Wings of Retribution (81 page)

“So you’re saying a fleet of three could take out a fleet of a thousand?”

Dallas scoffed.  “No.  It just takes longer to kill them.”

“Oh.”  Stuart stared at the sky.  “Do you think you can get us out of here?”

Dallas closed her eyes, breathing in the ocean breeze.  She could
taste
that fight.  All the way down here, and she could
taste
it.

“Dallas?”

“Of course I can fly us through that.”

Stuart cleared his throat, sounding embarrassed.  “Uh, Dallas, I meant to tell you earlier, but I was kinda fibbing a little back there, about helping you.  I mean, if you let me back in, I’ll be able to help a little bit, but it would mostly be you.  I just said all that stuff to keep the others off your back.  If you don’t think you can handle it, we’ll just have to find another way off the planet.” 

“Oh, like hell,” Dallas laughed.  “You couldn’t keep me away from that fight with a flesh-seeker.” 

Stuart fidgeted with a piece of moss he’d picked from a stone crack, then licked his lips.  “I guess what I’m trying to say is you don’t need to take me again.  I couldn’t really help that much.  I was being selfish, giving you an excuse to…”  He cleared his throat again.  “I spent all day thinking about it.  I mean, I
can
help, but what I did was wrong.  That’s not something I should
bribe
you into.  I just got a taste of—”  He bit his lip.  “It was so wonderful to have you—”  He cleared his throat again.  “What I’m saying is I just really hoped—”

Dallas gasped in happiness as another ship tumbled out of the sky.  “Look at
that
one.  Wow, he must’ve had combustibles aboard.  Sweet.”

Stuart frowned at her, then up at the sky.  For a long moment, he just glanced between the two of them, then he blurted, “You
do
realize we’re trying to head
home
, not go down in a glorious ball of flames, right?”

“Oh sure,” Dallas said.  Even as she said it, she felt a nervous flutter in her stomach. 
Was
she about to get them all killed?  She shook that thought from her head and said, “Just keep looking for Rabbit.  I don’t want to leave him until we have to.”

“Ragnar’s working on that right now.”  Stuart came closer, his body close enough to touch.  Tentatively, he managed, “So what I was trying to say earlier—”  He hesitated and licked his lips.  “I mean.  Please don’t take this the wrong way, but I don’t want you to feel forced into anything…”

“I think that one’s using that new experimental particle dissimilation cannon,” she said, pointing.  “You can tell the dissim from the blackmatter by the way the ships glow green before they explode.”

For a long time, Stuart said nothing.  When Dallas looked back, he was staring at her.  “What?” she asked. 

“Are you sure you want me back in your head, Dallas?  I, uh, don’t want to inconvenience you, and I was kind of stretching the truth earlier.  I really shouldn’t have done that.  You don’t need me.”

“Oh, phooey,” Dallas said, waving off his blubbering.  “Of course I want you back.” 

Stuart stared at her, looking dumbfounded.  “You…do?”

“Sure!”  Dallas gave his current body an appraising glance in between explosions.  “Wouldn’t be too upset if you brought him along, though.  Looks like he might be good in bed.”

Immediately, Stuart said, “He’s not.  He’s mean and selfish and always finishes in a couple minutes.”

Dallas burst into delighted laughter.  “I meant for
you
, nincompoop.  So
you
could be good in bed.”

“Oh.”  Stuart blushed in the darkness.  “Athenais might not like that.”

“Athenais can go jump out an airlock. 
I’m
the captain of
Retribution.
  If I say we bring him along, we bring him.”

“But it feels…wrong,” Stuart said.  “To use a host for my own sexual gratification.”

“You said he was an asshole, right?”

“Yes, but…”

“If he’s an asshole, then he deserves to be taught a little—
look at that!
”  Dallas’s eyes widened as one of the cruisers in the blockade cloud exploded, sending a sphere of shrapnel and fire out in all directions.  Some of the indistinguishable fighters got hit by the debris, setting off a chain reaction of explosions that lit up the night.

“One point for the good guys,” Dallas said, grinning.

“I wouldn’t exactly call Juno’s forces the good guys,” Stuart said.

“Yeah, but you’ve gotta root for one of them, and the Utopia fired me, so screw them.”

“Juno tried to feed you to a five hundred pound shark,” Stuart reminded her.

“At least she would have given me a harpoon.  That’s a lot less humiliating than getting fired.  You ever been fired, Stu?”

Stuart shook his head.

She grunted, making a disgusted face.  “Well, when you get fired, there’s no ‘I don’t think so, punk,
stab, stab, stab!
’  It’s just
boom,
get out, we don’t care you just spent the last fifteen years of your life working for us, you’re not wanted here anymore.  They had a new captain in command of my ship before it was even official.”

“Well, your ‘good guys’ are losing, nonetheless,” Stuart said.  “Ragnar thinks Juno’s gonna surrender in the next few hours.  From what he’s been able to learn, they’ve had fifty percent losses in the first twenty-four hours.”

“Oh, bummer.”  Dallas was disappointed.  “I was hoping it would last a bit longer than that.”  She went back to gazing at the stars, watching the explosions.  After a few moments, she felt Stuart sit down beside her.

“Dallas?”

“Hmm?”

“Do you really think I’d be good in bed?”

Now
there
was an idea.  She turned back to him, grinning.  “You wanna find out?”

Stuart flinched away from her.  “What,
here?”
  Stuart gestured at the sky, sounding horrified.

“Why not?  It’d be romantic.”  She gestured up at the explosions.  “Think of it as candlelight.”

“For some reason, the threat of getting skewered by falling shrapnel doesn’t seem all that romantic.”

“You’re just a worrywart.”  She wiggled closer, throwing a leg over his thigh and touching his chest.  “Come on.  It’ll be fun.”

The suzait swallowed, hard, and Dallas noticed he was suddenly sweating.  “But,” Stuart stammered, “…I don’t…I can’t…I wouldn’t…”

“Shut up and kiss me,” she said.  “All those explosions are making me horny.”

“Dallas, this is hardly the place to have a reproductive breakdown.  What if somebody comes up the stairs and—”

She grabbed the back of his head and ended his objection with a kiss.  A
real
one, this time.

Fairy’s Glory Days

The next morning, the island-wide intercom came on, startling them awake.

“
People of Xenith.  I am Colonel Harriet Burkes.  I represent the Unified Utopian Systems and will be in charge of converting this planet to civilization.  We have pacified the resistance here and have taken its leaders into custody for questioning.  You will see troops of Utopian forces patrolling the hallways and are ordered to go about your business when they pass.  Any violence or harassment toward them will be punishable by immediate use of force, namely execution, as we are all much too tired to continue to deal with your brainwashed, moronic horseshit. 

The woman on the intercom took a breath, then cleared her throat and continued. 
As evening falls, if you look up, you will see a cloud covering a good part of the night sky.  That is our fleet.  Admiral Redstone has secured your sector.  Any traffic in or out will be shot down, and any survivors executed.  Any attempts at escape will result in immediate execution.  All military forces of Xenith will be deported or executed, depending on our mood.  Any civilian resistance will result in execution.  Like I said before, we are all too tired to deal with your crap.

We will be conducting an investigation of Xenith’s non-combative citizenry on an individual basis.  We will be taking roll and creating an identification database.  Retina, voice, fingerprint, and DNA samples will be taken from every citizen.  If you do not surrender yourself to the rolls, we will assume you are part of the resistance and we will execute you.  I will return with more specific instructions this evening.”

Dallas sat up, grabbing her shirt.  “Did she say anything about Utopian citizens?”

“I don’t think so,” Stuart said.  “But she did use ‘execute’ like four or five times.”

“Breathing will result in execution,” Dallas mimicked, giggling.

Athenais burst through the hatch, panting.  “You hear that?  Juno’s finally surrendered after wasting all that—”  Then she gave them a stunned look.  “Did you two just
screw
while we were getting attacked?”

Stuart cleared his throat and pulled on his pants.  “We were just watching the stars,” he babbled, much too defensively.

“So what if we were?” Dallas demanded, bodily pulling the
suzait
back down to the stone with her.  “Go find your own rooftop, you one-armed leprechaun.”

Athenais stared at Dallas, then at Stuart.  Finally, she seemed to shake herself and said, “Okay lovebirds, get dressed.  We’re gonna go have a chat with this Colonel Burkes, see if she’ll clear us for takeoff.”

“We are?”  Dallas couldn’t hide her disappointment.

“What, you’d rather see us try to bash our way through their blockade?”  Athenais scoffed.  “Ragnar and I will be waiting back in the storeroom.”  She hurried back down the ladder, slamming the hatch behind her.

“You know, she kind of stands out with those fingers sticking out of her shoulder like that,” Dallas said, squinting at the hatch.  “I wonder what she tells people, when they ask.”

“Maybe she says it’s a birth defect.”

“If it was me, I’d cover it up.”  Dallas wrinkled her nose.  “Why’s it taking so long for her arm to grow back?  I saw her head put itself back together in a couple minutes.”

“My guess is because her arm is currently nine miles under the ocean floor, whereas the remains of her head were readily available.  So basically her body’s got to start from scratch.”

As she pulled on her pants, Dallas looked up at him, grinning.  “So’d you like it?”

Stuart hesitated above her.  “The physical connection was satisfying, though I’m not sure I got the technique down quite right.  The motor patterns were foreign to me.  I think I should spend some time on research, maybe ask Ragnar or Howlen.  They could guide me through the process—”