Ends, Means, Laws, chapter 17 (Patreon)

I'm sneaking away from grading to finish a chapter. I need a happy place.

John led them back toward the place where his soldiers had nearly gotten their asses handed to them. The fact that all those Command soldiers were losing to one alien inspired the sort of fear that Tyce preferred to push into a corner of his mind and repress. A sergeant brought his weapon up as they came around the curve of the corridor. “Plat, lower your weapon,” John ordered.

“Sir!” He didn’t lower the weapon, but he did give John an almost desperate look.

“I know.” John stopped near the sergeant. “But I’m ordering you to lower the weapon.” The sergeant slowly complied. He might not like John’s orders, but he wasn’t going to flout them.  “Come on,” John said. Yoss grunted and leaned against the wall. His body language screamed his unwillingness to walk into a room full of armed Command soldiers. Tyce glanced at Ama to see how she planned to handle him, but she followed John into the room behind the sergeant. 

Tyce refused to allow her to face Command alone, so he followed, leaving Yoss to guard their retreat. The second he entered the elongated room, he smelled blood. 

The doctor who had examined Tyce had been crouching on the floor between two injured soldiers, but now he stood and watched warily. He even clutched an instrument and stood with his feet braced as if he was about to fly into battle to defend his patients. It made Tyce’s heart ache that a good person like the doctor saw them as threats to helpless men and women.

And there were far too many injured. “Were there more aliens?” Tyce asked. Patients’ faces and hands were burned. Several had dried blood around their noses or mouths. One woman had a gory bandage covering an eye. And in the far corner, three perfectly still bodies lay in shadows.

“No.” John’s voice was flat. Cold. Tyce wondered if the others could hear the fear. Movement caught his eye, and he turned to see a familiar man bring up his weapon. He was the guard who had taken Tyce from the room of stink and slime to the cell.

“I know you would rather shoot us, but we have an alien enemy we need to focus on,” Tyce said.

John turned around. “Specialist Wiles, stand down.”

Wiles lowered his weapon, but he kept a firm grip on it. Tyce moved to place himself between Wiles and Ama.

Sergeant Plat spoke from his spot next to the door. “We would rather arrest you and take you to Earth to stand trial.”

“We still have Imshee to worry about,” John said, cutting off the entire conversation. He stepped between Plat and Tyce. “We’re the smallest of the three human groups on this ship. We need an alliance or we’re going to be the first wiped out by the Imshee.”

“But them?” Wiles looked at Tyce like he was a bug badly in need of being stepped on. “Sir,” he added as an afterthought. 

“Would you rather play nice with Robins and his group?” John demanded. That was a name Tyce knew. So the asshole who had tried shoving Tyce into the ship’s wiring had led a coup.

“I would rather all these idiots were still in my brig.”

“Then we work with the Ribelians and worry about the rest once the ship is secure.” John turned to the doctor. “We’re not safe here. Can we move the injured?”

A hint of a grimace twisted the doctor’s face as he looked around at the makeshift infirmary.  “Safely, no. But if we move slowly, we can minimize the danger. We’ll need three people per stretcher.” 

Tyce could count as well as the next person. Three soldiers were dead, five were down, and of those, two looked critical. That mean they needed fifteen to carry stretchers even if they left the dead behind, but there were fewer than twenty people in the room, and that included him and Ama. And Yoss who was still in the hall.

John turned to them. “We left another group to hold the mechanical room. The Imshee seem focused on taking that room, so we put a priority on holding it.”

“Then why were you out here?” Ama asked. 

John bristled. “We were trying to pin the enemy down,” he said.  “We can’t win by locking ourselves in a room when the enemy has more resources .”

“John,” Tyce said softly. John threw up his hands in disgust and then looked around the room. Tyce imagined the click when John realized the crew watched him. Immediately all the frustration—all emotion of any kind—vanished behind a brittle façade. 

“We need to get back to the mechanical room and regroup.” 

Ama frowned. Left to her own devices, she would probably pull out her lecture on emotions being healthy expressions of human experience. Some rare bit of common sense must have convinced her that Command soldiers wouldn’t appreciate her brand of assistance. She walked to the doorway where Sergeant Plat still stood guard. “Yoss, Tyce, take point so we can get back to this mechanical room,” she ordered. 

“Plat, go with them,” John ordered.

Plat’s jaw muscle bulged, but he didn’t protest the order. 

“I’ll take rear,” Ama offered.

“Hell, no,” Tyce blurted. She pressed her lips together and got a stubborn expression, but Tyce was used to ignoring her pissiness. “You can help with the stretchers.”

“I am perfectly capable of handling a weapon.” That was an understatement because she was the best gunner on the Dragon and one of the few who could challenge Yoss’s scores with handheld weapons, but she was not expendable, and anyone on point or rear guard would be in greatest danger. However, Tyce didn’t want to paint a target on her back by naming her as the captain of the Dragon.

“You’re not as young as you were,” Tyce said instead. Ama would make him pay for that remark later, but Tyce had to defend her by any means possible, and John had a protective streak, or at least he used to.

John nodded. “Harris, Rickles, you take rear guard. Ma’am, you can take center guard or help with stretchers.”

She glared at Tyce but didn’t argue as two Command soldiers passed Plat. Not willing to trust Yoss’s patience, Tyce hurried after them. If he was standing between Yoss and any soldiers, there was a reduced chance of Yoss opening fire. 

If Ama wanted to argue with John, she could, but Tyce trusted John’s chauvinistic streak to kick in. Hell, Tyce used to be the same. If someone got a few gray hairs, he started thinking of them as someone to protect. And then he’d met Harmond. Apparently a man could be a gray-haired grandfather and still be a sadistic, murdering rapist.

Once the positions were worked out, John got his people moving. Unlike the idiots who had guarded Tyce earlier, most of these soldiers seemed at least minimally competent, although several still seemed far too young to be on a ship. Even before Tyce had changed sides, Earth had been lowering the age requirements for new recruits, but there was one young woman who looked like she should be sitting in a cafeteria complaining about her Spanish teacher, not fighting aliens or rebels.

Yoss studied Command people with unvarnished hate. If anyone mentioned wives, he was definitely going to open fire, even if Tyce was still in the middle. The doctor came out with the most serious patients on litters, and Yoss demanded, “Can we go?” 

Plat looked back at John, definitely avoiding any eye contact with the Dragon crew. When John gave the nod, Plat headed down the corridor, his weapon at the ready. Yoss kept back ten or fifteen feet, but at least Plat wasn’t objecting to being used as bait. Tyce fell back ten feet behind Yoss, leaving him free to retreat if needed and providing a buffer between Yoss and the bulk of the Command crew. 

Tyce expected an attack at any time, but they moved through corridors and stairs in eerie silence. The only sound was the dull thud of boots against the cushioned floor and the occasional groan from an injured soldier. The sense of fear faded as they reached levels that started to look familiar. In most ships, the various parts looked the same, although officer territory had more space and was generally a little cleaner. The air scrubbers got changed more often and the recyclers didn’t carry the sour smell of food waste.

However, this ship broke those rules. The lower decks were not only narrower, but the facilities were different. The beds were a fraction of the size of the one bed he’d seen on this level. Below, water and protein sources were easily distinguished by arched bony structures and easily accessed piping. But on these upper levels, there were no alcoves and the walls were much more textured with designs that appeared almost tattooed on the skin of the ship.

No doubt an anthropologist could draw some insightful conclusions, but Tyce just thought it was weird. Why would aliens below decks require water sources and the ones above not? 

Plat held up a hand, gesturing from them to hold position. He then hurried out of sight behind the curve of the ship.

“Does he think we’ll follow his orders?” Yoss asked as he moved to follow.

Tyce caught his arm. “For now we work with them, not against them,” Tyce said, although he wasn’t any happier than Yoss. Maybe that signal had been because the sergeant had seen danger, and maybe he was off conspiring with Robins to steal the last of John’s soldiers. 

John came up from behind. “Trouble?” he asked.

“Your man,” Yoss said in a tone that made his feelings toward the sergeant offensively clear, “told us to wait here.”

John nodded. “We’re close to the mechanical room. He probably wanted to warn them that we’re coming in with allies and injured.”

Yoss turned to face John. “We’re not allies.”

John stared at Yoss for a second. “Unless we all want to end up dead, we are allies for now.”

“Yoss, enough,” Amali said as she joined them. “Why are we stopped?”

Tyce laid out the options. “Either Plat is making sure our new allies don’t accidentally shoot us or he’s conspiring with someone to make sure they do shoot. Take your pick.”

She gave him a small smile. “Your lack of enlightenment and lack of faith in the universe is a sign that your spiritual teacher has failed.”

“Yeah, no doubt you’d say something wise about how getting shot or not getting shot are the same in the grand scheme of the universe,” Tyce said. Yoss snorted. If there was one topic they could agree on, it was their mutual annoyance at some of Ama’s philosophical tendencies.

“I probably would,” she said mildly. “Sub-commander Burden, a number of your people suffer. Perhaps you should have a word with them.”

John glanced back. Only the doctor and three Command soldiers were visible before the corridor curved away, and one of those was unconscious on a litter. After looking at them for a few minutes, John sighed. “Perhaps I shouldn’t.”

Ama leaned closer. “People need to know their leaders hear them and see their suffering.” Tyce was fairly sure that was the summary of the whole war of the colonies.

“Most of these people don’t consider me a leader.” John kept his voice low. “I’m just the person who got left behind to babysit them while the real officers were in the forward ships.”

“You are the universe chose to lead them.”

John stared at her for several seconds before he turned and asked Tyce, “Is she always this annoying?”

Yoss answered with a very succinct “Yep.”

“Trust me, I’m barely tolerated, and after I put Robins in the brig, most of the crew abandoned their posts.” John glanced over toward Tyce. “I was fairly sure they were going to kill both of us and shove our bodies out an airlock. Assuming we could find one.” 

Plat returned before Tyce figured out what he was supposed to say. “The way is clear,” he said.

“I’ll take point,” John said, and then he strode past Yoss without glancing in his direction. Yoss practically twitched as a Command officer walked right past him. At least Tyce had the protection of only being a lieutenant. He’d been too damn young to accomplish much, but the pips on John’s collar were proof of his value, and a red flag wave waving in Yoss’s very bullish face.

Ama tried to follow, but Plat quickly cut her off so he was on his sub-commander’s six. Ama leaned closer to Tyce. “Perhaps he is not as without allies as he thinks.”

“Everyone likes him,” Tyce said. It was his superpower. Of course, in the past, John had never put his superpower up against a mutiny or an alien invasion. But no matter the circumstances, Tyce felt a little better being on the same side as John. He still thought they were going to die, but they had a better chance of taking a few enemy out with them. Maybe they could even kill enough to drive the Imshee away before any more Dragon crew got dragged into the fight. It was a small hope, but Tyce had learned that sometimes those sparks of faith were enough to keep him going.

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So, which is driving this more, the Imshee drama or the relationship drama? And which do you want to see resolved more or maybe first?