The woman had sidled to arm’s reach of the seat. When she went for the helmet at last, she was a blur of pure speed. I ducked down as soon as I saw her make a move, but the beam still only missed me by inches. The particle stream cut through the air behind me, grew wider as it interacted with the cabin’s atmosphere, and punched a ragged hole through the hull. In the same moment, Li Fei fired, but the woman spun on her heel and reversed direction entirely. She kicked the helmet out of the chair as she sprang to the right into a shoulder roll. She came up into a kneel and caught the helmet in one hand even as she leveled her weapon with the other.
I couldn’t believe the speed or the ease with which she moved. She slipped the helmet on and faded from view with the telltale ripple of active camouflage. I came up shooting, but a moment later something hit my rifle from the side and plucked it out of my hands. It went flying across the bridge and bounced off a wall. An instant later, my legs were kicked out from under me and I was driven into the floor on my chest. For an instant, I could see the woman as she stood over me before she once again rippled out of view.
I scrambled onto my feet. When I caught my next glimpse of her, she was fighting Li Fei. He was wrestling to hold onto his rifle. This was forcing him to remain in place and would have given her the opportunity to do just about anything she wanted to him if not for the extraordinary protection offered by his drop suit. As it was, she was whipping the weapon from side to side, and he was using all his strength just trying to hold on.
I slammed into her from behind with my shoulder and knocked her sprawling, but she rolled out of the fall and was back up again before I could do anything to stop her. She kicked me in the face, with the same technique I’d seen her use in Artorias. It didn’t hurt, but it did unbalance me. I stumbled backward and then fell over, and she turned back to Li Fei before he could even fire his weapon.
She freed the rifle from his grip and tossed it away, then she ducked out from under his attempt to grab her and countered with a flurry of jabs and knee strikes. The blows kept coming as she faded away, and it was all Li Fei could do to keep his balance, let alone defend or counter. Even with the dropsuit’s actuators multiplying our strength, she’d managed to disarm the both of us. She was winning this fight, just like she’d done in Artorias.
Li Fei’s arm hyperextended, pulled into the air in front of him like a marionette. A moment later, the woman flashed into view as she stepped around him and twisted his wrist. She torqued his arm backward, forcing him to double over. She then swept his legs from beneath him, flipping him head over heels onto his back right next to me.
Standing from a supine position is not an easy thing to do in a drop suit. The woman decloaked, her weapon aimed at us. “Tell me, please. At this moment, are you afraid?”
It didn’t look like there was any option except to die, but I wasn’t about to grovel.
“Section 9 will find you.”
“That’s good. You didn’t negotiate, you didn’t plead, you didn’t burst into anger or despair. Very good. I think I won’t kill you after all.”
Li Fei was still conscious. What’s going on here? Who is she?
I didn’t respond to him.
She walked toward the door of the bridge, her weapon still trained on us despite what she’d said. “You’ve stumbled onto something you aren’t capable of understanding. Nothing you’ve done so far has made it absolutely necessary for me to kill you, so if you cooperate—if you lie there and let me leave—you won’t force my hand.”
I realized my own hand was touching something on Li Fei’s drop suit. I didn’t think she could see it from her angle, but then again neither could I. What was it?
“Do we have a deal, gentlemen?” she asked, still walking slowly.
Based on the location, it was either a concussion grenade or an incendiary grenade. If it was a concussion grenade, it wouldn’t do anything other than prompt her to shoot us both. If it was an incendiary grenade, it might just turn this whole situation around. I put my hand around the grenade.
Li Fei noticed what I was up to immediately. The grenade? Yes, do it!
“Wait!” I called out to her.
She paused in place. “Yes?”
I yanked the grenade off Li Fei’s belt and tossed it in her direction. A particle beam lanced out from the muzzle of her weapon and cut through both the grenade and, to my horror, Li Fei’s body. The grenade exploded in a white flash. A ball of fire bloomed for an instant before it was snuffed out by rushing air. I blinked my vision clear and saw the hole in the hull was now a jagged gash. The venting atmosphere was violently dragging anything not bolted down into vacuum. That included me, our rifles, and what was left of Li Fei.
I activated my mag boots to stop myself but watched helplessly as my weapon slipped into space.
“You’re brave, I’ll give you that,” the woman called out.
I’d taken a gamble, but it hadn’t paid off. Now Li Fei was dead, one of two Arbiters killed on this mission. It seemed to me that if I had to die, this was as good a moment as any for it. I rolled over and tried to stand, but when I broke the connection between my boot and the floor, I began to slide. I got one foot under me again and stopped myself, then I got both hands under me and pushed myself upright.
Another particle beam shot out but missed me by a wide margin. The woman was still armed, but she was wrapped around a chair and holding on with everything she had. That was why she had missed, but she was doing her best to take aim for a better shot. I ran for cover, knowing that a moving target would be much harder to hit.
The woman fired again and a section of control panels above me flared up and then went dead. Through the broken hull, I could see the surface of Europa. A moment later, an automated voice echoed through the ship.
EMERGENCY. EMERGENCY. ALL PASSENGERS AND CREW EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY.
The woman reached across the console in front of her and tapped a command. “Launch pod 12,” she ordered. When I realized what she had in mind, I wasn’t sure if I was shocked or impressed. She had launched an empty escape pod and was counting on the chance that she’d be able to get into it from space.
The pressure inside the ship was dropping, and it was becoming difficult to hear. Sounds were muffled and distant but, despite that, the woman spoke. “You have my respect. Andrea is lucky to have you.”
Those were her last words before letting go of the chair and flying right out of the ship into open space. Now that I thought about it, her odds of survival were probably better than mine. The only thing I could see on the navigation screen was the surface of the moon, rushing up at us at tremendous speed. When the Havisham hit it, the impact would be exactly like a conventional warhead. If I wanted to live, I needed to get out of this ship.
As the ship listed, the view through the hole in the wall changed as well. I could no longer see the stars of outer space, only the icy landscape of Europa. The woman’s plan didn’t seem so crazy anymore. If I got out through that hole at a reasonable altitude, it would be no different than a combat drop.
It was my best chance, so I decided to take it.
I deactivated my mag boots and shoved off with both feet. I floated across the bridge and slipped through the broken hull into the vacuum of space. I was falling free, just like any Arbiter on a mission drop. And just like the drop to Llyr station, I’d have to trust my stability thrusters to negate enough of my speed for the suit to absorb the impact.