Tobias Buckell - Ragamuffin

Nashara’s voice bellowed out from the ship, “There are more of them coming up the hull towards us, they’re using nonreflective cool suits, hard to spot.”

Pepper looked at the girl. Her hands were shaking. He coasted out and grabbed her.

“You’re hurt,” she said, looking at his shoulder.

“I know. You?”

“I think I’m okay.” Her voice wavered.

Pepper pulled her with him into the lock. Nashara appeared and looked over Kara. “The chamber is close to being overrun. I’m losing repeaters all throughout the Gulong . If we stay much longer, we’ll be overrun too.”

“And you don’t know how to control the Gulong ?” Pepper asked.

“Not yet,” Nashara snapped. “It isn’t happening.”

“Then we hang on as long as we can. We have no other choice.” Pepper leaned back in. “Someone get this girl a gun.”

John flew in with a machine gun in hand. “Let’s get Kara into a room,” he said. “She does not need to be out there.”

“We need every hand,” Pepper said. “Every. Hand. We have nineteen hours left.”

“We’re not making nineteen hours,” John said.

“Speak for yourself,” Pepper spat, and kicked off down the corridor looking for more weapons. He’d give the Hongguo nineteen hours. It would be nineteen hours they’d never forget.

Cayenne appeared in Nashara’s vision. “I see a lot of movement around the Gulong , what’s going on?” The feed hissed and sputtered, pushing through Hongguo jamming and hopping several drones to reach her.

“We’re not going to make it down here,” Nashara said.

“That bad?”

“That bad.” The moment of silence stretched, neither sure what to say.

Then Nashara shook her head. “She lied.”

“What?”

Nashara showed Cayenne the cloud of flack approaching the Gulong that Cayenne couldn’t see from her side of the wormhole. “The League has arrived. Danielle was giving herself a margin.”

The first wave of drone nukes shot through, hitting the Hongguo ships and splitting them apart. Then the smart chaff, thousands of cylinders flung through to burst out and confuse the scene.

Nashara smiled as Danielle hailed her. “You lied,” Nashara said.

“We lost lives getting here this quick,” Danielle said. She looked grim, serious. “For the cause.”

The five League ships used their nuclear drones to quick effect, using surprise to roll over the Hongguo at first.

“We can escort you to safety,” Danielle said. “You’re going to have start moving.”

Nashara shook her head. “We’re dead in the water. We can’t move.”

Danielle swore. Nashara watched as the seven remaining Hongguo ships reformed into a starlike pattern.

Cayenne appeared. “Is that a pattern?”

The starlike group of ships swirled out and fired a concentrated burst of missiles at the League ships. Danielle scattered, focused on dodging them, and the Hongguo had the offensive.

Nashara was already on it, burrowing the space around the Gulong for transmissions coordinating the Hongguo attack. “Got it.”

Danielle appeared, grunting against the massive acceleration. “Where are your other ships? Five against seven isn’t going to be pretty.”

Raw lamina yielded to Nashara. She shivered and split, three times, and then she was in three of the ships. The star pattern fell apart. Three new copies of herself appeared with three smiles. “Keep going,” they said.

And Nashara laughed as she followed the source back toward the Datang Hao , where the Satrap was risking high-bandwidth communications to control the Hongguo ships.

A window in the lamina appeared before a great wall of defenses, and Cayenne saw her enemy for the first time. A balding, saturnine woman; a heavy child; a dour-faced man. “Who are you?” they asked, all their mouths moving in unison.

Behnd the trio a tank of pink liquid stirred. The dark shadow in it, that was the actual Satrap. That would be the creature Nashara and her sisters would dump into the vacuum and watch boil its insides out.

“I’m Nashara.”

“I’m Cayenne.”

And then they both shattered the window and began to rip into the wall of defenses the Satrap had. Firewalls, yes, but it had opened them up to control its small fleet. It would die for the mistake.

The three ships she’d taken turned on the other four. There was no time for names, just fast destruction. And the League ships unloaded more nuclear drones into the ball of fighting.

Nashara winced as two of the ships hosting copies of her mind split open and died, and then the third hailed Nashara.

“Call me Ada,” she said quickly. “Get Danielle off my ass, and then we need to help Cayenne get the Satrap.”

“Fellow freedom seekers,” Danielle’s broadcast rippled out from the Daystar , “who are rising up against our vicious alien masters, news of your valiant struggle has spread throughout all human communities thanks to our newly launched communications network. You have friends, true human friends. We believe in your cause, and we are here to help.”

“Don’t pay attention to the propoganda, let’s move,” Nashara said. She followed Ada across a string of buoys, and then Cayenne stopped them.

“I got it,” Cayenne shouted, and showed them a representation of a giant wall with a tunnel bored through it. Nashara could see on her navigation windows that the Datang Hao had changed course and now wobbled toward the wormhole’s edges. “I got in and boosted it, locked the controls.”

The Satrap’s trio appeared, mouths in perfect sync for the Satrap. “You are not so different from me.”

“You are nothing more than a parasite,” Nashara said.

Danielle continued, “The League of Human Affairs lends our hands to yours. Our warships stand ready. Human destiny is at hand. We can lift off the chains of our oppressors and strike them down and take our rightful place among the stars. Even now we are rising up against Satraps on worlds all throughout the Satrapy.”

The Datang Hao struck the wormhole at an angle, breaking itself open against the incredible tidal stresses. One-half continued past the wormhole leaking debris. The other half transited, appearing within sight of the Toucan Too .

“We are proud,” Danielle said, “that you have chosen to rise with us.”

Ada looked over at Danielle’s obviously prerecorded message. “They’re going to take the Gulong from us, aren’t they?”

“Yes. But I imagine,” Nashara said, “that Pepper, John, and the Ragamuffins won’t hand over New Anegada.”

Pepper sat in the chamber with Raga mongoose-men and a handful of Azteca with the large crate that had once housed the nuke in front of him.

A day ago he’d been getting ready to fight for his life and was not sure he’d make nineteen hours.

The doors clunked open and men in deep blue armor walked in. Mirrored visors on protective helmets looked around.

They had red fists as an emblem over their chests.

One of the suits of armor puffed over, and the mirrored helmet slid open. A Slavic woman with short hair tapped her chest with three fingers in front of Pepper.

“On behalf of the League of Human Affairs I salute you,” she said. “Your incredible work has inspired many to throw off their shackles and rise up against their oppressors.”

Pepper stared at her. John had left with Nashara and the Toucan Too to return to Nanagada. He wanted to see what damage had been done, and what would be needed down on the surface.

She looked slightly discomfited by Pepper’s stare, but continued, “We are proud to offer you a medallion commemorating this historic event.”