Aberrant

Chapter 23

Wailing alarms. Rattling ship panels. A windshield HUD scrolling warnings, its thick plas reinforced by an external heat shield. Sensor graphics at its centre, a near solid orange: a mass of collision alerts.

The Fire Witch burned through debris, the remains of vessels holding in low orbit.

Urgent voices in the clamour.

"Warp core pre-fire build initiated!" Konnu, yelling through coms static. "Ten seconds to maximum power."

A whooping alert, then Kaplan's crisp voice. "Dark Ray fast attack ship on our vector, seeking—" He cut off as the whoop became a blare. "Weapons lock-on! Light lance preparing to fire!"

A curse—Tras'. Then a punch of speed. A sickening roll—inertial dampers brutally tuned for pilot feedback. The sensation of weightlessness, then of being slammed downward—spine buckling.

The shriek of collision alarms—vessels and debris providing hazardous cover from laser fire.

Another burst of coms static. Konnu's breathless shout: "Fucking hit it! System overload in three, two—"

An explosion of force. Crushing agony. Buzzing noise and swirling light.

Then a tide of grey. Darkness rushing in...

Jinx jerked upright, her fist hard against her breastbone. Pressure. Pain. No air. She needed goddamn air.

Hauling in a lungful, she fought to get her bearings. Narrow bunks above and below her. Fuchsia zebra-print walls—faux fur. Hooks hung with chains and synth-leather straps. Her perspiration-slick body, clad only in a black bra and underpants. Panic faded and, with it, the recalled sensation of having her lungs all but collapse during the Fire Witch's rapid—dangerous—jump to warp.

"Fuck." She flopped onto her back and stared at the base of the bunk overhead. Just a dream—a memory. She was no longer on the Fire Witch's bridge, alarms screaming, her world pitching and diving. She was no longer waiting for a plasma torpedo or laser strike. She was in Konnu Phang's cabin, a converted, ex-brothel play pen. The one-metre-thirty by three-metre 'cell' Tras had confined her to for the better part of three days, ever since they'd blasted clear of Tirus 7.

Blasted away from everything she gave a damn about.

She covered her eyes with her arm, nausea clenching her gut. She should be grateful she was trapped in Konnu's migraine-pink room, not a Xykeree hive larder. But that was positive-thinking bullshit. How many people had died on Tirus 7 or orbiting it? Hundreds of ships had been waiting for landing clearance. Most had been mining vessels with limited crew, but there'd been a few passenger vessels.

Thousands of lives.

The memory of explosions on the Fire Witch's vid feeds and of engine signatures flickering out on the sensor displays shortened her breath. The Xykeree had used powerful lasers—light lances—to take out ship engines. There'd been chaos. Ships fleeing. Ships drifting with only minor thrusters to steer them. There'd been collisions, wayward weapon strikes...

She pressed her hands to her eyes, tried and failed to draw in a proper breath. The crews and passengers on the worst-hit ships might've been the lucky ones. What had happened after the aliens had stopped firing? What had happened to the people on the disabled ships? To the people on the ground?

A sea of disintegrating bodies. Soh dead. Dem dead, Lenton—

"Don't." She sat up and stared at the cabin's locked door, but recalled dreams continued to drown her sight. Her usual nightmare—screams and suffocation—had morphed into more personal terrors. She'd had days to picture, agonise over, every scenario and choice. Could she have warned people? Could she have done more to protect her friends? God, where were they now? Were they alive? Suffering?