Callum felt Mikan's scream even though he was nowhere near her. It rattled him to the core. Was she in trouble? Hurt? It hadn't sounded like that kind of scream. It was rage and pain and...loss. A horrible thought hit him. 'Is everyone still alright?'
'One of the indicator lights is gone,' Valencia answered. A wave of sadness emanated from her and he knew what she was going to say before she said it. 'I think it was Nita.' A lump formed in Callum's throat. 'Not Nita.' But he knew it had to be true. No other death would have affected Mikan like that.
Then he made a mistake. He'd been so focused on the fighting that he hadn't had time to think of the one thing he never, ever wanted to think about when Valencia was in the cockpit with him. But he thought of it now. All of the intimate moments he'd shared with Nita over the last week. They flashed through his head before he could stop them.
It stunned Valencia like he'd just caught her across the chin with a right hook. She stopped piloting. Her mind seemed to simply go blank. The Angra Mainyu flew through space in a straight line with carcha mechs closing in from every side. Beams flashed around them, only missing because the carcha firing expected them to try and juke. It couldn't last and one of them finally drilled a shot through Angra Mainyu's left leg. "Valencia!" Callum screamed. "Valencia, we're going to die!"
She finally woke up and instantly had their mech twisting and rolling out of the way of the converging beams. Callum felt her push down her hurt and her anger at him and focus on the task at hand. There would be hell to pay later, Callum was sure but for now he was glad she was focused on survival again. 'Can't kill me if the carcha do it first.' Her only response was a feeling of grim amusement. Callum had no idea if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
And they had much more pressing matters. Valencia's momentary lapse had landed them in hot water. Carcha surrounded them on all sides and they actually seemed somewhat organized this time. Callum noticed with a feeling of dread that one of them was a command selachii. He was convinced that the command mech must be organizing the group around them when six mechs fired a coordinated blast that forced Valencia to stop short. They were dead in space for a brief moment but the carcha didn't let it go to waste.
Four of them converged on Angra Mainyu with sawswords drawn. Working together, Callum and Valencia managed to twist out of the way of three of the thrusts. The fourth managed to stab their mech through the right leg. Callum could almost feel the teeth of the sawsword chewing into the leg. He knew what would happen next. The carcha would twist and slice, cutting off Angra Mainyu's leg from the calf down.
"Fortify the armor!" Russell shouted. "Hurry!"
As soon as Russell said it, Callum somehow realized how to do it. He reached out and strengthened the armor around the sawsword. It stopped the teeth cold, keeping the sword from slicing off the leg but also freezing it in place. Callum tried punching at the selachii whose sword was through his leg but the pilot wisely leaned away and Callum didn't have the angle. His preoccupation with the one mech cost him dearly when the other three came back. They stabbed at him from the back, piercing each of his arms. Callum instantly fortified the armor on his arms but now they had him trapped.
"Callum, the last one is coming from behind!" Valencia shouted. Using the technique he'd learned while training with Myna, Callum looked through her eyes and got a sense of where the mech was aiming a second before the strike. He hardened the armor on Angra Mainyu's back and the sword only penetrated a little ways. It hit something though and Cosmos informed him that one of their thrusters was damaged. That was bad but the position they were in was much worse. It was taking a massive effort to keep so much of his armor reinforced and he didn't have enough left over to throw off the selachii. The carcha mech behind him reared back for another strike. Callum braced for it, wondering how long he could last and how long it would be until more carcha got in on the easy kill.
"Quite a kinky situation you've found yourself in," a voice crackled over the com. 'Chajin!' Callum felt a mixture of hope and hatred from Valencia. He glanced up and saw her slice through two mechs and blast toward him. She cut the selachii behind him almost in half and then spun and pierced the cockpit of the mech trapping his left arm. It died and let go of its sword. With half his body now free, Callum reached over and grasped the arm of the mech that had its sword through Angra Mainyu's right arm. He jerked the mech forward so that it was in front of Angra Mainyu's shoulder cannon. 'Valencia!' She was triggering it even before he thought her name. The cannon took the top of the mech off and he let go to drift away.
In the meantime, Chajin dealt with the first one, who had gotten his right leg. Callum let the energy strengthening his armor lessen and shook the swords out. While he did so, he tried to get a sense of how much damage had been done. He couldn't really tell with the legs but his left arm seemed to be alright. The sword had caught mostly armor. The right arm was worse. It had damaged something deep and his hand was stuck closed. Since it was closed tight around the hilt of Shamshir, he supposed he had been pretty lucky, all in all.
But when he looked around, he wondered about that. They were surrounded by a sphere of carcha mechs. If they rained down missiles now, he, Valencia and Chajin were all dead. Instead, five of them advanced on the pair with swords drawn. 'These carcha are morons,' Valencia thought savagely. 'Lucky for us, I guess.' Callum didn't think they were morons so much as strange and stubborn.
The mechs came and he fought back to back with Chajin. The damaged thruster limited him but Chajin more than made up for it. He had watched her spar with Yemoramato and knew her fighting style was usually wild, jagged and chaotic. Fighting alongside him, though, she was all of a sudden smooth as water, as much a dancer as Yemoramato. She whirled around him, blocking cuts that would have hit him and killing four of the mechs to his one. 'She's a genius,' Callum thought in complete awe. To be able to change her fighting style to almost its complete opposite and still be that effective. Callum could hardly believe it. He felt Valencia's grudging agreement.
After the first wave of five, ten more came. Callum and Valencia fought doggedly, Chajin with preternatural skill but eventually numbers had to tell. They finally did when Callum sliced the arm off of one selachii with a frantic swing. The follow through left his sword almost above his head. Another selachii was right behind and darted in, sawsword aimed for Angra Mainyu's chest. There was no way to counter it in time so Callum hardened his armor, hoping he could stop it from penetrating too deeply. His power was flagging, though. How long have we been fighting?
Somehow, against all reason, Chajin was there deflecting the sword away. Of course, to do it, she'd had to turn her back on the selachii she'd been fighting. It didn't miss its chance. Even as Chajin used a thrust to dispatch the first mech, the one behind her swung his sword in an arc that sliced a huge rent in the back of Chajin's mech. It penetrated so deep that Callum knew it hit the cockpit. Chajin never screamed.
Callum did, a howl of rage as he gashed the selachii through the side of the chest, sending it spinning away. Callum turned to Chajin. Her mech was floating seemingly dead in space. But then Callum saw one of the arms move weakly. Chajin was alive and her mech was still online, if barely. New and fresh fear animated him. He surged forward and wrapped his arms around her mech, careful to keep his sword from hitting her. Valencia understood what he was doing and, despite her antipathy for Chajin, she didn't even hesitate.
Losing close to fifteen mechs had diluted the numbers of the sphere surrounding them. Valencia honed in on a spot where two selachii had drifted too far apart and they rocketed toward it. Callum put everything into the thrusters and they gained speed despite one of them being damaged. The selachii realized their mistake and tried to interpose themselves between Angra Mainyu and free space. Valencia deftly twisted but Callum saw that they weren't quite going to make it. He pushed forward to protect Chajin and angled Angra Mainyu's head. One of the horns crashed directly into the face of one of the selachii. It pierced deep and Callum shook Angra Mainyu's head violently, throwing the selachii to the side. The horn snapped off but Callum didn't have time to care about that. There was empty space ahead.
Valencia pushed the thrusters to max and Callum fed them power, though he was starting to feel like a withered piece of fruit. He let Valencia take over, trusting that she would see them back to Ragrun. He focused himself completely on holding on to Chajin and feeding power to the thrusters. He reached out to see if Chajin was still alive but his effort was fumbling and he didn't learn anything. 'Damn it. Damn it.' How was he supposed to live with himself if she died? No matter what else she'd done, she'd saved his life twice. Him and Valencia both.
Valencia pulled up suddenly and Callum briefly wondered if it was because of what he'd been thinking. Then he looked and saw that they had almost reached Ragrun but there were ten mechs interposed between them and the entry point. Callum cursed. That commander must have realized where they were headed and ordered these mechs to head them off. Callum was tired but he wasn't ready to give up. He let go of Chajin and pushed her away gently. He brandished Shamshir and readied himself. Valencia was a cold ball of focus and determination. They would sell themselves dearly.
Then everything changed. Something massive materialized in the space between Ragrun and Algnen. Callum turned his mech to look at it and so did all the carcha. It was a white disc so large that Callum couldn't truly appreciate the scope of it until he saw the carcha's light cruiser next to it. It looked like a pebble next to a boulder. 'Is that...a ship?' The thought was Valencia's and Callum gasped. His mind hadn't even perceived it as such, though it could be nothing else.
"She's here!" Yemoramato screamed. Her voice was pure joy and so different from her normal hostility. "Shimayasumota! Tsyirinsaku!" Callum blinked. The fie. The fie had actually come. And their ship was so big that Yemoramato's boasts about the light cruiser posing no threat seemed completely reasonable.
'It's launching mechs!' Valencia thought excitedly. Hundreds of them! He felt hope flare in her and felt the same thing. They had a chance to survive now. They just had to hold on a little longer. He turned to the ten mechs between him and Ragrun, hefting his sword. But all at once they angled away from him and blasted away. Callum watched, stunned for a moment, then he got ahold of himself. He didn't care if they were running or going to fight the fie. There was nothing between him and Ragrun now. He collected Chajin–noting with concern that her mech was now unpowered–and made for the surface.
As soon as they entered the atmosphere, however, Callum realized that they weren't quite safe yet. The drag, light as it was, made the thruster problem worse. As they descended toward the ground and Valencia fired them to slow down, it misfired and then exploded. Valencia got control quickly but with only one thruster they came into the landing zone very hot. Angra Mainyu touched down hard. Both of its legs had been pierced during the fighting. One of them held, one of them didn't.
Angra Mainyu tilted right and Callum hurriedly stabbed the ground to keep them upright. He awkwardly cradled Chajin's mech in his other arm and barely managed to keep from dropping her. Angra Mainyu settled into a somewhat stable kneel, with Shamshir driven through the tarmac. Callum waited for a few moments to see if it would topple but to his relief, everything stayed. Callum let go of the control sticks and Angra Mainyu powered down into idle.
It took him a moment to gather the strength to swim to the top of the cockpit. He broke the surface and the racking cough that always came seemed doubly painful. He heard Valencia coughing next to him and turned to look at her. She was naked but, for once, neither of them cared about it. They shared a tired grin, both glad to be alive. But that made Callum think of Chajin, who might be dead or dying. He scrambled out of the cockpit, forcing exhausted limbs to obey him. He sidled over to the shoulder of Angra Mainyu and then shimmied down the arm until he could leap over to Chajin's mech. Valencia followed him. When he glanced back to make sure she was doing alright, she snapped, "Eyes forward!"
Callum opened the hatch of Chajin's mech and swung himself inside. Chajin was floating in the PFC liquid and Callum thought he was too late. But then she looked up at him and smiled. Her movements were weak, though. Callum carefully lowered himself down, the angle of the cockpit making it awkward. As he did, he saw that the slash Chajin had suffered had indeed cut all the way into the cockpit. The PFC liquid had created a hard seal over the opening, though. "I didn't know it could do that," he muttered.
Callum took a breath, not wanting to fill his lungs with the orange goo again, and dived. He caught Chajin up with his arms and kicked his way back to the top. Valencia was braced at the top of the cockpit with her arms outstretched. Callum passed the carcha up to her. As he did so, he got a look at the injury that had almost killed Chajin. Her back had a diagonal slash, going from ribs to shoulder. Callum thought, with a sick feeling in his belly, that he could glimpse her spine through it.
Valencia was smaller than Chajin and had no extra power to draw on, besides being in a tenuous position. It was all she could do to hang on to Chajin. There was no way she could pull her up. Callum was at a loss for a moment until Russell suddenly appeared next to Valencia and grasped the carcha. "Saving a fucking fish," he grumbled. "What have I been reduced to?" Despite his size, Russell was strong and together they managed to get Chajin all the way out of the cockpit and out onto her mech. Then they half-slid down it.
Callum held Chajin against him, not wanting her wound to touch the ground. "We need to get her to one of the healing tanks," he said. But when he tried to lift her up, his legs suddenly went and he sat down hard.
"Callum!" Valencia cried, kneeling down next to him. "Are you alright?"
"I'm alright," Callum said, a little breathlessly. "Just tired."
"He'll be fine," Russell said. "A battle like that would take it out of anyone."
"Give me a second and I'll carry Chajin inside." He hated himself for his weakness. Chajin was probably dying and he wasn't saving her because he was too tired? It was pathetic.
"Don't," Chajin said. Her voice was still dry and whispery but it lacked the menace it normally had. That was replaced by pain. "I hate…I hate those tanks."
"Are you crazy?" he asked. "Your back was laid open to the bone!"
"The cockpit juice...stabilized it. Just need...to bandage it." Callum blinked in surprise. Apparently there was a lot he didn't know about the PFC liquid. It was true that she didn't seem to be bleeding, though. A wound like that should have had her bleeding all over the place. He'd thought it was because she was a carcha but he supposed even carcha bled.
Valencia stood. "I'll go see what I can find." Before Callum could argue, she turned and hurried away. Russell followed her.
"Where are you going?" Callum asked.
"Let's see," Russell said scornfully. "Follow the fully nude human hottie or stay here and watch you cuddle up to a goddamn fish?" With a snort, he trotted away.
Chajin chuckled. "I love that little thing." Callum shook his head. He didn't understand how she could like Russell when he so clearly hated her. Then again, Callum didn't understand the carcha at all.
He felt compelled to say, "You saved me again." Chajin didn't respond so Callum continued. "The first time I put it down to you wanting to get more kills than Yemoramato but this time...you put yourself into danger for me. I know you knew that you would take a bad hit when you blocked that thrust. Why? Why did you save me?"
"Because I felt like it," Chajin said.
He waited a moment to see if she would expand on that but she stayed quiet. "Really? That's it? You felt like it?"
"Why would I do it...for any other reason?" Callum couldn't think of one but he also couldn't understand doing it on a whim. "I have never understood...why I should do things for any other reason. I do things...because I want to." There was something in her tone then, something beyond the normal menace and amusement but Callum didn't understand it better than he had anything else.
"But why did you feel like it?" he pressed. "What made you want to do it?"
"You are interesting. The universe is mostly boring. I value anything that is interesting."
Callum shook his head. What was interesting about him? "Is that why you bit me?" Callum asked, his stomach knotting up a little at that. For some reason he was more nervous about learning why she bit him than learning why she saved his life.
"I wanted to see...what would happen. I thought it would be...unpredictable. And it was." She chuckled. "It really was. I had heard that you humans...turned crazy when you were bitten. I thought it would be...more extreme. I had also heard that...you humans gain power by fucking. I had no idea...that would be so extreme."
Callum didn't feel the need to explain why the boost that he and Mikan had gained had been so large. "So you bit me just to see what would happen? Weren't you afraid I might go crazy and attack you?"
"I was prepared. If you had sex with me...or your co-pilot...or someone else...it was bound to be interesting. And it was."
Callum couldn't exactly argue with that. "Well, don't do it again."
"We'll see."
Callum sighed. He wanted to steer away from this topic so he said, "I can't believe we survived all of that." A pang hit Callum when he remembered Nita but he wasn't completely sure she was dead yet. Chajin had survived her cockpit being pierced, after all. It seemed like an utterly foolish hope but he couldn't shake it. "A full hundred carcha. Probably some of their best warriors, too."
Chajin started laughing hard. It wasn't her normal maniacal laugh or dark chuckle but an uncontrolled, surprised laugh. Though it was still pretty disturbing. "Their best?" she gasped, after winding down. "Ah, it feels good to laugh." Callum couldn't believe that. With her back open, it had to be incredibly painful to laugh like that. 'She really is insane.' "That was a training battalion."
"What?" Callum asked, unable to believe he'd heard her right.
"Did you see the pink stripes...on their wrists and ankles?" Callum thought back and realized that had all indeed had bright pink stripes over the standard gray. "It was a battalion of trainees," Chajin said. "We like to send them into...a few real fights before they are...activated as full soldiers. Low level planetary rebellions like this. Get some blood on their teeth. Kill off the worthless. Of course, they underestimated this rebellion." She laughed again. "The best," she snickered. "A battalion of frontline soldiers would have erased us." That threw a whole cold bucket on Callum's sense of victory. 'But still, even if they are trainees, so are we and we survived being outnumbered twenty to one.'
Valencia and Russell returned with some ointment and bandages for Chajin. They carefully stripped her to the waist. Valencia gasped at the sight of her back and even Russell seemed a little discomfited. With Callum holding her, Valencia gently applied the ointment and then stuck the bandages to her back. When they tried to pull up her jumpsuit, Chajin waved them away and leaned back against Callum. She seemed more tired now.
Valencia sat down next to Callum. She had found a thin gown in the infirmary to change into. Callum was comforted by how close she sat. There was going to be a reckoning about what he'd done with Nita but she wasn't running away this time. Callum wondered what he would say when the time came. He'd been so focused on surviving the carcha that it still felt kind of surreal that it was over. What was next?
After a time, Mikan and the mystery woman appeared in the sky above them and touched down. Both mechs were scorched and chipped and dented but seemed to be in decent condition. Callum wondered if Mikan would have survived all of this if he hadn't slept with her. Did she owe her life to Chajin's whim as well?
Mikan opened the hatch and slid down the rope ladder so fast Callum wondered if she'd burned her hands. If she did, it didn't bother her. She ran over and took them all in. "You're alive." She clapped hands to her mouth and tears started streaking down her face. "You're all alive!" As she cried softly, another woman came to stand by her. Callum recognized her as the woman who'd stolen Nita's mech while they were on the storm prison. She was stark naked but nothing in her demeanor suggested as much. "Oh, sorry," Mikan said. She gestured at the woman and said, "This is Century. She helped me after…" Tears started again. "Well, anyway. Century, this is Callum, Valencia and the carcha is Chajin. She's a...friend. The little one is Russell."
"Little one?" Russell muttered dejectedly.
Century's eyes swept over them. Her head was tilted slightly back so that she was looking down her nose at them. For some reason, Callum found it vaguely irritating. "You have some skills, to survive all of that up there," she finally said.
"Who are you?" Valencia demanded. "You caused us a lot of trouble, you know! Where have you been all this time?"
She skewered Valencia with her bright hazel eyes and said, "That's classified." 'What does that mean?' Callum had never even heard the word before.
Valencia opened her mouth angrily but swallowed whatever she was about to say when another mech appeared in the sky above them. It touched down near the mechs of Mikan and Century. Unlike theirs, it was spotless. It was thin like a carcha selachii and about halfway between the height of the main and command models but it was all curves where selachii were angles. The armor was a deep purple. A long sword hung down its back. It was thinner than Shamshir but looked to be the same type of sword, rather than the sawswords of the carcha.
The hatch opened and a woman pulled herself up onto the shoulder of the mech. She was the most striking woman Callum had ever seen. Not the most beautiful--if he was honest, that title belonged to Yemoramato–but the most arresting. Her skin was a very light blue and her hair was a dark indigo almost the same color as her mech. It felt in a straight shimmer almost down to her waist, with the sides and bangs cut to frame her face. Ironically, considering the mech she piloted, the face they framed was all sharp angles. Her chin, cheekbones, nose, eyebrows, even her mouth was a sharp gash. But it was the eyes that were sharpest of all. Her double irises were bright violet and yellow and burned with intensity.
She stepped forward and peered down at them with her back straight, head high and arms folded behind her back. The jumpsuit she was wearing was skintight like a carcha design but all black and shined almost like scales. It also didn't show everything in quite the detail that a carcha jumpsuit did. Callum noticed with surprise that the boots of the suit had thin high heels.
A figure appeared behind the first woman and Callum sucked in his breath harshly. It was the woman who Yemoramato had contacted before. Bel-something. She was even more beautiful in person, all gentle softness where the other was harsh sharpness. She was even wearing a white jumpsuit, as if to highlight their opposite natures. Now that Callum got a real look at her, he wondered if maybe Yemoramato was not the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen. 'Are all fie so breathtaking?' And we're about to go on a ship full of them? Callum was not sure how he felt about that.
The woman in black suddenly spoke. "Well, humans, you have called and so Tsyirinsaku has come," her voice was strong and deep for a woman, ringing out with command. "I hope you intend to make it worth my while." She grinned and it only sharpened her features. It was an arrogant, mocking grin. Callum began to feel queasy. Tsyirinsaku ran her volcanic gaze over the four humans, weighing and measuring them the way he might have looked at a stone while wondering if there was anything of value in it. When she spoke, her voice was like a whip. "Welcome to the resistance!"