Out there, the planet Yall. Burnished blue, choked by the tight fist of endlessly sprawling civilization. They’d come to this same place just fourteen weeks earlier. The Krakens had come so close! So close to being here as a contender, not just going through the paces to prepare for next season.
“Uh, Q? Do you see that light?”
Quentin saw it. A bright light, moving fast at first, then not at all. It flickered, glowed brighter than the other lights surrounding the planet. The Touchback had an arrival window of space, in which other ships were not allowed to enter. That flickering light was a ship — it seemed to have ignored that safety window.
Quentin didn’t know much about space travel, but he knew the basics — if something moved like that, it was artificial and if it seemed to stop moving, it was probably coming straight at you.
“Yeah, John, I see it. What do you think it is?”
“It’s trouble.”
“Trouble? What do you mean?”
John didn’t have time to answer before a klaxon alarm screeched through the observation deck.
“Attention!” Captain Kate’s voice came from the ship’s sound system. “All Krakens players and staff report to the dining deck immediately. All ship crew report to battle stations.”
The Sklorno players sprinted out of the observation deck.
Quentin looked at John. “Battle stations? What in the Void is she talking about?”
John grabbed Quentin’s arm and started leading him out of the observation deck. “Come on, Q. We got to get to the dining deck. It’s the deepest part of the ship. We’ll be safest there.”
Quentin looked back out the window. He saw four bright lights branch off the oncoming ship — branch off, then close in on the Touchback. He had to look away and start running to keep up with John’s pulling.
• • •
QUENTIN AND THE OTHERS sprinted down the corridor. They rushed into the dining deck to find it already half full. The faster Sklorno players were already there, of course, as were many Ki. Messal the Efficient stood by the door, palm-up display glowing in the air above his pedipalp hand — looked like a team roster. As each player ran in, he tapped icons.
Other than Tara, Quentin saw no Quyth Warriors. He sat off by himself looking like his old, dejected self. The flood of players slowed. Coach Hokor, Mum-O and Michael Kimberlin entered. They must have been the last because Messal tapped a wall panel. A heavy blast door slid into place, sealing the room. Quentin had never even known a door was there — the dining deck had always been open.
“Messal,” Quentin said. “What about Virak and Choto?”
“They are trained soldiers,” Messal said. “They are manning the guns, as are Shayat the Thick and Killik the Unworthy.”
Captain Cheevers had told him Quyth players would man the guns, but Quentin hadn’t really believed it. “Don’t we have other staff who can do that?”
“A few,” Messal said. “But would you like to tell Virak that he should sit here and be idle while we are attacked?”
Quentin shook his head. No, he wouldn’t want to suggest that to Virak the Mean. “Well, what about Tara, then?”
Messal looked away. “Please, Elder Barnes, with all due respect, I don’t have time for such obviously ridiculous questions.”
Quentin felt a strange vibration beneath his feet, bursts of some rapid-fire pulsing.
“That would be the guns,” Messal said, amazingly calm in the face of this strange danger. “Excuse me, Elder Barnes, I have to report to the Captain.”
Messal walked toward a wall panel. A bigger vibration rattled the ship. Quentin instinctively knew that wasn’t a gun firing — the Touchback had been hit.
“Damage,” Kate’s voice echoed from the sound system. She also sounded spookily calm. “Hits to the upper decks. The practice field dome has been penetrated. I’ll feed damage schematics into the main ship feed. Everyone, be aware of off-limit areas.
They will change as the fight continues.” The ship shuddered again, harder this time. Quentin stumbled and braced himself on a table. He lifted his palm to chest level, calling up his own display. A glowing icon showed the ship feed. He poked the icon. A holographic ship schematic flared to life. Most of the ship was in green, but he saw the practice field in blinking yellow and several corridors in solid red. Six blue icons were labeled GUN CABIN, numbers one through six.
He felt the vibrations beneath his feet, realized that one of the blue icons flashed in time to mark which gun was firing. He saw that GUN CABIN 6 was closest to the dining deck. That was the same cabin that Captain Kate had showed him during the tour.
Another violent vibration, the bad kind. Seconds later, more areas of the ship glowed red — rooms and corridors marked offlimits, probably exposed to the vacuum of space.
Quentin looked around the dining deck. Forty-some sentients doing the same thing he was doing, looking at ship schematics, waiting helplessly.
The Touchback trembled again, even worse than before.
GUN CABIN 6 blinked from blue to red. Who had been in there? Virak? The icon switched from red to yellow. Quentin scanned the schematic. So many corridors in red — there was almost no way to reach Gun Cabin 6.
No, there was one way — a straight line from the dining deck.
“Attention!” Captain Kate’s voice. “We need clean-up in Gun Cabin 6. Messal, organize non-essential crew to get in there and fix it up. The gun reads operative on my board. We’ll work on repairs to corridors 12-A and 10-B so we can get someone else on it.”
How long would that take? Would the Touchback even be around by then? Quentin looked at the schematic, used his thumb and forefinger to zoom in on the GUN CABIN 6 icon. At this level of detail, he saw a name in red — Killik the Unworthy. Was Killik injured? Dead?
Quentin was no stranger to violence, to the threat of death. He’d been in dangerous situations before — what he had never done, however, was sit back and wait for things to happen. He had to do something.
He ran to the dining deck’s closed blast door.
“Elder Barnes! Where are you going?”
“I know how to fire that gun, Messal. I’m going to get it back in the fight.”
Messal blocked the door with his little body. “No! You must stay in the dining deck!”
A pair of big hands reached down and picked up Messal, moving him to the side. Crazy George Starcher.
“I’ll go with you,” George said.
George was a veteran. Had he been in combat before?
“You were in the Navy, right?” Quentin said. “You should shoot, not me.”
George shook his head. “Oh, no, I never fired a cannon. I was a mechanic. I can see the innermost connections of the machines, the dark lines of spirit and space and interdimensional soul that weaves forth the fabric, that—”
A barking roar from Mum-O-Killowe cut George off. Mum-O, apparently, liked listening to George’s odd rants no more than Quentin did. Mum-O’s multi-jointed arms reached for the door. His hands tapped the wall panel to open it.
“Bregat,” the Ki said, then scuttled through the door and into the corridor.
The Touchback shook again. No time for second thoughts. Quentin ran through the door, Mum-O and George Starcher right behind him. The blast door slid down and clanged shut.
• • •
PALM UP IN FRONT OF HIM, Quentin sprinted down the corridor, trying to simultaneously watch the both schematic and his footing. On the map, this corridor blinked yellow. What did that mean? Was it about to go red? He remembered the emergency training that told him to never take the elevators if there was a fire. He imagined running space battles followed the same logic. He ran for the stairs that would go down one flight to Deck Eight. From there, about forty feet to reach Gun Cabin 6.
Captain Kate’s voice echoed through the corridors. “Evacuate the practice field area.” Her voice still sounded eerily calm. “Sealing the field in ten seconds.”
George Starcher and Mum-O-Killowe just
steps behind, Quentin hit Deck Eight and ran down the corridor. He heard Captain Kate counting down from ten. She made it to five before another blast made the Touchback lurch under his feet, throwing him face-first into a bulkhead. His head spun. He fought to stay conscious. The artificial gravity sputtered for a moment. Quentin felt himself floating, the wall brushing against his right shoulder. Without warning, the gravity kicked back on and he dropped hard to the deck. Blood wetted his lips. His nose felt broken.
George lifted him to his feet. “Quentin! Are you okay?”
Quentin put a hand on the wall for balance against the moving ship. No, the ship was once again rock-still — his legs were wobbly. He felt something in his mouth. Quentin spit into his hand.
A bloody tooth.
His tongue told him what he already knew — front right.
“Why always that one?”
He put the tooth in his pocket. George helped him stumble down the corridor toward the gun cabin’s closed door. Quentin tried the handle — locked.
“Let me,” George said. He knelt by the key pad, then grabbed it and ripped it off the wall. He reached inside and started fiddling with the wires.
A heavy clang came from inside the wall as the door’s internal locks slid back into their recesses. His balance mostly back to normal, Quentin stepped inside. Smoke filled the room, as did splatters of red blood and chunks of green flesh, bits of shattered orange chitin and a nasty scattering of body parts.
George grabbed a trash can and rushed to the platform. He knelt and started using his hands to scoop up bloody green blobs.
“High One,” Quentin said. “Is that ... Killik?”
“Get a mop,” George said. He pointed to the corner of the room. Quentin walked there, watching his step amongst scattered bits of wreckage. He found the mop in a case on the wall. He pulled it out and worked his way back to the platform. To his right, Mum-O’s four hands scrambled across the long, horizontal, crysteel viewport. Cracks lined the material, cracks that glistened with some kind of clear liquid.
Big globs of white foam dotted the space-side wall. Bullets had punched through, the holes instantly filling with vent-foam that expanded and hardened, stopping the escape of air.
“Quentin, mop!” George said. “We can’t have you slipping on Killik’s guts.”
Quentin bent to the task, trying to keep his lunch in place. The wet mop pushed black goo, attached bits of exoskeleton and burned bits of cloth off of the platform and onto the floor below. George finished picking up the big pieces. His hands gleamed with slime. Gore covered his shirt and pants. A Quyth foot stuck out of the trash can, the severed leg streaked with red wetness leaking out through spiderwebbed chitin.
With Killik’s remains gone, Quentin finished sweeping the platform clear.
“Mum-O,” George said. “Do you hear any squealing or squeaking noises? Feel any breeze?”
Mum-O barked out a word that sounded a lot like a Human no, then turned and scuttled over wreckage, heading for the door. As he did, he drew his upper-left hand just under his hexagonal mouth, from right to left. Quentin recognized the very Human-like gesture — the sign of a throat being slit.
George nodded. “Quentin, the room is okay for now, but the decompression measures are exhausted. If this room takes any more hits, any at all, get out fast. We’ll wait outside as long as we can, but if the corridor goes red, we have to get clear.”
This was really happening. They were in an actual space battle, bullets punching through the hull, sentients dying. George followed Mum-O out. The door to Gun Cabin 6 clanged shut.
Quentin was alone.
He hit 726 on the keypad, then stepped onto the platform.
He faced the space-side wall as the X, Y and Z hololines flared to life. Outside the viewport, he saw the quad-battery’s armor slide away and the barrels rise up — four lethal, parallel lines.
This time, they weren’t loaded with blanks.
Captain Kate’s calm voice echoed through the small room. “Barnes, I read your gun is active. Everything out there is a bogey.”
“What’s a bogey?”
“Just shoot anything that moves, rookie,” she said. “I have to concentrate on damage control, so you’re on your own. No pressure, Barnes, but if you don’t shoot down these fighters, we all die. Patching you into gunner channel. Captain Kate, out.”
The speakerfilm crackled with static.
Then, the voice of Virak the Mean. “Quentin, is your weapon online?”
Quentin raised his hands up and out, chest-level, palms down. Through the slot, he saw the barrels move in time with his hands. The air around him flashed, rapid-fire bursts of bright static and then he saw arrows of fast-moving red light. They swam in all directions, crossing in front of him from the left, the right, from below and above.
“Virak! What are these red things?”
“Bogeys.”
“Will someone please tell me what the hell a bogey is?”
“Enemy fighters,” Virak said, his voice just as calm as Captain Kate’s. How could these sentients stay cool when fighters were shooting at the Touchback?
“Start firing, Quentin,” Virak said. “Quickly.”
Quentin tried to focus on the red arrows of light zooming in and out of his vision. One seemed to fly right at his face. He ducked, felt the vibration of his quad-cannon firing.
He looked at his hands. He’d balled them up into fists.
Can’t do that, that fires the guns.
He stood straight, took in a breath, leveled his hands flat once again.
“They are making a strafing run,” Choto called out. “Length of ship, engaging now.”
Tiny vibrations echoed under Quentin’s feet, the firing of guns somewhere else on the Touchback.
“They’re passing aft,” Virak said. “Quentin, prepare to fire.”
Quentin turned his hands palms-up and curled his fingers in. The X-axis hash marks raced apart as his system focused in on a closer region of space. He put his hands flat, then twisted a little to the right, a little to the left, watching the barrels match the move.
Then two red arrows shot past as if they had flown right over his head, a streak of light trailing behind each to indicate their speed and direction.
Quentin’s hands made fists, left-right, left-right. The room vibrated. Out through the viewport, he saw the barrels erupt with barely discernible cones of fire that instantly vanished behind clouds of smoke billowing out the rear. Quentin had to stop looking out the slot — he needed to make this hologram his reality.
Two more red arrows flashed from right to left, in and out of his vision in less than a second. Before Quentin could extend his X-axis for a longer-range shot, the arrows banked to his right and were out of his display.
“I missed!” Quentin said. “They’re coming back around to my right.”
“Port side, low,” Virak said. “Choto, they’re coming underneath.”
“Target acquired,” Choto said. Quentin again felt a distant, lighter vibration. His mind registered that level of shaking as the firing of Choto’s gun.
“Bogey destroyed,” Choto called out. “Three bogeys remain.”
Quentin realized he was shaking. This was life and death. And yet, wasn’t his life at risk on every snap of every game? Why was this any different? He breathed deeply through his nose as he held his hands up palm-out. The X-axis compressed, expanding his scale of vision.
From his upper right, he saw two red arrows.
“Target acquired,” Quentin said, mimicking what he’d heard from Choto. He leveled his hands, locking the axis display. The dots looked tiny. Quentin pointed his hands at them, then made left-right-left-right fists.
The dots banked down and to the right. He’d fired behind.
“Lead your target,” Virak said. “Note the distance in the display, Quentin.”
Part of his mind heard Virak’s words and part ignored them because he’d already figured that out. He curled his fin
gers up and in, making the hash marks spread apart as his targeting area closed in tighter. At the same time, he twisted to the right, recentering on the two dots.
Stay calm, he told himself. Stay in the pocket, do your job.
Once he had centered his display on the arrows, they seemed to change angles — they shot straight for him.
“Strafing run,” Virak said. “Quentin, they’re coming right for you.”
Stay in the pocket.
Quentin held both hands level, palms-down.
The arrows banked away from each other, then turned in, light-trails criss-crossing over their own paths.
BLINK
For just a moment, everything slowed. Quentin understood the fighters’ tactic — they crossed in front of each other to throw off any leading. It was just like throwing a pass; he had to see the speed of the ball coming in, the angle, aim just in front of where the receiver would be.
Left-right-left-right-left-right.
One of the arrows flashed brightly, then blinked out.
“I got him!” Quentin said. “I got him!”
“Great, Quentin,” Virak said. “Do not grow overconfident.”
The second arrow flashed at Quentin’s face, but this time he didn’t flinch.
He should have.
A noise like the coming of High One himself raged in the gun cabin. Instinct threw his body to the deck. Sparks flew, things slammed into him, the room seemed to explode a dozen times all at once.
He became aware of a klaxon alarm blaring, hurting his head, making him wish that he’d go deaf. Then the voice of Captain Kate, fractured and highly amplified, even louder than the klaxon.
“Quentin! Get out of there!
And one more noise — a squeal of wind.
He rolled to his back and looked to the viewport. Bullets had ripped holes in the crysteel, torn the metal, bent the armor inward like a mag-can punctured by a screwdriver. Bits of wreckage flew to the holes as if the holes were supermagnets. Some of the debris clanged to a stop, too big to go through, while some of the smaller pieces shot out into the void at a million miles an hour.
Quentin’s body slid toward the viewport. He put his hands and feet flat on the still-wet black platform, bracing himself as best he could, but his eyes never left the center of the viewport.