Hugh steps in as Davis gets shoved back and kicks Ngawai in her knee. She buckles just enough to catch Hugh's buttstock across her face. The Delta captain actually cracks the faceplate and Ngawai reels. Before anyone can press the advantage, she fires a shot at Davis that leaves a glowing crater in the airlock, then returns Hugh's buttstroke in kind. Hugh sees stars for a second as Ngawai's strike bloodies his cheek. Beside them, the outer airlock doors start their inexorable slide open.
Angel would rather not see Arketta be the victim of a coup de grace. He's got no special AP rounds, not man-cannon, no ray gun. He just does what he always does. Aim and shoot 'em in the neck. The would-be sharpshooter Turai clutches his neck as blood geysers from a sudden gunshot wound. He drops to his knees, gurgling. No time to put him down, though - Angel fires a second shot at the Imperial standing over Arketta with a sword. It's a hasty shot, but it whips the Turai's head back nonetheless. The sword clatters to the ground as the Turai staggers back. Arketta's safe for a few more moments.
Mellish keeps firing even as he hits the catwalk. The fusillade of 7.62mm stitches a ragged line up the deck and across the beamer-armed Turai still out in the open. Blood spatters as Mellish scores real hits and the Turai falls forward onto his face, mere feet from cover.
Then there's a click. The Hammer's run dry. The wounded Turai's still moving, and the man with the sword was waiting for something like this to happen...
"Reload!" Mellish calls. "Rel- oh, fuck it!" He goes for his HK45 as well as the stinger he brought with him from Earth.
Malenko's crew, frozen for several seconds by the sudden ultraviolence, finally figure out they shouldn't be where the beams and bullets are. There are still a number of Leno's men inside their ship, and these people outside clearly mean to do them and their mistress harm. One of the older crew shouts something unintelligible over the gunfire and the crew swarms back onto the assault ship, carrying as many children inside with them as they can carry.
Talia het Malenko's eyes open on Armageddon. She can't move; Leno's too heavy and she's too wounded. Blood froths at her lips. If there's no escape, there's only revenge. Malenko fishes Leno's sidearm from his hip, struggles with it, and looks for Ngawai. No dice. She tries for whoever she can see - in this case, Semo.
"Going to... mount your head on... my bow..." she gasps, aiming down the shaking barrel. The handlancer snaps but as one might expect from a wavering grip and senses dulled by pain, the beam sparks off the wall. Semo and his opponent both flinch.
Back at the ship, Luis, Max, Swims, and One-Ton finally finish their repairs. The Morningstar is back online, powered up, and ready to leave as soon as the shadowport releases the lockdown.
"Things are lookin' up," One-Ton quips, settling access panels back into their sconces.
Back at the ship, Luis, Max, Swims, and One-Ton finally finish their repairs. The Morningstar is back online, powered up, and ready to leave as soon as the shadowport releases the lockdown.
"Things are lookin' up," One-Ton quips, settling access panels back into their sconces.
"Yeah, for once. I wonder what's keeping our guys..." replies Max.
"...Maybe I can find out. Hacking into the station's security cameras shouldn't be that big of a chore. I should probably also look into a manual lockdown release should the whole thing go tits-up."
Though it seems futile, the stomp accomplishes exactly what he intended. Pinning the Turai in place, she's unable to avoid Semo's blade. It's not a mortal blow, but it's enough to weaken her.
That proves true as she attempts to stab him in return. There is no strength behind her sword, and Semo is able to easily bat it away.
Suddenly, there is a scorching sound on the wall next to Semo, causing him to jerk slightly. Instinctively, he snaps a glance in that direction. Though he doesn't have time for a good look, it appears that the shot came from the direction of where Leno and Malenko went down.
Still, right now, he needs to deal with this Turai. As he looks for an opening, Semo turns a bit on the foot trapping the Turai in an effort to put her more between himself and where that shot came from. Grabbing at her weapon hand with his free one, he stabs upwards towards her heart with his sword.
(no reason to expound on Gordon's post; the dice fell exactly as he describes)
Semo's blade slides up under the layered torso armor and the Turai goes limp, skewered right through the heart. The sergeant turns to see a Turai, armor battered by shrapnel and bullet, charge up the stairs at Mellish. The Hammer, lying prone on the catwalk, rolls over and fends off the Turai's first advance with frantic kicking, but the Turai redoubles his attack, half-stabbing, half-falling onto Mellish. The Hammer screams as the sword pierces his strike plate. His opponent gets to his feet and yanks the blade free amidst a spray of crimson. Mellish curls and lies still.
Mellish's attacker is not alone - a bloodied Turai cranes around the corner of a support beam not 20 feet away and fires at Semo! Semo, still grasping the dead Turai, pulls her in front of him. The beam rifle makes a click as its IFF circuits prevent it from firing at Semo's human shield!
South of Semo's war, the Turai with the neck wound tries a one-handed beamer shot at Angel. The shot's absorbed by the catwalk, leaving dripping metal on the deck and acrid smoke in the air. His supine partner keeps firing at Angel - this time his aim's good! Deadly energy sizzles Angel's upper leg, leaving his thigh raw, bleeding hamburger.
The last Turai picks his sword back up and trudges painfully towards Angel's position, clearly shaking off a concussion or worse. Angel's getting nervous - three Turai all to himself, and his cover's not going to hold up much longer. Suddenly there's a buzzsaw whine from behind the swordsman as Arketta returns Angel's favor with her stinger. The Turai staggers forward and falls. His back's been shredded down to meat by a full salvo from Arketta's little handgun. The bleeding ex-Turai lets the empty weapon fall and dizzily fishes for something else to shoot with.
Max trots his Toughbook down to the hangar terminal and hotwires the spaghetti-like cabling into his translator port. A few moments' work and Max is viewing the apocalypse in B91 from the industrial monotask drones' onboard sensors. The view's partially obscured by the bulk of Malenko's ship, but it looks like... Mellish is down... Arketta's down but moving... Angel's in trouble, Semo's... well, he's doing all right. And... Max doesn't see Hugh or Davis anywhere. There are random children ducking and covering in the middle of the firefight, and that fat fuck Leno's missing most of his skull and bleeding all over some woman in a gold dress. Dead port thugs are everywhere.
Considering that Leno's got the access to lift the lockdown, and furthermore, their deal was that he didn't lose any men, and now he's lost just about ALL his men, Max considers it wise that he's chosen to illicitly lift the Morningstar's launch restrictions.
He gets on that and finds that the system he's in isn't even connected to port control. He'd have to head out, find the port authority or some fool with a widget with access, and hack in from there. Alternatively, the end result is a mechanical problem. The bay doors may be shut, but there has to be some way to force them open...
Wait. Max looks back at his hangar's ruined airlock. If those bay doors open to space, does the shadowport have backup blast doors or "firewalls" that would seal off the section? If he juryrigs the door mechanically, would the port even know to activate said blast doors? How would they lift the lockdown if the damn airlock's not fixed? Was Leno lying all this time? Were they going to keep them here while they fixed the hangar airlock? Who was going to TELL the port guys to come fix the airlock? Leno? He's dead, and Max definitely is getting a bad feeling about all this.
The airlock melee turns nasty. Buttstocks give way to pulse-beams as Hugh and Davis bring the business ends of their weapons to bear. From outside (and on Max's screen), the airlock strobes with a flurry of beamer discharges punctuated by a brighter flash.
Inside, it's a blur. The trio of combatants move as best they can while spraying deadly beams into, as Davis put it, a phone booth. Errant pulse-beams lance out into the docking thoroughfare, felling more than a few bystanders. The airlock walls glow with waste heat and impact craters - thank God the outer doors are open. The gunfire's paused by a flash that blinds everyone for a second. Nobody's been hit. The only victim was Davis' beam rifle, struck by... well, it could've been Hugh or Ngawai at this point. The Turai weapon has a gaping hole in it and smoke pours from the inner workings.
Angel nods to Arketta and makes a mental note to compliment Davis on his psychological warfare techniques before falling over on his left side for a better shot at his two remaining Turai.
*BANG*
The neck-shot Turai catches another round in the throat. His head lolls and his body drops - likely a severed spinal cord. Muffled choking noises from the downed Turai indicate an impending agonizing fate.
Where are their frisbees? Angel wonders. Oh yes. WE have them.
*BANG*
Angel's second shot makes a 7.62mm hole in the supine Turai's helmet. The Imperial soldier lies back on the deck and twitches.
Malenko, cursing her fate this entire time, looks for a target who's not carrying one of her own men as a shield. Ah, a wounded woman in the open. Malenko figures even she can hit an unmoving target at this range.
"Bakata!" The common Imperial curse echoes faintly from under Leno's corpse as a handlancer beam craters the deck 10 feet from Arketta.
The muffled sounds of a second battle waft from the assault ship's airlock and open cargo bay like the ocean inside a conch shell. Stinger-whine, screams, lancer reports, and the clangs and clashes of melee would indicate that Leno's men inside the ship are putting up more of a fight than their dead friends did.
Wait. Max looks back at his hangar's ruined airlock. If those bay doors open to space, does the shadowport have backup blast doors or "firewalls" that would seal off the section? If he juryrigs the door mechanically, would the port even know to activate said blast doors? How would they lift the lockdown if the damn airlock's not fixed? Was Leno lying all this time? Were they going to keep them here while they fixed the hangar airlock? Who was going to TELL the port guys to come fix the airlock? Leno? He's dead, and Max definitely is getting a bad feeling about all this.
Max keys his radio.
"One-Ton, time to heat up the ship's systems. The deal we had with the port authorities has gone South and we're going to need to get out of here in a hurry. I'm going to juryrig the bay doors to open remotely."
Luis is on the bridge, sitting in a simulated cockpit, practicing his presicion flying under Swims watch when his radio (siting on a console for the whole time to serve as a bridge communicator) crackles over the secondary channel.
Quote:
"One-Ton, time to heat up the ship's systems. The deal we had with the port authorities has gone South and we're going to need to get out of here in a hurry. I'm going to juryrig the bay doors to open remotely."
He ends the sim, and grabs the radio, "Stanhill here. One-Ton's in the engine room. I'll start preflight." Setting it back down, he starts suiting words to actions, running down the checklist he's been working with.
Davis slams his hand into the wall, completely through the fizzling holographic display. The outer airlock door, freshly open, starts its downward slide.
"You scrofa-birthed fuc- mrrrphh!" Ngawai shouts and is muffled by Davis sidestepping his opponent's gunbarrel and slipping a neck seal onto Ngawai. She counters by slapping Davis' face with the white-hot beamer barrel and pushing off into a wall. The hold broken, Ngawai dives under the rapidly-closing door - and is grabbed by Hugh! The Delta officer drags Ngawai kicking and screaming back into the airlock, where she's battered by a kick to the head from Davis.
Hugh releases the wiry bitch and brings his beamer to bear, aiming to blow off an extremity or three. Ngawai's still got a grip on her weapon and swings it up at Hugh. Two simultaneous shots later, Hugh joins Ngawai on the floor. The airlock is all sweat and smoke, but nobody's down for the count yet. Ngawai's abdomen plating's been fused into a single sheet that hisses with heat castoff, while Hugh looks like he blocked the Death Star with his chest. SCAR mags spill from his burning LBV, and white-hot cinders from the ruined strike plate leave angry burns on cheeks and forearms.
---
Back at the ship, Luis starts powering up the Morningstar.
CIC holos online, bay doors cleared and locked, airlock secure, inertial dampers set to local, cruise engines hot, impellers at idle, atomic batteries to power, turbines to speed.
Max heads outside with his Toughbook, a toolkit, and a vacuum suit, aiming to jury-rig the shit out of the huge hangar doors. He attaches the safety line to the airlock clasps and spools out enough to get him to the rather hefty access panels that ring the bay doors.
Huh, he thinks once he gets the protective sheath off the doors' metal guts. That's easier than I thought.
Apparently, it's child's play to key the doors to open. Remotely? No, that's out of Max's ability with the tools he has access to at the moment. But if all he needs is to crank the damn things open and float back to the Morningstar, that won't prove to be a problem.
He spares a glance back at the gaping, slagged hangar airlock. It might be a problem for everyone else on the station, but fuck it. Max'll live, he has a spacesuit.
The Turai had his sword raised, ready to decapitate Mellish. Instead, he tumbles down the catwalk stairs. Angel can't determine the damage from his vantage point, but Semo notes the blood trail and the fact the Turai's still moving. Putupu's got other things on his mind, though. Screaming bloody murder, he hefts his dead Turai over one shoulder and charges the last Turai gunman! The Imperial backpedals, firing twice to no effect. The beam rifle refuses to fry its teammate.
Semo's feet pound the deck, his heart pounds in his chest, and he prays the IFF holds out. It does, and the Turai's too focused on shooting Semo to block the sword. There's a slurk as Semo buries his blade up to the hilt in the Imperial soldier's torso. Suddenly supporting two dead Turai, Semo drops to a knee. His human shield slides off his shoulder while he frees his sword from his new victim.
There's screaming now from where Malenko fell. The children are kicking her, biting, tearing at her chest wound. A little girl suddenly sprawls on the deck, a handlancer wound sizzling in her chest. Malenko gets a second shot off that showers sparks off the hangar ceiling before one of the kids get her gun away from her. It's all over then. Three, four, five shots, then the kids all back slowly away from what they did.
The battle inside the assault ship still rages, as does the vicious melee inside the airlock.
Crack! Davis swings his shattered beamer into Ngawai's own rifle as she brings up like a quarterstaff, warding off the agent's attack. Then Hugh figures out he's not dead and pounces the woman. He manages to hold her arms above her head long enough to land a flurry of wild punches to her torso, ribs, and one nice hit to the helmet that bloodies Hugh's knuckles. Ngawai tries to headbutt Hugh off of her but Verrill headbutts her first, using his superior size to keep the woman pinned for the moment.
The inner doors cycle open, releasing a cloud of acrid smoke and the grunts of close combat into the hangar.
Davis can't get a good hit in while Hugh's on top of things. He tries to wrestle Ngawai's gun away but a few blind shots keep him back. Hugh continues his assault, releasing his grip to steady his own position and laying three punches across Ngawai's head, UFC style. Her blood-smeared helmet takes the hits as she lets her gun go to protect her face, gets her legs up across Hugh's face, and pushes him away. Hugh gets in a kick as he's thrust backwards but the cramped airlock isn't a boxing ring. Hugh's head bounces off the now-shut outer door and the Delta captain blacks out.
Ngawai's not taunting anymore. There's blood inside the helmet as well as outside, and she's sluggish - too sluggish to avoid Davis' rifle remnant as it crashes across her shoulder, spilling her back to the deck.
She starts for her beam rifle, but Davis is between her and the weapon. She alters her plan, looks toward Hugh's unconscious form, and frees his combat knife from its sheath.
"Need a little backup in here!" Davis shouts as he draws his pistol and aims it at Ngawai. "It's over, Ngawai. Just drop the knife. I'm trying to keep you alive, the others on my team might not have the same ideas."
Sometimes you can make fear work for you, cause opponents to make mistakes. This is one of those times. The gunman is too friightened to think about taking an aimed shot past the meatshield Semo's carrying as he bears down on the Turai.
That mistake costs him his life. Semo's pigsticker carves through the vaunted armor like so much tissue paper and releases the man's guts to pour across the floor.
Looking around, Semo sees that the children have settled accounts in their own way. Good for them.
Then, a cry from help from the spook brings Semo back to his feet and charging for the airlock, sword in hand.
There's a plunk plunk behind Semo as Angel puts down the last Turai. The big man skids around the airlock door in time to hear Ngawai respond, "If you were gonna shoot me you'd have done it by now. You drop YOUR weapon or I slit your man's thro-"
*POP POP*
Ngawai raises up to threaten Hugh, but now she falls back across him as Davis fires .45 slugs into her lower leg. She throws Hugh's knife at Davis - the blade thunks into Davis' thigh, staggering him against the airlock wall...
And when she tries to push off for another try at the airlock controls and her leg fails her, when she sees the blood-caked sword in Semo's hand, then Ngawai throws her hands up, pushing herself into a sitting position in the corner of the airlock.
Davis holsters his pistol and resists the urge to pull the knife out of his leg. "I said I was trying to keep you alive." He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a pair of zip tie cuffs and tosses them to Semo. "Cuff her, Semo."
"Semo, don't cuff me," Ngawai says to the big man. "Just let me go. I'm more trouble than I'm worth." Her faceplate is cracked, smeared inside and out with Hugh's blood as well as her own. "We can call it even. You killed Harlon, I wanted payback, I fucked it up. Take your money back, I don't care, just let me go. Just open the door and forget you saw me. I'll do the same."
Davis hauls himself upright and leans against the wall. "Sergeant, if we wanted to let her go, we could have just let her go. At the bare minimum, we need to hold onto her until we make contact with our new friends. Until then, she's a liability to have wandering around. I can cuff her myself if you don't want to, but we'll have to pull this knife out of my leg first. Don't want her using it to stab me again, right?"
Unfortunately for Ngawai, he doesn't take orders from aliens. Then again, the spook is only tangentially part of the chain of command. He looks down at Hugh, realizing just now that the captain is out.
"You get cuffed until the captain can decides otherwise," he says to Ngawai. "Until then, you're a prisoner. You can hope that he doesn't bear you too much ill will."
Semo has seen enough cop shows to know the drill. "Lie down on your stomach with your arms out to the side." The sword and the blood all over him that isn't his testifies strongly enough as to the or else.
Watching Ngawai follow Semo's orders is a comedy of errors. Sitting in the corner with one good leg proves to be quite the tricky start position. She pivots to the side, her bad leg sticking out like a crane, falls over onto Hugh again, pushes off him until she's prone, then splays her arms out for Semo. He sheathes his sword and cuffs the prisoner.
Semo and Angel both have a good view of the assault ship and the aftermath of the battle from where they are. The stunned children are joined by another boy, who runs from the ship's cargo bay and starts picking through Leno's gear. The battle inside Malenko's ship appears to be subsiding. A few last faint whaps leave only the moans of the dying to permeate hangar B91.
Admiral Duck Sauce
