Chapter 42: Against The Shroud Ray [III]

Elena’s breath hitched in her throat as the trembling in her knuckles stopped.

The cold proud brilliant blood of a master architect rushed back into her veins and washed out the shame and the fear, leaving nothing behind but the razor-sharp geometry of the shot.

’He trusts me,’ she thought, her chin lifting with fierce breathtaking defiance as she pressed her chest flat against the console. ’He gave me the gun. Now I give him the kill...’

She didn’t pull the trigger.

Outside, the Ray’s wings tightened with a sickening grinding lurch, and a fresh cascade of cracks spiderwebbed across the canopy.

SNAP... CRACK!

The hiss grew to a shriek, spraying white frost across the consoles!

Jin-Ah squeezed her eyes shut and braced for the glass to go.

"Elena..." Camila whimpered over the comms from the garden. "Elena, please..."

Elena didn’t blink.

She watched the glowing cobalt vents on the creature’s belly heave inward.

One...

The beast dragged its great lungs full of nothing, pulling the bioelectric charge deep into its core.

Two...

The six slits flared pure blinding white and spread wide open until the soft pulsing pink tissue of its main vascular chambers was laid bare to the void.

...Three.

"Die, you overgrown parasite," Elena whispered.

She slammed both firing studs flat into the console.

KA-THOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

The ventral launcher detonated with a concussive magnetic roar at seven kilometers per second that punched through the entire spine of the Wanderer-7 and threw everyone forward against their straps.

At thirty meters, there was no travel time and there was no curve either.

SHCK... THUD!

The barbed Graventhal tip slammed straight into the third vent on the left side of the Ray’s chest.

It punched through a full meter of fibrous cartilage and buried itself four meters deep into the creature’s main circulatory knot, and the instant the sensor in the spike felt the impact, the hydraulic expansion teeth blew open inside the monster’s flesh like iron hooks, locking the shaft into its chest bones for good.

SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEECH!

A silent concussive psychic death-shriek erupted from the Shroud Ray.

It skipped the vacuum completely, rode straight up the harpoon shaft into the hull and shattered every light bulb in the crew corridor, and Leo’s vision flashed blinding white static.

POP-POP-POP-POP-POP!

The beast thrashed.

In a frenzy of dying agony, the hundred-and-fifty-meter leviathan flared its wings wide, trying to hurl itself away from the iron tick that had just driven a stake through its heart!

WHIRRRRRRRRR... SNAP!

The eight-hundred-meter tether snapped taut with a terrifying ear-splitting metallic shriek.

...Thousands of tonnes of thrashing alien muscle fought the ship’s momentum and dragged the Wanderer-7 twenty meters sideways through the void.

Down in the winch housing, the magnetic stator screamed under a five-hundred-percent rotational shear.

CREAK... SPARK!

Two of the heavy bolts holding the winch to the keel sheared off like dry twigs and threw molten sparks across the launch bay, and the braided cable started slipping across the main guide roller, threatening to jump the track and slice the lower hull in half!

"The winch is tearing loose!" Elena screamed. "It’s going to rip out of the keel!"

Out on the frozen hull, five meters from the smoking housing, Chloe saw it.

Nobody gave her an order.

Her boots were already locked to the plates, her helmet was flashing red low-pressure warnings, and the dying beast’s lightning was crawling across her suit like blue vipers.

She saw the cable slipping and she saw the winch tearing out of the ship’s ribs.

’If the cable snaps, the beast gets away,’ her thoughts burned scarlet. ’If the beast gets away, it takes the harpoon... It takes our air... It takes Leo.’

Her eyes flashed a bit more in realization.

’...It takes LEO.’

"NO!"

Chloe dropped to her knees, threw both small hands forward and clamped her fingers straight around the vibrating superheated high-tension tether.

BZZZZZZZZZZZZT... SIZZLE!

The bioelectricity roaring through the superconductive cable burned straight through her thermal gloves and seared the skin of her palms into raw blistered meat.

The smell of her own cooking flesh filled her helmet but Chloe didn’t let go.

"Hehe..."

She started laughing instead like a kid on a rollercoaster.

"Hahaha! Ow! OW! Hahahahaha!"

Her green eyes disappeared completely, swallowed by two rings of blinding apocalyptic blood-red fire, and the S-Rank Blood Sovereign strength that had bent hyperalloy on Kestrel-9 detonated through her muscles like a warhead.

Every tendon in her slender arms stood out like steel cable beneath her torn suit.

Her teeth clamped together so hard that blood welled past her lips and painted the lower half of her face in crimson froth inside her faceplate... she had gone... insane?

"You," she hissed at the monster on the other end of the line, "are NOT... TAKING... HIM..."

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

She screamed, a raw ferocious inhuman battle cry that rang through the hull plates all the way up to the bridge, and threw her whole body backward.

She planted her boots in the Graventhal seam, locked her elbows and held the thrashing leviathan by the cable with her bare bleeding hands.

The braided tether bit into her palms and groaned under a thousand tonnes of dynamic tension but it didn’t snap.

A tiny eighteen-year-old girl held the apex predator of the sector pinned dead center against the belly of the ship, and she didn’t give it a single millimeter of slack...

"Hehe... hehehe... mine," she giggled through the blood. "He’s MINE..."

Up on the bridge, the harpoon lock indicator flashed solid brilliant green.

"The tether is holding!" Elena screamed, tears streaming down her face as she stared at the tension readouts. "...I don’t know how, but the winch is locked! The target is pinned! It’s flat against our belly!"

"Jin-Ah! EVERYTHING TO THE TURRET!" Leo roared with his palms sinking so deep into the cradles the crystal groaned.

"DUMPING THE BUS!" Jin-Ah screamed back, slamming the emergency master breaker with her forearm!

Every last volt on the Wanderer-7... the life support reserves, the fuel pumps, the gravity grid, the radio... was ripped away and funneled straight into the dorsal turret.

The lights died... The gravity died and everything died except the guns.

Down in the lower maintenance bay, Harper stood over the turret’s capacitor manifold with her face blackened by soot and her hair singed by electrical fire, jamming two cryogenic coolant canisters into the overheated rail housings with her bare hands as her bronze aura flared like a small sun around her arms, swallowing the violent magnetic chatter of the coils.

KSSSSSHHHHH!

"Rails are cold, Cap!" she screamed up the open companionway, hoarse and ragged. "SHOOT HIM! SHOOT HIM IN THE TEETH!"

Leo didn’t need to aim.

Through the cracked canopy and through the link, the Ray’s belly was thirty meters away, held tight against the hull by the cable in Chloe’s bleeding hands... The six vents were wide open, pulsing with terrified dying fire.

...Lock... Zero range...

’Got you.’

Leo pulled the trigger.

THUMP!

Eighteen kilometers per second.

The first twelve-kilo slug left the muzzle, crossed thirty meters in half a millisecond and slammed dead center into the second vent!

SPLAT... BOOM!

The soft cartilage of the beast’s chest burst like a water balloon hit with an anti-tank shell, and a five-meter geyser of boiling sapphire ichor and shattered blue crystal blasted out across the canopy in a sheet of steaming alien gore.

THUMP!

The second slug tore through the fourth vent and drilled straight into the creature’s bioelectric generator, detonating its internal capacitors in a blinding multi-megajoule flash of white light.

FWOOOOM!

THUMP!

The third severed its spinal cord at the base of its neck and blew out the top of its head in an eruption of black scales and pulped brain.

"DIE!" Leo roared. "JUST DIE!"

THUMP-THUMP!

...A final double tap.

Two slugs ripped through the last vents and tore the entire chest cavity open from collar to belly, shredding its organs into smoking mist that vented into the black like a blue nebula.

The Shroud Ray went rigid.

For two seconds every muscle in its massive wings seized in one last agonizing convulsion.

Then... the tension died.

The obsidian teeth slipped out of the Graventhal plates one by one.

The great black wings fell open and drifted limply away from the hull like the tattered folds of a ruined funeral shroud, and the corpse began to tumble slowly backward into the void, spinning lifelessly along vector Beta-9... a hollow dead shell of torn meat and shattered chitin.

...Silence.

The grinding against the hull stopped. The frost hissing from the cracked canopy slowed to a faint whisper as the pressure settled at seventy kilopascals.

The only sound left on the bridge was the ragged heaving breathing of people who had just crawled out of their own graves.

Leo sat motionless on the throne. His hands peeled slowly off the cradles, his fingers shaking so badly he couldn’t even lift them off the armrests.

On the floor of station three, Jin-Ah sat slumped against the base of her console with her hair wrecked, staring up at the cracked gore-splattered ceiling with wide unblinking eyes.

Elena rested her forehead against the harpoon controls, her shoulders shaking with silent sobs of pure exhaustion and her hands were still frozen in the shape of the firing studs.

And then...

"WE DID IT!"

Harper came barreling up the companionway like a maniac with her face black with grease and her uniform scorched, waving a smoking coolant can over her head like a trophy!

"WE KILLED IT! WE ACTUALLY KILLED THE BASTARD!"

She threw her arms around the nearest warm body, which happened to be Elena, and hauled her off her seat in a bone-crushing bear hug that knocked the last pins out of her hair.

"Unhand me, Bell, you are covering me in soot!" Elena tried to snap, but her voice cracked... and a wild breathless tearful laugh broke out of her, and she wrapped both arms around Harper’s neck and hugged her back with fierce trembling strength.

"Leo!" Camila came flying through the hatch with her hands green with sap and tears streaming down her smiling face. "The garden held! The glass held! We’re alive...!"

She threw herself onto the dais and wrapped her arms around his neck from behind, burying her wet face in his shoulder and sobbing with pure joy.

The airlock hissed and Chloe stumbled onto the bridge with her helmet off, her dark hair plastered to her neck and her hands wrapped in charred bloody rags.

Harper let go of Elena, scooped the tiny girl up and spun her around in a frantic cheering circle.

"You held the cable! You held that giant fish with your BARE HANDS, you crazy little monster! You legend!"

Chloe let out a tiny squeak and her blood-stained cheeks went radiant pink... but she didn’t fight it.

A wide dazzling smile broke across her face and she hugged Harper’s shoulders, laughing like silver bells.

Over Harper’s shoulder, her eyes found Leo’s and stayed there.

DING!

A glorious resonant chime rolled through the whole ship, and pillars of brilliant white-and-gold light rose out of the deck plates around the six women.

[CREW ASCENSION: APEX THREAT PARTICIPATION]

[Entity Defeated: Shroud Ray (Level 2 Apex Void Specimen)]

[Aoi Tachibana: Level 4 ? Level 5!]

[Jin-Ah Park: Level 4 ? Level 5!]

[Harper Bell: Level 3 ? Level 4!]

[Elena Sterling: Level 3 ? Level 4!]

[Chloe Ivanson: Level 3 ? Level 4!]

[Camila Morales: Level 3 ? Level 4!]

The light soaked into their skin, easing the burns on Chloe’s palms and clearing the smoke out of Harper’s lungs.

In front of Leo’s eyes, a smaller silver bracket appeared.

[Master Captain: Experience gained... Level 5... Progress toward Level 6 increased!]

[The Master Captain is advised to manage his expectations... His personal journey toward Level 6 remains thoroughly distant and computationally disappointing. However, the canopy did not shatter, sparing this unit the indignity of vacuum exposure... An acceptable outcome.]

Leo let out a loud ragged laugh and dropped his head back against the throne, letting Camila’s arms anchor him there.

To his right, Ms. Tachibana stood quietly beside the shattered astrogation table.

She hadn’t joined the screaming circle... She’d found her glasses on the floor, wiped the quartz dust off with her handkerchief and slid them back on.

She watched Harper spin Chloe around.

She watched Elena laughing and wiping grease off her cheek, Camila hugging Leo, Jin-Ah tapping her console with a soft crooked triumphant smile.

For thirty years she had lived in the cold polite halls of Kyoto, lecture halls and bowing colleagues and a quiet empty apartment... always the composed mentor who never let her students see her hands shake.

Now Earth was gone... The academy was ash.

They were impossibly far from home in a battered iron corvette with a cracked window, smelling of smoke and fried tomatoes and alien blood.

Leo’s eyes found hers through the crowd, with that same quiet protective warmth he always seemed to save for her.

A warm unfamiliar tear broke over her lashes and slid down her cheek, and a gentle smile curved her lips.

’This is different...’ she thought.

She folded her hands over her waist, her heart lighter and fuller than it had been in thirty years on Earth.

’This is nice.’