Chapter Forty-Three
Knowing the remaining Kulsians were pinned in place, Harry worked his way up the final corridor, coached by Rodriguez, forced to crawl along the notional ceiling. Ahead, he could see the bridge hatch. The coaming that surrounded the aperture was deeper, and the hatch itself partially open, so Harry could see the hatch was thicker as well. Emergency lanterns lit the surface of the door, giving it a sickly yellowish cast. He could make out the chip reader that should’ve locked the door. He could also see why the door remained open.
The bottom half of a Terran EVA suit projected from the opening, bent at the waist and stuck midway up the door. It was quite still. The legs dangled grotesquely toward the ceiling. A small amount of blood was dripping along the jamb.
“He dove through the door as they were closing it, boss,” Rodriguez said, only the slightest catch in voice betraying any emotion. “He knew if they got it closed, we might not get it open. The guy inside sprayed him. I was on his heels and caught a few. Pham went straight away. But he’s the reason the door’s still open. They can’t push him out without giving me—us—a shot.”
Harry breathed. He packaged his emotions and evaluated the scene. Anyone trying to force the door would face at least one of those little needler things. Getting the frame charge off Grave de Peralto’s body and blowing the door would startle the occupants, but it would also send high speed molten copper into a control room that Harry needed intact.
He very carefully made his way to Rodriguez’s side. The sergeant had his gas gun trained on the hatch, using a man-thick bundle of cabling and pipes as cover.
“What now, boss?” he asked, the voice behind the question strained and soft.
Harry turned his helmet light onto Rodriguez’s face. The man was gray and sweating. Shock.
When in doubt, talk the bastards out.
“You, in there!” Harry called as loudly as he could, relying on his suit speakers to carry his Ktoran through the partially open hatch. “Let’s talk.”
“Who are you?” an unseen man yelled back. “Show yourself!”
“Maybe after I know you won’t shoot as soon as you see me,” Harry answered, staying right where he was. He tried to spot motion in the gaps above and below Pham. No: you have to think of it as “the body”—nothing more. “You can’t close the door, and I don’t want to use explosives to open it. Maybe ease it open a little more so we can look at each other and talk.”
There was a prolonged delay, during which Harry’s speakers picked up shuffling and gasping. A man moved into view. Harry squinted. It looked more like two men, and one wore a suit of a familiar color.
Harry eeled forward, never leaving more than a bit of his body exposed in the line of fire.
“All right, I moved up,” Harry announced. “My teammate has a weapon in case you do more than talk, and if we can’t resolve this amicably, I’ve ordered him to simply blow your hatch off.”
“If you attempt to force the door, he’s dead!” the voice announced.
Dead? He’s already dead.
The door opened to twice the previous amount, and Pham’s suit, tugged by the slight centrifugal gravity, slid to the deck.
Everyone paused for a moment.
There were two figures, all right.
One was the speaker, a lean, fair-haired man of middle age, obviously Kulsian by the red coveralls and likely an officer, judging from the shoulder insignia. But Harry couldn’t see much more of him, because bowed backward, helmetless, hands behind his back and an enemy’s needle gun screwed into his ear, was Korelon. Dried blood crusted under his nose and across swollen lips. One leg hung at an unnatural angle, and a gash in the suit bled scarlet. “Hi, Major,” Harry said after a minute. “Wondered where you got to.”
“Harr—” Korelon began to reply, but was choked to silence by a thin, almost transparent filament around his neck, biting deeply into the flesh. The free end disappeared behind Korelon’s back, presumably in the Kulsian’s fist.
“No, you don’t get to speak, dog,” the Kulsian growled. The officer’s accent had an odd burr, unlike the clipped speech of the SpinDogs and RockHounds. He looked keenly at Harry, then at the EVA suit holding the hatch open and back to Harry. “This is your servitor? More filth, like the rest of the garbage you brought to my ship?”
“If you choke him, the major really can’t participate in our little palaver, can he?” Harry said, enunciating carefully. “Let’s show a little good faith. You stop choking him, and I’ll withdraw the body of my friend.”
Korelon’s face was purpling.
“And if I close the door and kill this one at my leisure?” the officer sneered, tugging slightly at the line, causing Korelon to bow even further backward.
“By all means, kill the only thing stopping me from blowing the hatch and everyone behind it into space.” Harry replied, not flexing his fists. “For that matter, I also control the power plant, and I can destroy this ship at my leisure. Let’s start small. I move the body. You stop choking him.”
The man eased the line enough that Korelon inhaled, but so forcefully his breath whistled. Then the Kulsian double-checked he was covered by his hostage and cracked the hatch open further, giving Harry the most unobstructed view so far.
“Before you approach, take your helmet off!”
“Why?” Harry asked. “You have the gun.”
“Because then your team cannot evacuate the air on the ship,” the Kulsian pointed out angrily, his tone suggesting Harry was mentally deficient for not understanding at once. “Not without dooming you both.”
Korelon shook his head microscopically.
Harry pretended not to notice. Moving slowly, he undogged his helmet and let it slowly fall to the deck.
“And your weapons, slowly.”
“Sir…” From behind him, Harry heard the drawn out, cautionary syllable from Rodriguez. “This is a bad idea.”
Harry kept a razor-keen focus on the Kulsian. He unclasped and lowered his equipment belt, bearing his holstered pistol and grappler to the deck, bending his knees to crouch slightly as he lowered the belt. He unbuckled the straps for his punch and let it slide downward, too, maintaining a cringing sort of posture.
“Now, I’m going to get the body of my friend,” Harry said, holding his hands up, praying the Kulsian wouldn’t note the small black rectangle clipped to Harry’s EVA gauntlet. “All right?”
“Get that trash off my bridge, servitor!” the Kulsian said, pushing his pistol ever more firmly into Korelon’s ear. “Make even a single motion I don’t like, and I empty your master’s skull.”
Harry froze.
A familiar heat forged its way through Harry’s otherwise well-controlled battle awareness, awakened by this fucker who casually dismissed Harry’s dead brother as no more than trash. Incandescent anger, the deep rage that had always been there to use and be used, howled to be loosed.
And stilled, like a mirrored pool, because, as the frisson of understanding finally penetrated his thick SEAL skull, Harry understood. The man didn’t merely think Korelon was his teammate. He believed Korelon was his insurance policy, that Harry wouldn’t—in fact, couldn’t—risk killing his own commanding officer.
Show no fear, show no confidence, be the fucking expressionless Sphinx. Give your opponent nothing. These are the highest possible stakes.
Harry reverted to his poker face.
Slowly, he pulled Pham’s boots toward him, carefully not looking inside the helmet. He rotated the suit and gave it a little shove, sending it on a sloping trajectory behind him. As he did so, he took a step and a half closer to the door, which now opened fully to frame both his opponent and the hostage.
Immediate task complete, Harry held still, offering no threat. He kept his hands up as he regarded his opponent, taking in the arrogant expression, the haughty carriage, the golden eyes of a high-caste Ktoran exile.
He noted the tension in the man’s trigger finger.
“What Family are you?” the Kulsian asked, studying Harry in return. “From where on R’Bak?”
“Not R’Bak,” Harry replied evenly. “Harry Tapper, major, Consolidated Terran Republic.”
“Not from R’Bak?” the man asked, confused. He gave Korelon a shake. “What is this trick?”
“This man is from beyond this system, Kulsian,” Korelon slurred through battered lips. “His Republic is what the polity on Home has become. He is our legacy.”
“What?” the Kulsian officer asked incredulously and then began laughing. Harry thought for a moment the man was laughing at him but realized the Kulsian was gloating for Korelon’s benefit. “A rootstock aboriginal? Consigned to the Scatters? And you mean to challenge the might of Kulsis thus? You, a weakling who has devolved so far you use such detritus as servitors? Pathetic! Your blood will never prosper. You’ll not take this ship, nor hold this system. Indeed, we’ll scour your line, root and branch. The only pity is you won’t be alive to see the true meaning of dominance.”
Korelon began laughing as well, but he locked his eyes on Harry. A bit of blood floated free and began to slowly settle to the deck.
“Why do you laugh, contemptible spawn of a weakened tribe?” the Kulsian demanded, painfully shoving the pistol against his prisoner’s head.
“First, because your boasting doesn’t become a truly dominant man or Family,” Korelon said, still trading gazes with Harry, now only two steps away. “One does not become dominant by mere assertion. Dominance is a function of knowledge and strength, leading to assured power. You have neither. Next, I mock you because you denigrate a rootstock human as somehow less than us, when they represent not only our origin, but the source of all that Ktorans may ultimately become. But mostly, I laugh at you because you’ve never seen a Terran move. I have. And this one is particularly quick, fool.”
Harry didn’t have the gas gun he’d dropped obediently to the deck, or the punch block he’d unstrapped and likewise discarded. But he did have something.
He shifted his gaze from Korelon and looked at the Kulsian.
Looked deep into him.
Show no fear, show no confidence, be the fucking expressionless Sphinx. Give your opponent nothing.
But then, at last:
Fuck it. Let him see your pain. Introduce him to your rage. Show him death.
And Harry saw the sudden squint of suspicion, knew the moment his enemy saw the change in Harry’s eyes.
Too late, motherfucker.
One moment, Harry was relaxed, his hands shoulder height, very slightly crouched less than a double arm span distant from his target. Cringing, cowed, unarmed.
Then Harry’s hands blurred into motion, meeting in front of him, his right palm clapping to his left forearm, snatching the little holdout he’d clipped to the gauntlet cuff. His thighs bunched, straightened, launching him forward at the same time right hand flicked upward. He watched the Kulsian’s shock, could see the man’s trigger finger complete the first stroke, the puff-puff-puff of gas kicking from the muzzle as he tried to fan the stream of projectiles toward Harry.
The Kulsian officer’s absolutely perfect golden eyes widened into absolute panic as Harry’s arm reached nearly full extension, and the gravity knife took him under the point of the jaw, glittering edge and black blade burrowing deeply, severing the bundle of nerves and blood vessels before cutting into the target’s fibrous windpipe. The power of the strike drove the blade into the Kulsian’s spine, and all three men were launched off their feet against the backs of the piloting chairs.
Elapsed time for the Kulsian—eternity.