The breeze was gentle because the only atmosphere available was in the airlock tube. Until Warlock opened the airlock seal in the DS. Then, an unsettling flow shoved me almost into the hatch. After a cold 90 seconds, the pressure lifted, the air stream lightened and eventually ceased. I guess the Constabulary’s instruments showed the air was clear of the explosive compound.
I waited and shivered some more. The Constabulary were taking their own sweet time to board the Deep Space GunShip.
My cold stiff muscles fought me when the exterior hatch swung out. I pulled myself to the top of the opening. Inside was an oval air chamber and a big man in a vacuum suit. He was holding the air sniffer rod and watching the readout as he walked towards where I hung in the hatchway.
It was too soon to make contact. The inner door behind him was closed and I noticed monitors on the top of the air chamber. I forced my knees into my chest, flexed my shoulders, the stiff muscles screamed at the new tension. I watched the man advance towards the hatch and me.
He was mid step to me when I launched myself. It was close. Between my inflexible muscles, the odd angle of my launch, and the ship’s gravity, I almost landed on his head.
I whipped my torso forward and my legs counter rotated. The only reason, I didn’t kick the man through the hatch, was I spread my legs. When my chest smashed into the floor of the air chamber, the man was standing looking down the empty airlock tube towards the DS GunShip. My feet were on either side of his legs. Crawling and dragging my legs, I managed to stand without being detected.
He must have been sure the explosive material were clear as he turned and waved at a monitor. The inner hatch opened and three more men walked into the air chamber. As the third man entered, I dove between him and the door frame.
The corridor was wide and the deck was newly polished. I’d noticed the cleanliness of the Constabulary ships before and wondered what their fascination was with cleaning and scrubbing everything to a high shine. I thought this as I streaked across the slick deck. I slammed, hard, into the bulkhead.
“Ugh,” I grunted, loudly.
It was an involuntary reflex to having the air forcibly ejected from my lungs. I scrambled to my feet, took four side steps, and crouched. No sparking Prods electrocuted me, nor did a burst of kinetic rounds tear me apart. I’d expected both.
“What did you say?” a woman asked.
The speaker had the Constabulary accent but it wasn’t as thick as the woman on the radio. She was an officer and flanking her were 2 one stripers.
“Shut up and listen,” she scolded them without waiting for one of them to fess up to making the sound, “You might learn something.”
She was obviously teaching them procedures. The woman had a pistol resting on her hip. The two men were within arm’s reach of the big Prods so popular with the Constabulary. I imagined the damage they could do to the Strikers at the funneled entrance of the interior hatch. I couldn’t let that happen.
The officer might be teaching them one thing. I planned on teaching them something else, how to die.
I approached the trio. My Knight sticks held out as wide as my arms would reach. The sticks were tilted slightly inward and level with the men’s ears. It was only a few milliseconds later when stray kinetic rounds began pinging off the corridor wall behind us. Before any of the trio could respond, I smashed my sticks into the men’s heads.
If you watch action videos, they always strike the temple to knock out the bad guys. While the temple is the thinnest part of the cranium, you’d need a heavy blunt object to fracture it. My targets for the bilateral attacks were located in line with the men’s ears.
The Knight sticks first made contact to the front of the ear at the mandibular nerves. The feeling has been described as a shooting pain running from the hinge of the jaw to the vertebra. However, as with any sharp debilitating pain, it’s effectiveness lasted only until the victim realized the pain wouldn’t kill them. Then, the pain gets managed, the shock was shaken off, and they’d begin to fight.
But, my strike to each man not only triggered pain in the mandibular nerve, it had enough power to cause a hair line fracture in the temporal bone. The small vertical bone located behind the ear. As fractures go they would be minor. Just a self-healing bone fissure along the vertical bone. While tiny, the fractures triggered two additional pain centers. One at the top of the bone, an acupuncture point, and one a pressure point at the bottom where the temporal bone tucks into the skull.
Both men experienced excruciating and paralyzing pain. They collapsed inward. It must have felt as if three ice pick points had been driven into the side of their heads, simultaneously. As they instinctively moved to avoid the pain, they fell into their officer.
She danced back pushing and shoving at the two falling men. Her quick actions prevented her from falling to the deck in a tangled knot of three bodies. She took two steps back, right into my waiting arms. We didn’t tango long. I immediately spun her towards the hatch. The rate of fire had increased and her body absorbed more than enough kinetic rounds to kill her. She fell back and her body propelled by the kinetic rounds, slid a meter before coming to a stop.
My rebreather mask came loose in the maneuver and my lungs filled with the medicinal stink of the ketone tinted air. A haze drifted over my eyes and I struggled to find the two downed and thrashing men. Once I located them, I sliced their carotid arteries. Blood pumped into the air in spurts and splashed across the deck. Lesson delivered, they died in seconds.
Stone Angel stepped through the hatch and faced away from me. I tossed back the hood of my doublet and dropped lower by kneeling. Now I was visible to the next Striker through the hatch. The reason for taking to my knees was if the Striker didn’t fire immediately, he or she would have to aim. Hopefully, while aiming, they would notice that I was a friendly.
Next through the hatch was Heavy Rain. He rounded the frame of the hatch and stopped. After surveying the corridor behind me, he lifted a boot, and studied the bottom of it for a few seconds.
“J-Pop, must you always make a mess?” he asked shaking his head at the blood stain on his boot. He carefully placed the foot back down in a clean spot.
I indicted the dead officer in front of the hatch, and replied, “And your work is tidier?”
“Tight patterns, that’s me,” he answered, “The errant wounds, that’s Stone Angel.”
Before Stone Angel could defend his marksmanship, Warlock burst through the hatch.
“Sit Rep,” she demanded then looking at the red wet deck asked, “J-Pop, I thought you were all about stealth?”
I ignored her, raised up and stepped between the bodies. A few taps on the screen, and I realized I couldn’t read the screen. It was in Empress. I jerked the hood back over my head and the enhancements brought back my memories of the translations.
Empress to Realm formed in my mind and the words became legible. I found a layout of the Constabulary ship and waved for Warlock. She just stood there ignoring me.
“J-Pop, can you hurry it up?” she asked. I realized she couldn’t see me.
I dropped the cowl and motioned her to join me at the screen. She moved towards me. However, instead of joining me at the screen, she reached under the Knight hood. It took her a long time to locate the loose rebreather mask and longer still to secure it to my face.
“Are you okay, Lieutenant?” the Striker team leader asked.
“I’m fit,” I replied.
I wasn’t totally. When my rebreather mask had slipped during the action, the medical aroma of the Constabulary ship had burned my throat. My head was still a little fuzzy.
“If you say so, Sir,” she replied, “Best keep your mask on.”
I tightened the mask straps. While I did, Warlock turned to the schematics of the ship.
“Stone Angel, Fire Dove, on me,” she instructed stepping back and pointing out the direction of march, “The ion wall is four decks down. Heavy Rain, Thunder Eagle, you’re with J-Pop. Don’t let an
ything happen to him.”
After setting her team assignments, she followed Stone Angel towards the stairs. I wondered what she meant with the, don’t let anything happen to him, comment?
Thunder Eagle rested her hand on my elbow and said, “Let Heavy Rain have a look at the diagram. We’ll keep an eye out for the bad guys.”
‘What’s going on?’ I thought at the Striker guided me away from the screen.
“I’m fit,” I told her.
“Yes Sir, of course you are,” she assured me while studying my face as if I were an ion radiated spider.
“The Armory is three decks down and forward of the ion wall,” Heavy Rain announced, “J-Pop, stay between Thunder Eagle and me.”
He jogged away from us. For a big man, he moved gracefully. I felt a slight push on my lower back from Thunder Eagle. Oh, I realized, I should be jogging with him.
“Two down. Moving,” I heard in my ear piece as I jogged after Heavy Rain.
Warlock’s unit had encountered resistance but Stone Angel, her point-man, had dispatched them. It must have been a small unit from the ship’s crew.
Heavy Rain was partially using the steps and partially sliding on the hand rails. He was eating up the distance between decks. I was falling behind him. Thunder Eagle, whose breath I could feel on my neck, was an arm’s length behind me.
“Sorry to hold you up,” I said turning to look back at the Striker.
“Less talk, more running,” she replied.
By the time we reached the bottom of the stairs, Heavy Rain was peering around the door frame at the Armory.
“Only two armorers,” he reported, “I’m for a quick assault before the Constabulary can send reinforcements.”
“Alert,” Thunder Eagle responded in agreement.
She stepped up close behind Heavy Rain and tapped his shoulder. Once, twice and on the third tap, they stepped around the frame. I put my hands on the frame and peeked around.
The Strikers moved as one with Heavy Rain covering their right and Thunder Eagle their left. They swiftly covered the distance to a high stack of crates. Not pausing or consulting, they veered around the stack and I lost sight of the Strikers.
My next view of them was when the two large Constabulary Armories grabbed their Prods. The Strikers broke cover and met the Armorers. Sparking Prods against machine guns, it wouldn’t be a real fight.
Except the Strikers didn’t light them up. Instead, Heavy Rain parried the first Prod, grabbed the man’s thick arm, and stepped behind him. The Striker, before focusing on the second Prod, hammered his forearm into the first man’s back. The hit propelled the man towards Thunder Eagle. Then, Heavy Rain turned to face the second attacker.
I thought Thunder Eagle was going to duel with the man. Her Wakizashis came out of its scabbard. She ducked under the sparks from the Prod and took two steps beyond the man. Then, she shook blood off the sword’s blade and slid it neatly into the sheath.
She was so fast I didn’t see the attack. Just the result of her sword work.
The Constabulary trooper stood in shock. Slowly, he lowered his eyes to his leg. He died with his quadriceps muscle resting on his shin. The huge thigh muscles were dangling against his shin attached to his leg by a tendon at the knee. Massive blood losses from several severed arteries killed him before the Prod fell from his hands.
I turned to Heavy Rain. He stood over the second trooper holding a still sparking Prod against the man’s chest. The sparks had burned a hole in the man’s torso.
“I’ve got to get me one of these,” the big Striker uttered.
He gazed at the deadly flicker, then he tossed it away.
“I thought you wanted one of those?” Thunder Eagle asked.
“Don’t want to bother charging it,” Heavy Rain replied, “Let me see about creating a boom.”
I walked to Thunder Eagle as her Earth side partner vanished behind a circle of ammo crates. He was gone for a few minutes. However, we never lost track of him as we could hear Heavy Rain. At one point he cursed, another time he laughed, and we heard several muffled Aha’s from different locations. Finally, he strolled back to us.
“Best check with Warlock,” he suggested, “Because we can do real damage here depending on what you want done. Wreck the deck or go for the gold?”
“Warlock, report,” I called.
“Stone Angel is making a mess of the ion wall,” she responded, “Fire Dove is somewhere carving up fiber optic cables. And, I’m sitting in a control room that’s going to require a major overhaul. Funny thing, we’ve met no resistance since dispatching the engineers.”
“Let’s go big. How much time do you need?” I asked Heavy Rain.
“Ten to set it up, ten to vacate the decks,” he replied, “and ten to get the DS out of the blast zone.”
“Warlock, twenty minutes,” I reported “We’ll meet at the exterior hatch.”
“Affirmed, twenty minutes at the airlock,” she stated.
I looked around the armory before turning my attention to the big Striker.
“Heavy Rain. It’s your show,” I said.
“Yes Sir, I know,” he mumbled as if his heart wasn’t in the job.
“What’s up?” I asked, “You seem hesitant.”
“In a way, I am,” he admitted, “I hate wasting really good engineering.”
“We haven’t much time. Give me the short version,” I ordered, “What good engineering?”
“This Armory deck is all but automated,” he said pointing to a massive round funnel hanging from the ceiling, “Everything gets placed on conveyer belts under the duct work. Gun Ammo, rockets and missiles, all of it is shoved into the funnel and is distributed to weapons’ stations around the ship. Sweet engineering.”
“Noted, now go mess up that mechanical marvel,” I stated, “It may be sweet, but it’ll kill us, before we can get away.”
“Alert, Sir,” he replied as he once again disappeared behind the ammo crates.
“Thunder Eagle, don’t you find it strange,” I asked. She had her back to me and was watching the other access door, “that the Constabulary hasn’t attempted to take back the ion wall or the Armory?”
“Maybe it’s a gift from the gods of war?” she replied.
“The gods?” I asked in wonderment. I had no idea she was religious. “Are you a believer or belong to a faith?”
“No. Couldn’t be the gods of war,” she said softly as if she were about to reveal a tenant of her faith. “If it was a gift from the gods of war, we’d have a whole platoon of Constabulary troops for entertainment. No Sir, it’s like you said, strange.”
Heavy Rain jogged from between two ammo crates.
“Time to go,” he said without breaking stride.
“Hasty ambush,” Thunder Eagle shouted.
Heavy Rain curved to his right heading for a low stack of ammo crates. His Sky element cut across in front of me running full out for a higher stack of crates. I guess the chase instinct took over and I followed Thunder Eagle towards the tall stack.
She leaped and seemed to fast rope up the crates. Except she didn’t have a rope, just her hands and legs. By the time I stepped around the crates to hide, Thunder Eagle had disappeared over the edge of the top crate.
Chapter 28
The Marine Corps teaches maneuvers for most combat situations. One of these was a hasty ambush. On the march, when a unit detects the approach of an enemy force, although surprised, the Marines weren’t paralyzed. They were trained to seek cover and form a quick trap for their adversary.
When Thunder Eagle said ‘Hasty Ambush’, she announced three things. An enemy force was approaching, the Strikers needed to find cover fast and they would engage the arriving enemy. Two words uttered and, because of superb training, many reactions took place, all without addition conversation.
Peering around the corner of the bottom crate, I saw three Constabulary troopers step onto the Armory deck. The sight was troubling, as instead of the usual Prods, th
ese folks had machine guns. However, they were only a unit of three.
The deadliest weapon in the Realm is a single Marine with a mission. Put four of those ferocious fighters together and you had a Fire Team. A basic unit trained to move in twos with the other two providing cover. It was almost impossible to stop a Fire Team.
The Constabulary troops attempted to move one man up while providing cover with two. They didn’t see Thunder Eagle until she popped up and dropped the lead man. The other two, now having a target, laid heavy fire on the top crate.
Their concentration was impressive, however, it was too focused. Heavy Rain raised up from behind the low ammo crates and dropped another trooper.
The remaining man switched to engage Heavy Rain and Thunder Eagle raised up and finished the small battle.
“Moving,” shouted Heavy Rain as he dashed from behind the crate, “Let’s go J-Pop.”
I fell in line and we double timed it towards the stairs. Just before the big man reached the stairs, Thunder Eagle dropped from above. Her surprise landing in front Heavy Rain slowed neither of them.
She was pulling away when Heavy Rain and I reach the first landing. I heard a laugh.
“Come on boys,” she yelled back.
Thunder Eagle was already out of sight when I reached the third deck. Stone Angel, who was stationed there providing security, nodded. Ahead of me, Heavy Rain’s back disappeared into the exit hatch. I began shuffling my feet preparing to slow down, make the turn and follow him through the hatch.
Warlock was standing at the exit hatch and Fire Dove was on the other side of her guarding that approach. My plan was to slow down a little so I could make the turn.
That’s when Stone Angel punched me in the back. My momentum increased and I was stumbling and falling towards Warlock. She had her arms out stretched.
Now, I like Warlock and, under different circumstances, I wouldn’t mind a hug. But this was neither the time nor the place for an embrace. I stumbled into her and she grabbed my shoulders, turned my body, and launched me into the airlock chamber.
Galactic Council Realm 3: On Guard Page 22
