Not for Two-Gun Berg. Both massive pistols started hammering out .50 caliber BMG rounds nearly as fast as a machine gun, the blazing pistols sounding like one continuous stream of fire as the armored Marine strode towards the door, clearing the monsters off of his fellow squad leader’s back and clearing the compartment.
Of course, they only had seven rounds apiece. The left-hand pistol dropped to its holster, the claw of the suit coming up with a magazine the size of a book and slamming it into place. There was barely a pause as the reloaded pistol blazed out again, the left hand unthinkingly readying another magazine. And still the Marine sergeant strode on, right up to the hatch of the compartment, firing into the corridor beyond, blasting fist-sized holes all the way through the hated monsters that had been harrying them for so long.
It took Berg a moment to realize that there were no more targets, in part because there was a stream of fire coming from the left-hand side of the hatch. Streams of tracers and cannon rounds had blasted the remaining Dreen away from the door and back down the corridor to the right.
Berg didn’t care, though. He automatically reloaded, then leaned out the door, extending both pistols down the corridor and continuing to engage the Dreen until the passageway was clear of anything but mangled alien bodies and runnels of purple blood.
“And that, boys and girls, is why we call him Two-Gun,” Corporal Lyle said, raising the barrel of his smoking machine gun. “Nice to see you, Berg.”
“You, too, Lurch. What took you so long: Stop to examine an alien mechanism?”
“We are not hitting chither,” Spectre snarled, watching the replay.
The nausea, which seemed to have passed with the extended stop to do repairs, was back in spades. It only made it worse that everyone was now in suits. And various systems, so far none critical, were breaking down. The boat was not really designed to be evacuated on an extended basis. There were a lot of systems on it that were not rated for vacuum.
And there was the problem that the suits had a strictly limited amount of air. Unlike the Wyverns, they did not have capacious air systems or recyclers. There were hook-up points at all the manned stations, but personnel who had to move around were constantly having to replace bottles.
And they weren’t hitting the destroyers. The targets were an order of magnitude smaller than the capital ships and it had taken up to a hundred shots to get a real hit on the bigger ships. So far, the Blade had done nothing but miss on the smaller ones.
“Weaver, you said something about integrating everything and staying open longer to get more accurate,” the CO said.
“It will also make us more vulnerable,” the astrogator pointed out. “And it will take at least a half an hour to implement.”
“Get to work,” the CO said. “XO, move to a chill position while Commander Weaver prepares the change. I’ll take the chance of getting hit for a chance to get one. What the hell. We’re already so grapped up, they could put one through us crossways and not take out anything important.”
“We picked up a pretty important secret from the Hexosehr,” First Sergeant Powell said. “Task Forces like this are controlled by a sentient. The sentients reside on the capital ships, like this one. Take out the sentient, the rest of the Dreen don’t know what to do on a strategic level. The Blade took out the other capital ship. It’s heading for home. If we find the sentient on this one…”
After doing what they could for the wounded Marines, Top had gathered the survivors and his reinforcement platoon in the corridor for a quick op order.
“The rest of the Dreen do what, Top?” Sergeant Priester asked. His armor was heavily scored and a dog-demon had destroyed the right leg of the suit so he wasn’t going anywhere. But with the spare ammo that the reinforcements had lugged into the ship, he was back to full load and ready to use it. “Leave? Quit fighting?”
“The Hexosehr say that they go find a sentient to tell them what to do,” Top replied. “Now, there’s that other capital ship, but it’s leaving the system. At the very least it’s going to buy us time. So that’s our mission. Find the sentient.”
“Top, we’ve been roaming all over this ship for the last couple of hours,” Priester pointed out. “We haven’t seen anything but nurseries and security. We’ve got no clue where—”
“Maybe we do,” Berg said, suddenly. He walked over to the compartment and pressed the closing switch. “Look at the symbols on the door.” They were impossible-to-decipher orange, glowing cuneiform.
“I don’t read alien, Berg,” Priester said.
“Neither do I,” Berg said, striding down the corridor to the end they’d entered from. “But the exact same symbol is here,” he continued, pointing to a symbol about a third of the way from the bottom. “And…” he continued musingly. “That’s interesting…”
“What you got?” the first sergeant asked, walking over and looking at the two symbols. “They’re exactly the same, aren’t they?”
“Yes, but look at the top one,” Berg said, pointing to the purple. “I’d thought the symbols matched. And the ones that match the door, do. But the top one… The aft symbol is straight rectangular script. The forward one is angled… I think it’s angled forward. The bottom is pointed that way. Gimme a second.”
He trotted back down the corridor and almost got lost for a second. But at a cross-corridor he bent down and looked at the orange symbol. Script on the forward corner was pointed forward.
“They are directions,” Berg said, trotting back. “The side that’s pointed is the direction of the compartment.”
“This one is pointed down the corridor,” the first sergeant said, pointing to a yellow one.
“That’s probably the shortest route to whatever yellow means,” Berg said, excitedly. “Look, there’s another orange one. I’d guess that that was an environmental compartment. Orange is environmental.”
“Six Orange,” the first sergeant said. “Four blue. One purple, one green and one red. A bunch of that light violet or whatever.”
“Okay, Top, let’s just assume for a second that they think like humans,” Berg said. “And the reason I think they do is that a lot of this stuff has been laid out the way that humans would lay it out. Six orange. I’d say that this is the most forward environmental section, starboard side. All the rest point back except one that points inward. That leads to—”
“Forward, port environmental section,” Top said. “Environmental Two or whatever. So the script probably just says E-2 or something like that.”
“Right,” Berg said. “Now, what’s the most important compartment on the ship?”
“Bridge,” Top said, looking at the script. “Conn. Whatever. All the multiples have two symbols, some of them matching even though they’re different colors. One, two, three, whatever. The singles have three symbols, there’s a match… in a second symbol, here and here. No problem, their version of an E. Top one is a single.”
“These are directions to the conn,” Berg said. “Maybe the command zone, Conn, CIC, whatever.”
“This, Two-Gun, is a wild-ass guess,” the first sergeant said, straightening his armor from its crouch.
“Yes, it is, First Sergeant,” Berg replied. “But it’s a place to start.”
“Right,” Top replied. “We need to reconfigure. Priestman, you’re with Sergeant Norman. His weapons control system is out so you’re both good to secure a position but that’s about it. You two are to secure this compartment and act as our fall-back position. We’re going to leave the extra ammo loads here, so it’s important. Set up the extra guns for support fire and try to keep Smith alive. Lyle and Seeley, you’re with Two-Gun, designated Alpha Team. Lyle, grab a cannon and cross-load ammo. Norman, you’re Bravo. Chief Miller, if you would be so kind as to take rear-guard with Gunny Neely, I’d be much obliged.”