Caught Up
“He was in the damn artifact?” Isaac said incredulously.
“Yeah,” replied Ava. “As far as I can tell, he was conscious the whole time too. He knew things about the ship, the people on it. He knew names, at least. I don’t know what else. Probably knows Curry intimately, considering the amount of time he spent with it.”
Isaac laughed but abruptly stopped. Ava assumed he was wondering whether he had said anything damning while near the artifact. Some embarrassing secret or hidden sentiment.
People sometimes let private thoughts slip aloud when they thought they were alone.
She knew she did, anyway.
“Does he have a stated goal?” asked Kane as he dug through a crate, tossing things onto the floor.
“No and yes? He said he would explain more later, but that he wanted to do whatever I wanted him to do for the time being. Something like that,” Ava said.
“A stasis pod. I never would have guessed,” Isaac mused.
“That feels off to me,” Kane said.
“I agree,” said Ava. “But for the most part, other than arguing with me about being selfish or about whether he should punch people’s heads off or shoot them, he kinda does just do what I say. Or, more like, I say what I want, and he comes up with a plan to get it and then seeks my approval sometimes.”
“What do you mean?” asked Isaac.
Ava thought for a moment.
“Well, like when he picked me up and put me in the hall before breaking that guy apart. I didn’t ask him to do that, and I was mad as hell that he did. I didn’t want to see it, but I didn’t want him treating me like a child either.”
“I wanted to see it,” Ethan said. “I’m still pissed as hell I missed it.”
He spat on the floor.
“He got off light.”
“Stow it,” Kane said, turning toward Ava with a warning glance that told her to drop it as well.
“Okay, but also, when I told him to take me to you all, he picked me up to carry me instead of just leading me to you,” she said.
Juarez found his suit and was already snapping it into place. His helmet slid over his head, and he worked the seals.
He still needed his weapons and equipment.
Ethan had found his weapons and tools but couldn’t locate his suit.
He had found Peters’s.
He set it aside near the wall.
Juarez kept glancing at it.
“So he is very literal?” asked Kane. “A man after my own heart.”
“Possibly…” Isaac said skeptically.
He had found his suit and gun but had given up looking for his data slate.
“He would have to be ancient. Five hundred years old or more. Has he said anything about his life before the stasis pod?”
Ava thought for a moment.
She had spoken to him and watched him, but she now realized she knew remarkably little about him.
They had only just met, but she felt like she should know more. There were so many questions she could have asked.
Instead, she had asked so few.
“I… well… no. We sort of just bickered a lot. He tries explaining things mostly. Like philosophy and stuff,” Ava said, unimpressed with her own explanation.
“I got the sense,” she continued, “that if I asked him, he would have spilled his whole life story, but with everything going on, I just didn’t think to ask.”
Isaac shook his head as he moved to the next crate to help find Ethan’s suit.
“How the hell were they organizing this crap? Randomly?” he asked no one in particular.
Then he added, “I would have loved to be there when he first emerged. He has answers I want.”
“We may have the chance to get those answers,” Kane chimed in. “He is around here somewhere. I can’t imagine he will be hard to spot if we can get access to the base’s local feeds and pull up the camera system.”
Ava sucked in a breath.
She knew she had forgotten something.
“Oh. About that.”
She began describing Dom’s suit.
She had told them that the artifact—now reclassified in all of their minds as a stasis pod—had made a suit and weapons for him.
But she had neglected to mention that the suit possessed an advanced camouflage system.
Dom could be in this very room, and they might not even know.
Peters would have made some joke to show that he wasn’t bothered.
Ava looked toward Juarez to see if he had the same thought.
He was absently clipping his tools onto his belt and storing Peters’s tools and equipment in his satchel, but he glanced again at the unused suit on the floor.
“Okay,” Kane said, breaking the silence. “We may not get those answers if he is that elusive.”
“No, I think he’ll find us again,” Ava said.
He had told her he would.
She believed him.
“But we should still try to make our way out of here. He found you for me easily. He’ll be able to find us no matter where we go on this base.”
This text was taken from NovelPhoenix. Help the author by reading the original version there.
She didn’t feel comforted by the thought.
“So what’s the plan?” Ethan asked Ava, finally finding his suit in a crate on the top shelf.
He deftly stepped into it and began pulling it over his body.
“The last I saw, the
Eye
was still parked at the drop zone. We make our way to the surface, get back to it, and hightail it out of here. We might want to cause some kind of distraction to keep the rest of the base residents busy. Dom might do that for us. He said he wanted to destroy the base.”
“Whoa, he said that? You neglected that part,” Isaac said, striding over to stand in front of her. “You need to tell us if there is anything else he said that may impact us in the near future.”
Ava took a small step backward and raised her hands.
“I’m sorry. I think that’s it.”
She searched her memory for his exact wording.
“He said, ‘We will free the crew and destroy the base. Then return to the
9Lives
. There he will brief us on future plans.’”
“That’s it, Ava?” asked Kane.
“Oh. He also said he wanted to rescue the base’s AI. But I wasn’t sure if he was serious about that.”
“Let’s assume he was being entirely serious,” Kane said. “The shuttle. When did you last see it? Are you sure it is still there? I would have relocated it to a hangar or stripped it entirely.”
Ava squirmed at the thought.
“They sent two men out to force entry. I managed to take them out, and then I left the shuttle locked down and made my way into the base. Before I got inside, I saw a group of heavy suits heading out toward the shuttle. I assume they were looking for the first two men and would force access and discover them. I hadn’t really thought past that. They might have moved the ship by now, or maybe they left it there to search for me. Unless we get eyes out there, we won’t really know.”
“Not the best plan, then,” Isaac sighed. “We have uncertainty on top of uncertainty. We don’t know if we’ll be able to get out of here without a fight. We don’t know if we can win whatever fight we encounter. If we manage to get up there, we don’t know if we even have a means of escape. This won’t do, Kane. We need something more.”
“I think it’s worth a shot to see if the
Eye
is still there,” Ethan said.
Isaac raised a hand to silence him.
“Ethan, you’re biased and compromised.”
Ethan started to protest, but Kane cut in.
“Isaac is right. We need more information. We need to understand the lay of the land and figure out alternative options. It might even be a sounder plan to find their hangar and commandeer a vessel, possibly sabotaging their other ships if we can’t destroy them outright. But first, we need the layout of the base.”
Ava sighed, disappointed in herself as she remembered the map data Dom had sent her and realized she had to admit to forgetting yet another important detail.
“Okay. Now that you all have your suits, I’m transmitting the facility map data so we can plan what comes next.”
“Ava…” Isaac groaned in annoyance.
“Isaac, she is telling us what she knows as she remembers it,” Kane said, trying to pacify Isaac and defend Ava.
Isaac was a man of science, not action. He was out of his element, and Ava could see that he was trying to hold himself together.
She also knew she was frustrating him by accidentally withholding useful information.
“I’m sorry. I—” Ava began.
“No, Ava. I understand. You’re trying.”
Isaac cut her off.
Ava felt a sudden flare of anger at being interrupted but held her tongue.
She didn’t know what they had endured before she arrived, but her imagination had already shown her several bloody, awful possibilities.
Isaac pulled on his helmet and began ferreting through the base map Dom had given Ava.
Kane put his helmet on as well.
Both men fell silent, but Ava was sure they were speaking privately.
Ava took the opportunity to reach out to her team.
She opened a private channel to Juarez.
“Are you holding up?”
“I’m fine. Don’t ask me again until we’re off this rock, or I might not be,” he responded sharply.
“Okay, Juarez. Thank you.”
“For what?” he asked, glancing away from Peters’s suit toward Ava.
“Thank you for being strong. For helping me be strong.”
Juarez didn’t respond, but after a moment, he gave her a thumbs-up.
Ava opened another private channel.
“Ethan.”
He paused while attaching equipment to his suit.
Isaac and Kane were still examining the map data in their HUDs and speaking over a private channel.
Juarez absently checked his rifle, though his visor remained angled toward Peters’s suit.
“What happened to Peters? What did they do?” Ava asked cautiously.
She needed to know.
“I’m the wrong person to ask. I wasn’t there for all of it. I got knocked clean out, so I only know how it started,” Ethan explained.
Pain was evident in his voice.
There was something else too.
Shame, maybe.
Or anger.
“How it started? Tell me that, then. Help me understand what happened,” she pleaded.
Ethan sighed and shook his head.
“There isn’t time to get into it. Not here. But I can sum it up. When we came to, we were in those cells. They started yelling at us and said they were going to pull us out and break us to get what they wanted.
“Peters started antagonizing them until they pulled him out and started hurting him. He was already in bad shape. I think he was the only one of us to eat ballistic ammo. I have burns from where I was hit. Kane thinks it was some kind of energy weapon.
“Peters was bleeding badly even though they had bandaged and foamed him.
“He kept at it.”
Ava listened, her mouth going dry.
Rationally, she thought she understood what had happened.
Emotionally, she was having difficulty accepting it.
Her eyes welled with tears as a sudden flash of anger toward Peters struck her.
“Idiot. He threw his life away,” she said bitterly.
Ethan stifled a choked sob.
He cut comms and collected himself, but Ava could see his posture change.
He was fighting for control.
Then his comm opened again.
“No. Don’t say that. He was a damned hero. He made them choose him. He bought us time. I never thought I’d say this, but he might be the bravest man I’ve ever known.
“I don’t know if they broke him in the end, but I couldn’t take it. I grabbed that one guy when he walked past the cell. I wasn’t thinking. I guess he smoked me with a stun baton, and I went down.”
His breathing was ragged.
Ava moved as though to comfort him but stopped herself.
They were having a private conversation about a traumatic event while surrounded by the others who had experienced it.
Ethan had been right.
This wasn’t the place or the time.
“I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have had to see that…” Ava said, trying to comfort him from afar.
Ethan cut her off.
“I didn’t. I was knocked out. I didn’t witness his last moments, and I couldn’t stop it. I failed him.”
He descended into sobs again.
Ethan placed both hands against the temples of his faceplate and bent forward, crying silently as he cut his comms once more.
Ava rushed to him.
She pulled him against her chest, wrapped her arms around him, and held him tightly.
Ava held him there until his breathing returned to normal.
Then she slowly pulled away.
She placed her hands against his helmet and lifted until he looked toward her.
“You’re right. Peters was a brave man and a hero. But you’re wrong. You didn’t fail anyone. You did everything you could.
“We can’t stain Peters’s sacrifice with our self-pity. We have to go on living for him. Okay?”
Ethan stared at her faceplate as though he might somehow see through it to her face.
“Ava…”
“We are going to get out of here,” she promised.
She rested her helmet against his.
Ava closed her eyes and remained there, feeling his closeness.
“Team, we have a direction, and we need to move,” Kane said.
Ava opened her eyes, straightened, and turned toward her father.
“We are pushing directly toward the nearest hangar bay,” Kane announced. “We are getting a ship and getting the hell out of here.”