Hot Brass Mousetrap

Marion Thrace was a scholar, assistant to one of the world’s top authorities on science and technology. She, by her own estimation, belonged in a library or a lecture hall. 

She had no business being curled up behind a car, surrounded by the thunder of gunfire as a small war erupted around her. 

The car shuddered as bullets hit the engine block. The tires wheezed air from a dozen holes. I should not be here!

She and Doctor Lawrence Reisser had started the day on a skyliner, eating breakfast, chatting with a pompous ambassador, and preparing for a week of committee meetings and political posturing. That would have been bad enough. 

Every bad day she’d ever had paled in comparison to today.

Marion’s hands were still wet with his Lawrence’s blood. She had been standing right next to him when a sniper ended his life just minutes ago. She’d watched him gasp his last breath through bloody lips as an army descended on the little gang of sky pirates hired to keep them safe. 

This is a mistake, she repeated to herself. He can’t be dead. This is a dream. I’m in my hotel room, napping before the opening ceremony. Lawrence is in his room reading a colleague’s dissertation instead of preparing for his speech. This is all a dream; I’m going to wake up, sigh in relief, take a hot shower, and everything is going to be fine!

Glass rained over her head as the car’s window shattered. I’m still here. Lawrence is still dead and I’m next! She curled up tighter, wrapping her arms around her legs and pressing her forehead into her knees. I’m next! When she was eight, she had a pet mouse who escaped his cage. The family cat caught him and left his little body under the kitchen table. Marion was that mouse now, missing home and cornered by predators.

“Kid!” A woman’s voice cut through the gunfire and the dozens of men’s voices shouting orders, calling targets, and spitting curses. Calista Haven ran through the melee and slid to a stop behind the car Marion hid behind. “Snap out of it, kid, we gotta move!” 

Calista was everything Marion wasn’t. Tall and strong, strapped with armor and weapons, assertive and confident in this world dominated by men and violence. She could run and shoot and talk and think and laugh in the middle of a raging gunbattle. Even her blond hair and green eyes were the opposite of Marion’s. Opposite people from opposite worlds: a proud alley cat in her natural habitat and a scared mouse out of her cage for the first time.  

“Hey!” Calista ducked and grabbed Marion’s shoulder. “Are you hit?”

“Um…” Thinking was like wading through waist-deep water. “I don’t think so?” She couldn’t tell if the blood on her hands and clothes belonged to her or Lawrence.  

“Then let’s go!” Calista rested her submachine gun on the car’s bonnet and fired a burst at the oncoming enemy. Return fire thumped into the car. A shot went through the brim of her hat. 

Marion’s heart matched the tempo of automatic fire as hot brass flew over her head. Get up and walk. You do it every day. You even run sometimes. Her limbs had, apparently, forgotten that. “I don’t think...” What if…what if I’m already hit? Maybe a bullet got me in the spine and I haven’t realized it yet. Her mind began to boil; her back spasmed in anticipated pain. I am going to die just like Lawrence, coughing and bleeding and twitching! Her breathing began to match her heartrate. “I can’t. I can’t!” 

Calista punched the car’s fender. “Look here, civvie!” She paused, sighed through gritted teeth, and met Marion’s eye. “Listen to me. The first step is the hardest. I know you’re scared, but we’re low on time, patience, and ammunition. If you don’t move your ass right now, we’re all gonna die.” She dropped the magazine from her weapon, loaded a new one, and racked the bolt back. “Got it?” 

Marion took a deep breath, rolled forward onto her knees, and rose to a crouch. The roar of gunfire quieted around her. Or maybe she was just going deaf. “Right.” She could do this. “Right!” 

“Right!” Calista rose, shouldered her submachine gun, and dumped the mag in a single, automatic spray. “Go, kid, go!” 

Marion took a step. And then another. A hand shoved her forward as Calista pushed from her from behind. 

She put one foot in front of the next, expecting each step to be her last. Her terror didn’t lessen, if anything it intensified. But she was moving. The breathless, boiling horror, instead of paralyzing her, now pushed her along like an out-of-control steam engine. 

Marion ran past gunslingers who she’d only met that morning. A skinny man with a shotgun grinned in feral glee. A man with a thick mustache, who looked almost as scared as Marion felt, stood his ground and fired his revolver. If these people could stand and face death, the least she could do was run away from it. 

Run away. Anger suddenly gripped her. Run away, helpless like a mouse whose only move was to flee and hope the cat wouldn’t bury its claws in her back. Shells rolled under her feet, threatening to trip her. Other people had to fight and risk their lives for her. 

Fury rekindled the fire in her overworked heart and lungs. I will find out who killed Lawrence. I will complete his work and I will do whatever it takes so that I never have to feel helpless like this again. Newfound energy coursed through her burning legs. She ran toward something now, not just away. 

She chanced a look over her shoulder as she picked up speed. The crew fell back behind her, laying down suppressing fire to cover the retreat. 

Marion ran, untouched by a storm of bullets, to the waiting airship and to the skies and to a moment’s rest. 

It would take hours for her nerves to settle. Hear ears would ring for weeks. Lawrence’s final, bloody moments would linger in her dreams for years, even as she witnessed future battles and tragedies.

But because she ran, and because a crew of half-strangers decided she was worth fighting for, she lived to see it that future.