“That’s why we sent five groups,” the pilot muttered. He turned to the navigator. “Call HQ on the carrier frequency, but keep it short. Just give them our velocity and the coordinates for our cargo bay, one meter off the deck. Tell them we’re secure and can hold as much as they can send.”
The navigator nodded and pulled his long-wave radio from his pack.
The pilot looked over his shoulder. “Marx, you and Cole head back to the cargo bay and coordinate our arrivals. Let’s pack as much as we can into this puppy, just in case we’re the only ones who make it through to the other side.”
“Yes, sir,” Marx said from behind Cole. The Callite stomped aft through the thin skim of drying blood.
Cole took off after him, his thoughts divided between how well his squad had done on their portion of the raid—and on which of the other groups had run into trouble.
Penny raced through the ship’s corridors, the dying screams of the last Bern crewman echoing in her ears. She slowed to round a bend in the passageway, then found herself in the aftermost section, the rumble of powerful thrusters audible through the thick bulkhead.
The sound intensified as a door opened. A Bern engineer stepped out, his gray coveralls spotted with grease stains. Penny sliced him in half before he could even register her presence. She watched the two pieces of meat fall to the deck, strings of interior organs spilling out in a thick soup. She studied the odd arrangement, the fleshy interior, and felt more curiosity than horror.
A rhythmic clanging rang out over the roar from the open thruster room. Penny kicked the door shut to hear better. It was footsteps. Someone running. She prepared her blade just as Mortimor jogged around the corner and came to a panting stop.
“You okay?” he asked. He pulled his blood-specked hood back and ran his fingers through his graying hair.
Penny nodded and lowered her sword. “I think this is the last—”
Before she could finish the sentence, Penny flew into the air and slammed into the rear bulkhead. Mortimor followed, his limbs flying out for balance. Gravity returned, and they both fell to the deck. Penny felt her weight lessen again, like the ship was dropping altitude, but the grav panels should’ve more than compensated for any maneuvering. She looked across at Mortimor, her hands splayed wide and her fingers digging into the grating on the floor.
“The cockpit!” Mortimor yelled.
Penny pushed herself to her feet. The whine of the thrusters in the next room suddenly lowered in pitch—and then the engines began screaming higher and harder than before. Something was wrong. She took off, churning up the meters back to the cockpit, her legs hammering away at the artificial gravity, her mind willing it to last.
The pounding of the approaching footsteps came faster than Anlyn could retreat. She stood, frozen in place, comprehending the noise but not understanding how it was possible. When the Bern rounded the corner, dressed in a suit of all-white, she collapsed in stark horror, her already fatigued legs turning to soup. Her brain boiled with confusion and fear. She scrambled back from the figure and tried to scream for Edison, but her voice wouldn’t heed her. In the back of her muddy mind, she finally matched up the banging sound she had heard with a ship locking to theirs. She imagined a squad of Bern troopers boarding their craft. She wondered what mistake she’d made to end their ruse.
We’re doomed, Anlyn thought. The figure approached, his eyes wide and his hands clenched together high over his head. Someone else ran up behind the Bern—some unknown race—also with his hands double-gripping an unseen device.
“What are you waiting on?” the alien in the back yelled.
In some fuzzy corner of Anlyn’s mind, she realized he had yelled it in English. This alien, also in all white, tried to get around the Bern, pushing him to the side.
“It’s a Drenard, man!” The Bern held the alien back and looked toward Anlyn. “Maybe she’s like a sex slave or something.”
“Sex slave? You stay away!” Anlyn yelled. She kicked her feet at the decking in an attempt to scramble toward the cockpit.
“Stop moving,” the Bern said. He leveled some sort of object at her.
“Wait!” The unknown alien reached for the Bern ahead of him. “She speaks English?”
Another Bern ran up behind the other two, his uniform identical.
“What the hell is going on here?” he asked. He spotted Anlyn. “What the flank?” He spoke some Bern to her while he reached for something on his belt.
“She speaks English,” the other Bern said over his shoulder. He looked again to Anlyn, his eyes narrowed warily as he stepped forward. “Where’s the rest of your crew?” he asked her.
“Screw this diplomacy,” the other Bern said. “We need to secure the cockpit!”
All three figures moved closer—and then the faces of the two Bern turned as white as their suits. Their eyes bulged as they gaped high over Anlyn’s head.
“Desist!” Edison roared from behind her. He followed with something equally terse and forceful in Bern.
Anlyn turned to see her fiancé reared up, the fur along his arms waving as if in a stiff breeze. She scrambled away from the three figures and tried to get to the other side of Edison, eager to put his imposing bulk between herself and this strange threat that had invaded their ship.
Penny sprinted toward the cockpit, fearful of the mechanical failure that had lifted her and Mortimor off their feet before slamming them to the deck. When she reached the ship’s cargo bay, she noticed a bright light flooding down the corridor from the cockpit: It was the telltale flash of hyperspace’s unshielded and blinding photons.
Penny pulled her goggles out of her collar and forced them in place with one hand. She heard the drone of a steady wind and felt the air in the ship grew colder as she got closer. She stepped over two dead Bern, their guts spilled and dripping through the deck grating. The ship’s grav panels lurched again, sending her sideways into another bulkhead. Penny bounced off and staggered forward, calling for Jym, their group’s pilot. A flurry of snow swirled around her, melting in the air.
“Up here!” Jym yelled. Penny ducked into the cockpit and saw the Pheron pilot peering back from one of the flightseats. Beyond him, the ship’s canopy had been blown wide open, letting in the snow and light. The fur on Jym’s face whipped around in the breeze, but even that, coupled with his black goggles, couldn’t hide all the alien’s panic.
Penny ran toward the nav seat to help with the flight controls, then saw the spot was already occupied. A beheaded Bern, his arms still twitching, sat behind a collection of smashed instrument panels.
“What happened?” Penny asked. She attempted to pull the body out of the seat, but it must’ve weighed a ton.
“No flankin clue!” Jym yelled. “And that thing ain’t flesh.” He let go of the controls and waved a hand at the Bern. “Took its head off from behind, and the flanker went ballistic, smashing the dash and the canopy. I think the grav systems are toast. I’m not gonna be able to keep us airborne!”
Penny peered through the hole in the canopy, past the snow billowing in to dust the controls and ice everything over. Beyond the craggy hole lay the endless white of hyperspace and the flurries she hated so much. Looking down at the beheaded Bern, she didn’t see any organs inside the neck, just the sheen of metal. It made her feel nauseous, looking at it. She pulled out her sword and gritted her teeth. Carefully, using slow motions, she carved the mechanical Bern and his chair in half, right down the middle. Another clean sweep sideways—careful as the ship lurched again—and she had pieces small enough to carry out of the cockpit. Again, no blood and hardly any oil or grease.