Part 3
Containment Failure
If you’d obeyed orders, we wouldn’t be here today.
Chapter 38
“You know, Major, it really annoys me that this didn’t occur to me before I thought I’d have to kill you,” Wraith told Kael conversationally. “It would have saved me some emotional fallout.”
They were sitting in the Banshee, which was miraculously working again.
She’d won the argument with Elijah and Seori. That if things went south, and they probably would, it was better if they weren’t nearby.
At least she got to say goodbye this time.
Flying one-handed was awkward, but she had to keep her other hand at her shoulder, fingers interlinked with Kael’s, anchoring him to her.
She hoped.
She was taking him further into the Void. No doubt a fucking terrible idea. But she didn’t have any better ones.
“How the fuck am I supposed to do this?” she asked him. “I mean. I can already feel you. But Void, you are so far away.”
She pulled the Banshee into a sideways glide. Settled it at what felt like a good spot, and shut down the impulse engines.
Leaned her head back and closed her eyes. Squeezed his fingers.
“I didn’t plan to like you, you know. You’re a senior officer in the Strategic Intelligence Division, that’s strike one. You put me on a Tether, strikes two and three.
“And if I needed another, you came across as a desk jockey. Way too pretty and polished to have ever been closer than the fringes of combat.
“But you have, haven’t you? Your scars tell a story, and it’s not a good one. In fact, it’s a lot of really shitty ones.”
She sighed. Tried to let her mind wander, let herself feel more than the bone-deep weariness that never let up.
“I was on Iveros too. A couple of times. Why do they never give us enough rations? I don’t think I’ve met anyone who’s been there that hasn’t had to march through an ice blizzard to get to a rendezvous point. Watching your friends and comrades collapse. Knowing that you can’t do a damn thing.
“I tried once. Picked up a rookie. Green as grass. Didn’t realize he was full dead until he was half frozen. Literally. Not sure how I got through that one alive.
“Not sure how I got through a lot of things alive. Before I became a Ghost at least.”
She smiled, “Did you know that Hound rescued me from Taurus Prime when I was an ensign? I didn’t. The rest of his unit was taken out. So was mine. That’s why he hates me.”
The silence was heavy. Maybe she should just shut off the life support. As Ghost Command, they had integrated when they were trying to survive. Aligned thoughts. Feelings.
But he was too far gone already.
“I had a sister,” she found herself saying. “Not Rina. A blood sister. A twin. She died young. We were four or five and she got sick. I don’t even remember her.”
She idly tapped KN—over to you—on his hand in Morse code.
Tap-pause. Tap. Tap-pause. Tap-pause. Tap.
Over and over again.
“You told me you had a brother. You said he died on the Onyx. In what was apparently the final battle of the war, so maybe I did do something right. You wanted to know what happened.”
Tap-pause. Tap. Tap-pause. Tap-pause. Tap.
“Okay, Major, I’ll tell you the story. But you’re not going to like it.” Delete
Five Years Ago
Wraith ripped the yoke and the Wasp screamed into a 360-degree spin. The missile that had been tracking her slammed into the Other ship beside her—a design they’d taken to calling a Creeper for the way it slunk into battle.
She laughed in adrenaline-fueled delight as it silently exploded. Flicked the team comms switch.
“Still alive out there, boys and girl?”
The responses were immediate.
“Nope.”
“Nuh-uh.”
“Died a year ago.”
“Never born.”
And: “We’re Ghosts, Wraith. I think the answer to that question is self-evident.”
She dodged debris, aimed for the center of the chaos.
“You know, Geist. I’d have thought being in the middle of a giant fucking space battle would have made you a little less verbose.”
“Pot, kettle,” he snarled back.
“She has a point.”
“Shut up, Shade.”
“Make me.”
Wraith’s smile was feral. She may die at any moment, but she was with her family. It was when they stopped fighting that you had to worry.
“What are we seeing?” she asked. “I’ve got two Creepers and a Moth trying to sneak in from below.”
Phantom’s voice rolled out like liquid velvet, “I have three Wisps,” a pause and a chuckle, “make that two Wisps tailing. They’re holding back, waiting for something.”
“Well that’s just great,” Spook. Annoyed, as usual. “You’re behind us swatting at insects while I’m taking the fight to the Razors on the beam. Four of them. You could do something useful and join me.”
“Sorry, Spook,” Wraith could hear Spirit’s smile. His sheer joy of being alive. “Shade and I are playing tag with the Goliath.”
“It’s ignoring us. Annoying really.” Shade.
“Coming in hot, Spook. And I bet I take out a Razor before you do.” And Geist.
Shocked silence, then, “Not on your life.”
Damn, she loved them.
She may love Tom best, but she loved them all. And being here, at the edge of death? Made her feel so Void-damned alive.
Something pulled on her to right. A flicker.
“Anyone else… feel that?”
Silence. Then Shade’s voice, “The sudden creeping existential dread?”
“That’s the one.”
“Yeah. I think we may have a problem.”
Something shifted. A gravitational wrongness. And then a fucking Leviathan punched out of the Fold. Right into the center of the battle.
Wraith toggled comms to All Channels.
It was chaos. All orders and counter orders as Command tried to adjust from the sidelines.
One voice, colder that the rest, stood out.
“Obsidian, Onyx, Ebony, move to Moirai positions. Kerberos lock. Control, initiate Typhon Protocol.”
What the fuck?
No time to puzzle over it. The Leviathan had just released a swarm of Locusts—single enemy fighters—into the fray.
She flipped the comms back to her team channel and pushed her Wasp forward, circling to cover the Onyx as it moved away from the enemy flagship. Engaged some Locusts, destroyed them.
The moments bled into each other. Fire, roll, dodge, fire.
The small Locusts weren’t as fast as her Wasp, but damn, they had a lot of them.
“You doing okay?”
Phantom. She glanced down at her instruments. Private channel.
“Five by five. You?”
“Dancing on the wind. Let me buy you dinner later?”
She laughed and her pulse that had been rock steady, spiked. “You’re flirting with me in the middle of all this fucking chaos? Buddy, with that kind of audacity, I’m gonna be buying you dinner later.” She waited a beat, “Much later.”
He chuckled and clicked off the channel.
And there was another excellent reason to live.
She’d taken out five Locusts at once by making them chase her and then yanking on the yoke at the very last second, pulling her up and over the Goliath. They weren’t quite so lucky. And the Goliath gained a nice hole in its hull.
“Swarm is thinning,” Geist’s voice, “but they’re prepping for something.”
Wraith looked at the Leviathan. It was shifting, turning. Its shields seemed impenetrable. Not a single missile, laser, or ship had breached them yet.
What was it up to?
A loud burst of static crackled in Wraith’s ear.
Ow.
“Captain Ashley Raine. Send response for encryption key freefall-skulk-boomarang.”
And that wasn’t ominous at all.
“Ashley-Raine-Wraith-ruby-omicron-solo.”
“Authenticated. Stand by for orders.”