Rev almost jumped out of his skin as tightly as he was wound.
“See you soon!” the voice said before breaking into maniacal laughter.
Rev chastised himself for overreacting. His reaction was exactly what the pirates wanted. He stepped off again.
Just ahead was a fairly large space to the left side of the passage. It was designated as crew quarters, and there had been body signatures there. Their original route would have bypassed it. They still could, but as a Marine, Rev was taught never to leave a potential enemy at his rear. Time was ticking on, but Rev thought they were still good in that regard.
“We’re going to check this out before we keep going. If there’re crewmembers inside, we leave them there and move on.”
He motioned for Gingham to open the hatch as he stood just to the side, Pashu aimed forward.
Three people were inside the compartment. Two jumped at his appearance. The third was face down on the deck, and he’d never be jumping at anything again. Blood pooled under his head. There was nothing Rev could do for the dead crewmember, so he put the man out of his mind for the moment because he had something far more urgent in front of him.
One of the other two was also a crew member. Her eyes were wide open in fear, her breath short and shallow. Standing immediately behind her, one arm across her chest, the other holding an ancient but deadly looking boarding pistol to her head, was the first pirate Rev had ever seen in living flesh. A bolt of anger shot through him, and he had to fight to keep from erupting.
He took a step inside when the pirate said, “Now that’s enough, there. You come closer, and this lady is dead.”
“Let her go,” Rev said, the fire in his voice making the pirate flinch, the pistol jerking.
Calm down, Reverent. Don’t panic him.
“Just let her go, and I’ll make sure you get out of this alive.”
Behind him, Gingham started to join Rev, but with his free hand, Rev waved him back.
“Leaving privateers alive isn’t something you Mezzies do,” the man said, some of his bravado gone.
“We’re not Mezame. We’re Home Guard.”
That seemed to confuse the pirate, and he opened his mouth to say something when he suddenly seemed to notice Pashu pointing at him.
“What the hell is that?”
Really? You just noticed her now? Cream of the crop, aren’t you?
But instead of being cowed, the sight seemed to give the pirate confidence. “By the looks of that beamer, you’re kind of stuck now, asshole Home Guard or whatever the fuck you are. You try and fry me, and this lady’s gonna get it, too.”
Which was true as far as it went. Pashu wasn’t the best weapon in a situation like this.
The crewmember’s eyes got even wider, and she lasered in on Pashu’s projector cone. She pushed away from Rev and into the pirate, who had to take a step back to keep standing. He jerked her with the left arm across her chest and gave her temple a hard poke. She let out a squeal and froze.
Rev lifted Pashu to his left, shifting the pirate’s attention away from him. The pirate had his eyes locked on the projector cone, turning his head slightly to follow the movement.
He must have realized his mistake. He jerked his head back to Rev, his eyes widening, his finger tightening on the trigger of his boarding pistol. Rev wasn’t as quick with other weapons as he was with Pashu, but he was a trained Marine. With his right hand, the one he’d waved to stop Gingham and the rest from entering the space, he swept it forward, snagging his Tata-74 and bringing it up in one smooth motion. The first dart took the pirate at the inside corner of his left eye. The second grazed off the dead man’s forehead as he collapsed, legs bending at the knees, the body folding backward over them.
“Don’t fall for the show, buddy. Focus on what’s going to kill you,” Rev said as the heavy boarding pistol clattered off the deck and bounced a couple of times before spinning to a stop.
The crewmember stared in shock at the pistol before slowly turning to the body. She raised a hand to the side of her head as if checking for blood.
“You could have killed me,” she said in astonishment.
“But I didn’t. Are you OK?”
“I . . . I think so.”
“We’re going to leave you now.”
“No!”
“We still have our mission, ma’am. We’re going to leave you. I’d suggest you lock the hatch behind us and don’t open it up unless you know who’s on the other side. Or if it’s Home Guard.”
She stared at him blankly as Gingham, then the other two peered inside the space and took in the scene.
“Nice shooting, Staff Sergeant,” Akkeke said.
“You understand, miss?” Rev asked the woman again.
“Yes. Yes, I understand.”
She was obviously in shock, but they didn’t have time to deal with her at the moment. With one last nod, Rev backed out of the space. She didn’t immediately close the hatch behind him.
Rev motioned the small team forward. The entire thing had taken less than two minutes. It wouldn’t affect their mission, but Rev didn’t think they could afford too many other engagements.
They were approaching their next passage between decks when the lights went out, and after a ripple, the artificial gravity failed. Emergency lights flickered on, illuminating the way.
Rev had just taken a step, and the action pushed him off the deck. Gingham hit him from behind, sending Rev tumbling. Without thinking it through, he tucked and brought his feet forward, hitting the overhead with the soles of his boots.
“Sorry, Staff Sergeant,” Gingham said. “That took me by surprise.”
“Come on. We’re trained in this,” Rev said. “Nothing’s changed.”
Rev didn’t know if the pirates had switched off the artificial gravity or if it was a casualty of fighting. Given what they did for a living, he suspected it was the former. They might think that this evened out the odds, but Rev wasn’t too worried.
He turned and pushed forward. Outside or inside a ship, the Oscars’ thrusters would work. But within the confines of a ship, the exhaust of the thruster could impact other nearby Marines. So, movement became a series of jumps with tiny adjustments from the microjets to keep steady. Controlling the geckos on the soles of their boots to grip when needed, but to let go when jumping was an exercise in timing that did not come easily, and Rev wished they’d spent more time in training. But it wasn’t a difficult thing to do, just difficult to do it as smoothly as Akkeke was. The big trooper was graceful and controlled as they moved down the passage.
The team had automatically spread out once the gravity was cut, hugging the sides of the passage with one Marine on what had been the deck, the overhead, and each bulkhead. Each was oriented with their feet toward the outside of the passage, their heads toward the middle. This allowed for better fields of fire should they meet anyone. Where before, only Rev could realistically react, now all four of them could.
They reached the final door, which would lead them into the engineering spaces. Rev reported their progress and was told to proceed with their mission. He motioned for Gingham to open the door with Rev covering. As before, however, the immediate way was clear. Rev pulled his way through, followed by the other three.
“Akkeke, the door,” Rev told the corporal who was the last one through.
Doors and hatches were different things. Hatches led into spaces and were not sealed airtight. A door was. They were designed to keep integrity between sections of the ship in case an area was breached. The rule of thumb was that all doors that were opened had to be closed once passed through.
“Right, Staff Sergeant. Sorry.”
“OK. Our space should be just aft. Twenty meters.”
Rev motioned Gingham, who was on the bulkhead opposite the hatch leading into the life support space, to move to the other side. No use giving anyone there a better target. The four Marines crept forward, weapons ready.
No fire reached out to
them.
The hatch had a window. Rev wished he had a Marine Optisight that he could use to look in without exposing himself, but unfortunately, that wasn’t part of his combat kit. There was no getting around what he had to do. He braced himself, then leaned in for a quick look before snapping back.
“Did you see anything?”
Rev didn’t like that. Life support was a vital center of control on the ship. Why would they leave it unmanned?
“I don’t know if there’s anyone in there,” he told the other three. “But we need to clear it.”
“No one there? That’s unexpected,” Akkeke said.
Rev stared at the hatch for a long moment. It was unexpected, as the corporal had said, and that concerned him.
“Wait one,” he told them.
He pulled his multiscan out of his thigh pocket. The little instrument was an all-purpose scanner that could perform a lot of functions but not do any of them very well. It was good enough for general work, testing the air, for power sources, temperature, emissions, and signs of life, and that was about it.
He opened the aperture, held it to the window, and pulsed the space. No sign of life registered, but it wasn’t hard to spoof the little scanner.
Clear. So, what’s got me spooked?
Almost on a whim, Rev ran the scanner along the edge of the hatch . . . and there was a slight bump on the energy band, right near the entry panel.
“Three-point-two nanojoules,” he muttered, reading the display.
That was nothing. The entry panel would be in the five-millijoule range, but with the power out, that should be zero.
Residual power?
“Can that reading be a glitch?”
It has to be residual power. What else?
Rev knew he was being overly cautious, but as Bundy liked to say, there were two types of Marines: the cautious and the KIA. Still, time was ticking.
He reached out to the panel to depress the latch but stopped, his hand centimeters away. He had access to petabytes worth of knowledge in the crystals in his head.
“What might be putting out three-point-two nanojoules?”
“Break circuits? What are those?”
“Like a security sensor?”
Rev stared at the panel for a long moment, his mind churning.
“Staff Sergeant? You OK?” Corporal Akkeke asked.
Rev held up a hand to stop him. He needed to think. He could see inside the primary life support room. No one was there. Why? It was one of the three or four most important parts of the ship, yet the pirates had left it abandoned.
Rev put his head up against the bulkhead, getting a better angle to see more of the space. There was no one at all.
So, where’s the crew?
No, the pirates hadn’t forgotten the space. They’d been there. Rev was suddenly sure that the room, probably at the door, was booby-trapped. It was the only thing that made sense. The tiny power emanation was one of the security circuit breakers.
He stepped back. “No, we’re not going in.”
“But our mission?” Akkeke asked.
“I think it’s booby-trapped. We’re waiting outside until we can get some engineers here. We don’t need to be inside to secure it.”
He opened up the squad circuit and relayed to SFC Gamay what he was doing and why.
“Are you sure about that, Pelletier?”
“No. Not at all. But it makes sense. And if I’m wrong, we can still keep any pirates from accessing it right here in the passage.”
“Wait one.” The circuit was dead for a moment, then the squad leader came back. “The captain says no use taking chances. Secure it from outside and wait for further orders.”
“Sergeant Gamay just confirmed, we’re not going in,” he told this team. He directed them farther down the passage on each side, Akkeke and Acevedo fore, he and Gingham aft. He attached his geckos to the bulkhead, ready to wait out either the coming of engineers or the end of the mission. But he had to be ready for anything.
Rev was on the overhead, looking up at the deck. As he looked back to make sure the two corporals were getting set, something caught his eye. It wasn’t much, just a tiny blip in the smooth juncture of overhead and bulkhead. If he was walking along the deck under gravity, he doubted that he’d ever have seen it.
“Keep facing down the corridor and shout if you see anything,” Rev told Gingham. He released his geckos and pushed off back toward the hatch into the life support space. Using his microjets, he maneuvered close. It was small, basically the same nondescript gray as the passages in this part of the ship. But it definitely didn’t belong there, of that he was sure.
Rev could see well in the dim light, but there were limits, so he turned on his torch. There was a glint, and that brought it into focus. Rev recognized it for what it was: a spy eye, and he didn’t think it was from the ship. He plucked it from its spot. In the torch light, the color was slightly different from the bulkhead, and he could see it wasn’t wired into the ship’s power.
He turned his head. The little recording device had been placed to watch over the door and up and down the passage.
“I think the pirates have spy eyes on the ship. At least, I think I found one,” Rev passed to the staff sergeant as he looked into the tiny lens.
“Are you sure about this—”
Whatever the squad leader was going to ask was lost when a flash appeared inside the life support system space, the hatch buckled, and a shock wave pushed out of the hatch and sent Rev smashing against the far bulkhead. He fended off getting slammed with Pashu, but his face banged against the inside of his face shield, smacking his nose.
Another series of blasts sounded, and the ship shuddered. A moment later, the air started moving, taking Rev with it. He spun around and planted his feet on the overhead, and activated his geckos.
Emergency lights started flashing, alarms howling.
“All hands, secure yourself,” someone passed over the assault force net. “I repeat, secure yourself. If you are with civilians, make sure the space is locked tight. We have multiple breaches in the hull.”
“Bring it in,” Rev shouted at his team.
The air movement picked up quickly, from a breeze to gale force. With it blowing toward Gingham, he was struggling to make it back to Rev. The other two were carried by the escaping air to him. Rev reached out to snag Corporal Acevedo, and the impact tore him free. Both tumbled in the air like tornado flotsam. Rev bounced hard four or five times, once so hard on his helmet that he was sure it was cracked. He tried to plant his feet, but he might as well have been fighting a hurricane.
Someone, Akkeke or Acevedo, crashed into him, and like baby marmosets hugging their mother, the two clung together. Rev locked Pashu around the trooper to keep them from being separated. He hunched over, protecting the front of his helmet. They slammed into the bulkhead several more times, knocking the breath out of him before the velocity of the escaping air started to diminish. Finally, as they tumbled, the other trooper managed to plant his feet, jerking them both to a stop. Rev raised his head to see Akkeke’s face just centimeters from his.
“We’re going to have to do this again sometime,” Rev said as he planted his gecko soles. (Or something funnier.)
A body came by, and Rev and Akkeke snagged it, reeling in a wide-eyed Acevedo.
“Holy shit. I thought we were going to get sucked out,” Acevedo said.
“PFC Gingham, are you OK?” Rev passed
on the team net.
“I . . . I think so,” a trembling voice said.
“Where are you?”
“I’m not sure. I was stuck on some grate in the overhead. I don’t know where I am.”
Rev checked the ship’s diagram. There was a ventilation grate just ahead. “OK, you’re right around the curve in the passage. Come back and join us.”
Acevedo might have thought they were going to be ejected from the ship, but Rev knew that there would have to be a breach all the way through to their deck for that. Even as it was, there were doors that should have closed to keep the inner decks pressurized. But if the pirates planned this, then from the evidence, Rev figured they’d sabotaged those doors.
Sabotage! And booby-trapped the hatch into life support.
If Rev’s instincts hadn’t kicked in, the four of them would have bought the farm, he was sure.
And it clicked into place. The spy eye. They’d been under observation. When they hadn’t opened the hatch, the pirate on the other end manually set the explosion to disable life support and breach the hull.
The question was how much of the ship was without air. Those in sealed compartments should be OK for the moment.
“Staff Sergeant Pelletier, what’s your status?” SFC Gamay asked.
“We’re OK and functional. There was an explosion in life support, but we got taken away in the maelstrom.”
“We’ve got multiple breaches over the ship. We’re going to need life support to start repressurizing as soon as patches can be set in place. Get back and assess the damage.”
“Roger. We’re on our way.”
* * *
Rev looked through the cracked window into life support. The hatch had buckled under the force of the blast and was now stuck, and even with Rev’s augmented strength, he couldn’t budge it. He had PTC to cut into the space, but there was no need. He could tell that the main life support wasn’t going to work again until the Nightingale’s Song was in drydock.
He opened a connection with his squad leader and keyed in the other three in his team. “Life support is offline, and nothing we can do is going to get it back. It’s totaled.”
An Uneasy Alliance: Book 4 of the Sentenced to War Series Page 18
