by J. W. Kurtz
Ayad read the gesture by the Doctor for what it was. Ayad was now in charge by delegation. He stepped forward and started to direct traffic.
"Medical will be locked up tight and sealed from inside. We can't have this place get fucked up, since I suspect we'll be needing it soon even more than before. The Doc and Mikkelsen will stay here, suited up of course," Ayad said directly to the Doctor and his assistant. "The rest of you, follow me, we need to find some gear, right quick. I'll give a sitrep to the Captain once we've suited up and retrieved some weapons to fight with."
Everyone, including the reluctantly uncommunicative Doctor and his assistant, nodded understanding and agreement. Some nodded more vigorously than others however. To those who had never experienced personal combat this new occurrence was already pretty terrifying and they knew it would only get worse once the actual shooting started. Surprisingly there was a large number of crew working on privateer Bellerophon without a military or paramilitary background. These folks had committed a sin somewhere along the line that was egregious enough to keep on the blacklist and unable to crew aboard the mainstream starliners, exploration vessels, and industrial cargo haulers plying the interstellar highways. Often, good people could be found from these pools of untouchables. They needed second chances and were willing to work at a much reduced rate simply to be away from the harsh settlements and colonies. And since privateering was a business, with an often razor thin line between profit and failure, hiring on able-bodied crew at a discount was a necessity for positive yield operations.
Captain Wray was very much appreciated by the crew that fell into the normally "untouchable" category because he only required that they go through two processes before he hired them. First, the prospective crewmember went through a thorough psychological screening. It would do no good to have a nut job sealed in a tin can often light-years from the safety of a breathable world. The Captain didn't want to worry about all the things that could go wrong with someone that couldn't hack this minimum standard. The second part of the process was a one-on-one interview. Just the applicant and the Captain. Absolute honesty was required in sharing of transgressions. If the Captain thought you were lying, or the computer indicated such, even just one little "white lie," the interview was immediately over. The unsuccessful candidate sent packing with a not so subtle suggestion not mention anything about the Captain or the operation as the penalties would be "rather severe." Ayad knew for a fact that those who had shot their mouths off had experienced accidents, not at the commission of the Captain though, but at the hand of his employer who didn't want a valuable asset compromised. Ayad remembered his own interview very well, and once past the painful sharing of his dishonorable discharge and associated details, he found the experience rather cathartic.
Ayad now led his bastard team of defenders out the hatch. The team paused as Ayad waited and listened for the telltale sound of the hatch being secured from the inside. A heavy "clunk" was heard as the Doctor engaged the manual locking mechanism from within the vital compartment. Of course the smoky voice of Vera Mikkelsen, and not from the semi-mute Doctor himself, sounded from the intercom speaker next to the exterior hatch controls to confirm that medical was indeed secure.
Compartment locked tight, the team followed the lead of Ayad who found himself somewhat distracted as he was thinking about the sexy voiced medical assistant sealed behind the medical bay hatch rather than the possible coming fight. Ayad doubted the Doc could have hired a more attractive assistant. She was very competent and obviously knew her stuff...Ayad just wondered what her transgression had been that brought her here and away from real life. Once again he considered hacking into the personnel files maintained by the Captain, but since it was something similar to that which had led to his own discharge from the CDF, and since he gave his word to Wray that he would never hack his files, Ayad knew that discovering the truth would have to be done the old fashioned way. He would have to ask Mikkelsen herself. His musings on the subject were cut short as his professional focus returned through the haze of wonder.
The team quickly came to the compartment that was their destination. Ayad had led the team to a small storage compartment where emergency gear and a modest, to say the least, small arms locker was located. The compartment was far from an armory. There were no battlesuits to don. The kits found in the compartment lockers were only standard emergency vacsuits. Also, the arms stored here were primarily old style plasma pistols along with a couple similarly obsolete carbines stored in recessed charging units along one short bulkhead.
Ayad didn't share his grim assessment of the situation with the team. He confidently armed himself with a plasma carbine and checked the charge. Though it had been secured snuggly in the charging cradle it was only at half-capacity, meaning the power cell was far past its prime. Not good, he thought to himself, but it's better than a sharp stick and foul language. Soon the team was dressed in their ill-fitting one-size-fits-all unarmored emergency vacsuits, with each sporting a weapon or two with at least a half-charge. Ayad tried to hide the concern in his voice as he contacted the Captain with his personal communicator.
"Captain, here."
"This is Ayad, Boss. Sitrep follows. Including myself there are six suited up and armed, just aft of the area you highlighted as compromised by the hostile boarders. None of us however are in any category of armor other than zero and the small arms on hand are very low on charges. There are only two light carbines and the rest are pistols of the obsolete variety. We'll put up a hell of a fight Captain but if I can suggest, if there is another team with a better kit, I'd put them on point and have us react as flankers."
"Roger, that Ayad. How many vet shooters do you have on hand?"
"Three. Emilio Kim, he's a skiff gunner, Gessle from Van Vorst's Beta, and I. The other three are new to this sort of fun," Ayad said with a bright grin shone to the three in the compartment recently referenced.
"You're team's designated Beta. Standby, I'll be coordinating with Alpha in a moment. I need you to get your team to the main hangar. Should be a quick lateral movement for you and you'll either be able to react when called or block anyone heading down the middle of the ship toward engineering which is what I expect will happen. We're watching the target, there's no movement yet, but be ready. The bridge'll patch your team into the tactical net in a moment, Captain out."
The order to move out was quickly passed by Ayad and the team moved to the hangar to setup in case trouble headed their way.
Chapter 14:
Time: 16:42 (Zulu)
Angelo Dixon had always enjoyed working alone. Prior to being hired on as a merc shooter for the Cassius operation, Angelo had plied his trade on more than a dozen worlds. He didn't care what the work was. It just needed to both pay well and allow him to kill people.
Those that knew him found it as no surprise that he'd been drummed out of the Colonial Defense Marines. A result of too many consecutive poor fitness reports. Most of those reports highlighted his "excessive aggressiveness," (what the hell is that?) and numerous instances of questionable civilian casualties and collateral damage whenever he was in the area. Coincidence could happen only so many times until it was no longer coincidence.
Angelo took to his current line of work like a duck to water. There were no after action reports, fitness reports, psychological evaluations, blah blah blah. Angelo was paid for results, and when he was employed properly, he always delivered. The current situation where he now found himself, with no ride home, limited resources, and in hostile territory, would have made the most level-headed shooter apprehensive at best. Luckily for Angelo he'd never considered level-headed...he was crooked all the way. He saw this current situation, especially his solo mission, as an opportunity to practice chaos, havoc, and his favorite: murder.
When the show started, with Laaken and Petrov headed forward with the primary environmental controls and/or the bridge as their ultimate goals, Angelo began to head aft toward engineering. Taking engineering
would allow his team many options. They could hold the ship hostage and direct their course or they could simply overload the reactors and destroy the ship. Angelo was not suicidal, entirely he thought, but he did enjoy the notion of taking everyone with him if there was no chance of his own survival.
Angelo had the schematics for the old cruiser floating before him in his heads-up-display of his visor. He located the deck where he believed he was and quickly verified his position, thanks to the old and flaking away navigation markings painted the immediate area. He thought he'd heard plasma fire over his external microphone coming from the direction where his teammates had tromped off in. They were most likely destroying monitoring systems as they moved forward and firing off smoke and gas to mask their movements. Standard procedures for the Cassius teams. If they were dealing with resistance they couldn't handle he didn't hear about it, the moment he went his own way he went zero emissions and shut off his wireless communications.
He was walking as softly as he could in his heavy armor. To help mask his movement he had disabled the magnetic locking feature on his boots so there was no heavy "clicking" from step-to-step. Hopefully he wouldn't come to an area with an artificial gravity malfunction. Steadily he moved down the dimly lit central corridor heading toward the main hangar, his external mic turned up to maximum to listen for any approaching boots thumping his way on the deck.
Stopping about 5-meters from the doublewide hatch to the hangar, Angelo considered his options. He understood, and even embraced the mantra, that fortune favored the bold, but in the here and now some discretion seemed a better option. Odd because discretion is not a word in Angelo's regular vocabulary. Working without backup he couldn't risk not knowing what was on the other side of the hatch, he could be facing half the crew prepared for him in a killing zone. The Ogre heavy suits were not invincible, with enough concentrated fire even from light carbines, enough damage could be dealt to end his one-man go for broke offensive. He considered his options while hunkering down on one knee beside a bulkhead lining the corridor. His weapons, quad sentinels, targeting the hatch to the beckoning hangar.
Retracing his steps several meters, Angelo located what he was searching for. He opened the hatch to a small compartment and negotiated his way inside. He barely fit through the small entrance to what he quickly came to be believe was a disused storage compartment. Debris was scattered throughout the unlit small space. His infrared lighting system enabled him to maneuver in the dark, but despite his best efforts at stealth, he sounded like a bull in a china shop moving about the cluttered compartment. Finally he was able to take up position before the aft bulkhead but not before numerous objects crunched beneath his heavy boots.
On the other side the bulkhead, according to the schematics that had thus far been right on, was another compartment with a doublewide hatch leading to the hangar. Most likely this neighboring compartment was a maintenance shop for the craft and other machinery operated by the cruiser. If there were defenders awaiting him in the hangar, they would not be expecting him to come from a side maintenance shed that only had the one set of doors to the hangar itself and no direct path from anywhere else on the ship...at least until Angelo was done with his modifications to the existing floor plan.
Standing before the aft bulkhead, Angelo set his shoulder and forearm plasma weapons on low powered continuous stream. The plan was not to brute force blast a hole through the bulkhead, but rather to melt and slag a portal large enough for him to wiggle through, as much as a heavy battlesuit could wiggle anyway. At the low continuous setting the weapons emitted a steady dark orange beam with all four beams converging on the same point on the bulkhead. It only took a few moments for the gray steel to succumb to the intense heat and turn a glowing white. Droplets of steel began to run down the bulkhead to collect at the feet of Angelo, who despite the stimulants in his blood, remained patient and focused at the task at hand. Stims in his system always had a calming effect on him. It was unknown to him but it was a regular occurrence for the people he worked with to slip stims into his food so his normal berserker like mentality was controlled.
In short order a new path to the hangar was established.
Angelo adjusted his shoulder mounted plasma cannons to high-power and his forearm blasters back to their normal settings. Carefully, so as not to brush up against the still glowing edges of the newly created portal, which could damage components and exposed sensors of his suit, he made his way through the interior of the maintenance shed. An engine from a small craft dangled from overhead chains while another sat in a wheeled cradle secured to the deck. Parts and tools for various ongoing, or possibly abandoned and forgotten projects, were scattered about. He hoped there were no ears near the hatch he was moving towards because it was impossible to navigate the space without making a terrible racket.
He was pleased to see that the doublewide hatch leading from the shed to the hangar had a small window. The window was grime-caked and dirty enough that he couldn't get a clear view of the hangar. He spotted a rag nearby and deftly retrieved it with his gauntleted fingers. Also, he found what he hoped was a can of solvent spray and retrieved that as well. Angelo then proceeded to deftly clean the window. The most heavily armed and technologically advanced window washer in history. This was not lost on the killer, who snickered to himself. Swiftly, he was rewarded with a somewhat better view through the badly smudged but usable window.
Arrayed in a loose crescent, weapons aimed at the main hangar doors leading to the central corridor, were a half-dozen defenders in vacsuits. Angelo was vindicated in his assessment earlier that caution had been warranted in entering the hangar. Also of note was that it didn't appear that he was facing any armor of any class. The defenders were kitted up on emergency vacsuits only.
As he spied on the waiting ambushers he spotted two more of the ship's crew enter the hangar from a hatch across the deck. They hurried to join a figure at the center of the formation. The man at the center of the crescent barricade appeared to be directing the others. The leader conversed quickly with the two newcomers, nodded agreement, and pointed at a parked assault skiff near the maintenance shed that Angelo was in. At first he thought he'd been discovered but he soon realized the two newcomers were in flightsuits and not the vacsuits like the others. It dawned on him the newcomers must be pilots or crew for the assault skiff because they made a line for the parked craft and entered via a side hatch facing him. They paid the shed no mind at all, they obviously still didn't know where he was.
A hum could be heard through the hatch, the powering up of the assault skiffs systems. Angelo could see the two figures through the multifaceted windows of the insect-like craft. A chin turret, with what appeared to be needler cannons, swayed from side to side as control was established by the crew, to then aim at the main hangar doors the ambushers believed to be the point of assault by the boarding party.
A plan was quickly formulated by Angelo.
Natural endorphins flooded his body, overriding the stims that, because of his somewhat unique blood chemistry, had up until then calmed him. Now however the berserker within was about to be released. He was going to kill a lot of people in a moment and the thought was giving him overwhelming pleasure. As he shook in anticipation, and prepared to spring into action, a distant explosion reverberated through the steel corridors and shook the deck slightly. Whatever was happening elsewhere interested Angelo in the least. It was time to kill.
*****
Ayad and his team braced themselves against the tool carts and storage containers they had piled chest high into a makeshift wall before the main hatch to the hangar. He was happy to have the two assault skiff crew just join the party. They had suggested they use to chin turret mounted needler cannon on a nearby parked assault skiff to add firepower to the team. The two had promised that the low power setting would be safe to use and that the cannon would only be discharged on semi-auto fire to further limit any collateral damage. Ayad accepted the plan and the two hurried
off to warm-up and man the skiffs weapon systems.
A startling bit of static crackled momentarily over the comm system speakers of his suit. Ayad glanced at his personal communicator attached to his left wrist, he was surprised to see he was now attached to a tactical net on the shipwide wireless. The heavy jamming by the boarders, which began shortly after his last conversation with the Captain, was now no longer active. He knew heavy fighting had been occurring forward, the unmistakable thumps and vibrations of explosions had traveled through the decks of the ship. And just a moment ago a very heavy explosion was both heard echoing through the hull and was felt through the vibrating grates of the hangar deck. It was an explosion heavy enough that Ayad feared the hull may have been breached.
Ayad attempted to make contact using the now active tactical net.
"Bridge, this is Beta leader. Do you read me?"
A crackle, snap, and hiss were followed by what sounded like a dead line. Silence. A low pitched hum quickly returned to the line and finally a voice crackled over the speaker of the headset worn by Ayad. The voice was recognized by Ayad as that of Chance Ryan. The Captain must otherwise be preoccupied.
"This is the bridge, Beta, we read you. The tac net just reestablished. Boarders jammer is offline and suspected disabled by action. Alpha is heavily engaged with two heavies. Blockage damage to port fast-tube parallel corridor. The two hostiles have rerouted and are suspected to be heading for environmental or the bridge. Have you had contact with the suspected third heavy?" Ryan inquired.
"Negative contact, bridge. Beta is six plus two in the hangar, maintaining a blocking position. A skiff is crewed with weapon charged for support. No sight nor sound of third hostile. With the jammer down can you run a closed circuit video and sensor sweep looking for him?" Ayad asked.
