Devil May Care Ch. 06

"Hold your fucking fire!" a voice that had senior NCO printed all over it boomed out. Marin peeked around the corner towards the engine room. The chamber looked as ready for the end of the world as any he had ever seen. What had to be most of the ship's remaining compliment of marines were there. They had set up shotgun turrets, shields, even rolled out what looked like pre-prepped mono-filament wire. There were almost two dozen of them, all of them with their weapons at the ready. The senior NCO, a grizzled looking Tech Sergeant, scowled at Marin and Air Force.

"Get your asses over here – those black hole sons of bitches are making a beeline for the warp core."

Marin ran forward. "I know, they're right on our ass!"

The screech of tearing metal came from behind him. He and Air Force didn't waste time looking back. They ran forward over the mono-wire. One of the marines thumbed an app on their smartphone. The wire went taut across the corridor. Marin found a fluxgun pressed into his hands. He checked it, then looked at the Tech Sergeant that had given it to him. "Civilian?" he whispered.

"Fucking replicating black hole monsters," the Tech Sergeant whispered back. "The plan is to make it look like we absolutely do not want them here."

"Then we pull back and vent the core into space?" Marin asked.

The Tech Sergeant nodded.

Marin sighed. "Well, great minds think-"

The tearing metal went up an octive. Looking down the corridor, Marin saw that the Revenants had joined up en mass. There were at least five of them, walking casually towards the corridor. He shouldered the fluxgun and saw that some bright cookie had passed out underslung lasers. He switched to laser at the same time the Tech Sergeant bellowed.

"Fire!"

One downside with a volley of energy weapons. It wasn't the most dramatic thing in the universe. They weren't pulse lasers, so there was no crack of ionizing air. Rather, there was a fierce sizzling noise as the atmosphere between the barricades and the monsters started to crisp and cook and burn. The Revenants strode forward – slowly.

With purpose.

###

Dey came to her feet in time for a stream of accelerated particulates – mostly dirt, clumps of grass, and rocks – to slam into her chest. The space suit took most of the impact and she bowled over the two guards who had been protecting Simon. When she came to her feet, she saw how the black hole monster looking at the nimbus of rapidly orbiting rocks that still hazed the air around its left fist.

"Ow," Dey said, grabbing one of the AFG-55s off the ground. The guard didn't seem to mind – he was too busy whimpering in utter panic. She wondered, briefly, what exactly Simon had been doing here, with his own personal space station and direct mastery of unimaginable nightmare monsters. She wondered this as she pulled down the trigger. The AFG-55 was able to fire uninterrupted for a very long time without overheating. At this range, with the gun pressed to her shoulder, her legs in a wide stance, she was able to put pretty much every round on point until, at last, the weapon shut down with a quiet bleep bleep bleep that warned of overheating. A red light flashed next to the barrel.

Dey looked at the magazine. Only a few thousand rounds left. They had been skimping on topping off the D-mags.

The black hole monster, who had been standing there with his arms spread as he absorbed the bullets, lowered his arms – a disturbingly human gesture.

"Now, how to kill you best. There are fast ways and there are fun ways and-"

The AFG's magazine hit the ground in-front of the monster. Dey threw herself on top of the other guard, knocking him to the ground. The sudden white flash of the magazine exploding, safeties removed by a quick manipulation of Loki and a touch from Dey's finger. Thousands of bullets spilled outwards as space warped in the black hole's face, and some of them got through Dey's shields, skidding across her back.

When she looked up, she saw that the Revenant was still there.

The blackness had been stripped away, leaving nothing but a crystalline structure that refused to become fully visible. It shifted and reformed and repatterned itself over and over before Dey's eyes. It glowed, brighter and brighter and Loki's voice came through her head like it was a million miles away.

Dey! Dey it's emitting hard radiation! RUN! RUN NOW!

Dey scrambled herself to her feet.

"Escpae pods!" she rasped out.

The guards – shaking their heads – stood. They ran. Dey followed as the bright light got brighter behind her. The terrible clicking noise of the Geiger counter built into her brain filled her mind with panic – and made her knees feel weak. They reached the end of the atrium, having covered a remarkable distance in a short time. But she felt tremors starting through her hands as one of the guards grabbed onto a mat of leaves. He threw it aside, revealing a hatch. Dey shoved him in, then shoved his friend in.

[Loki, can you trigger an evacuation alarm for the st-]

Already done, Loki said. His hands were on her back. He shoved forward. And in her confused, panicked state, Dey landed on her back, reaching for him. The airlock door closed and then she felt the sudden lurch and feeling of falling that came from being flung away from the station at one G. She closed her eyes.

I'm in your head, you dingus.

[R...ight...] Dey thought.

She didn't feel sick.

But she was pretty sure that wouldn't last.

###

Marin stepped backwards a moment before the first Revenant got to the barricade. The marines were backing away as well – several of them waiting for just a moment too late. He grabbed onto a woman's combats, yanking her away before one of those hands grabbed for her – but just passing close still created a red mist where her face used to be. Screams filled the air as Marin staggered backwards. Blood flew in strangely beautiful, circular patterns as droplets were caught in competing gravity wells, swinging about, floating in naturally occurring semi-stable Lagrange points, before being slapped against the walls.

The Tech Sergeant backed into the warp core with Marin.

"Well," Marin hissed. "They're getting in. We getting out?"

The Tech Sergeant spat on the ground.

"Get out?" he snarled. "Hell. We just got here."

The Revenants stepped closer.

The Tech Sergeant pulled out his iPhone. For a moment, his thumb hovered over the camera function. Marin looked at him. He looked back. The Revenants reached out towards them.

The Tech Sergeant touched the right app.

Marin, for a moment, hoped that someone had set this up and that it wasn't just as simple as activating a smartphone application to dump a USAF light carrier's warp core into space. Then it was all he could do to find something to hold onto as the warning klaxons came on and the floor opened up. Wind roared past him and the Tech Sergeant grabbed onto two of the Revenants. He screamed as his hands came apart – and threw himself backwards. The black holes fell with him – all of them tumbling outwards with the warp core. The rest, shocked by the sudden depressurization, were swept off their feet.

Marin's arms screamed. A whole chamber being vented into space through relatively small hole – the design to flush dangerous radioactive in a hurry, produced winds that he had never felt before. His chest wound suddenly spiked – his fingers went weak.

And a hand closed around his wrist.

Marin looked up.

Kuz the Shockpod, his other hand looped around a wall's support strut, beamed. He bellowed over the winds.

"Flaming intoxicants, human! Flaming intoxicants!"

The door closed.

And a few kilometers away from the Biden, a nuclear-thermal generator's DV containment units overloaded. A few seconds later, five white holes were born. Fortunately, the Biden's radioactive shielding was more than up to the task.

And a hundred kilometers away, Delta-V fighters were cutting out their engines as the Hamilton Cylinder started to melt from the inside out.

###

Dey's palms slammed into the desk as she glared down at her superior officer.

"With all due respect sir, but what the fuck!?"

Captain Moon Two glared at her. "Lieutenant!"

Dey clenched her jaw. She sat down in the chair.

The Captain's office was located in Virginia, looking out over the matured coastline. A few buildings peeked out of the bay, but for the most part, the clean up crews had long since taken things down. A new artificial reef grew out there. Kites capturing wind power and floating solar panel plants glinted in the sunlight. Dey looked out at it, then looked back at Captain Moon.

"They're going to walk?" She asked.

Turned out that, at the end of the day, radiation was a son of a bitch. She had been in a special hospital unit for a week and a half, checking to make sure longterm damage hadn't been done to her nervous system. Loki had checked out as unharmed, and his sensors had done more than anything else to ensure that the doctors had missed no cancers or other unpleasant side effects. During her time in the hospital, Fong and Muller – who had both survived their ships getting hijacked by mutated missiles – had come to visit her.

News had come too.

Charon's plebiscite had gone off sans illegal meddling. The vote had been carried and by the next year, the colony would become the state of Hancock. Personally, Dey would have picked one of the less stupid sounding Founding Fathers. But she wasn't on the committee. Or whoever picked State names.

The debriefing had been grueling.

"Lt. Gallagher," the five star general had said, turning over a paper in the folder, her eyes emotionless. "When you fired your Mk-981 implanted grapnel into Mr. Wood's skull, were you aware that the Perseus Mumblers had implanted an organelle in his brain, allowing him direct control over their Revenant class attack...units?"

Dey had gulped and nodded. "I, uh, theorized that sir."

"It seems your gamble didn't quite pay off."

Dey winced at the memory. Two squads of marines and change, not to mention the fighter jocks who had been taken down by their own side's guns, or the bad guys who had shot FS-65 down while the American pilots had been struggling with their own fighters. The eggheads still had no idea what the Revenants had been shooting. No idea what they had been. Actual black holes? Something more esoteric?

But that was neither here nor there. What was here was the facts. The evidence. What little had been gleaned from the guards and other evacuees, her testimony, Marin's words, and even the statements from the Huntress. Once they had found her escape pod.

Simon Woods, Executive Manager of AI Research for the Exxon-Dow Petrochem Corporation. Born, 2010. She had known he had been too fucking connected to that cane. Put in charge of an AI research program. When the AIs went insane, the funding got pulled. Somehow, those AIs had ended up being traded to the Mumblers. Somehow, that had been enough to pay for a Revenant, several bioaugmented shapeshifting assholes who could spit acid – oh, sorry, one bioaugmented shapeshifting asshole who could spit acid.

One that they could prove existed.

"The simple fact is," Moon Two said. "Everything after the AI research program was started without the knowledge of the board of directors or the CEO or the aristos who are getting their deep money from centuries of interconnection with the industry." He shook his head, his fingers drumming on the desk. Dey could see he was just as mad as her.

Loki's hands squeezed her shoulders.

"So, it was all for nothing, then?" she asked.

"Not nothing," Moon said. "We got a new state. The Green party got a few more senators and congressmen. And you kept an exceedingly dangerous weapon out of the hands of an amoral madman. All things considered, that's what we do."

Dey frowned. "When he was ranting and raving, Simon said that America isn't a democracy. He said it's an oligarchy. That all that matters is the rich's power." She frowned, watching Moon Two. Her CO sighed.

"He's not wrong," he said. "But at times like this? I remember a poem. Langston Hughes. Let America be America again." He smiled. "Let it be the dream it used to be. Making America into America is that long, blood struggle through broken glass and assholes that you and I just got done with."

"You?" Dey grinned. "Your Starfury got knocked out of the fight in the first five minutes. I did all the leg work."

Moon Two didn't look amused.

###

"So, uh, that's one way to get paid, I suppose. The US government's contracted me to go investigate Huntresses – learn more about their culture and all that. Apparently, they'd rather pay me governmental peanuts and not have to worry about my safety. Frugal buggers." Marin saluted at the screen as sardonically as he could. "Seriously, you got my contact code. If..." He paused. "If you ping up on social media in the same solar system, I'll have my ship ping you. You know?" He smiled. "So, uh. I guess..."

Dey smiled as she watched the recorded message, pausing as she walked along storage units. The sea air was rich in her nose.

Marin nodded.

"See ya, space cowboy." He smiled and waved.

The video ended.

Okay. Maybe he's not as much of a tool as I thought on reading his facebook feeds, Loki said.

"Are you kidding?" Dey asked, coming to Storage Unit 12 on the Happy Fisher Storage System in the piers of New Miami. "He likes the remake of Teen Wolf. He's an asshole."

She grabbed onto the bottom of the doorway and pushed up. Sitting there, as if it hadn't changed a single bit since she had last laid eyes on the damp thing, was her father's boat. The sail, the solar power generator, even the little cabin that they had cycled – on Monday, she had gotten to sleep there. The deck was wide enough for a family of three to sleep, if one was in the cabin and one made the top of the other's T. She shook her head, walking into the storage unit, sliding her palm along the side of the ship.

The name, painted on the hull: ENTERPRISE.

[Dad, you fucking nerd,] she thought.

You sure this is how you want to spend your leave? Loki asked.

Dey smiled. [They said I could do whatever I wanted. Plus, this'll save money.]

They paid you a fucking huge bonus for this mission-

[If I stay in a city, the shrink will be on my ass. At least this way, I'll get them via telecommunications. That's...] she shook her head. [That's better.]

Loki squeezed her shoulder.

The advantages of DeVilbiss Drives showed themselves once more – lightening the boat and helping Dey shove it out into the water. The Enterprise bobbed there in the water. Dey put her hands on her hips. For some reason, after tumbling through space, fighting ancient and terrifying alien war machines, uncovering a fucked up conspiracy, and saving the galaxy – after a fashion – sitting on her Dad's boat didn't look nearly so unpleasent.

She hopped on board, grabbing onto the sail. Old memories guided her. The sail billowed, snapped, caught. The ship leaped outwards, and the solar panels started to drink in the rays. Dey grinned, leaning backwards. She squeezed and looked outwards at the horizon – dotted with rotting skyscrapers that Florida remained too poor to tear down, buildings that had stood the test of time. Every few years, another one came down.

Dey let the rope play through her hand.

But she couldn't stop thinking of Simon's words.

The war between China and Russia raged.

Exxon-Dow continued to rake in profits – albeit reduced.

The dream that would be America remained just that.

Dey grinned.

The devil might not care.

But Dey sure as fuck did.

[So,] she said. [Now that you've gotten a chance to watch em, who do you think was the best Annikin Skywalker?]

Eh. I honestly didn't like Star Wars.

THE END

DeShane Gallagher and her devilish companion Loki shall return in IDLE PLAYTHINGS.

Thanks for reading!