by Phil Geusz
And three shots it was, no more and no less, because that was more than enough to empty my weapon. Indeed, the third blast was noticeably weaker than the previous two. But with them all catching the enemy drifting in the open, three were enough. Suddenly space was filled with writhing and twisted figures, all spinning in contrariwise directions as the survivors attempted desperately to evade the further rounds which they couldn’t know I was unable to fire. In mere seconds all of Hummingbird’s heavy guns, alerted by my oversized discharges, were blazing away at the disorganized mass with all they had.
In the end only one Imperial marine really drove home his attack on the grapple. He came gliding directly at me, blaster aimed and ready as I tried to ward him off with my now-empty weapon. My bluff failed, however. He came boring in regardless, until the hole in the end of his own weapon looked like the entrance to a tunnel. By then I understood that it really didn’t matter much whether he fired or not—I’d had it regardless. So I held my gun up steady and proud, then lined the sights up directly on the Imperial’s helmet. “Bang!” I whispered at the moment when I should’ve fired, and so help me if I’d had even a partial charge left I’d have killed him. Instead he grew larger and larger and larger, until I wondered if he was bluffing too. When he was almost on me I looked down at Sword’s hull and closed my eyes. At least I’d held up my end, I reminded myself. And maybe now James and Pedro and the rest of those who’d been so kind to me might get away.
But somehow my enemy never fired. Instead something heavy landed on my back, driving me face-down into the hull. I screamed again at the insult to my poor, suffering ears, and in turn the screaming was effort enough to make the universe first fade, and then spin away into total darkness. After that I must’ve sort of faded in and out of consciousness for a while, because I remember being tugged along at an incredible speed by a group of marines, and then my helmet being removed in what I suppose must’ve been Sword’s sick bay.
“…only so many Tanks to go around,” someone was saying. “And we’re going to need every one of them! There’s no way that I’m displacing a real person who needs intensive treatment for—”
“Shut your bloody trap!” I heard an enraged Sergeant Wells bellow. In the distance, blasters were still firing. “I don’t have to take any garbage from a goddamn Imperial just because he happens to be a doctor!”
“Sarge!” I heard my friend Percy say from somewhere nearby. “Settle down a little. We’ll get the kid taken care of; there’s no need—”
“You shut your mouth too, Corporal!” Sergeant Wells shouted. “If you’d seen what I saw, well…” Then there was a click, which I recognized from my brief training as a standard-issue blaster’s safety being released. “Put him in the Tank! Right now, before it’s too bloody late! He can’t have more than another minute or two.”
I finally managed to open my eyes a little; sure enough Sergeant Wells was holding a gun in his bloody, burned left hand—the right one was now missing. “I…” I tried to say. “Uh…” But of course no one ever listened to a mere Rabbit.
“All right, Sergeant,” the voice agreed. “Have it your way. But I assure that I won’t be the one who…”
And then a far deeper blackness than any I’d ever known before surged up from somewhere within me and carried me far, far away.
David Birkenhead’s adventures continue in Book 2: Midshipman
Available for Kindle on Amazon and in print from Legion Printing.
http://www.legion-bhm.com/publishing/
Table of Contents
Copyright
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