20
“That’s eighteen of us on the ship and twenty-three from Second Platoon,” SFC Gamay told Rev and Ting-a-ling.
“Nobody from Third?” Rev asked.
“Never got their breach finished. No, it’s just us. Captain Chokra is the senior officer who made it aboard, so he’s taking command.”
“And what are our orders?” Ting-a-ling asked.
“Same as before. We’re to take back the ship.”
Rev had expected as much. If no one from Fox had made it aboard, the Takagahara would be taking out the ship’s drive, trying for as little damage as possible. But with troopers aboard, they had a better chance of rescuing the passengers. Even if the shot to take out the drive didn’t kill them, then the pirates would have plenty of time to take out their anger on them.
And notwithstanding that they had not entered the ship at full strength, forty-one Home Guard troopers were nothing to sneeze at. They didn’t know how many pirates were on board, but for a ship this size, they could seize and hold it with as few as thirty. They probably had twice that in order to handle the passengers, though.
Minus the two Rev killed, of course. He spared them a brief glance. They were too blasted to tell much about them, the water in their cells expanding with the force of an explosion. His fan beamer had performed as advertised.
In a force-on-force assault, the pirates would stand no chance. However, with the civilians in the mix, that changed the equation. No matter how confident the troopers might be as to their military skill, they had to take into account the vulnerability of the passengers and crew.
“But time is a factor. We don’t have word whether the Taka will let the ship enter bubble space, if it gets that far. That gives us about forty minutes if we’re going to end this before then.
“So, here’s where we’re at. Pull up your interior scan.”
The Takagahara had run several heat and bio scans of the ship and created a hotspot image. There were at least fifteen people on the ship’s bridge, which was to be expected. A mass numbering in the high hundreds was in the ship’s theater, another group of thirty were in the engine room, and more were scattered throughout the ship. Unfortunately, there was no way to tell which were pirates and which were prisoners.
“Captain Chokra and Second will both take the bridge as well as secure the main group of people. Our mission is the engine room, the life-support system, and the propulsion chambers. Listen, you two. Nothing’s really changed. Pelletier, you’re going to take your three and secure life support. Be ready to move to the engine room, however. Tjivyrtzlin, you’re taking the rest of the squad to clear the propulsion tubes. I’m taking the four from Second Squad to clear the engine spaces. Got that?”
Rev and Ting-a-ling nodded.
“About the passengers. They’re not your worry right now. We need to secure the ship and keep it from jumping. I’m serious about that. Got it?”
“Yes, Sergeant,” the two said.
“OK, then. Time’s a’wasting. I want you moving in sixty seconds. Face shields sealed.”
Troopers, like Marines, had a habit of cracking open their face shields or visors. Rev guiltily closed his before he wheeled around and gathered up his three troopers. He gave them the condensed version of the order, then with a route mapped on his Oscar’s face shield, he took point. Normally, he’d have one of the other three take point, but in the confines of the ship, if they ran into pirates, the survivor would be the one who shot first. And without ego, Rev knew that he could clear the corridor with Pashu far quicker than any of the others.
They were on the outer deck of the ship, the H-deck. Their objective was on the C-deck and about fifty meters aft. Without opposition, they could reach it in five minutes. Moving tactically, it might take twice that long, but that would be well within their window.
The platoon had entered the ship just aft of frame 104. Forward of the frame were the bridge and the passenger spaces. Back here, there was no need for art or the other niceties of comfort. The passage was bare and gray, which made it easier for the four troopers.
They went up two levels to the F-deck, then continued aft, seeing no sign of the pirates. It was as if the ship were deserted—which they knew it wasn’t.
The one advantage to this mission when compared to some other hostage situations was that this time, the hostages had value. Other terrorist or religious groups, such as the Children of Angels, wanted to leave a message with their actions, and killing hostages was the most impactful way of doing that. The more dead, the better. Pirates and slavers needed the hostages alive. They might kill some, but only when necessary. They might—probably would—kill hostages if it was evident that they were going to be caught and executed, but short of that, they would want to keep their money-makers alive.
The presence of the civilians kept the Navy from disabling the ship with its cannons, but it also limited the pirates’ options. Fox Company was going to try to take advantage of that.
The pirates managing to get the ship underway had kept all of Fox from boarding. Rev didn’t know if the pirates knew how many of the company made it aboard. Hopefully, they’d be overconfident in their abilities to hold off the troopers. An overconfident enemy made mistakes.
Sustained firing echoed down the passage. Rev hesitated, his instincts telling him to turn back to assist. But his mission was the ship’s life support system. He kept going, only to come to a stop ten meters farther down the passage.
“Am I reading this wrong?” he asked Punch.
<This bulkhead should not be here.>
“Wait up a second,” he told the other three troopers.
Every ship moving through human space was required to have complete ship’s blueprints registered. And at the moment, on F-deck, aft of frame 124, there was a bulkhead where there shouldn’t be one. He moved to where the bulkheads met, and there was a fine seam there. The Nightingale’s Song had been modified, and the new plans had never been submitted or at least recorded.
“Fox-one-actual, this is One-Alpha. I’m on the F-deck, but our way aft is blocked. The ship’s been modified.”
“Find your way around,” was the curt reply.
Of course, Rev was going to find another way. He’d just thought it appropriate to inform his squad leader that the ship’s diagram they’d downloaded wasn’t accurate. Looking at the diagram and thinking that one direction was secure when it wasn’t could lead to avoidable casualties.
“Reroute us,” he told Punch.
A new route appeared. Rev turned this small team around
“What’s up?” Akkeke asked.
“The ship’s been modified, and the ladder we were going to access is on the other side of the bulkhead blocking our way. We’ve got to backtrack to get access to the interim spaces.”
As with all commercial ships, artificial gravity oriented the ship so that down was proximal, toward the center of the ship. Rotational gravity was the opposite, but with both methods, the larger compartments tended to be medial, on the horizontal axis, surrounding the corridors. In between decks, though, there was interim space that wasn’t accessible to the public. This space could be used for conduits, air tubes, and the like. But wherever small compartments could be jigsawed in, they provided extra storage space, control rooms, or even hydroponic farms. They could also provide shortcuts to other decks, and that was what Rev wanted to do.
“According to the ship’s diagram, we’ll be able to exit onto E-deck from inside the space.”
“But you just said that the diagram is wrong,” Corporal Akkeke said.
Crap. I hate it when he’s right like that.
“Well, not everything’s wrong, so let’s hope this is right. Otherwise, we’ve got to go all the way back to where we started.”
They backtracked about thirty meters to the non-descript access panel at the base of the bulkhead. Rev had Gingham open it while he covered it with Pashu. There was no sign of anyone, so Rev edged his head in, surveyed the area, and then lowered his body inside where he crouched and listened for any sign of life before he signaled the other three to join him. Low running lights illuminated the space, but it wasn’t bright. Rev could see fine with his augmented vision, but that was not the case for Gingham and Acevedo, who needed their mechanical night vision option on their helmet displays.
At a meter and a half high, the space was not made for augmented Marines. Rev had to crouch and crabwalk back to where hopefully another access would lead them to the E-deck.
Rev passed the first of what looked like two double racks. They were cramped with tiny shelves at the head. These had to be for low-level crew members, and Rev swore he’d never complain about his beehive cells back on Enceladus.
As he passed the second set of bunks, he froze. A man, dressed in only a pair of black ship shorts, was on his back, his eyes open. Rev didn’t need to see the blood soaking the thin mattress to know the man was dead.
That told him two things, though. The pirates would kill, and they knew about the interim spaces.
There was nothing Rev could do for the crewmember, but he told Punch to note the space for a later recovery. He moved past the four racks to the inside of the access hatch. Once again, he signaled for Gingham to do the honors with him providing the cover. As with the entry, there was no sign of anyone, which was getting a little eerie, if Rev was honest with himself. His warrior was in full presence, and Rev wished for the relief some action would give him. This constantly being on point with nothing there expended nervous energy.
The four moved farther aft where another ladder would lead them all the way down to the C-deck and their objective.
“Soldiers, thank you for coming to our little party,” a high-pitched, taunting voice rang out over the ship’s loudspeakers.
Rev almost jumped out of his skin as tightly as he was wound.
“See you soon!” the voice said before breaking into maniacal laughter.
Rev chastised himself for overreacting. His reaction was exactly what the pirates wanted. He stepped off again.
Just ahead was a fairly large space to the left side of the passage. It was designated as crew quarters, and there had been body signatures there. Their original route would have bypassed it. They still could, but as a Marine, Rev was taught never to leave a potential enemy at his rear. Time was ticking on, but Rev thought they were still good in that regard.
“We’re going to check this out before we keep going. If there’re crewmembers inside, we leave them there and move on.”
He motioned for Gingham to open the hatch as he stood just to the side, Pashu aimed forward.
Three people were inside the compartment. Two jumped at his appearance. The third was face down on the deck, and he’d never be jumping at anything again. Blood pooled under his head. There was nothing Rev could do for the dead crewmember, so he put the man out of his mind for the moment because he had something far more urgent in front of him.
One of the other two was also a crew member. Her eyes were wide open in fear, her breath short and shallow. Standing immediately behind her, one arm across her chest, the other holding an ancient but deadly looking boarding pistol to her head, was the first pirate Rev had ever seen in living flesh. A bolt of anger shot through him, and he had to fight to keep from erupting.
He took a step inside when the pirate said, “Now that’s enough, there. You come closer, and this lady is dead.”
“Let her go,” Rev said, the fire in his voice making the pirate flinch, the pistol jerking.
Calm down, Reverent. Don’t panic him.
“Just let her go, and I’ll make sure you get out of this alive.”
Behind him, Gingham started to join Rev, but with his free hand, Rev waved him back.
“Leaving privateers alive isn’t something you Mezzies do,” the man said, some of his bravado gone.
“We’re not Mezame. We’re Home Guard.”
That seemed to confuse the pirate, and he opened his mouth to say something when he suddenly seemed to notice Pashu pointing at him.
“What the hell is that?”
Really? You just noticed her now? Cream of the crop, aren’t you?
But instead of being cowed, the sight seemed to give the pirate confidence. “By the looks of that beamer, you’re kind of stuck now, asshole Home Guard or whatever the fuck you are. You try and fry me, and this lady’s gonna get it, too.”
Which was true as far as it went. Pashu wasn’t the best weapon in a situation like this.
The crewmember’s eyes got even wider, and she lasered in on Pashu’s projector cone. She pushed away from Rev and into the pirate, who had to take a step back to keep standing. He jerked her with the left arm across her chest and gave her temple a hard poke. She let out a squeal and froze.
Rev lifted Pashu to his left, shifting the pirate’s attention away from him. The pirate had his eyes locked on the projector cone, turning his head slightly to follow the movement.
He must have realized his mistake. He jerked his head back to Rev, his eyes widening, his finger tightening on the trigger of his boarding pistol. Rev wasn’t as quick with other weapons as he was with Pashu, but he was a trained Marine. With his right hand, the one he’d waved to stop Gingham and the rest from entering the space, he swept it forward, snagging his Tata-74 and bringing it up in one smooth motion. The first dart took the pirate at the inside corner of his left eye. The second grazed off the dead man’s forehead as he collapsed, legs bending at the knees, the body folding backward over them.
“Don’t fall for the show, buddy. Focus on what’s going to kill you,” Rev said as the heavy boarding pistol clattered off the deck and bounced a couple of times before spinning to a stop.
The crewmember stared in shock at the pistol before slowly turning to the body. She raised a hand to the side of her head as if checking for blood.
“You could have killed me,” she said in astonishment.
“But I didn’t. Are you OK?”
“I . . . I think so.”
“We’re going to leave you now.”
“No!”
“We still have our mission, ma’am. We’re going to leave you. I’d suggest you lock the hatch behind us and don’t open it up unless you know who’s on the other side. Or if it’s Home Guard.”
She stared at him blankly as Gingham, then the other two peered inside the space and took in the scene.
“Nice shooting, Staff Sergeant,” Akkeke said.
“You understand, miss?” Rev asked the woman again.
“Yes. Yes, I understand.”
She was obviously in shock, but they didn’t have time to deal with her at the moment. With one last nod, Rev backed out of the space. She didn’t immediately close the hatch behind him.
Rev motioned the small team forward. The entire thing had taken less than two minutes. It wouldn’t affect their mission, but Rev didn’t think they could afford too many other engagements.
They were approaching their next passage between decks when the lights went out, and after a ripple, the artificial gravity failed. Emergency lights flickered on, illuminating the way.
Rev had just taken a step, and the action pushed him off the deck. Gingham hit him from behind, sending Rev tumbling. Without thinking it through, he tucked and brought his feet forward, hitting the overhead with the soles of his boots.
“Sorry, Staff Sergeant,” Gingham said. “That took me by surprise.”
“Come on. We’re trained in this,” Rev said. “Nothing’s changed.”
Rev didn’t know if the pirates had switched off the artificial gravity or if it was a casualty of fighting. Given what they did for a living, he suspected it was the former. They might think that this evened out the odds, but Rev wasn’t too worried.
He turned and pushed forward. Outside or inside a ship, the Oscars’ thrusters would work. But within the confines of a ship, the exhaust of the thruster could impact other nearby Marines. So, movement became a series of jumps with tiny adjustments from the microjets to keep steady. Controlling the geckos on the soles of their boots to grip when needed, but to let go when jumping was an exercise in timing that did not come easily, and Rev wished they’d spent more time in training. But it wasn’t a difficult thing to do, just difficult to do it as smoothly as Akkeke was. The big trooper was graceful and controlled as they moved down the passage.
The team had automatically spread out once the gravity was cut, hugging the sides of the passage with one Marine on what had been the deck, the overhead, and each bulkhead. Each was oriented with their feet toward the outside of the passage, their heads toward the middle. This allowed for better fields of fire should they meet anyone. Where before, only Rev could realistically react, now all four of them could.
They reached the final door, which would lead them into the engineering spaces. Rev reported their progress and was told to proceed with their mission. He motioned for Gingham to open the door with Rev covering. As before, however, the immediate way was clear. Rev pulled his way through, followed by the other three.
“Akkeke, the door,” Rev told the corporal who was the last one through.
Doors and hatches were different things. Hatches led into spaces and were not sealed airtight. A door was. They were designed to keep integrity between sections of the ship in case an area was breached. The rule of thumb was that all doors that were opened had to be closed once passed through.
“Right, Staff Sergeant. Sorry.”
“OK. Our space should be just aft. Twenty meters.”
Rev motioned Gingham, who was on the bulkhead opposite the hatch leading into the life support space, to move to the other side. No use giving anyone there a better target. The four Marines crept forward, weapons ready.
No fire reached out to them.
The hatch had a window. Rev wished he had a Marine Optisight that he could use to look in without exposing himself, but unfortunately, that wasn’t part of his combat kit. There was no getting around what he had to do. He braced himself, then leaned in for a quick look before snapping back.
“Did you see anything?”
<No sign of anyone in there. I could not see the space directly beneath the window, however.>
Rev didn’t like that. Life support was a vital center of control on the ship. Why would they leave it unmanned?
“I don’t know if there’s anyone in there,” he told the other three. “But we need to clear it.”
“No one there? That’s unexpected,” Akkeke said.
Rev stared at the hatch for a long moment. It was unexpected, as the corporal had said, and that concerned him.
“Wait one,” he told them.
He pulled his multiscan out of his thigh pocket. The little instrument was an all-purpose scanner that could perform a lot of functions but not do any of them very well. It was good enough for general work, testing the air, for power sources, temperature, emissions, and signs of life, and that was about it.
He opened the aperture, held it to the window, and pulsed the space. No sign of life registered, but it wasn’t hard to spoof the little scanner.
Clear. So, what’s got me spooked?
Almost on a whim, Rev ran the scanner along the edge of the hatch . . . and there was a slight bump on the energy band, right near the entry panel.
“Three-point-two nanojoules,” he muttered, reading the display.
That was nothing. The entry panel would be in the five-millijoule range, but with the power out, that should be zero.
Residual power?
“Can that reading be a glitch?”
<Possible, but unlikely. The B-12F is notoriously accurate within its designed tolerances.>
It has to be residual power. What else?
Rev knew he was being overly cautious, but as Bundy liked to say, there were two types of Marines: the cautious and the KIA. Still, time was ticking.
He reached out to the panel to depress the latch but stopped, his hand centimeters away. He had access to petabytes worth of knowledge in the crystals in his head.
“What might be putting out three-point-two nanojoules?”
<Thousands of objects on sleep status could read that low. Any number of break circuits, some medical bots—>
“Break circuits? What are those?”
<A small LED or a wire leading to a receptor. Interrupting the beam or wire will trigger an action.”
“Like a security sensor?”
<That is a common use for them, yes. But there are far more applications that make use of them.>
Rev stared at the panel for a long moment, his mind churning.
“Staff Sergeant? You OK?” Corporal Akkeke asked.
Rev held up a hand to stop him. He needed to think. He could see inside the primary life support room. No one was there. Why? It was one of the three or four most important parts of the ship, yet the pirates had left it abandoned.
Rev put his head up against the bulkhead, getting a better angle to see more of the space. There was no one at all.
So, where’s the crew?
No, the pirates hadn’t forgotten the space. They’d been there. Rev was suddenly sure that the room, probably at the door, was booby-trapped. It was the only thing that made sense. The tiny power emanation was one of the security circuit breakers.
He stepped back. “No, we’re not going in.”
“But our mission?” Akkeke asked.
“I think it’s booby-trapped. We’re waiting outside until we can get some engineers here. We don’t need to be inside to secure it.”
He opened up the squad circuit and relayed to SFC Gamay what he was doing and why.
“Are you sure about that, Pelletier?”
“No. Not at all. But it makes sense. And if I’m wrong, we can still keep any pirates from accessing it right here in the passage.”
“Wait one.” The circuit was dead for a moment, then the squad leader came back. “The captain says no use taking chances. Secure it from outside and wait for further orders.”
“Sergeant Gamay just confirmed, we’re not going in,” he told this team. He directed them farther down the passage on each side, Akkeke and Acevedo fore, he and Gingham aft. He attached his geckos to the bulkhead, ready to wait out either the coming of engineers or the end of the mission. But he had to be ready for anything.
Rev was on the overhead, looking up at the deck. As he looked back to make sure the two corporals were getting set, something caught his eye. It wasn’t much, just a tiny blip in the smooth juncture of overhead and bulkhead. If he was walking along the deck under gravity, he doubted that he’d ever have seen it.
“Keep facing down the corridor and shout if you see anything,” Rev told Gingham. He released his geckos and pushed off back toward the hatch into the life support space. Using his microjets, he maneuvered close. It was small, basically the same nondescript gray as the passages in this part of the ship. But it definitely didn’t belong there, of that he was sure.
Rev could see well in the dim light, but there were limits, so he turned on his torch. There was a glint, and that brought it into focus. Rev recognized it for what it was: a spy eye, and he didn’t think it was from the ship. He plucked it from its spot. In the torch light, the color was slightly different from the bulkhead, and he could see it wasn’t wired into the ship’s power.
He turned his head. The little recording device had been placed to watch over the door and up and down the passage.
“I think the pirates have spy eyes on the ship. At least, I think I found one,” Rev passed to the staff sergeant as he looked into the tiny lens.
“Are you sure about this—”
Whatever the squad leader was going to ask was lost when a flash appeared inside the life support system space, the hatch buckled, and a shock wave pushed out of the hatch and sent Rev smashing against the far bulkhead. He fended off getting slammed with Pashu, but his face banged against the inside of his face shield, smacking his nose.
Another series of blasts sounded, and the ship shuddered. A moment later, the air started moving, taking Rev with it. He spun around and planted his feet on the overhead, and activated his geckos.
Emergency lights started flashing, alarms howling.
“All hands, secure yourself,” someone passed over the assault force net. “I repeat, secure yourself. If you are with civilians, make sure the space is locked tight. We have multiple breaches in the hull.”
“Bring it in,” Rev shouted at his team.
The air movement picked up quickly, from a breeze to gale force. With it blowing toward Gingham, he was struggling to make it back to Rev. The other two were carried by the escaping air to him. Rev reached out to snag Corporal Acevedo, and the impact tore him free. Both tumbled in the air like tornado flotsam. Rev bounced hard four or five times, once so hard on his helmet that he was sure it was cracked. He tried to plant his feet, but he might as well have been fighting a hurricane.
Someone, Akkeke or Acevedo, crashed into him, and like baby marmosets hugging their mother, the two clung together. Rev locked Pashu around the trooper to keep them from being separated. He hunched over, protecting the front of his helmet. They slammed into the bulkhead several more times, knocking the breath out of him before the velocity of the escaping air started to diminish. Finally, as they tumbled, the other trooper managed to plant his feet, jerking them both to a stop. Rev raised his head to see Akkeke’s face just centimeters from his.
“We’re going to have to do this again sometime,” Rev said as he planted his gecko soles. (Or something funnier.)
A body came by, and Rev and Akkeke snagged it, reeling in a wide-eyed Acevedo.
“Holy shit. I thought we were going to get sucked out,” Acevedo said.
“PFC Gingham, are you OK?” Rev passed on the team net.
“I . . . I think so,” a trembling voice said.
“Where are you?”
“I’m not sure. I was stuck on some grate in the overhead. I don’t know where I am.”
Rev checked the ship’s diagram. There was a ventilation grate just ahead. “OK, you’re right around the curve in the passage. Come back and join us.”
Acevedo might have thought they were going to be ejected from the ship, but Rev knew that there would have to be a breach all the way through to their deck for that. Even as it was, there were doors that should have closed to keep the inner decks pressurized. But if the pirates planned this, then from the evidence, Rev figured they’d sabotaged those doors.
Sabotage! And booby-trapped the hatch into life support.
If Rev’s instincts hadn’t kicked in, the four of them would have bought the farm, he was sure.
And it clicked into place. The spy eye. They’d been under observation. When they hadn’t opened the hatch, the pirate on the other end manually set the explosion to disable life support and breach the hull.
The question was how much of the ship was without air. Those in sealed compartments should be OK for the moment.
“Staff Sergeant Pelletier, what’s your status?” SFC Gamay asked.
“We’re OK and functional. There was an explosion in life support, but we got taken away in the maelstrom.”
“We’ve got multiple breaches over the ship. We’re going to need life support to start repressurizing as soon as patches can be set in place. Get back and assess the damage.”
“Roger. We’re on our way.”
* * *
Rev looked through the cracked window into life support. The hatch had buckled under the force of the blast and was now stuck, and even with Rev’s augmented strength, he couldn’t budge it. He had PTC to cut into the space, but there was no need. He could tell that the main life support wasn’t going to work again until the Nightingale’s Song was in drydock.
He opened a connection with his squad leader and keyed in the other three in his team. “Life support is offline, and nothing we can do is going to get it back. It’s totaled.”
“Shit. I was afraid of that. Look, we’re about to clear the engine room, so I’m going to be a little busy for the next few minutes. You start heading for the auxiliary life support control on Charlie Deck. I think the captain’s going to want you to check it out and secure it. The Nightingale’s or Taka’s engineers are going to have to use one of them if we’re going to get this thing up and running again.”
“Roger. Good hunting.”
“Gamay, out.”
“You heard her. We’re shifting our mission. Diamond formation, but key on me,” Rev said.
He gave one last look at the mess that was life support. Hopefully, the integrity of the rest of the ship would remain secure until the Navy could come in and get the secondary systems online.
There were two auxiliary life support stations. One was forward in passenger country. The one aft was one deck up and about twenty meters aft from their position, just forward of the engine room and propulsion tubes. Rev led his team aft to Frame 112 and the interim space where they could cross to the next deck. As before, he covered the space while Gingham opened the hatch. It was empty, and they made their way through what had been crew quarters for six people. Not much was left. Mattresses, pillows, all the normal accoutrements of life had been swept clean. The hatch at the other end into the C-deck was opened, and Rev pulled himself into the Charlie Deck, where he was greeted by a crew member who was slowly twisting in the passage, a stream of black globules arced behind him.
He was floating a few centimeters off of the bulkhead. His eyes were glassy and bulging, his mouth open. Around his nose and mouth were black bubbles that Rev knew would be bright red under normal lighting. Without an EVA suit or emergency hood, he would have had about only twenty or thirty seconds until the air was expelled from this section of the ship. Rev looked back at the interim space from which they’d just emerged. From the looks of it, the crewmember might have been inside the space. There should have been emergency hoods there, but maybe they’d been ripped away as the air rushed out. He probably emerged only as the air was lost, and he tried to reach safety. Clearly, he had tried to hold his breath while he struggled to find refuge.
During their space training, one of the things drilled into them was that holding their breath in a vacuum was tantamount to a death sentence. The air in their lungs would quickly expand, causing embolisms that would kill within seconds. The SOP for a Marine or soldier caught in an air evacuation event was to immediately expel all the air from their lungs and keep the mouth open. A human could remain conscious for up to fifteen seconds in a vacuum and could remain alive for up to a minute or more. People caught in a vacuum could be revived even after longer than that. Hégémonie Liberté sailors had supposedly been successfully brought back after seven or eight minutes in a vacuum with no signs of permanent damage.
The crew member’s lungs were damaged, and the embolisms in his brain would be problematic, but he might have a chance of resurrection if he could be gotten to a Class B or higher med center. That would have to wait, though. Rev recorded the space, then tried to move past the body. He barely nudged it as he tried to scoot by, and that sent the body tumbling. Rev grabbed a leg and planted his boots, activating the gecko pads. After slowly turning, he steadied himself, and with a sure push, sent the body down the very center of the passage and out of their way.
Sorry about that, buddy. Hopefully, you’ll get scooped up in time to be brought back.
Gingham looked with wide eyes as the body floated past him.
“Keep moving,” Rev ordered.
Their target was just ten meters away. The hatch was open, and Rev’s heart fell. But as he looked in, it seemed undamaged. It was half the size of the primary, but it supposedly had the ability to get the ship’s life support back online.
Rev paused and looked back. The dead crewmember’s body had come up against the curve in the passage. Maybe the man had been holed up in life support instead and had been trying to get to what he hoped was an emergency hood in the berthing space. That would explain the open hatch.
He shook his head. It didn’t matter now.
Rev opened up a channel to the squad leader to report the status, but before he could speak, the SFC excitedly asked, “Where are you now?”
“At the auxiliary—”
“We just made entry into the engine control room and are pinned down with some crew-served beamer. You’re the closest to us. I need you to breach into the engine room aft of 126 and get the bastard off of us.”
“Roger. On our way now.”
“And I just got word that we’ve got ten minutes, twenty seconds now. The timeline’s been pushed up. If we don’t shut down the engines, the Taka’s going to fry the space.”
And everyone in it at the time.
“Understood. We’ll be there.”
While the engines and propulsion tubes ran a good third of the ship’s length, the entrance to the engine control room was on their deck and only fifteen meters aft, but on the other side of the ship. They could get there in thirty seconds if they pushed it.
They pushed it.
“We’re going to have to breach the bulkhead,” Rev told the others as they reached the corridor outside the engine room.
Then to Punch, he said, “Will PTC work here? And if so, what setting?”
PTC was an incremental smart explosive, higher-tech and easier to employ than the D-5 cord Rev had used on Roher-104. Smart, in that it could be programmed to fit the situation, from detonating in a microsecond in an explosive blast, cutting through most metals and synthetics, to slow explosive that could move dirt or flip vehicles, or to a slow burn that could be used to cut through most materials. Incremental in that it came in rolls of tape carried by members of a squad. As much of the tape as required could be used, and tape from different rolls could be stuck together in strips from two to a hundred, the amount and shape as required for the mission. It was shock-resistant and safe, needing a small mechanical fuze to set it off.
The bulkhead surrounding the engine room was reinforced almost to hull strength. Enough PTC could theoretically cut a planet in two, but this wasn’t theory, and Rev didn’t know if a high-speed explosion of a cut would be better.
<One roll of PTC would be enough. Given the situation inside, a high-speed blast would give the enemy less time to react.>
Which made sense. Rev had been leaning that way, but it was good to have Punch confirm it.
“We’re at frame 126. Are you clear for us to breach here with an Alpha detonation?” he asked the squad leader.
“That’s a negative on 126. There are six or seven civilians there now. Move to 128. That’s at the very back of the space, so don’t go aft any farther. And move it. We’re still pinned down by the damned beamer. Wait for an image,” Gamay said, her breath coming in gasps.
Five seconds later, a skewed image popped into the four troopers’ displays. It wasn’t particularly clear, but it was good enough to get a picture of what was inside.
Rev counted six pirates in view. One was manning an old-fashioned energy cannon. Old didn’t mean it wasn’t effective, however. An Oscar wouldn’t do much to reflect or stop the beam.
Several bodies without vacsuits were scattered in the space, masking fields of fire. Four pirates were positioned where they could cover the entire control area, and one was holding eight civilians, each in what looked like emergency vac suits, which were little more than big white bags with air tanks. If they were at frame 126, that gave Rev their position in relation to the four of them.
“Give us a heads up on the blast,” the squad leader told him.
“Roger that. Setting the charge now.”
“You can see what we’re up against. Akkeke, you’ve got the one on the civilians. You’re leading us in. I’ve got the one on the big cannon. Gingham and Acevedo take who you can of the rest. Remember, Sergeant Gamay and her team are behind the machinist table. Watch your lines of fire. We need to stop this and stop it now.”
“How long do we have?” Corporal Akkeke asked.
Rev checked the countdown display he’d started. “Nine minutes and fifteen seconds. If we don’t have the engine room secured and the drive cut, the Taka is going to disable the drive.”
He didn’t have to remind them that if the Takagahara opened fire, chances are that everyone in the engine room would be killed.
“Where’s Captain Chokra?” Acevedo asked.
Rev should have spooled them into the messaging, so he didn’t have to repeat it.
“It’s just us. Now let me set the PTC.”
“What do I need?” he asked Punch.
<Two sections of seventy-two centimeters in three layers, one at approximately one-point-five meters from the deck, one at point-five centimeters.>
Rev swung his feet around and attached the geckos to the bulkhead. He started on the upper section and told Akkeke to do the lower one.
“Watch what I’m doing,” he told Punch.
<Roger.>
The tape came out easily. He slapped the first section, pulled out the second section and put it on top of the first, then applied the final twenty-four centimeters.
“Settings?”
<Mode B-2.>
Rev set the detonator to the B mode and dialed it to two. He gave it ten seconds and slapped it on the PTC. He repeated it with a second detonator, synched it to the first, and as Akkeke finished his tape, he slapped that on as well.
“Did I get everything right?”
<Affirmative.>
“OK, you three. Step back, uh, five meters. That should be good. But be ready.”
He gave the squad leader the heads up, then slapped the two detonators, starting the countdown. Instead of jumping to join the others, he carefully walked and turned, ready to push off.
The small green light shifted to rapid flashes, and Rev instinctively held his breath. The two patches silently exploded, the walls of the bulkhead bursting in. An explosion in a vacuum doesn’t propagate a shock wave, but the medium does spread out with force. Corporal Akkeke had to wait a moment before he burst into motion with Rev right on his ass.
The jagged hole in the bulkhead wasn’t very big, barely enough for Akkeke and Rev to squeeze through. Without the shock wave, the pirates inside weren’t incapacitated, but that first blast of explosive material would have momentarily affected them. The pirate with the civilians hesitated, and Rev almost wasted the woman, but he had to trust Akkeke. His target was the pirate on the cannon. He went low, bringing Pashu up as the pirate tried to turn the cannon around. Rev almost had a clear shot with only one civilian at the edge of his line of fire. Rev twisted to hit a line of consoles, kicking out, which pushed him to where he was clear of the hostage. The pirate almost had the cannon swung around when Rev fired a single one-second pulse. The body seemed to explode in a red burst, like a sped-up holo of roses blooming.
Rev didn’t have time to admire his work. Still moving through the space, he twisted around to find a target. The pirate watching the civilians was now dead, a line of small blood globes a lot neater than the mess that was Rev’s target. Another pirate was low, pulling himself between a line of condensers, just two meters away. Rev drew on him, but from this angle, he’d hit the civilians. Rev reacted by instinct. Pashu was more than just her weapons. She was a pretty big hunk of machine. Rev jumped forward, swinging her in an arc, trying to maintain his orientation. Corporal Cathcart, back teaching vacuum ops on Enceladus, would probably flunk him. Rev’s body rotated as he swung his IBHU. The pirate must have just caught a glimpse of Rev because he started a classic rabbit turn to face him, raising his weapon, and far more gracefully than Rev. If Rev missed, he would be open to the pirate’s shot.
Rev didn’t miss. Pashu hit the pirate square on the head, her 145-kilogram mass driven by Rev’s augmented muscles. The projector barrel crushed the pirate’s helmet and continued on to crush the skull inside.
Not that Rev saw that. The blow sent Rev tumbling, and he was lucky to hit the overhead feet first. He managed to attach with one gecko and stop himself.
The fight was now “over” his head, and he had to crane his neck to see it. Four pirates were dead, and two were surrendering. None of the vac-suited civilians looked to be hurt.
From the entrance, SFC Gamay and the four troopers from Second were emerging from behind a massive machinist’s table. He recognized Rice but not the other three, at least in their Oscars. It was good to see her alive and kicking.
“Zip-tie those two and check the others,” Rev ordered Bingham and Acevedo. He stayed where he was for the moment. Under gravity, he was on what would be the overhead, so except for some piping and conduits, there was nothing to block his view, and he could observe the entire engine room. Rice was already moving to begin shutdown procedures.
Rev checked the time. Only fifty-five seconds had passed. They’d completed the mission with a good cushion, and the Takagahara could stand down, at least as far as crippling the Nightingale’s Song. Rev’s warrior started to recede.
Then fire lanced across his right shoulder.
Rev wheeled around. A face was peering at him, trying to use one of the conduits as cover.
The pirate must have been using the overhead to observe what was going on. Rev didn’t know why he hadn’t fired before.
The pirate had a look of resignation. He might have realized that the ship was not going to make the jump into bubble space now. He might even know that the chances were that he faced trial and execution. He didn’t look like someone who accepted the immediacy of his death, however, and instead of aiming and firing again, he was pushing himself farther back into the maze of pipes. He fired one more unaimed shot as he tried to get away.
Rev could have waited for his Oscar to seal the bullet hole in his shoulder. He could have fired his cannon, cooking the man. He could have called for help.
He didn’t do any of that. He dove after the man, covering the space in one leap. The pirate looked back in horror, his eyes fixated on Pashu. He must have seen what it had done to the pirate on their cannon, or he’d seen Rev crush the other pirate’s helmet. Either way, he tried to get away in panic. He finally seemed to remember his weapon, and he brought it back around and fired . . . at Pashu, not at Rev. The round glanced off the IBHU as Rev closed the fingers around the pirate’s ankle, and bracing against a conduit, he pulled the man free like a terrier pulling a rat from a hole.
Rev could see the man screaming in utter horror through his face shield. Rev knocked his carbine away with his right hand, sending it spinning to the deck. He shifted his grip around the ankle, braced himself with the full intention of swinging the man and bashing his head on the pipe.
The pirate knew he was done, and he’d given up. Tears were making little floating globules inside his helmet.
“Should have thought of that before you killed those civilians,” Rev snarled.
He tensed the muscles he used to control Pashu, ready to end the pirate’s life. But he stopped.
Hell, Reverent. Look what he’s done.
But he knew he couldn’t kill a helpless man, even a helpless pirate, despite as much as he wanted to.
With a snarl, he pulled the man and twisted him around so he could use Pashu to put him into a headlock. He looked up, ready to push off.
So, you think I should kill him?
It didn’t matter. His warrior had fled, and he no longer even wanted to be the executioner. Rev released his geckos and used his suit thrusters to cross over to the deck.
“Zip-tie him,” he told Akkeke, still holding the now limp pirate.
To Rev’s surprise, it wasn’t disdain he saw on the corporal’s face. It was something more akin to respect.
“You catch something?” SFC Gamay asked as she pulled herself up to Rev while Akkeke was securing the prisoner.
“Yeah. I caught one. We’ve got three alive. Four dead. No civilians dead . . . I mean, of the ones in the vacsuits. There are some that looked like they might have died when the air was lost.”
“There wouldn’t have been too many of the emergency suits here. It must have sucked to realize you weren’t getting one.”
The squad leader suddenly looked closer and grabbed Rev, then twisted him around so they were oriented together. “Your Oscar’s been punctured.”
Of course, she would see it. Punctures were always sealed with a red color to make them easier to spot.
“That bastard shot me.”
Gamay gently probed the spot, then turned Rev around. “Through and through. Can you move the shoulder?”
Rev rotated his arm.
Just what I need. Already lost the left one, and now this.
But the arm moved freely.
“Can you tell what damage there is?”
<Not while you’re inside your Oscar. But there is minimal blood loss, and your vitals are strong. It looks like a glancing shot without major issues. Your medinanos are already at work, limiting damage.>
I got hit because I relaxed my guard. I assumed the fight was over. Lesson learned.
“I think I’m OK,” he told his squad leader. “Nothing major.”
“Well, you’re going to have to wait until a medic can check you out. Our orders are to secure this space from any stragglers.”
“I can hang. What’s the status with everyone else?”
“The bridge is trashed but secure. Second Platoon is now clearing all the passenger spaces.”
“And Ting?”
“Staff Sergeant Tjivyrtzlin and his team have secured the propulsion tubes. Now that the ship isn’t going to be blasted by the Taka, the owners, or whoever, don’t want any more damage.”
Rev let out a sigh of relief.
“And now we wait. The Taka is sending over their engineers to try and get life support up and running again. These emergency vacsuits have a limited running time. After that, maybe in as soon as ten hours, a tug’ll arrive to bring the ship to the closest port.”
“And them?” Rev asked, pointing with Pashu at the three living pirates.
“Not our problem. We’ll be long gone before that’s decided. And now, you’re done. Go latch yourself somewhere and relax.”
“I’m fine.”
“Right, says the trooper who’s just been shot. No, you’re not fine. You’re full of dream juice that your nanos are pumping into you.”
The Marines and Navy corpsmen called it happy juice, but Gamay was probably right. It was probably better if he did take it easy until he could get out of his Oscar and let the Takagahara’s surgeon take a look at him.
Rice jetted over to them and announced that the engines were officially shut down. She gave Rev a long once over.
“Saw what you did, Rev. Totally impressive.”
Rev shrugged, then winced. The medinanos hadn’t completely deadened the pain.
She leaned in and switched to the P2P. “And thanks for saving our asses. That fucker had us dead to rights. You did good, Rev, and it isn’t all about that IBHU on your shoulder. You’re a good soldier.”
“Marine.”
She chuckled. “OK, jarhead. A good Marine.”
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