Into the Black Hole

Chapter 19: Pandemonium

The sensation of falling causes my stomach to sink, indicating our ship stopped decelerating. I shake my head to clear it, and with a mind of its own, my hair floats around my head. Shoot, I forgot to tie it up. As long as I don't leave the closet, the long filaments of dead cells shouldn't get in the way. The skirt of my dress floats up, but now's not the time for decorum. I peek through a horizontal vent in the closet's door that's just wide enough for examining the pirates' activities without them noticing.

Unlike the structures on Mars and Earth, battleships such as DeLarge and Silvereye are bulletproof. At least, projectiles bigger than regular bullets are required if one expects to cut through an MSF ship. A high amount of kinetic energy from elec photons can kill living organisms, but metals are very reliable at absorbing those photons—a large percentage of them anyway—that miss their mark.

So when exactly twenty Martians carrying semi-automatic rifles, and the coolest coilguns I've ever seen, enter the command center through the outer hallway entrance, and Blaze shuts and locks the doors while simultaneously blocking their comms, I try to convince myself this is a rosier situation than dying alone in a vacuum.

The Martians wear full on spacesuits with helmets; the pirate soldiers don shoulder to toe armor; Felix, Thomson, and Blaze sport modest bulletproof vests. Although Felix stated magnetic boots are not designed for walking around, the Martians and pirates are pretty good at it, despite the movements appearing a bit awkward. Rather than rely on gravity to move forward, they plant their feet and drag their bodies toward a destination.

Realizing they've lost contact with Silvereye and are trapped, the Martians raise their guns at the pirates, yelling demands and obscenities.

All pirates except Felix raise their weapons as well. "Easy," he warns, holding up his hands, tone somehow both soothing and fierce, "we simply wish to chat, is all." Felix asks some questions that are either ignored in favor of more... colorful responses, or answered curtly—no telling if the replies are true, but the goal isn't to pry information from them. It's to buy Nupan and Jual enough time for locating Silvereye's self-destruct button.

The argument continues for a minute. Then ten. Then twenty.

One brave, albeit shortsighted, Martian soul wanders a little too close to a pirate soldier. The pirate pokes the Martian with her gun, advising him to back up. The Martian doesn't like that. He shoots her in the abdomen.

And all hell breaks loose.

Chaos erupts, gunfire leaving me deaf and flashes of photons leaving me blind. A Martian is shot in the face, clean through the helmet, and drops dead. Most pirates take cover behind the command center's metal structures, and Blaze presses something on a touchscreen, transforming nearby chairs, tables, and monitors into fortresses.

Felix kicks his heels together, deactivating the magnets, and ducks under the newly formed alloy shield that used to be the comms station. His pistol is laughable compared to the other fighters' defenses, but its small mass allows him to dart out of his hiding place, shoot, and disappear effortlessly.

Some deliberately place themselves in the line of fire. At least ten pirate soldiers are wounded. Many continue to fight, disregarding the perfect spheres of blood coming out of their gushing wounds and floating through the air. Two pirates are immobile, mouths gaping, eyes open, and arms weightless. The magnetic boots tether the deceased to the floor, reminding me of those historical paintings depicting supposed witches chained to the bottom of an ocean by their feet.

While the Martians have fewer structures to shield them from projectiles, their red spacesuits double as exceptional armor. Only three of them are incapacitated. One trigger-happy Martian, a couple meters away, runs out of bullets and unsheathes two knives, aiming for the nearest pirate's neck.