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I flex my hands around the breath mask I hold. I don’t remember how I kept us alive until the oxygen came back in. Volga says she woke up with me pressing the oxygen mask to her face. I must have taken it from one of the corpses. It must be the lack of oxygen or the vacuum slagging with my memory. Maybe that’s a side effect.
Whatever happened, I did it. Me.
I feel numb from the killing I just saw. Body trembling from adrenaline, from the boiling blood. I dry-heave, sending me into a spinning motion that I only stop by catching a locker.
My head is all a-jumble. My hands are not much better off. Several fingernails are missing at the root. The fingers of both hands are torn to the bone between the first and the second joints. My skin feels sunburnt.
“That was scary,” Volga says.
Words come out slowly. “Do you know what those—”
“They looked like…” Was she about to say Obsidian? She blinks. “Whatever they are, they must have hit the AGG first.”
It takes me a moment. “AGG?”
“Sorry. Artificial gravity generator. Fig just left us,” she says, breaking the fingers of the dead captain to loosen his grip on his rifle. How is she not fazed by this? “Did you see?”
“I saw.”
“She’s such a bastard.”
“Personally, I’m a mite more worried about the monsters.”
She looks at me over her shoulder. “If Ephraim taught me one thing, it is not to stick your nose in other people’s business. They are here for Julii. Not us.”
Finally managing to free the rifle, she does a series of technical motions followed by the clicking of the weapon and a whaaaamp sound as green lights flicker on its screen. She grins and pets it. She grimaces as she catches me watching her. “Guns like me. But I do not like the Julii. She has been cruel.” She looks at the walls. The blood boiled off in the vacuum has left brownish stains. “Time to go.”
“No shit.”
“So?” She wipes the blood from her eyes. “Where to?”
“You’re the gangster, you tell me.”
“Gangster, gangster, gangster. I am a—”
“Freelancer. Yeah, whatever. I’m neither, so…”
She tilts her head at me and her entire body begins to rotate. Stupid null G. “Yes. You would be a worthless judge of this situation. Sorry.” She hesitates. “I will lead.” She starts pushing her way toward the hall.
“Where are you going? Do you even have a plan?”
She catches herself on a bent locker. “This is not our war. We must find the hangar.”
“You can fly?”
“Sometimes.”
She pushes off down the hall without me. I glance back at the dead captain. His pistol is still in his holster. I take it and follow Volga, not at all reassured.
The ship is quiet as we float through the pulsing corridors. Sirens wail as a calm voice instructs all Sol Guards to meet at their rally points, and all support to report to their safe rooms. An enemy is aboard. Code Black, whatever that means.
More sounds of gunfire and close-quarters combat echo down hallways the farther we go. Bodies of men in robotic armor strew the floor. Few if any are burned. Most were victims of spears and axes. The monsters didn’t seem to bring a single gun aboard, but with the way they moved in the zero G, I don’t think they need any.
I can’t shake the feeling more will appear from the shadows.
Or from around the corner.
My heart won’t stop throbbing.
