Once, Brant might have thought it strange how quickly Karl took to his new lodgings, and how little he seemed to dwell on the ship he had allegedly been kidnapped from. Surely, she might once have thought, a man would want to know what had become of his former comrades and try to rejoin them, or at least get word to them. But that, she now knew, was not how the universe operated. Andrews had once told her about an aquatic animal on Earth called a shark, which had to always keep swimming to keep oxygenated water moving into its gills; if it ever stopped, it would suffocate. Spacefarers were all sharks, he'd said – always moving forward, no matter what happened, or else falling down dead. Certainly that comparison applied to Brant and her crew, if no one else.
He'd been aboard for a few days, working the engines through one uneventful jump and one encounter with a woefully outgunned AI scout. He hadn't tried to steer the ship into a star on either occasion, and that was about all she could glean from recent events about how much she could really trust him, whether in skill or loyalty. Time would tell, she supposed.
She knocked on the door to his quarters. By the time he called "Come in," she'd already opened the hatch and started striding in, hoping just a little bit that she'd see him talking to a hologram of a Rebel spymaster. Then at least she'd know where she stood with this guy. No such luck, though.
"Ah, captain!" Karl said quickly. He was sitting at a small table, a small box of booklets and magazines in front of him. He quickly rose and put his arms at his sides, looking a bit flustered.
"At ease," Brant said. She eyed the box, then looked back at Karl. "Have your quarters been comfortable?"
"Quite, captain. I was just looking through a box of, uh…I guess, thank you for the, uh…I mean, was this from you?"
"The box? No, everything in here belonged to the late Ensign Harlan Mickelson. I never discussed literature with him while he was with us – did he have good taste?"
"I won't speak ill of the dead, Captain Brant, much less one of your comrades. But…" Karl eyed the box again sheepishly. "Ensign Mickelson owned an alarming amount of pornography."
Ah. And here I thought he had some kind of hobby. "Yes, but did he have good taste in it?"
"Uh…I haven't fully inventoried his collection, ma'am."
"Well, make a note of your progress. We'll be leaving jump state in just under half an hour. You should report to your station. I just wanted to check on you and see how your introduction to the crew was going."
"Going well, thank you. I'm not sure whether the mantis girl wants to kill me or be best friends, but I reckon that's the way of it with mantis in general." He eyed her, thinking.
"Deciding whether to add 'women in general'? For the record, I don't want to kill you or be best friends."
"Thanks for the clarification, captain. All the same – thanks for letting me serve with you. I don't like to think about what the rest of my life would have been like if you hadn't come along."
"Probably much longer than it will be with us. Things are going to get pretty dicey as soon as we reach Rebel space, so you want to think long and hard about how far you want to extend this gratitude. You're free to go at the next port of call."
"Thank you, captain. If it's all the same to you, I think I'd like to stay. I want to tell you it has to do with my deep moral character, but really I just don't have anywhere better to be." He chuckled at this and she smirked. Smirked, and made a mental note that he was determined to stay aboard the Kestrel, just as a Rebel operative in his situation would be.
Brant got up and saw herself out. On her way to the bridge, she brought up a hologram of the ship's power allocations, double-checking one last time. The display shot out from the control unit on her wrist, and she liked what she saw. Damn, but the Kestrel was looking good.
Brant couldn't remember the last time she'd really thought they had a chance at pulling this mission off, but as she sat in her chair on the bridge studying the readouts, things were looking up. Engines were running optimally, shields were dense and fully-powered, weapons were well-stocked, and every post was manned. They couldn't face down a top-of-the-line battleship, but they could at least hold out long enough to run from one.
She nodded in satisfaction and flipped the display off. They would be transitioning out of jump state in a few minutes, and Brant gave them an 85% chance – hell, 90%! – of survival against whatever was waiting for them. It felt nice to have so much confidence.
"I know it's my turn for prayer, ensign, but you go ahead if you like. The Shaper and Preserver did right by us last time," Brant said to the hulking pilot sitting in front of her.
Toh didn't respond. He checked some of his instruments, but he didn't look back at her or say anything.
"Ensign Toh, did you hear me?"
"Yes, captain. I heard you," Toh said flatly.
Brant nodded. She'd been expecting some sort of confrontation, but the ensign had pointedly avoided her during their hours jumping away from the Cormorant. She decided it was best to give him space since he hadn't outright challenged her or anything, but now, heading into possible danger with a crew member who might question her command, she wasn't so sure about that decision.
"Whatever you've got to say, Toh, now's the time. Speak freely"
Toh didn't react immediately, and Brant worried that he'd just ignore her. Then he slowly rose from his chair and turned to her, hands at his side.
"What you did with 145 was disgusting, captain. Shaper knows I've got no love for pirates or traitors, but you pardoned and reinstated him. By your own authority, you killed him for no reason."
Yes, that's what she'd figured was up. "I offered him a pardon and reinstatement, Toh. He didn't accept."
Toh groaned. He didn't raise his voice or change his tone noticeably, but Brant knew enough about his people to know a level tone was not a sign of level emotion. "Captain, you known how you phrased it, and what you meant him to think. If I wanted to play tricks with words instead of just getting straight, honest talk, I'd have gone to work for the slugs."
"I had to preoccupy an enemy to buy Kat an edge on a blind boarding action. I'll always talk straight with you, Toh, and here's some straight talk: if I have to break a rule or two to save my ship and my crew, I'm going to do it every single time. A traitor is dead and our ship is in better shape than ever, and I won't apologize for that."
"To strengthen the body at the cost of the spirit is to weaken the whole, captain." That sounded like a quote, probably from the Preserver's Covenant or some other scripture. "You killed a Federation officer who had been pardoned of all his crimes. I'm not an idiot and I realize the stakes, captain, but when this is all over, I have to report your actions to the admiralty."
Brant bit her tongue hard and felt every muscle in her face stiffen with the effort to avoid laughing out loud, loud and rich and insanely. They were probably going to die before the mission was out, but if did they succeed and the intel they carried really did save the Federation, then High Command wouldn't give a damn what she'd done. She could have been shoveling little Zoltan babies into the reactor for the past month just to boost their power output a smidge, and she'd still get every medal they had plus a few extra they made up just for her. Some of the Rebels' complaints about the Federation's morals were well-founded.
"When this is all over, ensign, I will submit to any investigation that High Command wishes to open. Until then, do we have a problem?"
"If you will agree to one condition, yeah."
Brant exhaled – she didn't even realize she'd been holding her breath until that breath came out in ragged frustration, almost a growl. Would just a plain old "yes" have been so hard?
"And that would be?"
"Your carpenter-god. You ought to pray to him more. It's…lonely out here. It's easy to get confused and untethered, and I don't want you losing your way. This ain't even a condition, really – yeah, I'll follow orders, watch your back and all. It's my ass too if we don't make it. But…just once a day, at least. I want you to say you'll talk to your god a little."
Brant couldn't think of what to say for a moment. Besides the rocks and the humans, no spacefarers had held on to their religious roots; she did not have as long a history with the ensign as she did with 78, and she did not have quite the warriors' rapport with him that she did with Katarek, but he was the only person on the crew that she could talk about God with.
"I will make an effort, Toh," she said.
"Thank you, captain," he said. He eased back into his seat. "Exiting jump state in two minutes."
"Exiting jump state in two minutes," Brant said over the crew com frequency. "Weapons and shields, stand by."
The usual wave of vertigo flooded over her as the ship breached into physical reality again, and she had to admit to having an trigger finger. She pictured some simpering, baby-faced Rebel captain seeing them materialize at the jump beacon, recognizing her ship as a Kestrel and assuming they'd be easy prey, thinking all like "What a lucky dude I am, finding some crappy Federation craft out here that I can take without any effort at all, this'll be SOOOO fun. Oh, whoops! They're actually really well-armed! The Kestrel is blowing us up really easily! Oh, no, I'm bleeding out right on my nice Rebel bridge! That Kestrel must have one tough, sexy bitch at the helm, but I guess I'll never know because now I'm dead, bye!"
"No sign of active craft, captain," Toh said.
"Dang it. We get her all dressed up, and now no one'll dance with her," Brant said, studying the readouts herself. They were at the very edge of the nebula now, with the next jump set to finally take them out of the Cloud, but even with the nebula's interference it was obvious that no ships in the Kestrel's class were in the area, at least none that were operational. A few small derelicts were floating around the jump beacon, giving off no energy signatures at all…
Wait a second. "I'm picking something up. Very faint, but one of those wrecks has power. 78, look over the readings and see if you can…"
Gunfire resounded through the corridor.
Oh, frack.
"All hands, ready close quarters weaponry! Enemy troops have beamed aboard!"
She shot out of her chair, brandishing her sidearm in one hand and flourishing her power baton in the other, extending and igniting it. She faced the door to the bridge and listened over the com channel in her ear, but heard only static.
"I'm afraid they can't hear you," said a female voice, calm and thick with the accent of an inner sector city. "We've jammed all channels. This vessel is now under the command of the Rebel fleet. You are ordered to throw down your arms and stand down. Your mantis is badly wounded and needs medical attention, so I suggest you obey."
As much as they'd built up the ship and as much experience as they had at their posts, Brant suddenly felt naked. All the scrap and all the high-end weapon systems in the world amounted to nothing in a close-quarters scrap, and she did not believe the Rebel was bluffing about Kat. She couldn't communicate with her crew, and her best combatant was down. Kat might have taken a few down with her, but the fact that they'd taken her down at all meant these folks knew their business.
Even without com channels, the Kestrel had a standard procedure for these situations. Ahab and 78, who were generally not as capable in a fight, would dig into defensive positions in the medbay. Toh and Brant would engage with the enemy while Kat flanked them. Kat was really the killer there, striking with a ferocity that tended to break most opponents.
And there was also Karl, now. And like that, Brant started wondering if it was really a coincidence that a Rebel commando team had ambushed them so soon after they'd picked him up…
Brant brought up her holographic display of the ship. Karl was in engineering for the moment, no doubt getting ready to join the battle. But on whose side? Brant sighed. This could be the decision that killed them all, but that made it no different from most of her decisions as captain.
She flicked some switches on the display and ordered the doors to engineering shut and locked.
"Toh, you're with me!" Brant barked. "We've got to meet up with the others before they take us all down one by one."
The pilot was already lurching toward her. He had a pistol out, and considering the sheer mass his body had, he didn't need much more in the way of melee weapons. "Lead on."
Toh and Brant stalked out of the bridge together, weapons trained ahead of them. The corridors of the Kestrel offered almost no cover, so Brant crept behind Toh as he huffed along at a ponderous gait. The ensign was far from indestructible, but he could take a good bit more punishment than a human.
There was still nothing but static coming over the com link. 78 was probably working on that at the moment, as he'd reached the medbay and hadn't been murdered yet; if he got through, she was sure she'd hear from him. Still, at least the enemy was listening.
"You don't actually expect us to surrender, do you?" Brant said into her link.
"I figure I gotta' at least try," said the same Rebel she'd spoken to before. "Federation crew, hear this: the captain's got two minutes to come downa' the shields room and give up the ship's control codes, or we kill the mantis before goin' room by room and killin' every single one of ya'." Her voice lilted with that same obnoxious, sing-songy street accent, making the mockery somehow sting that much worse. "You lot've got some reputation, I'll give ya' that, but we've been gettin' ready for just this occasion. Give up, or you die."
The line went dead, and Brant scowled at Toh.
"It's an obvious trap," said Toh.
"That it is. But then the threat is credible, and surrender is suicide. Bad choices all around here, but only one of them maybe saves Katarek. We fight. Hopefully 8 and Ahab are on the same page. We'll need the backup."
Toh nodded and kept moving, muttering a prayer softly to himself. Brant crossed herself with her baton and gave the best prayer she had available at the moment:
"Lord, get us through today."
They reached a bend in the corridor, and she knew that around this corner they'd be able to see the hatch to the shield control room. This was the only approach to shields, and chances were they'd be under heavy fire as soon they got in line of sight with the hatch. She signaled Toh to pause, and they crouched just out of sight from shield control. She needed to plan this out, and fast.
OK, so…options. They could bum rush the door, Brant using Toh as cover; the ensign would be blown apart, but Brant would at least get close enough to join in close combat, where she'd be hopelessly outnumbered and promptly killed.
She could set her sidearm to catastrophically overload and lob it in to the control room as a grenade, just like they'd tried with Katarek all those weeks ago – had it only been weeks? It seemed so much longer – no, back on task, Charlotte. It would certainly kill Kat this time if it hadn't last, and it might not kill the…
Running footsteps, coming down the hall, from the control room, a lot of footsteps, frack frack frack.
Apparently, the other option was to wait until their arrival was noticed and the enemy brought the fight to them, and Brant did not like that option at all. She sprang to her feet, snapping her neck back to see if there was any cover nearby. The door to her quarters was fifty feet away behind them. She might be able to run for it, but Toh definitely couldn't, and if they separated they would be easy pickings.
Toh and Brant exchanged frowns.
"Well, then," said Brant.
She rounded the corner, leading with her pistol and firing blindly at first. In her mind's eye it was Ahab and 78 charging toward them, looking on with horror as their unwitting captain mowed them down, and so for a moment she actually felt relief to see the five grim strangers with familiar grey uniforms bearing down on her, shouting for her to surrender. One took a plasma round to the head and fell in a convulsing heap, another was staggered with a shot to the arm, but that was all the luck she got. In the next instant, the Rebels were on them.
She swung her power baton, knocking one in his chest so hard that she felt the impact in her teeth. When ignited, the tip of the baton pulsed with a tiny mass field, a heavily modified version of the same tech that powered the ship's jump drive; essentially, it felt like the stick weighed a few pounds to her, and felt like it weighed several hundred to whatever it struck. The Rebel's chest caved in with a thud, and he tumbled back toward the shield room hard enough to knock one of his comrades over. One Rebel, a male with horirble burn scars, swiped at her with a crackling powerknife; she hopped back to dodge, then brought the baton crunching into his head with her backswing.
Three down, two to go. She couldn't believe their luck. Toh had stepped in front of her, chunks of his thick dense epidermis flying off as the remaining two Rebels tried to double back, firing as they went. Brant couldn't believe her luck that they hadn't gotten any rounds off during their charge, but then she tried to lift her sidearm and realized she couldn't feel that arm. She looked, and saw a mess of red and charred black on her bicep. Ah. Not so lucky after all.
Well, best not to let the adrenaline wear off.
One of the two Rebels, a scruffy kid, yelped out as Toh grabbed his arm, pulling him forward and planting a stoney fist in his face. The kid didn't yelp any more after that. The remaining Rebel howled at the sight, blasting away at Toh with single-minded fury. It took him half a second to switch that focus to Brant as she dodged around Toh and dashed forward. It took Brant a little less than half a second to destroy his knees with a low swipe of the the baton. The man toppled onto his back, his gun clattering away from him. He raised a hand to Brant, his eyes wide with fear.
"Please, I surrender, I sur -"
Brant lifted the baton again and slammed it into his skull.
It got real quiet in the corridor. Brant was starting to feel the pain in her gun arm, which was good and bad; some of the nerve endings still worked, at least, so maybe it was salvageable. She looked herself over, and decided the arm was her only serious wound. Toh, on the other hand...
"Captain, I..." The ensign turned to her and fell to one knee. Molten blood was seeping out of a dozen wounds. None looked fatal on their own, but all together...
"You and Kat need the medbay, now," Brant said. She put the baton back in its holster and looked around for where she dropped her sidearm. That hand still wouldn't move, but the gun was probably a better choice if she could only have one weapon.
"Well...if you insist, captain," Toh said. "Your arm..."
"I'm fine," Brant said quickly. "There can't be too many left. Let's wait for the others and finish this."
She double-checked that logic. Standard transport beams could only send two folks at a time, four with more advanced models, but she'd heard of specialized models the Rebels had tested that could send as many as eight. All the fallen Rebels around her were male, so she had at least the woman she'd been talking to to contend with, and maybe two more. Even if Kat had taken one out with her, Brant didn't like the odds of her and Toh in an even fight.
The silence drew out. Where was 78? Where was Ahab?
"I don't like this," Toh grunted. "Something's wrong."
No, something didn't feel right at all. Brant edged closer to the shield room, listening closely. Toh limped behind her slowly. She heard the thrumming of her blood in her ears and a few random creaks of the starship around her, but nothing else.
A sinking feeling came over her.
"Where are you?" she growled into her com link.
"Can't figure it out?" asked the Rebel woman. Brant heard her over the link, but still heard nothing from the room a few feet away. "Here - I'll give you a hint."
An alert sounded in her ears. Her eye shot to her wrist display.
The medbay was offline.
"They're in the med bay!" Brant called.
78 and Ahab needed help.
They needed to hurry, and fight while they still had a numbers advantage.
Where was Katarek?
"Go - I'll only slow you down," Toh said, and it was very true. Brant nodded and started dashing off toward the medbay, but she stopped short.
Where was Kat?
Brant turned and charged into the room, gun raised, though she now expected the room to be empty. It almost was.
Kat was sprawled across the shield console. There were drops of red human blood on the ground, but they were hard to see amidst the growing puddles of dark green blood dripping out of Kat. The damage to the console and the wall behind her and the sheer devastation done to her body illustrated the scene for Brant. They'd teleported in behind Kat; she'd gotten a few swipes out, maybe seriously wounded one or two, but she'd never stood a chance. They'd shot her at least thirty times; five of them had stayed, and whoever else had come aboard had moved out.
Brant needed to hurry. 78 and Ahab were still alive, and they needed her.
"Oh, God," Brant whispered. She crossed herself. "Oh, Kat."
Toh lurched into the doorway. He swung himself around the door frame and sat just inside, ready to defend the doorway.
He looked intensely at Kat, then back at the captain.
"Stay with her," Brant said. "Say something for her."
And she was off down the corridor, toward the medbay.
