He could see, but it was a nightmare of blood and gory body-parts left in the wake of the merciless counterattack.
“Donnie and Eva went that way. Just focus on the other two corridors for now.”
Distantly they could still hear the angry roar of the two plasma weapons being unleashed on the Junkers, that and the moans and cries of the wounded and dying coming from everywhere.
“West!” Bryan said suddenly.
Billy scooped up her rifle and with surgical precision took down the two guys trying to sneak up on them, then returned to working on Maria as if there had been no interruption.
As she got more and more information out of her suit’s medical scanner she let out a sigh.
“Oh honey, we are going to get our money’s worth out of these nanites today.”
She set to work.
Meanwhile, not far from the sole airlock leading into the station, a man in a red-sequined dress was bleeding out on the floor, the imposing figures of Donnie and Eva looming over him, panting inside their armour.
There were several glowing patches on Eva’s suit from the pulse-rifle of the last Junker she’d fragged, but the two of them were mostly unharmed.
Dead pirates were everywhere, as were the scorch marks left by the plasma weapons.
Blood dribbled over Commodore Rufus Fairchild’s ruby painted lips as he stared up at the pair of marines that had so brutally and effectively ended his reign.
He smiled at them dreamily through his mighty beard.
“My daddy always told me that it was going to be a woman that-”
Donnie blew his head off with the final charge from the plasma repeater before casting the oversized and overheating weapon to the ground.
“Oh come on!” Eva complained as she emptied a container of water on her helmet and shoulder to cool off the laser burns; “You weren’t even a little curious about the drag-queen’s back story?”
“No. Were you?”
The fiery woman shrugged as she surveyed the carnage around them, still aware of her surroundings despite their earlier recklessness.
“Yeah. I mean... a bit. He had such a pretty dress.”
With adrenaline still coursing through both of their bodies from the high of combat, the topic of conversation had turned to the absurd.
In reality both of them were using the banter to push their concern for Maria to the very bottom of their stomachs where all it could do was gnaw at them without distracting them from the task at hand.
“You got me there. Red definitely was a good colour for him.”
Eva made an impatient noise in her throat.
“Again with the colour.”
With the redhead’s armour plates cooled off, Donnie took her shotgun back as the other marine unslung her heavy repeater.
“Come on. We’re not done yet. They sealed the airlock so if there is anyone left on that dildo of a ship the Pixie will have to deal with them. You clear to the east, I’ll head west.”
Minutes later Eva and Donnie finished their sweep of the station, executing three more Junkers in various states of cowardice before the captain sounded the all clear and commed Davie to see what was happening with the enemy vessel.
Returning to the main room, that gnawing question in their bellies was about to get answered; with the shooting over and the battle won, how pyrrhic the victory would be depended now on Billy’s expertise.
The doctor had used her medical overrides through her suit’s link with Maria’s to turn the expensive piece of hardware into an expensive pile of scrap, removing multiple damaged segments of armour and casting them aside to get at the woman’s injuries.
Ashen faced and unconscious, Maria had multiple tubes going into her from Billy’s medical bag and she did not make for a pretty sight: all the way from the left side of her hip to the front of her left shoulder she looked like a bloody and overcooked steak.
With hands shaking from crashing adrenaline, the captain twisted her helmet off, her suit letting out an irate hiss as the seal was lost. Sweat was beaded on her brow and stinging her eyes as she knelt beside the doctor and the hulk of burnt and pockmarked metal that was Maria’s exo-rig.
“Talk to me Bridget, how’s my marine?”
Her voice was tired and hoarse from shouting so much, but the question was steady.
She’d seen friends die in combat before: loss was part of the life she had chosen.
But no matter how much she prepared herself, it always stung.
Billy had already removed her own helmet, though it sat at her side with the interior HUD showing her Maria’s vitals.
“Armour absorbed the brunt of it, but as is plain to see her suit was breached in multiple locations before the plasma burned out. I gave her enough nanites to pay off the last of my student loans and they are earning their keep mending the underlying tissue and stopping the burns from spreading.”
“Okay. Now the version without the stupid metaphors?”
Billy tried and failed to shake a sweaty lock of black hair out of her face, then absently pulled it behind her ear with one finger.
“I’ve induced a coma, but her prognosis is good. We’ll be bagging her piss for the next several days to try and get some of my money back, but she’ll live.”
Medical-grade nanites were designed to inevitably find their way into the patient’s bloodstream, from there they ended up filtered out by the kidneys and expelled as normal body waste.
The ones that were still viable once their operating procedures inside the body were completed could then be recovered, recharged, and reused.
The company that invented them cautioned against this because people recycling their product hurt their bottom line, but a recent report released by the GRC found that as much as fifty percent of nanites in use in hospitals across the core systems had been recycled at least once.
The mega-corporations weren’t the only penny pinchers in the universe.
Though relieved that Maria was going to pull though, Donnie’s breathing started getting a mite shaky as the could-haves and might-have-beens began to pile up on her again.
She wiped at her face in a bid to get the sweat out of eyes, instead leaving a smear of blood in its place on her forehead.
“She was so fucking lucky!” She lamented with a shake of her head; “If that prick had gotten the shot off from a few feet closer we’d be prepping our dress greys for a funeral.”
Billy nodded.
“More than that though, she was lucky we scored these nanites. I was feeling good about having such a large supply to keep in reserve aboard the ship. Didn’t expect to use more than half of them in one go like this. Plasma weaponry should be banned.”
Both of them were very conscious of Donnie’s shotgun, sitting on the floor between them, not to mention the carnage she and Eva had so recently unleashed on the Junkers that had been dogging them.
“We’ve had that argument before Bridget. Though it’s not like I’m going to disagree with you after today. If it makes you feel any better I’m almost out of ammo. Only have a couple clips left on the ship.”
“It doesn’t. But whatever. The more terrible a weapon the more likely someone is to use it. I can live with you using it on them before they use it on us.” Billy finally looked up from her patient and gave the captain a once over; “You and Eva okay after that Geronimo maneuver you just pulled?”
Her gaze flicked down to where Donnie was holding Maria’s limp hand in hers, her priorities clear in her mind.
Triage and assess.
“We’re fine. Her suit was glowing in a couple places from some lucky pulses, but they didn’t make it through the carapace. I feel like my tits went into a rock-tumbler from all the repeaters. But yeah, we’re fine.”
“Okay. Station is clear?”
“Yup. Eniella is scanning the sector before the Pixie docks again. The big red dildo made a jump. Kinda hoping that doesn’t come back to bite us in the ass down the line, but I find myself rathe
r indifferent at the moment.”
Billy nodded her agreement.
“I guess now we play the waiting game? Not much I can do for Maria until I get her back on the ship. She’s going to need several skin grafts once the nanites are finished, and she’ll hate the number of body-scans and blood-screens I’ll have to put her through to clear out the internal residue from the plasma discharge.”
Donnie knew that Billy wasn’t really talking to her at this point; the doctor was going over her treatment procedures out loud so that when she got her patient back on the Pixie she could do her work quickly and methodically.
“Glad you have a plan.” She looked up as they all felt the deep thunk of a ship docking; “That better be Davie. I’m not up for more just yet.”
__________
The constant dull hum of slipspace served as the backdrop for a panicked conversation taking place aboard the fleeing Junker vessel.
“Don’t we need a jump window?!”
“Who cares! Everyone is dead! I think even the commodore bought it! I thought that majestical fairy was unkillable!”
“No he weren’t! Now calm down the both of you!” The navigator who had initiated the reckless jump snapped; “I need to hear myself think!”
Being the only three survivors to have the sense to abandon the Commodore’s vendetta, the trio of ashen faced Junkers were keen to get as far away from the disastrous encounter as possible.
The entire bridge crew had been as raw about Derrick’s death as the commodore so except for Dwight they had taken part in the assault on the lonely rock.
And without them the three survivors stood no chance in a firefight with the Pixie Hazard and her competent fire control officer.
Hell, two of them couldn’t spell ‘FCO’ if their life depended on it.
So using the nav-log, Dwight had directed the ship back to the controlled space around Mung Station, giving himself more time to mull over their options as they waited to come back into normal space.
“We can try to make contact with the other ships in the clan, but I don’t like our chances of surviving that conversation, not if word gets out that we bailed on the others.” He reasoned out loud.
“I ain’t saying shit.”
“Me neither.”
The mood of his crewmates settled the matter.
“Good. That’s that then. My thinking is that the rest of the captains will be too busy fighting over who gets to wear the commodore’s dress to bother chasing after us. So best we can do is mosey on our way, pawn everything on this ship what ain’t nailed down, and part as friends.”
He left out that he was angling to keep the ship for himself, at least long enough to say goodbye to the dead weight onboard somehow and turn around and sell it for a sizable fortune.
As far as he saw it: the commodore had promised him pussy and had failed to deliver on said promise, so if he sold the drag-queen’s beloved ship in order to fund a lavish lifestyle for himself for a little while... well, who could blame him?
Plan firmly in mind, he gave another determined nod.
“Okay, now listen. We’ll be coming back into normal space any sec-”
Dwight the navigator didn’t get to finish his sentence, nor did he get to sell off the brilliantly painted Howling Dragon.
Hard to get anything done at all when you come out of slipspace inside a drone-operated supertanker.
Particularly one whose cargo was, rather poetically, a fresh batch of slipspace fuel headed to resupply Mung Station.
If anyone had been looking in that bit of open space when the two ships met they would have thought a star was being born.
But no one was looking, and no one cared.
To the Iowa clan the disappearance of the Howling Dragon and its colourful commander would become something of a legend, a campfire story to tell the greenhorns looking to become part of the clan.
Meanwhile to the Juan Corporation’s big wigs the loss of the tanker was a lonely red mark in the minus column on a single page of their digital ledgers.
And there were a lot of other pages.
Chapter 35:
Recuperation
Despite Billy’s optimism about Maria’s prospects, Donnie felt a lot better once she and the others got the wounded woman into the infirmary so that their doctor could do her job properly.
The good news was they no longer had to make it look like a Junker clan had raided the hidden station, so after they snagged a couple of valuables that wouldn’t be missed by anyone Davie sent out a broad-band distress call via the facilities improvised communications room.
Then it was time to get the hell out of dodge before the cavalry from Outerlight Union arrived.
Stepping out of her personal shower, Donnie leaned on the sink as she took in the sight of herself in the mirror.
She winced at what she saw.
She had numerous bruises from being knocked around by the Junkers’ repeaters, the worst of which were on her right breast, which hurt.
With one hand she rubbed at it tenderly, but she immediately sucked in a lungful of air from the agony of it, involuntary tears streaming down her face.
A moment later though her bruises were forgotten when the image of Maria’s prone form on the floor of the lab popped into her head unbidden.
She punched the mirror with a feral snarl in denial of the memory.
The plex-glass held, so she didn’t need stitches, but her knuckles throbbed all the same as she broke down, letting out a harsh sob as her emotions overcame her.
Burying her face in her hands she was truly torn: part of her wished Bunny was there to cling to, while another part didn’t want the loving creature anywhere near her while she was in such a state.
But the K’or-Macka wasn’t her only dear friend.
“Hey.” Billy said from the door.
Reflexively Donnie’s fists came up as her adrenaline spiked and her training took over.
The doctor held both hands up so show that she meant no harm, then handed the naked captain a cold pack.
“For the girls.” Her eyes flicked down to Donnie’s bruised tit for a moment; “Knew you’d be hiding from me.”
The captain’s rigid posture relaxed as she took the cold pack and set it down on a shelf while she washed the mess of tears from her face.
“Thanks.” She finally said awkwardly.
Ultimately she was more self-conscious about being emotionally naked than physically, but they both knew that Billy had seen her in worse shape.
Like the day Eniella lost her arm.
The medic didn’t say anything, just leaned against the hatchway and watched the captain break open the hidden packets within the cold compress before pressing it to her aching breast with a hissing groan.
“That the only reason you snuck into my bathroom?” Donnie asked plaintively.
Billy smiled, if faintly.
“I’ve treated Eva’s burns and Maria is stable. I can’t do the grafts until the nanites are finished their routines. Eniella needs a moment in the armoury. It’s about the tracker.”
They stepped out into her quarters so that Donnie could get dressed.
“Almost forgot about that. Did she find it?”
“Don’t know. I’ve been kind of busy.”
The skipper ignored the wry tone in Billy’s voice as she laced up her boots with practiced movements, firmly in control of her emotions again.
“Then let’s go and see if we’re still fucked.”
Minutes later she and Billy stepped into the armoury to find Eniella, all of them keenly aware of the hulking and bloody mess of Maria’s suit sitting on her workbench.
Seeking to avoid the emotional distraction, Donnie looked to Eniella.
“Okay pinky. Talk to me.”
“That’s racist.” The FCO shot back humourlessly; “It wasn’t hard to figure out where it came from.”
With her robotic arm she deftly flipped over one of the supply crates to display the slipspace
beacon neatly nestled in one of the grooves in the bottom of it.
Donnie groaned at how badly they had been duped as she took up the crate for a closer look.
“Eva’s wrong, we’ve all gotten sloppy. They barely needed to hide it on us.” She lamented.
“Those phony stevedores that delivered the groceries played me rather perfectly.” Billy agreed sourly; “They were pushing to get on the ship so badly so that we’d be in a rush to get the supplies inside after I chased them off. They had me looking for a break-in when I should’ve been looking for an infiltration.”
The captain nodded sympathetically as she dropped the beacon back on the table.
“I told you not to underestimate Demarco. He knew we had Bryan before we even docked at Mung. Slippery fuck had this thing in place in case he couldn’t get me to deal. Not sure how the drag-queen fits into his plans though.”
“What about Juan Corps and the whole murder thing?” Eniella asked.
Donnie shrugged.
“Fuck ‘em. They’re not a major player in the grand scheme of it, and I picked Lewanna for a reason. No corporation is going to start some shit with a free colony. If they send in papers demanding our arrest, Lewanna’s government will wipe with them before sending them back.”
“Come on man. Gross.” Billy said with a grimace.
“Everybody poops doc, thought you knew that.”
“That’s why I invented nurses.”
Letting the moment of levity pass, Donnie moved on.
“In any case, my biggest concern is still the Iowa Clan. They can’t realistically start any trouble in orbit of Lewanna, but we might need to land to sell the transport. And I don’t feel like having my throat cut by a bounty hunter while shopping for space-bananas.”
“I wouldn’t put it past Demarco to have a hand in that as well.” Billy agreed.
But Donnie shook her head.
“End of the day Demarco is all about business. Despite his bluster he doesn’t do revenge. Though he’d certainly take it if he could profit off it somehow, but he doesn’t have that kind of reach. Big fish in a little pond and all that.”
Pixie Hazard Page 29
