“Not that easy,” you say. “The MCR you blasted must have tinkered with the hyperdrive’s jump delay. It’s counting down but I don’t have the override codes.”
That’s a lie. You do. The secret ones hardwired into the system so that you’d always have a backdoor key.
“I could try to guess at it, but that might force a reset and we’ll wait even longer to make the jump.”
“Bring it up on screen,” Scarpia orders. “I, for one, wish to see how close we’re shaving things.”
You curse to yourself. You had hoped to reset the counter one more time. But this will close off that option. Your only hope is for assault shuttles to arrive before you make the jump.
The bridge doors swoosh open, and armed zhee rush inside. They form a perimeter and point their blaster rifles at every non-zhee in the room.
You feel the corvette shake, and a blaring klaxon fills the bridge.
“What’s happening?” the zhee cries out.
You suppress a smile. “Republic assault shuttle just penetrated all the way through to the main corridor.”
The zhee captain brays orders in his native tongue, and several of his species run off, gathering others as they go to lead a glorious assault on whoever’s inside that shuttle. You watch the countdown to jump.
“When we jump, we all go to the House of Reason,” the zhee captain informs the bridge. “No second chance for the Republic to meddle in the will of the gods. You will die for the glory of Ankalor, and the sacred texts will remember your names.”
You look at the sensor array. No other shuttles will arrive on time. Their ETA is too far out. The clock will strike midnight and this corvette will disappear before their eyes.
It’s up to this kill team—it has to be a kill team, first in war, first in ops like this, always—to stop this ship from reaching its target.
And you, Tom.
It’s up to you to help them.
28
“Save the fraggers if you can, we’ll need them for the bridge!”
Kags lays down a steady stream of blaster fire from his SAB. “Yeah,” he grunts, “if we make it to the bridge. These zhee are making it so we gotta stop and fight for three minutes just to take a couple steps closer to the engine room.”
We’re in a protracted blaster battle. The corridor we’re attempting to push through forks into a ‘Y’ and then loops around the entire engine room. The zhee have set themselves up in in that fork, right in front of the main door to the engine room, and are putting up a good fight.
I line up a zhee who’s been jumping around a corner to empty a charge pack with full automatic blaster fire. He’s done this three times, jumping out, unloading, braying about his gods, and then jumping back in. The firefight has been thick, affording him this opportunity. But after the third time it just pissed me off. So I’m looking for him. And when he pops out, I double-tap, splitting his head open at the mane.
But for every donk we kill, it seems like there’s another taking its place. Far more than we experienced in the simulation. It’s practically a miracle that we made it out of the assault shuttle with these kinds of numbers on the ship.
The real problem are the two zhee in the middle of the floor, taking cover behind a pair of cargo containers that must have been dragged to their location in anticipation of an assault on the engine rooms. These donks are laying down rapid-fire blaster bolts with such intensity that we aren’t able to get off a clear shot.
Reality is that we’re pinned down, but only by these two zhee. When one of their zhee buddies tries to corner-peek to get in a few shots of his own, we drop the kelhorn. But we’ve gotta do something about the blaster MGs raining holy hell on us.
Fraggers were the first go, but with how low the ceilings are in the corridor, we had to chuck the grenades like we were throwing fast balls. That made for too much exposure. Not to mention the first couple we threw detonated well shy of our targets.
“Hey, hullbuster,” Kags calls to the marine. The kid is on the opposite of the corridor, about ten meters south of Kags. “I need one of those extra charge packs you’ve got. I’m running low.”
The marine nods. Unlike a conventional charge pack, the one required to keep an SAB going is a heavy piece of work. In the Legion, they’re usually strapped into the webbing of the legionnaire equipped with the weapon. It’s not the sort of thing you can just toss to whoever needs it. Which means the marine is going to have to run the resupply to Kags, or Kags is going to have to run to the marine.
Since Kags is using the SAB, we don’t want him out of the fight.
We lay down covering fire for the marine, but it’s not enough to get the two zhee to duck down behind the cargo containers. They’re feeling real safe and snug. I see us take our first casualty. A fusillade of blaster fire slams into the deck around the marine’s feet as he runs. The zhee adjusts upward, and the blaster bolts tear into the kid’s leg, up to the thigh. He goes down hard, a few steps from Exo.
Exo pulls him to cover, but the kid is screaming. I can hear him as our fire slacks.
“Ah! Ah! Oba! It hurts! It hurts!”
The zhee behind the container begin to laugh. Then they mock the kid. “Ah! Eet hurts! Eet hurts!”
More donkey laughs.
This seriously pisses me off. “Why don’t you two take our your knives and let’s settle this?” I shout. “You women. You cowards.”
The zhee laugh again. They’re having a grand time. “Why you don’t sleep with your sister?”
I doubt the zhee have a firm enough understanding of the grammar of Standard to realize they more or less insulted themselves. It doesn’t matter. Had they taken the bait, I would have dusted them with my NK-4. You’d be surprised by how often enemy combatants fall for the “come out and fight like a man” lure.
“All right, Victory Squad,” Captain Owens says from behind the cover of a bulkhead. “Time is seriously draining. If the real-time window is anything like the exercise window, we’re in some deep dung.”
The marine cries out again. We don’t have a medic, and other than Exo, no one’s in a good position to reach him.
Once again, the zhee mock his pain, saying in broken Standard, “Oh! Oh! Please, help me!”
I’m beginning to hate them as much as the koobs.
“Dude,” Kags says over L-comm, “I got this.”
Before any of us has a moment to answer, Kags steps out with his SAB, holding down the trigger and firing full auto. No burst fire. No aim, really. He’s shooting from the hip and sending an overwhelming stream of blaster fire down the corridor. The zhee are caught off guard. They both disappear behind their containers.
Kags begins walking down the hall, still firing. The cargo containers and the corridor wall behind it are riddled with black scorches from the innumerable blaster bolts. A zhee attempts to run out and stop the onlaught. Kags swings his SAB in the alien’s direction and just about cuts it half. Another comes from the other side, only to be dropped by Wraith.
We’re following behind Kags, moving up by the power of what is now relentless firepower. Kags is in the middle of the corridor, maybe a meter away from the cargo containers.
When we reach the ‘Y’ where the two zhee are camped out, Masters turns corner port, Twenties turns corner starboard. Leejes back them up, opening fire on the shocked zhee in the forking corridors—who did not expect to see a kill team advancing on them so quickly.
Kags doesn’t stop firing. His weapon’s barrel is glowing, but it functions. He just holds down the trigger until he’s right on top of the two zhee. They make attempts to point their own weapons at Kags and fire, but he simply sways his arms and the two zhee are torn apart beneath an avalanche of blaster fire.
The corridor falls silent. We’ve wiped out the resistance. All that’s left is to breach the door to the engine room.
I crouch next to the door while the rest of my team stacks up. We had good success with a slice-box, so I reach in my kit to retrieve o
ne. But without warning, the door simply slides open. I’m looking inside, slice-box in hand, at two dozen zhee. Each of them seems just as surprised to see me, like they weren’t expecting the door to open either.
Before either side has a chance to make a move, the engine rooms fills with vented steam. It blasts directly onto some of the zhee, and they begin wailing in pain. The rest of them open fire at the door. I fall on my butt and begin to scurry backward like a crab to escape. I reach a bulkhead, but I’m cut off from my team still stacked against the door.
“What happened?” Wraith asks over L-comm.
“I don’t know,” I answer. “The door just opened.”
“Okay,” Wraith says, and I can tell he’s not really satisfied with that answer, but it’s what we’ve got. “We saved a lot of time with that trick out of the assault shuttle. Let’s not split up. Toss an ear-popper through the vapor and let’s go in hard.”
I’m looking for an opening to move back up with my squad. Blaster bolts sizzle past me down the corridor. Too many. My guys are pinned in there and I’m pinned out here.
Great.
I’m waiting for an opening that won’t get me shot in the face when I hear a private-channel chime over my bucket.
“Chhun,” I hear Captain Owens say. “You need to take the bridge. Right now.”
“What?” I’m having trouble believing what I just heard.
“Do what he says, Chhun.” The voice belongs to Andien. Somehow she’s communicating through my L-comm in spite of the fact that I’m on a ship traveling through hyperspace. Nether Ops has some legit gear.
“I don’t…” I begin, genuinely unsure what I’m supposed to do. Follow orders, I guess. But this was not part of the training evolution.
“The ship is little more than a hollowed-out bomb,” Andien says. “And it’s heading directly for the House of Reason. Based on the jump time recorded by the Intrepid, we’ll have impact in fifteen minutes unless either the hyperdrive is cut—which gives us twenty minutes—or you take that bridge and change course.”
I started running at the word bomb.
***
You’re Tom. And you’re not sure how long this will go unnoticed.
“Twenty zhee dead!” the zhee captain bellows. “Killed in one swoop at the mouth of the assault shuttle. And where were their brothers?” He slams his hoof-hands onto a nearby console.
The MCR sensor tech answers. “Holocams indicate that the other zhee seem to have gotten turned around. They entered a restricted area—a payload hold—got themselves stuck via a door malfunction, and ended up looping around to the airlocks. Cams went offline shortly after that. Most likely due to the kill team.”
The zhee captain stares with disdain at the MCR sensor tech. This report was not at all welcome.
“If these legionnaires cannot be stopped,” the zhee captain rails, furious as he brays, “then how can I honor your request, Scarpia?”
Scarpia worked out a deal with the Ankalor zhee that made keeping him alive—keeping us alive—well worth their time. But this conditional agreement hinged on the elimination of the kill team. A team that was now advancing rapidly on the engine room.
“I’m sure I don’t know,” Scarpia says. “Your warriors were brought aboard precisely to assure that no such event would happen. And yet here we are.” The arms dealer smiles that self-assured, smug grin. The one he uses when he’s sure that he has the ultimate upper hand. Which he always does. “Had my original plan been carried out, you would already be celebrating the destruction of the House of Reason in the afterlife.”
The zhee captain snorts in response to this.
“I will still yet reach the zenith of our gods.” The zhee stares at Scarpia with its dead eyes. “The question is, will you be there too, groveling before the gilded throne I will be given?”
“I certainly hope not,” Scarpia says dryly. “Froggy?”
Frogg steps forward. “Yes, Mr. Scarpia?”
“Do you think you could do something about this kill team?”
A wicked smile curves across Frogg’s face. Is there anything he’d love to do more? And can you stop him from your place at the console? Ostensibly you’re maintaining the ship’s travels in hyperspeed, preventing the nav computer from dumping once it realizes you’re on a collision course with Utopion. Ostensibly, and at the moment, actually. Because if not you, it’ll just be someone else. The number of blaster rifles pointed at you tells you that much. The mission will continue, with or without you. You’re expendable.
You always were.
Frogg clears his throat and flips his knife once up into the air. “Oh yes, Mr. Scarpia. I fancy I can do something about this kill team. Something very nasty indeed.”
***
I’ve slowed my run into a cautious patrol as I move past the assault shuttle and back toward the main bridge. My bucket’s audio sensors strain for a hint of any zhee who lie ahead, but all my ears are met with is the real-time L-comm transmissions from the rest of my team.
“One more pocket to clear out,” Masters says.
I hear Owens’s shotgun boom repeatedly, at what I don’t know.
Kags screams out in pain, and my stomach sinks. Is he hit? Dead? I listen to the scene like it was a scripted drama.
Wraith: Kags, you okay?
Twenties: Kags!
Exo: He ain’t movin’, man!
Masters: Sket! No wait, I just saw his arm move.
More blaster fire.
But my focus needs to be on what remains ahead of me. I have five fraggers and three ear-poppers. Plus my breaching gear and NK-4. I don’t know if that’ll be enough to clear the bridge, but what other choice do I have?
I continue down the main corridor, my blaster rifle tucked into my shoulder, at the ready. I stop. Ahead I can hear two zhee sentries speaking in their odd language. Praising their gods, I imagine.
Okay. So how do I dust them?
I’m not skilled enough with a vibroknife to pull off a double blade kill. I settle on creeping as close as I can and going hot with my blaster pistol. It’s suppressed, and hopefully won’t draw attention.
I prepare myself to creep forward when a side door, one of the barracks doors that was always sealed in training, quietly slides open. In a panic, I point my suppressed blaster pistol at the open door, expecting to dust a zhee walking through at any second. But… nothing comes.
Something tells me to walk toward it. I look inside. The room is stuffed from deck to ceiling with explosives, but there’s a narrow path. I follow it. At the end of the path, another door opens before I get there. As if I’m being led down some enchanted pathway.
Each corridor is empty. Each room is safe. I realize from my walk and the lay of the ship that I’m being guided past the sentries. I’d already be on top of them if I had moved this far up the main corridor.
Someone—a friend—is walking me safely through. Andien?
I’m weaving through doors and rooms. Corridors and holds. Sometimes I wait, and I can hear zhee talking just on the other side of the door I’m on. I lower my L-comm to little more than a faint background noise to better hear what’s outside. The zhees’ frenetic voices fade and disappear. And I move on.
The bridge is close. I can feel it. I know it instinctively from the number of times I’ve been on this ship when it was a mere training construct aboard the Intrepid.
And then I reach the door that I know opens onto a waiting room that in turns opens onto the bridge. I’ve been brought to a side entrance—on a ship where the entirety of the bridge crew will expect the attack to come from the main corridor.
But the door doesn’t open.
I wait. Wondering if my friend has left me.
My bucket’s sensors pick up motion on the other side of the door. I hear yelling. Wild, furious screams in Standard.
“Tom!” the voice on the other side shouts. “Damn you to hell, Tom!”
The voice pauses between every outburst, as if waiting for
Tom to reply from somewhere.
“I know it was you, Tom!”
“I can see it now!”
“I’ll gut you for this, Tom!
“Tom!”
I’m not sure what to do. This guy isn’t going anywhere, and I can’t keep waiting. I kneel down and retrieve a det-brick. If I have to blow this penultimate door, so be it.
The lights in my room flash. Whoever is guiding me doesn’t like this idea.
Is it you, Andien?
Or is it Tom?
Or is it the man on the other side of the door?
I stow the det-brick and stand up. I raise my NK-4 to my shoulder and point it at the door. Finally, the door slides open with a whoosh. I don’t see anyone in the room.
I’ve taken one step forward when a man—short, powerfully built, and ugly, with bug eyes—rolls from around the corner and leaps at me. I fire my NK-4. He absorbs the shot; he must be wearing armor. He crashes into me and my rifle goes flying. We’re tangled together on the floor.
The man straddles me. He raises a knife, and I see the viciousness in his eyes.
29
My attacker attempts to plunge his knife into the unprotected spot between my bucket and chest guard. I get my arms up and grab him by the wrists. I let his momentum rock me backward, and I kick him off me. He does a flip and lands on his back.
We’re on our feet at the same time.
“So you’re what’s left of the kill team, eh, mate?”
He tosses the knife back and forth from palm to palm. My NK-4 is on the ground. I reach for my sidearm, hoping my draw is quicker than his knife hand. But the little guy’s reflexes are something else. As I reach for the pistol he lunges, forcing me to jump back to avoid several expertly aimed slices and jabs. As I’m dancing around the room, it’s instantly obvious to me that I’m going to bump into a wall or he’s going to get lucky before I manage to draw and fire.
I decide that talking to this odd little man, compactly built and full of muscles, is my new strategy. “Yeah. I guess I’ve made a habit of surviving.”
Kill Team (Galaxy's Edge Book 3) Page 22
