"Frakking cowboy," Jammin said.
Tali suppressed a smile. Jammin was generally unflappable, but Jimmy was his perfect foil. The two men couldn’t be more different. Jammin was the model of disciplined precision and quiet confidence. Jimmy, on the other hand, was all talent, intuition and annoying swagger. The fact that Jimmy had gotten under his skin meant Jammin put credence in the cocky shooter's words. Her job, however, was not to manage egos beyond what would make the team more efficient. In small team combat speed was everything, as long as nothing got missed.
She spun her index finger in the air. "Run it again."
"Shite, woman," Jimmy said. "We've been at this for four hours."
"You must be loving it then, James, since we've been running this drill for five," Tali said. "And you're going to need to put some time in on the track this afternoon; civilian life has you soft."
"Devil woman," Jimmy muttered, but grabbed Rocinante from its resting place.
On Tali's HUD, Bit had projected a menu of options for the portable combat simulator projectors she'd installed into each of the rooms in Little Deuce's starboard hull. The boys were fatiguing and nerves were fraying, making it the perfect time for a zero-g max-target expert-level run. Just for the heck of it, Tali had thrown in some concussive traps.
"Incoming!" Jammin warned as he leapt forward and pulled an expanding, translucent shield from his thigh armor. Tali raised an eyebrow at Bit's timing, then quickly pulled her tactical rifle from her back and leveled the weapon down the passageway. An explosion, well beyond the strength of anything they used in simulation, rocked the team backward, throwing Tali and Jimmy into the bulkhead.
"Bit?" Tali called, shrugging off the bulkhead and twisting through the now zero-g space, the blue cones of thrust pushing her back into position behind Jammin, who'd anchored into the deck.
A blistering fusillade of bright, streaming blaster fire lanced through the air over her shoulders, bracketing her and Jammin's heads and punching into the smoke roiling down the passageway. Her AI counted no less than eight targets dropping. Perhaps more frustrating was that each target she acquired dropped down microseconds before she fired.
"Not me, boss," Bit said. "Those grenades came from another system on the ship. I'm hacking Little Deuce right now."
"Team, upgrade to live fire," Tali said. "Jammin, you holding?"
"Copy. No frag's getting past me today," he said.
A tap on Tali’s shoulder warned her of Jimmy's presence, as if that was necessary. Laying down sheets of fire, blinding light streamed from the end of his long rifle. With unexpected grace, Jimmy twisted over the top of her and slid into second position behind the team's shield. Two more forward explosions rocked the ship and atmosphere rapidly drained from the passageway.
"My bad," Jimmy said. "I should have let those frags loft a bit more."
"Horizontal orientation," Tali ordered. "Tactical comms only, Jimmy."
"Copy," he agreed.
"Dorian, we're switching to full combat, please advise. Is there an enemy ship nearby?" Tali called on a separate channel. "Jammin, by the numbers. I'm not getting Dorian, we need to make all haste for the bridge. Give Jimmy Zone-Three."
"Copy." Jammin pushed forward, the hallway momentarily clear — aside from several corpses at the far end. He placed a charge on the first hatch and hunkered behind his shield after anchoring to the bulkhead. Feeling a pat from Jimmy on his shoulder, he blew the door and surged into the room. Involuntarily, he stepped aside as the heat from Jimmy's tactical weapon surprised him; it belched blaster rounds on full autofire, sounding something like a sewing machine from hell.
"Clear," Jimmy said, just shy of two seconds later.
Jammin inspected the room. Simulated bodies were strewn about, all dead. The room had paid a heavy price for their decision to switch from simulation to combat mode. Foam, cotton and small chunks of upholstery floated through the destroyed room on random vectors.
"Bit, kill the simulation." Tali popped onto the non-tactical channel, seeing the virtual bodies and no real threat.
With Jimmy's hand on his shoulder, Jammin navigated back into the hallway, slamming the side of his shield into the bulkhead, fusing it to the steel surface. He quickly swept the space and allowed Jimmy to anchor onto him. Jimmy fell in, gun blazing, as even more frag grenades were launched from the cover of the aft hallway.
"Can't tell if they're bio," Jammin said. So far, the non-simulated invaders had kept to the end of the passageway.
"I can't raise Dorian or Bit on the bridge. They could be in trouble," Tali said. "Jimmy, you good taking point on a bridge blitzkrieg?"
He nodded sharply. "Rocinante is getting hot. I have forty seconds of constant fire left. I say, let's do it."
"Go," she instructed.
Jimmy slapped the back of Jammin's helmet as he leapfrogged ahead and raced down the hallway, ignoring the hatches on either side. It was a reasonable gamble that the rooms they'd just cleared in the last four hours of simulations hadn't been filled with boarders. The real danger would be the aft passageway joining the airlock to both hulls and the bridge.
"Jammin, clear airlock," Jimmy directed as he approached the t-shaped intersection and dropped, gravity having abruptly returned.
"Copy. Got your back," Jammin replied, tapping Jimmy's hip as the two men expertly rolled back to their feet, even as they stumbled across real bodies lying in the hallway.
Jimmy fired incessantly as he and Jammin spun back-to-back into the aft passageway. Jimmy was only mildly curious as to what Jammin had found, focusing on the fight in front of him. Enemy combatants fell even as Jimmy was rocketed forward by blaster fire from behind.
A familiar pain blossomed in his right shoulder and his right hand became unresponsive, causing him to drop his weapon. In Jimmy's experience, the difference between mission success and failure was often measured in the short spaces between breaths, and accepting changes to conditions as they occurred was critical. Fact was, Rocinante had done its job, first taking out the majority of the attackers in the passageway and terrifying the remainder. And while, by his count, there were three remaining, his mission parameters were clear; he was to take the bridge at all costs.
Without missing a beat, Jimmy launched himself upward into the shaft that would give him bridge access. Kicking off the bulkhead, he crashed into the opposite side of the shaft as his arm refused to brace him with his right hand. No matter, he grinned, fighting the pain. The bridge was a small space and women were always more impressed by pistols.
Crashing onto the deck, he was almost disappointed when he found only two enemies guarding Dorian, Bit and Victor. He loved amateurs. Their weapons were held level with the women's foreheads, knowing that standard call for close combat was a center mass strike, which would likely end in the death of one or both of the women.
For an ordinary breach and an ordinary team, they'd have had him dead to rights, resulting in a standoff. The crazy thing was, whoever planned this breach already knew they weren't dealing with an ordinary team or they wouldn’t have sent a score of combatants to take the ship. Maybe they hadn’t planned on anyone getting past the crew below. In the space of a breath, Jimmy fired and placed a single shot into each of the soldier’s wrists, shattering them beyond use. He followed up with kill shots to the chest.
The sounds of war continued in the passageway below as Jimmy rolled to a standing position.
"You never told me it was called a hero gene," he drawled, as he spun his pistol back into the left holster and flicked open a blade to cut the ties from Dorian's wrist.
"Victor!" Dorian exclaimed, horrified.
Too late, Jimmy realized Dorian’s scream wasn't one of concern for her life-long employee as much as it was alarm at something Jimmy must have missed. He spun, only to see the end of Victor's hand, still holding a blaster, pinwheeling to the deck. Before Victor could react, the back heel of Tali's boot caught him in the side of the head and he went down.
> "Well, shite," he said, face reddening. "Good thing you're fast with a nano-blade."
"You're shot," Dorian said plainly, turning away and typing furiously on the virtual keyboard she preferred when communicating with the ship.
"That's on me," Jammin said, setting Rocinante against the bridge's aft bulkhead.
"Not so, brother," Jimmy said. "It was on me to give you time to set up."
"Ms. Lizst, are we secure?" Dorian asked.
"You need to engage the bridge security system," Tali replied. "We dispatched all hostiles in the first wave, but we've yet to make a ship-wide sweep. We'll need full ship access to accomplish that."
"I don't have systems access," Dorian said, banging balled fists onto the arms of her chair. "I've been locked out."
"Victor! Care to share?" Tali switched from wrapping the man's severed wrist to applying pressure.
"Jimmy, knife," Dorian stood, holding her hand out as she focused on the whimpering man. "Twenty years, Victor. I've trusted you with everything."
"Your entire family is an abomination," Victor said.
"But why now?" Dorian asked, tears running down her face. "Our relationship can't have been a lie. We've shared so much."
"There are laws that should not be broken," Victor said, looking at the deck. "You said you were done; no more super squads. But you're back at it. Someone had to stop you. What gives you the right to play God?"
"Dorian, this man needs medical attention," Tali said.
Dorian's hand lashed out, grabbed Victor’s wounded arm, and pulled him toward her. With the tip of a knife, she dug ruthlessly into his arm as he screamed in agony. Mercilessly, she drove her fingers into the wound and extracted a small capsule.
"Victor Barnes, your services are no longer required," Dorian said.
The man's face turned hard and he spat in Dorian's face. "Judgment comes for you."
In a fluid movement, she jammed the heel of her hand into his face, knocking him to the floor, unconscious.
"What the frak, Dorian?" Tali asked, pushing the body away. "We could have gotten information out of him. The mission is compromised."
"A risk we'll have to take. This is too important."
"What's your master key phrase?" Bit asked, seemingly unfazed by the events around her.
"I tried that already," Dorian said. "I'm locked out."
"We'll see," Bit said.
Dorian recited a long list of numbers and words.
"I'm in," Bit said a few moments later. "I've got the ship. Looks like we have two bogies still in the cargo bay. Give me a minute to scan for traps and explosive sets."
"Let's go," Dorian said, jumping up.
"You!" Tali pushed her hand into Dorian's chest, bringing the surprised woman up short. "You get Jimmy down to wherever you have your med-tank stored. His bios are dropping."
"You can't order me around. I need my ship back."
"Your concern for my wellbeing is heartwarming," Jimmy grinned lopsidedly, even as his head started to spin.
"It's not like that, Jimmy."
"I get it, Dorian, but you agreed to give me tactical command when we signed on," Tali interrupted. "Play it my way. We'll talk about why I didn't have security access to the ship later. Let's go, Jammin."
"Copy," Jammin jumped through the opening in the bridge's deck.
Without even a glance back, Tali dropped through the hole after him.
Jimmy grinned at the look of shock on Dorian's face as she watched the two leave. "Guess that just leaves us," he said. "Come on. You can get me naked and tuck me in."
Dorian turned away from the entry and processed Jimmy's words. "Let's go, hero," she said, helping him up from the chair he'd fallen back into.
"I'll help strip him down," Bit offered, sounding a bit more wistful than she might have liked.
"See?" Jimmy said. "It's all you girls think about."
"You're impossible! I've half a mind to let her." Dorian searched the fallen bodies for weapons and handed a pistol to Bit. "If anything moves, you just keep shooting until they stop. Copy?"
"Copy," Bit replied.
Dorian helped him up from the seat he’d once again slumped into. "Let's go, Jimmy."
Jimmy faltered and leaned heavily on Dorian. "Sure. Good," he mumbled, somewhat incoherently.
"Reduce gravity to .4g," Dorian ordered and wrapped a thin arm around his waist, helping him to the lift.
"Hull breach. Masks," Jimmy slurred.
"Little Deuce has self-sealing hull plates. We're solid," she said.
"Opfh," Jimmy complained as the shock of their landing registered. He'd waved off Tali's offer of a pain-management medical patch, preferring to keep his wits.
She winced and helped him over the bodies. "Sorry. I can't fathom how you made it through this mess, Jimmy. You truly are a hero."
"I guess you've never seen combat up close and personal before," he said. "You doin' all right?"
"I've seen plenty of death, Jimmy," she said, stepping over the final body that lay in the starboard passage.
"Is it really starting up again?" he asked. "I thought we put an end to it."
"All I have are whispers and innuendo," she said. "Luc Gray is the first I've traced back to a lab that's capable of the procedure. I don't know anything for sure. I suppose it was only a matter of time."
"What makes us different from them, Doc?" he asked. "Why are we righteous? Where's the line?"
"Actions, Jimmy," Dorian said.
"Seems like a lot of effort to get me naked."
Dorian pushed him into the wall as she palmed a concealed security panel. A hatch opened, exposing a narrow room barely wide enough for the two of them to enter.
"As far as I can tell, getting you naked is the easy part." She ran a finger down the seam of his vac-suit, gently removing it and leaving it on the deck. Shining a bright light on his shoulder, she inspected the damage. "Damn. They really got you. I can't believe you're still standing."
"I'm not sure I am," he mumbled as he slumped.
Dorian adjusted the room's gravity to .1g and opened the horizontally-oriented medical tank. The larger-than-life man wasn't difficult to move and she quickly shuffled him around, secured the breathing mask on his face, and pressed a button to cause the tank's liquid to start filling.
"Come back to me, Jimmy." She trailed a finger down his muscular chest and then pulled the tank's lid closed.
"Any word on Victor?" Dorian asked as Tali joined her and the rest of the team, sans Jimmy, in the galley.
"Sure you want to know?"
Dorian nodded.
"Bled out. You should have applied a medical patch before you took Jimmy down to the tank. We've cold-stored all the bodies. Do you always travel with that many body bags? A little surprising that we didn't have to manufacture any."
Dorian smiled sardonically. "That'd be Victor. He always hated a mess and he must have expected the body count."
"To Victor," Jimmy said, appearing in the doorway, holding up a glass in salute. "I'm going to miss that little psychopath."
"Is it true? Was there a whole squad like Jimmy?" Tali asked.
"There was," Dorian said. "Nearly unstoppable too."
"What happened?"
"Jimmy?" Dorian tossed the question over to Jimmy.
"Our leader went rogue and started using the team for personal stuff," he said. "After a while, me and the medic figured out that things weren't adding up and we split."
Jimmy looked back to Dorian and raised an eyebrow. He wasn't about to get into the details of that dark period of his life. He could see a desire to ask questions on Tali's face and felt relief when she let it go.
"I had Bit check on our navigation plan. We've been sailing inward, toward Venus," she said. "To get to Vermeer, we should be heading to the Bethe Peierls TransLoc gate. Who knows who Victor might have alerted."
"Trust me when I say that Victor was not in league with the same people who have taken Captain Gray," Dorian
said. "He hated the idea of biologically-enhanced humans. What I failed to understand was just how much. You see, for the last ten years, after Jimmy's team split up, we've been tracking illegal bio-tech traders. Somewhere along the line he became fanaticized and I didn't catch it."
"Tricky ground for you," Tali said. "You're basically accusing them of doing something you've already admitted to doing yourself. Victor believed so strongly that you were getting back into that business that he brought mercs aboard to stop you. Why now? What is it about this mission that made him think that?"
"I'm too close to this one," Dorian said. "In the past, we either grabbed the bio material too early and failed to trace it back, or we played it cool, sent a team to track it, and hit a dead end."
"What kind of dead end?" Tali asked.
"All kinds," Dorian stood and paced around the room. "In some cases, the team came up empty. In others, they went missing entirely.
"Luc Gray was simply supposed to deliver a tracking isotope to someone we believed was part of the bigger picture. When he was captured and killed, it was too much and I chose to get involved. When I brought Jimmy in to help, Victor must have decided I was getting back into it."
"Is that what's happening?" Tali asked. "Luc Gray is dead. You said the mission was to recover his body and two others. Sounds like Victor was right. No reason to risk everything to recover dead bodies, even if they're only 'mostly dead.'"
Dorian reached for Jimmy's glass, which he easily released to her. She finished the contents in a single swallow. "What I'm about to tell you can't leave this room."
"Of course," Tali said.
"Sounds like a conversation above my pay grade. I'm out," Jammin said, standing and walking out of the room.
"You sure you want in on this, Bit?" Tali asked.
"Tali-hoe! You're assuming I don't already know what she's going to say," Bit said.
"Do you?" Dorian asked.
"Lagartija Ridge, Guatemala, ring any bells?"
"How could you possibly know that?" Dorian asked. "Your curiosity endangers you."
"Dorian?" Tali asked.
"There's a war for control of the southern tip of North America."
On a Pale Ship: A Privateer Tales Series Page 15
