Pixie Hazard

by Archibald Bradford

  “I’d go with the first one, new parts for everything I want to fix wou-”

  “Kyle!” She barked, cutting him off; “We can’t do shit until we get inside!”

  “Uh, right, sorry. Hey Davie! I need the Pixie to-”

  He was interrupted again, this time by a hissing noise not unlike a pissed off snake being shot out a cannon.

  A second later a rocket fired from the top of a nearby junk pile slammed into Maria’s abdomen and exploded, sending her armoured form careening backwards to smash into the side of the ship next to the hatch.

  Right after their heavy went down the other marines were lit up on three sides from assault rifles and several repeaters, the charged rounds of the latter pounding like sledgehammers against their suits.

  Acting on instinct Donnie tackled Kyle to the muck beside Maria, taking cover behind the assembly arm.

  “Contact!” Eva’s voice crackled.

  Her repeater tore through the top of the heap where the guy that launched the RPG was hiding, but she had to take cover on the other side of the hatch when she felt the burning heat of a pulse-laser trying to melt its way through her armoured shoulder.

  Donnie lifted her head above the robot arm enough to spot a multitude of figures swarming all over the place above them, having secured the high ground before launching their attack.

  “We got Junkers! And they’ve got real guns this time! Sledge is down, I repeat, Maria is down!”

  She ducked as another rocket whizzed past her face, exploding against the side of the ship and causing a heap of metal to shift and land next to Maria’s prone form with a screeching clatter.

  Though she cursed at the sudden shift in the terrain, the captain kept giving her orders.

  “Reeves, get the Pixie in the air! We need fire-support now! You copy?”

  “We’re moving Skipper.” The pilot’s tense voice came back.

  Donnie was distracted though as she had to grab Kyle by the shoulder and throw him back to the ground when she heard the familiar pinging sound of ricochets off of his borrowed suit.

  The mechanic simply didn’t know how to react to bullets bouncing off of his armoured helmet.

  She scanned the scrap heaps above them, spotted the guy that had been shooting at him and took him down with three quick bursts from her pistol, her shotgun no good at that kind of range.

  But she had to duck again when a pulse-laser burst seared past her face.

  “Hooker! Up and to the left! Laser-rifle, you got eyes?”

  The multitude of other weapons that were raining down on them were more of a distraction than anything, more powder based burners; even the Junkers’ repeaters could only really knock them around, though that kind of trauma would kill them eventually.

  But a couple lucky bursts from a pulse-rifle could frag any one of them, armour or no.

  “Yeah I saw him! Fucker already tagged me once. That guy with the rockets is reloading at your twelve o’clock!”

  “Right! I’ll take boom-boom, you get sparkles!”

  She counted down from three with her fingers as the two of them stayed huddled low.

  “GO!” She announced as her digits reached one.

  They leapt up at the same time, another triple burst of lasers came at Donnie, but Eva’s repeater barked and the oncoming fire ended.

  Meanwhile the captain lined up her charge-pistol, a kinetic projectile weapon like the other marine’s repeaters. Ignoring the multitude of rounds pinging off of her, Donnie stood totally exposed for a full second as she waited for the guy with the rocket launcher to poke his head up.

  When he did, she was ready, her pistol cracked in her hand and a burst of death took the top of his head off, helmet and all.

  But even as he dropped, yet another laser rifle lit her up from the right and she had to duck again, cursing at the heat as the armour on her chest glowing cherry-red.

  Her HUD was flashing multiple temperature warnings at her and her tits were feeling a mite crispy so she dropped all the way into a puddle of filth with a crackling hiss as the armour plate rapidly cooled.

  Then someone took up the first guy’s pulse-rifle and they were really in trouble, Eva having to likewise drop to the ground to evade the superheated laser bursts.

  With the enemy spreading out, they were crouched low on either side of the hatch, effectively pinned in the crossfire from the advanced weapons. Kyle was huddled down over Maria while Eva and Donnie did their best to return fire, blindly shooting over their cover to keep the enemy ducking.

  Over the din of their repeaters a voice called out for the Junkers to ceasefire and after a few more pot-shots from the lasers the enemy laid off them.

  With the respite Donnie took a second to check on their downed crewmember.

  “Talk to me Sledge! You dead?”

  She could hear the woman working to respond, clearly she’d been winded.

  “Took the hit.” She said with a wheeze; “Don’t you bury me.”

  “You kidding? I ain’t digging a hole that big.” Eva muttered as she reloaded her weapon with practiced movements.

  Despite her joke, Donnie could hear the relief in the redhead’s voice.

  Another voice broke into their conversation then, and it wasn’t linked to their coms.

  “Ahoy down there! You folks had enough? I get that ya’ll have your fancy pants armour, but this time we brought the tools needed to melt through ‘em. So I got an offer for ya! Hows about we take that truly substantial find off your hands, while you mosey on out of here, eh?”

  Donnie ignored him, having no intention of negotiating.

  “Reeves, ETA?” She murmured intensely, not that the man could hear her through her helmet.

  “Less than a minute out.”

  Donnie smiled like the predator she so often was, but the Junker called down to them again.

  “Oh come on now! Aren’t you even gunna consider taking the easy way out? It’s a fair offer: you get to live and we don’t have to damage the goods to kill you.”

  Again she ignored him, focusing on giving the Pixie’s flight crew their orders.

  “We’re all bunched up like idiots, so draw a circle around our transponders. But don’t hit the scrap heap we’re up against unless you have to. You copy?”

  “Copy.” Eniella replied tersely, likely busy priming the Pixie’s weapons.

  “Then fire for effect.”

  “You’ll hear the thunder presently.” The gun-nut promised.

  Donnie made a whirling gesture with one finger then clenched her fist and jerked her elbow down to communicate the incoming air support to Eva, then she hunched as low as they could with Kyle and Maria.

  Just as they ducked down a panicked voice sounded from one of the scrap heaps above them.

  “Leroy! There’s a ship coming in fast! I think it’s-”

  The Pixie came over the horizon and cast her shadow down on them; less than fifty feet above their heads the powerful whirr of her thrusters abruptly drowned out his shouting.

  Then the old girl’s Javelins cut loose and drowned out even that.

  When railguns were first mass produced they were a seemingly unsolvable problem for ship engineers.

  A single solid tungsten round from one of the Pixie’s Javelins was capable of punching a hole straight through an unhardened vessel from bow to stern and carrying on into the void of space still traveling about five kilometres per second.

  Eventually though, a certain mega-corp developed their famously patented ‘Carapace Armour’ and rebranded itself as the Dungeness Corporation, named after a nearly extinct species of crustacean relocated from Old Earth to serve as finger food for rich people.

  The hardened neutron plating they patented was so incredibly dense that it could withstand the by-then ubiquitous railgun fire, and quickly became the standard for every ship in the galaxy whose owners didn’t want it torn apart by rival corps or pirate clans.

  So pretty much everyone.

 
It also meant that as ex-marines for the corporation that invented the stuff, Donnie and her people slept better at night knowing that each of their exo-rigs had a thin sheet of neutron plating layered over the entire surface.

  It was nowhere near enough to protect them from the Pixie’s ship-killing rounds, but was certainly capable of withstanding small arms fire, excluding high-impact energy weapons like Donnie’s shotgun, or high temp weapons like the Junkers’ pulse-rifles.

  Hence why Maria took a rocket to the gut and just had the wind knocked out of her.

  Using the anti-ship weapons the Pixie was packing on a bunch of shitheads with no real armour to speak of was just about the definition of the word ‘overkill’. But the tri-barreled railguns were the smallest that the ship could bring to bear and the ammunition was cheap, so nobody was going to complain about the noise.

  And what a noise it was.

  Eniella wasn’t holding back, not with one of her best friends on the ground, so three batteries were each letting loose a gut-thumping two hundred rounds per minute as they tracked on separate targets while Davie guided the Pixie through a drifting swoop overhead.

  The five kilogram shells from the weapons were punching holes in the terrified Junkers that a basketball could fit through, and the piles of metal beneath them were being likewise hammered from the barrage.

  Two of the now unstable heaps buckled and collapsed in on themselves when the Javelins’ work hit some unknown structural elements deep within the piles of random scrap.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Donnie saw one of the Junkers recklessly leap down from the high ground in a bid to escape the rain of death from above, but Eniella spotted him and quickly tasked one of the batteries to drop a round at a downward angle that punched through his body from shoulder to foot while he was in mid-air.

  A gory mess of blood and ruined flesh rained down in front of the captain and a split second later all that remained of the poor bastard splattered against the manufacturing arm they were using for cover.

  The methodical thumping roar lasted for a very long two minutes before Eniella let up, but Donnie stayed down for a good ten seconds afterwards to ensure she was finished.

  “Check fire?” She asked loudly.

  Even with the noise cancellation buffers engineered into their helmets, her ears were ringing from the danger-close air support.

  “Fire checked Skipper.” Eniella confirmed; “I don’t see anything moving from up here.”

  “Copy.”

  She wagged her fist to get Eva’s attention, then signalled her orders with sharp movements of her fingers, in case the redhead’s hearing was worse off than hers.

  “Hooker, we’re doing a sweep.”

  The pair of them moved through the ghastly remains of Eniella’s symphony. As ordered she had left the buried ship intact, but the same couldn’t be said for a huge crescent of land radiating outwards from it.

  “This one’s alive.” Eva called out, closely followed by a bark from her repeater; “Oh, wait. No he isn’t.”

  It was gruesome work, but it needed doing.

  Though Donnie had always felt that Eva enjoyed it far more than was healthy.

  They found two others that had survived the Pixie’s sweep: one missing a leg, the other his jaw and most of his shoulder.

  Two more barks, this time from Donnie’s pistol, ended their suffering.

  “We’re clear on the ground.” She commed up to the ship; “Set down as close as you can and we’ll get Maria inside so Billy can have a look.”

  “I’m fine Skipper.” The blonde protested, having gotten back to her feet, though Kyle was still in the dirt struggling to rise; “See? Right as rain.”

  “Good, now get back to the ship and prove it to Billy.” Donnie ordered.

  The Pixie’s bulk made a deep rumbling noise as it came down between two tottering scrap piles some thirty metres away, the closest Davie could manage without scratching the paint.

  As the ship came to rest though, there was a painful screech of straining metal that caused Donnie to wince and the pilot to curse over the coms.

  “What the hell was that?” The captain demanded.

  “I must have sat on something.”

  “Dammit Davie! We’re here to fix the ship, not break her more!”

  Shaking her head in exasperation, Donnie ordered Eva to make sure Maria did as she was told and while the mismatched pair began to pick their way towards the ship she pulled the hapless Kyle to his feet.

  “Sorry Captain, these suits are not as easy to maneuver in as you make them look.” He grumbled.

  “No worries. This shit isn’t in your job description, you’re coping well though.” She gave him a congratulatory smack to the ass that neither of them felt through their armour and got back on task; “Billy, you on coms?”

  “I am Captain, where’s my patient?”

  “On her way with Eva, meet her in the airlock. How’s the Bunny?”

  “Same as always, trying to get in my pants.”

  Donnie chuckled, her nerves steady despite the carnage around her, she’d certainly seen worse: twenty odd pirates blown to bits by the Pixie’s wrath was nothing compared to the sight of Bunny face down in the muck.

  “I keep telling you to just let her jump you.”

  She could hear the shrug in Billy’s voice.

  “I don’t swing for the ladies, you know that.”

  Donnie chuckled.

  “Neither do I, but I swing for Bunny!”

  Kyle broke in then, a bit awkwardly given that it was his wife they were talking about.

  “So uh, what’s the plan now?”

  Donnie turned back to the ship they had yet to get into, her eyes narrowing as she considered the sealed hatch.

  “As much as I’d like for everyone to take a breather, this second attack proves that it’s a clan we’re up against, so we need to kick down that door and get that conduit thing if we can find one. They come at us any heavier than this and we’re bugging out. We’re not dying for a payday, I don’t give a shit how good it is.”

  Chapter 7:

  Work Work Work

  Given their string of violent encounters since landing on Kentis, Donnie vetoed Kyle’s plan to cut through the hatch. Instead she had Eniella come out of the ship and set up a plasma charge against the sealed entryway.

  “Are you sure this won’t breach the inner airlock?” Kyle fretted for the third time, on his knees beside her as she worked.

  The pink-haired woman’s voice crackled a bit over the coms.

  “Yes! Relax hermana.”

  He scowled.

  “Even I know that’s the feminine version. Do you really speak Spanish?”

  “You caught me.” Eniella chuckled as she continued with her work; “No, and neither did my parents, but I picked up on a lot of choice wordage from my abuelo. That’s granddad to you white-folk, though he called me gabacha all the time growing up. Now relax hermaNO. I’ve done this like, at least eight times.”

  “That doesn’t sound like a lot.” His tone was still dubious, unimpressed at her limited vocabulary.

  Donnie was largely ignoring their banter, instead covering the pair of them while they worked at the hatch. She had snagged Maria’s heavy repeater for the extra range and was scanning all of their sight-lines while Eva was on overwatch from the top of the ship.

  Once again their sensors had failed to pick up the Junkers’ ambush, even with the hasty modifications they had thrown together the day before.

  “Being the lead charger in the primary breaching unit for eight mid-space boarding operations doesn’t impress you?” Eva remarked drily over the coms; “Wow, cat sex must be mind-blowing.”

  Kyle didn’t say anything at first, mollified at the redhead’s sarcastic tone.

  “I just hate to damage the ship any more than we have to.”

  Eniella rolled her eyes as she finished priming the charge.

  “You ever seen anybody killed by a Pet
e-Willis?”

  “No, what’s a Pete-”

  “Pressure-Wrecker.” Donnie interrupted; “Basically a door mine. Someone doesn’t want you getting on their ship in space, they set ‘em up as a nasty surprise on the inside of the outer airlock. Try to get in and they blow outwards. A pre-emptive strike against exactly what we’re doing now.”

  Eniella helped him up and explained further as they all walked away from the rigged hatch.

  “They’re sensitive to heat, so your cutting torch is out. They also have motion sensors in case someone gets clever and tries to jack the ship’s CPU to let themselves in. Pretty effective deterrent. We have one in the armoury for each airlock in case shit ever gets too real.”

  They moved back a good ten metres and took cover.

  “Sounds like the same thing as this breaching charge. Why aren’t we just using one of those to get in?”

  Eniella chuckled and signaled for everyone to get down.

  “Because-” She paused to make her point by popping the detonator for the plasma breacher.

  A flash of green light causing them all to blink for a second as their visors automatically adjusted to account for the sudden brightness.

  There was another, smaller explosion from the ship, the dual shockwave causing a nearby pile of congealed and putrid sludge to collapse in on itself with a wet squelch.

  “As I was saying before Kyle let one out in Billy’s suit. A Pete-Willis is an old school powder charge, they have to be to keep them from being disabled by a short-range EMP. And it’s a lot easier to break out of a pressurized airlock in space than it is to break into one, so in short: they’re not strong enough.”

  “Right.”

  They could hear the dubious frown in his voice.

  “Enough gabbing.” Donnie ordered as they got back to their feet; “That second pop meant I was right. Ship is rigged. Our job just got way more involved. Eva? Anything twitching out there?”

  “I clocked another one of those nasty pigeons that tried to eat Bunny. But it’s a good two klicks out at least.”

  Donnie opened her mouth to respond, but Kyle beat her to it.

  “Don’t get too comfortable Eva, those things might look like an evolutionary disaster, but their wings work and they’ll surprise you with their speed in the air.”