It’s going to ram us.
“Evac suits and pods!” I shout. Someone’s screaming for us to brace for impact. I rush to the side of the bridge where my command escape pod is built into the wall. It opens at my word. Tactus, Roque, and Victra sprint into its confines. I hold back, shouting at the Blues to hurry and unsync. For all their logic, they’ll die for their ships.
I range about the bridge, screaming at them to activate their escape hatch. The helmBlue does, pressing a button that causes a hole to dilate in the floor of the pit. One by one, they unsync and are sucked down the gravity tube into their escape pods.
“Theodora!” I shout, seeing her prying at a young Blue who still clutches his operations display with white-knuckled fear. “Get in the gorydamn pod!” She doesn’t listen. Neither does the Blue let go. I start toward them just as the proximity sensor lets loose one final warning blast.
All slows.
Bridge lights throb red.
I jump for Theodora, wrapping my arms around her.
And the destroyer hits my man-of-war at her midline.
Clutching Theodora to my chest, I’m thrown thirty meters across my bridge, slamming into a metal wall. White pain rips across my left arm along the seams of the mending break. I’m slapped with darkness. Lights dance there, first like stars, then as weaving lines of sand disturbed by wind.
Red light seeps through my eyelids. A gentle hand pulls at my clothing.
I open my eyes. I’m wrapped around a dented electrical column as the ship shudders, groaning like an ancient, dying beast sinking in the deep. The column trembles violently against my stomach as the destroyer finishes sheaving through our middle. Gutting us with slow cruelty.
Someone’s shouting my name. Sound fades back into being.
Lights bathe the bridge, alternating shades of murderous red. Warning sirens. The ship’s swan song. Theodora’s delicate old hands pull at me, like a bird pulling at a fallen statue. I’m bleeding from my forehead. My nose is broken. I wipe the stinging blood from my eyes and roll onto my back. A broken display sparks beside me. It has my blood on it. Did it fall on me? A bar lies beside it, and my eyes drift to Theodora. She pried it off. But she’s so small. Her hands cup my face.
“Get up. Dominus, if you want to live, you have to get up.” The old woman’s hands tremble from fear. “Please, get up.”
Groaning, I pull myself to my feet. My command escape pod is gone. In the collision, it must have launched. Either that or they left me behind. So too has the Blue escape pod jettisoned away. Th
e frightened Blue has become a stain on a bulkhead. Theodora can’t tear her eyes away from the sight. Tears make glassy her eyes.
“There’s another pod in my quarters,” I mutter. Then I see why Theodora winces. Not from fear, but pain. Her leg is shattered, splayed off to the side like a length of wet, cracked chalk. They don’t make Pinks to last this. “I won’t make it, dominus. Go, now.”
I bend to a knee and throw her over the shoulder of my good arm. She whimpers horribly as her leg shifts under her. I feel her teeth rattle. And I run. I run through the broken bridge toward the wound that is killing my ship, through the bridge level’s hallways into a scene of chaos. People swarm the main halls, abandoning their posts and functions as they race to escape pods and the troop carriers in the forward hangar. People who fought for me—electricians, janitors, soldiers, cooks, valets. They’ll never make it to safety. Many change course when they see me. They tumble forward, leaning against me, panicked and crazed in their mania to find safety. They pull at me, screaming, pleading. I push them off, losing a small part of my heart as each falls behind. I can’t save them. I can’t. An Orange grabs Theodora’s good leg and a Gray sergeant hits him in the forehead till he drops like a stone to the ground.
“Clear a path,” the thick Gray bellows. She whips her scorcher out of her tactical holster and shoots it into the air. Another Gray, remembering himself, or perhaps thinking I’m his ticket out of this deathtrap, joins her in parting the chaos. Soon two more carve a path at gunpoint.
With their help, I make it to my suite. The door hisses open at my DNA’s touch and we move through. The Grays back in after us, training their scorchers at the thirty desperate souls who ring the entrance. The door hisses as if to close, but an Obsidian pushes through the crowd and jams herself into the doorframe, preventing the door from closing. An Orange joins her. Then a low-ranking Blue. Without hesitation, the Gray sergeant shoots the Obsidian in the head. Her companions gun down the Blue and Orange and shove them off the doorframe so it can close. I tear my eyes away from the blood on the ground to lay Theodora on one of my couches.
“Dominus, how much room is there in the escape pod?” the Gray sergeant asks me as I head to the pod’s entry lock. Her hair is buzzed in military fashion. A tattoo on her tan neck peaks from under her collar. My hands fly over the control prism, entering the password with a series of hand motions.
“Four seats. You get two. Decide amongst yourselves.”
There’s six of us.
“Two?” the female sergeant asks coldly.
“But the Pink’s a slave!” one of the Grays hisses.
“Not worth shit,” says another.
“She’s my slave,” I growl. “Do as I say.”
“Slag that.” Then I feel the silence as much as hear it, and I know one of them has pulled a gun on me. I turn, slowly. The stocky old Gray is not a fool. He’s backed out of my reach. I’ve no armor, only my razor. I might be able to kill him. The others ask what the hell he thinks he’s doing.
“I’m a free man, dominus. I should get to go,” the Gray says, voice trembling, “I have a family. It is my right to go.” He looks to his fellows, bathed in the nasty red of the emergency lights. “She’s just a whore. A jumped-up whore.”
“Marcel, put the gun down,” says the dark-skinned corporal. His eyes are heavy for his friend. “Remember your vows. We’ll draw lots.”