Despite the efforts of our stabilizers, we were only able to return to a normal trajectory after a much too long quarter of an hour.
“What a nightmare!” I exclaid, completely dazed. “You alright, dear?”
“Fuck no!” spat my strong partner, unstrapping her shoulders.
“My vision is blurry! Where are we?”
Five bangs suddenly echoed in the cockpit and brought back to reality. The copilot’s seat shattered. Ali had collapsed on the dashboard, on which was bubbling a ruddy liquid. As blood began to fade in the weightlessness, smoke was coming out of the foam backrest cover.
Soone had just shot my partner from the other side of the cabin.
“Who?” I yelled, turning around.
Nora, her face bleeding white cyber-cooler, stood at the top of the ladder. The five barrels of Marcus’s powerful Desert Eagle were still fuming. She was reloading the heavy gun with her left hand as her augnted one was cut in half.
“What the… Ali!” I exclaid before turning to my sapiens.
With a deep breath, my partner imdiately sat up, literally spitting her lungs out on the flashing dashboard.
“Damn it!” swore Nora before another of her shots dislocated the mainfra of the control computer.
Several audible and visual alerts told that there was critical damage overlapping, including a leak in the coolant tank. A short circuit even activated the next cycle of the Baltimore reactor.
“Hell, Nora! What’s going on?”
Neglecting her mortal wounds, my partner tore off her harness to turn to her sister. Blood beads were spilling from her black body, but that didn’t stop her from putting on her pink vest and grabbing her firearm. “Don’t move, sis’…” my associate grumbled between two harsh breaths. “I’m about to open up a can on you…”
“Ali! Sit still!”
My sapiens vomited blood but continued her walk.
“You’d better listen to your mate, Bambi…” Nora taunted her, pointing Marcus’s gun at her for the third ti while entering the cockpit.
“Only if you explain to what’s going through your cyber-head. You got so fucking microchips taking your over brain over or what?”
The sudden ignition of the monoturbine slamd against my seat and propelled Ali to the back of the cockpit, against the sliding door and her sister. The .50 caliber gun slipped from her fingers and disappeared into the dismantled equipnt.
Another shot rang out and weakened the armored windows. Fortunately, my partner managed to disarm Nora. Despite her wounds, a violent hand-to-hand fight ensued between the two Nikus.
I couldn’t contribute to this sibling fight, because the Kitty appeared to be in a very bad position. The control computer was no longer responding. Just before it gave up the ghost, it had locked onto improbably erroneous coordinates beyond the system’s confines. The Baltimore would send us through Planet Nine head first!
“Hell!” I swore, frying my pads on the short circuits that sparked across the dashboard, triggering an electric arc which stopped all auxiliary functions.
Behind , Nora had gained the upper hand and was hamring her attacker’s shoulders with the butt of her gun.
The Kitty was lost but not my partner. I had to act! As the air beca thin and the lights went out, leaving only the ergency white LEDs, I perceived Ali’s saber floating above my pilot chair. Ignoring the error reports piling up on the last remaining monochro monitor, I initiated the chanical deploynt of the ergency brake fins.
The shock had the desired effect. The crashing parts, including the radio and the katana stolen from Earth, rushed to the cabin’s porthole. Ali’s back caught so of them, but the sword impaled her sister in the abdon.
“Shit! You’re kidding …” the cyborg scread, slashing her plastic palms on the sharp pink steel. “You’re really pissing off!”
Ali silenced her with a hook before floating backwards. Breathing hard, her first reaction to my anxiety was a casual wink. “Don’t worry, Lee! Tis but a scratch!” She remained as white as snow. Her eyes were half-closed.
“You’re impossible!” I refrad her. “Altered geno or not, your wounds are extrely serious!”
“Take a chill pill… damn!” she answered by pushing back to face our opponent who had finally freed herself. “So, Nora… Crab-Face already on Sedna’s orbit. You—lurking in the rumbles ready to jump on us. Nice trap. But why?”
Her sister spit white glittering blood. “You wouldn’t get it…”
“She’s not talking about the Civil War and Lunar takeover!” I intervened.
“Yes. We ain’t give a flying fuck about that!” shouted my sapiens. “What we want to know is why? Why have you been conspiring with the sa lunatics who have turned half of our lives into hell? Since when are you a fucking bitch?”
If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringent.
The forr DIA agent slid against the closed hatch, her broken hands compressed against her bubbling gash.
“Weightlessness and severe wounds don’t mix, do they?” added Ali while floating towards the hold and displaying her own. Her lips were blue. She had to stop bragging.
“Ali….” I tried.
“Titan…” sighed Nora.
“I misheard,” Ali replied, sticking her face closer to the cyborg. “Speak louder when you die.”
“The Gods ca to on Titan when I called them for help.”
“Help?” I gasped. The system rebooted, releasing a blast of air.
“I never belonged to Titan,” Nora continued. “I belonged to Lunapolis.”
Ali’s sister winced as my partner pressed her stomach with her boot. “Have you forgotten what vat experints like us were designed for? Why did we run away with Félix?”
“I am not a at doll, you dolt!” Nora roared. “I never was!”
My sapiens sketched a backward movent as we exchanged a look.
“I am the Arch-Princess Sirona of the Awen tacaste,” Nora yelled, standing up. Pulling the saber from her artificial guts, she grunted as her skin seed to have fused again. Her enhanced body was already regenerating! “Twenty five years ago, when Koviràn ‘saved’ … I was a diplomatic hostage on the Oga’s flagship. Hidden among the filthy cattle because the operation aid at killing Hera and freeing turned into a bloodbath!”
“What?” Ali said.
“You heard that. Damocles was a hit ordered by the Awen against the Oga. And amid the chaos, I chose to flee… a poor decision.”
“I… but our father…” my partner stamred and took the words out of my mouth.
“Don’t worry. Félix wasn’t part of the original plan. Never was. He knew nothing about … Nothing until years later when my ‘brother’ Taranis sent his goons,” Nora continued. Spatting, she tore off the top of her suit. The katana still in her hand, she cleaned off the crust that had ford over her injury. Her golden iris and engravings shone brighter than before. “Even his friend the samurai couldn’t save him… poor idiot… the only thing he could do was give the final blow when our dear ‘dad’ begged for rcy!”
“Another victim of your cruelty!” I heard Ali scream.
“You slew him—not !” Nora went on. “Do you know that we worked together? My brother offered a place on the Moon again. But to punish from hiding all these years on Titan, he ordered to work with Raïda in the shadows. Hearing his remorse was such a burden… until you guys t, he thought the Moon killed you too. Poor fuck… At least you were more useful than him when you did so missions alongside … spying for the Awen… Yet I should have listened to my brother and lted your head right off like that jerk Kamirov!”
My sapiens rushed on Nora. The impact bent the access door to the cockpit and they sank into the hold from which a thick black smoke erged. Our recent confrontations around Sedna had severely damaged the Swallow. The oxygen replicator had been destroyed, and a fire had broken out in the life support module.
Worse still, the Blue tanks exploded. Outside, leaving a trail of azure drops like parting tears in its wake, the Kitty had re-established its course, hurtling towards the icy unknown with no way to stop it.
Despite the all-out disaster, the fight between the two sisters had resud in the small Baltimore’s chamber beneath the hold as the reactor was running critically low on coolant.
“Ali!” I shouted as I stuck my head through the hold’s hatch, overlooking them. “We have to figure out how to freeze the cycle or we’ll implode like a supernova!”
“I’m pretty busy right now!” my partner yelled at , out of breath.
She gave a kick to Nora who landed on the protective hull. Heated to white, the radiation shield burned the back of her skull before cracking dangerously.
“Too bad you’re not a Niku,” my sapiens grumbled. “It must hurt like hell!”
Nora wanted to counterattack by surprise, but only received another punch in the face and she hovered backwards. Ali caught her just before she stumbled towards the reactor spurting boiling fuel as the radiation soared.
“I was scared…” Nora sobbed. Red sparkling tears oozed from her eyelids. “I didn’t know what to do—my brother…”
“What?” Ali uttered.
“On the Moon—on that ship… on Titan…” her sister cried, gasping for air. “I have always been fucking scared. They’re monsters you know… the Moon… you have no idea…”
“No idea?” Filled with rage, my sapiens clutched the face of the Lunar goddess. “Fuck you, Nora…”
“Ali! Don’t!” I owed before taking cover.
There was the terrible sound of an electric shock followed by the most frightening screams I had ever heard. A shower of lightning bolts ca out of the hatch and bounced into the hold and the cockpit, pulverizing the last electronic equipnt that had miraculously reactivated itself. A great blue flash finally concluded the chaotic ballet of destruction.
A silence of death had seized the Kitty which seed strangely immobile. Against all expectations, there was even a weak gravity that brought the debris to the ground. I didn’t know where we had ended up. Because through the armored windows of the cockpit, no star shone anymore.
A terrible feeling of weariness suddenly ca over as I ca back to my senses. I heard Ali’s footsteps on the rungs. She was climbing back from the hatch. Irradiated and mortally wounded, my partner lay down on the bed below; without saying a word. Struggling to get on her side before rolling into a ball, she spilled our precious Betamax from our last evening with Yossef without paying attention.
“I’m coming…” I whispered without her being able to hear .
With her eyes closed, my sapiens was holding her left arm, burned to the elbow by the Baltimore’s electric arcs. Tears of sadness, not pain, falling onto our single white pillow, she made room for to nestle against her chest.
“We won’t have enough oxygen for a trip back to Sedna or any other known world,” I explained, resting my chin against her wet cheek.
She only answered with a kiss on the nose.
“And the engine is beyond repair.”
“Will it hurt?” she asked. Her voice was very weak.
“No more than putting your arm through a nuclear reactor.”
“I’m sorry,” she managed to enunciate.
“I’m not,” I admitted, hugging the little girl from Titan.
“Love you, furry ball.”
“I know.”
Facing the end, I couldn’t help myself but quoting The Empire Strikes Back. It would have been better to keep it quiet. Because even if I had been around the dark and cold cosmos for quite a long ti, the recent events almost made forget how pleasant the silence could be.
It was so easy to fall asleep there.
One last ti.
Reviews
All reviews (0)