It had almost felt like he was itching to join the fight.
The elevator reached the central floor, and Arin dashed towards the cavernous space that held the majority of the passengers. The main doors were wide open, and the first thing that hit her was the sound.
It was a cacophony of thousands of voices combining to create a deafening buzz. Arin navigated the endless rows of empty cargo containers, most of which had been claimed and occupied. People sat inside them, having procured basic bedding, food, and home comforts from Jupiter-knows-where. The sound of someone plucking a slightly out-of-tune guitar reached her ears, accompanied by the smell of roasted space-sausage.
Seriously, where the hell had these guys found the time to procure all this stuff? They were supposed to have been fleeing a doomed mining station, not strolling through a county fair.
As Arin darted through the crowds, she scanned the spacefor any signs of Xargek. At least nobody was screaming. That meant the central decks were probably safe for now. People stared at her curiously as she passed, but most of them had seen her face on Fortuna Tau, so they didn’t pay her much attention.
She eventually made her way across the giant area, locating the small guardroom at the back. Through the brightly lit floor-to-ceiling glass windows, she recognized several familiar faces.
Arin narrowed her eyes in disapproval as she slapped her palm on the door panel and entered the room. Five grown-ass men turned in her direction, guilty looks plastered across their faces.
“What the hell is this?” Arin demanded, wrinkling her nose at the smell of staleJuvismoke. The five peacekeepers were seated around a makeshift table constructed from packing crates. In the middle of the table was a half-empty bottle of whiskey, which sat atop a scattered mess of playing cards.
None of them were wearing their comm devices. That’s why they hadn’t answered her alerts. Arin touched the small comm that sat in her ear, making sure it wasn’t loose.
“Sarge, you’re back!” The man sitting closest to her, a tattooed gunner called Nguyen, rose to his feet, giving her a sloppy salute. “We were just, uh…”
“Celebrating the end of the world.” Private Holmes raised the bottle, offering it to her. “You wanna join?”
“You’re supposed to be keeping watch,” Arin grumbled, pinning each of them with a hard stare. The men’s faces were flushed, their eyes unfocused. She noticed an empty bottle of whiskey lying under the packing crates. “Being intoxicated on duty is a Capital One offense. You could go to military prison for that.”
“Who the fuck cares?” Private Marat slurred, takinganother swig of the bottle. “We’re all going to die, the Federation’s sitting on their asses because we as a race have forgotten how to fight a good war, and either way, we’re fucked. You heard what happened to Harris and the others? His head’s sitting in the cryo-freeze, and next they’re going to come after us. Won’t be long until the real Kordolian fleet shows up, and then what? We get shipped off to Sector One as slaves? We stay on Earth and get eaten by Xargek?”
“We’re soldiers, Marat. We’re not paid to think about the hypotheticals. Although I’m sorry about Harris.” Her voice softened. Even though he’d been a hotheaded idiot, Harris had been a part of their team, and there would be someone on Earth who would miss him.
Arin frowned as the five men stared at her, bleary-eyed. In their current intoxicated state, she wouldn’t trust any of them with a bolt gun. They’d probably end up shooting innocent civilians. “Your job is to follow orders and protect your people, no matter what. We don’t get to make decisions about the fate of the human race.”
“Who needs protecting?” Marat jeered. “We’re all just trying to enjoy our last moments of freedom.”
Arin resisted the urge to slap some sense into him. She’d only been off the freighter for two days, and during that time, the situation seemed to have devolved into chaos. At the beginning, fear and a common purpose had kept them together.
Now, it had all gone to shit.
Soon, they’d start running out of food and supplies, the sanitation units would fail, and water would become scarce. This freighter wasn’t designed to handle masses of people. Soon, the real fun would begin.
Humanity didn’t do well when it was crammed into a metal box.
“Where are the other squads?” Arin demanded. She needed someone who could work with her right now; someone sensible, someonesober.
“Beats me,” Nguyen gave her a blank look. “Probably gone off to get laid or hoard up all theSpikebefore it runs out and we all start getting withdrawals.”
Aargh!Mentally, Arin groaned, but she didn’t allow her frustration to show. Instead, she strode across to the table, picked up the half-empty bottle of whiskey, and tipped it out. The amber liquid splashed all over the playing cards and trickled onto the floor. “Sober up,” she snapped. “If we’re going down, we’re going down as peacekeepers, not drunkards.”
All five men opened their mouths to protest, but Arin shot them a dark look. “If you’re not sober by the time I come back, I’ll have you court-martialed.”
She turned on her heel and left the guardroom, just as the sound of fighting reached her ears.
Out in the central hold, people were shouting and screaming. Someone was swearing at the top of his lungs. Arin ran, her fingers dancing across the control panel of the rocket launcher as she set it toactivate. She did it without looking. If she had to, she could’ve done it in the dark with her eyes closed.
She reached an area where some of the cargo containers had been moved off the tracks to create a makeshift clearing. In the center of the clearing, surrounded by onlookers, a man and a woman were going at it.
The man had the typical look of a space miner. He was bare-chested, with crude tattoos decorating both of his generous, hairy pectorals. His forearms were the size of small tree trunks, and his bald head was coated with a sheen of sweat.
“Give it back!” he roared, swinging a wild punch at the woman.
The woman danced out of his way, her dark braids whipping around her face as she easily evaded his meaty fist. “I didn’t take it!” she shouted, staring daggers at her attacker. “You’re delusional, Grogan!”
