Pylades Against the Taurians

August 487 I.C., Within the Iserlohn Corridor

Kircheis had been on fleet ships before during a few training exercises at the IOA, but this was the first time that he had been assigned to one, even on a temporary basis. The ship, along with all of the ships in their group, was a transport, barely even armed, and therefore relatively boring to everyone familiar with the larger battleships of the Imperial fleet. Kircheis was fascinated with its workings nevertheless. Once they left Odin, he had few official duties while en route, so he spent as much of his time as he could lingering on the bridge, trying to learn about normal ship’s operations without getting in anyone’s way.

Kircheis’s usual assignment gave him little practical experience, and he wanted to get as much as he could now. He suspected that once the Kaiser died, his comfortable post in the capitol would cease to exist. With that in mind, he didn’t want to suddenly be assigned to a ship in crisis without knowing the first thing about how they ran in reality. Classes at the IOA, though they had been comprehensive, were nothing like the actual experience of being on duty.

People tolerated him on the bridge, asking questions about the operation of all of the ship’s equipment and duties. Perhaps his curiosity was welcome because, despite his officer’s uniform, he was unfailingly polite to the enlisted specialists who manned the bridge consoles, and the senior officers ignored him because of his sub-lieutenant’s lack of stripes on his shoulders.

Learning about how things worked gave him something to do, anyway. Travel was otherwise deathly boring, and he hated spending too much time in his quarters. His room on board the ship was very cramped: there was a camp-sized bed that he barely fit on, and that was it. He could stand sideways in the crack between his bed and the wall, but not face towards the door, which opened with a sliding mechanism to take up even less space. Being an officer, he at least had a room of his own. This was more than any of the enlisted men in the belly of the ship could say.

Even though Kircheis wasn’t expecting to stay on the ship for very long, he had still taken a few steps to make it feel more like home, taping up some photographs on the wall above the little fold-down desk. There was a copy of his photo of the von Musel siblings, and then a photograph of Hilde in her IOA uniform, grinning out at the camera. A photo of Martin, sitting at the rickety kitchen table in their apartment, had the place of honor, though when Kircheis sat on the edge of the bed and looked at it, he felt an odd twist in his heart.

He had been given the choice of coming on this mission: Captain Leigh had called him into his office and asked if he wanted to accompany him to seize the base on Cahokia-III. Kircheis remembered standing in front of his messy desk, and looking at Leigh’s serious face.

“Do you want me to come?” Kircheis asked. He realized after he said it that it was a silly question. Leigh wouldn’t have asked if he didn’t want Kircheis to come.

“Only I’m allowed to answer a question with a question, Sub-lieutenant,” Leigh said with a smile. He was dodging the question, though.

“You’re my superior officer, sir,” Kircheis said. “You shouldn’t really be giving me a choice.”

“I’ll mark you down as ‘no’, then,” Leigh said. There was no animosity in his voice, and he almost sounded relieved. “That was all I wanted to ask.” He waved his hand at Kircheis and looked back down at his computer, frowning in concentration.

“No, sir,” Kircheis said. “I want to come.”

Leigh looked up. “Alright.”

They looked at each other in silence for half a second— it was a weird, strained moment. “I—” Kircheis began, then stopped.

Leigh smiled. “I’m being selfish in wanting your company, Kircheis. And since I wanted the company of a friend, rather than the obedience of a subordinate, I was asking you as one. That’s all.”

Kircheis, thinking of the way that he sometimes saw Captain Ansbach look at Leigh, nodded. It would have been unpleasant to be surrounded on all sides by enemies. “Thank you, sir.”

Leigh studied him for a second, then shook his head. “You shouldn’t thank me, Kircheis.”

That had been the easy conversation of the day. Telling Martin that he was being deployed out into the field had been much harder. It would have been better if Leigh hadn’t given him a choice, if Kircheis had not had to face Martin with the knowledge that he had volunteered to head out to the front, to fight and maybe die. Kircheis studied the photo of Martin on the wall, and tried not to think about Martin’s cold scowl when he had broken the news. He hated leaving on an argument, but with Martin, there would be no other way that he could leave.

Kircheis checked the time. He couldn’t sit around dwelling on Martin right now. In about ten minutes, there would be a command meeting to discuss the actual plan of attack, since they were coming close to the planet, having already passed by Iserlohn Fortress. They were now creeping through relatively empty and barely charted space, with the dot of Cahokia starzone gleaming on their navigational charts.

With a final glance at the photographs, Kircheis heaved himself to his feet and shuffled sideways out of his room, then strode through the cold ship’s hallways to the meeting room. It was already full of the junior officers and NCOs who had been pulled to staff this mission, talking among themselves. As one of the most junior of the junior staff officers, and not knowing anyone in this battalion, Kircheis was thoroughly ignored as he found his seat. Captain Leigh and Captain Ansbach, sharing command, had not arrived yet.

Ansbach arrived right at the scheduled time, and Leigh showed up about thirty seconds later, earning himself a scowl from Ansbach, who called the room to order before Leigh could even get to his seat at the front.

The room quieted down to listen to Ansbach. Compared to the way that Kircheis remembered Leigh delivering his lectures, Ansbach was stiff and unfriendly when he spoke to the assembled staff, looking out over the tops of everyone’s heads. He began with the schedule.

“As you are aware, we are just two days out from our target. As soon as we enter the starsystem, we must assume that a clock has begun ticking, one which will summon the nearest contingent of the rebel fleet down on our heads. We cannot assume that we will be able to enter the system and land on the planet undetected, though we are going to try. As such, speed and timing will be of the utmost importance.

“Our goal is to overtake the rebel base on this planet, before the rebel fleet moves into the corridor to protect their asset. We need to establish Duke Braunschweig’s control of the planet, without the assistance of the broader Imperial fleet. Any engagement within the corridor does not concern us on the ground today, even if in the future ships will need to be permanently stationed in the starsystem. Removing the rebel fleet forces on the planet’s surface is the only thing that Duke Braunschweig requires.

“To reduce our chances of being detected, we will attempt to take advantage of this planet’s features. The rotational period is very short, meaning we will have only a short time before we lose the cover of darkness. Sandstorms, which are frequent on the surface, will provide us cover for our descent. They reduce surface visibility to almost zero, and will impede radar detection.

“We will be able to make a direct landing during a moderate intensity storm, but aerial navigation will be difficult. As our ships are only minimally armed, due to the nature of the mission, we will land and then proceed to capture the rebel fleet base with ground troops. Our starting position will be in these highlands, close to the known location of the rebel fleet base.”

He continued to explain the details of the plan, the navigational route that the tanks would follow, the way they would approach the base, and the logistics of supporting this deployment on a planet that had an unbreathable atmosphere. The plan was almost exactly as Captain Leigh had written it, so Kircheis was already familiar with its details. He paid attention, and took notes on the places where Ansbach mentioned deviations from Leigh’s ideas.

“Once we have captured the rebel base, we will relocate our ships to just outside the mine, here. Since this will need to be accomplished quickly, Captain Leigh will be remaining with the ships to coordinate the change of position, as well as any resupply or fallback we may require,” Ansbach said, continuing as though this was a completely normal part of the plan, and not him deliberately cutting Leigh out of it.

Kircheis looked over at Leigh, who was sitting silently, looking up at Ansbach’s presentation without a flicker of annoyance on his face. He was merely weaving a pen back and forth through his fingers, the notepad in front of him completely blank. Kircheis was having a harder time not being annoyed at Ansbach. He and Leigh were supposed to be in co-command, and Leigh had been the one to write the plan that they would be following.

Ansbach finished his presentation a few minutes later and opened the room up to questions. None of the other staff seemed concerned that Leigh had been unofficially relieved of his command, by someone who didn’t have authority to do so. All of the questions concerned logistical details that Kircheis ordinarily would have been interested in hearing the answers to, but all he could do was look across the room at Leigh, who was unperturbed by Ansbach’s behavior.

Leigh’s lack of concern didn’t mean anything. Kircheis had seen Leigh be escorted away by armed guards out of his classroom, once, and the only thing he had said was that everyone should remember to study for their next exam. He took things in stride.

Leigh may have been willing to allow Ansbach to push him around, to not cause a stir, but Kircheis had come with Leigh to provide him an ally, and he wasn’t going to take that duty lightly.

When the question and answer section of the presentation finished, and Ansbach left, Kircheis slipped out of the meeting room. Leigh remained behind, speaking briefly with the gathered group of XOs from their little squadron of ships.

Ansbach was walking down the hallway by himself, and he stopped and turned when he heard Kircheis approaching at a jog.

“What is it, Sub-lieutenant?” he asked. His expression was cold, but in an impersonal way. Ansbach knew that Kircheis was part of Leigh’s entourage, but his disdain for Leigh apparently didn’t entirely extend to his staff.

“Sir, if I may speak freely, I have a question about the personnel assignments.”

“A question about personnel assignments shouldn’t require permission to speak, unless you are planning to be impertinent about it.”

“You and Captain Leigh are in co-command. Why isn’t he accompanying you on the mission?”

Ansbach stared at Kircheis silently for a moment. “It shouldn’t concern you, but since it does, I will say that I am more senior than Captain Leigh, and staffing choices are my prerogative. It was a choice I made for the benefit of the mission. There’s no need for both of us to go, and I have significantly more ground combat experience.” He paused, looked Kircheis in the eye, and said, “And Leigh should be grateful to not be put in charge of the excursion. He’s never been good at defending himself. If that is all, Sub-lieutenant?”

“Why do you dislike him so much, sir?” The words fell out of Kircheis’s mouth before he could stop them, and the tacked on ‘sir’ only felt like more of an insult. “He hasn’t done anything to you.”

“I suggest you mind your own business,” Ansbach said, then turned and strode off down the hallway.

Kircheis let him go. When he turned around, he found Leigh leaning on the wall, further down the hallway, outside the briefing room doors. He had probably heard the whole exchange, or most of it. Kircheis’s face heated up.

“He’s right, you know,” Leigh called.

Kircheis walked over to him. “About what, sir?”

“If he hated me more than he wanted the mission to succeed, he would be sending me out there and sabotaging the plan.” Leigh shrugged expressively. “I’m not going to look a gift horse in the mouth— I would have preferred not to come here in the first place, so staying with the ships is the next best thing.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I appreciate that you’re looking out for me, but sometimes it’s best to leave well enough alone.”

“I’m sorry, sir.”

“Well, I did ask you to come for a reason.” His smile was wry, and he tugged at his hair. “Don’t apologize.” He chuckled. “I suppose there’s probably nothing you could do to make him dislike me more, anyway.”

“Why does he dislike you so much, sir? If you don’t mind me asking.”

“Because I’m—” He shook his head. “He used to say it loudly enough— he’d say it’s because I’m a foreigner for sure, and probably a faggot on top of that, and maybe even some bastard son, which are all terrible things to be.” He shrugged. “Easy enough to understand, so let’s leave it at that, Kircheis, alright?”

This was clearly not the reason, but Leigh was loath to discuss it, so Kircheis nodded. “Yes, sir.”

Their ships reached Cahokia-III exactly as scheduled, and took observations of the planet before approaching within the detection range of any ground sensing stations. They didn’t see any satellites, nor any rebel fleet ships lingering in the system, just the reddish, dusty ball of rock that spun unnervingly quickly on its axis. When one area in the northerly latitudes of the planet swung into the light, their most powerful scopes picked up the scar of an open pit mine, though the buildings next to it nearly blended into the terrain. If they hadn’t known what they were looking for and where to find it, they likely would have missed it, tucked in among the lumpy and misshapen ground of the planet as it was.

Despite the relatively small size of the forces that Ansbach was going to be commanding, they were still likely to be a much larger force than anything stationed at the rebel encampment, which was quite small. Considering how many workers would be needed to staff the mine, along with the size of the buildings surrounding it, there was probably at most one regiment of soldiers.

Although the plan was simple and well thought out, things began going wrong almost immediately. Imperial ships were designed to descend through a planet’s atmosphere and land on the ground, but the sandstorm that they were aiming to descend during was more punishing than anticipated. On their first attempt to descend, the ships were knocked so wildly off course that they had to re-ascend into space and regroup, waiting a few hours for the weather to clear slightly, and then descend during the next available opportunity. Even in a less powerful sandstorm, the ships were knocked back and forth like they were toys in the hands of a child.

Kircheis stood on the bridge and barely kept his balance as they ended up nose-down at one point, their massive gravity engine barely able to compensate for the wind’s force. Leigh seemed unperturbed, sitting on one of the bridge chairs cross-legged, watching their position change over the terrain map in front of them with his eyes half-lidded. Ansbach leaned over his own console, gripping the edge of it so hard that the heavy ring he wore scraped loudly along the metal when the ship tilted hard to port and Ansbach stumbled and clung for stability.

Despite the weather, this time, the ships all made it down in the same area, tucked in among the rocky highlands. Ansbach grew impatient— it took far too long for the ships to be anchored to the ground to allow for the disembarking of the tanks, and then the tanks took far too long to get out of the bellies of the ships and form neat lines, struggling to array themselves on the shifting sand and crumbling rocks of the ground beneath them.

Leigh watched all this from the bridge with his usual detached benevolence, it seemed to Kircheis. He sidled over to Leigh.

“So much for speed being the name of the game,” Leigh said, glancing up at Kircheis and giving him a smile. “Ah, well, I’m sure Ansbach will figure it all out.”

“Is there anything I can do to help, sir?” Kircheis asked.

“No, I’m sure there’s not.”

“I’m not sure I like the feeling of being dead weight,” Kircheis said.

Leigh nudged Kircheis with his elbow. “It’s good for soldiers to be idle.”

“Yes, sir.”

Despite this reassurance from Leigh, Kircheis couldn’t bear to watch things go poorly and just stand around, so he suited up and headed outside to help direct the tanks as they left. He had never been on a planet without a breathable atmosphere before— he had never even been on a planet other than Odin before— and it was a little unnerving. Gravity was light on this world, which made the sand fly up into the air and scatter wildly with every gust of poisonous wind that buffeted the ships. The dull red sun illuminated each grain, like snowflakes, but it was far too hot on this planet for snow. Even in his cooled suit, sweat gathered along Kircheis’s back and flattened his curls to his forehead.

Admittedly, his excursion to assist ended up being more of his getting a feel for navigating the ground of the planet. As Leigh had said, there wasn’t much for him to do. But he still loped around, getting his balance in the strange gravity, and offered help where he could.

He could see why the tanks were having trouble. Although their treads stopped them from sinking into the loose sand like Kircheis’s feet did, they moved much more slowly than they wanted, and the way the sand buried uneven features in the rock below made several of them end up catching in sharp dips in the ground that they found difficult to clear. Still, they were well designed machines, and once the operators figured out the best gear, they trundled away in long rows. Kircheis watched them go, standing beneath the bulk of the ships, and looking at the sun crawling too-fast towards the horizon, feeling apprehensive in a way he couldn’t justify.

An eerie silence fell over the ships, once the tanks departed. The crew outside spent some more time preparing the ships for an extended stay on the planet, and Kircheis watched as the small staff that Braunschweig had put aside for actually investigating the possibility of mining the planet took some measurements of the rocks and atmosphere. It took a while, and the sun was setting by the time they finished. This didn’t mean much, considering how fast the night/day cycle on this planet was, but the darkening sky felt unnerving.

Kircheis headed back inside with the rest of the small remaining support staff, and the great cargo ramps retracted back into the now-empty bellies of the ships. His footsteps echoed through the hallways, which felt barren without the hundreds of ground troops they had carried to Cahokia. The crews of the transports themselves were minimal. Kircheis was still wearing his suit, but he had taken off his helmet and was holding it under one arm. It was a pain to get into and out of, so he headed for the bridge to see if there were any tasks that might require him to go outside again, before he took it off.

He found Leigh on the bridge. Now that the chaos of everyone disembarking was over, and Ansbach wasn’t around to scowl at him, Leigh had found a perch on top of one of the consoles, and was reading a book. Even the bridge was too quiet. Ansbach’s tanks weren’t going to communicate with them by radio until they had taken the base.

“How’s the weather out there, Sub-lieutenant?” he asked when Kircheis came in and stood at his side. Now that Ansbach was gone, it was clear that Leigh was more relaxed without him standing nearby on the bridge. His posture was loose, and he was no longer pulling at the hair on the back of his head.

“It’s hot,” Kircheis said. “I wish we had satellite imagery. I’d love to know if we’re going to get any more sandstorms.”

“Ansbach knows to just stop and shelter in place if there is one,” Leigh said. “I have faith that he is not going to find himself lost in the desert.”

“Do you think when he’s captured the base, we’ll move the ships into orbit? I feel like all this sand can’t be good for them.” Even as he said this, a gust of wind rocked the ship, floating tethered above the ground. Kircheis wobbled on his feet, though Leigh was stable in his criss-crossed perch.

“Maybe,” Leigh said noncommittally. “Ideally we’ll put a whole fleet in the system, so six ships won’t really matter…” He glanced up from his book at Kircheis, wearing his suit still. “But if you’re fishing around for me to give you something to keep you busy, making sure none of our systems are clogged with sand will take you” — he checked his watch— “probably until the end of this shift.”

“Yes, sir,” Kircheis said.

Leigh shook his head. “I see I failed to teach you the value of laziness at the IOA.”

“That’s true, sir.” But he smiled at Leigh, and trotted off.

And so it was that Kircheis headed down to the engineering section of the ship, going to talk with the crew down there about how the ships would fare in the corrosive, sand-blasted atmosphere.

While he was down there, examining a computer readout monitoring the temperature of the engines, the ship was rocked by a particularly heavy gust of wind, one that slammed Kircheis sideways into the man standing next to him.

“Sorry about that,” Kircheis said as he righted himself.

The enlisted man chuckled. “It’s fine. I think you’re right that we’d be better off in space than on the ground, though.”

The ship wavered in the wind again, and this time there seemed to be a strange, thrumming vibration, the whole ship bouncing in some resonant frequency. “Is there any way we could put the ships on the ground, rather than keeping them in the air? That might help with all of this.” He held the console to stay steady.

“You’d have to ask the captain about that, sir. We certainly can land— won’t hurt the structure of the ship to be on her belly— but if we ended up half buried in sand, I’d hate to try to take off again. These ships really weren’t built for that.”

Another man jogged up through the engine room. “Hey, Mikelson—” he called, then stopped on his heels and saluted when he saw Kircheis. Kircheis saluted back.

“What is it?” Mikelson asked.

The ship shivered again, some of the vibrations becoming more severe. “One of our tethers snapped off,” he said. “That’s what’s making the shakes so bad.”

Mikelson sighed. “Damn.”

“Looks like we didn’t bolt it in to the rock properly. Somebody’d better go fix it.”

“You volunteering?” Mikelson asked. “Get a new wire, and a couple guys. I’ll come out with you.”

The other man sighed. “Sure, sarge,” then walked off, calling to get the attention of a few other men down in the engine room to take care of the problem with him.

“The ship’s not going to come loose, right?” Kircheis asked.

“Nah,” Mikelson said. “I’ll make sure they check the rest of the attachments. You all set with the engine check?”

“Yeah,” Kircheis said. “Thanks for showing me what to look for. You need anything from the bridge when you go out there?”

“No, I’m all good.” He saluted, then headed off, leaving Kircheis to poke around in the ship’s engine computer some more, looking through all the system diagnostics. The ship kept shaking, but it wasn’t unbearable. After about ten minutes, Kircheis saw the team going out in their suits, carrying the heavy anchor between two people. He nodded at them as they passed.

Kircheis was absorbed in the technical readouts when, suddenly, the ship was rocked so violently that he couldn’t keep his balance, and he toppled to the floor. As he scrambled back to his feet, there was the sound of shouting from down the corridor, and an alarm began to blare. He immediately jogged to the front of the engine room to see what was happening.

“What’s going on?” he asked one of the soldiers who ran past him, scrambling for the weapons cache on the side of the room.

“We’re under attack— the other ships—”

Kircheis’s heart began to beat strangely. He accepted a rifle and axe from the weapons cache that the enlisted man opened, and by the time he had them in hand, he could hear the sounds of fighting, coming closer through the hallways from the loading bay. He imagined that whoever was trying to board had entered the ship when they dropped the ramp to repair the snapped guy wire.

Although Kircheis’s first instinct was to dash out into the fray, he quelled it. If the ship was being boarded, he needed to make that as difficult as possible. He ran back to the computer console in the engine room, still open to the diagnostic menu, and anxiously paged through it to find the command he knew must be in there: a way to disable the engines and stop the ship from moving. He didn’t want the boarding party to gain control of the vessel.

Although he found the command, when Kircheis attempted to enter his credentials to put it into action, he found that he didn’t have the authorization. He was only a sub-lieutenant, and not even a permanent part of this ship’s crew. He bit his lip but didn’t swear. The sounds of the fight were drawing closer.

He switched tactics. Captain Ansbach needed to be warned that the ships were under attack. He didn’t have any way to send a detailed radio message, not that he had any details, but Captain Ansbach wasn’t a stupid man: if he saw any radio signal from the ship, breaking their transmission silence, he would know that something about the plan had gone horribly wrong. There were radio broadcast test programs there in the menus, and Kircheis set them all off.

As much as he could, he systematically disabled every ship’s system that the computer would let him put into a maintenance mode with his authorization from the engine room console. It wasn’t as much as he hoped, but he was at least able to put some of the ship’s gun ports into a cleaning routine, which stopped them from moving. He figured that would prevent anyone from aiming the ship’s paltry defense weaponry, for now.

The fighting had reached the outside of the engine room. Kircheis yanked his authorization card out of the computer, and jammed his helmet on his head, grateful that he was still wearing his suit from going outdoors. Immediately, the sounds of yelling and the scrape and clash of metal on metal faded, and all he could hear was his own breathing through gritted teeth, and the drum of his heart in his ears. Kircheis ran towards the door, axe in hand.

He would have used the rifle that he had been handed, but he saw their attackers were using axes, which meant that the odorless and highly explosive zephyr particle gas had already been released into the room. If anyone fired a gun, it would mean a painful, fiery death for everyone in a huge radius.

Looking at the fight, taking place in the narrow hallway outside the engine room, Kircheis realized that the crew of the transport ship was outclassed completely, and possibly outnumbered. The invaders were crashing through the paltry and futile resistance that the crew was putting up, and Kircheis could see why: on their arms, visible as they swung their heavy axes, was the insignia of the crack Rosenritter regiment, one of the fiercest ground combat groups in the rebel fleet. Leigh had underestimated the strength of the rebel fleet on the planet, and that was turning out to be a fatal mistake.

The engine room was going to be breached sooner, rather than later. Kircheis could have stayed to defend it, but that would have been useless. He needed to get to the bridge, to find Captain Leigh. That was the only thought that remained in his mind.

And the only way to the bridge was through this fracas. Kircheis steeled himself, hands gripping his axe tightly. His vision was tinted red through the eyes of the death’s head of his suit.

The hallway was jammed with combatants, but his fellow soldiers were fast enough to move aside when Kircheis stepped through. He swung his axe at the first of the Rosenritter, one who was distracted by already having his own axe buried in the midsection of a wailing Imperial soldier. Kircheis’s axe found contact, right at the base of the Rosenritter’s neck, the soft joint where the helmet met the suit body. Kircheis felt the metal bite through the plastic, into bone and skin, and the Rosenritter fell forward, onto his own axe, already dead.

Kircheis had never killed anyone before, but he didn’t have time to process it. His mind was completely blank, thinking of nothing except how to move most efficiently, to stay alive and get to the bridge and Captain Leigh. He was already using the handle of his weapon to block an incoming blow, this one heavy and fueled by rage for what he had done to this next Rosenritter’s comrade. Kircheis plowed through him, too, using the momentum of his axe to pull it from his hands and scatter it down the hallway, and then swing his own blade at the attacker’s knees, again cracking open the vulnerable joint. The Rosenritter collapsed, and Kircheis leaped over him before someone else could take his position.

Kircheis ran. He made it past the fighting in the hallway, and through parts of the ship where fighting had already taken place, as evidenced by bloody footprints on the floor, blast and axemarks on the wall, and bodies laying in the corridors. The bridge was far away, at the top of the ship, and as he ran, he felt the ship shudder and jerk, and, with a sudden snap of breaking loose from its guy wires, lift into the air.

The alarm stopped wailing, the red emergency lights ceasing to flash.

Kircheis, in a dim and empty hallway, leaned against the wall as the ship moved forward through the windy air. With the cessation of the alarm, he knew that the bridge had already been taken. He was too late.

That didn’t necessarily mean that Captain Leigh was dead. Kircheis suspected that he would have surrendered rather than encouraging the crew to fight to the death, especially if he saw the crew was outnumbered. He didn’t know if the Rosenritter would accept a surrender like that, considering their fearsome reputation, but he had no choice but to hope that Leigh was alive. Kircheis hesitated for a moment in indecision, then decided that the only thing he could do was continue forward, and hope he found Leigh.

He took back hallways towards the bridge, looping the long way around the rear of the ship, and in this way was able to avoid all of the Rosenritter. He didn’t see any of the ship’s crew, either. There hadn’t been many to begin with, and they had either run towards the fight, or had hidden themselves. Either way, Kircheis didn’t find anyone to ally with.

A little guilt nagged at him as he snuck through the hallways, heading for the bridge. Although he wasn’t officially a member of this ship’s crew, as an officer, he really should have taken charge of organizing some sort of defense instead of running off on his own. It was too late now, and he didn’t regret his choices, but if they made it out of here alive, someone would probably reprimand him for that. The silence of the hallways, now that the alarms had stopped their caterwauling, let those thoughts sneak in, even though he remained focused on finding Leigh.

It was highly likely that the Rosenritter would land this ship near their own forces, since their goal was to prevent Ansbach’s tanks from having a place to retreat and escape to. That way, if Ansbach’s forces couldn’t seize the mine, they would die without supplies. The tanks only had enough oxygen and fuel to supply the Imperial soldiers for a few days. The only hope, as Kircheis saw it, was to rejoin Ansbach, somehow, and either capture the base, or retake this ship with Ansbach’s help and escape off-planet. The best chance of any of that happening would be if he stuck with Leigh, and made sure he survived enough to rejoin Ansbach. From there, Kircheis had faith that Leigh would orchestrate some sort of reversal of their fortunes.

He heard voices as he got closer to the bridge, and he was grateful that Leigh had forced him to learn enough of the Alliance language to know what the Rosenritter soldiers were saying. Kircheis pressed himself to the wall around the corner, clutching his axe, and listened. One man had just arrived to speak to another. Kircheis missed what was said at first, but picked up the thread of the conversation quickly.

“Jurgenson still struggling with the controls, hunh?”

“I’m sure he’ll figure it out before we get to the battle.” A chuckle, probably from the man who had just arrived. “We’re moving through mud.”

“That’s what a headwind’ll get ya. You know I took glider training, right?”

“This thing’s less aerodynamic than a fucking brick. Glider training my ass. Idiot, if anyone kills the engines, we drop faster than a stone.”

“I wasn’t suggesting we would need to glide anywhere. I’m just saying I know what atmospheres act like. But I suppose even with that, flying low’s gotta be better than having to go back into orbit, anyway.”

“Yeah, yeah. Is the LC still in there?”

“Yeah, trying to make that captain talk. Not sure what he’s gonna say , but I guess that’s for him to know and the LC to find out.”

“Great. Well, if you need a status update, I just gave you one.”

“A complete non-update. You just were curious about the guy.”

“You want to trade places?”

“Fuck off, Ashbaum.”

“You have fun standing here by yourself with your thumb in your ass, then. Holler if you need me.” The arrival laughed, and then one set of footsteps left.

Kircheis steeled himself, his hands clutching his axe so tightly that he wasn’t sure he would be able to unclench them easily. Leigh must be right around the corner, being kept prisoner in the little wardroom. All Kircheis would need to do was kill the guard, then kill the Rosenritter lieutenant commander, and grab Leigh. They could hide in the ship somewhere, and maybe take advantage of the fact that the Rosenritter leader on board was dead.

He took one final deep breath, then charged around the side of the hallway. The guard was leaning against the wall, visor of his helmet up, axe in hand. He reacted to Kircheis quickly, bringing his axe up to block Kircheis’s swing, but Kircheis had momentum on his side, and his leaping overhead swing knocked the axe out of the Rosenritter’s hand, and crashed down, directly through the top of the Rosenritter’s breastplate. It cracked open, and the Rosenritter stumbled back, ending up pinned against the wall. Kircheis yanked his weapon free, then hesitated for a split second, his disarmed enemy before him.

Some other man would have run from Kircheis, during his moment of doubt about killing an unarmed man, but this Rosenritter lunged at him, undeterred. Kircheis reacted on instinct, and swung his axe again, this time catching the man in the throat. He toppled to the ground at Kircheis’s feet, blood pooling around him, staining Kircheis’s suit red.

The door of the wardroom sprung open. Kircheis barely had time to take stock of his enemy: the Rosenritter lieutenant commander was already charging at him. He was shorter than Kircheis by a surprising amount, and swung his axe at Kircheis’s feet, underhanded. Kircheis only barely was able to block, and he was thrown off balance for a moment.

He realized he was stronger than the Rosenritter, as the handles of their axes ground together, and Kircheis gained the upper ground, pushing forward into the room. Inside, he could see Captain Leigh, scrambling backwards to stay as far away from the fighting as possible. Kircheis ignored him and focused on the man in front of him.

The Rosenritter abruptly switched postures, dropping his axe down away from Kircheis’s, and Kircheis stumbled forward as the resistance to his forward movement vanished. The Rosenritter tried to grab his midsection, but Kircheis regained his bearings and dodged out of the way. Their positions were now reversed: he was in the room, and the Rosenritter was in the hallway.

Kircheis turned around to face his enemy, and managed to bring the handle of his axe down on the Rosenritter’s visor, trying to just delay his charge until he could get a better grip on his axe. This didn’t slow the Rosenritter down, despite the outer, black visor of his helmet cracking apart. Kircheis stumbled backwards, repositioning his hands on his axe, and the Rosenritter kept coming for him, lifting his head.

The cracked black visor fell in pieces with the movement as the Rosenritter raised his axe in an overhead strike. Kircheis was frozen in place. Now visible through the clear, inner visor of the helmet was a face Kircheis never thought he would see again in person: the delicate features of Reinhard von Musel, angelically beautiful even with his teeth bared in a silent, vicious snarl.

Reinhard swung at Kircheis, and Kircheis dodged, leaving him with just enough breath to yell, “Reinhard! Stop!”

Reinhard did not stop. He swung at Kircheis again, and Kircheis blocked the swing, holding his axe one handed, while with the other, he did the only thing he could think of to do: dig his fingers into the quick-release latch of his helmet and pull it from his head, dropping it to the ground.

He wasn’t sure if it had worked, or if he had signed his own death warrant. Time stretched strangely as Reinhard pulled his axe away from Kircheis and stepped backwards, looking like he, too, had seen a ghost.

“Reinhard—” Kircheis said. He was breathing heavily, and his curls were flat to his scalp with sweat.

“Annerose,” the Rosenritter said. The ground spun beneath Kircheis’s feet, the universe tilting onto a new axis. Her voice was cold, despite the strange light in her eyes as she looked at him. This was Annerose, identical to her brother, but not the girl of fifteen that Kircheis had once known. “Drop your axe,” she ordered, speaking in a clear Imperial.

Kircheis did, letting it fall to the ground next to his helmet with a clatter.

Annerose reached down to pick it up, not taking her eyes off of Kircheis’s face.

From the back of the room, Leigh spoke up. Kircheis had forgotten he was there. “Kircheis, er, I’m glad you came to rescue me, but this doesn’t exactly seem like—”

Whatever Leigh was about to say was interrupted by more Rosenritter appearing in the doorway, looking between the corpse on the ground outside the door, and Annerose holding two axes in her hands.

“Are you alright, Lieutenant Commander?” one of the soldiers asked.

“Yes,” Annerose said, breaking her stare at Kircheis. “For the moment, anyway.” She handed Kircheis’s axe to one of the soldiers. “Search him. Make sure he doesn’t have any other weapons. And I want two guards on the door of this room. I want to take both of them prisoner.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the Rosenritter with Kircheis’s axe said.

Annerose stepped out of the room without another word, leaving Kircheis at the mercy of the Rosenritter soldiers.

He held his hands up, but they ignored his docility and slammed him down over the wardroom table to search his armor for weapons. Kircheis submitted to this, not resisting even as his head was smashed onto the fiberglass tabletop. Revenge for their fallen comrade outside the door, Kircheis assumed. Now that he no longer had an axe in his hands, an ugly feeling that resembled guilt began to pool in his stomach.

“Hey, he’s not gonna do anything to you,” Leigh said, a note of anxiety in his voice.

“Shut up,” one of the soldiers replied. Kircheis met Leigh’s eyes, and Leigh closed his mouth.

They finished searching him for weapons, found none, and then tied Kircheis to a chair. The restraints were only zip ties that one of the soldiers was carrying, and Kircheis thought if he needed to, he would probably be able to break them, but he didn’t like his chances of trying to escape at this moment, especially as the ship was still swaying and rocking in the wind, high above the ground of Cahokia, en route to where Ansbach was. He would have to wait until they landed to make a break for it with Leigh.

The soldiers stepped back from Kircheis once he was sufficiently tied, and stood by the door, axes in hand.

“You alright?” Kircheis asked, looking at Leigh.

“I’m fine,” Leigh said, in the Alliance language. “For the benefit of our friends, I do suggest we speak their language.”

“I suggest you don’t speak at all,” one of the Rosenritter said.

Leigh shrugged and leaned back in his seat, closing his eyes. His calm was feigned. With his hands behind his head, he was twisting his hair so tightly that his fingertips were losing circulation. For Kircheis’s part, with adrenaline still heavy in his system, he was jittery, and resisted the urge to fidget in his chair. He stared ahead at the guards, who shifted their hands on their axes.

In the tense silence of the wardroom, Kircheis had a minute to think. His heart beat strangely in his chest as he thought about Annerose as the leader of these Rosenritter, and how lucky he was that he hadn’t killed her during their fight, which he may very well have if he hadn’t shattered her visor. Reinhard would have never forgiven him for that, he was sure. What was she doing here, in command? He had known that she was in the Alliance fleet; when Reinhard had captured one of Rear Admiral Reuenthal’s ships, the articles about him had briefly mentioned her. But they hadn’t said that she was a Rosenritter !

Although he thought about her often, Kircheis’s mental image of Annerose had been frozen at the point when she had left Odin: a teenage girl who had barely escaped destruction. He had hoped that she was happy, on the other side of the galaxy, but she always was a quiet ghost in his mind when compared to Reinhard. To find her here, with a bruising force behind her presence (his arms ached from how hard their axes had crashed into each other), was too jarring for Kircheis to wrap his mind around. Ghosts were not supposed to come back to life.

And yet, here she was. He was half-tempted to ask the Rosenritter guards what she was like as a commander, but he didn’t think that would go over well. Annerose had left the room quickly enough, it seemed likely that she didn’t want anyone to know that she knew Kircheis. He could do her the favor of keeping that secret, especially if he was planning to escape.

There was a part of him that didn’t want to escape. If he let Annerose keep him prisoner, he was almost certain to see Reinhard again. But he glanced at Leigh, leaning back in his seat with his eyes closed, and pushed that thought out of his mind.

The ship juddered and rocked, and Kircheis had to wonder if it was just wind, or if there was something else going on, especially as the blows became more violent. Leigh didn’t move, though his expression twitched in discomfort as the ship bounced his chair on the floor.

The ride grew rockier and rockier, and the ship at one point banked hard. A few minutes later, several more Rosenritter soldiers appeared, whispered something that Kirchies couldn’t catch to the ones at the door, and then roughly untied Kircheis from his chair, though he didn’t let his hands free. One of them picked up his discarded helmet from the floor and clicked it back onto his head, then escorted Leigh and Kircheis out of the wardroom.

“Mind letting us know where you’re taking us?” Leigh asked as he was manhandled out the door. He didn’t get any response. Kircheis was familiar with the ship’s layout, and figured they were traversing almost the entire length and height of the ship, headed back down towards one of the rear loading bays.

His guess was confirmed when they arrived. The bay was chaotic, swarming with Rosenritters brandishing axes and running back and forth doing inscruitable tasks. Annerose was there, shouting commands over the din. When she saw Leigh and Kircheis, she turned towards them.

“Put this on,” she said to Leigh. On the ground at her feet, there was a dirty Imperial exosuit, one that had clearly been stripped from a corpse. It probably wouldn’t even fit Leigh, but he obeyed, hopping around to get his feet into the legs.

“You don’t have to haul me around,” he said gamely as he got dressed. “You could just let me go.”

“No, you’re valuable,” Annerose said. “Hurry up. We have about two minutes before we land.”

Leigh took her advice and hurried in getting dressed. As soon as he had the suit on, he was tied up again.

Her attention was split between Leigh and Kircheis and her gaggle of Rosenritters. She glanced at her watch, then at one of the men, who flashed her a hand signal.

“Brace for landing!” she yelled, and then dropped to the ground, hooking her feet into the cargo grooves on the floor of the bay, and clinging on as tightly as she could with one hand, the other sheltering her head.

Kircheis, whose hands were still tied behind his back, didn’t have that luxury. The Rosenritter holding him had let him go momentarily to take his own cover on the floor, which left Leigh and Kircheis to fend for themselves. If Kircheis’s arms had been free, he would have grabbed Leigh, but as it was, all they could do was lay on their stomachs next to each other. He couldn’t even see Leigh’s face through his helmet, the Imperial death’s head. “Hold on, sir,” Kircheis said.

“I will do my best. Thank you, Kircheis.”

Kircheis opened his mouth to say something further, perhaps an apology for not being able to do more, but any coherent thought he had was lost as the ship hit the ground. From the way the Rosenritter had prepared themselves, he had been sure it was going to be less of a landing than it was a crash, and he was right. The ship hit the ground with a horrifying jolt and a scream of metal.

Kircheis, who had been unable to hold onto anything except with the toes of his suit, flew up into the air, maybe a meter— he couldn’t tell. The ship thrashed beneath him, the wall and floor moving towards him. He braced and hit the ground in a tumble, the hard plastic of his suit not shattering but bending inwards. He had a horrible pain in his chest, probably a broken rib, and his left shoulder, already twisted behind him, dislocated.

The ship came to a halt on the ground.

All the lights were still on in the bay, the engine of the ship still functioning, miraculously. It had been a hard stop, and the ship was worse for wear, but they must have come in at a low enough angle and slow enough speed to survive. New alarms were ringing in the bay, but Kircheis could barely process them amidst the chaos and shouting. Rosenritters were clambering to their feet, most in better condition than Kircheis was.

“Captain Leigh!” Kircheis yelled out, throat raw from the effort. He scrambled to his own feet, the floor tilted at an odd angle, and looked around for Leigh, the only other Imperial-suited figure in the bay. Leigh was laying on the floor, and Kircheis’s heart stopped for a moment, thinking he might be dead. He stumbled towards him and crouched down. “Captain Leigh— are you—”

“I’m fine,” Leigh groaned, though his voice sounded thick and bubbly, and he coughed.

They didn’t have time for any other checks on the other’s health— two Rosenritter soldiers grabbed Leigh and Kircheis by their tied hands and dragged them up and towards the exit of the bay. The doors had opened, letting in a wall of reddish sand.

Annerose stood at the front of it, axe in hand. She stood out from the rest of the Rosenritter by her short stature, and her shattered visor, and the way the rest of the soldiers orbited around her. “Let’s go! Let’s go! Let’s go!” she screamed, gesturing with her axe.

The Rosenritters streamed out of the bay, dragging Leigh and Kircheis with them. Just outside the ship, everything was invisible in the huge wall of sand that the crash landing had thrown up. Sand was piled up in a mound around the edge of the ship, and to get out of the bay, the Rosenritters slid down it. Leigh tumbled when dragged, slowing his captor down. Kircheis managed to stay on his feet as he ran, but he could barely breathe, and he tried to steer his way towards Leigh, trying to keep together.

Through the thick wall of sand in the air, vague shapes began to emerge: the crumpled wreckage of Imperial tanks poked out from beneath the ship, or were half buried under the mounds of sand. Several tanks were on fire, throwing acrid black smoke up into the tangle of red dust in the air, limiting visibility further. Annerose had crashed the ship into Ansbach’s front line.

Further off, from the tanks that had not been hit, Imperial soldiers were climbing out, running pell-mell towards the Rosenritter. Some of them had guns in hand, some axes, and a horrible battle began, or continued. Kircheis and Leigh had been dropped into the thick of it. All they could do was try not to trip over the rocks and their own feet in the sandy ground as they were dragged and shoved forwards, towards some destination they didn’t know. Stray blaster fire whizzed past them.

The Imperial soldiers from Ansbach’s forces were heading towards the ship. Someone must have given that order, because the movement was happening all at once, in a wave. Despite the confusion of the scene, and the pain that he was in, Kircheis understood: the ship had the Imperial soldiers’ only hope of surviving. If their tank line had just been decimated, they would no longer be able to take the base. The ship might be a place they could hole up and defend until help arrived. It had an ansible they could use to call for help. All the ship’s running lights were still on, and the engine area still glowed like a second sun through the red sand. She might even still be able to fly.

And if Kircheis and Leigh didn’t want to be prisoners of war, Kircheis would have to get Leigh there. His captor wasn’t paying attention to him except to pull him along. Kircheis bit down on his lip and wiggled his dislocated shoulder, shifting his arm in his half-destroyed suit. The suit’s arm, where it connected to the shoulder, was loose. The ties binding him were over the thick plastic of the arms. If he could just get the chestplate off, he could pull the thin inner suit lining of his arms forward out of the hard armor. If he just had leverage—

He was trying to wiggle his arm free when Annerose came up to their group. She barely spared him and Leigh a glance: she was focused on the path forward through the line of Imperial tanks, running.

A blast of tank fire— Kircheis didn’t know which side it had even come from, at this point— struck the ground directly in front of them. The concussive blast threw him, Leigh, Annerose, and the Rosenritter holding him captive, to the ground. He was dazed for half a second, but realized this may be his only chance. The rock beneath the sandy ground was uneven, and he inched forward along it until his chestplate caught on an outcropping of rock, and popped free from his chest. He scrambled to his feet and with a cry of pain, pulled his arms out of his armor.

Annerose was still on the ground next to Leigh. Kircheis looked her in the eyes for just a moment, her expression one of surprise, then grabbed Leigh with his good arm, hauling him to his feet, and then ran back into the haze of sand, towards the downed Imperial transport.