From Darkness

[Manticore]

LISA

Five minutes passed – five eternal minutes from Lisa’s perspective.

JADE had sliced into the ship’s systems with her usual efficiency, once James had – somehow – made it to the mainframe. But now his vitals were peaking dangerously as he struggled to hold position at the airlock.

The Gull – now under JADE’s control – was bleeding altitude as fast as was reasonably safe, and Lisa had guided the Venture down right alongside it. In forty seconds, both ships would touch down at the prepared landing zone. Lisa grabbed her headset, keying it to speak to JADE directly, and leapt from the pilot’s seat.

“JADE, I want you to open James’s airlock on my mark!”

She sprung for the closest exit, snatching up one of the assault rifles they’d lifted from the Junkers as she ran. A blast of frigid air buffeted her as soon as she opened the exit hatch, and snow crunched beneath her feet as she jumped down into a pristine alpine clearing. Wayfarer sat parked nearby, but Lisa’s gaze was focused on the Gull in the process of touching down twenty meters in front of her under JADE’s steady guidance. Looking up, she quickly ran the ship’s schematic through her memory and identified the exit hatch for James’s airlock, right along the bottom edge of the hull.

She was already in motion, lining herself up as the ship settled into the snow-covered surface. She keyed her comm again as she awkwardly loped through the shin-deep snow. “Now, JADE! Now!”

Both twin doors of the airlock hissed open, and she leapt through without hesitation. As her eyes adjusted to the dim light, she spotted James on her left, and instinctively squeezed a burst of wild, automatic fire further into the ship’s interior. There was no immediate response, but she heard the sound of distant gunfire echoing back down the hall. That likely meant that Rob and company had already made their entrance.

She turned back to James, only now seeing that he was leaning against the wall, in obvious pain. Punctures marred the glass-like surface of his armor, and Lisa saw his blood leaking through in several places. He still defiantly held his pistol in his right hand, and a rifle lay discarded on the steel floor nearby.

“James!” she shouted. “I’m here!”

His head turned toward her, face still covered by the fearsome-looking helmet. Through it, he mumbled something she couldn’t quite understand. Knowing him, he was probably chiding her for taking so long.

She fired another wild burst, then slapped him on the shoulder and jerked her thumb towards the open hatch behind her. He hesitated a moment, then slumped back towards it. Lisa kept shooting, even though there still hadn’t been any direct return fire. The echos of gunfire were growing louder – she hoped Rob would be able to manage clearing the ship without James’s help.

She heard the distinctive crunch of snow as James landed outside, and took that as her cue to follow. Lowering the gun, she whirled and leapt out of the hatch behind her, landing on her knees in a spray of snow.

Pulling herself up, she saw James crouched beside her, on hands and knees. Wordlessly, she grabbed his elbow and helped him to his feet, dragging him awkwardly towards the Wayfarer. He stumbled forward, lurching left and right as he walked but managing to keep his feet.

She stayed with him, helping him to his feet when he fell, and tried not to think about the trail of red smears he left on the snow behind them. When Wayfarer’s bulk appeared before them at last, Lisa was relieved to see Floretta, the young woman who had been introduced to them as the ship’s doctor, running down the ramp with a red bag in her hand.

The doctor stopped in front of James, kneeling to inspect him. “Oh dear, he’s lost a lot of blood,” she said, her lilting accent expressing genuine compassion.

Lisa nodded, unsure of what to say. The young doctor’s big blue eyes flashed to Lisa for a moment. “Help me get him inside.”

Lisa grabbed James’s elbow again, helping him to his feet. His head now hung limp, flopping from side to side as they walked him up the ramp and into the comparatively warm cargo hold of the freelancer ship.

“It’s okay James, you’re safe now,” Lisa said, quietly.

---