However, what he couldn’t shrug off as unsurprising was the shuttle which had power-armored figures covering its hull. As he watched, men in Caprian Marine battle-suits dropped or jumped off the shuttle. It was unlikely, but not impossible, that Lieutenant Colonel Riggs had commandeered a shuttle to help secure the ship from Bug boarding—or to use as a poor man’s version of what Jean Luc was attempting.
Which was why he let the Quad pass him into the bay and take up position hiding behind a several loading pallets. He let them assess the situation, while he took a few steps back to the doorway. Either way he looked at it, friend or foe, he would be ready to jump in the appropriate direction. Even though the door had needed to be opened by hand from the outside, they had slid automatically closed as soon as Jean Luc and the Quad entered. So sidling up to the control panel he readied himself for a quick getaway, priming the door through the first set of override checks.
If and when he pressed the final key for the last override code, it wouldn’t matter if the shuttle bay had re-pressurized or not; the door would automatically open.
Moments later, the shuttle touched down and Jean Luc could scarcely believe who stepped down the exit ramp.
It was that Pipsqueak in Command, himself; and he wasn’t even wearing a scrap of power armor—he was in a skin suit!
This was too good an opportunity to pass up. He pulled out his dueling pistol and leveled it at the other Montagne Prince.
“Hey, Nephew,” he called out through his external speakers, and before Jason Montagne had the chance to respond he pulled the trigger.
Slapping the control to open the door, he ignored the sudden gust of air being sucked out of the room in favor of watching the sanctimonious, Confederation wannabe keel over from the mounting winds, and Jean Luc could not believe his luck.
The hail of blaster fire that came his way was mostly absorbed by the now-standing Quad of suicidal Marines and their loading pallets. His drake-skin armor easily absorbed the rest, and he was once again thankful that he had stopped to change. Fortunately, the sudden loss of atmo-pressure caused the enemy Marines to sway forward, throwing off their aim.
“Toodles,” he taunted, mockingly waving his hand before throwing himself through the blast door. Jumping to the side to avoid another hail of blaster fire, he waited until the five second delay he had put into the override kicked in and slammed the doors closed.
Jean Luc quickly activated the manual lock on the door and grinned. Now they’d have to burn through the blast doors, and in the meantime he had time to try for the Captain’s gig.
“You’re good, Nephew,” he chortled to himself, “but not good enough. It seems I am better, after all—as even your soon-to-be-frozen corpse will be forced to admit!”
Chapter 94: Deathly Determined
“The Admiral’s shot. He shot the Admiral,” cried one of the two Lancers I’d brought from the Bridge.
My chest felt like it was on fire and I couldn’t breathe. I knew I was about to die, since it was a sensation I was familiar with already.
“His suit’s been compromised and we just lost atmo,” shouted the same Lancer, right before powerful’ metal arms grabbed me around the waist. Metal grating blurred before my eyes’ and with a lot of shouting and pushing I found myself lying face-first in the shuttle bay, but at least I could breathe—that was as definite improvement.
“He can’t breathe if you hold him down face-first like that,” argued the second, accented voice. And before I could protest, the position became academic when they rolled me over onto my back.
Staring up at the Lancers, I was surprised that I wasn’t dead yet. My chest still hurt like I was dead—or, at least, should be.
“He’s alive,” the one Lancer reported to the other, speaking as if I wasn’t present and his buddy was an idiot, because even a moron should have seen me moving my head to look at them.
Realizing I wasn’t about to die anytime soon—even though I still didn’t feel that way—I groaned and tried to get up. Agony immediately lit across my chest and my head thumped back down.
“Don’t try to move, Warlord,” the talkative Lancer advised me.
I started to bark a laugh, and then had to stop from the pain and clutched my chest. Realizing I was still holding my data slate, I started to drop it until I spotted a hole through the middle of the thing—right through the thin, metal backing of the slate.
Holding it up was painful in the extreme, but I was able to see through the hole in it to the Lancers on the other side.
“How bad is it?” I grated.
Jogged into action, the first Lancer jerked off his gauntlets and tore apart my skin suit. Even though he was using human or rather Tracto-an hands, his arms were still power-assisted and the sturdy little skin suit tore. Holding onto the suit through the blaster hole, he managed to tear skin-suit far enough to either side that I could see the burnt meat and an exposed rib in the two inch wide hole that had been blasted in my chest. I didn’t see anything else—like, oh, my lungs, or heart—exposed to my field of vision, so I dropped my head back down to the floor.
It looked like I was going to live, after all.
“Here you go, Warlord,” the talkative one said, and by the time I’d managed to lift my head up enough to see the tube of Combat Heal, it was too late. I still tried to protest, but I wasn’t fast enough.
“Stop!” I screamed breathlessly right before the he injected the foul substance into my chest wound.
The pain I’d been experiencing up until then expanded tenfold, and I passed out. Thank Saint Murphy for small favors.
When I came to, the silent Lancer was busy stripping off his power armor, and the other one was putting it on me and adjusting the legs.
“What are you doing?” I demanded, only to realize I wasn’t demanding; I was grinning foolishly. That’s when I realized they’d given me some kind of happy juice. I felt a brief flare of anger that these two geniuses had waited until after giving me the Combat Heal to dope me up, but under the weight of the juice I was more than willing to lie back down and let them dress me.
“Getting you back on the field, Warlord,” replied the Lancer
I’d almost forgotten the question, so asked another one, “What’s the hurry, gentlemen?” I slurred.
The two Lancers exchanged glances, which I ignored. Others were boarding this ship and I had a perfectly good excuse not to go out there to get my head blown off…again. Although, it had been more of a chest wound—you know, a ‘two to the chest’ situation instead of a head shot, even though I’d only taken one to the chest.
I realized I was rambling inside my own head, and had to put a stop to it.
“We have to get you ready because we never should have let you out of the ship without power armor; we’ve failed you, Warlord,” said the Lancer who didn’t like to speak.
“No problem,” I said happily with an airy wave of my hand.
“And your Sword-Bearer, the Hold-Mistress, is on her way; you’ll probably want to be presentable,” added the talker of the pair.
For a long moment, I happily thought of every reunion Akantha and I had ever had, but that particular parade of happy memories really wasn’t all that a happy, and the realization that Akantha was on her way to see me during a boarding action suddenly shot through my body like a lightning bolt.
Plus, basically ignoring me during this entire battle meant that she wasn’t happy with me, implying that she blamed me for allowing her star system to become conquered, or possibly remain conquered. It didn’t matter—the only important thing was—
“We’ve got to get out of here,” I gasped as I bolted upright, ignoring the flare of pain in my chest. The last thing I needed was to run into an enraged Akantha in my wounded condition—I’d be killed, for sure!
“Warlord?” the two Lancers looked at me curiously.
I stared up at them and realized admitting to be afraid of my own wife wasn’t likely to earn me any points with my loyal p
rotectors—quite the opposite, actually.
“I mean, we’ve got to get out of here; we’ve got a ship to board,” I said, fighting the stab of pain when I moved my upper body too much, “help me get dressed. There’s no time for lying around!”
“Yes,” the Lancers assented in unison, sharing a mutual look of understanding and while I was sure we were understanding different things, I was more than happy to allow them to believe I was the hard-charging, take-no-prisoners-unless-it-advantages-me, jus-the-heads, kind of war-leader they deserved instead of the sniveling, wife-fearing failure I readily admitted myself to be.
Give me Bugs and battle-armored pirates over an enraged Tracto-an woman any day of the week. You couldn’t live with any three of them, but the first two you could actually kill and get away with it!
They had me suited up in record time, and were advising me that my wife was only two minutes out when I staggered out the shuttle door, headed for the exit to the bay at my best, wobbling run.
“Warlord,” exclaimed a pair of Lancers standing guard over the bay door when I arrived.
“Open the door and tell me which way he went,” I demanded, feeling short of breath but not caring. I could deal with anything in order to get out of there and back in the game.
The Lancers shared a knowing, ferocious grin before pressing a series of buttons on the bulkhead.
“We’ve got a portable airlock set up on the other side, Warlord,” the Lancer stated, “just push through the permeable membrane and you’ll be in.”
“We have portable airlocks that big?” I said, my eyes widening as I stared up at the size of the blast doors leading into the bay.
“The marines mentioned this might be a concern and brought along some of their equipment; we loaded it on the shuttle and came prepared, Warlord,” the other man said with a Tracto-an style, hand-over-the-heart salute.
“Good, good,” I said quickly, realizing Akantha could be arriving at any moment, “pass me through.”
“Yes, Warlord,” the men replied and began cycling open the door.
As soon as there was room for my power-armored figure to stagger through the blast doors, I did so, followed closely by my one remaining guard.
“Have…to get…moving,” I huffed my way through the doors into the airlock, and out the permeable membrane. My chest still hurt but I was still functional, especially with the power armor on.
Stepping into the empty hall of the ship was like entering another world, and it gave me the jolt I needed to stay focused on the task at hand.
Activating my internal com-link, I raised the company commander of the Lancer detachment aboard the ship.
“This is Captain Onesimos,” said a deep, Tracto-an voice.
“This is your Warlord speaking,” I said flatly, “tell me which way the traitor, otherwise known as my murderous uncle, is going.”
“Warlord,” Captain Onesimos said gravely, “we are tracking him through the service corridors, but resistance has been stiff; many Bugs, as well as Marines in battle-suits. We believe he means to flee via another shuttle bay.”
“Send me the directions,” I instructed the Captain.
“Your will be done,” replied the Tracto-an curtly.
I was halfway down the first corridor before I realized I didn’t even know the name of my newest shadow.
“What’s your name?” I asked my guard.
“Phocas,” replied the Lancer over short range com.
“Okay,” I said, wondering why all Tracto-ans seemed to have these really weird-sounding names. Then I shrugged it off and continued on; I was wounded and needed all my focus if I wanted to stay moving at a pace that had any chance of catching up with my Uncle.
After cycling through another membrane—this one on a much more reasonably-sized door—I was back within the still-pressurized part of the ship, and according to my directions I was starting to catch up with my Uncle.
Several minutes later, Captain Onesimos reported a firefight taking place up ahead. Having no desire to go hand to hand in a weakened condition, and with nothing but a blaster rifle at my disposal, I chose the better part of valor and skirted the engagement.
Unfortunately, going around the fight between Parliamentary Marines and my own loyalists ran the pair of us straight into a slew of Bugs—half a dozen six foot tall, soldier Bugs, surrounded by a much larger and decidedly more fearsome-looking Marine Bug.
“You have got to be kidding me,” I growled, leveling my blaster rifle and firing, and three soldiers fell to my fire before the Marine Bug slammed into me. As I went down swinging, it was at moments like these that I missed having a vibro-sword. Talons shrieked across my breastplate as the Bug pile-drove me to the ground.
I would have liked to say I fought back heroically, but my chest was in too much pain at that moment to sell such an obvious lie. Fortunately for me, Phocas chose that moment to thrust his rifle in the Bug’s face and pull the trigger.
Blood and ichor rained down on me, but Phocas gave a mighty shove to the toppling corpse of the Marine Bug, pushing away before it fell on top of me. I have to tell you, fighting Bugs in pitch-blackness really added terrifying creatures of the horror element to the fight.
“Thanks,” I said as soon as he’d helped lever me back up to my feet.
“It’s my duty,” Phocas shrugged off my appreciation.
“Of course it is,” I felt deflated by this dismissal, but decided it wasn’t important. The thing that mattered—the only thing that mattered—was chasing down my dastardly uncle before he had the chance to cause more trouble.
That, and avoid my wife—and, yes, I realize that throwing Akantha into the mix negated that ‘only’ qualifier, but what can I say? I was still punchy from the Combat Heal and subsequent happy juice. Although, the life or death combat was burning off the happy juice faster than I was entirely comfortable with.
A familiar, feminine voice got on the channel and demanded to know in which direction I had gone. The icy nature of her voice sent shivers down my back. So in addition to changing operational channels, I quickened my pace. From the brief flurry of directions she was getting, I knew my beloved wife wasn’t far behind—I had to move faster.
Cutting back on the trail of my Uncle I smiled tightly when I heard the sounds of another firefight taking place behind me. If I wasn’t a man on a mission I would have turned around and pitched in.
Thank Murphy I was wounded and had a mission. I had no problem with joining the fray, but I really needed to stay focused or risk getting side-tracked.
In the meantime, maybe the ruckus would prove a nice distraction for my bloodthirsty Sword-Bearer? One could only hope, I thought as I huffed my way down the corridor.
Three more bulkheads went past and then I caught sight of a small light source up ahead. It seemed someone, sans power armor, was manually opening a blast door.
Increasing the brightness of my helmet light, I saw that it was none other than the object of my vengeance—Uncle Jean Luc, in the flesh.
Chapter 95: ‘Jason, I’m your _____’
Raising one hand up over my visor and the other to point my blaster rifle at the bloodthirsty pirate, I gave vent to my fury with a scream and charged, firing wildly as I did so.
I should have kept quiet and I knew it, but all I can say in my own defense is that I lost control. I could try to blame the battle damage, or the happy juice, or a hundred other things, but the reality was that I’d been dreaming about this moment for months and something snapped inside me.
“Die, die, die!” I shouted, and on one level I was disappointed my Uncle didn’t fall to my wild flurry of blaster bolts, but on another I would have almost certainly felt cheated if I hadn’t been able to get in close first.
Of course, sometimes we need to be cheated or else we end up running headlong into our uncle’s vibro-blade—a lesson I soon learned.
“Why won’t you just die?” Jean Luc spat, using his sword to knock my still-firing blaster rifle
to the side.
“Sorry to disappoint you, Uncle,” I sneered, blocking a blow of his sword with my forearm. I batted away another one aimed at my visor with my rifle.
Jean Luc dodged under an overhand left and spun around beneath my guard, his sword seeking my well-armored gut. But I was in no mood to give him the chance to see if he could gut me, and instead of backing up in alarm, I stepped into the blow by way of driving my power-armored knee right into his gut.
Rolling and coughing blood, Jean Luc came up blaster pistol in hand and aiming for my visor.
Staggering back from the rapid shots scarring my visor, I was pushed aside by my Lancer guard. I gave my head a good shake, and by the time I looked over again, Phocas was falling to his knees with Jean Luc’s vibro-sword run right through his stomach.
“Blast it,” I swore, and then swore again as I saw Jean Luc diving for the now partially-opened blast doors. It would be a bit of a squeeze, but I could tell at a glance that my Uncle would be through them in nothing flat.
Jumping forward, I caught hold of my pirate uncle’s intimidating, black leather armor right below the shoulder and pulled him back. I took great satisfaction in the way he slammed into the side of the blast doors when I did so—and much less pleasure when he pointed his blaster pistol right in my face and pulled the trigger.
With a savage, instinctive gesture, I batted away the pistol and when I could see again, my Uncle’s right arm was bent at an unnatural angle. Then my side stung and I realized his left came equipped with a vibro-knife of some kind.
Bellowing with pain—and a little fear, I admit it—I finished pulling Jean Luc Montagne, the Blood Lord, who epitomized everything I stood against, back through the door and threw him against the wall on my side of the blast doors.
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