“Time’s up, Natalya,” said a calm voice in the captain’s ear.

“Still forty to go,” Natalya replied, though twice that many crowded the ship. She strapped her auto-carbine across her back so she could grip the dust-laden gangplank’s thin support pole, leaving a little more space for the refugees to board.

Wide-eyed people streamed past Natalya. The refugees shuddered with each distant explosion, close to trampling those in front of them as they made their way from the yellow-tinted dust of the half-ruined spaceport to board the ramshackle ship. The troops at the spaceport’s door fled inside. The bombardment had started.

“We go now, we can make it past the shields,” Augustus’s voice, thick and full of bass even in the communicator stuck in Natalya’s ear, announced from the cockpit.

“There’s still people,” Natalya countered, dropping to the cracked concrete. They couldn’t shut the gangplank now, not unless they wanted to crush a dozen tearful men and women. And children, screaming.

“I could gun them down,” Co suggested. She leveled her massive assault blaster, a weapon near tall as Natalya. A shoulder strap attached at the barrel’s midsection held it in place and kept the muzzle level during automatic fire. A terrifying weapon few could handle, the short woman’s robotic arm held it steady as a titanium wall.

While her left arm was entirely artificial, the rest of Co was a mix of electronic additions. She wore a set of robotically-enhanced bracers around her thick legs. She planted her feet and alloy-steadied legs in a firing stance, and Natalya nearly had to step in front of the woman.

“No gunning down the refugees!” Natalya ordered.

“Why not?” Co asked, her mouth flat and her eyes expressionless behind a red targeting visor.

Natalya stood only a whisper taller than Co, but the woman more than beat the captain in stature. While Co looked like a piece of heavy lifting machinery, Natalya had a runner’s build. Her metallic-green, carbon nano-weave top and baby-blue nano-leggers showcased her lean frame where they weren’t covered with light-armored padding. Natalya stared at the gunner with electric blue eyes, not bothering to give Co an answer to such a ludicrous question.

“I’m afraid she has the right of it, Natalya,” the same calm voice who’d been watching the shields once more informed her through her communicator.

“Captain, Ptolemy,” Natalya corrected.

“I thought you were the captain, not I,” Ptolemy replied.

Natalya grunted. Screaming refugees drowned out her annoyance as a wounded fighter cometted over the sky. The doomed spacecraft struck the shield above the spaceport and erupted in a million pieces, some ricocheting into the city and setting unshielded apartments on fire.

It was a good bet there were still people in the small city. The fifty-story-tall apartments and businesses were outside the spaceport’s shield and made easy targets for the growing bombardment. The shield had been turned on earlier than expected, but the Gaozu fleet had arrived earlier than the Changyu troops had expected. Puqi was under attack, the people stuck between two fleets who wanted the planet.

That shield protected the spaceport, the autocannon, artillery, and hundreds of troops stationed on Puqi. But it didn’t protect the civilian buildings, which was why so many were willing to pay Natalya for safe passage off the planet. More importantly for Natalya, however, that shield kept her ship grounded.

“Request shield clearance,” Natalya ordered.

“No go, Captain,” Augustus bellowed. “General Siu just called me a disembodied pigeon. Do you think that’s an insult?”

“He wants the ship, Captain. That will not happen,” Ptolemy informed Natalya.

The bulkhead above the cargo bay bore the green field and yellow sun of Changyu. Augustus had marked it out with blue spray paint and added a smiley face.

Natalya saw the faces of the people as they passed through the airlock and into the cargo bay. They shuddered in fear for the Gaozu flag, a simple red field, that still decked the weapons systems. Despite the mix of sigils, nearly all marked out, it was relief that showed most prominently on the peoples’ faces.

A woman with a gash on her forehead pulled her torn blouse back over her shoulder as she kissed her crying child, tears of relief breaking the dam of suppressed terror.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

“Natalya,” Ptolemy prompted, waiting for an answer.

“We’ll get the shields down. Co, door,” Natalya instructed.

“Done,” Co said.

Without further prompting, Co pulled back a lever on her weapon and fired a cannon-slug at the spaceport’s metal doors.

Natalya ran for the opening before the smoke cleared, firing her carbine in the air to clear a path through the refugees.

“Get the people onboard and ready to go the second we’re done!” Natalya ordered into her communicator.

“Gotcha,” Augustus replied.

Co overtook Natalya in two leaps of her bracer-lined legs, unleashing a torrent of blasts through the ruined doorway and into the spaceport corridor.

“Covered,” Co said when Natalya reached her.

“Thank you for that, Co,” Natalya said. “I always love it when you shatter every light fixture in my path.”

“Welcome.”

Half a year together and Co still didn’t get Natalya’s sarcasm.

Natalya had hoped to make it through the long hallways to the shield control room unnoticed, but Co’s idea of subtlety was to only collapse half the walls in their way.

The two blitzkrieged a path through the spaceport and into the military’s ops center. Octagonal corridors that used to be lit by unexploded and perfectly harmless light fixtures zigzagged through boarding gates and maintenance depots. The port had been used by civilians before the war, some advertisements for chewing gum and a pill sold to reduce nausea in space flight, which tasted disgusting, still hung from the widening ceiling. Natalya and Co paused as they reached a large intersection of corridors.

It may have once been a food court, but the room had been turned into a barracks. Empty bunks lay amongst the furniture Changyu soldiers had taken from refugees on their way to Natalya’s ship.

Just in case she hadn’t been heard already, Co fired her gun in a waving arc. Glass and chunks of the ceiling rained down around what used to be a noodle shop. Natalya held up a hand and stopped before she ran through the cascading shrapnel, about to yell at Co, when two Changyu soldiers appeared on the other end of the food court.

“Lay down your arms and—” the first soldier said before Co landed a single blast to his forehead.

The second didn’t get a chance to say anything before another blast rang out.

Two blasts, two downed targets.

“I’m sorry, was I supposed to get permission to do that?” Co asked.

More blasts echoed through the old food court, but this time from behind the downed soldiers. Twin blasts rippled across Co’s arm, their force making her step back a moment. One of the biggest reasons she’d voluntarily had a robotic arm installed, besides improved firing ability, was that Co could jury-rig a small shield emitter onto her metal elbow. The fingers on her right hand squeezed the trigger as her left, robotic arm held her weapon steady and projected a tiny force field. The woman was lucky the soldiers only carried weapons that fired basic blasts.

Natalya took cover and returned fire while Co ducked behind a pillar and sprayed the corridor.

“Ptolemy, we need a pathway!” Natalya said over the shattering stone.

“Checking blueprints now. Interesting,” Ptolemy replied, the sound of distant screaming filtering through his communicator. Natalya hoped none of the refugees had tried to enter the bridge, for their own sakes.

There were three corridors: one the way they’d come, a second that was now filling with soldiers, and Natalya had no clue where the third path led.

“Your ship is now the property of the Changyu Confederation. We’re at war, Captain, we need your ship — the Gaozu are here,” the green-capped officer in charge of the pinned down troops announced.

“Which is why I’m leaving!” Natalya replied, her carbine poking holes in the walls.

“Take the corridor to your left. Second intersection. Door on your right,” Ptolemy said through Natalya’s communicator.

“Captain Frazier, you are ordered to remove yourselves and those onboard your vessel,” the Changyu officer commanded.

“I’m sure you need ordnance first, right?” Natalya shouted, then turned to Co and said, “Co, send them some ammunition.”

Co fired a cannon-slug above the doorway, chunks of concrete collapsing above the soldiers and making them dive for cover. Co added further gunfire to cover Natalya’s flight down the third corridor, bounding beside her captain a moment later.

They ran down the hall and passed the first intersection, through octagonal corridors Co had not yet eradicated. When they turned left at the second intersection, they saw a lone guard standing in front of the door Ptolemy had directed them toward. Natalya shot the man in the knee. He went down screaming.

As Co leveled her gun, Natalya shoved the massive weapon upward, sending Co’s blast harmlessly into a light fixture. Natalya squinted as bits of glass fell into her short, blonde hair. Co raised an eyebrow as shrapnel fell into her own untamed, brown hair.

Natalya didn’t bother explaining herself as she ran to the downed guard and kicked away his pistol.

The door was thick, barred with a code-padded crossbeam.

“What’s the code?” Natalya asked.

The downed guard screamed as he clutched his knee. He screamed louder when Co stepped on his wound.

“Co! What are you doing?” Natalya asked.

“I was helping you ask him,” Co replied.

“I was asking Ptolemy!”

Co shrugged. “Whoever’s quicker.”

Natalya was going to say something in response, but noticed the guard had a keycard strapped to his side. She snapped it off and swiped it across the code pad.

“The code is one, one, three—” Ptolemy began.

“Yeah, yeah, I got it,” Natalya said as the locks snapped aside and the door swung open.

Natalya leveled her carbine, expecting a force of guards protecting closely monitored machinery. Instead, she found a vault full of metal lockers and sealed drawers.

“What is this?” Natalya asked.

“Fourth drawer on the second row,” Ptolemy chimed in.

“We’re robbing them?”