“You are going to secure this corner,” Top said, chuckling. “Patrol this area and try to avoid contact. Got it?”
“I’m all for that one, First Sergeant,” Berg admitted. “You guys can feel free to drive the grapp on. I’ll happily assume my guard of this position until your return. How long do I give you?”
“One hour, then retreat to the holding area,” the first sergeant replied. “Do you understand your orders?”
“Aye, aye, First Sergeant,” Berg said.
“Come on,” Top said, looking around at the remaining four. “Let’s go.”
Berg watched their retreating forms and reached up to scratch his face. He felt like he was peeling from a sunburn. Which probably meant burns which he shouldn’t scratch so he stopped. Except for his eyebrow which was really… there wasn’t any hair, there. The claw of his suit, nonetheless, continued to scratch across the face of his trashed sensor pod as he considered his predicament.
All his usual sensors were down. He had external audio, two way, and commo, two way. Weapon traverse out, manual movement only, no cameras. Basically, he could lurch around, look through the soot-covered porthole to see where he was going and maybe lift and fire the machine gun. No water, and the heat from the suit was dehydrating him fast. Internal gravity, which he’d hardly noticed before, seemed over Earth normal. So not only was the suit hard as hell to move, he was trying to do it in a heavy gravitational field.
Maulk.
The machine gun was heavy as hell and there weren’t but twenty rounds for it so he leaned it against the bulkhead. He scratched his eyebrow again and considered the bottom of his suit. There was water pooled down there. He was pretty sure it was mixed with urine but drinking your own urine was actually recommended by some doctors, so at the very least it wasn’t going to kill him. And he was really thirsty. The problem was, there was no way to get to it inside the suit. What he needed was a straw. A really long straw.
There was a power feed that led from the reactor to the sensor pod up the starboard side of the armor. It was accessible through a box he could just reach…
“Heh,” he muttered. Wasn’t going to be using that insulator as a straw. The entire compartment was one mass of fused wiring, and opening it increased the already serious ozone level in the suit by an order of magnitude. “Grapp.”
He picked up the machine gun again, with difficulty, and paused at a skittering sound. Like… claws. On metal. Like…
He stood stock still as, across the open area, a group of dog-demons headed aft in the direction of the Marines that had just left. When they were past, he backed up, as quietly as he could in an unpowered suit, and fell through the hole in the deck.
“Grapp,” he muttered again, looking up at the hole. He must have made a noise that could be heard back on Earth, two hundred light-years away.
He’d been in some seriously grapped situations, but this one was starting to take the cake. He hated the idea, but he needed to hide. Find a compartment the Dreen didn’t seem to be using, or escape and evade back to the recycling compartment and link up with Norman and Priester. His suit, at this point, was more grapped up than theirs. Actually, that sort of cut out E Eing back to the recycling compartment. He could barely lurch along the corridors like a zombie; escape and evade was going to have to emphasize minimum distances.
He stumbled down the corridor to a T intersection, listened for movement, then looked both ways as carefully as he could. But it necessitated getting in the corridor and moving around in a circle, like an old time helmet diver. Careful was a relative term.
It also was a terrible place to hide because both corridors terminated in hatches that looked as if they went to lifts. And both the control pads glowed light violet. They’d run across those before and they always meant the door was locked.
He turned around again, trying to figure out which way to go, and heard the skitter of claws on metal from the way he’d come. He backed down the corridor, figuring he’d put his back to the elevator at the end of the port corridor and make a last stand. As the claws approached he hefted the machine gun, trying to get a sight picture through the soot-covered porthole.
Just as he figured the approaching Dreen were on the last stretch of corridor before his, he heard a whooshing sound behind him. Turning with difficulty, he found the previously locked elevator was now open, lit by a blue glow.
He stumbled into it and the door closed automatically…
“This grapping sucks,” Miller snarled. They’d found two routes that indicated headed to the purple area, both of them locked. Which just meant they were probably on the right track. “There’s got to be a way to blow this door down.”
“We might need to figure that out fast,” Gunny Neely said from the end of the short corridor. “We’ve got Dreen closing our position.”
“Chief Warrant, if you’d try to convince this door to open, I’d appreciate it,” the first sergeant said. “I’m going to join Corporal Lyle and the Gunny in securing this corridor.”
“On it,” Miller replied. “This time I brought demo.”
27
“Negative engagement,” the pilot said.
Spectre looked around the conn and wasn’t surprised that the warp/normal space lash-up they had been using so effectively for so long no longer worked. He could see the sun playing across the rubble where the sonar room used to be. Among other things, there was only half a bulkhead there. For that matter, there was a patch of sun working its way across Commander Weaver’s position. Fortunately, the mass driver round had penetrated behind the astrogation position, missing the commander. Unfortunately, it had punched through two more decks into the crew mess. The mess was overflowing with wounded from the battle; crew were struggling to seal it again before the wounded died of asphyxia.
“Tactical, Conn,” Spectre said, struggling to keep the fatigue out of his voice. The battle just seemed to go on and on.
“Tactical.”
The voice wasn’t the TACO.
“Who’s this? Chief Brooks? Where’s the TACO?”
“Sickbay, Conn,” the tactical chief replied. “Took a fragment to the chest. We got his suit patched but… It doesn’t look good.”
“Understood,” the CO said. “Engagement system is down.”
“We’re on it, Conn. Appears to be overheating of some of the interface chips. We’re attempting to repair.”
“Enemy status?”
“Sierra One, Sierra Seven, Sierra Fifteen and nine Bandits remaining in BatRon One. Six more Bandits, Sierra Six remaining from CruRon One. Estimate Bandits attached to CruRon One unable to return for replenishment. Sierra three, CruRon One, will be unable to engage for a minimum of three hours. Sierra Twelve dead in space. Primary threat, BatRon One, continues on course to intercept Hexosehr fleet. Sierra One has been engaging at long range but negative impact on Hexosehr fleet. Estimate, based on Hexosehr maneuvering delta, impact guaranteed at seven light-seconds. Estimate forty minutes to that range for Sierra One.”
“Got that,” Spectre said. “Conn out. Eng, Conn.”
“Go, Conn.”
“Status?”
“Primary drive system offline. Working on secondary. Drive is up. Spare neutrino generators ready for replacement.”
“Roger,” the CO said. “Conn, out.”
“Be interesting flying home like this,” Weaver said.
Spectre looked at his suit indicator and realized it was on a private frequency. The rest of the conn crew couldn’t hear it.