Ends, Means, Laws, chapter 22 (Patreon)

Joahan’s weapon was heavy in Tyce’s hands, but he held it at ready as they moved up the stairs. “It’s quiet down here. I’ll carry Joahan for a while.”

Plat grunted. “Fucking Imshee was down there. I’d rather you watch our six.”

Tyce didn’t argue, but he figured the Imshee had either escaped to a higher level or it was dead. Seconds after they’d reached the stair and the sphincter door closed, the whole wall had bulged outward. The only explanation for that was a sudden loss of pressure in the corridor. They struggled up the tall stairs, and Tyce cursed the aliens who built this death trap in ever more creative ways.

They stopped. Despite the low level hum the ship always produced, Tyce could hear Plat breathing heavily. He was wounded himself. “You’re more likely to run into enemy up there than I am. Let me carry Joahan.”

“The Imshee—”

“Was probably sucked out into space or died of asphyxiation, depending on how large that hull breech was. Maybe it died as its body was sucked into the hole and then dragged through.” That would be a fitting end. A Ribelian spiritual leader would warn him about karma and the danger of judging others, but right now Tyce felt pretty damn entitled to that opinion. 

When Plat went silent for a good minute, Tyce knew he’d won. “Shift him over to me,” he said. Even in the poor light, he could see Plat kneel down and put Joahan down against the wall. Tyce clipped the weapon he had taken from Joahan to his vest before he moved up. Plat moved several steps up since the stair was too narrow for two men to stand comfortably side by side. That was going to make carrying Joahan more difficult.

He was shifting Joahan onto his shoulder when Plat said, “When we got this mission, I was not expecting someone like you.”

“Meaning?” Tyce put his foot on the next step and grunted as he lifted them both up. This was going to be hell.

“Meaning I didn't think a traitor would care this much about one life,” Plat said.

“I became a traitor because I cared about life.”

Plat was conspicuously silent as he watched Tyce climb another stair. Tyce counted it as progress when Plat turned and headed upship. The stairs were so tall that within three or four steps Tyce’s thighs were burning, and he had a lot more respect for Plat’s training regimen. Plat paused several steps ahead of Tyce and went to one knee.

“Problem?” Tyce whispered

Plat held up a small square. “This is where I dropped the ready meal. This is our exit.” Plat scooted to the side so that when the door opened, he would have a little cover. 

“Good thinking to mark it,” Tyce said.

“I can't believe you didn't mark this the first time you found it.” Plat snorted.

“I wasn't interesting and interested in sneaking back into a cell.” Tyce carefully laid Joahan as close to the wall as possible. With no railing, the stairs were a menace for even conscious and healthy human beings. But if John started rolling around in pain, he would fall into the void for sure. However, Tyce couldn't let Plat cover the door by himself. Either rebelling Command troops or Imshee could be on the other side. For them to have any hope of survival, Plat needed Tyce's help. Tyce eased his way past John and settled on the opposite side of the door.

Plat took a deep breath. “Ready?”

“Yep.” Tyce’s stomach was in butterflies, but he couldn't tell if that was some ship emotion or his very own, very legitimate terror. Tyce tickled the door, and the sphincter released. Once the threat of imminent death passed, people were going to be laughing about the ship biology. Tyce could practically hear the anal jokes now.

The cell where Tyce had been imprisoned was empty. Plat remained wary as he moved forward, his weapon up. With each step Plat took, Tyce’s panic grew more intense. “Wait!”

“What?”

Tyce’s heart beat against his ribs. “There’s something on the other side of the door. Something’s wrong.”

“Is this another of those weird ship feelings?”

Plat’s disrespect annoyed Tyce to the point of illogic. “The information the ship is sending me helped us find the camera room. It saved us from the last Imshee. Don’t discount a source of information simply because you don’t understand it.”

“Oh, I understand it,” Plat said in a knowing tone, “I just don’t trust it. And we needed to get back to the others if Joahan is going to have any chance of surviving. He needs those wounds sealed, and he needs blood.”

“I know it,” Tyce snapped. The weight of Joahan life pulled at him, but they couldn’t afford a tactical mistake right now. If they died, Joahan would lie in that spiral staircase until he died alone and his soul wandered off to another life. “I’m just saying we can’t rush into this.”

“Says the man who boarded a powerful alien ship with a dozen broken down shuttles.” Plat scoffed. “Besides, I don’t rush into anything.” Plat raised his gun and moved forward again, but despite all of his confident words, he moved slowly. He pressed himself to the wall before triggering the door. Tyce raised his weapon. When the door slid open, it showed an empty corridor.

Plat looked over his shoulder and rolled his eyes. “Great Intel,” he said sarcastically. However, Tyce’s gut was churning. Plat kept his weapon up and eased around the edge of the door, and Tyce moved up to cover him. Plat had just started to pick up speed when the whine of an Imshee weapon warned him a half second before an oversize claw appeared around the curve of the corridor.

“Fall back!” Plat yelled. He scrambled to get back into Tyce’s old cell. But if Joahan didn’t get help soon, he wouldn’t survive. They couldn’t afford to head back into the stairs and wander around a city -sized ship trying to find another pathway into the engineering level. And they couldn’t afford to get trapped in one room, not when Joahan needed help that neither of them knew how to provide.

Tyce started out into the hall. “Get behind the sphincter door with Joahan. I’ll draw it off.”

Tyce fired off a couple shots in the Imshee’s direction and took off running. Behind him, Plat shouted something, but Tyce kept running. The Imshee was between him and the balloon elevator that would take him up to the engineering level, so Tyce needed to find a set of stairs. They were far more common than the elevators, and hopefully he could find another way up to the level he wanted.

Behind him those oversized claws scrambled against the floor. This ship was definitely not made for them. Tyce slipped as he detoured around a bone-like support structure, his knee hitting the padded ground. It wasn’t ideal for humans either, but at least Tyce didn’t end up with cracked kneecaps from falling on steel plated decking.

“So!” Tyce shouted when the clacking of Imshee claws went quiet, “I guess you guys don’t board ships often. Either that or you really suck at your job.” Tyce assumed the creature couldn’t understand him, but if humans knew about Imshee, there was a chance the Imshee had researched humans and their dominate languages. “Are you coming?”

Tyce peeked around the support structure, and found himself damn near nose to missing nose with an Imshee. The monster didn’t appear to have a head at all—only two huge bloodshot eyes set into dull black skin over what should be shoulders. The Imshee clicked, and a huge claw reached for him, but Tyce scrambled back before fleeing. He didn’t even consider close-quarters fighting, not with that sort of monster.

Behind him, a huge crash made the deck shiver. When Tyce glanced back, the creature was sprawled on the floor, one thick back leg shoved up into the air. Huh. Tyce hadn’t even shot it. They were definitely not graceful. However, those center legs were already reaching for a weapon. Tyce ran for his life. Because of the curve of the ship, he nearly ran past a stair before spotting it. 

Gasping for air, Tyce forced his legs to carry him up a level. He was either on the engineering level or one deck below, he wasn’t sure. He doubled back in the general direction of his old cell, hoping to find either a patrol or another set of stairs. He was roughly over the location of his old cell when he heard the whine of the alien guns again. They definitely did not board ships regularly or someone would have designed something quieter, or they would have done what the Dragon crew had and resorted to short swords—silent, deadly, less likely to cause hull breeches. Humans had relied on them for thousands of years for good reason.

Tyce put on a burst of speed. He hated leading the Imshee back toward John’s group, but at least they had significant firepower. Tyce and his one gun would not last long against one of these monsters. The passage curve grew a little sharper, and Tyce looked over his shoulder to make sure the Imshee was not in sight. It wasn’t. However, when Tyce turned back, he nearly ran into the ass end of another monster. The huge back legs were tucked up under the butt.

The creature started to turn, and with another Imshee behind him, Tyce took the only safe path he knew. He threw himself on the creature’s back and grabbed fistfuls of green hair.

The Imshee went wild. It launched itself straight up with its huge back legs, and Tyce was almost crushed as they hit the ceiling. However, he held on. 

“Hold your fire. Hold position!” Someone yelled. It sounded like John. Tyce wanted to look, but he concentrated on holding onto the chitinous body under him. When the Imshee landed, it huddled down and chittered madly. Its behavior reminded Tyce more of a frightened horse than an advanced species. “It’s trying to reach its weapon!” John called. That implied that it had dropped its weapon.

Tyce slid off the side of the Imshee and quickly scanned for the weapon. He didn’t see it, so he went with plan B and ran like hell. He heard something strike the floor hard, but he didn’t even glance back. John stood just behind the curve of the hall yelling, “Run, run.” Tyce didn’t even have the breath to call him an idiot because clearly Tyce was running. He skidded into the wall, and pushed off. The alien weapon gave a distinctive hiss and Tyce’s neck felt sunburned, but he didn’t care. He slid to a stop safely behind two soldiers with the biggest guns Tyce had ever seen.

John caught his arm. “Are you alright?”

Tyce sucked in oxygen and tried to hand wave John away. It was the best he could do without any air in his lungs. However, John pulled on Tyce’s shoulder and leaned around to check his neck. “You’re burned.”

“Not badly.”

John snorted. “You’re not going to say that in a couple of hours when it all blisters up.”

Tyce had suffered worse. He pushed John to one side and straightened up. “The Imshee?”

One of the soldiers guarding the hall answered. “It’s shaking.”

John finally stopped staring at Tyce in horror. He turned to the soldier and asked, “It’s what?”

The woman shrugged without lowering her weapon. “Sir, it’s shaking like a dog with water in his ears.”

John blew out a breath. “Aliens.” He spat the word out like it was profanity. Soldiers lined the walls, weapons up and ready for the assault, but then the soldier who was watching the Imshee said, “Sir, it’s retreating.”

“Why?” John sounded utterly confused.

“I assume because it didn’t want to be shot,” Tyce said. The look John gave him made it clear that was a stupid answer. “Did Plat and Joahan made it back safe?” Tyce braced himself for the worst.

“Yeah. That’s how we knew to look for you doing a suicide run.”

“I survived. How are they?” Tyce followed when John headed into the engineering room. The first thing he noticed was the number of Dragon crew who were scattered among the Command soldiers—tending wounds, hooked to live blood transfer equipment, unloading supplies. At least fifty crew had reached the upper levels, including Yoss. He watched like a cranky old floater who considered a certain patch of beach his only to find a bus full of kids tramping over his sand. Despite the extra people in the room, Tyce also noticed several missing. The dead had been removed and a couple of the barely surviving were gone as well. Tyce assumed they had died while he was gone. John’s expression was unreadable.

Now Joahan was laying in one of those spots. He had bandages everywhere and Rytae sat on a chair next to him, medical tubing coming out of her arm before it curled down, through a med filter and then into Joahan. At least he was alive. Tyce was surprised at how relieved he was to see Plat sitting on the edge of a box as a doctor poked him. They made eye contact, and Plat nodded.

“You idiot,” Ama greeted him as she strode across the room. “Plat told us how you were going to distract the Imshee. I sometimes wonder if you’re not tired of this life and looking to move on to the next.”

Tyce grinned at her. “If so, I must be disappointed because I keep ending up back here.” He held out his arms for a hug, but she punched him in the gut before embracing him. That was his Ama.

“It means we have some additional information,” John said. “One Imshee attacked you at the same time an Imshee attacked here, and just now, one Imshee was chasing you while another was keeping us pinned down. That gives us a crew of at least three.”

Tyce let go of Ama. “How does that help us?” Unless Tyce knew something about their fighting styles or internal politics, the number of individuals in a crew didn’t help much. After all, Command crews were three to four times larger than a typical colony crew, and yet the colony crews were far more dangerous because any mechanic who served on a ship knew how to pick up a wrench and beat a soldier to death with it.

Ama punched him in the arm. 

“Ow.”

“You two are the leaders of these crews. Go next door and decide what strategy you’re going to suggest and don’t come out until you can present a united front.” She caught Tyce’s arm and started dragging him toward the door.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” John said.

Plat stood and pushed the doctor to one side. “Sir, I agree. You two have to share intel and figure out how to lead. We won’t survive if we try fighting these guys separately.”

“Look at that, an unexpected burst of common sense,” Ama huffed. For a second Plat stiffened, clearly offended. Then Yoss spoke.

“She talks to all of us like we’re half-wit grandchildren she got stuck babysitting. Don’t take offense.”

Ama gave him a vicious look. “I do not.”

“You kinda do,” Tyce said. He quickly backed away as she turned her fury on him. “Which I respect because you are far closer to enlightenment than we are, but to be honest, you definitely do.” Instead of waiting to see how she might react, Tyce took the tactically sound choice and fled—to the room across the hall where she’d told him to go. 

John followed, and suddenly Tyce wondered if he could get someone to loan him one of the big guns so he could go Imshee fighting. That sounded so much safer than being alone in a room with John. 

“Come on,” John said as he walked to the next door and opened it.

After taking a deep breath and sending a prayer out to the universe, Tyce followed.