Tobias Buckell - Ragamuffin

Pepper twitched. He wasn’t going to be trapped again for centuries more.

“Hey.” One of the Raga pulled a machine gun up and flicked the safety.

Pepper pushed over, and in the doorway floated one of the Azteca warriors, next to a Teotl like Metztli, tentacles wrapped around the doorjamb.

A bipedal Teotl floated behind them.

“There are one hundred and fifty-seven Azteca with us, five of us,” the new Teotl said.

“As I said,” Metztli announced from behind Pepper. “We want assurances.”

The Raga could take them. Recoilless rifles and more experience in zero gravity than the Azteca. Modern mongoose-men versus Azteca with rifles here in orbit.

But the Teotl might even that out. It would be bloody, Pepper decided.

Another dim explosion.

The alien craft was going to rip itself apart as they argued. Safeties clicked off all throughout the room.

The Azteca had stormed in and surrounded the conference room. The new Teotl shouted demands for written contracts and promises. The aliens’ world was falling apart, and so had John’s.

He’d been staying out of it, waiting to leave it all with his son’s body. Ready to run and let Pepper do his thing, be in his element.

For Pepper, John would wait to kill Metztli. He owed him that much.

The woman, Nashara, stiffened. “Incoming! Everyone,” she shouted, her voice amplified and booming from the mobile unit next to her. “Everyone grab something!”

The world exploded in debris around John. Thundering filled his whole world that screamed up and down his range of hearing until something popped and went silent. Hot white light filled the doorway and then faded away.

He drifted, watching silent screams until a large piece of rock smacked him in the head and he spun away from the wall, bleeding.

Nashara grabbed him using a mechanical claw on the mobile unit. It puffed its way through air to her dragging him with it.

“You okay?” Her lips didn’t move. “Your eardrums are blown.”

“I’m okay.” John looked around, dazed. “How am I hearing you?”

“I’m talking to you through the lamina.”

“Lamina?”John mouthed. “You mean data overlays?”

“Yes. I’m drilling straight in. I’ll let you listen in through the mobile unit if you want.”

He looked at her, impressed.

“Air’s getting low.” Nashara left him and grabbed Metztli from the middle of the air. “Can you fix the leaks?”

“Fix? Fix? The nest is falling apart,” the Teotl screamed.

Jerome’s body had floated free, eyes staring out at nothing. John gritted his teeth and turned. “Who the hell did this?”

Nashara looked over the mobile unit at him, face pulled into a grimace. Blood hung in the air in globules, leaking from scratches as people were flung into walls. “We’ve got Hongguo ships coming out of the upstream wormhole, looks like one of them snuck a missile or two through at us.”

John looked at the captains. “None of your ships caught that?”

“It won’t happen again,” one of them said. “We see how they jam it.”

John looked at Nashara, some of the things she’d been explaining to the grounation coming back through the haze. “And you saw it because you’re in the lamina, spreading out through other ships, wherever you can grab processing power, right?”

“I’ve taken over a Hongguo ship, the Wuxing Hao . That version of me picked up on the trick and passed back a warning.”

They had a ship of the enemy’s. “What are you doing with that ship?”

“Trying to run the Hongguo blockade. Warn the rest of humanity.” Nashara shrugged. “They deserve a chance to fight back as well.”

Fight back. Nashara looked frustrated sitting around waiting. They’d been talking about running for Nanagada. Cutting losses. Even Pepper had joined in, looking resigned to the idea but annoyed.

John looked around at bleeding Ragamuffins, still facing off against the Azteca despite the disruption.

Fuck running.

“Metztli tells us this ‘nest’ is unsalvageable.” John faced the alien. “You can try and force us around with the Azteca here and we rip each other apart and you become extinct. Or you can work with us and live.”

“You lie to us, you betray us,” Metztli said. “How can we trust you?”

“It cuts both ways,” Pepper said, before John could snap something else out. “You have to start somewhere. Besides, you and I both know you won’t make it out alive if you fire the first shot, and I’m pretty sure I will walk out of here alive no matter what choice you make.”

Metztli seemed to droop in the air. It waved a tentacle, and the other Teotl barked something out in Nahautl. The Azteca pointed their rifles away, many of them looking relieved.

“These Hongguo are coming through, but how are they going to close the wormhole?” John asked.

“A machine, the Gulong ,” Nashara told him.

“So we’ve lost the Teotl machine, we’re threatened by the Hongguo, we need to take the offensive and capture the Gulong and hold it to keep the Hongguo away. Then we can negotiate. Until then we’re going to be showing them our backs as we try to organize a fighting retreat? That is how people die, they’ll hunt us down and scatter us. No. I’m not interested in that. How many of these ships do they have?”

“Just the one.”

Pepper moved over to John and put a hand on his shoulder. “We go for the Hongguo? We hold that wormhole and that ship while Raga evacuate to Nanagada, and if we lose that position, we fall back to this wormhole.”

“We take control of this,” John said, looking at all the faces.

“A vote, now,” said one of the captains. “We go lose people trying to board the Gulong , but if we can hold it…” Nods spread around the gathering of captains.

The grounation was done.

A vote was called, and Pepper shook John in midair as the captains weighed in. John grabbed his forearm and held on tight to it. “I’m okay, Pepper.”

“We’ll get… the body in a pod.” Pepper looked to his side at it, then back to John. “Then we take control of this situation. And when it’s done, then we’ll grieve properly.”

Nashara joined the impromptu huddle. “I’m sorry for your loss,” she said to John.

“Thank you,” John muttered.

Nashara looked out at the gathering. “It may not come to a physical boarding. I may be able to infiltrate the Gulong . If it has lamina, I would like to take that ship.”

“Less casualties, and we have it as a weapon, I like that,” John said.

The vote finished, captains were sending messages back to their ships to prepare them to hold Azteca warriors and Teotl, and for others to start preparing plans for the attack.

Already simulations would be tested out, heads put together.

“John, Pepper.” Nashara grabbed both their arms. “You may want to stay on one of the larger ships, but you are welcome aboard the Toucan Too . We’re not armed, but we’re quick.”

John nodded. “Away from the Teotl and off here, yes, I’ll come. Pepper?”

“I think I’ll split us up and get on the Duppy Conqueror . Old friends there, I know the layout. That ship’s going to take on a bunch of the Teotl, and I want to keep an eye on them.”

“That makes sense.” John let go of Pepper’s forearm. “Be safe.”

“We’ll see each other again soon enough.” Pepper smiled.

“Soon.”

“Let’s move,” Nashara said. “Air levels are falling and I want to be out and ready to move, we’ve turned into sitting ducks all docked here.”

John floated away with Nashara.