Syberian Sunrise (23 page)

It didn't seem fair.

Greg collapsed into the pilot's seat and stared off into space for a long moment. The stars seemed to mock him. To survive all this...something chimed suddenly in the bridge. Greg sat up, wondering what could have gone wrong now. After a moment, he felt hope spike in his heart. Another ship had just appeared from hyperspace. He keyed the close-range communications system, said a small prayer and brought the radio to his mouth.

“Hello? Can you help us?” He paused for a moment, figuring there was probably a better way he could have worded that.

The radio crackled.
“Yes...well, maybe. We've just come from a bit of a bad situation. Who are you? What are you doing out here?”
a female voice responded, sounding tentative and tired.

Greg let out a small laugh, considering how to respond. Then, finally, he reactived the radio. “My name is Greg Bishop...and it's a long story.” He paused for a moment. “What about you?”

Another pause.
“My name is Eve Brooks. And I'm afraid I've also got a long story.”

“How about we link ships and talk in person?”

“Okay. I'll link up our airlocks.”

Greg responded positively and then keyed the shipwide intercom. “Kyra! We've finally hit a bit of good luck. Get up to the bridge, someone's coming to rescue us...I think.”

“Oh, thank God. On my way.”

Greg began running scans on the vessel as it approached. After a moment, he had all the data he was going to get out of it. Two relevant things were revealed. The first was that there were only two people onboard, the second was that they had a working FTL drive. So maybe they'd get out of this after all. Providing whoever it was that was over there didn't try to kill them. Just as Kyra stepped onto the bridge, there was a loud
clang
that reverberated through the hull of the ship. Greg stood up and together he and Kyra moved towards the main airlock.

“So who are they?” Kyra asked.

“Not sure. There's just two of them, though. And they sounded nice enough.”

“Fantastic.”

They arrived at the airlock, both of them with their pistols holstered, but not clasped. After everything that had happened so far, Greg wasn't willing to take too many chances. After a long moment, the airlock beeped. Greg reached out and hit the access button, allowing the inner door to open up. Two people stood within the airlock. The first was a man wearing a ripped, bloodied black uniform that immediately sent Greg on edge. He'd seen that uniform before. The woman, who looked to be in an equally battered state, wore the same uniform. She held a pistol and the man, who, after a moment, Greg realized had a fake arm, held a rifle.

As one, both Greg and Kyra snapped their pistols out and covered the two new arrivals, who did the exact same thing.

“Who do you work for?” Greg asked.

“Presently? I'm unemployed,” the man replied.

“Don't give us that shit, those are Dark Ops uniforms,” Greg said.

The woman lowered her pistol. “How the
fuck
do you know about Dark Ops?”

“We just spent three weeks dealing with the assholes,” Kyra replied.

“We're not Dark Ops, I promise. We're actually on the run from them,” the woman, Eve, said.

“Why are you wearing those?” Greg asked.

“I infiltrated Dark Ops and he had nothing else to wear,” Eve explained.

A long moment of tension passed, then Greg lowered his pistol. Kyra did the same. The man with the artificial arm kept his rifle raised. After a second, the woman sighed heavily, put her hand on the barrel and forced it down. “Get over yourself, Enzo,” she muttered, then she returned her attention to Greg and Kyra.

“I imagine we have a lot to say to each other.”

* * * * *

Enzo had to admit, he was impressed. And that was hard to do. These pair of survivors, both of them
Security-Investigations
for fuck's sake, had managed to survive a lot more than he'd had to put up with over the past day.

“So, what do we do?” Greg asked.

Enzo glanced over. He was in the process of giving himself another dose of morphine. He'd taken a spare medkit from off the bridge wall and had pulled out the liquid painkiller. They were looking at him now. He held up the needle, flicked it a few times, depressed the plunger half an inch, then jabbed the needle into his shoulder and injected half the morphine.

“Much better,” he whispered, replacing the syringe. “It seems the best thing to do would be to get on our ship and get the fuck out of here.”

“Fine by me,” Greg replied, standing.

As he did, something beeped in the bridge. The woman, Kyra, glanced over. Enzo laid eyes on her as she worked the controls. Eve was a no-go, that much was obvious, but this new girl, Kyra, was one smoking hot brunette. On the other hand...Enzo frowned, flicking his gaze to Greg, who was looking at Kyra in
that
way. They were an item. Fantastic. Enzo had broken up relationships before, he was no stranger to cheating, but...he had to admit a begrudging respect to this guy. Unless Greg was lying. Which he supposed was possible, but...no, there was just something about the guy that made Enzo believe him.

“Oh...
fuck
,” Kyra said.

“What?” Eve replied.

“There's a ship on intercept and I think-”

Kyra stopped talking as the other vessel opened fire on them. Both ships shuddered from the impact of the incoming fire.

“Now what?!” Greg snapped.

Despite his mind being so fatigued, his body pain-addled, Enzo felt a plan slap together in his head. He stood up straighter and grabbed his rifle. “We head over to my ship. You three make for the escape pods. I'll launch both ships directly for the Dark Ops vessel as a distraction. When we get close enough, we'll launch the pod directly into the fucker, punch through the hull and come out guns blazing, take over the ship.”

“That...might actually work,” Kyra said.

“Let's go,” Greg replied.

They hurried off of the bridge and worked their way through the pair of airlocks. Once they were through, Enzo pointed them back towards the pod bay and then began to make his way forward, towards the bridge. He hoped he wasn't just bullshitting them. He was
fairly
confident that his plan would work, and wouldn't get them all killed. He came onto the bridge and sat down in the pilot's seat. Working fast, feeling the ship coming apart around him as the Dark Ops ship continued to open fire on them, he plotted the course.

A moment later, the thrusters fired. Working both against the pull of Greg's ship and the incoming fire, his own vessel began to trundle forward. Enzo let out a breath, stood up and began hurrying back to the escape pods.

* * * * *

Greg settled into the seat. He and the other two had hastily pulled on simple EVA suits to protect them from the deathly cold of open space, should the need arise. Given the nature of what they were doing, everyone felt it was a necessary precaution. About a minute after he felt the ship begin to move, which was difficult to tell amidst all the shuddering impacts, Enzo reappeared. He stepped into the cramped confines of the escape pod, looked at Greg and Kyra in their seats, Eve up front in the pilot's seat, and then down at the suit they'd grabbed for him.

“Now?” Eve asked.

“No, not yet,” Enzo replied, closing the door behind him and then hurriedly pulling on the EVA suit. The ship continued to tremble and shake.

“
Now
?” Eve asked once more.

“Not yet,” Enzo replied, finishing up with his suit. After he slipped the glass plate into place, he stepped forward and glanced out of the front windows. Greg followed his gaze, his eyes widening as he realized how close they were.

“Oh, shit, uh, yeah, now,” Enzo said, taking his seat.

“Enzo, for fuck's sake-” Eve punched out.

The trip lasted approximately two seconds. The escape pod exploded out of its metal nest aboard Enzo's stolen vessel, crossed the short distance between the two vessels in record time, and abruptly slammed itself into the hull of the Dark Ops ship. For a moment, pure, painful chaos flooded the interior of the escape pod. Greg let out a sharp bark of pain as his whole body was thrown forward, straining against the restraints that kept him in place. He heard the others shouting out in similar pain. Then, dead silence enveloped them all.

“We all still here?” Kyra asked, slowly unhooking herself from her seat and standing.

“Present,” Greg groaned, doing the same.

“I'm here,” Enzo said.

“Barely,” Eve said. “It would appear that we're lodged in the hull.”

“Fantastic...everybody out! We're going for a walk,” Enzo called.

Greg groaned again. He hated going outside for space walks, they never seemed to end well. But in a moment they had all gathered at the back of the tiny escape pod, weapons in hand, ready to head out into the cold vacuum of space. Greg was first. He hit the access button and stepped out through the door, activating the magnetic boots built into the suit. He took a quick look around as he stepped from the pod onto the hull of the vessel.

“Coast's clear,” he said into the little radio.

“Coming out,”
Kyra replied, her voice tinny inside his helmet.

He began moving slowly forward, spying the protruding bulk of an airlock. That was their way in...and also the likeliest point of attack from the troops onboard. He glanced back, pausing briefly, and saw that the others had all left the pod and were following him in a spread out line. So far, so good. He turned back around and kept going, hurrying as fast as the magnetic boots would allow him. He crossed about halfway to the airlock and was just beginning to let himself believe he'd caught a lucky break when a suited figure emerged from the ship.

The figure in dark armor, looking inhuman and insectile, wrapped up in sleek metal and glass, was holding a rifle. The trooper pointed it at Greg, who snapped up his pistol and let loose with a few bullets. The first two went wild, but the third took the son of a bitch in the faceplate. The man died, and the body hung there, attached by its own magnetic boots, swaying gently like seaweed caught in a soft undersea current.

Two more figures appeared.

“Let's pick it up!” Greg called, continuing to move and opening fire.

The two troops managed to get off a few shots, one of them nearly grazing Greg's neck, before he and his allies put them down. No more figures managed to get out before the quartet reached the airlock bay. They hastily opened it up, gunned down another pair of soldiers that were lying in wait, and hurried inside.

“We'll make for the bridge,” Greg said as they cycled through.

“I don't suppose anyone has any idea how many might be onboard?”
Kyra asked.

“Probably no more than two or three dozen. This isn't a big ship,”
Enzo replied.
“Like Greg said, we'll take the bridge in a bullrush and then figure out what to do next.”

The airlock opened up. Enzo was kneeling over the corpses they'd produced. Abruptly, he shouted, “fire in the hole!” and tossed something.

“What was that?!” Greg cried.

His answer was an immensely brilliant flash, followed by an explosion of sound that briefly overloaded his suit's audio processors. He became aware of gunfire and dropped to a crouch. By the time he had his vision back, he saw that Enzo had pushed ahead of them, out of the airlock, and was engaged in a firefight.

“Asshole!” Greg snapped as he hurried forward, ducking down within the doorway that served as an exit into the rest of the ship, and peered out. Enzo was across the corridor the door opened up into, opposite them, firing from cover.

“Hey, it worked!” Enzo called back.

Greg leaned around the corner and fired a few rounds from his sidearm, tagging one of the pair of Dark Ops troops he could see in the corridor. The shot took the man in the neck. As he stumbled back, clutching at the wound, someone, either Kyra or Eve, popped out behind Greg and finished him off with a shot that shattered his visor. Enzo quickly dispatched the second man and called for the others to follow him.

Kyra and Eve emerged from the airlock, both now armed with sleek, black rifles. Greg glanced down at his pistol, then holstered it and, as they passed the freshest pair of corpses they'd just produced, snagged one of the rifles in passing. The quartet reached the end of the corridor, gunning down another trio of troopers that tried to shoot them from behind, and gathered at the large door they found. Greg hastily reloaded.

“This must be the bridge. Everyone get ready!” Enzo called.

Greg and Kyra stuck to one side of the door while Enzo and Eve stacked up on the other. There was a moment's pause, then Greg hit the access button. He and Enzo dropped to their knees, peered into the bridge and opened fire on everyone inside while Eve and Kyra fired away over their heads. Sixty seconds passed, then all fell silent as the last man standing in the bridge was put down.