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As the ship’s motion comes to a gradual and complete stop, it’s still enough to turn the fallen hostage onto his back. Automatically, HOPI’s camera focuses on the face, zooming and enhancing, matching the casualty to her onboard list of the crew, and updating accordingly.
The sandy-blonde hair of Cadet Gregory Sloan waves gently in the breeze, uniform caked in blood, youthful eyes staring blankly into the vast beyond of the open sky. Against an ash and grime-streaked face, his tears run down in purifying rivers before comingling with the blood spilt along the foredeck.
He will never get sick on another voyage. He will never make another heading calculation. He will never have the opportunity to study the weather patterns of the Flooded World. He will never again ask you to check his math and grin sheepishly if he’s off by a handful of decimals.
The voyage to the wreck of the Olympia will be the first, last and only outing of Gregory Sloan.
…something inside of you quietly breaks.
…ah, there it is. The last of your patience.
You reach in deep, to the darkest, deepest most primitive part of your mind that you had briefly touched when you nearly drowned Pierce aboard the Marduk. And as you let some of it in, you come to a quick and easy enough conclusion to the madness of the day.
Fuck the salvage. Fuck the debt.
You just want the Khanate dead.
In some distant part of your mind, you think that it’s a tender mercy that Molly wouldn’t be able to see you like this. She'd enjoy herself too much. And that you’re immensely grateful that neither would Jean, Caroline or Tom. You aren’t exactly yourself when your temper starts to flare up…
…unless this is actually who you are.
A very angry man in a 20-ton exosuit with precious little to lose, more than one axe to grind against the world, who kept it all bottled up for the better part of eleven years…
…until now.
You utter no noise as you nail an armored officer to the deck.
You make no pithy quip after splitting a torpedo boat in half.
You have no angry retort as your speargun runs out of ammunition.
You remain silent as the heat of your jets burns a man alive.
You hold fast as a stray rocket blasts your right shoulder actuator to bits and pieces.
You offer no rejoinder as HOPI overrides the heat warning to let you shoot faster.
You suffer not the presence of the Toghril Khanate, the star of Tengri, and the wretched, barbarous ideals that they champion aboard the Calypso.
But a sudden radar warning breaks you out of your trance. HOPI screams, “Jamming ship’s making an attack…no, a suicide run! She’s aiming to smash right into the bow of the Calypso!”
It is with a cold, and utterly dispassionate emotion that finds you raising your gun, and undoing all the restraints that kept you from melting a hole through the Calypso. The torpedo boat makes fast, closing the roughly 30/40-meter distance quickly as it accelerates.
(cont.)
