Endurance: The Complete Series Read online

  They ran back down the hallway, retracing their steps until they again headed toward the hangar bay. “There’s no way Earth could hold off a fleet that size,” said Joyce breathlessly.

  “Good thing they’re not interested in us,” said Chris.

  “Not yet,” said Joyce. “Who knows when they’ll change their minds?”

  “We can’t let them know where our solar system is,” said Areva.

  Despite being out of breath, Chris snorted. “Obviously. That’s why we’re escaping, isn’t it?”

  They finally reached the hangar bay at the end of the corridor. Areva covered the door as the two scientists went through the hatch into the bay, then she followed them. They all ran toward the second Haxozin shuttle. No doubt the first one had already returned to the spider-people’s planet.

  “Can you turn the ship on?” she yelled to Chris as he reached the boarding ramp.

  Chris stopped and gave her an incredulous look. “I have no idea! Why do all of you command officers think that being a scientist means I know everything?”

  Joyce reached the ramp and slapped him on the back. “It’s okay. Between us, we probably do.”

  The two disappeared into the shuttle, and Areva trailed behind them, checking over her shoulder every few seconds for pursuit. She took up a position near the door and kept an eye on the hatch to the rest of the mothership. She could hear the Fishes arguing somewhere in the forward section of the shuttle. “Well?” she called. “Can we fly out of here?”

  The argument broke for a second as Joyce yelled, “Working on it!” Then the two resumed chattering.

  A few seconds later, Chris’s voice rose to audible. “The People of Tone have been working on their captured shuttle for over a month, and they don’t even know how to fly it! How are we supposed to do this in the space of ten minutes?”

  A humanoid form appeared in the hatch to the hangar bay—an armored Haxozin soldier, leaning in to take a look around. Areva froze. Move along, she thought. Move along. Nothing to see here.

  For a moment she thought luck might favor them. The soldier took a few steps into the hangar and then turned around to head back toward the hall.

  Chris chose that moment to shout a particularly loud expletive.

  The soldier whirled and raised his bazooka, looking straight toward the shuttle.

  Unfortunately for him, he looked toward the bridge, not the ramp. Areva fired once and felled him.

  Another soldier poked his head through the hatch. When he saw his comrade collapse, he yelled something and turned to run. Areva aimed, but her shot missed and hit the side of the hatch. The soldier disappeared from sight. She had one guess about where he was going.

  “You don’t have ten minutes!” she yelled to the Fishes.

  Chris swore again. “Best day ever!”

  Areva heard shouts as the Haxozin approached the hangar. If she assumed there really were only twenty-five soldiers aboard the ship, and subtracted the three her team already eliminated and the two who’d returned to the planet, that left a score of fighters bearing down on their position. Way too many to take by herself.

  “Time?” she called, hoping Chris had deciphered the shuttle’s controls.

  “A month or two!” he yelled back. “This is alien technology, Lieutenant. I can’t just interface with it and figure out how it works!”

  The first Haxozin soldier appeared in the hatch. Areva fired, and while her shot missed, it convinced him to duck back to the side. She could keep them pinned down that way for a few minutes, but then what? Two more soldiers appeared in the opening, and while she sent one scurrying back, the other dove through and took up a position behind some cargo containers.

  The two Fishes appeared in the shuttle’s hallway and crouched near Areva, who continued to fire at the hatch. She’d need to reload in a couple more shots. Fortunately, the Haxozin were keeping their heads down, which meant they weren’t looking at her and she could shoot without compunction. Unfortunately, that wasn’t helping. They were too quick to kill.

  Joyce stared out at the fray. “Are we going to die?”

  Areva fired again. “We can’t let them recapture us.”

  “I guess that’s a yes.”

  Chris blew out a breath. “Well, that stinks.”

  “You’re taking this awfully calmly,” said Joyce, glancing at her husband. “Weren’t you the one freaking out about cannibalism earlier?”

  “This is just an energy blast to the chest. That was being eaten, possibly alive. Big, big difference.”

  Areva fired her last bullet and held her pistol out toward Chris. “Give me your gun and reload this one.” During the space between shots, another pair of Haxozin came through the hatch and took up cover closer to the shuttle.

  Chris handed her his service weapon. “Don’t you want the bazooka rifle?”

  “I’m more accurate with a p-gun.”

  “Oh.” Chris reloaded the second gun. “How many have you taken out?”

  She took aim with the new gun and fired. “One.”

  He made a choking sound. “Then what’s less accurate?”

  “It’s not my fault. They’re keeping covered, and their armor is too thick.” She fired again, and her bullet grazed her target’s faceplate. “Two-ish. They’ll overwhelm us before long.”

  One of the soldiers behind a cargo container presented her with a perfect shot, but he was also staring right at her. Instead of firing, she ducked behind the wall to avoid his aim. By the time she looked out again, he had returned to hiding.

  Chris brandished the bazooka rifle and began firing with her. All of his shots went wild and only served to distract the aliens. Areva took down two more enemies, one dead and one wounded, but another five swarmed through the hatch.

  Will this ever end? she wondered.

  That’s up to you, another part of herself answered.

  She felt a weight settle on her heart. She’d been thinking about the current battle, but she realized the question applied more readily to her struggle between her self-imposed limitations and her job. Would it ever end? The answer really was up to her.

  Or at least it would be, if she survived the day. At the moment that looked unlikely. But even as she felt the futility of her internal debate settle in, she realized that she already knew the solution to it. She’d thought she could have both—her career and her conviction—but she couldn’t keep fooling herself. The struggle had to end. She needed to choose, and she knew which one had the higher priority. That choice carried some implications for her future, but at the moment it looked like she wouldn’t live to see them through.

  Bazooka rifles fired right and left, and Areva had to duck back more often than she could look out and shoot. It wouldn’t take long before the soldiers overwhelmed their position.

  Before she died, she felt she owed the Fishes an honest apology about her inaction in the corridor. “Chris, Joyce, I want to let you know that …”

  Her deathbed confession was interrupted when all the lights went out and the hangar plunged into darkness.

  Areva looked up, startled. “What just happened?”

  “Power loss?” said Chris. “Maybe somebody tripped a circuit breaker.”

  “Or severed one of the power conduits with stray fire,” said Joyce.

  Clanking and rumbling sounds came from the enormous pair of airlock doors at the external end of the hangar. Areva feared another Haxozin ship was about to enter and blast them to pieces. She crouched further behind the shuttle’s bulkhead and listened. The Haxozin soldiers shouted at each other, but she couldn’t tell if they knew what was going on or not.

  The internal door clanged to its open position, and a bit of starlight filtered in through the glass plate in the airlock’s external door. It illuminated vague outlines of the cargo containers and repair equipment providing cover for the Haxozin, but didn’t give enough visibility to see any of the actual enemies, nor the exact shape of the ship entering the bay.

>   Areva peered around her hiding place to get a better look. She assumed the new ship would come in slowly for its landing.

  It did not.

  Instead the ship’s running lights snapped on, illuminating the bay and giving her a clear view as a huge, white object with backswept wings careened into the hangar, landed with a thud right next to the Haxozin shuttle, and opened fire on the Haxozin soldiers.

  “It’s the Endurance!” shouted Chris. The ship’s two forward guns fired round upon round at the hiding enemies.

  Areva caught sight of the ship’s loading ramp lowering, and she waved the two scientists toward it. “Get aboard, while they’re pinned down!”

  The three ran down the ramp of the Haxozin shuttle, ducking to avoid any stray fire the Haxozin might unleash. They needn’t have bothered. The ship’s machine fire provided plenty of cover, and the darkness had disoriented the Haxozin too badly to regroup. They made it to the Endurance’s rear ramp without any trouble and entered the ship’s airlock. Areva triggered the ramp to close and then followed the Fishes into the ship.

  Viktor met her there. “Did they hurt you?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “No, we’re fine.”

  He grinned. “Did you hurt them?”

  “Kind of.” She couldn’t quite return the smile.

  “Good. We will leave now. The captain will want you on the bridge.”

  “Right.”

  The two left Chris and Joyce to hug each other and exclaim their good fortune—and no doubt start arguing about it a few minutes later—and headed to the front of the ship.

  Captain Withers nodded to Areva as she entered. “Welcome back, Lieutenant.”

  “Thanks,” she said. She assumed a spot near the back where she could keep out of sight. It felt good to hide again, to return to her natural state of being. The adrenaline of her ordeal began to wear off, and she suddenly felt exhausted.

  Viktor stood near her, since someone else currently manned the defensives station. She took advantage of his proximity and hid herself a little more behind his impressive size. “Viktor, we’re lightyears from the planet where we were captured. How did you get here?” she asked.

  He didn’t turn around to look at her as he answered, which she appreciated. “We anchored the Endurance to the bottom of their ship before they activated their gravity stick.”

  She blinked. “What?”

  “Never mind. We would have rescued you right after they returned to normal space, but the method Matthias used to anchor us took some time to undo. Also we did not think about how we would get into the hangar once we disabled their ship, and we had to send someone out in an EV suit to open the airlock manually.”

  Areva nodded at the explanation. “Thanks for coming for us.”

  “Of course.” He turned and met her eyes. “I would never leave you behind.”

  She smiled at the phrasing. Viktor was sweet, despite his outward appearance of antagonism. Her smile grew sad as she thought of the realization she’d reached in the hangar bay, when she thought she wasn’t going to survive.

  She watched through the forward viewports as the ship’s guns continued firing on the Haxozin. She also felt the engines kick in as the Endurance took off and hovered slightly above the hangar floor. Through the windows she saw the ship’s angle yaw to port, and they headed back toward the exit. The hangar’s external airlock door loomed ahead, sealed shut.

  With the power off, she had no idea how they planned to open the path without sending somebody outside. That might have worked to let them into the bay, but they didn’t have time to repeat the strategy now. “How are we getting out of the hangar?” she asked.

  Viktor grinned. “Easy.”

  In front of him, Captain Withers ordered, “Fire.”

  An enormous torpedo shot out of the Endurance’s forward launcher and sped straight into the airlock door. A second later, there was no airlock door.

  The Endurance zoomed out of the hangar and back into open space. Areva avoided looking at the scanners and external camera feeds. She didn’t want to see the Haxozin bodies flying out of the depressurizing bay.

  “Get us out of here,” ordered the captain.

  In the viewports, space began to spin as the D Drive activated and jumped the ship into four-dimensional space. Areva averted her eyes from the dizzying view and looked at the floor.

  A few seconds after that, the ship re-emerged into normal space.

  They were safe.

  * * *

  It took the ship’s computer about an hour to determine their exit point from D Drive and calculate the necessary travel plans to return them to Earth. Captain Withers used that time to debrief Areva, Chris, and Joyce and hold a staff meeting about what they’d discovered.

  “So they’re not actually interested in attacking us?” asked Matthias. “That’s great!”

  “Not yet,” said Chris. “They’re short-staffed, but once they get around to it, I think we can expect them to look for Earth.”

  “And when they do come, they’ll come in force,” said Joyce. “We saw the size of their fleet.”

  “Were they orbiting their homeworld?” asked Captain Withers. “That dead-looking planet?”

  Areva sat slouched in her seat so that her head just barely peeked above the table, but she knew she should answer this one. “It’s possible,” she said. “They were bringing us to see their Sovereign, whoever that is. It would make sense for him to be at their base of operations.”

  “Wonder what they did to turn it so lifeless,” the captain said.

  “Whether or not it is their base, it makes little difference,” said Viktor. “We cannot fight them.”

  “No, but we can’t just wait around for them to get ready for us, either,” said Withers. “Especially now that they know for sure that we’re out here.”

  “So what do we do?” asked Chris.

  Withers placed his palms on the conference table. “If Dispatch takes my advice, the same thing we’ve been doing. We get out there and explore. We look for allies and try to liberate some more of their worlds. We keep an eye out for the Haxozin home, assuming we haven’t already found it. And we keep Earth safe from them.”

  “Ooh,” said Matthias, “that’s like capture the flag!” When nobody agreed, he explained, “You know, we’re looking for their base, but trying to protect our own at the same time, and whichever team finds the other team’s base first wins, and …”

  “In any case,” Withers interrupted, “I don’t think we’ll have to worry about any reprimands for what happened here today. With our new intelligence, Dispatch will want all hands out there looking for possible ways to defend ourselves. They’ll be willing to overlook minor breaches of protocol.”

  “Yay!” said Matthias, which actually made the captain crack a smile.

  Areva did not smile, and she didn’t know if her breaches of protocol could be overlooked. Maybe Dispatch would ignore them, especially since Chris and Joyce seemed to think she’d overcome her neurosis about shooting.

  But she couldn’t ignore them.

  Viktor invited her to his berth for a drink after the meeting, and she accompanied him with anxiety in her heart. She’d made her decision, and she knew that as her closest friend, he should be the first to know. She also knew it would hurt him, but she had to do what was best for everybody.

  “To you,” said Viktor, raising his glass in a toast after he’d poured them both a shot of vodka. “Based on what the Fishes said, you are quite a hero.”

  He downed his drink, but Areva set hers quietly on the table. “Viktor, I have to tell you something.”

  Her serious tone made him sit down in his desk chair. She remained standing. “What is it, Areva?”

  She swallowed. “I couldn’t do it.”

  “Do what?”

  “What Chris Fish said, about taking out the guards who were escorting us out of the cell. I choked the first one out, but when it came time to shoot the second one … I c
ouldn’t do it. I couldn’t pull the trigger.”

  “Right,” said Viktor, “because you did not have time.”

  “I had plenty of time. I just couldn’t do it. I looked straight into his helmet’s faceplate, and I couldn’t bring myself to shoot him.”

  Viktor exhaled slowly. “That is understandable.”

  “But it’s not excusable!” Areva sank into a sitting position on the second chair. “If Chris hadn’t killed the guy, we would have all died.”

  “Areva, it is all right. You are still here.”

  “And what about the next time? Or the time after that? I’ve been through three firefights in the past three months, and every single time, someone nearly died because I couldn’t shoot an enemy in the face. I’m a liability, Viktor.”

  “That is not true!”

  She sighed. “Did I ever tell you why I wound up on the Endurance?”

  “Da. You were in spec ops, and when you could no longer kill the way they wanted, they transferred you here.”

  “That wasn’t completely true. They didn’t transfer me.” Areva took a deep breath. “I requested the move.”

  His eyebrows rose. “You asked to be placed here? On the ship where nobody wants to go?”

  “I wanted it. I thought that being in a remote assignment, with little to no action, I could live with my eccentricities and yet still feel like I was making a difference.” She looked at the floor. “And now our remote assignment has turned right back into the thick of things.”

  Viktor pulled his chair closer and took Areva’s hands. “You will adapt to what is happening now. You simply need to trust yourself.”

  She shook her head. “I’m fighting against myself, and it doesn’t make sense to keep doing that.”

  “Sometimes the most important things do not make sense. That does not mean we should give up.”

  Viktor spoke with an earnestness Areva had never heard from him before, and she looked up into his eyes in confusion. “What do you mean?”

  “You put limitations on how you will fire a weapon, and yet you are a UELE officer. From the outside, this makes little sense, but from the inside, we see that you have done a lot of good.” Viktor kept staring into Areva’s eyes as he spoke, and she grew uncomfortable with the intensity, but she couldn’t tear herself away as he continued. “You and I are very different, and yet our relationship is very deep. From the outside, this makes little sense, but from the inside …”