Squad Marsters, led by Harold and his punishing rate of fire, slammed into a small cluster of defenders who had erected a makeshift barricade next to the main airlock. The furious barrage of buckshot kept the pirates at bay until Harold reached the barricade.
As Virginia shot down a pirate who tried to fire down on them from the top of a container, Boss Marsters leapt over the low, makeshift wall and knocked several hostiles to the ground as he fell. Behind him, Jada vaulted in and buried her boarding knife in the neck of a pirate who was attempting to raise his pistol to shoot the Boss. The young marine drove the point of her knife through the back of another pirate who was attempting to rise, then Boss Marsters was on his feet and swinging his own blade.
One of the pirates was wearing body armor and wielding his own wide-bladed knife, which he used to parry the Boss’s blade before catching Jada’s on his armored forearm. The pirate blocked another strike from Jada and managed to push her blade aside before stepping inside her guard and ramming his knife through her chest. The titanium blade punched through her battle armor and as the pirate pulled his blade out there was a brilliant spray of blood.
Harold screamed as he finally reached the fighting and smashed his shield into the pirate, knocking the man over. Harold pinned him down with the shield and Boss Marsters was able to end the pirate’s struggle by sliding his blade under the armpit articulation in the man’s armor and into his heart.
Samuel’s heart skipped a beat when he saw Jada go down and he found himself blinking back tears of rage as he sighted down his rifle and sent three rounds into the chest of a fleeing pirate. Mag shouted for the squad to advance and they pushed forward to join Squad Marsters at the airlock.
If they could take and hold the airlock, then Squad Ulanti would be on the way to support them and make the first real incursion into the depths of the space hulk. The few defenders still alive had dug in the far right corner of the compartment.
Virginia and Mag crept through the mess of containers in the shattered hangar bay to engage the last ditch defenders while the rest of the marines worked on breaching the airlock.
Patrick used his hand welder to burn through the bottom while Boss Wynn used his to come in through the top. Between the two of them they’d cut through the mag-locks in just over a minute.
Samuel knelt at Jada’s side and worked frantically to save her life. She was gasping as she looked pleadingly at Samuel. To the marine it looked as if the young woman had been stabbed through the lung and might have a chance of surviving if he acted quickly enough.
He opened his med-kit and found the emergency lung. He gritted his teeth as he slid the nozzle and feeder tube into her ragged wound without giving her painkillers, which might have hampered her ability to breathe by relaxing her. In this situation he needed her to be as agitated and awake as possible, despite how much it might hurt.
Once the nozzle was inside her punctured lung, Samuel hit the inflator and the emergency lung, contained in a small plastic box that he attached to her armor with the adhesion strips on the bottom of the box, the artificial lung began to inflate her real lung. Once that was done Samuel used the hypo multi-tool to inject a vial of faux flesh into the wound. The faux flesh would seal the wound and keep her real lung from re-collapsing.
His work was good, and soon Jada was stabilized enough to let her be. She would need to go to med-bay as soon as possible, and could still die from shock and complications if the boarding party did not conclude their business soon. For now, Samuel had done what he could as a medic, and he unslung his rifle in preparation to do what he could as a soldier, which was to secure the beachhead and take the space hulk.
Mag and Virginia took turns firing and moving as they advanced on the five remaining pirates who defended the landing zone. Once they were within shouting distance Mag gave them a choice.
“Listen up, space scum!” shouted Mag as she slotted another magazine and chambered the first round, “We are taking this ship one way or the other. The only choice you have now is whether you die in this room today or take your chances in the penal labor system. What’s it gonna be?”
“Sod off, company man! We’re nobody’s slaves!” shouted one of the pirates from behind cover.
“Have it your way,” grumbled Mag. She grabbed a frag grenade and yanked the pin, letting it cook for a few seconds before throwing it, all while a visibly shocked Virginia watched.
“You’re crazy Boss, you know that right?” said Virginia, crouched with Mag behind cover while the pirates shouted in surprise at the grenade landing in their midst.
“Now that we have a beachhead the hard part is done, I’d rather blow another hole in the ship than get killed at the last minute trying to take out stragglers,” Mag snarled before smiling wickedly as the frag grenade detonated, giving the pirates a grisly end.
Harold and Ben, each on their last shotgun magazine, stood ready to enter the airlock as Boss Marsters and Patrick pulled it open. Samuel had gently moved Jada to the side, just under cover of the makeshift barricade. Once the doors opened the two shield bearers leapt through the threshold and into a brutal firefight. Pirates had positioned themselves on either side of the corridor and were using scrap metal pieces in the hallways to create modest cover for themselves.
However, in the tight metal passageways, the breaching shotguns of the salvage marines revealed their truly devastating capabilities. As their shields bucked against the impact of enemy fire, the marines rapid-fired their shotguns with Ben taking the right passage and Harold taking the left. In the tight environment, the buckshot rattled and ricocheted to create a deadly cloud of projectiles that shredded defenders on either side of the corridor.
Those who weren’t killed outright were either wounded or driven back. Samuel fell in directly behind Ben, who, once his shotgun was empty, knelt to allow Samuel to stand over him. The shields all had a gun rest built into the top so that marines could execute this very maneuver.
Samuel was protected from the upper chest down while he rested his weapon on top of the shield to keep it steady as he fired upon the enemy. Boss Marsters performed the same maneuver with Harold on the other side. The marines paused to allow Mag and Virginia to join them, and each of the three person teams moved forward to the next hallway. At that point they slotted fresh magazines and held their position. The marines had expended all or most of their ammunition by that point, and though the fighting had only been going on for a few minutes, each one of the marines was exhausted by the furious pace of the battle.
“Squad Ulanti, beachhead is secure and you are clear to advance,” reported Mag as she scanned the hallway in front of her.
Samuel knew that just beyond their sight would be more pirates working to rally their defenses and prepare for the next phase of the battle. However, now that the beachhead had been established it would be tremendously difficult for the pirates to push the marines off the ship.
As Squad Ulanti pounded across the compartment floor to reach the airlock, Samuel wondered how the dozens of other boarding parties had fared in their initial assault. How many marines, he wondered, were now crawling through the insides of the space hulk?
When Squad Ulanti arrived, they carried with them several boxes of additional ammunition. For ten anxious minutes the new squad held the line while the survivors of the first two squads reloaded their magazines.
Once everyone had rearmed, Squad Ulanti pushed forward as what was left of Squad Taggart held the right corridor and Squad Marsters held the left. Lucinda led her squad down the main corridor and was immediately met with stiff resistance.
Samuel could hear shouting and shooting from his position behind Ben’s shield and found himself counting the seconds until they could advance. He felt, deep in his bones, that to stop was to die, and according to everything he’d been hearing about boarding actions, this was accurate. Boarding actions were inherently an all-or-nothing scenario, with the percentages of survival dwindling the longer the defenders were able to hold out.