Conviction by Tammy Salyer

embarkation ramp, half-in and half-out, not even acknowledging me. Drew looks frightened, pasty white. More like a child than a teenager. They must have been detaining him in a different holding area on board. Wherever it was, Rajcik’s crew overlooked it, and Soltznin—lucky again—had been there too. Did she go straight for the kid to use as a shield when the shooting started? The thought turns my stomach. One of his eyes is blackened and swollen, and his lip is split. Whatever she’d done to get the drop on him, it’s clear he’d gone down fighting. Good kid.
    “You”—she juts her chin at Rajcik, who stands still and alert, one hand grasping the stock of a Sinbad auto-pistol, the other still resting on the scout’s metal skin—“tell everyone on that shuttle to get out here. Now!”
    Rajcik doesn’t move.
    “And drop that pistol!”
    He still doesn’t move.
    From my periphery, I make out the blond guy and the scarred woman from the bar standing at the ready nearby. How many more of Rajcik’s crew are around, tucked under cover?
    I try again, keeping my voice as reasonable as I can. “Soltznin, look. Just let the kid go. You can get back on the scout and take off to whatever fleet cruiser you want. There are way too many of these smugglers for you to fight, you must realize that.” Subtext: You’re going to die the second you let down your guard.
    “Dad,” Drew cries.
    “Let him go, you bitch!” Temple yells, fear giving his voice enough strength to overpower the sickness weakening him.
    She glares at the group for a second, then focuses back on David and me. “Fucking traitors, both of you. Cowards.”
    She adjusts the arm clamped tightly around Drew’s throat and starts to say something else. Before she can, the kid reaches up and grabs it, simultaneously letting his body go as limp as one of the corpses at his feet. Soltznin is pulled off balance and staggers as he yanks her arm away, straightens his legs, and lurches forward.
    She shoots him directly between the shoulder blades. His body leaps into the air, his arms spread wide, as if he’s trying to fly like a bird. Then he collapses into the red sand, twisting as he comes down so that he lands on his side, his head turned to the sky. I can’t pull my eyes from his face, even as the sound of Rajcik’s Sinbad echoes Soltznin’s pistol shot.
    “NO! Not my son!” Temple screams, rushing forward to stumble and fall next to the body of his dead kid.
    David’s hand is still on my shoulder, and he squeezes it hard, ready to pull me into flight if we need to. But we don’t. Soltznin lies in a pile, blood pumping from a gash in her throat, her eyes desperate, pleading.
    The world goes sharp-edged and gray. All noise wicked away to a subtle background hum. Again with the killing, the kids dying for no reason besides being born non-citizens, the Corps taking life like it’s nothing more than an exchange of currency. I want to laugh at how it’s going to end for Soltznin.
    Instead of going to Drew—I can’t bring myself to look at him and have his face join those of so many others like him in the caskets of my memories—I approach Soltznin, absently kicking her Bowker off to the side. Her hand presses to the wound, the sleeve of her uniform becoming instantly drenched with dark red. I feel nothing for her, neither hatred nor concern nor resentment. A matching stain spreads over her jacket on the same side, where a second shot from Rajcik landed a few centimeters beneath her collarbone. I merely stare. Numbness protects me right now, Drew’s pointless death too disturbing to allow through my armor. If that makes me a coward, so be it.
    Temple’s sobs sound like gravel and glass crunching beneath tires. Someone comes up beside me. Rajcik. Soltznin’s eyes leave mine and look at him. He squats and wraps his fingers around the hand covering her wound, pulling her arm away and holding it. His expression as he watches her bleed to death is the