Grail - Elizabeth Bear [22]
“It’s more than an old book, Mother.” Perceval knew how feral the grin that curved her lips must appear, and reveled in it. “Are we listening to Tristen?”
Caitlin grinned back. “Do we ever?”
They burst through the Bridge door like eager angels, emerging into a functional vacuum. Tristen’s once-weapon Charity was brandished high in Caitlin’s hand. Perceval—out of respect for the unblade—ran three steps behind, firing darts that could pierce even armor if they struck a joint or soft spot squarely. Two of the invaders—gray-armored, their colors blanked and their visors fogged to hide their features—spun to return fire. The other three slipped aside, muscling the ancient Bible’s nitrogen-filled case through a fuse-edged hole in the bulkhead that led straight into the embrace of the Enemy.
Perceval went right; Caitlin went left. Perceval lunged into the niche where the Bible’s case had until so recently been set, hopping up on its barren stand like a crouched gargoyle. Caitlin flattened herself behind a bulge in the bulkhead through which environmental pipes ran.
Perceval hoped that the raiders were using ammunition that would not punch holes in her ship—or more and worse holes than they had already punched.
Well, Perceval thought, that explains the vacuum. It doesn’t explain how they got past Nova, though.
There had been problems with the Angels and their areas of awareness before, but those difficulties were long in the past, and Perceval was meant to have complete command of her ship. That anyone could work this—under her very nose—was unsettling.
Though not as unsettling as the darts whizzing past Perceval’s faceplate. Something was going to have to be done about that.
Perceval might be Captain now, but she had been raised a knight. Nobody wandered into her bridge and made off with a priceless relic.
She slapped one hand against the top of the niche, armored fingers curling into the bulkhead, denting metal and cracking carbon. “Three,” she said into her com, certain Caitlin would count and move with her.
And move they did. Perceval came around the corner on the tether of her arm, a spray of smart darts from her gun hand leading. At the top of her swing she released her hold on the bulkhead and arced into the air. She landed in a crouch, stuck it—or her armor stuck it for her—and came up pelting forward, whooping inside her helmet until she made her own ears ring. Caitlin’s footsteps banged through the deck behind her—soundless in vacuum, but Perceval could feel each impact through the plating, and she let the shock waves lift her up and hurl her forward, adding impetus to her own charge.
They were two, and Nova was with them. Tristen and his troops were coming. But they were Conns, and nothing was going to stand before them.
Perceval felt the impacts on her armor as it deflected the intruders’ darts from its corona and its carbon-ceramic surface. None struck where they could harm her, though; her armor was as state-of-the-art as these people’s countermeasures. They’d have to hit square to hurt, and every ounce of her armor’s tech and ability were devoted to making sure that did not happen.
The gray-suited five already had the Bible and its case through the rent they’d ripped in the corridor wall; Perceval could see it being hauled away with cables and tug drones. Only two were firing at her and Caitlin, crouched behind EM shields that offered a modicum of soft cover. The other three, engaged in moving their prize, did not even glance over their shoulders.
Perceval came in among them not so much like a fox among the chickens as like a wolf among enemy wolves. Her armor’s corona—as much an extension of Nova as not—struck the EM shields and sparked, raining dead nanotech in a velvety dust. Perceval leaned forward, knowing she was a target and hoping the crackle of crisping electronics was sufficient protection from more darts. Her armor traded dart launchers for ceramic blades.
“Shifting resources,” Nova said. “One moment more—”
And then Perceval’s