The sensation of falling causes my stomach to sink, indicating our ship stopped decelerating. I shake my head to clear it, and with a mind of its own, my hair floats around my head. Shoot, I forgot to tie it up. As long as I don’t leave the closet, the long filaments of dead cells shouldn’t get in the way. The skirt of my dress floats up, but now’s not the time for decorum. I peek through a horizontal vent in the closet’s door that’s just wide enough for examining the pirates’ activities without them noticing.

Unlike the structures on Mars and Earth, battleships such as DeLarge and Silvereye are bulletproof. At least, projectiles bigger than regular bullets are required if one expects to cut through an MSF ship. A high amount of kinetic energy from elec photons can kill living organisms, but metals are very reliable at absorbing those photons—a large percentage of them anyway—that miss their mark.

So when exactly twenty Martians carrying semi-automatic rifles, and the coolest coilguns I’ve ever seen, enter the command center through the outer hallway entrance, and Blaze shuts and locks the doors while simultaneously blocking their comms, I try to convince myself this is a rosier situation than dying alone in a vacuum.

The Martians wear full on spacesuits with helmets; the pirate soldiers don shoulder to toe armor; Felix, Thomson, and Blaze sport modest bulletproof vests. Although Felix stated magnetic boots are not designed for walking around, the Martians and pirates are pretty good at it, despite the movements appearing a bit awkward. Rather than rely on gravity to move forward, they plant their feet and drag their bodies toward a destination.

Realizing they’ve lost contact with Silvereye and are trapped, the Martians raise their guns at the pirates, yelling demands and obscenities.

All pirates except Felix raise their weapons as well. “Easy,” he warns, holding up his hands, tone somehow both soothing and fierce, “we simply wish to chat, is all.” Felix asks some questions that are either ignored in favor of more… colorful responses, or answered curtly—no telling if the replies are true, but the goal isn’t to pry information from them. It’s to buy Nupan and Jual enough time for locating Silvereye’s self-destruct button.

The argument continues for a minute. Then ten. Then twenty.

One brave, albeit shortsighted, Martian soul wanders a little too close to a pirate soldier. The pirate pokes the Martian with her gun, advising him to back up. The Martian doesn’t like that. He shoots her in the abdomen.

And all hell breaks loose.

Chaos erupts, gunfire leaving me deaf and flashes of photons leaving me blind. A Martian is shot in the face, clean through the helmet, and drops dead. Most pirates take cover behind the command center’s metal structures, and Blaze presses something on a touchscreen, transforming nearby chairs, tables, and monitors into fortresses.

Felix kicks his heels together, deactivating the magnets, and ducks under the newly formed alloy shield that used to be the comms station. His pistol is laughable compared to the other fighters’ defenses, but its small mass allows him to dart out of his hiding place, shoot, and disappear effortlessly.

Some deliberately place themselves in the line of fire. At least ten pirate soldiers are wounded. Many continue to fight, disregarding the perfect spheres of blood coming out of their gushing wounds and floating through the air. Two pirates are immobile, mouths gaping, eyes open, and arms weightless. The magnetic boots tether the deceased to the floor, reminding me of those historical paintings depicting supposed witches chained to the bottom of an ocean by their feet.

While the Martians have fewer structures to shield them from projectiles, their red spacesuits double as exceptional armor. Only three of them are incapacitated. One trigger-happy Martian, a couple meters away, runs out of bullets and unsheathes two knives, aiming for the nearest pirate’s neck.

That pirate happens to be Thomson. In such close proximity, Thomson’s gun is useless. He won’t be able to aim and pull the trigger before the blade slits his throat.

His carotid artery will sever. He will die.

I don’t think. I just act.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Punching the pad on the wall, I kick my heels together violently as the closet door slides open. Magnets deactivated, I hook my arms around the doorframe and propel myself toward the threatening dagger wielder.

I’m too late.

No, I’m not!

Luckily, Thomson doesn’t attempt to shoot, instead choosing to block the knife. The shiny weapon plunges into his forearm, and he cries out. The Martian brings down his other knife, targeting Thomson’s forehead, but I barrel into the red soldier and take hold of his wrists. I wrestle with his arms, struggling to force him to let go of the weapons, or at the very minimum, fracture his focus. I succeed temporarily when he is unable to remove the knife from Thomson’s forearm, but my delight sours as he jerks his other wrist out of my grip and cracks the pommel of his last remaining weapon against my cheekbone. My neck snaps to the side, and pain saturates my skull, pulsating down my spine.

Releasing the Martian to clutch the back of my neck, I think I sprawl through midair and end up near a wall. Or maybe it’s the floor. I think somebody calls my name. I think I see Thomson rip the knife out of his flesh, tear off the Martian’s helmet, and bury the blade into his enemy’s temple. But I also think I see silver worms wriggling into my pupils, so who knows what’s actually real?

I blink in agony.

After what feels like hours, my vision starts to clear up. My cheek throbs, but the sharp pain in my neck diminishes. Thomson pops up next to me, his shoes demagnetized, and snatches my upper arm, propelling us behind the weapons station fortress. “What the hell are you doing?” he questions aggressively, shaking me. “You’re actually insane. You’re gonna get yourself killed!”

I stare at a random spot on the floor, not because I’m ashamed, but because I’m perplexed. I can hear him. The Martians and pirates are no longer firing. Looking back into the black holes comprising Thomson’s eyes, I declare, “They’ve stopped.”

Comprehension crossing his face, his grasp on my arms loosens marginally. His mouth opens, closes, and opens again.

We can’t see them, yet we hear a Martian’s voice reverberate through the hushed room, “We just want the girl. Give her to us, and we’ll be on our way. We won’t track you. We won’t go looking for you. We’ll forget that DeLarge even exists. Set up a contract if you wish, and we’ll sign it. No hard feelings.”

“Not giving you shit,” Thomson mutters under his breath, glaring at nothing. His eyes soften when he catches my gaze. “You did a number on them, huh?”

Feigning ignorance, I widen my eyes and shake my head. The Martians saw me defend Thomson, and they must remember me from the cameras back in the Holding Safe. Or maybe Felix was right to assume they’d recognize me as the Starship Admiral’s daughter. Either way, I’m screwed.

“Stay here,” Thomson growls, bending down to rapidly activate my magnetic books and secure my heels to the floor. Then he reels himself into the line of fire, vanishing before a protest escapes my lips. A trail of his blood hovers in the air, morphing into symmetrical, deep red droplets. I worry about his wound in zero G. Thrombosis, clotting of the blood in part of the circulatory system, becomes life-threatening in microgravity.

The gunfire resumes. From my vantage point, the only person I can see is Blaze, crouching behind his navigation station shield and animatedly typing something into the touchscreen computer. I’m about to check whether or not Thomson is still alive when Blaze abruptly stands stick-straight, demagnetizes his shoes, and yells, “Bort vagga tre!”

Time stalls. Blaze locks eyes with me from five meters away, his sclerae ballooning. He curses, and his expression fluctuates between shocked and disturbed. Catapulting off the nearest solid surface, he flies directly at me, exposing himself to bullets and photons that narrowly miss his thin frame. Before I can comprehend his actions or even consider protecting myself, one arm wraps behind my knees and disconnects my magnetic boots from the metal floor, while his other arm encircles my waist. Roughly cradling me, he jumps toward open air and avoids touching any surfaces.

Now, the Martians can see us.

We’re dead. Blaze hates me so much he’s chosen to kill us both.

I clutch his vest and close my eyes.

A deluge of heat drenches my bare legs, arms, and face—but it only lasts a second, and the ship turns quiet. The smell of burnt flesh in the warm air makes me gag. Opening my eyes, I search for the source of the appalling odor. Eleven pirate soldiers, Thomson, and Felix dawdle gently through midair, all conscious, but most of them bear injuries. Five Martians also float through the air, mortally wounded. Four pirate soldiers and fifteen Martians are attached to metal surfaces.

Those nineteen are deceased, exposed skin showing their bodies boiled and charred. Blaze just set off a timer to electrocute every soldier physically connected to metal surfaces in the command center.

The battlefield metamorphosed into a graveyard in the blink of an eye.

But we’ve won.