Chương 85: Departures

Fleet Station Chel, Vidako System Imperium Stellarum May 18, 2848"Can you fix it?" Cassie demanded. A part of her knew that she was being unreasonable, that Natalie and the rest of the crew were already doing their best, but she couldn't stop the words from coming out of her mouth. The signal interference had been noticeable the moment Arc took Lady Ren down into the second chamber of The Deeps.

It had manifested as occasional shudders in the holo-projected image, a noticeable decrease in resolution, and the audio from Arc's comm cutting in and out. When he dropped into Dead Man's Drop, the feed had begun to freeze, then skip ahead.

"The problems are on the other end," Natalie explained, shaking her head.

"All we're doing here is receiving the signal from the mech's communication systems. What you want to do is either add some sort of signal booster on his end or get him up out of all that rock."

"We knew this could happen if they went deep," Pika pointed out.

"Too much granite and basalt between the lower chambers and the surface."

"I should have brought my mech," C'rise said, her shoulders slumped.

"If I was out there with Commandant Marlowe, I'd be able to sense him."

"Radecki and his people would have never gone for it," Monica Yarborough broke in.

"And we needed the duel to actually happen, not for him to get cold feet and walk away."

"Signal's back!" Bill Tremblay shouted, and with everyone else, Cassie crowded around the hologram. There had clearly been fighting that they hadn't seen, from the damage visible on Lady Ren. The mech's left foot was a blackened, charred mass of melted metal, little more than a jagged stump. One part of Cassie's mind was already worrying about how much harder that would make it to get Arc back into the hangar, while the rest of her was silently screaming about how it had happened in the first place.

But what was far more terrifying was that she finally got a good look at the hit Radecki had landed on the armor above Arc's cockpit. The ceramic plates there were melted and fused together, revealing much of the mech's internal structure where they'd been scoured away, and it was terrifying - like a glimpse of pale-yellow bone in an open wound. One more shot there, and - Cassie pushed that thought aside.

"He's still really deep," Natalie muttered, as she tapped away at her tablet.

"They must have come out into a place where there's a lot less rock between them and the surface." And that made sense, because Lady Ren seemed to hang in the darkness, thrusters burning to support the mech's fifty-five tons of mass in low gravity. As Cassie watched, Arc ignited the plasma blade in his right hand, casting a brilliant purple light over the armored panels of her mech, then drew the other blade in his left hand.

"Has he got any other weapon left?" Vee asked. Cassie shook her head. A moment later, the Karabela shot into view, exploding out of a cloud of rock dust and debris. Cassie didn't have time to take stock of how damaged Radecki's mech was, because Arc's thrusters flared, throwing Lady Ren forward in a desperate attempt to get inside the range of those heavy lasers. Wait - was one of Radecki's guns already destroyed?

She couldn't be certain, but a thick line of blue light stabbed out from the other gun, tearing through Lady Ren's left torso, burning a semi-circle of absence into the machine's inner workings. At the same time, Arc thrust both his plasma blades into the modified Kestrel's torso; one skittered off to the side, making only a shallow cut, but the other plunged in hilt deep. Cassie's friends were cheering, gasping, asking half-formulated questions, but she couldn't look away.

The mech - her mech - was going to be a disaster when they got it back to the hangar, but she didn't care. No one had surrendered. No one had ejected. The duel wasn't over yet.

"Come on," she whispered, and clenched her fists as Arc dropped his left plasma blade to grab onto Radecki's arm. Good. If he could hold that laser barrel away from where it could do any harm... When Arc's voice came through the audio feed loud and clear, she actually jumped.

"Surrender," he said, and that single word was the fiercest she'd ever heard him. It almost seemed impossible that the shy boy she'd met on the space elevator down to the surface of Vidako could sound like that.

"To a pathetic boy from the outworlds? Never," Radecki shot back.

"Idiot," Rain muttered. But Cassie didn't look away from the holo-feed for even a moment. In fact, she found herself leaning forward as Arc dragged the blade of his weapon deeper into the Karabela's torso, inching it closer and closer to Radecki's cockpit. With a sudden shake, the rear armor panels blew off the back of the ruined mech, and an escape pod shot out into the darkness. The Karabela went limp, and for a second it hung there, supported only by Lady Ren.

Then, Arc let go of the mech's arm with his left hand, ripped the plasma blade out with his right, and let it fall into the darkness. The entire hanger broke into cheers. Vee let out a victory trill, while Pika whooped and threw his arms around the two closest people, who happened to be C'rise and Rain. Natalie leaned back in her chair with a wide grin. For Cassie's part, she felt almost faint, and had to sit down on the catwalk next to the computer terminal.

When she looked at her own hands, she saw that they were shaking. A moment later, Commandant Marlowe's voice crackled over the feed.

"This duel is over," she declared.

"As Cadet Radecki has ejected, by the terms agreed upon, Arcturus Sandhurst is the victor. Cadet Sandhurst, can you get your mech back to Fleet Station Chel under your own power?"

"I can," Arc said.

"Medical team on standby?" Marlowe asked. Doctor Seung's voice came across the channel next.

"Sandhurst is clear to fly back, I don't see anything from the biosensors in his skinsuit other than an elevated heart rate and body temperature. I need to get to Radecki. I don't think he's conscious."

"You heard the doctor," the commandant said.

"Get back to the barn, Sandhurst. I'll retrieve Radecki's escape pod." That led to another round of applause, though Chief Jastrow was already shaking his head.

"Ramírez! Moore! Tremblay! We're going to need to move the gantry into the airlock, there's no way he can set that thing down without buckling the leg. Let's move, people. The duel may be done, but we aren't." In the commotion of the tech crew leaping into action, Cassie would have missed Monica Yarborough slipping toward the airlock if C'rise hadn't stepped over, put a hand on her shoulder, and nodded a head toward the retreating intelligence agent. Cassie stood up, let C'rise's hand fall away, and followed.

She managed to jump through the closing air lock doors before they sealed.

"Where are you going?" she asked, while the other side of the air lock began to cycle.

"I'm going to arrest Radecki's accomplices," Yarborough said, sparing only a glance for Cassie.

"I've got a full platoon of marines on standby, under authority from your father. We'll tear the computer unit out of that Kestrel, once the wreckage has been recovered, and that will prove he sent the signal to detonate that first mine. We'll get all of them on violating the imperial dueling laws, on conspiracy, and some sort of smuggling or weapons trafficking charges for the mines themselves." This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Cassie reached out and slapped the button that paused the airlock's cycle.

"You knew those mines were there," she realized, even as she said it out loud.

"Of course I did," Yarborough admitted." And you left them there?" Cassie felt her own fists clench, and she didn't even try to stop it from happening.

"I had proximity triggers removed, and set all but one to refuse Radecki's access," Yarborough said, as if it were the most reasonable thing in the world. Cassie saw it again - when the mine had exploded in the second chamber, blasting the rear of Arc's mech.

"You left him able to use one." She was aware that her voice had gotten very quiet.

"We needed to get a record of him triggering at least one mine," Yarborough said, reaching for the button which would let the airlock resume cycling. You need to keep your temper, Cassie, she heard her father say, and for once in her life quite deliberately chose to do the opposite. Cassie stepped right up to Yarborough and grabbed the other woman by her suit-jacket.

Yarborough's hands moved to break her grip, fast and efficient, and the two women exchanged a flurry of grabs, blocks, and breaks that ended in Cassie slamming the intelligence agent's back against the wall of the airlock.

"I'm faster than you and stronger than you," Cassie growled, leaning in close.

"Now shut up and listen, before I break your face." Yarborough's eyes widened at that.

"That mine could have killed him."

"There was very little chance of a single mine affecting the duel."

"Low, but not zero," Cassie insisted.

"What if the armor over his cockpit was already damaged when he got into that second cavern? What if he still had missiles left, and the mines set off his ammo? You gambled with his life." Monica Yarborough swallowed.

"I did what I had to do to bring evidence back to Terra. The most important thing was to make certain we could take his father down-""No," Cassie interrupted.

"The most important thing was for Arc to come back alive. You should have told me."

"If I'd told you, you would have objected," Yarborough said.

"I was protecting you."

"Never again," Cassie told her, staring straight into the other woman's eyes.

"You understand? Never again." There was a long moment of silence.

"I understand," Monica Yarborough said. Cassie released her grip, dropped her hands, and stepped back. She slapped the button and waited for the air lock to cycle. Only once the intelligence agent had left, and once Cassie was alone again, did she let out a long, shuddering breath. 𝝮 It took an entire additional day to get Lady Ren in a condition fit for travel. Once Arc got the mech into the hangar airlock, Chief Jastrow showed Natalie and her tech crew how to secure the badly damaged machine and haul it inside.

The three of the RSiNC ceramic plates on the front torso needed to be cut off before they could get Arc out of the cockpit, having been so melted and deformed that they wouldn't open the normal way. Finally, an hour after he'd brought her mech in for a one-legged landing outside the station, Cassie was able to wrap her arms around her very sweaty boyfriend. The techs got to work right away, draining the fuel lines and tank, ejecting the batteries, and pulling the melted circuits that had smoked up the cockpit.

Once Chief Jastrow and Natalie were certain there was nothing that could ignite, explode, or otherwise get worse during the trip, they went back again and inspected the entire mech from the beginning before wrapping it in plastic. Repairs would need to wait until Cassie had got her machine back to Auctoritas Station, above Terra. Fletcher Radecki's two hangars-on, Naku and Kitree, were indeed taken into marine custody, as Monica Yarborough had promised. Radecki himself was, as well, once he was conscious.

His ejection pod had, apparently, bounced off a rock face before falling nearly two-thousand meters to the floor of the underground fissure in which the two men had concluded their battle. While the emergency thrusters on the life pod had brought it in for a relatively safe landing, he'd still been pretty banged up, apparently suffering a fairly serious concussion. Cassie didn't expect any of the three to be attending the academy when she and her friends returned in August.

Yarborough left as soon as the Karabela's onboard computer banks had been extracted from the crash site, presumably with all the evidence she needed. On a dedicated courier ship, Cassie knew the other woman would reach home long before she did - and long before the military transport that Radecki and his friends were packed into.

On Pinnacle Station, she and her friends settled into seats in a private room at DelVeccio's, a restaurant that could almost be mistaken for something back on Terra, if you squinted real hard. The walls were paneled in imported wood, the same as the tables and chairs, and the white tablecloth was of actual natural fibers, rather than something synthetic.

"Cassie," Arc said, leaning in at her side.

"There aren't any prices on this menu."

"Don't worry about it," Cassie told him.

"Marlowe said she was covering everything. Get whatever you want." What she didn't say out loud was that DelVeccio's prices had come with a guarantee from their management that there would be absolutely no press allowed to disturb them. Down the end of the table, where he'd chosen a seat so that his elbows had plenty of room to either side, Pika made a face and squinted down at his own menu.

"What is this? This isn't imperial standard. Is this one of the Terran dialects?"

"It's Italian," Cassie told him, with a laugh.

"Get anything under the heading ' Pesce.' It's all different kinds of fish, you'll love it." The wine came, and then the food, and she couldn't help sitting back to watch. Her friends were laughing and smiling, an entire table of them, from Pika at one end to Natalie and the tech crew at the other. Vee had a heaping dish of Lumache alla Romana, and was devouring the snails with relish.

Cassie thought of how the two of them had been, just after she and Arc had gotten together; the awkwardness, the stiffness, the anger. Now, she tried to imagine that spot at the table empty and couldn't. It had taken some doing to talk Jessica into having a seat, but eventually Cassie had convinced her bodyguard to at least pretend to relax. Even C'rise had, somehow, come to fit in, despite the way they'd all begun the year yelling at each other.

In fact, she was the only one taking the same ship out of Pinnacle as Cassie was - her father was on Terra. Vee left first, with hugs all around and promises to send messages whenever the Nightjar ark-fleet stopped in a system. Tremblay and Moore were after her, and then Pika slipped off to the bathroom, leaving Rain to slump in her chair.

"What's wrong?" Cassie asked her friend, leaning half across Arc.

"I'm just not certain how it's going to be to visit Stellar Abyss," Rain admitted.

"I'm not certain I should have said yes. I feel like the matriarchs are going to expect me to be someone that I'm not. I've never once actually lived with my own people." She sighed and looked toward the bathrooms.

"And I don't think Pika really understands." Her voice dropped.

"I'm not ever going to be... normal." Cassie got up, walked around the table, and gave her friend a hug.

"If you don't like it, leave," she said.

"I don't know Senator Catalina all that well, but I'm certain she wouldn't be angry if you came home halfway through the summer."

"But Pika might be," Rain said. Before Cassie could answer, it was Arc who spoke up.

"He won't." Cassie loosened her arms so that Rain could turn toward her boyfriend but didn't let go.

"He's about the most loyal guy you'll ever find," Arc went on.

"Rain, I watched him carry a woman over his shoulders up a rope-ladder, while being swarmed by zombie flies. If you just tell him how you feel, I promise you, he'll have your back. Even if he doesn't quite understand."

"See?" Cassie said, and she felt Rain relax in her arms. One by one, her friends, the people she hadn't even known existed a year ago, left to catch their ships. And while she was sad to see each one of them go, Cassie also couldn't help but be filled with a bit of wonder. After so many years of everyone just seeing me as the princess, she thought to Lyra, I never thought that I'd have so many actual friends. That I'd be able to do something like this. It sounds like you were very lonely, her AI said.

But that's over now. Even when you're not with your friends, Cassie, you'll be with me. Finally, it was just Cassie, Arc, C'rise and Jessica, after everyone else had left. The three women walked Arc over to his gate, and she couldn't help but laugh when she glanced down at that same battered suitcase that he was still dragging along behind him.

"I swear I'm sending you a replacement for that over the summer," she warned him.

"I don't mind it," Arc said.

"What I do mind is that I'm not going to see you for three months." He set the suitcase upright so that he could let go of the handle and wrapped his arms around her waist.

"You better send me messages." Cassie was certain that someone was going to take a picture of them, and that it would be all over the gossip pages on every planetary net in the imperium within a few weeks, but she didn't let that stop her from reaching up to put her arms over his shoulders.

"I will. I promise," Arc said, and when they kissed she could taste the wine from the restaurant lingering on his lips.

"Don't let any of those girls back home try to steal you from me," Cassie joked, when they released each other.

"You don't have to worry about that," Arc said.

"I'll see you in August." He leaned in for one last hug, and then turned, taking the handle of his suitcase in his grasp, and walked toward his gate. She almost said it out loud - almost told him, I love you. Neither of them had actually said it yet. But she was afraid he wouldn't say it back, or worse, that he'd feel like he had to, and that either way it would lie between them all summer, while they were apart and couldn't see each other.

So, Cassie turned and set off through the station, with C'rise on one side and Jessica on the other, to catch their ship to Terra.