CHAPTER FOUR

Incandescent pain dragged Richard back to the world. His. Face. His face. On fire. Burning. He reached up and flattened his palm against his forehead, expecting a cruel tongue of flame to lick at his hand.

The touch sent torment radiating through his skull—but his hand was unhurt. He was not, uh, on fire.

All around him there was a terrible sound, the panicked ringing of a gong that just would not stop: dong-dong-dong-dong-dong, the sound echoing painfully in his skull.

Slowly, carefully, he opened his eyes. He was startled to find himself sitting in absolute darkness, a black so complete he could not see his hand millimeters from his face.

Am I blind?

He realized something else—he was wrapped in something, a kind of…shroud.

He swallowed hard, panic wringing terror out of his guts like a man might wring water out of a sopping wet towel. They buried me alive.

And then somehow, over the endless gonging and the trip hammer roar of his own heart, somehow he heard another sound. It was a solid, mechanical thunk, distant but real.

Switchgear, he thought. That was the sound of emergency switchgear closing.

With a kind of stuttering, flickering hum, light returned to Richard’s world and he realized he was not in a coffin after all, he was sitting in the cab of a truck.

The air bag.

The truck’s air bag had gone off. He was tangled up in the deflated bag.

Dong-dong-dong-dong-dong.

He grabbed the handle and shoved hard against the door. It did not budge. Something had smashed into the door, bending it out of true. It would not open.

He freed himself from the air bag and managed to work his way out the truck’s driver side window.

Dong-dong-dong-dong-dong.

What was that horrible racket? It meant something, but he could not remember what. Right now, he just wished someone would shut it off.

He drifted free of the truck and his jaw sagged open. He was surrounded on all sides by catastrophe. Much of the cargo had remained in place, but the items that had torn free of their restraints had wrought havoc. The air was filled with debris, millions of glittering nuts and bolts and washers, golden beads of diesel fuel, a dark mist of atomized gasoline, two-hundred-liter drums smashed flat like empty beer cans, a forest of splintered wood. An upside-down olive drab bulldozer bobbed in mid-air, tethered to the deck by a single surviving tie down and looking for all the world like a Spheroid child’s toy balloon.

Stravag! What could have done this?

Dong-dong-dong-dong-dong.

And then Richard suddenly knew what that sound was.

Collision alarm.

He realized a couple things at once. Like, it was standard procedure after a major casualty to put a quarter-gee of acceleration on to assist the damage control teams. And, when the Sharp Claw engaged her engines, all the floating debris was going to come raining down.

He glanced at the truck. The smart thing to do was to get back into the truck’s cab. It was strong enough to shield him against most of the material floating in the air. Any moment now, the Claw would detach from the Bear’s Den and put a burn on. The maneuver would be signaled by the cessation of the collision alarm, and anyone caught in the open was going to be subject to a very hard rain.

Then he realized something else. The warriors of his Trinary were trapped somewhere in this mess, many of them probably hurt.

(Corinne!)

He pushed off against the truck, throwing his body forward, but keeping low enough to the deck that he could grab the top of a crate or a box to move him forward, faster, faster.

Dong-dong-dong-dong-dong.

He looked up and what he saw wrung a gasp from him. “Freebirth,” he whispered, his mind reaching for the most profane word he knew. What he saw was a cloud of bodies floating aimlessly through space with the rest of the junk.

MechWarrior Ursula drifted gently toward him, her head bowed, shoulders rolled forward, her golden hair stained with a bright smear of scarlet.

The body of Star Commander Bjorn flew towards the overhead, a protruding bone distorting the flesh of the man’s left arm, the fracture tenting the skin. Bjorn’s eyes were wide and unseeing.

Star Colonel François Cote clung to the mast of a toppled forklift. His face was slack with shock and he was bleeding heavily from a cut that extended halfway across his bald pate, but he seemed to be alive.

There were others, too, so many others. The Trinary had been caught in the open when the disaster had struck, terrible force flinging them against bulkheads or cargo, smashing their bodies. Only Richard, sulking in the truck’s cab, had been protected.

There were so many of them he did not know where to begin.

He glanced up and, for a heartbeat, time seemed to just stop.

Corinne!

There she was! Just a little past the Circle of Equals, drifting slowly towards him, her body limp, her eyes closed, her head lolling to one side.

She was three, four meters up. If she had been healthy, if he had been awake, she could easily have survived a quarter-gee fall from that height, but she was neither. If she fell, it might very well kill her.

If she was not already dead.

Stravag! How much time did he have?

Dong-dong-dong-dong-dong.

If he jumped for her, how would he get her down? Besides, a gentle leap might not get him to her before the DropShip’s main engines cut in. And a powerful leap would send them rocketing high into the overhead and win them a fatal twenty-meter fall once gravity returned.

He glanced up at the mezzanine and an idea flashed through his head. If only there is enough time…He pulled himself to a stop and lined himself up. Coiled his powerful legs beneath him.

Dong-dong-do—

And just like that, the incessant alarm was replaced by silence. He had waited too long. Any moment now, the DropShip would detach and then she would cut in her main engines. The smart thing to do was find cover.

Instead, he jumped.

His leap shot him straight at Corinne’s limp body, sailing towards her at a rising angle.

He caught her in his arms and she did not stir. For a moment he remembered holding her after the Trial, and then he was touching her neck, feeling the delicate flutter of her pulse in her carotid artery.

She was alive.

There was still a chance.

The momentum of his jump was carrying them towards the mezzanine. The deck would have emergency equipment and first-aid kits. It was above most of the floating debris. And most importantly, if Richard had timed his jump correctly, they would reach it before the DropShip’s mighty engines reasserted their control. They were almost there, only a few meters below the mezzanine’s deck level and still heading up…

He waited for the deep clang of the 11,550-ton DropShip slipping free of her docking collar, waited as he and Corinne sailed towards the safety of the mezzanine. He could see the waist-high railing and the bright yellow DC Locker, all of it drawing closer, closer.

They were…they were going to make it.

And then, right then, the deck plating below them began to shake, began to throb with the terrible power of the vessel’s massive engines coming to life.

He felt a hollowness in the pit of his stomach. They were maybe a meter above the deck railing, but as soon as those main engines took hold, they would yank them right out of the air. Why had the deck officer not detached the DropShip? The vessel could not possibly be engaging her main engines if she were still attached to Bear’s Den.

And then he felt the first tickle of acceleration, sudden force pulling him down. But down did not turn out to be in the direction he expected. He was flying, falling toward the mezzanine, as if the whole world had been tilted on its side.

It was not the DropShip’s engines that were coming to life.

It was the WarShip’s.

Sharp Claw sat in her docking collar, perpendicular to the WarShip’s axis of motion. If the Bear’s Den was engaging her mains, the resultant forces would turn everything aboard her four DropShips on its side.

Richard just had a moment to wonder what was going on, and then brutal acceleration jerked him forward, smashing he and Corinne right into the yellow DC locker. They hit with a loud crash, the impact punching the air out of Richard’s lungs.

He felt her grunt with the impact.

He drew in a shuddery breath and turned his head to the side, trying to get his bearings.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a flash of motion.

He sucked in a startled breath and then he was covering Corinne’s body with his.

A bruising rain of nuts and bolts punched into his back and pinged off the DC locker’s sheet-metal surface millimeters from Richard’s face. He saw something big slam into the mezzanine to his right, and suddenly he was showered with needle-sharp slivers of wood.

It was over in less than a minute.

Shaking and gasping for breath, he rose on his knees. All the debris that had been drifting through the air had now fallen against the exterior bulkhead. The DC locker below he and Corinne was the closest thing they had to firm footing, but it was not level. It sloped up and to one side. Bear’s Den must not be driving straight ahead, it was the only thing that explained the weird cant of the locker. But why would the WarShip’s deck officer choose to—

Richard felt icy fingers wrap around his heart. Of course. No sane deck officer would choose a crooked acceleration vector.

Stravag! The WarShip herself was damaged. Nothing else made sense.

He scooted down the face of the DC locker, carefully pulling Corinne’s limp body down with him. In this weird sideways world the mezzanine’s deck was a wall. But it was not a vertical wall. The WarShip’s off-cantor velocity vector had tilted everything fifteen or twenty degrees.

He peered through the slats of the railing, looking across when he should have been looking down. Like the mezzanine, the cargo hold’s deck was now a bulkhead. Material still clung to the new wall: pallets and crates and vehicles, any one of which would kill a man if it broke free and came crashing down. Normally, Richard would not have worried. The cargo techs knew how to secure their gear. But Sharp Claw had been subject to a titanic impulse. Terrible stresses had flowed through the ship’s decks and bulkheads, stretching bolts and tie downs, cracking welds, snapping lines, ripping tarps.

Overhead he heard the creak and rustle and moan of what might have once been a galleon from the days of sail. Except, what he really was hearing was the warning sounds of an avalanche readying itself to break free. For a moment he paused, staring up at all that barely restrained cargo.

Then he tore his eyes away from the problem he could not affect and focused on the problem he could.

He reached the place where the locker was anchored to the deck and climbed unsteadily to his feet, one foot braced against the mezzanine, one against the DC locker, this time searching out the new down.

The exterior bulkhead and its roll-up garage door was now the deck. Everything not still tied down had ended up wedged into the right-angle corner where the bulkhead and deck came together. The ship’s uneven acceleration made that corner into a trench that ran the full length of the ship’s exterior bulkhead. Richard’s gaze found an overturned jeep, smashed crates, armor plating spilled across the deck like scattered playing cards, and—

A body.

A twisted, broken body.

The debris was half-submerged in a shallow, brown-black soup made up of lube oil and diesel fuel and antifreeze and bleach and gasoline and Father knew what else.

The long, deep moan of tormented metal filled the space.

Richard turned, looking up.

His breath caught.

In this crazy, sideways world, what had once been the interior bulkhead was now the overhead. Anchored to the now-overhead were a quartet of ammunition racks. The storage devices were enclosed towers twenty meters high, where reserve ordnance was cradled in individual cells against sudden acceleration. But Richard had no idea just how much shock the stored ammunition could take before something bad happened. And judging by the way the nearest tower had twisted out from the bulkhead, a good number of its anchor bolts had sheared away.

The rack groaned again, and this time Richard saw it shift.

He looked from the rack to the debris half-immersed in the sludge below, and then back to the rack.

Hanging over their heads like the Sword of Damocles.

Time to go.

Richard knelt by Corinne’s still body, braced against the DC locker. He gently lifted her, laying her against the face of the gray transformer to the right of the locker. Then he jerked open the locker door.

It was a mess inside. Items that had been carefully ordered were all jumbled together. He began pulling material out and tossing it aside: a fire axe, water and food packets, a box of batteries—

There.

He paused when he found a store of Emergency Breathing Units, devices that were basically a mask and a small, portable oxygen tank. He was not sure what had happened, but the Sharp Claw was clearly crippled, and Bear’s Den was at least damaged. Survival might very well depend on having an emergency oxygen source.

Richard snapped the mask over his face, wincing as the thin plastic guard settled over his injured nose. Pulling the pin on the O₂ bottle, he squeezed the lever, took a couple deep breaths to make sure the device was working, and then ripped the mask off his face and placed it over Corinne’s.

Only when he saw the rise and fall of her chest did he find an EBU for himself.

He continued pulling things out of the locker and throwing them aside: a portable radio smashed into a million pieces, a stretcher that would never work in the DropShip’s weird sideways gravity, a body bag—

He started to throw the body bag away, and then stopped and thought better of it. For a moment he stared at the black plastic bag. Then he unzipped it part way and started tossing EBUs into it, along with a flare gun, flashlights, a laser cutting torch, a hardcopy map of the ship.

He found the ultimate piece of Clan emergency equipment, a slug thrower, and tucked the weapon into the waistband of his shorts.

Then he found a first-aid kit.

Richard lifted it out of the DC locker with trembling hands, popped open the plastic lid. It only took a moment to find what he was looking for.

A syringe.

The needle contained a mixture of stimulant and painkiller. The drug cocktail was dangerous to administer, especially if the recipient was in shock, as Corinne certainly had to be. He looked over at her, wishing there was a medical technician he could consult, wishing he did not have to do this.

But something truly terrible had just happened, and in Richard’s gut he knew he would not be able to carry Corinne out if she were unconscious.

He had to administer the drug.

He leaned over her body, tapping the inside of her arm to find a vein. And then, with one quick, decisive motion, he jabbed the needle into her flesh and depressed the plunger.

For the first time since he had woken to darkness, it occurred to him that if Corinne died here, now, he would win back the position that always should have been his. Of course, it was dishonorable to raise a hand against a rival outside a Circle of Equals. No. It would be more than dishonorable. It would be murder.

And yet, if she died now, in the midst of this disaster, no one would ever question it.

He swallowed.

Richard was surprised to find that he did not wish her to die, even though she stood between him and glory. More than anything, he wanted her to live. No matter what it cost.

He shook his head. He was soft. Perhaps…perhaps it was right that he had lost the Trial.

He reached down with his right hand and placed his palm on her chest, just above her bra. Beneath his hand he felt the steady beat of her heart, felt it start to accelerate as the stimulant took effect.

Her eyes fluttered open.

“Richer,” she whispered, slurring his name.

Those dark blue eyes marked his face.

“Something happened,” he said. “Something terrible. Maybe something hit the ship.”

“Trinary,” she whispered. “Help Trinary.”

Help Trinary.

He nodded. “Aff.” And then something tightened inside him as he looked down at her and saw how badly she was hurt. Beneath the clear plastic of the mask covering her mouth and nose she looked pale. Dark circles ringed her eyes. Her face was lined with pain and fatigue. She looks terrible. Richard tried to tell himself it was just a trick of the dim, jaundiced light.

But he knew that was not the truth of it.

A part of him he had not known existed made him say, “Aff, Star Captain.”

But his words were stolen away by the shriek of rended metal, punctuated by the gunshot sound of bolts failing one after the other. His head jerked up at the sound.

In time to see the ammunition rack hurtling downward.

For a heartbeat there was a pregnant silence as the tower just fell, plunging down through empty space.

Then it hit the exterior bulkhead.

A terrible crash echoed throughout the great space, followed by the groan of tortured metal, and the brutal snap of the rack breaking in two. The top half punched into the bulkhead and tumbled to a rest.

But the bottom half slammed into the deck and slid.

For half a second, Richard saw metal slide across metal, the rack sending up a shower of electric orange sparks.

Then a thunderous roar shook the cargo deck and the world was swallowed by inferno.