Every ship, no matter how high technology rose in civilization, had retained the low-tech methods of securing a deck, with heavy-duty latches or wheels to close the door and seals, in case power failed during an emergency. Both physical and electronic locks were easily disabled by Thielind and Aaooorru, the corlist acting as the ensign’s assistant, his ‘good four right hands,’ as Thielind put it. As they exited the ladder, the scouts hesitated, weapons up, against the ceiling before slipping through and crouching on the floor in the dark. Wolfe read the first bogey signal about fifteen meters ahead. He clicked over to D-45’s audio frequency. “I’m seeing five, chief, er, Numbers.”
“Me, too, sir.” A moment of silence while the noncom checked with his squad. Wolfe could hear Ambering’s voice over the other channel responding to a query. “Cuddles says six, but she’s at a better angle than me. From 12 o’clock, twelve, one, one-thirty, two at five, seven.”
“Got it.” Wolfe passed the word, but the others had already seen what he had. “Ready to go?”
“Aye, sir!” twenty-two voices chimed in his ears.
“Go, go, go!”
At the word, D-45’s squad leaped up through the hole into the dark, laying down covering fire as the rest of the Cockroaches scrambled up into the combat zone. Returning fire cascaded, red streaks lancing out from the dampened laser weapons. The bolts represented the smart-bullets the weapons would normally fire: each explosive projectile had an onboard chip telling it not to detonate when it hit hull plate or other materials that matched certain chemical signatures. That way defenders wouldn’t be scuttling their own ship while attempting to defend it.
Daivid and the others returned fire. In his headset he watched the red-in-blue forms duck and come up shooting, over and over. He wished there was a visual image for his eyes, but the automatic targeting software in his heads-up display helped him track the enemy. He let out a short burst over the head of one opponent behind a square obstacle. As soon as the form raised its head to return fire, Daivid nailed it in the throat. The blue glow around the ‘live’ body went green, then yellow. A solid kill. In a real combat situation, he would just have put an explosive armor piercing round right into one of the most vulnerable points on an invader’s suit.
“Oh, slag!” Somulska wailed. Daivid glanced at him, checking the stats in his heads-up display. The big man’s armor had gone green and begun to flash on one side of the upper body. “I’m hit!”
“Where, Talon?” Gire asked.
“Left shoulder. My damned web suit’s pinching me. Fraxing computer simulation.”
“You’re not dead yet,” D-45 growled. “Keep fighting. Cockroaches can keep fighting for a week even if you cut off their heads.”
“We’re fighting for the glory of all the cornflakes under the refrigerator!” Mose cheered. The others joined in.
“Axe?” Wolfe asked his XO. “Are you hearing the beacon yet?”
“No, sir,” Borden answered, firing her sidearm with one hand while she ran a scan with her infopad up and down the range of sound waves. “It’ll be faint; otherwise it’d be too easy to find in a small environment like this one.”
“Sir! Right roll!”
Lin’s warning came just in time. Daivid threw himself down and rolled over twice, coming up firing. Two of their hidden foes had chosen that moment to leap straight at him. He shot one of them, a clean hit in the joint between the left shoulder and back. At that angle it ought to have been a killing blow, piercing through the heart, but the fighter scrambled away on hands and knees.
“Cheat!” Boland bellowed. Lin and Corpsman Gire blasted at the retreating body. The corlist, brandishing six miniature sidearms and one two-handed rifle in its small manipulative limbs, blazed away from between their hips. Finally, the suit dropped to the ground, its aura yellow.
“Bad AI,” commented Ambering.
A barrage of flashes erupted at three o’clock. Boland’s squad spun to return fire. Two of the unfriendlies fell; their suits registering slightly green instead of blue. Wounded, not dead. They elbow-walked behind an obstruction to get out of the line of fire. Meyer’s ‘bullets’ stitched the floor in pursuit, nipping at the heels of the figures’ boots. Her suit gave her enhanced targeting abilities, but their suits lent them speed.
“Damn, I missed!”
Daivid scrolled the map of this section of the deck on his side screen. “There are two exits from this room. One leads to two more corridors. Ammo, take the exit at 11 o’clock. Tullamore and Numbers, the one at 3 o’clock. Go!”
D-45’s sharpshooters laid down covering fire for the other two units to scramble across the room toward the doors. Three of the remaining unfriendlies rushed to block Lin’s way. The petite chief drew her sword and swung out at the hot signature of their weapon barrels, now too close to fire at her. The resulting clang! surprised them all.
“Hey! These are real bodies!” Gire exclaimed. Ewanowski waded forward, grabbing one enemy fighter’s gun by the barrel in one huge paw and wrenching the trooper off the ground. It kicked as he picked off its sword and can-opener and threw them across the room before heaving the body after them. Aaooorru started jabbing at the other suit blocking the door with his can-opener, making him dance.
“Go, sir!” Lin shouted. “Find the base!”
Ashamed of himself for temporarily freezing up, Daivid signed to the other two units. One of the scouts at the fore drew a flash grenade from a pouch, triggered it, and sent it flying overhand into the corridor beyond the doorway. Daivid closed his eyes, but his mask registered the actinic glare. The enemy on the other side would be temporarily blinded. He hoped.
“Aaaarrgh!” Boland bellowed, as they burst into the hallway. Six bodies faced them, one lying down behind a machine gun. Pencils of hot red light strobed across the floor, each burst representing a bullet. The Cockroaches retreated into the room from which they had just come.
“We’ve got to take out that machine gun!” Daivid yelled, ducking back.
“Yes, sir!” Boland bellowed. He chambered a round, leaned out the door, pulled the trigger, then leaned back in again. The flechette beams had stopped. “What now, sir?”
Daivid stared for a moment, then pulled himself together.
“Go get ’em!” he shouted.
D-45’s sharpshooters led the way with flash grenades and short bursts of fire. Daivid and Borden followed in their wake, shooting over their heads. On the other side of the wall, the six had frozen temporarily from the surprise of the second flashbang. Choosing their shots with remarkable speed, D-45’s scouts picked off the leader and another trooper. Both suits of armor faded to yellow, and the troopers inside them sat down to play dead. Their fellows, however, returned fire fiercely. Boland took a hit in the knee, which made him hop around and swear, but he kept shooting.
Five more shadows moved in from the rear. Daivid had been aware of them as faint glows beneath the deck, tracking the movement from below. Now they surged upwards through another hatch in the floor as the remaining defenders rushed them from the other side.
The Cockroaches were caught in a pincer movement. The door through which they needed to escape was beyond the newcomers, to the right. Still firing, Daivid transferred his pistol to his left hand while drawing his sword up and over his body.
“Duck!” yelled Boland, as Party A, the three remaining troopers on the left, opened a barrage on them. The Cockroaches hit the deck. Red light flashed over their heads. A howl came from behind them. Party A realized they had just killed a fellow unfriendly in Party B in the crossfire. Several others were slightly ‘wounded.’ Daivid snickered. His troopers let out derisive snorts and catcalls. Too bad audio channels weren’t open. There were some choice insults being wasted. The enemy drew swords and closed.
The Cockroaches, clustered together, still had the advantage of firepower. The center line came up shooting over the heads of the sword wielders, one squad facing in either direction. They took out two more of the enemy before s
uits of body armor slammed into them from both sides.
“I’ve located the beacon, sir,” Borden said. Her voice cut through the hollow banging of swords.
“How far?” Daivid asked, without turning his head.
“Ten meters, sir. Behind you, second left, then left again, then third left in an equipment cabinet at the rear of the chamber.”
“How do you know it’s an equipment cabinet?”
Borden sounded hurt. “The platoon is stationed down here during normal shifts, sir. I make it a point to know the department the unit is in.”
Once again Daivid couldn’t help but be impressed by his XO’s precise ways. “I see. Okay, everyone, you heard the lady. Let’s clear the bodies and get out of here. Ammo!”
“Aye, sir,” the senior chief’s voice came. She sounded as if she was enjoying herself.
“Axe is sending you coordinates of the target.”
“Aye, sir.” There was a pause. Daivid ducked under a wild swing from the trooper he was facing, and came up with his blade upward, taking a swipe through his opponent’s crotch. It counted as a cut to the left femoral artery. The enemy trooper tipped over, and its aura turned pale green. Daivid spun to confront the next fighter in line. “Dammit, Tullamore, I told you they’d put it there! It’s in the sump closet.”
“The what?” Daivid asked, parrying a chop from his opponent.
“The sewer head, sir,” Lin explained. “Aaaggh! Spidey, that’s me!”
“Sorry, Ammo,” came the corlist’s little voice.
“It’s the main valve for the ship’s disposal system. If there’s a major clog, you open it up and send the bots through from that point. It always stinks in there, sir. Like a dead diplodocus and the forty tons of rotting kelp in which it was buried.”
“Well, we’re not likely to smell it through the armor, chief,” Daivid said sternly. Lin sighed audibly. “Did you say something, chief?”
“No, sir. We’ll make our way to you.”
O O O
Party B realized that they were just getting in the way of Party A and retreated down the long corridor, pursued by Boland’s squad toward a linked cluster of rooms. Daivid saw in his heads-up display the color change and slump of another unfriendly as it ran out of hit points. The Cockroaches were doing very well in this battle. He was impressed by the cohesiveness and skills of the unit. They must have pissed off some very high-ranking personnel to be considered outcasts. Or, he reasoned, as he kicked an enemy combatant in the chest, they could be innocent victims, like him, who were too inconvenient to keep around. He and his unit would show the skeptics who had value!
His kick had all the force of his powered armor behind it. The enemy flew backwards, crashing into the bulkhead. It slid to the floor, blue aura becoming tinged with green. Daivid grinned. The hard landing wouldn’t really hurt the trooper inside, since servos and the CBS,P would absorb most of the force. The officers and D-45’s squad continued to hammer away at Party A until they were forced to retreat toward their original position. Daivid sheathed his sword and drew his sidearm.
“Snipers! Take out that machine gun!”
“We’ve already killed the gunner, sir.”
“Not the gunner, the gun!” Daivid said. “Tag it. I want it out of the equation.”
D-45 dropped flat to the ground and fired off a shot that went between the legs of the enemy. As they were hopping around trying to figure out who had gotten hit, the sharpshooter bounded to his feet.
“That’ll take ’em a minute to realize,” he announced.
It took less time than that for the defending force to deduce that their heavy weapon had been disabled, but by their body language, it made them mad. As the Cockroaches bore down upon them, Party A met them squarely, charging their approaching opponents with frenetic force. Coolly, Daivid assessed the big figure who had targeted him. His suit’s reaction time had been tuned up to where he could dodge Daivid’s laser bolts. Daivid stopped trying to land one on an easy target, and began to bracket the fighter, making him dodge from side to side. He might not have been able to hit the other, but he hoped, by the time the red-in-blue figure reached him, that that the faceless trooper would be damned motion-sick. As the trooper closed, Daivid tried one more shot to the neck. The trooper ducked, and came forward with amazing speed, wrapping his arms around Daivid’s body.
The suit’s servos whined as a force equal to its own crushed inward. The exoskeleton was rigid, providing a solid framework but a certain amount of flexion existed in the material in between, to help dissipate the force of a missile, much the same way the ancient and time-honored protective material kevlar did. One quickly learned in hand-to-hand combat training that those softer zones were where sword blades and can opener tines could lodge. The other clearly knew where the vulnerable places lay. He swung one arm up, trying to get it around Daivid’s neck. Daivid’s hands shot up, breaking the hold of the arm around his chest. He kicked out at his opponent, flinging himself backwards.
An obstruction stopped his flight. Another armored combatant grabbed him by the arms, locking onto his wrists with a death grip. Daivid tried one martial-arts twist after another to make the trooper let go, including mashing him backwards toward the nearest bulkhead. The first would-be crusher picked himself up and charged. In a moment, Daivid would be caught in a suit sandwich. Well, if his hands were not available, he still had his legs. Feinting backwards with his heel for a dirty kick to the crotch, he suddenly threw in every servo and flung a leg forward, upward and over his head. His body protested mightily at the abuse as it was forced to follow the leg, but it was an anti-grav trick that he had used before in a non-zero-gee situation. He ended up more or less sitting on the fighter behind him, who had let him go in surprise. Daivid took a point-blank shot up the gasket at the back of the fighter’s head, then aimed at the oncoming hulk. Unfortunately, a couple of suits tumbled in between them.
Daivid scrambled up, and a twinge of pain shot up from his knee to his groin. He wished he’d had time to limber up before the exercise began, but it wouldn’t have helped much. He wasn’t a yogi or a ballet dancer, and he was going to pay for that twist later. Still, it worked. The fighter under him had turned yellow, a casualty.
“Take this one, sir,” Trooper Software’s voice said in his ear. The red-in-blue blob with the gold tag gestured toward the suit she was facing. “He’s almost finished.”
“What?”
Instead of replying, Software threw a flying kick at the knees of the approaching suit. It staggered, and drew its weapon over its head. Or tried to.
“I got mine,” Thielind’s voice said as he leaped onto the enemy’s back. The floating gold tag superimposed over the small blob clinging to the hulk identified the ensign. “I can help.”
“I don’t need anyone to help me!” Wolfe roared. The new opponent at his feet was glowing green. Almost in pique, Wolfe reached down and twisted the helmet until the seals protested and popped. Yellow. “I can take out my own targets!”
“We saw you do that leap,” Borden said calmly, as she fired precise round after round into the joints of the huge combatant’s armor. No chance of an accidental slug impacting a fellow attacker. Wolfe couldn’t wait to see her scores on the target range. The last remaining fighter in Party A slumped to the ground. “Can you walk?”
“Of course I can walk!” Daivid raged, and took a step. The pain shooting up the tendons in his inner thighs made him stagger. Tightening up the servos so the suit would carry him instead of relying upon his abused muscles, he strode out ahead of his surviving platoon members toward the beacon location.
“Uh, sir,” Borden began, as they approached the door with Daivid in the lead.
Fuming with embarrassment, Daivid barked out orders. “Sharpshooter scouts, to the fore! Everyone else, draw weapons and cover your piece of the pie!”
“Aye, sir,” the squad replied, with a sigh. D-45 and the other scouts slipped through, then relayed a signal to follow. No unf
riendlies within range. Daivid’s own display agreed.
“How many does that make, Axe?” Wolfe asked, as they scoped out the new chamber. In the darkness, towering red signatures on a deeper blackness indicated the position of the sanitation plant. Sticking to the edge, the platoon skirted huge, booming cabinets from which pipes a meter across ascended to the ceiling. This must be the main pumping station for the sanitation department. In a ship this size there were auxiliary stations in at least three other locations, but this was where most of his troopers spent their shifts, overseeing the machines that extracted all the water out of the waste material. As he understood it, the solids remaining were dried down to a fine powder that was nearly odorless, stored, and offloaded in regulated facilities, where it went for uses like fertilizer. The water was purified and went back into circulation throughout the ship. The gas was not so nearly easily dealt with, venting occasionally through escape valves into the sanitation chambers when pressure got too high, as now. His suit took out nearly all of the smell in the air, but a small amount of it made it past the filters. He coughed, then gagged.
“God, this is awful,” he said.
“You should try it without armor, sir,” Mose said. “The pump head’s worse. That’s the actual interface.”
“Sixteen combatants, sir,” Borden interjected, after a moment’s calculation. “All dead or too wounded to follow us. If the exercise is truly one-on-one, then there are only seven left.”
“Squad leaders, report,” Daivid said, trying to ignore the fumes. It seemed as though the smell had a cumulative effect. He thought he should be getting used to it as he went, but it seemed to get worse. Deprived substantially of one sense, sight, under the terms set by the exercise, it felt as though his other senses had become heightened. Now was not the time he would have welcomed enhanced senses.
“Two casualties,” Lin stated. “Doc and Spidey. No wounded. These guys couldn’t hit a starship from the inside.”
“Taz is a casualty,” Boland announced, lighting up Streb’s and Vacarole’s stats in Wolfe’s helmet display, followed by Nuu Myi’s and Haalten’s. “Mustache, too. I’m wounded. So are Pearl and Mantis.”
Strong Arm Tactics Page 12
