Realizing he must have been out for several minutes at least, Middleton shook his head and found that it felt remarkably clear. Even his jaw did not hurt quite so badly as it had prior to his losing consciousness, although he knew that was a result of the stims he had just been pumped full of by the young Tracto-an.
“Did Sarkozy get aboard before they passed out of range?” Middleton asked, careful not to move his jaw too much.
Hephaestion nodded, “The Deathbacker attached to their outer hull near a primary airlock as their trajectory intersected ours; sensors indicated that of the seventy five warriors in the Assault Team, well over half of them made it to the hull of the enemy warship by way of grav-sleds and grav-boards.”
“They’re on their own now,” Middleton said as he saw that several bridge crewmembers had already armed themselves, “and so are we. Have we gotten word from Sergeant Gnuko’s Defense Team?”
“Not since they fell back to the last rally point, sir,” Hephaestion replied grimly.
“How long ago was that?” Middleton demanded, reaching for the ion pistol he had requested from Armory prior to the jump into The Bulwark and had previously had hung from his chair. Finding the weapon in working condition, he strapped its holster around his waist and put the weapon through its initialization phase.
“Three minutes, Captain,” Hephaestion reported as he gripped a long, slender vibro-blade.
“Are you any good with that?” Middleton asked, indicating the far-too-slender-looking vibro-blade skeptically.
Hephaestion nodded, his eyes drifting in memories which were clearly not of the happy variety, “I would be dead several times over if I was not.”
Middleton suspected the young man had never been accepted on his home world of Tracto, for reasons which were utterly meaningless to any responsible soldier, and gestured to his remaining bridge crew. “The only Rim Fleet ship that can still fire on us is the Light Cruiser Sarkozy—make that McKnight,” he corrected, realizing he must have made the gaffe earlier without knowing it at the time, “is working to take. That means our time on the bridge is over,” he said, meeting each of his nine surviving bridge crew’s eyes in turn and gritting his teeth, mindful not to aggravate his broken jaw again, “and our Lancers have their backs to the wall one deck below us. They’re going to need all the help we can give them, and I’m not going to lie: the odds of any of us surviving a firefight with armored Marines are pretty low, but they’re better than if we just sit up here.”
Toto bent down and, using his herculean strength, tore the helmsman’s chair apart in some incomprehensible series of savage-looking gestures. But as he stood with a pair of pieces in his hands, Middleton realized he had fashioned for himself a short club and a reasonably sturdy-looking shield out of an arm and the high back of the chair.
“I don’t want any insanity,” Middleton said, pulling the ion pistol from its holster and seeing several more of the weapons in the hands of his crew, “just keep your heads down and, if we put one of the blighters down, the window will be narrow. Anyone not armed with an ion weapon needs to be ready to hit them with whatever’s at hand while the rest of us provide cover fire.” He gestured to the front of his neck just below his Adam’s apple, then to his armpit, and finally to the inner groin, “These are the weak points on their style of armor, but the only thing that will get through those regions without servo-power assisted…or Sundered strength,” he added with a dark grin, causing Toto’s chest to swell before he uttered a primal war cry that needed no language to be clearly understood, “is a vibro-blade. Let’s go!”
They made their way out of the bridge and came to the lift, which had been disabled prior to Sergeant Gnuko’s shutdown of the reactors. The emergency lighting in the area was good enough for him to find the manual lever which opened the lift’s door, and his crew descended the recessed ladder rungs as quickly as they could.
Before they had even reached the level where the Lancers were making their stand, the sound of blaster fire—and the occasional whump of a grenade—could be heard clearly through the bulkheads.
Activating the manual override, Middleton had one of his crew crank the door open before the Pride’s commanding officer dove head-first through the door and found the relative shelter of the nearby maintenance alcove. Hephaestion was close on his heels, and Toto led another pair of crew to the opposite alcove where they took up firing positions.
Before any other crew could egress the corridor, a bolt of plasma fire streaked past Middleton and slammed into the lift tube. The unfortunate bridge crew who had failed to leave the tube in time were incinerated even before they could scream, and Middleton cranked the nearby manual lever to close the doors before the fire spread to their cover.
His crew began firing their ion pistols down the corridor, and after a brief assessment he saw that only nine Lancers still stood while there were eleven fallen suits of power armor bearing MSP insignias and heraldry on their shoulders and chests.
He took careful aim and snapped off a shot at a Marine who was raising his axe in a death blow over a Lancer, and Middleton rewarded with a hit on the elbow of that Marine’s axe-wielding arm. The arm seized briefly, which was enough of a reprieve for the Lancer beneath to drive his knee up into the Marine’s armored groin.
The armor protected the enemy Marine from any actual damage, but the force of the blow knocked him briefly off-balance. With only one arm still fully-functional, the Marine fell to the deck and the Lancer wrenched the mono-locsium boarding axe from his hand before a life-and-death struggle began between the two as the Marine regained use of both arms before the Pride’s Lancer could deliver a killing blow.
Looking down the corridor, Middleton saw the plasma cannon-wielding Marine—who bore Major bars proudly displayed above a long string of service honors emblazoned on his chest that looked like something out of a holo-vid. Generally speaking, Marines—or soldiers of any kind—didn’t survive combat duty long enough to earn such an impressive display of decorations, so Middleton knew this man was the commander of the boarding force.
Bringing his ion pistol up, he took careful aim and fired a shot which struck the Marine in the helmet. The Marine’s helmet crackled with a dazzling display of blue-white electricity, but he kept the barrel of his plasma cannon trained on Middleton before turning slightly and pointing it at Toto and the crew on the other side of the corridor from Middleton’s position.
Realizing the enemy commander had recognized him, and was almost certainly under orders to capture the Pride’s commanding officer rather than kill him, Middleton snapped off another round but this one went wide by more than a meter as the deck shifted beneath him.
He saw the power core of the plasma cannon had very nearly completed its recharge cycle—a fact which was evident by the bright, blue light emitted by the weapon’s main body—and Middleton knew there was no way they could stop the man from getting his shot off.
Acting purely on instinct, Middleton dove across the hall, using his body as a shield which he was reasonably confident would at least give the Major pause.
He was proven correct, as the enemy commander stayed his hand for a fraction of a second, but Middleton actually saw his finger move toward the trigger of the weapon without wavering the barrel from Middleton’s direction. Apparently, he had decided that capturing Middleton was going to be more trouble than it was worth, so he was going to content himself with killing him instead.
But before his finger pushed the trigger, a Lancer bearing Sergeant’s stripes crashed into him and sent the Marine commander into the deck. His body was twisted by the impact in such a way that his weapon discharged into a nearby bulkhead, and blue plasma fire splashed against the duralloy of the Pride’s corridor. When the flames had dissipated, the hole in the bulkhead was glowing cherry red and the enemy commander was locked in a pitched battle with what could only be Sergeant Gnuko.
The air grew acrid, and Middleton knew that the oxygen in the corridor was almost completely gone, having fu
eled the firefight between the Lancers and Marines for several minutes prior to his arrival. He did not remember to bring his head bag, however, and he knew that mistake would very likely cost him his life, as well as the lives of his bridge crew.
But if they could lend even a tiny bit of fire to the fight, he would consider their lives well spent, so he fought to keep from gasping in panic and fired off another shot from his ion pistol at the same Marine he had hit with his first shot. The blue bolt of ionic energy struck the Marine in the hip, and Middleton was pleased to see the Lancer who had engaged the enemy Marine bring up the wrested boarding axe into the man’s left armpit over the hip Middleton had hit.
Again and again, the Lancer struck the relatively weak section of the Marine’s armor, and blood began to splash onto the deck with each blow. The Marine tried to bring his right arm up, but the Lancer kicked the Marine’s legs out from under him, sending the Marine crashing into the deck.
With rather less finesse than Middleton had expected, his Lancer brought his armored boot up and drove it down into the Marine’s face shield once, twice, and a third time until the visor and helmet succumbed to the brutal power of his stomping boots.
Looking back to Gnuko and the enemy commander, Middleton saw that his Sergeant looked to be losing the battle. The Major held dual boarding axes in his hands and was attacking with brutal, but controlled, ferocity and Gnuko was armed with only a single vibro-blade.
A mass of silver and black hair went rushing past him, and Middleton saw that Toto’s assessment of the battle between Gnuko and the Marine leader was almost certainly the same as his own. The Sundered took great, loping strides and deftly collected a fallen boarding axe after dropping his makeshift cub, but he kept the remains of the pilot’s chair-turned-shield gripped firmly in his hand as he charged headlong into the battle with the Marine Major.
Using every last newton of force his body could muster, Toto slammed his improvised shield into the enemy commander’s right arm. Amazingly, the Major seemed not to even notice the attack as he backhanded Toto across the back before kicking out with his right leg and narrowly missing the uplift’s knee. The way the enemy commander moved, Middleton suspected he was as large as Kratos, and his strength was clearly working to his advantage.
But Gnuko had made the most of what little opening Toto had given him, driving his vibro-blade up into the Marine’s groin. The Major had been forced to brace himself against Toto’s charge, where before the Sundered had entered the fray he had been light on his feet, so he had momentarily become stationary. Gnuko’s vibro-blade was turned aside by the Marine’s left boarding axe, but soon Toto recovered his own balance and joined the attack against the enemy commander with a mono-locsium axe of his own.
Middleton tried to get a clear shot, but the truth was he had been lucky to land as many strikes as he had done already. He had never been good with firearms; his hands were simply too unsteady, and the conditions in the corridor were making things even more difficult.
His crew continued to add ion bolts in support of their fellow brethren from the Lancer contingent, and slowly but surely it seemed the tide was turning. Eight Lancers still stood while the same could only be said for five Marines, including their commander.
The Major’s boarding axe smashed into Toto’s shield, shattering it into a handful of pieces—the largest of which Toto gripped and used like a nightstick as he slammed it down into the Major’s right forearm.
Gnuko stabbed, swiped, chopped and punched with everything he had, but Middleton could see that his armor had already sustained significant damage while the Major’s appeared more or less untouched. The Major seemed to know Gnuko’s moves before Gnuko made them, and Middleton knew that if nothing was done, his Tactical Officer and Lancer Sergeant would soon fall to the man.
So he did the only thing he could: he fired his ion pistol through the first opening he saw. He missed entirely, which was a good thing since his shot had actually come closer to Gnuko than it had to the Major.
A nearby Lancer tried to join the fray on his Sergeant’s behalf, but a Marine on the far side of the corridor fired a blaster rifle at him and sent the Lancer to the deck with a ruined right knee joint. Another Lancer tried to lend his arm to the effort of bringing the enemy commander down, but a nearby Marine literally tripped him by grabbing his heavy, metal boots and sending the Lancer crashing, face-first, into the deck before a one-on-one scrap between the two began.
It was clear that the Marines knew their commander would win without outside intervention, and they were betting that the death of the Pride’s Lancer commander would result in yet another turning of the tide, with this one proving to be in the Marines’ favor.
Gnuko and Toto fought valiantly, but Toto’s lack of armor was becoming a liability that the enemy Major was now exploiting to maximum effect. He feinted a blow toward the uplift, causing Gnuko to adjust his stance and counterattack in an attempt to keep the Sundered protected. The Major used the opening and smashed his right boarding axe into Gnuko’s right elbow.
The vibro-blade went to the deck as Gnuko’s arm failed him, and Middleton knew his Sergeant was about to die, so he drew a deep breath, put the Major in his sights, and waited for what seemed like an eternity for a shot to develop.
When it came, he squeezed the trigger and his ion pistol sent a round into the Major’s left knee. The knee seized briefly, but that was all Gnuko needed to avoid being decapitated by the Marine’s sweeping boarding axe. The axe missed high, and Gnuko drove his body underneath the arm which wielded it as he reached down with his left arm and trapped the Major’s right knee before driving their combined bulk down to the deck.
Gnuko’s right arm was still out of commission, but he had the top position and he was going to take advantage of it. He spun his body across the Major’s and began hammering punch after punch into his foe’s right shoulder. Toto leapt into the fray as well, bringing his boarding axe down on the Major’s left upper arm, and soon the Lancer and Sundered had rendered the mighty Marine more or less defenseless with their combined, brutal, seemingly unthinking onslaught.
But there had been a cost: before Toto had neutralized the Major’s left arm, the Marine commander had very nearly chopped through the armor over Gnuko’s right hamstring.
Gnuko reached for his fallen vibro-blade and brought it up before driving it down into the Major’s neck. He twisted and wrenched the blade back and forth until the Marine commander’s body went limp, after which Gnuko staggered to his feet—after kicking the boarding axes away from his vanquished counterpart’s hands.
Middleton found himself gasping in spite of his determination not to do so, and he realized he was already suffering the effects of anoxia. His fingers were numb, and the ion pistol fell from his hands as soon as he made that particular realization.
“Captain?” a nearby Lancer asked. But before Middleton could respond, the Pride’s commanding officer fell to his knees and, for the second time in what seemed like only fifteen minutes, he fell into unconsciousness.
Chapter XIX: Behind the Line
“The local ComStat hub is indeed down,” Fei Long reported, confirming his assertion of a few minutes earlier.
Lu Bu looked at the limited tactical readout on the Mode’s main screen and knew then, more than ever before, that it was of the utmost importance for her team to succeed in their mission.
Within the system were over a hundred independent, stationary defensive platforms and a dozen warships—including a heavy cruiser—spread out in some sort of formation which she could not hope to fathom. The heavy cruiser was located directly over what looked to be the carbon-rich planet, which in turn orbited the most massive object in the system: the brown dwarf.
Although, to her eye it made little sense to call it ‘brown’ when it was actually a faint, yet distinct, shade of violet. It reminded her of a picture she had seen as a little girl that had been burned into her memory: it was of a young, blond-haired girl wearing a whi
te and blue dress, standing in the middle of a field of lush, green grass. In her hands had been a bouquet of wildflowers which were the same shade as the failed star which served as this particular system’s central object.
“This be whack in the head, y’all,” Strider grumbled as they passed so close to a corvette that they could actually see it through the starboard viewing window of the cockpit. “What kind of nonsense be a plan what sends a handful of peeps into a system guarded by a dozen warships?”
“The kind that wins big fights,” Lu Bu countered sharply, causing the other man to flinch so slightly that if she had not been looking for it she would have missed it.
“What’s the play, ma’am?” Hutch asked from the back of the cockpit.
Lu Bu pointed to the planet, “We land. Cruiser too big for boarding; we find their base on surface and destroy it.”
“And how we supposed to be doin’ that…mom?” Strider asked belatedly.
“We have two Starfire warheads,” she explained, jerking her thumb over her shoulder toward the rear of the ship where they were now stowed. “Warheads enhanced with fifty kiloton yields; we place inside facility and detonate.”
“Begging your pardon, ma’am,” Hutch said with respectful skepticism, “but that place has to be about impenetrable.”
“Every fortress has weakness,” she replied, knowing he was merely putting voice to a concern shared by every member of her team—well, perhaps not every member.
“Do you see that?” Trixie asked in awe before pointing excitedly to an obscure readout on the periphery of the Mode’s display panel. “Look—look!” she veritably squealed in delight.
Fei Long deftly transferred the image to the craft’s main viewer and Lu Bu squinted at the image which had appeared on it. It looked to be a pattern of some kind, with concentric circles connected by lines which intersected each other at seemingly random angles and depths. At first she did not understand what she was looking at, but Fei Long scaled the image back and she saw that it was a real-time display of the carbon-rich planet’s surface directly beneath the Heavy Cruiser.
Against The Middle Page 23
