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Thirty Seconds
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The air in The Wreck’s Lantern tasted like rust and bad promises. It was the kind of place where the walls were black with old smoke and the floor remembered every spilled drink and every drop of blood. The ceiling fans didn’t move the air so much as rearrange it, sending threads of heat and the stink of engine oil drifting past the tables.Thirty Seconds
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Thomas kept his elbows tucked in, not because he was shy, but because the man at the next table had a knife the length of Thomas’s forearm and seemed to polish it only to remind everyone it was there. Angela sat beside him, her gaze flicking to every shadow, her hand curled protectively around the mug of something that pretended to be coffee. Natalie sat opposite, posture straight in a way that screamed new. No dust in her hair yet, no scar tissue. She still smelled faintly of the boarding shuttle.
Everywhere they looked, the bar was packed with danger. Thick-armed mercenaries whose skin was webbed with scar tissue and faded tattoos. Men and women with mechanical limbs so worn they hissed when they moved. Eyes like gun barrels. They all leaned in close to one another, laughing low, telling stories that were worth killing over.
Thomas tried not to stare, but it was like looking at the roster of a future he thought he wanted.
A glass clinked too loudly, and the man with the knife glanced over. Thomas looked away fast. Angela noticed and smirked, not because she thought it was funny, but because she liked the way Thomas pretended to be braver than he was.
The door creaked open. A pair of Confederacy fleet troopers stepped inside, but nobody in the bar even looked at them. This was Confederacy territory, after all. The fleets didn’t rule here so much as they tolerated what kept the credits flowing.
Natalie was mid-sentence, whispering something about the job board she’d seen on the docks, when the sound came.
It started as a low vibration in the floor, subtle enough that Thomas thought it might be the bar’s ancient refrigeration unit choking to death again. Then it grew. A single howl, rising through the air like an animal tearing itself out of its cage. It wasn’t the sound of a ship’s engine so much as the sound of an accusation. Too loud, too close, and so sharp it left the air buzzing against the teeth.
Every conversation stopped mid-word.
The veterans froze for half a second, listening with the kind of stillness you only get from experience. Then they moved. Tables overturned. Glass shattered. Boots slammed against the floorboards. The older mercs scattered toward the back exits and the narrow stair to the roof, some dragging their drinks with them like they couldn’t imagine dying without one last swallow.
Thomas stood, startled.
Angela’s voice was tight. “What the hell is that?”
The bartender didn’t stop wiping down the counter, but her hand trembled. She was an older woman, hair silver at the roots and skin like sun-worn leather. Her voice was dry and unhurried, like someone who’d said this before.
“That,” she said, “is the Screamliner. And if you hear it, you’re either fine, or you’ve got thirty seconds to live. Depends on how right your life’s been lately.”
Natalie frowned. “What does that—”
The front door slammed inward so hard it splintered the frame.
She came in like gravity had tilted the room toward her. Black armor scarred and painted over with graffiti, red stripes slashing across it like fresh wounds. A matte-black cannon cradled in her arms, the barrel wide enough to drink the light around it. Her gaze swept the room and it wasn’t the cold precision of a soldier, it was fire and teeth and the surety of someone who already knew who was going to die.
She didn’t look at the rookies.
The first bolt of plasma carved the air with a sound like tearing silk and turned the man with the knife into a smear on the wall. Another cut down a pair of veterans before they could draw. The cannon roared and spat light, every shot an argument against the idea of survival.
Angela grabbed Thomas’s arm and yanked him down toward the floor. “Get down!”
Natalie was already crouched, her breath shallow.
But Thomas didn’t drop. His blaster was already in his hand, his body moving before his mind caught up. He’d been waiting for his first moment to be the kind of mercenary he thought he was meant to be.
He took aim.
The shot never left his weapon.
Something invisible and hot tore his arm away at the shoulder. The limb hit the floor before he understood it was his. A half second later, a beam of molten light sheared his right leg off at the hip. He was falling forward when the pain hit him, a ragged scream clawing up his throat but never making it out whole.
Angela was shouting his name, but her voice was swallowed by the howl of the cannon and the screams of the dying.
It went on for exactly thirty seconds. Not a second more. Not a second less. The clock might as well have been built into the weapon.
When it ended, the silence felt heavier than the noise had. Smoke hung in the air, thick and chemical, tasting like scorched metal. The floor was littered with bodies and the smell of blood made the air dense enough to chew.
She walked toward them through the haze. Not hurried, not slow.
Thomas lay pale and still, his breath shallow, blood soaking through the floorboards. Angela had her hands pressed hard against the ragged wound where his leg used to be, her palms slick. Natalie sat frozen, her back against the wall, wide-eyed, lips pressed together so tightly her face shook.
The woman stopped in front of them.
Her eyes were too blue. Not the pale, washed-out blue of a man who spent his life in space, but a bright, impossible blue that seemed to burn from the inside. She smelled faintly of engine grease and smoke.
Her voice was low, almost conversational.
“Set your lives on a better path.”
Angela swallowed, not trusting herself to speak.
“No Federation,” the woman said. “No Confederacy. I don’t expect you to be saints. Ain’t no one a saint.”
Natalie’s voice was a whisper. “Who are you?”
The woman ignored the question. Her gaze moved between them, weighing them like parts on a table.
“If I ever hear your names tied to anything that hurts children, or the innocent,” she said, “I will find you. And I will end you. In under thirty seconds.”
The words didn’t feel like a threat. They felt like the reading of a sentence that had already been written.
She reached into a pouch at her hip, pulled out a cigar, and lit it with a battered lighter. The flame reflected in her eyes for a second, then vanished. She took a slow drag, exhaled smoke that curled through the blood-scented air, and stepped over the broken door frame into the street.
Somewhere far above, the Screamliner’s engines screamed again, and the sound carried a promise.