Princess

I looked over Boomer and triple-checked his seals, not that I thought I'd missed anything. I just needed to give my hands something to do. Doing something productive now was better than doing the perfect thing in five hours. That had been one of Boomer's first teachings to me. He was airtight and good for several hours. I let my hands move on, checking the harness he was strapped into. He was still unresponsive.

"We're in the shit now. Aren't we old man?" I kept the question sealed in my helmet like so much of my troubles. A leader wasn't allowed to be worried. If the squad knew their boss was afraid, then the battle was already lost. Who was it that had told me that piece of bite-sized wisdom? One of the old hands no doubt. I had already slipped up once. I couldn't let it happen again. This was supposed to be a milk run, the perfect job to get my feet under me. To get a taste of command.

If this was command I didn't want it.

"What do we do now?" Jhordan asked again.

"Something productive." My mouth moved on its own while my mind reeled. "The mission hasn't changed. We have the package so we can leave right now. You go see if the Cat starts weeping fluid when I spark the engines." What was I saying? I couldn't leave half my team behind!

"What are you saying? We can't just leave them here! You'd trade that future kill bot for Nye, Diaz and Shores!?" Jhordan spoke with her arms, gesturing wildly around the narrow crew cabin, striking walls and the ceiling. "For all you know they're in the next room over punking us. And you're just going to leave them!?"

"Look around Jhordan!" Her bad attitude was infectious. It flushed my cheeks and forced venom into my words. "If we go looking for them, what'll happen to Boomer? Who's going to watch him? He could go missing too or get worse and croak! You want me to risk the entire mission, the payment and our lives on a chance?"

"If he's going to die there's nothing either of us can do about it now."

"We can get back to the Shadow ASAP and get Frank or Gerald to fix him. That's not nothing."

"Glad to know you don't play favorites." Her words cut deep, and she could see it. "Unless this is where you look me in the face and say you'd do the same for any of the rest of us."

More than twelve feet of lethal steel loomed over me, a monument of my own hypocrisy. My black-mirrored visor met her suit's indifferent bulged optics while I leaned into her accusing glare. She may be twice my size but I wouldn't back down. This was supposed to be my command! I marshaled the words to put Jhordan in her place, but in the corner of my eye, Boomer shifted and I faltered. At that instant, I didn't want to fight. I wanted to be there for the man who'd been there for me my entire life, even if I couldn't do anything to help him.

"No, I wouldn't." I confessed.

"That's what I thought." She spun to leave. "If you wanna run away, then you'll have to load your precious kill bot without my help." Jhordan said as she stomped out of the Cat's crew cabin, her steps rocking the dropship.

Over my shoulder, I heard Boomer's helmet konk off the wall as he slumped in his harness. I was torn between chasing after her and just leaving her behind. I turned, gave Boomer another quick look over, then moved to the cockpit.

The space was dominated by controls for the subtleties of void flight and atmospheric entry. Running on low power, the ship would outlast its occupants if it was coasting outside of a gravity well or landed, a fact not lost on me now. I sealed the cockpit and purged the air— it was all tainted anyway. The minutes crawled on while I was listening for the distinct whistling of a leak. The Cat's cockpit was happy with its integrity and my ears provided the peace of mind I desperately needed right now. I started running simple diagnostics to keep my hands busy while I used this brief respite to establish my current priorities.

As much as it irked me to admit, Jhordan was right. I wasn't cold enough to abandon my team, not on shaky intel like this. I didn't know enough right now to make that choice. Even if I did know they were a lost cause, I wasn't sure I could do it. It was one thing to consider, but another entirely now that I was sitting in the ship. What kind of sub-human monster could give that order? I gave my cheeks a slap. Focus!

First priority, establish contact with friendlies, regroup, retreat, repeat. If they were dead, I'd bomb that bridge when I got to it. Second, hope that the Client was a nice guy and he didn't mind that some heavily armed mercenaries were—in all likelihood—lost and or wandering around his super-secret, highly-illegal station doing stars-only-knew what. Probably snooping around in Tony's case. Focus! Third, get everyone on the ship, lock them to their seats and don't let them out of my sight until we're skids down back on the Shadow. It wasn't much of a plan but it would have to do until I'd gotten a better fix on the situation.

Boomer would have said something about an average plan with a confident commander was better than a great plan carried out by a fool. He was probably right but that didn't make me feel better. It would have if he could actually say it to me. If I screwed this up, he might never get the chance. I took a deep breath and put on a facade of confidence. There was no way Jhordan wouldn't see through the sham.

The Cat's diagnostics came back better than I'd dared to hope they would. The ship would get us home, but it'd be painfully visible to everything but the naked eye for the entire flight. Unless one of the locals got jumpy and shot us down, that was more of a problem for the Client than it was for me. I couldn't abandon my team, but I needed to keep them in line and on mission until we were off this station.

I sorted through my head, looking for something that wouldn't come off as a hollow air. Confusion… Fear… Doubt… Anger? Anger could work. I tapped into the feeling, thinking back to every misfortune suffered since the Captain had asked me to take on this botshit job. Oh yeah, anger would work just fine. I was sick of pretending that everything was fine. I may have been a garbage leader but I could be a royal bitch in my sleep.

I swept my fingers over my helmet and exited to the hanger floor. The AI core lay on its side not three meters from the Cat's ramp. Three meters may have been three megameters. The core was the second-largest object in the otherwise empty hanger after the ship. Not empty, sterile. Like the rest of the station I'd seen so far.

For all her blustering, Jhordan was squatted as low as her bulky suit allowed without toppling, inspecting the spilt guts of the shuttle. I followed her gaze to an exposed mess of spotty welds and ugly globs of patchwork. Boomer's handiwork wasn't pretty, but it was functional. I was half surprised that Jhordan hadn't charged off, gun blazing. As much as it irked me, I needed her, which meant playing nice for the time being.

What to say? It's not like I could just go 'yeah, I was just being childish and getting mad cause you were mad, let's be friends again.' I'm not a toddler. What would Boomer say? Something rashly cryptic and non-committal. I didn't have his particular flavor of worldly wisdom. What about Croaker or The Captain or Leeroy? What about Diaz? Duty and sacrifice paired with begrudging respect. Camaraderie in the face of danger. I was supposed to be the team leader, so why'd I feel more like a mediator for a giant, well-armed brat?

"Fine, you've convinced me," I announced. "Toss that thing in the Cat. I'll button it up and Boomer will just have to sit tight. We'll go find the others, then we'll leave."

I indicated to the AI core while forcing a barely restrained hostile air about me. My temper wouldn't flare up and throw me into a rage. I was calm, the murderously calculating cool of a killer plotting their strikes with full intent of escaping justice.

I switched on my suit's comms suite and weighed the risks. The Client had warned against anything on the EM spectrum but wasn't specific in detailing the consequences. He'd just given me vague warnings about gear being infected and destroyed. People are worth more than gear to me.

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"Diaz, Tony, Nye, Shores. Sound off and return to the Cat for extraction." I raised the gain for my audio and listened for the voices or even the faint clicks of keyed mics— transmissions without the power to deliver the message. And heard nothing but the gentle hiss of white noise. If Shores was here, I'm sure he'd be able to boost the signal somehow, but I lacked his technical know-how. I vainly tried again.

"I say again Diaz, Tony, Nye, Shores. Sound off and return to the Cat for extraction. Acknowledge." Again that same deafening silence. I left the channel open but decided it was a lost cause. Toggling my output, I turned to Jhordan.

"What now bi-" She started. Without moving a muscle, I radiated a cool menace. "Boss."

"We are going to find them," I said. "But we're not taking chances. If we find Nye or anyone else, and they say everyone's dead, we trust them and we leave. No stunts, no backtalk. We are the rescue party and if we get lost too, it's all a wash. Got it?" I was treated to a baleful stare as she stood mutely.

"Got it?" I repeated.

"Oh, am I allowed to talk back now?"

"If you drop the attitude, then yes."

She chose silence.

I set a slow pace. Not that I was dawdling, I was forcing a reasonably deliberate pace. When clearing a station, hostile or otherwise, there was no textbook way to do it— there was too much that could change from station to station. There were a handful of great tactics that were useful as a whole; stealth insertions, covert sabotage, numerical or technological superiority were just a few that came to mind. In a perfect world I would have overridden the airlocks and bulkheads, but with Shores lost, not to mention unsealed, I wouldn't have been able to risk it. So many ideas came to mind, and for just as many reasons they were all discarded one after another.

At the bottom of the list available to me, I arrived at the only strategy I could actually employ for my two-woman strike team. We checked our doors and corners really well, hoping the other guy would hesitate long enough to get a chest full of lead. Which was slightly better than the alternative of skipping the middle man and just shooting ourselves in the back. But heightened awareness and taut nerves were wearing me down quickly.

On a station like this, deep into the rock of an asteroid instead of some glorified metal bubble floating in the void, there wasn't the permanent threat of every shot causing a hull rupture, at least not for standard small arms. Jhordan took point while I followed in her shadow, offering what fire support I could. In exchange, Jhordan's armored mass acted as a mobile piece of hard cover for me. Our progress was slow, painfully so as I had to force Jhordan to stop rushing ahead every few minutes.

She was too spacey. It was hard for me to get and hold her attention. You don't rush in hostile—or in this case perceived hostile—territory. The only thing you're rushing towards is an early death.

We found the cleanroom with both doors opened and in the center, right on the proverbial X in the middle of the trap, was the ruined spattering of a robot in pieces. Trap was too generous a term. Traps are usually hidden, but that is still what it amounted to as Jhordan walked right into the center to inspect the bait like some dumb kid looking at a shiny landmine. Then she cocked her head up to look at the turrets, which had swiveled onto her and spun up. Then the shooting started.

Despite myself, I couldn't help imagining that she had a comical look of surprise on her face when it happened.

Jhordan still had enough sense to tuck her arms down and hunch out her hulking pauldrons to protect her more vulnerable joints. Ringing like a bell getting worked by a hammer drill, she pushed through the fire sweep to the far door and what limited cover the other hallway offered.

Meanwhile, having been only two steps into the room and watching the corners, I was able to unload three slugs into the first left-side turret before the far ones lost sight of Jhordan and swiveled their IR targeting lasers to me. Ducking back outside less than a second ahead of the oncoming bullet storm, I tore a smoke grenade from my non-lethals bandoleer and tossed it into the room as it fumed.

Jhordan's heavy rifle cracked once and the remaining turret on my side of the room fell silent, then to the floor in a twisted heap. Two left, both on the far side. One was shooting at me, the other at her. If Jhordan looked out to get line of sight on either, the other would shoot her in the back. Her suit was tough but all it took was one lucky shot to kill or cripple. We could just wait for them to run out of ammo, but there was no guarantee that'd be anytime soon. I'd need to let her draw fire and move fast.

"In, right, circle sweep!" I hollered over my suit's maxed-out speakers, hoping the pitch of my voice could carry over the hissing smoke and echoing torrent of gunfire. It was always an iffy thing in a firefight, sometimes combat was just too loud. Damn, kinetics were loud. Even dampened by my helmet, my ears drummed under the assault of each shot as they hammered into my cover. The stupid turret didn't care that it couldn't penetrate the stone and metal. It just wanted to keep me pinned.

"Got it. Moving!" Jhordan's reply was sharp, automatic. A beat passed, then in she stormed. I saw the targeting laser dart away from my cover, both turrets swiveling to track her. Fouled by the smoke and sensor baffles of Jhordan's suit, their fire sprayed wide of their moving target, maybe one in five rounds striking her plate.

I moved now, looking for the pressure waves in the thrumming smoke. Stray bullets or possibly ricochets whizzed past me, tumbling after fetching on the periphery of my personal shield. There were no audible cracks as they did. Sub-sonics?

There! Scattering through the smoke, I spot the IR laser and aim for its origin. I blast a duo of slugs from my shotgun as Jhordan fires her rifle once more. Then the room fell silent as my smoke grenade wheezes its last gasp.

The fight had lasted what, thirty seconds? If that. I was breathing hard. My limbs were still flooded with unspent adrenaline. While the deafening silence closed, I felt my muscles twitching in anticipation. Focus! I bit down on my lip, not hard enough to draw blood or peel skin, but hard enough to make the pain more pressing than the building ache within me.

I abandoned the room of scrap metal for the hall of the pooling smoke deeper in, changing my magazine for my spare solid shot. Pellets would have been great for a typical station, but for bots they were less than ideal. Lucky shots might cripple a non-combat model, but everything else would be built tougher than my triple-aught shot could reliably mangle. If by some cosmic flook I did manage to take a military-grade bot down with my shotgun at point-blank range, shrapnel and ricochets would still cut me to bloody ribbons.

Jhordan emerged from the smoke behind me, her suit looking much the same as always— marginally scratched around the edges and battered everywhere else. Stumpy feet were half-hidden by long thick legs eventually lost under the plate-sewn kilted tassets guarding the joints and most of the lower belly. The torso's bulky barrel-chest was so scuffed and beaten from age and use it was next to impossible to tell if there was any new damage to it. An overlarge stomach plate squatted under her slab chest and the steeply-pointed gorget high on the chest.

The arms were lopsided by design, the left more armored with its larger pauldron, wide-flanged elbow guard and a rounded slat of metal shielding the forearm. The right boasted a greater range of motion and a wickedly twisting triangular piston knife designed for punching through armor; it was exceptionally more capable of ripping through an unarmored person, like myself. The theory was a right-handed shooter would catch more incoming fire on the left side, assuming they didn't take a square firing stance. Even the helmet, which was nothing more than a mass of optics and sensors in a vaguely mushroomed shape, was sunk into a mess of angled plates that favored the left side. Jhordan's actual thick skull would be somewhere inside the suit's torso.

"Anything damaged?" I asked.

"Just glances here. Suit's fine, no spalling." She reported, voice energized. She was still switched on from the fight.

Now that I had a fresh reference point, I could see just how much she had been shut down before. Her movements had a whole new economy; her stride was longer, head up on a swivel, rifle tracking with her eyes. All things a leader should have seen absent sooner that didn't add up— things I'd missed.

"You gonna shit the bed on me again?" I allowed cold animosity into my voice.

"What? I'm fine, let's go."

"If you'd been focused five minutes ago you wouldn't have walked into that kill-box like some stupid kid! Did you forget about those from when we were here three hours ago?"

"No, I jus-"

"No, none of that. Shut up and listen. If they were using H-VAP rounds, you'd be dead. Period. We are the calvary. No one else is coming." I had her attention at the cost of her pride. "You're no good to anyone if you can't even watch out for yourself. You're just a liability."

It was hard to get a read on her through her armor. She stood there, rifle in hand, but she didn't look like the incarnation of murderous professionalism. She was stock-still, bordering on statuesque in all meanings of the word, but as she towered over me in that instant, I couldn't help thinking that she somehow looked sort of small.

"Sorry-" She started meekly.

"I don't want you to be sorry. I want you to be better. That's what I need right here, right now. You, switched on. Got it?"

"I get you."

"Then tell me what's wrong with you."

"Nothing. I'm fine." Her tone made it clear she was done with this conversation. It was one I'd heard hundreds of times before but never had directed at me. It was the one you used when you walked away from a fight you knew you could win. Hatred was seconded to mixed pride and shame as she stepped aside to let me pass instead of punching me in the face.

"I'm taking point since I can't trust you not to do that again. Just keep pace and don't shoot me in the back."

She said nothing but the look I got practically screamed 'no promises.'