Jove used his phone's flashlight to search, and it felt much like it usually did. Inefficient. Slow. Infuriating.
He checked the entrance chamber first. The most inward door was completely open, but the one leading outside was mostly closed, with an inch wide crack as though a group of fleeing survivors had perhaps tried to close it behind them without electricity.
He worried for a moment that Mango might have slipped out while Andromeda was adjusting it, but the AI assured him otherwise.
"The cat is still within the station," she said. "I would be able to locate her for you if more of my sensors were still online."
"Mango!" he hissed, at a whisper. "Mango!"
He thought he could hear shouting or perhaps banging from his mother and the others. There was no time. He checked his own room, hoping she might have developed some kind of fondness for it given that it belonged to her ostensible master. No such luck.
"Jovian, the intruders are approaching the entrance," said Andromeda. "You're out of time."
He swore under his breath and slowly closed his door. He realized an instant after it was too late that he'd made a second mistake. The tape he'd once used to thwart his mother's curfew was still over the locking mechanism. Andromeda couldn't even seal him in.
He took quiet steps back until he was next to his bed, and then lay down and slipped underneath it. If the door opened, he wouldn't wait for them to check for him — he'd just start firing. His ears rang again, but in a good way, or maybe a bad way. A way that seemed to deafen his emotions along with his hearing.
He heard unfamiliar people moving through the hallway, loud footsteps, followed by a shout of "hey." There was an exchange of mutters, and then Victor Vasquez's familiar, arrogant, billionaire voice cut through the din.
"Why the fuck would they have stolen the propane if not to power this place?" he snapped. "We saw the tank outside. They brought it back here… only to what? Run headfirst into the bitter cold?"
"Boss, it's fucking cold in here," said another man. "I'm saying if they are here, they're iced."
"Maybe," said Victor. "But they might have left something valuable behind. Anything. We didn't risk our lives coming all this way to return with nothing!"
Jove waited, feeling an odd flutter of… excitement? That wasn't the right word. Or at least, it wasn't the word he wanted to be the right one. He could see it now, how easy it would be to unload on the first two men through his bedroom door.
The others would be wary afterward, but he could simply wait them out, force them to either take him on from a suboptimal sightline or retreat. He should have grabbed a second gun from Eve or his mother, but he could manage with what he had.
"What was that?" snapped Victor.
Jove froze, wondering if he'd made a noise without realizing it. But no, he wasn't moving, and a laugh confirmed what had worried him into leaving hiding in the first place.
"There it is again," said Victor.
Silence, nothing… and then gunshots, all at once. Jove's ears rang for an instant, but not with enough intensity to keep him from hearing the yowl of his cat, followed by the laughter of several evil men.
He didn't consciously make the decision to wriggle out from under his bed and start moving toward the door. He wasn't aware how he was trying to stay quiet, preserve the element of surprise for as long as it belonged to him.
What he was aware of was the instant he threw his door open and spun out into the hallway. His focus was so intense that time seemed to slow down as he took the first three shots, shooting the man to the left of Victor in the head, missing once, and then nicking the billionaire's shoulder with the following bullet.
Something knocked into the back of his head. He didn't feel the pain, but the blow was heavy enough to send him into the wall, dazed and reeling. Another man grabbed his gun arm. Jove twisted his elbow free, aiming at his opponent's chest.
The man instantly put his hand up and tried to back away, banging into the henchman behind him. Jove hesitated — he shouldn't have. Another blow struck him, missing his head but slamming into his shoulder in a manner that threw him off balance.
He saw Mango as he fell to one knee. The cat was bleeding, on her side next to the door leading to Aster's room, twitching slightly. He expected something, a sudden shift to whatever hidden purpose he'd originally assumed Abacus to have installed into the tiny little creature. A means of defending them. Salvation.
The cat blinked once, eyes already glazing over, and opened her mouth. She tried to lick the air in front of her, twitched once, and went still… like any cat in the process of dying might.
"Hit him again!" screeched Victor, voice frantic with pain. "And get that fucking gun!"
There was a crash as the far hallway door flew open. Eve came through it, crouched low with Kira aiming over her. More shots were fired. One of the men took a bullet through the throat and began gurgling. Victor snarled, leveled his pistol, and returned fire.
Aster screamed. She clutched the side of her body as she fell sideways against the wall, sliding down it and leaving a red streak from the exit wound. Jove struggled back to his feet, caught between the impulse to help her and hurt his enemies.
He snarled and took aim, but hesitated before pulling the trigger. The man who'd put his arms up earlier still had them up, and moreover, had positioned himself in a spot he would be next one shot, regardless of where the bullet came from.
"Enough!" shouted the man, waving his hands wildly for emphasis. "We'll go! We didn't want this. Fucking hell… who would have wanted this?"
"Kill them!" screeched Victor. "Kill them all! I'm fucking shot!"
The man seeking peace was older, heavily balding with a full gut and winter gear that looked like it had come from the same shop in Port Sirius where Jove had bought his own stuff. He turned around, facing Victor and the others.
"Get Victor outside!" he shouted. "Let me talk to them."
"They fired on us!" said another man.
"We're not firing now!" shouted Eve.
She was down on one leg — her only good leg, knee clearly having given out mid-fight. Kira was at Aster's side, eyes wide as she tried to staunch significant bleeding.
Jove was uncertain about what had happened in Port Sirius, whether the situation was still as desperate and dangerous for them in Termina as it had once been. A crisis of leadership, maybe? Or maybe Victor's authority had been checked in much the same way their mother's had?
"Leave," said Jove, still aiming at the man with his hands up. "Take your wounded and your dead and get the fuck out. We'll let you go."
"We'll go." The man nodded slowly. "Look, we need food. That's what we came here for. If you bring food to Port Sirius, we'll give you more propane. Was that so fucking hard?"
The man shouted the last question not at Jove, but at Victor specifically.
"Ezra, you fucking coward!" hissed Victor. "We came here to bring back food and find out what they did to our men! And you're going to, what? Give them a chance to run and take everything with them."
"There's fish in the shed," said Jove, carefully. "It's unlocked. You can take what's there. I'll come by for the propane when we need it."
There was some of their leftover catch there, perhaps a third or even half, but he would have given it away freely to avoid the pointless violence. He could hear Aster crying behind him, Mango struggling to breathe in front of him. The gun felt heavy in his hands and this time, there was some actual blood on them.
"Sorry about… this," said Ezra. "Let's go. Victor. Victor!"
"Fucking hell!" hissed Victor Vasquez. "Fuck all of you. Fuck your dead husband. You should have had the sense to depart that ship while you had the chance!"
"Victor," said Ezra. "Let's go."
They left the station, following Jove's directive and dragging the dead men along with them. Jove followed them out, watched as they took the fish, and then made sure the door was closed as Andromeda began repowering the station.
He hurried to Aster, wincing at the sight of Mango on the floor as he went by. "How bad is it?"
Aster forced a smile, face pale but determined, sweat beading her forehead. "I'm… fine, darling. You think Rose Redding can't take a bullet or two?"
"It looks worse than it is," said Andromeda. "A rough graze, but nothing that some rest and recovery time won't cure."
"Thank God." He took her hand into his and kissed the back of it. "That was too close."
He flexed his fingers, feeling inept and angry and, more than anything, tired. A noise came from the hallway. Mango's death throes. He crouched down next to the cat, again wondering why the AI had chosen to drop it into his lap, why he'd been given the chance to connect with it only to fail to protect it.
Astonishingly, Mango's injury also wasn't as bad as it had seemed. The noises she'd been making, real noises of pain… were not simply from the blood welling up from where a bullet must have nicked her.
The cat's stomach suddenly seemed conspicuously large, not just chubby like he'd assumed before. There was something next to her, almost lost underneath her tail, wet and furry and unbelievable tiny and vulnerable. A newborn kitten.
He gently picked it up in one hand and felt intense warmth radiating off it. It wriggled slightly. He looked at Mango again, her eyes narrowing at him with familiar annoyance.
Abacus had given them a pregnant cat.