“Right,” Clarissa said, and turned to see the enemy with her own eyes. The brightness of the welding torch forced her helmet to dim, protecting her eyes. It was like the three mechs stayed the same, and the stars all around them winked out. There was nothing left but the people who wanted to hurt her and Amos and the darkness.
“You ready?” Amos asked.
“Does it matter?”
“Not a lot. Let’s see what we can do before they notice.”
Clarissa crouched close to the hull, lifted her rifle, sighted down it. With the magnification on, she could see the human form cradled in the mech—arms, legs, head encased in a suit not so different from her own. She dropped the bright red dot of the sight on the helmet, put her finger on the trigger, and squeezed. The helmet jerked back, like it was startled, and the remaining two mechs turned and pointed yellow steel legs at them.
“Get moving!” Amos shouted as he jumped into the black sky. Clarissa turned off her mag boots and leaped after him, almost too late. A white line appeared on the hull where she’d been, the bullet gone off behind them before her suit could even warn her it was coming. The suit thrusters kicked on, driving her out and shifting her unpredictably as it avoided the string of bullets she couldn’t see except as lines in her HUD.
“Keep ’em busy, Peaches,” Amos said. “I’ll be right back.”
He shot off, angling forward and around the body of the Azure Dragon. Clarissa turned, letting the suit push her in the opposite direction, putting the horizon of the Rocinante between her and the mechs. Her heart sounded like a ticking in her ears; her body shook. The red dot found the welding mech, and she pulled the trigger, missing with the first round. The second struck, and the mech rocked a little under the unexpected thrust of escaping volatile gas. Her suit threw up an alert, and she thought it was malfunctioning until she looked at her leg and saw the blood there. She’d been shot. It was like a point of intellectual interest.
“Report!” Naomi was shouting. Clarissa meant to say something, but the mechs were scuttling across the Roci toward her, and it took all her attention to retreat and return fire.
“I got a boarding party back here, waiting to go,” Amos said.
> “How many?” Naomi barked.
“Five,” Amos said. And then, “Four now. Now three.”
The stars were coming back, but they didn’t seem as bright as before. The hull was glowing under the light of the sun, now almost directly overhead. The mechs crawled toward her faster, like something out of a nightmare. One scuttled past the barrel of a PDC and vanished.
“Got one,” Alex said, and Clarissa laughed. But her attention slipped. She’d pulled out too far from the hull. She had to get back into cover. She dove toward the Roci, but too fast. She hit with her feet, trying to roll with the impact the way she’d learned as a girl in her self-defense classes. Her sense of up and down swam, and for a moment she was falling into the stars.
“How you doing, Peaches?” Amos asked, but she was moving. Rushing backward away from the remaining mech. Their friend’s unexpected death by PDC had slowed them, made them more cautious. She went farther around the Roci, paused to line up a shot, and waited for the enemy to walk into it. It was hard. The sun was in her eyes now, and the helmet struggled to keep it from blinding her. Her leg ached, but it didn’t hurt. She wondered if that was normal. The mech lurched into view, and she fired, driving it back. How many rounds had she used? It was on the HUD someplace, but she couldn’t remember where. She fired again, and saw a small green six become a five. So. Five rounds left. She waited, a hunter in her blind. She could do this. The red dot jittered and shifted. She tried to bring it back in line. She could do this …
“Peaches!” Amos shouted. “Your six!”
Clarissa spun. The Azure Dragon loomed behind her, the sun high above. She’d run back so far, she’d looped. And arcing up over the enemy ship, two bright, moving shapes. The crew of the Azure Dragon wouldn’t be able to force their way onto the Rocinante, but they could have some small vengeance here. There was no place for her to take cover. She could only stand here and face the remnants of the boarding party descending toward her or charge into the guns of the remaining mech.
“Amos?” she said.
“Go to the airlock! Get back inside!”
She raised her gun, aimed at one of the incoming figures. When she fired, they shifted out of the bullet’s path. Her HUD reported fast-movers. It was time to go. She turned toward the drive cone. It seemed farther away than she expected. The suit thrusters kicked in, and she skimmed along, a meter above the hull like a bird flying just above the surface of a lake. Something exploded in her arm, spinning her. Her HUD told her what she already knew. Another wound. The suit was already squeezing at her shoulder to hold as much blood in as it could. To her left, a flash of yellow. The mech, riding plumes of its own thrusters, and coming closer. She dropped her rifle, and it fell away behind her. With one arm, she couldn’t aim it anyway, and a little less mass meant a little more speed.
This was it. This was how she died. The idea was weirdly consoling. She’d end here, under billions of stars. In the unending, unshielded light of the sun, fighting for her friends. It felt bright, like a hero’s death. Not the cold fading away on a hard, gray cot in the prison infirmary she’d expected. How strange that this should feel like victory. Time seemed to slow, and she wondered if maybe she’d triggered her implants by mistake. That would be silly. Amping up her nervous system would do her exactly no good when all her speed came from the thruster’s nozzle. But no. It was only fear and the certainty that she was rushing to her death.
Naomi and Alex were shouting in her ears. Amos too. She couldn’t make sense of any of it. It occurred to her like a conclusion she was watching someone else make that Amos might feel bad when she was gone. She should have told him how grateful she was for every day he’d given her outside the hole. Her helmet alerted. She had to start braking or she’d overshoot the ship. She killed the thrusters and flipped, more from a sense of obligation than from any real hope of living. One of two boarders was spinning away sunward, arms and legs flailing and out of control. The other was above her with their back turned, facing a fast-moving body that had to be Amos. The mech flickered, drawing closer. When she started braking, it seemed to surge toward her, an illusion of relative velocity, but with enough truth to end her.
And then, inexplicably, the mech driver slumped against his harness. The mech arms waved, suddenly uncontrolled. One reached down, gouging the hull and sending the great yellow machine spinning away from the Rocinante and toward the stars. She watched, uncomprehending, until a hand grabbed her uninjured shoulder and an arm looped across her back. In the bright sunlight, the other suit’s helmet was opaque. She didn’t understand what had happened until she heard the voice over her radio.
“It’s all right,” Holden said. “I’ve got you.”
Amos woke her. His wide face and bald head seemed like a dream. But that was likely just the drugs playing with her perceptions.
The regrowth cocktail did strange things to her mind, even if the painkillers didn’t. Given the choice of feeling numb and stupid or alert and in pain, she chose pain. Wide elastic restraints held her to the bed of the medical bay. The autodoc fed her body what it needed, and only occasionally threw out errors, confused by the leakage from her after-market endocrine system. Her humerus was shattered, but growing back together. The first bullet had carved a groove ten centimeters long through the muscles of her thigh and shocked the bone, but didn’t break it.
“You okay, Peaches? I brought you some food, and I was just going to leave it for you, but you were … You looked …” He waved a hand.
“I’m fine,” she said. “I mean all shot up, but I’m fine.”
He sat on the side of her bed, and she realized they were under thrust. The smell of artificial peach cobbler was inviting and nauseating at the same time. She undid her restraints and sat up on her good elbow.
“Did we win?” she asked.