would take to get me across the gap and weaken the structure enough.
“Let’s face it: the frontal assault is suicide,” I said, “and they know it. They want that. Let’s give them something they don’t want: a fight on our terms. If we can do that, maybe everyone gets out of this alive.”
I pulled out a sheet of paper from my satchel and let my eyes wander across the assembled faces. A smile spread across my face. It’d take most of what I had left in the tank, but I was still strong as hell in this gravity. I could make it work.
“Get me across that gap, and we’ll be through that wall and on top of them in moments. I’ve got a plan.”
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I leaned over the side of the hole that Messec, a half-dozen engineers, and Taga had just cut through the wall to the Lifeweaver Nexus. Maybe there was still time for a new plan. While I’ve never been afraid of heights, seeing the long drop into a mass of undulating mechanical pistons and who-knows-what gave me a fresh appreciation for walls and their intended use. I was able to imagine myself getting crushed in several different ways before Messec sidled up next to me.
He looked down and whistled, which sounded funny through his voice modulation. “That’s the [liquid-anima] respirator,” he said, “it collects any anima we’ve cast off and integrates it with the circulating [liquid-anima] so that it doesn’t crystallize.” His helmet craned up, down, and then to the right, where he pointed to a long shaft of metal bracing that ran from our side to the Nexus. The primary trunk was a thick piece of gray-green metal that spanned the distance with a slight arc. Its smaller branches were spaced close enough to make an effective handhold, even for Taga.
“That’s what we’re looking for,” he said.
“We’ll want to muffle anything that makes noise—Taga’s scales in particular,” I said to him. “We need to be as quiet as possible.”
“It’ll take time for us to get over there,” Ereia said, coming up behind me. “We’ll need a distraction.”
Her, Heshae, and Rexiel disappeared into the horde of assembled fighters, who dispersed into the bowels of the ship with no preamble. Taga used the extra room to amble towards Messec and me. His head loomed over my shoulder, peering at the next leg of our journey with what I judged to be a pensive look. He started making a strange noise by tapping the wide claws on his hands together. Clink, clink-clink, clink.
“Nervous, big guy?” It was a shot in the dark. But, if I was going to be stuck here for a while, I should start learning some social cues.
“…YES. FOR MANY REASONS,” he said. His hesitation gave me the feeling that I wasn’t getting the whole story, but he also seemed like the type who would tell me if I needed to know. So, I wisely kept my mouth shut and reviewed the plan: Get everyone across, quick and quiet. Get in place. Cast the spell, drop in on the ringleaders, get the hostages safe, take everyone else out. I made it sound so easy. I hoped it would be that easy. But I also knew it wouldn’t be.
Nothing had been that easy so far, why start now?
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
Everything fell into place in minutes. With the amount of cloth wrapped around him, Taga looked like he had broken both his arms and his tail. The fighter crews returned to the room with large metal panels, pipes, and assorted parts, which they began fashioning into a series of mobile barricades they could inch down the corridor.
Heshae, Ereia, and Rexiel were halfway across by the time Taga inched his way out onto the support trunk. His arms shook as he reached out from branch to branch, pulling himself along the narrow structure. Once he was halfway, Messec and I began our journey across; if Messec wasn’t going to make a comment about Taga, neither was I.
Gunfire erupted behind us, and I told myself not to look. I drove myself along the trunk with a speed bordering on reckless, and the closer we got, the more I felt my heart begin to pound. The others slid out onto an arched section of metal devoid of any ornamentation—a prerequisite for the “don’t disconnect this from the bracing and get us all killed” part of the plan—and I followed suit, watching as another dozen of our people made the trip across and set up.
My eyes closed, and I took two deep breaths, then raised the paper in my hand. My eyes opened, and I watched the cascade of tense readiness course through our group as they prepared to strike. My left hand danced in the air, putting the key in the mental lock for transmutation, connecting the circuit between the paper, the metal, and me.
I roared into the dream, and my hand slammed onto the bare metal.
One.
Time slowed down in that strange way that you really only notice in hindsight as I crashed through the panel beneath my feet. I tore right through it as if it were made of aluminum foil. The paper in my hand started to get warm, then uncomfortably warm. A shower of tearing metal paper followed us into the room as nearly a score of rebels breached the Lifeweaver Nexus.
I fell ten feet before finding the ground again and then rolled end over end as I broke my fall. I finally came to a stop in a crouch with the lower panels of my robes splayed out around me like the petals of a black flower. Half a dozen creatures turned towards me, their small arms and blades still poised to end the lives of the slaves they held in thrall.
Two.
Two slaves had been hastily rigging up explosives with shaped charges pointed at the door on the far wall—a present for our distraction—but the sudden noise had brought them up short. The taskmaster watching over them was busy winding up to threaten them with a wicked-looking short whip, its end covered in small barbs.
The paper burned to ash in my hand, but it hadn’t started to hurt just yet. I kept my hand closed and willed a little bit more anima through the spell, making sure everyone was in the fight. I bolted for the door, my blood boiling. The ground shook around me as my allies landed: thump, thump-fwimp, BOOM. Messec, Rexiel, Ereia, TAGA.
The clash of weapons screamed into the room as my backup fanned out and started the mayhem. I saw Heshae land in my periphery, slam her staff into the neck of a creature like Veligrusk, and grab the hands of a young child and their mother as she bolted for an alcove.
Three.
One of the captors in my way turned towards me in slow motion, their weapon matching their movement like a languorous shadow. The barrel of the weapon bloomed in my mind’s eye, growing bigger than the room itself; I ducked before it fired and began weaving back and forth. The shot rang out, smacked into metal on the far side of the room an instant later. The weapon barked two more times and scored hits on the ceiling, but I was already far too close for them to correct their aim for another shot.
I heard a wet crunch as my fist connected with something chitinous along their neck. Their head whipped sideways at an awkward angle, and I was rushing past them before the body dropped. Their Gaal hostage hit the ground and began crawling away with a frantic desperation. It was the right reaction.
I could hear other guards firing shots, a few screams from our side, gasps of pain and pleading from theirs. There was a grim satisfaction in dealing with these assholes, but I didn’t have time to savor it. All I had to do was get to the door and open it, and we were home free.
Two wssht-wssht noises rang out from the dark to my left, and I felt a slash against my left side. The momentum turned me at an awkward angle, and my already bruised shoulder slammed into a vertical pile as thick as my thigh, which sent me sprawling to the ground. I ran my hand against my side and came back with a streak of red across my hands.
Ulketh stepped out from the shadows, looking at me with cold, dispassionate eyes. His crescent-shaped weapon pointed its tines toward me, and I braced myself for the end, eyes open. Alright fucker, if now’s the time, then come get—
Taga’s massive hand clasped around Ulketh’s neck, lifted him three feet off the ground, and Ulketh's skin around his neck started to char. Ulketh’s eyes went wide with pain, and as he screamed, I swear I saw a fire from within his throat burning upward into his mouth. I could smell charred meat, and my stomach turned over in hunger and revulsion at my own instincts.
“ENOUGH!” Taga roared, his body flaring with the exertion. I scrambled to my feet and bolted for the door, happy to be as far as I could from the spectacle as he finished Ulketh. My hands fumbled across unfamiliar controls, failed the first time, tried again: Clockwise to here, half turn to there, three buttons…
The door slid open, and the palms of my hands slammed over my ears. I couldn’t hear myself think over the roar of the guns, and my ears did almost nothing to block out the sound. Desperation and adrenaline drove me forward. My hands grasped around the cables attached to the weapons, and I yanked hard, pulling them out like I was uprooting carrots.
The sound stopped, but the ringing in my ears didn’t.
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It was official: Selema-vass was just gone. Everything else on the ship was pacified, but that sneaky little moth-creature was still skulking around somewhere. A general sense of weary jubilation permeated the ship as the crew worked to undo most of the damage they had caused in the uprising, fix hydroponics and the engines, unlock all of the functions in the helm, and help some of those families who were caught in the crossfire to reunite and enjoy some much-needed rest.
We lost twenty-nine of the original seventy people who rose up against the guards and overseers, a little under a third of the ship’s now emancipated population.
I really didn’t know how to feel about the loss. On one hand, I didn’t know them; I hadn’t worked with them or grown up with them. On the other hand, I wished that I had been awake to help earlier. Some of them might still be alive to enjoy their freedom.
I came out of the assault with a trio of bruises on my upper torso and had taken two of those crystal shots to the side. Since I was conscious, I was able to stop Duguf from using healing magic on me again. Instead, I helped him stitch me back up the old-fashioned way. He was rightly pissed at how much damage I had taken, but I gave him assurances that I wasn’t going to fall apart. I couldn’t blame the guy for being cautious: his first encounter with me was one where I was dying because of a claw wound. While I wasn’t going to fall apart, I certainly hurt like hell. At least my hearing had returned to normal.
Last but certainly not least, my Tether was nearly empty, so magic was out of the question for now. Everything left was reserved for keeping my conversation spells cooking. Once Taga heard that I had drained myself to keep the fight going, he gifted me the crescent-shaped handgun from Ulketh, and it didn’t seem that anyone wanted to contradict him. There was just one problem: it used anima to generate and fire those crystals, so at the moment, it was more useful as a paperweight than as a firearm. Hey, it was the thought that counted.
Those of the crew who were still standing broke into four-person teams and began the arduous process of combing over the ship, hunting for Selema-vass. I was once again relegated to the confines of the infirmary to recover, which annoyed the hell out of me, but I didn’t argue too much. Once I was safely sequestered in my original infirmary Laying down caused more aches, which caused me to remember the last time I ached, which ended with me replaying the series of events over the last eighteen or so hours.
Had it really only been that long?
I did some mental calculations, figuring in my normal sleep time, and yep, it had really only been about eighteen hours. I smiled slightly and thought to myself, Some things really don’t change. Head out on a mission, and all of a sudden, it’s something completely different. If this doesn’t qualify as ‘completely different,’ nothing else ever will. Determined to get some rest, I laid back and stared at the ceiling, watching the little spherical bulbs slowly transition from cool yellow to a soft amber, and ruminated.
One of the more interesting things to come out of my efforts in retaking the ship was that my efforts were being misattributed to my species instead of my profession. I tried to correct them, but I had several things working against me: I didn’t know the language, so my ability to explain nuance was out the window, and stories have their own power. Especially if you’re trying to inspire your children, to make them smile or laugh or feel joy for the first time.
Even so, it was strange and more than a little embarrassing to be treated with that amount of reverence. As far as I was concerned, I just did my job. The tallness of the tales only grew faster once the kids got a hold of them. I figured by the weekend, I’d be a folk hero.
“Oh, did you hear about the human? She can leap ten feet in the air and land without a sound!”
“I heard that she can throw fire with her hands, just like the Embrial do!”
“My mother saw her dive straight through a bulkhead panel and then punch someone across the room!”
On and on it went, with the kids pointing and smiling their shy smiles before being ushered away with apologies from their parents. And then there were the parents, who thanked me for helping but didn’t have anything to give other than their thanks and apologized for it. I understood. Then there were the nods of respect from those I had fought with, who knew that I could help shoulder the burden. I liked those better. Those looks felt more like home.
The lights continued their slow shift through sunset colors, and my eyes fluttered a little. Maybe I could take a small nap and feel better, and then when I got up, I could figure out whether or not I could eat something. My stomach growled in agreement, and I reached for the waterskin next to my cot to satiate it until I woke up.
Which is when my hand collided with the soft fur on Selema-vass’ forearm.
My eyes shot open wide, and I sprang up to a sitting position. The dagger next to me was in my hand before she could blink, and I was turning my body to thrust into her throat with everything I had in me in half a second. She barely got out a “Wai-“ before she was forced to evade down and around my reach. Her hands pushed my wrist inward and used my momentum to guide my forearm into the roll of blankets that made for a pillow.
“Wait, damn you! I came here to talk,” she said as her little wings fluttered behind her like Shimmertree leaves in a breeze, casting reflections into the room from their prism-like windows. Her black sclera pulsed a deep purple as the bioluminescence of her iris brightened, and whatever she was doing burst into my mind with an intensity that bordered on the psychedelic.
“So talk,” I spat, trying to wrench my arm out of the pillow. My fear and adrenaline were helping to stave off some of what she was affecting me with, but I knew it was a losing battle. She had enough of her weight pressed against my elbow that I wasn’t going to be removing my dagger from its new sheath anytime soon, and her other hand cupped around my other forearm with a ruthless intensity. And whatever she was doing in my mind was going to send me somewhere, and in a hurry.
“I’m getting off of this ship as soon as I leave here. Come with me.”
“What? You’re crazy,” I said, tensing my arm again. “You just spent the last eight-ten— the last half a day trying to get me… trying to make me… to kill me.”
“I just spent the last two days trying to keep Ulketh from being a vicious bastard and murdering all of your new friends. I spent the last six weeks prior to that researching you, your sarcophagus, and the artifacts that we recovered, hoping that we could find out where it all came from,” she said as she steadied my head.
I didn’t have enough strength left in me to explore the practical ramifications of what she was saying. I tried to lean back, to roll away from her in a last-ditch attempt to yank my arm free, but it was sluggish. I tipped over the back of my cot and began falling to the floor, which stretched out below me until it converged to a single point, and darkness swept over the purple light in the room. My vision shattered like stained glass windows, a kaleidoscope of colors that shifted into a nebula of exploding stars. Their thundering cadence erupted into the silence like cannon fire, and my mind retreated from the noise by folding itself like origami.
I woke up in the chrysalis gasping for air.
The door opened slowly.
Human hands reached in to pull me into the light.