Marauder Ramses (13 page)

W
e lay
in the shadow of the Aegus statue. The tall, colorful towers of the palace are above us. We’ve been in Sankt Petersburg--on Venus--for several months now. It almost feels like home. Almost.

“Want some mango?” Ramses says, holding it out to me.

“Mm, yes please.”

I bite into the mango, and I can nearly taste the jungle. It’s not quite the grapes I imagined, but it’s just as good.

“You need to eat well,” Ramses says, putting a hand on my stomach.

The baby kicks.

“She’s ready to come out,” Ramses says.

“
I’m
ready for her to come out! I’m tired of being so...huge.”

“You miss the jungle?” Ramses asks.

“Uh,” I say, “Kind of?”

The jungle was nice. Walking around naked, and being surrounded by naked people, was weird at first, but I quickly got used to it. The heat, and the rain, and the living in huts thing--not so much. After Atlantis, I thought that a tropical forest would be like paradise, but it turned out Sankt Petersburg is much closer to ideal for me. Air conditioning, cars, tall buildings--it’s all much closer to home for me.

“You’ll hurt my aunts’ feelings,” Ramses says. “We’ll have to bring the baby there so they can gush over her.”

I smile. The baby. I may never be able to return to Earth, but having a baby with the man I love can create a new sense of home for me. A family.

I sense a presence above me, and when I look up, I see the Tsar. Aegus.

I sit bolt upright. “Your Excellency--”

“Elise,” Aegus says. “Please. You’re my daugher-in-law. You don’t have to call me that.”

I nod, feeling embarrassed. In my head, Aegus had always been some type of historical figure, not a real person. Even after all these months, it still hasn’t gotten through to me.

“You’re sure you don’t want to go, Ramses?” Aegus says.

“And risk missing the birth of my daughter?” Ramses asks.

Aegus smiles. “Are you sure Kain is ready?”

“I’m sure,” I say. “He saved Earth once...he can do it again.”

“
F
elicia
,” I say, shaking my sister by the shoulders. “You have to stay awake.”

Felicia’s eyelids flutter, but she groans and pushes me away.

“Up!” I shout, shaking her more forcefully.

Felicia’s face scrunches up, and she rolls away from me.

The cold is seeping into my bones. We’re dying a slow death, but I have to keep her awake. There’s
still
a chance.

I slap her face.

She snaps awake and takes a swing at me. “What the fuck! Kara you--”

“Stay awake, sis,” I say, looking her straight in the eyes. “You don’t want to die out here, do you?”

“You were always an optimist,” Felicia says, rolling out of bed. She floats down slowly in the barely existing gravity, and lazily gets her feet beneath her, then stands and yawns.

We’re on a planetoid a little bit further out than Pluto’s orbit. It’s not so much a planetoid as a big, ugly rock; but it’s full of big, juicy paydirt: gold, platinum, cobalt, iridium--the list goes on.

“We’ll be rich, Felicia,” I say, shivering.

Felicia shakes her head, but says nothing.

Our mining drill blew a fuse. The fuse fried not just the mining drill, but also our engines... and the heat regulator.

Our fusion reactor, mining drill, and oxygen is all still good to go. As is our distress beacon.

“We’ve got a lot going for us still,” I say. “I’ll do it this time.”

“It’s not your turn,” Felicia says.

“Just relax,” I say. “I’ll do it.”

She sighs, but doesn’t object again. Two weeks. We’re almost out of food. We can synthesize water and oxygen from the materials on the rock, but we can’t synthesize food. If my optimism turns out to be wrong, we’ll die of starvation.

I step into the suit, and Felicia helps me in. She locks the arms into place, and then I put on the helmet.

When the ship is working properly, the waste heat from the reactor is converted to microwaves, and beamed out into the cold of space. A tiny amount of that heat is reserved and used to keep the ship a nice, comfortable temperature for my sister and me. But that’s with the heat regulator working properly.

Now, it’s either all waste heat pumping into the ship, or all going out. No in between. The only way to flip that switch, however, means suiting up, going through the airlock, and bolting a bunch of hoses on and off.

When I’m outside, I hold up my big wrench and get to work on the first hose. Once all the hoses are in place, I’ll flip the switch. Within five minutes the icy-cold ship will be nice and warm. In ten minutes it will be a sauna. In fifteen we’d be dead.

I bolt in the last hose, and then I double-check all of them to make sure they are tight and secure.

I hit the switch, and put my gloved hand onto the hose to feel for vibrations. I press my faceplate onto the window, and I see Felicia huddled up against the heat vent. She gives me a thumbs up and flashes a wide smile.

I start the timer on my suit’s wrist.

At around the twelve minute mark I need to kill the heat. By the time I get back inside and have my suit off, it will still be slightly toasty, but it will quickly drop back toward below freezing. Then it will be Felicia’s turn.

We’re both exhausted from this. Exhausted, sleep-deprived, and starving.

While I wait, I keep looking up into the void, hoping to see a ship on the horizon. I’ve hallucinated seeing one often enough, that I don’t believe the light in the distance could possibly be one.

I squint at it, and it
seems
to be moving. Yes. It really is moving. But it could just be a small piece of debris--or a distant comet.

I don’t even want Felicia to see it. False hope is the most deadly thing for her right now. I move in front of the window again and start making stupid faces at her.

She rolls her eyes at me, but I see her smiling. And soon I see sweat beads dripping down her forehead.

When my watch hits the ten-minute mark, I turn away and check the sky again. It
is
a ship.

If it’s a ship, it must have heard our distress beacon. Real hope is in sight.

But I still have to get the hoses off, or Felicia will cook.

I try to ignore the ship as I work, but my mind is racing.

Best-case scenario is that it’s a perfectly upstanding crew--maybe a Martian military craft on a scouting mission or patrol. Second-best case is another mining ship, and they would be happy to rescue us if we hand over most of what we mined.

After that, the less optimistic possibilities begin. It could be pirates. They’d likely take our haul and leave us for dead. And if it’s particularly nasty pirates, we’d
wish
they’d left us for dead.

Worst case...what is the worst case? Darkstar Marauders. No one knows for sure where Darkstar is. It could be about as far out as we are now, or it could be halfway to the Oort cloud. Some people think it’s even
in
the Oort cloud. One thing is for sure though: Darkstar Marauders hate humans, and we’d be lucky if they gave us a quick death.

I put the wrench onto the third hose and start to turn, but it doesn’t move. I go a bit harder, and
still
it doesn’t budge.

I calm my breathing and try not to panic. I check my watch. Eleven minutes, thirty seconds. Plenty of time...as long as I don’t lose my cool.

I re-adjust the wrench for more torque, get both gloves firmly on, and pull.

My feet slip out from under me as the wrench moves, and a pressurized blast of heated air shoots out from the socket.

It blasts the wrench out of my hand, and it flies out of my hand. I watch as it gleams in the floodlight from the ship, and then disappears into total darkness. The gravity is so slight that--while it will land, eventually--it might not land for several hundred meters. Maybe even a kilometer.

Twelve minutes, thirty seconds.

I don’t even know which direction to look in. In this suit--and with this little gravity--even if I knew where the wrench landed, it would take me twenty minutes to reach it, and twenty to bring it back.

Too long.

I look up toward the ship, and see that it
is
a ship. It’s close now, and it’s definitely coming toward us.

“Please don’t be a Marauder,” I whisper to myself as I try--hopelessly--to get the hose off with my gloved hands.

D
arkstar
.

I never thought I’d have to go back there. I felt--for the first time, however faint--the sun on my skin on Atlantis, the frozen planet. And then I traveled to Venus, where the sun’s energy is trapped by the thick atmosphere, and I felt warmer than I’ve ever been.

Darkstar. The sun’s rays barely reach it. A barren rock, cast out from the sun’s inner circle. My former home.

All the other Darkstar Marauders sent with me to Atlantis were killed. Including my father. I killed over half of them--but I didn’t kill my own father. That was a shame debt I could never take on, even if my father was a genocidal monster. I couldn’t pull the trigger to end him.

I’ve betrayed Darkstar and become a peacekeeper. My first assignment? To go back there. To pretend I never changed.

The computer beeps.

“Kain,” it says, “There’s a distress beacon from a nearby planetoid. We should ignore it.”

“How nearby?” I ask.

“It’s close enough to reach, but we’re too close to Darkstar now. You need to keep your cover.”

“I can reach it and get back on course to Darkstar? There’s enough fuel?”

“Yes, but--”

“Do it,” I say. “Change course.”

“But--”

“Do it!”

The computer goes silent, and I feel the ship start to rotate, then change trajectory.

“Mining vessel,” the computer says. “Two humans requesting evac.”

My ship could hold two humans, but what then? On Darkstar, humans are sterilized--so the disease of humanity will not spread--and then used as sex slaves. If I rescue these humans, I can’t bring them to Darkstar.

But I can’t just leave them to die.

Maybe I could fix their ship. Or give them enough supplies to make it until a human vessel can rescue them.

I sit back and wait. There’s no use planning with such limited information. I’ll save my energy until I know what I’m dealing with.

After over an hour, the ship’s display shows me a magnified view of the planetoid. It zooms in further and shows a ship. It’s a mining ship, and the drill is still deep in the rock. The ship’s floodlights are on, and there’s a suited figure standing outside the ship. It’s...struggling.

“Zoom in more,” I say.

“We’re at maximum zoom,” the computer says. “We’ll have to get closer to see more.”

The ship is already slowing itself down as it nears the planetoid, preparing for a touchdown.

As we get closer, I see that the human is trying to remove some kind of pipe or hose from the ship. But they have no tool, and the pipe is not coming loose.

“Why are the humans outside the ship?” I ask.

“Analyzing,” the computer says. “Hm…”

“Don’t ‘hm’ me,” I grunt. “What is it?”

“It’s a thermal distribution hose connected to the tokamak reactor via the heat regulator.”

“What?”

“It makes the ship hot,” the computer says.

“Then why is she trying to pull it out?”

“It seems the interior of the ship is nearing the limits of human tolerance, and another woman is still inside.”

“They’re women?” I ask, feeling my chest tighten.

“Yes,” the computer says. “And one is going to die if that hose is not removed.”

“Hard landing!” I shout.

“Kain, that will use too much fuel--”

“Hard fucking landing! Now!”

T
he ship’s
engines cut off.

“What? No...no...no... please!”

But then I realize that the engines were facing me. Meaning they were being used to slow it down. So if they cut off...it means the ship is coming even
faster
toward me.

I don’t know what to make of that, but without the engine burn, I can’t see the ship at all. I start to worry that I hallucinated it all along.

I give the hose another good turn, but it doesn’t budge. I feel the veins in my neck bulge as I tighten my grip and give it everything I’ve got. My stomach flexes, my thighs burn--every muscle in my body goes to work, but nothing moves.

“Fuck!” I shout, falling ever so slowly to the ground as I collapse from exhaustion.

I pant until I have my breath again, and I stand up to check on Felicia.

She’s chugging water, and her skin is red. Her hair is matted onto her forehead, and it’s soaking wet from the sweat.

Okay, she needs hope now. Even false hope is fine.

I tap on the window, and point up to the black sky.

She gives me an exasperated look that makes it seems she has no idea what I’m saying. She holds up two hands as if she is gripping a hose, and she rotates her wrists in opposite directions, miming a hose disconnecting.

I hold my hand up like I’m still holding the wrench, and then I use my other hand to mime an explosion. I hit the explosion to the invisible wrench, and I show her the wrench had drifting away up, and up, and up.

She slams on the glass, and her mouth moves.

I’m not good at lip reading, but it looks like three syllables.
Idiot
, maybe?

I point up again, and then I see the engines flare once again. The ship is right above us.

The light from the engine burn nearly blinds me, and I shield my eyes.

The ship is settling down only about one hundred meters away from me, and directly below it rocks are flying everywhere. The gravity is so low that small pebbles and even larger chunks of rock slam against our ship.

I check through the window and see Felicia slouched down against the wall. Her skin is red like a crab, and she’s not even sweating anymore.

“Shit...shit!” I slam my hand against the window, but her eyes don’t open.

I look back and see that the ship has landed. It doesn’t look like Martian military, maybe it’s Venusian?

The landing ramp hits the ground, and one figure begins walking down.

His suit is tight, form-fitting teal. He doesn’t even walk all the way down the ramp. He leaps from the top of it.

I see him floating through the microgravity, straight toward us. He floats through the air--but really is just falling extremely slowly--for many seconds, and his feet hit the ground just a few meters from the other side of our ship.

I try to get a look at his face, but he disappears behind my ship before I can see him.

Moments later he comes around the corner, and God, he’s fucking tall.

His faceplate goes transparent, and I see that it’s a Marauder.

I hold my breath, maybe because I’m terrified, or maybe because he’s so fucking handsome. His cheekbones are razor sharp, and his eyes are vibrant green. There’s a kind of tortured darkness hiding behind his eyes, but the worried look on his face shows true sympathy.

He’s the youngest Marauder I’ve ever seen. Marauders can’t mate with other Marauders, they can only mate with humans, which produces pink-skinned Seraphim. The Marauders entered our solar system just over 25 years ago, so most of them are pushing 60 by now. But not this one--he barely looks 25, he must have been a baby when they arrived.

He points to the hose, and steps toward it. I take a step back out of his way.

He grabs the hose with his gloved hand and twists. He pulls the hose right out.

Then he flips the switch.

Now all the waste heat is beaming out as microwaves, and
not
into the ship. If I had flipped the switch without removing the hose, the microwaves would have cooked Felicia just as bad as the radiated heat.

The Marauder narrows his eyes at me, and even though it’s hard to see through his faceplate, I swear I see him grin.

He reaches to the airlock and starts to turn it. It takes me almost two minutes to turn the thing enough to open the first door, but he does it in just seconds.

He gets it open, but there’s only room for one of us inside. He looks at me, nods, and points inside.

I nod to him, and he shuts the door.

I exhale. Had I really been holding my breathe that whole time? The look he gave me...it was like he was telling me with just one look that everything would be okay. And there was something else behind those eyes. Something I don’t dare to even think about.