Regrettably, I have seen some evidence that suggests that Pitt, at least, was taken alive. Injured, but they patched him up enough that he was able to scream when they nailed him, still breathing, to the feast hall of nearby Dzhail. His slow and lingering deathin that place rendered the hall unsanctified, no longer a fit place to eat, and in retribution the Yeh’haim bombed a Shine barracks while the Corpsec within it were having their dinner, a few weeks later. The symbolism of the act was entirely lost on the Shine, but maybe a few survivors of the resistance feel better about themselves, and the price they had to pay.
Only Maolcas made it back to the ship alive. I was there alone, of course. I was always there.
I became aware of them by the thumping of the tiny submersible against the hull as they steered it beneath the waves and into the flooded port airlock. The computer was better than humans at docking the thing, but Maolcas had been learning from Jahen how to drive, and both had a pride that led to them disengage autopilot even when their choices ended up denting the nosecone of the cramped little vessel.
With a sigh, therefore, I left my bunk, pulled on my soft ship-shoes, padded quietly through the hushed halls of theDuty, past walls of sapphire and yellow swirls, emerald bursts of colour and deep ochre stripes of the ancient painted soul-names, to find the airlock already draining of floodwater and the door hissing back in a dank, salty burst of humidity.
There was Maolcas, clambering out of the awkward submersible; slipping down the side into the still-draining puddle of seawater that remained, rushing towards me, grabbing me by the arms. I flinched, but they didn’t seem to care, gripping tighter, eyes wide, breath a ragged gasp. “The Shine! The Shine! They came!”
They babbled that Ceitdh had saved them, had screamed at them to run, to run, to run, and they would have fought – of course they would have fought! – but it was chaos, all around was chaos, and they hadn’t known what to do and Ceitdh had said it was an order, it was an order, you see, and so…
“We have to go back for them! We have to go back!”
A moment, to process these words.
A moment seemed to be more than Maolcas could handle, forthey rushed past me towards the small locker behind the mess room where Pitt kept the three sonic rifles with which we were supposed to defend ourselves in the case of boarding. They pawed at the door, shook it, slapped random numbers into the lock, howled when it did not respond, turned to me, foam on their lips, whole body shaking, tried to gasp – the code, the code – and I grabbed them before they could fall.
In the legends of Nitashi, this is an important stage of the warrior’s journey.
First, the overwhelming grief, the staggering despair that leaves you too crippled by your experiences to speak.
Then the rage. The unstoppable rage that had made the resistance what it was.
I had read about it, but had never seen it in its full glory. “We have to go back,” Maolcas gasped, eyes half rolled in their skull, a sentence intoned without meaning, a chant that might soon become a scream. “We have to go back, we have to go back, we have to…”
I kneeled down in front of them, tried putting my hands firmly on their shoulders – I had seen Pitt do this before, a thing expressing some kind of solidity. “How many Shine were there? Did you see?”
“I… I… I…”
“Maolcas. How many Shine?”
“Hundreds? They had a gunship, trucks, they kept coming, we have to…”
I let go.
Stood up.
Headed for the cockpit.
Maolcas didn’t immediately follow, too focused on the rifles, too lost in rage, which suited me fine. I fired up the engines, activated the emergency launch sequence, blew the ballast tanks, scanned for vessels above us – the scanners pinged off two hulls circling the bay, but couldn’t confirm their type – slipped into the Pilot’schair. The ship hummed beneath me, and as the interface began to tangle with my skull, I felt more solid, more alive, more settled than I had for months.
As we broke through the surface of the ocean, the weight of water tumbling from the hull felt like a great sigh running through my bones; as we turned our nose up towards the sky, the tilting of the internal grav-sys was like the stretching of tired limbs sat too long in a crooked chair. I heard the first warning ping from one of the circling ships – a comms challenge, a demand to stop and be inspected – ignored it entirely, pushed towards the sky above. The night, the stars, the blackness, they were singing on the edge of my consciousness. TheDuty’s grav-sys strained against the angle and speed of our ascent, struggling to keep the acceleration comfortable as I took us out of normal parameters and into the red, daring the ships on our tail to follow. Scans picked up three corvettes in low orbit, heading towards our exit point. I whispered to the arcspace engines, ordered them to start to hum. Our speed was far too low for an arcspace jump, but in that moment I found I didn’t care, called out to the dark,I’m coming, I’m coming, I’m coming!
Then Maolcas was in front of me. They’d picked up a kitchen knife, having failed to force their way into the rifle locker, and were holding it in a swaying, uneasy motion, unsure whether they were threatening me or not. The weight of our acceleration was pressing down on them in knee-buckling, face-swelling anguish; they had to catch themselves on the back of my chair as the force of it built against their spine, nearly tumbling to the floor.
“Take us back!” they gasped, a sound that should have held more fury, if only they’d had enough breath to breathe. “Take us back!”
I looked from the child – and they were a child, whatever rituals they had performed – to the knife and back again. “No.”
Now the knife waved a little nearer, and it was more than possible I would be cut from the sheer weight pressing on Maolcas’ arm, rather than any violent intention on their part. “Take us back! We have to save them!”
“We would die if we go back, and it would be pointless. This ship is more valuable to the Yeh’haim than our lives. I will save the ship. Then we can die, if you want.”
“TAKE US BACK, TAKE US BACK, TAKE US…”
There it was. Fascinating, the rage, the blinding, all-consuming strength of it. Eyes bulging, throat straining, blood vessels popping, lungs heaving – but even at its peak, Maolcas didn’t cut my throat, because what would that achieve?
I sighed, reached out through theDuty’s system and disabled grav-sys support.
