Supremacy's Bounty, page 26
part #2 of Dueling Planets Series
“I’m so sorry,” Mack said, over the shared channel, and Jinx was too.
“Fuck your sorries!” Renata kicked the desk. “They took Gabriel, Lilah, Otto, even Angelo! They took everyone from me!”
“Get to the shuttle bay,” Mackenzie ordered. “We need to dust off now.”
Renata laughed like a woman who wanted to cry. “Leaving this place intact was never the plan. Artifice showed me where to plant everything.” She stood, clutching a device that was about the size of a remote. A detonator? A remote detonator?
“This cursed pit will burn.” Renata glared at the ceiling. “We won’t leave anything for the Advanced to find, any chance for them to study or prepare for the virus. We are going to wipe these fuckers out.”
“Jinx,” Mackenzie said, “is that—?”
A rumble shook the base. Renata dropped the device, and like exploding popcorn, a whole bunch of new AR damage reports opened on Faux’s display. The base’s command console remained plugged into Faux.
“You’ve got ten minutes before the fires reach the base’s underground fuel storage,” Renata said. “Lift off now, and you should be clear before it goes.”
Wow. Renata planted explosives during the gunfight, while they loaded the shuttles. Jinx knew how rocket fuel worked. Once whatever fire Renata started reached the underground fuel reserve, this base would stop being one real quick.
Tears blurred Jinx’s vision as she turned to the door, to the hallway, to the way she would save Renata. Freyja grabbed Faux’s arm. Some rational part of Jinx’s mind knew she’d never make it all the way there and back in time.
On the camera feed from the C and C, Renata sat back. “You go, Jinx. You live. Cherish those who love you while they’re still alive.” She leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes.
“Shuttle.” Freyja tugged on Faux’s arm. “There’s a bulwark cruiser coming, and we can’t get away if we don’t leave now. Also, explosion.”
Jinx reluctantly depressed Faux’s grips. She stomped toward Clayton’s shuttle. As they approached, the shuttle bay door rumbled down with a screech of poorly-treated machinery.
Faux had an air supply, but only a few hours. Not enough to make it back to Ceto in that porous wreck. Still, Jinx supposed they’d figure out air once they weren’t sitting on the pad of a secret murder base on top of a reservoir of shuttle fuel while an Advanced destroyer closed on them with a dozen railguns.
“Shit!” Mackenzie shouted. “Clayton!”
Clayton stumbled down the extended ramp with a makeshift cloth tourniquet wrapped around one thigh and a sealed helmet on his head. He hadn’t been so lucky after all.
To be fair, there had been an awful lot of bullets.
23: Pyre
MACKENZIE JOGGED FORWARD and caught Clayton as he tried, and failed, to keep walking. “They shot you!”
Clayton collapsed into Freyja’s arms and stared through the misted viewport of his helmet. “No shit, really?”
“Why didn’t you tell me they shot you?”
“You a medic?” Clayton asked. “No? Then I don’t see what you could have done.”
Mackenzie glanced up the extended landing ramp. “There have to be bandages in there somewhere.” Clayton had a family, didn’t he? Shaw had said he had a family.
“No time,” Clayton said, “and even if we lift now, we’ll never outrun that bulwark.”
“Try anyway!” Mackenzie shouted. “Renata’s about to blow this place to hell and back!”
“Well, that’s convenient,” Clayton said, with a sigh of what might be ... relief? “Get me out of range of the engines.”
“Why the fuck would I do that?”
“The Supremacy will capture anyone inside this shuttle,” Clayton said. “They cannot capture me. They can’t link this slaughter to President Mendoza or Ceto.” He coughed, like Shaw coughed before he died. “We can’t start a war.”
Was he serious? “You can’t ask me to just leave you here!”
“I can,” Clayton said, “and you will.” He pushed up. “Even if you space me on the way out, they could still pick up my body and link my DNA to Ceto’s government. I’m in the CSD database, and you can bet the Advanced cracked that as soon as we put it online. Shaw wasn’t wrong about my presence pinning this op on President Mendoza.”
Gods, no, this wasn’t right! Clayton wasn’t mortally wounded, like Shaw. It was just one hole in his leg, and he’d already restricted blood flow with the tourniquet. He had a family.
“You know I’m right,” Clayton said, stumbling off. “Ceto’s depending on you.”
“Fuck Ceto!” Mackenzie shouted, but she caught and supported him. “You’re sure about this?”
“I am,” Clayton said. “And I need a favor.”
Mackenzie helped Clayton a safe distance from the engines, where he wouldn’t be burned up when they ignited. This made no sense, but it was how the man who knew spy games wanted to play his spy game. She couldn’t question him.
Mackenzie was an amazing bounty hunter, a decent leader, and a wonderful drunk, but as she’d insisted many times, she made a horrible spy. Clayton might be right about his capture linking this massive clusterfuck to President Mendoza. Gods, he was almost certainly right.
Even with the human experimentation, the wholesale slaughter of every unarmed Advanced in this facility, after using a biological weapon on them and then blowing the whole base to space rocks, could not be tied to Ceto’s government. That would violate Ceto’s fragile treaty with the Advanced, and that would start a war. Jinx watched them from the shuttle ramp.
“Set me down here,” Clayton said. “This is good.”
Mackenzie set him down against a crate. “What’s your favor?” They had maybe seven minutes before a bunch of rocket fuel exploded.
“You can’t let the Supremacy capture you,” Clayton said. “They have ways to interrogate you can’t imagine. If they capture you alive, they’ll hurt you, hurt Jinx, but more importantly—”
“They’ll make us tell them everything that happened here,” Mackenzie interrupted. “We’re not morons. There’s no way I’m letting anyone torture Jinx like that, so if it looks like they’re going to capture us, I’ll do us both myself. Let’s see those fuckers interrogate a corpse.”
“Good,” Clayton said, relaxing against the crate. “That’s good.”
“I can do the same for you if you want to come with.”
“They’d get my DNA, remember?” Clayton winced. “Also, I actually need two favors.”
Of course. “You know the fuel reservoir’s about to explode, right?”
“I need you to archive a message for my daughter. For my wife.”
Mackenzie shut up. She couldn’t fault Clayton for dropping this weight on her shoulders. This brave man was going to let himself die here because he believed it was the only way to save hundreds of thousands on Ceto. She flipped on her archiver.
“We’re recording,” she said. She hoped she wouldn’t record them exploding.
Clayton looked up at her, eyes wide, gentle, and kind. “Shy,” he said, which must be either his wife or his kid, “I’m sorry I couldn’t keep my promise. I did all I could to get back home, to you and Sarah, but things just spiraled out of control.”
They had. They certainly had.
“This was the only way to keep Ceto safe, like we both swore we would. We had the best life together, pretty girl, but I want you to love again after I’m gone. Whoever he is, you have my blessing.”
Mackenzie wondered how old Clayton’s wife was. She wondered how Shy would take Clayton’s last words. She remembered how she’d felt when she thought Jinx was dead, empty inside and ready to just ... stop.
“And Sarah?” The way Clayton spoke that name told Mackenzie this was his daughter. “I’m so proud of you. You’re a genius, girl, and you’re going to do great things. I know it.” He swallowed, eyes flooding behind his misted viewport. “Daddy loves you like the sun.”
Gods, now Mackenzie was crying too. Still, this base was really going to explode in six minutes, so as touching as this was, she hoped she wouldn’t have to ask Clayton to wrap it up. She really didn’t want to ruin his last moment, but if he didn’t—
“I’m done,” Clayton said.
Mackenzie terminated the recording. She knelt before Clayton and wished she could open up Freyja, so she could look him in the eyes, but she couldn’t. She touched his shoulder with Freyja’s working hand.
“Where do I send this message? How do I find your family?”
“Mendoza knows,” Clayton said. “Tight-beam the archive to the CSD once you break the atmosphere.” He gripped her armored hand. “Oh shit! Three favors.”
“Gods, what now?” Five minutes.
“The virus. It’s inside Jinx.”
Mackenzie remembered what she’d said about anything infected. “And?”
“I found Chase’s extra syringes when I searched the shuttle,” Clayton said. “It’s the anti-virus. Inject it into Jinx once you’re safe, and it’ll clear her system. The virus can’t bond to natural-born DNA, or so Edge said.”
That was a big claim. “You sure?”
“Edge confirmed it under considerable duress. I don’t think she’d lie.”
Clayton must have given Edge a real hard time after he cut his duct tape. Mackenzie felt bad about that, but sometimes there was no good way to do a good thing. Edge sounded fine when she flew off, so Clayton’s interrogation couldn’t have been that bad.
“Kill the virus,” Clayton said, fumbling with the pocket of his suit. He pulled out several sealed syringes. “Even if you die, they could still find it and trace it to us.”
Mackenzie took the syringes. “What’s favor number four?”
“All done now.” Clayton smiled an exhausted smile. “I left a course plotted, so the shuttle will launch itself at your command. If that bulwark pursues the Advanced shuttles instead, you might still escape.”
Mackenzie stood. “Right. I’ll find your family, kill the virus, and make sure the Supremacy never finds out about any of this. I promise you, Clayton.”
“Eli,” he said, voice soft. “My name is Eli.”
It was, wasn’t it? She turned and stomped toward the shuttle, toward Jinx, toward the end of this long and very fucked up bounty. She stopped at the end of the ramp and turned Freyja back. She stared at Eli, her friend, and sealed the image in her mind.
“See you, cowboy.” She turned away.
Clayton laughed from behind her. “Half man, half cow. Like a mutant or something.”
It was a shame she’d never had time to introduce Clayton to westerns. She suspected he’d enjoy them. She wondered if she could show his daughter a movie one day.
“Go,” she told Jinx. Three minutes.
They stomped up into the bay together. Faux pushed a button to close the shuttle’s ramp. Then they found him, sitting dead in Renata’s rover. Jeffrey Shaw, a.k.a Artifice, a.k.a the man who’d blown her whole life to hell.
The rover’s tires were deflated and there were holes all over it, including the engine, which had leaked oil everywhere. Shaw’s body had at least six exit wounds. Yet somehow, all those bullets had completely missed his peaceful, staring face.
Jeffrey Shaw died saving people. He died a hero, even if he’d been a regular asshole most of the time. Everyone who just escaped on Edge’s shuttles had Shaw to thank for their lives.
This seemed such a stupid death for a man with so many grand plans — blown open by random bullets as he sat in a rover — but death was disturbingly random, and often far more stupid than heroic. In the end, the laws of physics and averages had been too much for even Shaw’s schemes.
Mackenzie couldn’t hate him. Shaw was with his family now, if there was an afterlife. If Shaw’s daughter still existed, she’d probably missed her daddy all the years he’d been away. They’d be together now. They’d be happy.
She could forgive him if she imagined that.
One minute later, their wrecked and entirely unspaceworthy shuttle took off. Two minutes after that, there was an exceptionally large rocket fuel explosion. Mackenzie watched a mushroom cloud grow from the shuttle’s broken cockpit windows.
A shockwave rattled the shuttle, but not super violently. They’d made it far enough away. Soon the last of the toxic moon air whistled into space, leaving the ship entirely without atmosphere.
Renata had her vengeance — maybe even her peace — and Elijah Clayton had Ceto’s plausible deniability. Neither of their sacrifices seemed justified or acceptable, but they hadn’t been her sacrifices to make. She’d made plenty of her own.
Mackenzie checked Freyja’s air reserves. Two hours and twenty-two minutes. It was at least a six hour flight to the nearest moon with a settlement on it, so ... there went that idea. As for Phorcys, that was completely out of the question.
Jinx remained down in the shuttle bay, trying to open a channel to the Supremacy shuttles Edge piloted. Soon they were in zero-g again, but that was fine. Both Freyja and Faux had magnetic locks on their feet, which meant they could walk across the shuttle’s deck without floating away.
Jinx floated into view, propelled by tiny blasts of air. She jetted into the bay and settled feet-first on the deck, boot magnets taking hold.
“Status?” Mackenzie asked.
Three words appeared inside Mackenzie’s helmet. “PRISONERS IN DANGER”
Shit, that wasn’t what Mackenzie wanted to hear. “How?”
“BULWARK TURNING / BURNING HARD / EDGE BURNING TOO / THRUST INSUFFICIENT”
“What does that mean?”
“ESTIMATE NINE HOUR FLIGHT TIME TO CETO FOR SHUTTLES,” Jinx typed. “BULWARK OVERTAKES THEM IN EIGHT”
At the end of the day, any sort of space chase came down to math. When you had one ship that could accelerate at X and another that could accelerate at more than X, the bigger ship caught the little one. It blew it right out of the sky.
“I’ll tightbeam a message to Ceto telling them the incoming shuttles are carrying political refugees,” Mackenzie said. “If Mendoza finds out fast enough, maybe SpaceGov can intervene. It’s worth a shot, right?”
“YES”
Mackenzie used the rustbucket’s still-intact transmitter to fire off a burst transmission to Ceto. She included Clayton’s final words, her notification about the Advanced shuttles, and a complaint about the bulwark cruiser chasing them. What could she do about that cruiser?
“BULWARK IGNORING US,” Jinx typed. “WHERE NOW”
“We’re not leaving those people,” Mackenzie said. The Advanced obviously didn’t care about this hole-filled shuttle, because it wasn’t a threat and couldn’t attack them. Or could it? Mass was mass, when it got going fast enough.
“Hey, what if we rammed the bulwark?” Mackenzie asked. “Can we do that?”
Jinx turned on her. “YES”
“Then do it. Full burn, like you said. Fly this hunk of junk up their asses.”
“FORCE THEM TO ALTER COURSE OR RISK COLLISION / INCREASE TIME TO INTERCEPT SHUTTLES / MIGHT BE JUST ENOUGH”
“Can you make this thing intercept them even if we aren’t there to fly it?” Because if they started taking railgun hits, they wouldn’t last much longer than Shaw.
“YES,” Jinx said, as the shuttle rumbled silently beneath Freyja’s metal feet. “EVEN IF WE DIE” The engines were running at full burn now, consuming all remaining fuel.
“Those people deserve to live,” Mackenzie told Jinx, and herself, and whoever else might be listening.
Jinx didn’t type anything in response. She was probably hacking the shuttle to match any course corrections the bulwark might make. Mackenzie didn’t know much about orbital mechanics, but she did know the more mass a ship had, the longer it took to change its current direction, especially with soft, squishy people crammed inside. Unlike their brave little rustbucket, that bulwark had a lot of mass.
“I love you,” Mackenzie said then. “You’re my everything.”
“SAME,” Jinx typed.
This was it, then. This was how the two of them would die, shot apart by railguns and vented into space by the actual Advanced navy. Maybe she should have watched more space westerns. She could have prepared better.
She couldn’t see Jinx inside Faux, couldn’t touch her, couldn’t kiss her goodbye, but she could stand beside the woman she loved as they died saving people. Faux took Freyja’s working hand.
“COURSE LOCKED,” Jinx typed.
Mackenzie grinned with a grim amount of satisfaction. “So they turn back and blow us up, or they don’t turn, and we ram this ship right up their asshole.”
“THRUSTERS WOULD INCINERATE US IF WE TRIED”
“You know what I mean.”
“WE ARE MOVING ON INTERCEPT VECTOR NOT UP ASS”
“Right, but we’ll hit them like a massive bowling ball.”
“MANY RAILGUNS WILL CRACK THIS SHIP / ANY DAMAGE WILL LIKELY BE FROM DEBRIS CLOUD”
Mackenzie jerked at Faux’s locked hand. “Just let me have this, will you? Let me have some hope!”
There was a pause, then one word. “HOPE”
“It’s all I had when you were missing. It kept me sane.”
“WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH MACKENZIE”
Mackenzie rolled her eyes. In the distance, with Freyja’s magnification optics turned to maximum, she could see the spiky length of the bulwark destroyer. It was just a blob from here.
“YOURE MY EVERYTHING” Jinx typed. “GETTING THAT TATTOOED”
Mackenzie stared at an endless carpet of stars beyond. “How long until we’re close enough for them to target us?”
“FORTY TWO MINUTES IF THEY START TURNING NOW”
“How long if they wait before turning?”
“MORE”
That was an awful lot of time to sit in powered armor in a pilot’s compartment, waiting to die. Mackenzie remembered her earlier survey of the crates inside this shuttle, accomplished while she waited for Shaw to load his rover. She had what might be another wonderful idea.
She released her magnetic locks and jetted Freyja down the steep steps into the cargo bay. A number of Shaw’s crates were still on board, and after a few minutes, Mackenzie found the one she wanted. It had a hole shot in it, but that wasn’t the end of everything. Jinx had joined her while she searched, but just floated nearby.
