Without warning, Drago opened fire into the darkness, and was answered by the muzzle flash of a smiler’s shotgun as it briefly illuminated one of the shadowed bedrooms.
Rhett caught movement in his peripheral vision and saw that another smiler had launched itself across the rec room towards him. It was wielding a vicious looking power drill and a heavy wrench as the smiler plowed through the thick debris with great momentum, intent upon engaging the trooper in close quarters. The dull thud of pistol fire filled the space as Doak and Vader both opened up on one or more smilers who appeared to have been attempting to flank the team by emerging from several grated ducts in the ceiling.
In an instant, the team was beset by attackers, only this time the vultures were ready.
Rhett swiftly sank to one knee as he pulled his combat rifle snug against his shoulder in order to fire upon the drill wielding smiler who was bearing down on him. At the same time clouds of shot peppered the trooper, and though they were deflected by his body armor, the force of the impact threw his aim, causing his shot to go wide as the rifle was knocked from his hands.
Rhett’s rifle was tethered to his utility belt. It sailed into the darkness and then the line pulled taut. Everything around him was in motion as smilers and vultures battled furiously in the half-light of the compartment, the strobe of muzzle flashes flickering in the tight space, making it difficult to see clearly. Rhett ducked as the smiler swung its heavy wrench through the empty space where the troopers head had been a moment before.
Rhett’s cor-sec hand to hand combat training had been augmented by years in the penal system and it was all that saved him. As the smiler’s wrench swept over him, Rhett instinctively reached out with both hands to catch the arm driving the drill towards his chest. His armored gloves locked around the smiler’s forearm and wrist, which prevented the tool from impaling him instantly, though physics was for the moment an ally of the smiler. Rhett’s mag-clamps kept him in place while the smiler, not similarly fettered, kept going, and the momentum of the attacker’s body slamming into Rhett drove the bit into the trooper’s armor. Rhett was knocked onto his back and landed with the smiler on top of him as the nightmare person pushed harder against the drill.
He felt the pressure of the bit tearing through his armor and knew that in seconds it would rip into his body, not only causing a possibly fatal wound but also depressurizing his suit. Like most combat armor used by spacefaring professionals of all income and skill levels, the void seals would react to damage by flowing over the holes in the armor. It made surviving combat injuries in hard vacuum possible, though it was relatively easy to overwhelm the capacity of the seals with sustained fire, and the spinning bit of the drill had the same effect as it chewed at both armor and seal.
Rhett desperately pulled on the tether connected to his rifle with one hand, using the other hand to push back against his attacker, doing his best not to look into the faceplate of the smiler as it pressed itself harder into the back of the drill.
Suddenly, the rifle emerged into the light of Rhett’s helmet and smacked into the smiler with enough force to distract it for a moment. Rhett snaked his arm under the smiler’s and pushed up even as he released the mag-clamps on his boots so that he could kick out. The pair grappled over the drill as they soared through the low gravity, knocking aside more debris as they careened through the chamber.
Just before they collided with the wall, Rhett was able to reverse the smiler’s drill and shove the point of the bit into the smiler’s void suit while his enemy was still helpfully squeezing the trigger. In the next instant the smiler slammed into the far wall, or perhaps the ceiling, it was difficult to tell in this dark, low gravity environment. The force of their impact drove the bit deep into the attacker’s chest. Rhett pushed with all his might and the drill tore messily through the void suit and body beneath, causing a rapid decompression which vented a stream of blood all over the trooper.
Rhett pushed himself back and engaged his mag-clamps. He yanked on his tether to catch his rifle, then took a knee again to assess the situation. In the short amount of time he’d been engaged with the drill wielding smiler, his team had been hard at work, but not without their own losses.
Ahead of him, Rhett could see Vader floating aimlessly through the compartment. As he watched the cutter’s body turn in a gentle spin, the man’s left shoulder and chest revealed itself as a grisly mess made by what the trooper assumed was a close quarters shotgun blast. A cloud of blood drifted along with him.
Quinn, Sparks, and Doak had their backs to the wall near the entrance to the compartment, each of them holding their pistols out in front of them. Nearby, the bodies of two smilers floated and leaked rapidly crystallizing blood from multiple gunshot wounds. The steady strobe of weapons discharge illuminated the interior of the crew barracks, and in the swirl, Rhett could see Dante and Drago unleashing withering amounts of fire upon multiple targets, some he could see and others he couldn’t. This salvage was hostile indeed, and as much as he wanted to get off this death ship and back to the relative safety of Vulture Six, the only way was forward.
Do the job or get retired, thought Rhett to himself as he pushed away from the wall and soared across the compartment towards the wild firefight, we’ve already paid the price for this haul.
The trooper stuck the landing at the entrance to the crew barracks. He could see through one of the shot-out windows that barricades had been erected on the other side of the primary door. When the trouble started, it looked as if at least a few people had closed the door, disabled the lock, and stacked what they could against it.
Cleary none of those people had been much of a tactician, thought Rhett. He moved through the open window and took a hastily aimed shot at a humanoid shape moving through the barracks towards the twins, or they’d have realized that the presence of the windows made this a terrible place for a last stand. He fired again and knew he’d scored a hit when the human shadow’s trajectory suddenly changed and the body went smashing through a half-broken window. Rhett turned on his mag-clamps and threaded his way through the debris while putting two more rounds through the enemy.
The trooper would have liked to have backup as he moved through the barracks towards the command hatch, though it wasn’t really the cutter’s job, or the engineer’s, to handle this sort of stand-up fight. Of course, they carried weapons, but it was the express duty of Rhett and the twins to do the heavy lifting when it came to hostile salvage operations. Vultures weren’t Reapers by any stretch of the imagination, and at that moment Rhett wished he had a few more solid shooters on the team. Six was one of the larger ships in the Vulture fleet and she only had a crew of fifteen, and just under half were presently on AG16 engaged in a bloody struggle for control of the ship. He was on his own, and Rhett could do little else but shrug and get on with the task at hand.
He moved cautiously through the series of small crew compartments and found himself in the mess hall, with the command deck hatch just on the other side. It seemed as if the big show of force on display by the twins had drawn the smilers away from this area, though Rhett never let his guard down.