We fly back to Scorpion territory, uncloaked. The Scorpions see us coming this time and several ships come out to meet us.

“I want to talk to Mabel,” Kiera tells them.

“She’s a little busy today,” the lead pilot says, “come back tomorrow.”

“Ask her if she wants the Cryta clan to get their guns at half-price.”

Silence. Then, “Follow us.”

We’re led into a hanger filled with short-range starfighters. There must be two hundred of them in here, and I didn’t think for an instant that this was the only hanger. I’m not very impressed, though. If we’d come here first, I would’ve been impressed. But after seeing the armada that Jager collected, I almost feel sorry for the Scorpions. Almost. Still, I’m happy we didn’t need the suits and I say so.

“These little mousetraps are no match for the suits,” Laura says.

“They’re spaceball suits,” I say. “Yeah, I know some of them are military - hell, mine still gives me crowd control instructions whenever I put it on. But they’re just suits.”

Laura looks at Kiera. “Just suits, he says.”

Kiera gives me a sideways glance. “Does he know?”

“No,” Laura says. “He hasn’t had an opportunity to see them in real action.”

I ignore the topic I don’t know about - and won’t find out because I know it’s the part Laura won’t tell me - and instead ask, “A spaceball game isn’t real action?”

Kiera snorts. “No. That’s just a game. It’s different when people are actually trying to kill you.”

“Right,” Kissy says. “Next game, Coach can put you in my place. We’ll see how you feel about it after taking a snap.”

We land a little off to the side and disembark. Not through the airlock, like we came in. A gravity elevator near the cockpit deposits us on the ground under the ship’s nose. I glance back and then do a double take. The Phoenix is a lot smaller than I expected. It’s sixty meters long, tops. This thing is hyperspace-capable and it goes up against Edochian destroyers? The team bus is bigger than this toothpick.

The Scorpions lead us into a large cafeteria. There are clansmen scattered across the room, eating. They look random, but my pattern-recognition software picks up on the fact that they all have a line of sight to one person on the far side. The person is big, old, and female. Mabel, I presume.

There’s another person sitting next to her. Young. It’s Dexter. He’s talking to Mabel. He doesn’t look afraid or otherwise uncomfortable. He’s smiling. Having a good time. So Jager was right again, Dexter isn’t in the airlock and they’re spoofing his IIDS tone.

Mabel laughs out loud, her donkey braying echoing in the room. I notice then that she and Dexter are the only ones talking, none of the other clansmen are doing anything other than eating. Pretending to eat, anyway. I’m not seeing a whole lot of food traveling to mouths.

The room is a trap.

I give Laura a look. It’s a trap.

She gives me one back. Of course it’s a trap. I’m not a moron, you know.

Another look. Just trying to be helpful, honey.

Mabel pretends to just notice us. “Kiera! Nice of you to drop by. Who are your friends?”

I’m looking right at Dexter when he turns his head to see us. No surprise. No fear. A grin. Maybe Kiera was right, thinking he was Echelon along with his mother. I start counting the exits, and replay our walk in here in the corner of my eye. There were a lot of turns and I want to know which way to go when we start running.

“You know who they are, Mabel,” Kiera says. She gestures at Dexter. “I was going to negotiate this boy’s release, but it seems that not everything is what it seems.”

“You mean Dexter here? Oh, he’s our honored guest!”

“I was under the impression he was here against his will,” Kiera says.

“Then somebody’s led you astray, my dear girl,” Mabel says. “Dexter here was just telling me all about his last game, where he saved the day at the last moment!”

I snort. “He was on the field five times for a total of 47 seconds. Not at the end.”

“That’s just the kind of hurtful thing a man like you would say.”

“A man like me?”

“Selfish glory hounds like you build themselves up by knocking other people down. I don’t know how you sleep at night.”

“Like a rock, actually.” I’m trying to figure Mabel out. She’s talking like a warm fuzzy mom-type who’s obsessed with all of her children and they can do no wrong. But she’s a clan leader. Warm and fuzzy don’t climb pirate corporate ladders all that efficiently. She’s doing it on purpose, obviously, and I can tell from Kiera’s face that this hokey act is driving her nuts.

“Mabel,” Kiera says. “Regardless of how well you two are getting along, we need Mr. Cribbens back.”

“Oh, he’s happy here. He’s going to stay, actually.”

The cafeteria eaters all stand up. We’re surrounded in two seconds. A shitload of guns point at us from all sides.

Kiera doesn’t even twitch. “Mabel, what are you doing?”

“I’ve gotten a better deal, Kiera,” the old woman says. She’s practically glowing with excitement. “One that will ensure that we never have to deal with you or Beane again.”

“Echelon, Mabel?” Kiera says. “Seriously?”

Mabel’s grin slips.

“They’re promising that to anybody they can,” Kiera goes on. “They even came to us. They’re desperate, Mabel. You think you’re getting support from them? It’s the other way around. They’re a noose you’re tying around your neck. Willingly. What did Jint promise you?”

The smile on Mabel’s face becomes a little fixed.

“Ereban!” someone shouts from the other side of the room. I look and see a clansman standing in the doorway with a panicked expression. “Jager is here!”

“Well, it’s about time he dragged his ass–”

“He’s gathered a fleet! He brought the Issari!”

“WHAT?”

“Oh, I forgot to mention that,” Kiera says. “Jint’s promises might have seemed worth it, Mabel, but it’s not going to matter for you.”

The lights go out.

Someone sweeps my legs from under me. I go down. I manage to put my hands out so I don’t bang my face off the floor.

Mabel screams, “What the fuck!”

I hear the unmistakable whir of monofilament blades. They’re whizzing in seemingly all directions.

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

Thuds. Soft thuds. Bodies dropping. More thuds, but different. Crashes, more like. Further away. They’re reverberating through the walls, through the asteroid itself. Jager’s forces have opened fire.

I start to get up.

Laura’s urgent whisper in my ear, “Stay down!”

My fight or flight instinct has an argument. I stay down.

A gun goes off.

A lot of guns go off.

More screams and shouts and gurgles and scary knife whirring and thuds and more gunfire and more screams.

Silence. Except for the intermittent explosions coming from somewhere else on the station. Jager is attacking, but he’s leaving this section alone, which is nice, because he strikes me as the sort of person who gets carried away when he’s shooting something.

The lights come back on, flickering.

“You can get up now,” Kiera says, her voice somewhere above and away from me.

I stand up and look around. It seems like all the clansmen are on the floor. Some of them are moving, but it’s the slow twitches of a body in shock. Kiera is stepping through them, checking them for something. I realize she’s checking them for life. Because one woman raises a hand and Kiera bends over her and puts her arm out. With that scary hum, a monofilament blade lances down from a hidden arm holster beneath her sleeve and pierces the clanswoman’s throat. No gushing blood, the blade cauterizes the wound as it passes through. It snaps back up into its holster. Kiera doesn’t hover over the woman, but stands up and moves on to the next one. Methodical. Without mercy. I shiver.

It’s not like I’ve never seen someone die before. Spaceball is dangerous. Happens less than you’d think in the spaceball arena, but it happens. Never like this, though. Alive one moment, perfectly capable of surviving. Then dead the next. Alive. Dead. Alive. Dead.

Someone squeezes my hand and I look and see Laura watching me. A bit worried. “I’m fine,” I say. “Are you hurt?”

“No,” she says. “Are you?”

“I don’t think so.” I see Dexter. He’s on the floor with his hands tied behind his back. He’s not moving. I figure out cold, because why tie up a dead man? “Who tied him up?”

“I did,” Kiera says.

“What are you, a ninja?”

She pauses mid-strike. A see a faint smile cross her lips, then she shakes her head and it’s gone. She goes back to executing the wounded clansmen.

I don’t see a big fat body. “Where’s Mabel?”

“She got out,” Kiera says mid-strike. “Kissy went after her.”

I hear muffled thumps from outside the room. Then Kissy reappears. She’s wearing that cocktail dress of hers and dragging an unconscious Mabel by the hair.

I wonder if it’s part of Kissy’s programming or some weird, twisted cross of artificial neurons that makes her wear outfits inappropriate for the moment. She doesn’t need clothes per se, they serve no function for her. She doesn’t need them for warmth. The opposite, really, since she’s got a small fusion reactor driving her and she has to bleed off heat to keep from melting. So in reality, the garments are only there to satisfy those of us looking at her, so we can place her in a mental bucket and move on. I decide that she’s doing it on purpose. Maybe she wants people to notice her and not categorize her by what she was made for. I make a mental note to ask her, later when Jager isn’t shooting the place to pieces.

As soon as I think of it, the distant thumps become less distant and several panels along the far wall explode in a shower of sparks. “We need to go!” I shout.

“Keep your shirt on,” Kiera mutters. “We’ve got plenty of time.”

“What, so you can keep sticking people with that knife of yours? They’re all going to be dead anyway.”

“I like to be thorough.” Kiera walks over and nudges Dexter with her foot. “Besides, this one is only pretending to be unconscious.” She bends down and waves the monofilament blade beneath his nose. Dexter eyes snap open and cross to look at the blade. He squirms and I see his neck muscles try to push his head through the floor, in much the same way that I try to get away from dentists. Kiera stands back up again with a satisfied smirk. “We’re done. We can go.”

I go over to Dexter and haul him to his feet. He’s definitely awake. His expression is mixed. One thing I don’t see there is any fear. The wide-eyed boy persona he projected when I first met him isn’t there, either. He looks annoyed, and a bit disappointed. Makes me wonder if this whole situation was his idea and not his mother’s.

“Follow me,” Kiera says, and heads toward the door we came in.

I grab Dexter by the arm and push him ahead of me. He tries to shake me off, but I’ve got him with my right arm. “If you want a detachable shoulder,” I tell him, “then keep doing that. If you try anything, the first thing I’m going to do is squeeze as hard as I can. Got it?”

Dexter nods. I think he gets it, but I’m keeping an eye on him, just in case. He’s Echelon. There’s all sorts of interesting training involved with joining a cult like that.

Laura falls in behind me and Kissy brings up the rear with her frumpy luggage. “You still going to play on the team after this?” I ask the kid.

“Are you serious?” he says. “Not in a million years. I can’t stand the innocent teen act.”

“How old are you, anyway?”

“Twenty-two.”

“I know a guy like you.”

“Like what?”

“He’s forty-three and looks like he’s eighteen. It’s really fucking annoying.”

“That’s great. Look, Stern, it was fun to play in the games. But I’ve got more important things on my mind right now.”

“Yep, I’m sure. I don’t know what’s going to happen to you in the next hour or so, but I would greatly appreciate it if you’d consider returning to the team. You’ve got an amazing leg and I’d hate to have to replace you this late in the season. Who knows, maybe it’s something to fall back on if things don’t go your way. Don’t answer now. Answer me later. You know, if you live.”

Dexter shrugs. Best I can do. I don’t know what’s going to happen to him, either. Jager probably won’t kill him, unless he’s the kind of guy who eats his young. With him, I just never know.

Except for us, the hallways are bereft of living things. They’re also bereft of consistent light and debris-free floors. After I trip over three things, Kiera stops and turns around. Exasperation paints her face. “Is there something wrong with you? Don’t have you have ocular implants?”

“Yeah,” I say while skirting an exposed panel hissing steam and sparks. “For seeing details ten kilometers away. Ten meters in the dark? I see as shitty as everybody else.”

She gestures at Dexter with her chin. “You want me to take him, so you can concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other?”

“Nope, I got him. I don’t want you to get carried away with your murder stick.”

She snorts and turns around.

A clansman darts out of a darkened doorway and runs toward Kiera, something clenched in his raised fist.

The lights flicker and I only catch fragments.

Kiera’s monofilament blade snicks out.

“Now!” someone yells behind me.

I hear something clunk and rattle on the floor nearby. I look down and see something oblong and black skitter toward us.

WHAM.

Blinding white and purple light fills the hallway.

***

My ears are ringing. I have an incredible headache. I can’t see very well. My vision is dark and shadowy. Blurry. The hallways slowly comes into focus. I realize from my perspective that I’m sitting on the floor. My elbow hurts. I’m still holding onto Dexter. He’s on his back and looks to be about in the same shape as me.

Laura.

I see her a couple meters away, face down. She’s moving. Groaning. I let go of Dexter and scrabble to her side. I flip her over gently, and her hands go to her forehead in pain. She’s got a pretty good bump at her hairline, but no blood.

“Mabel!” Kiera shouts. “Where is she!”

“I’ve got her,” Kissy says. She’s in her armored mode again. She has to stoop to fit in the corridor, and her crouched stance reminds me of a demon in a horror vid. There are several bodies lying around her, their limbs and necks at odd angles. She’s still holding Mabel by the hair. “It was an attempt to retrieve her. Apparently, they did not count on me being immune to a flash-bang.”

I help Laura to her feet. She’s a little wobbly. I duck my head under her arm. “I’m okay,” she says.

“Sure you are,” I say. “Just for a little while. Dexter—”

Dexter waves me off. “I don’t think you need to worry about me, Coach. I’m pretty sure that Kissy isn’t going to let me go anywhere.”

Kissy fixes him with an unblinking demonic stare. “You are correct. If you try to run, I will chase you down in four steps and beat you unconscious with this one.” She raises Mabel off the floor.

“Let’s go,” Kiera says. “We’re close to the hangar.”

We don’t run into any more surprises in the corridors. When we enter the hangar I realize that there was a welcoming committee at one point, but something happened to them. There are bodies all around the Phoenix with scorched holes in them.

“Your doing?” I ask Kiera as we jog toward the waiting gravity lift.

“Yep,” she says over her shoulder. “Automated defenses.”

We pile onboard. A maelstrom of laser and kinetic weapon fire is pounding the station as we fly away. Large pieces break off. Depressurizing compartments blast their contents into space. I see bodies floating about like spent chaff. Kiera weaves in and out of the debris field around the station and we clear it into open space. She brings us up into the main body of the pirate fleet and turns us around in time to see the station tilt on its axis as if guided by a giant invisible hand. A bright blue explosion shudders and shoulders its way from the core, fragmenting the asteroid into several big chunks. Then everything splits apart as if each piece can’t wait to get away from the rest.

The fleet stops firing. We sit there and watch as secondary explosions keep the destruction going, like some sort of a macabre fireworks show.

“Jager’s calling,” Kiera reports.

The clanmaster’s head appears. He sees Dexter and smiles wide. “Good! You made it! What of your charge?”

“We’ve got her,” Dexter says.

I look at him. He looks satisfied with himself. “Wait a minute,” I say. “This was the plan all along? You were in on this?”

Dexter smiles at me. “Yes. Jager got wind of an Echelon deal with Mabel a few months ago and asked me to look into it. Mom was trying to broker the deal, and I came with her on the pretense that I’d be running backup. She’s going to be rather upset with me when she finds out I wasn’t playing on her side this time.”

Jager looks disappointed. “I do wish you would call me ‘Dad’, son.”

“On special occasions,” Dexter murmurs.

“But you’re Echelon, aren’t you?” Laura asks. “Are you a double agent or something?”

“Something like that,” Dexter says. “My father needed an asset there, and my mother wasn’t going to help him. So I was the logical choice. I wasn’t happy about it. I really liked my life out here.”

“You’re young,” Jager says. “You adapted quite well. We will discuss your next career path this evening over supper.” Jager turns to us. “Please, bring Ereban to me. I have some words for her, words she deserves to hear herself.”