"Based on past Turai encounters, those bastards need all their fancy technology to aim and shoot. If we can rig up some electronic decoys or possibly transmit a false transponder signal, say...a few miles away from the ship, it may just give us enough time to make the Gate jump. And yes, I'd like to have my gun back. I did promise the guy a fair chance to win it back when we returned. It's not over yet."
Angel looks over at the would-be bomb technicians.
"If I may? The Turai don't just have trouble with tech - they have a trouble with us *not* using tech. Rifles, claymores and camo netting pissed the hell out of them. We're on a predictable intercept path, have a fuckton of explosives, and a bunch of toys not on their radar...just sayin'".
Luis, though unable to hear the comments of those inside thanks to the door in the way, is thinking along similar lines as he keys his own radio, "Sir, I think if you can convince Swims-the-Black we deserve his help more than a 'warrior's death,'we might be able to win this."
Luis, though unable to hear the comments of those inside thanks to the door in the way, is thinking along similar lines as he keys his own radio, "Sir, I think if you can convince Swims-the-Black we deserve his help more than a 'warrior's death,'we might be able to win this."
Max shakes his head, thinking of the proper way to explain themselves to Swims-the-Black.
"Captain, we're sorry to inform you that we've negligently painted your ship as the Scourge of the Imperium. Better luck next time?"
*Looks at Hugh*
"I think you might have a better way of persuading the Whirr. All I've got is several duffel bags worth of explosives."
Not distracted by any of the other chatter, Semo moves his open hand closer to Max, a very serious expression on his face. "The detonator, please," he repeats, a little louder this time.
Not distracted by any of the other chatter, Semo moves his open hand closer to Max, a very serious expression on his face. "The detonator, please," he repeats, a little louder this time.
"Oh, right...of course."
*open hands it to Semo*
"Through all the excitement, I almost forgot I was ready to blow us all to hell. Sorry."
"We're not going down without a fucking fight, that's for damn sure. Get crackin' on it, Doc."
He keys the radio.
"I'm with you, Stanhill. If I can talk them into letting you in the cargo room, I have a few toys I want you to work on."
That done, he gets onto the vox.
"This situation is not hopeless. Far from it. We have fought the turai and prevailed. They have no idea who they're dealing with, but I'll let you know."
Semo accepts the detonator from Max. "Fortunately for all of us, I didn't."
Stepping back, Semo hands the detonator to Luis. "I'll let you figure out what to do with this, sargeant." Since Luis is the techy who's actually in the chain of command, he seems like the best choice to have the device.
Hugh's reveal results in a *Please hold...* from the vox. Precious seconds tick by. Luis and Arketta are half-blinded by the sudden flare of the interior daycycle lighting.
*Kovos, Clay, One-Ton, boy, stations. Wake up, get to your stations!* That vox was over Akamu's quarters' comm, not the cargo bay vox.
Now comes the response over the cargo bay vox: *Whether you are actually Narsai'i changes nothing. How will that stop us from being boarded?*
"They can't board us if we don't let 'em. They can't shoot us if they can't get a target lock. The first is in your hands, we can take care of the second.
But this isn't just about self-preservation. There's more at stake here than just our lives. You know as well as we do what the Imperium is capable of. If they can reach the homeworld, six billion people will die. Six billion people and an entire planet devastated, all so that the Imperium's ways can go unchallenged. And no matter what you do to appease them, eventually they'll just come and take what they want. Do you want to live under their heel, not knowing when they'll decide to crush you? Or do you want a chance to change all this?"
The cargo bay hatch disengages with a clunk cycling open to reveal Luis and Arketta.
*Then brace your mans. We thread needle. One-Ton, need speed.*
*Shipmaster, what are you doing? Why are you listening to these Nar-*
Yaris' voice cuts off, and you cannot discern what's being said, as Swims-the-Black's language requires a visual component and he's telling something to Yaris using only cursory words and grunts for emphasis.
"We should maybe seek the couches," Arketta says. "They won't be necessary, but it will be... uncomfortable otherwise."
Semo finally hands the deadman switch off to Luis.
Semo spends several moments looking about for Luis and not finding the sargeant. Meanwhile, the others negotiate / guilt-trip with the ship's crew. Moments later, the gantry opens and Luis walks in with Arketta, so Semo hands the detonator over.
"Retreat to the couches, sir?" Semo asks the Captain.
As the doors open, Luis rushes in, his mind conducting the paradigm shift from avoiding possible capture to creating distractions while they get to the Gate. When Semo hands him the deadman's switch, Luis gives him an acknowledging nod and (being very careful with the switch) does a quick inspection of the bombs. They're primative, just a couple pounds of C-4 modified to direct the force in one direction and then set to go off when the switch sends a signal. He looks them over, then at a rack of suits hanging off to one side. It doesn't take long to put two and two together. He starts looking over the charges, trying to visually gauge if it's possible to put one in a suit in such a way that the explosion could damage a nearby ship when it went off. As he surveys the lay of the land, he turns enough to let Hugh know he's talking to him, "Sir, I have an idea."
Stanhill gathers his demolitions kit and the team heads out of the cargo bay towards the crash couches and emergency suitlockers. You pass the shipchef and the crew quarters and are a few steps from the inertial restraints referred to as "crashers" when you hear the distinctive short whine of an Imperial-style slivergun.
"I told you we're stopping!" Yaris' voice is hysterical, but the pained groans from the bridge indicate the shipmaster still lives.
Clay steps halfway out of the bridge doorway, longarm in hand and leveled at the group. "Get in the crashers, we're hotstopping."
From the shadows cast inside the bridge, it seems that there's at least one more crewman in there. Probably Kovos, since you'd have seen One-Ton leaving Engineering.
It never rains but it pours, you can't help but think.
You only catch snippets of Swims' plaintive and astonished pleas. She can't leave that many people to die - turn her back on her own homeworld, on her crew - how could she after they rescued her from her lonely fate in the void?
"Rescued me?!" Yaris babbles. "You've got a milspec pantaki staring you in the face and you still don't get it! You were meant to find me! What are the chances you find an interceptor pod in deep space, with a pilot who's just barely alive? They tell you during sim, when you eject with no friendlies inbound, nobody comes back from that. Not ever. I was planted on this heap, planted to find terrorists, rebels, and Narsai cultists and I end up with the Narsai'i themselves."
"Clay..." Black grunts.
"Sorry Master, she's right," the lime-haired second replies without taking his eyes off the team. "Akamu's our Homeworld, and we ain't givin' that up. Not fer these fools, not even fer you. Kovos, plug Yaris in." Clay tongues the vox in his jumpsuit collar. "One-Ton, I'm gonna need all power to retros on Yaris' mark."
A pause.
"One-Ton? Power to cruise engines, we're hotstopping."
*No.*
"Whaddya mean 'No', you hairy fuck?!"
"It doesn't matter!" shouts Yaris. "I'm jacked; I'll brake with what we've got. Get the Narsai'i to the crashers then get yourself stowed!"
"You heard her," Clay says, motioning towards the seats with his longarm.
Davis spins on his heels and takes off for the main stairwell. Clay brings up the rifle but Semo uses Davis' distraction to charge Akamu's second. Davis leaps clear down to the stairwell landing, slamming into the locked Engineering hatchway with a slam that takes his breath.
For the first time since you've been aboard, the hatch opens. Davis squeezes through the door when it's only halfway open, crosses the distance to a second door marked with warning glyphs, and throws it open to reveal an impossibly complex barrel-shaped chamber. Armored pipelines and conduits run to and from a smaller cylinder that thrusts back toward the ship's aft. A hemispherical control console juts from the "floor" and intersects the chamber's far wall. Davis looks at the ladders inlaid into the floor and realizes that both the current "floor" and the far "wall" are both viable "down" surfaces. It's very confusing, and a much more pressing matter is the smallbore handgun One-Ton is pointing at Davis' head. He quickly recognizes Davis and slides the weapon into his toolbelt.
"Whaddya doin'?! Get in the crasher!" One-Ton shouts at Davis. He waves to one of two crash couches located to either side of the main hatchway. The shipboy is already secured in one of them.
There's a snap from the topside crashers, then a scream of pain from Clay.
---
A faint beam lances from Clay's longarm and slams into Semo's abdomen. It burns a palms'-breadth swath through his vest and cascades immense heat off the armor's prototype strike plate. Semo sucks it up, draws his sword, and puts his weight behind a mighty swing that meets Clay's rifle mid-strike. The Turai blade cleaves through the weapon and cuts into the ship-second's collarbone. Blood splashes across gray deckplates and sizzles where the spray hits Semo's piping hot armor. Clay staggers back into the circular bridge chamber, clutching his wound but still in the fight.
From Semo's perspective, they're dancing in space. A holographic starfield fills the cockpit, leaving only the command chair and the people within. Yaris is standing, keeping the chair between her and the bridge doorway. A whiplike silver cable extends from a 6-inch plug at the base of her skull. An inner glow seems to light her golden eyes. The stinger pistol shakes slightly in her hand. Swims-the-Black lies slumped along one edge of the room, trying to keep what passes for Whiirr entrails from spilling out of the ragged buzzsaw wound in his stomach. Kovos is still spinning around, reacting to the sudden violence. He carries a wickedly sharp cutting tool and a small handgun.
The starfield suddenly spins in time with a sudden sense of vertigo. Yaris must have just flipped Akamu around, meaning to fire the cruise engines to brake the ship. The now-deadly hum you remember from blastoff rises throughout Akamu's interior like an approaching freight train.
"Overload the navigational interface that Yaris is plugged into!" Davis yells. "She can't fire the thrusters until she's strapped in, so we don't have much time. How much power can you reroute into her interface?"
One-Ton stares at Davis for a critical second through his beard, replies "But she CAN fire'em from the bridge-", then just nods. He points to a morass of spaghetti wiring, shouts "Yank that shit!" and runs for one of the wall conduits with a hand cutter. Sparks fly off the armored casing as One-Ton buries the cutter, but it'll be a few more seconds before he cuts through to whatever he needs to cut through to.
Hugh breaches left into the bridge behind Semo and brings his HK45 to bear against Kovos. The older crewman, Yaris, and Clay flinch from the gunshots as Hugh's .45 slug skips off Kovos's skull. Kovos falls backwards, sitting down hard on the faux black void of the bridge, but manages to fire his handlancer. The beam sears into Hugh's armpit right between his chest and shoulder. His upper sleeve blows away in a cloud of embers, his flesh boils, and Hugh's eyes blur from the pain.
Luis is third man in, and the bridge is getting chaotic. Luis draws down on his first target - Yaris - but sweeps left as Hugh gets hit. He shoulders past his captain and puts two into Kovos' chest from two meters. At least one of the shots was a through-and-through; the old man crumples onto the deck and lies still.
Pain explodes in Semo's abdomen, but fortunately, his armor takes the brunt of the damage. Gritting his teeth in an animal snarl, he charges forward with his Turai sword. The alien blade flashes out, carving through both the man's weapon and shoulder.
Despite the wound, green-hair doesn't appear to be out of the fight yet. Semo stays on him as tenaciously as a bulldog, closing the gap and bringing the sword to bear once again.
"Take out the female!" Semo yells at the Specialists.
Max whips the webbing off the team's stowed gear. He knows his own beam rifle is unpowered - they needed it thus so they could get through Imperial scanners - so he grabs one of the SCAR-Hs, flicks the selector, and lines up for a kneeling shot on Yaris.
At the same time, Angel draws on Clay and squeezes off three rapid shots. Semo gets spattered with more of the crewman's blood as Angel puts a perfect grouping into Clay. The lime-haired man falls dead before Semo can land a second sword-stroke.
Everyone can tell that Akamu's crew is not used to Terran gunfire. You're used to it, and your ears are still ringing from the series of reports.
Rifles are a level of magnitude louder than handguns. The gunblast from Max's shot thumps your chest. The round hits Akamu's command chair, penetrates, and hits the woman mid-torso. She falls sideways into the chair with a hysterical yelp of pain.
"Martian piece of shit!" Mellish shouts as he realizes his sidearm, a Turai stinger, is depowered just like Max's beam rifle.
"Mine works," Taylor smirks. He waits for a clear shot and fires - Yaris' command couch provides enough of a barrier to stop his .45 slug, however.
Dieter
