Poor Man's Fight (51 page)

***

It was exactly what they had taught Tanner not to do. Everett and Janeka put Oscar Company through frequent simulated small arms combat at the tail end of basic training, both in the squad bay and on
Los Angeles
. They showed the recruits how to find and use cover, how to move forward and how to retreat as a team under covering fire. Weapons and tactics school elaborated on all such topics. All of Tanner’s instructors instilled a sense of aggression and urgency in such matters, but they also wanted their people to survive.

Headlong charges with weapons blazing were strictly for the movies, they said. Wild exposure provided nothing but dead comrades. A crewman or a marine had to rely on his teammates to stay alive.

He had no teammates here. No covering fire. Nothing but a thin margin of surprise and whatever aggression he could dish out. Every passing second provided another chance for the enemy to realize that he was all alone. Yet as aggressive as his enemy could be, they apparently weren’t used to being on the receiving end.

Alarms rang throughout the ship. Tanner raced around a corner to find three men at the base of a ladder, each of them with weapons raised and wild, wide-open eyes. He let his feet fly out from under him, willingly falling down onto his back as they spun and opened fire.

Tanner’s plasma carbine was set to maximum spread. The bursts wouldn’t travel far, but they didn’t need to. He pulled the trigger half a second after his shoulder hit the floor with the gun aligned as close to parallel to the deck as he could manage. The trick worked; two of the men shrieked in sudden agony as their legs dissolved in a green flash.

The remaining man hosed down the corridor with bullets. Tanner felt something strike against his right calf. Slugs hit the padded armor of his jacket. Then his head jerked sideways involuntarily, almost rolling his body over with sudden force. A high-pitched ringing tone overwhelmed his hearing. Black and red spots clouded his vision. He lost his gun.

By the time it cleared two seemingly endless seconds later, he couldn’t believe he was still alive. He thought he’d been lying on the deck for an eternity. Yet the alarms still blared. No weapon filled his hands. He heard frantic, panting breath and the sound of metal sliding and clicking against metal.

Tanner forced himself to roll back up to one knee and then rise. In the middle of the passageway, standing amidst his mortally wounded comrades, a young man frantically tried to reload his assault rifle. The bullet that
clipped Tanner’s helmet had been the last from his magazine, and now he couldn’t reload the next one before danger came upon him.

Lunging forward, Tanner got his left hand around the pirate’s neck. He shoved his foe up against the bulkhead, grabbed for the pistol tucked into the pirate’s belt and pulled the trigger the instant his finger was around it. Only two inches of air and the lenses of Tanner’s helmet separated their eyes as the bullets tore through flesh, bone and lungs.

Stepping back, Tanner found his left leg much weaker than his right. Blood flowed from his calf. It had to have been from a ricochet; at full force, a bullet from that rifle should have done more damage. All those bullets, only to hit a glancing blow across his helmet and a ricochet through his thigh. The combat jacket stopped the rest. His luck held.

There was no time to deal with the wound properly. Tanner limped over to retrieve the plasma carbine still lying on the deck. Two steps told Tanner all he needed to know about his leg. Seconds mattered, but so did blood loss.

Tanner paused to pull the electrostatic tape from his belt.

***

“Where the fuck is Shango’s team?” growled Jerry.

“Not gonna be here in time,” answered
Lauren. She let the screen from her holocom fall away. “Have we still got a fix on only one assault element?”

“So far, yeah. Such a fucking mess in here I can’t even tell, but there’s gotta be more than one,” her ops boss grunted. “And goddammit, I’ve already got two different teams with friendly fire casualties. They’re rushing back so fast they don’t even know who they’re opening up on, and I can’t tell—dammit! Look! Hector just got wasted! He’s on this deck!”

Lauren bit back a curse. One of Jerry’s viewscreens relayed images of smoke and debris from yet another small security team’s demise. There were only three men with Hector to begin with, but now all she could make out was a smoky mess of blasted corpses and bulkheads with the paint melting off. At least one of their attackers was awfully liberal with some sort of plasma gun.

That sort of firepower presented a real problem.
Lauren considered her options. Jerry all but read her mind. “Seal off the bridge?” he asked.

“Not yet,” scowled
Lauren. She strode away from him, heading for the only hatch in or out of the compartment. “I want a shot at these fuckers first. Ted, Sarah, c’mere. Grenades. Mike, you’re on the hatch.” Lauren pulled the scattergun from its holster on her back.

***

The bridge sat just down the end of the passageway. It had a single broad hatch. Two more hatches lay before it to either side of the passageway, both only a few meters from his goal. The layout reminded him just a little of
St. Jude
, where the captain and XO both had their quarters near the bridge.

Crouched at the top of a ladder well at the opposite end of the passageway, Tanner considered his options. The lack of obvious defenses unsettled him, but he couldn’t allow time for attackers to come up from behind him. His limp wasn’t too bad now; electrostatic tape had it wrapped tight while adrenaline
blunted the pain.

He kept his gun trained on the bridge hatch. They had to see him out here on some sort of security camera. There had to be
an ambush ready.
Bridge at the end of the passageway, hatches to either side before I get there...

Clearing those two compartments
had to come first. Tanner rushed up, picked the hatch to his left more or less at random and had his hand on the large, wheel-shaped handle when the bridge portal flew open.

Gunfire followed. Tanner hid behind the heavy metal hatch he’d only just opened. Then the grenades flew from the bridge, one, then two more, then another. He leapt through the open portal, trying to shut the door behind him
in time. Though the bulkheads and the door held against the series of explosions that followed, the hatch wasn’t quite closed.  The shockwaves knocked him to the deck.

His only look at the compartment came as he got to his feet again. It had to be either the captain
’s or XO’s quarters, but the living area was a shambles. No one else occupied the compartment in that moment, though; nothing else mattered.

Tanner pushed the hatch open, swinging his plasma carbine around it while using it as cover. He heard quick, cut off words as he moved: “Did we—fuck!” Lasers and bullets struck against the hatch, which Tanner answered with a half-aimed blast from his much heavier weapon. He heard a scream. Someone shouted out, “Seal it! Seal the bridge!”

That was his cue. Tanner charged, firing a last blast of his weapon before it clicked dry. As before, the wide ball of plasma left smoke and screams in its wake, searing the bulkheads and passing straight through the limbs and flesh of humans who weren’t far enough out of the way. Tanner followed the same path.

Haste made all the difference. Heavy metal panels slid up from the deck and down from the overhead around the bridge portal, coming into place over the bridge hatch. Tanner dove headlong through the space between the thick walls before they met, landing unceremoniously on his faceplate and belly in the bridge before they slammed shut. His weapon fell from his hands, clattering off to one side.

The chaos created by his plasma blasts had not yet abated. “My arm!” someone shrieked in anguish. “Oh God, my arm!” Another voice howled in even greater pain, unable to form words. Sparks burst from a ruined control panel.

He rolled without thinking about it. Left was as good as right when he had no real clue where danger was yet. His legs collided with someone standing over him, sending the surprised pirate stumbling to the deck.

“Shit! Get him!” a woman behind Tanner demanded. “Jerry, fuck him up!”

Bullets ricocheted across the deck as Tanner scrambled away. He got to his feet, finding himself moving toward a tall, balding man at a control console. “
Lauren,” Jerry barked, getting out of his seat, “I’ll get—!”

A fist loaded with rage and fear cut Jerry off.
It landed forcefully against his jaw, eliciting a popping noise from the pirate. Tanner grabbed the stunned pirate by the shoulders, pulling him around to get something between him and the woman shooting at him. Jerry collapsed as soon as Tanner was past. The younger man dove for cover behind the control console, trying to get a sense of his surroundings, his opponents and his prospects. He had only a second, perhaps two.

There was a pistol tucked into an underarm holster sewn into his combat jacket. He remembered that. Tanner grabbed for it just as he looked up, spotting two more pirates behind yet another set of consoles just beyond the one sheltering Tanner. They both rose from their desks, eyes wide and hands drawing weapons. Shouted commands and screams of pain filled the bridge from every side.

Tanner got off the first shot. The pirate to his right jerked back, blood and bone bursting as Tanner’s bullet passed between his collarbones. His comrade fired away, shooting with more urgency than control. Janeka had taught her people to aim. A red flash of the enemy’s laser cut a line through the console above Tanner’s head. A second, straighter shot bit through his jacket across his left shoulder. The heartbeat Tanner spent training his pistol on his opponent proved worthwhile. He shot the pirate squarely in the face.

His shoulder burned with worse pain than anything he’d experienced, but the hit was blessedly narrow and cut a straight line through his flesh. He hadn’t lost feeling or control of his arm.

Sudden movement drew his attention to his left. Lauren appeared right next to him, stepping around the wrecked console to level her scattergun right at Tanner’s head. His left arm swung up immediately, pinning the weapon against the side of the console and pushing himself away as it went off. He could feel the heat of its blast rush by inches from his back, but more than that he felt Lauren’s foot as it swiftly came up into his side. The jacket did nothing to soften the blow. She kicked him away, but by then he had his gun pointed at her and fired.

Lauren
saw it in time to dodge behind Jerry’s console again. Tanner scrambled away. There was another pirate in his way then, a swarthy man in thick leather and silks with a pair of pistols that weren’t up in time to stop Tanner from tackling him. Again, Tanner spun around his opponent, using him for cover.

His foes weren’t as hesitant to fire this time as they had been when Tanner first tried this. The shot from
Lauren’s scattergun blasted the pirate forward onto Tanner in a bloody mess, sending both men to the deck under a rain of gore.

Once a
gain, Tanner’s helmet had saved his skull from a nasty landing against a metal floor. Falling on his back, Tanner found that he’d come nearly full-circle around the main control console. Jerry still lay on the deck, knocked out cold by Tanner’s punch. Lauren appeared from around the other side again; Tanner fired off two more shots from his gun to send her back behind cover while he rose. By the time she risked another shot, he was gone.

Lauren
couldn’t decide on a foul enough exclamation. Practically her whole bridge crew was down, most of them dead, all at the hands of a single guy. Her opponent moved with more urgency than grace, evading her next shot solely by virtue of slipping on the blood on the deck and landing on his side. Then he rolled behind the command and control table. Yet another of her bridge crew had hidden on the other side of that; once again, she heard shots ring out and saw that same pirate fall away with holes blown through his chest.

She paused for only a moment, but it was enough to assess the situation. One guy on the bridge, half-rushing and half-stumbling around. The
pirates were used to having the initiative, accustomed to being on the offensive and following at least some loose sort of plan. They had no time to regroup here. No time to regain their balance. They were on the defensive, and as a result they were dying and the bridge was getting smashed.

He didn’t come out from behind the astrogation table again. His gunfire ceased. He had to be reloading.
Fully fed up with this shit, Lauren rushed forward and launched herself over the command table.

Just as he slammed his fresh magazine home in his pistol, Tanner was tackled to the deck from above. He and his assailant tumbled. She recovered first; still on his side, Tanner swung his pistol around at
Lauren only to have it kicked painfully out of his hands. Her next kick came straight for his head. Her boot heel slammed into the left lens of his helmet with a crunch. The jarring blow put Tanner on his back once again. Pain shot through his left eye, which now refused to open.

She sprang to her feet, drawing a long, laser-heated knife. Tanner had a leg up in time to return her stomp to the face in kind as she lunged in.
Lauren shrugged it off, slashing downward through the fastening straps of his jacket.