Echoes of Avarice

by Brendan O'Neill

  “I don’t suppose we’re leaving these tunnels anytime soon,” Jackie huffed as he labored up the handholds between two decks. “These ladies are lovely, but they’re not exactly carrying their own weight.” Needing one arm to hold onto their burdens, he and Akshay had to brace their backs into the wall of the tube to move their other hands up the rungs.

  “We have to lose whoever’s following us,” Wild Bill whispered as he crawled into a horizontal tunnel. “We’re going to be in these tunnels for a while. Let someone else carry her if you need to.”

  Jackie’s answer was simply a grunt of effort as he heaved the woman onto the lip of the horizontal tunnel, crawled past her, then grabbed her wrist to drag her along. It wasn’t graceful but doing so allowed him and Akshay to move substantially faster.

  Connor looked back at Wild Bill when he arrived at each hatch and junction for direction in the twisting maze. The Texan directed him into a dizzying mix of twists and turns so, when they did leave the tunnels, Connor could only tell they were two or three decks higher than before. They crawled into an unremarkable hallway that ended in a T-section about fifty yards in either direction.

  “Connor, check right,” Wild Bill said. “Akshay, left,”

  Akshay placed the woman he carried near the mouth of the hatch, and each man moved to his respective position. They took cover behind exposed bulkheads, as the remaining group crawled out of the tunnels. Lavi was the last out, and quickly closed the panel behind her to conceal their exit.

  When Connor looked down the hallways of his T-section, he saw the left side extend at least a hundred yards to what looked like an airlock, and the right finished in a stairway at about twenty yards. He was signaling his find to Wild Bill when automatic weapons fire rang out from the other end of the hall, followed by the deep booms of shotguns.

  “This direction’s out!” Akshay called as he sprayed bullets from his pistol with the extended clip. “I have them pinned down for now, but we’ll be overrun soon enough!”

  “Stairs here!” Connor shouted. He started toward Akshay to help, but Wild Bill motioned for him to stay.

  “Stairs are out!” Wild Bill called as Lavi moved to assist Akshay. “We won’t get more than a deck before they surround us.”

  “I also have an airlock, but it’s about a hundred yards down the hall!”

  Wild Bill raced over and looked down the hall at the airlock as Connor covered the momentarily empty stairs. “I see one intersecting hallway between us and the airlock. If we can make that before they cut us off, that’s our way out.”

  Jackie transferred his guest to Charisma and bolted over to help Akshay. The surgeon labored under the woman’s weight but didn’t complain. In seconds, Lavi strapped the bridge she was carrying to Heyerdahl’s back like it was a back pack, then picked up the second woman. She took her to Connor who slung her over his shoulder before returning to cover the stairs with his pistol.

  With Akshay and Jackie covering the far hall, and Connor watching the stairway, Wild Bill and Lavi raced to the intersecting hallway. As soon as they ascertained it was clear, he signaled for Connor to send Heyerdahl and Charisma down.

  The two were only half way down the hall when one of Paxton’s guards rushed out of the stairway. He didn’t bother to slow from his run as he sprayed bullets from his pistol wildly down the corridor. Fortunately, his bullets splattered into the corridor walls.

  Connor fired one shot, hitting the huge man directly in the center of his chest. He’d expected the man to fly back into the wall like in his televids. Or a giant hole to open in his chest. But neither happened. A small red dot appeared on the man’s chest, then his arms went limp and his just fell straight down. No flipping through the air. No arms and legs flapping about. Just a body that acted as though its power switch was flipped off.

  Connor was so shocked that he didn’t notice the second guard right behind the first. Smarter than his partner, he stayed in the stairwell for cover, only sticking his head and weapon out far enough to get a clean shot. It wasn’t until the bullet ricocheted off the bulkhead next to him that Connor snapped out of his reverie.

  Waiting until the guard’s head poked out again, Connor fired a shot that grazed his ear. Shouting and cursing rolled out of the stairwell. If it weren’t for the weight of the woman slung over his right shoulder, Connor would have jumped when he felt a hand on his left shoulder.

  “As soon as I shoot, move to the next bulkhead,” Jackie shouted over the cacophony of weapons fire. He leaned out into the hallway and zeroed in on the guard leaning out of the stairway. He’d switched his pistol to semi-automatic fire and two lightning quick shots put two clean holes into the man’s head.

  Connor rushed toward the next bulkhead as quickly as possible with the woman’s still form slung over his shoulder. He was immediately thankful for his intense physical training considering this woman weighed more than Fraser had and wasn’t wearing anything for him to hold onto.

  He glanced toward Wild Bill and Lavi on his way, noticing them firing down both directions of the intersecting hallway. Heyerdahl and Charisma were right behind them, hiding behind the nearest bulkheads. When Connor turned, Jackie and Akshay were already moving into the hallway behind him, protecting themselves with the exposed bulkheads.

  They tried to hurry, knowing their only salvation lay outside, but the constant hail of bullets kept them from moving too fast. In order to avoid enemy fire, they were forced to leap frog down the corridors, from bulkhead to bulkhead. The coppery tang of blood started assaulting Connor’s nostrils and his ears rang from the firefight in metal hallways.

  “I’m almost out of ammunition!” Wild Bill shouted when they were only twenty feet from the airlock. “What about the rest of you?”

  “Running low!” shouted Jackie, and Akshay simply shook his head.

  Lavi fired two more rounds before she shouted “I’m out!” Connor caught her eye, and was about to toss her his pistol, when Wild Bill broke in.

  “If we don’t make that airlock now, we aren’t making it out.” He looked back at Lavi. “Get that door open.”

  She simply nodded, waited for a lull in the near constant stream of bullets, then dashed behind the bulkhead near the airlock’s panel. Connor could see its panel was far more complicated than the others. Because it was designed to open directly out into what could potentially be deep space, it had a much more intricate override procedure. There was no way that Connor could override it with his current training.

  A ricochet next to Connor’s head pulled his attention away from Lavi. Three guards were trying to make their way up the hallway, using the bulkheads just as his group had. He squeezed off two shots, and one of the men fell screaming to the deck, blood streaming from his inner thigh.

  “Make them count, Connor.” Wild Bill said. He had a flesh wound in his left shoulder that Charisma was attending to. “One shot, one hit!” The Texan accentuated his point by firing twice, each remaining advancing guard falling limp to the floor. He fired once more, and another guard hit the floor.

  “Shit!” said the Texan, looking at his pistol. Its slide was locked back, chamber and clip empty. He motioned for Jackie to take his place and moved closer to Lavi. “Has anyone been able to get a transmission to Tejeda?” A chorus of ‘no’s answered him.

  “Transmission?” Jackie called over as he fired a few rounds at a pair of moving guards. One fell screaming, a hole in his stomach, the other staggered behind a bulkhead.

  Connor tapped the mini-transmitter in his ear, then fired a shot that missed a guard completely. His pistol empty, he removed the spent clip and slid in the last spare he had. He looked over to see Wild Bill removing Charisma’s spare clip from her belt and slide it into his own weapon.

  “How’s it coming on that door?” Wild Bill roared at Lavi as he fired off three rounds.

  “Just about got the inner airlock,” she replied, her voice cool and calculating. Seconds later the inner airlock door hissed open. There was
a screech from inside the airlock and a naked woman in work gloves and boots burst out. She only got three steps away before a burst from down the hall sounded. The woman’s cries instantly silenced and she dropped, rolling onto her back. Her dead eyes stared at Connor as blood spilled from three holes in her chest.

  They lept over the dead woman into the six-foot by eight-foot room as Lavi started on the outer airlock door. The airlock’s walls were deeper than the hallways, giving greater cover, but there were no other bulkheads to hide behind inside. If the enemy got too close, they’d have a clear angle of fire at anyone inside.

  And the guards were coming in force now. Almost a dozen leap-frogged down the bulkheads of the hallway, firing wildly at the group. From their lack of training, Paxton obviously intended them for intimidation or brute force. They moved as an undisciplined pack of thugs, their weapons sprayed more than aimed. Three times now, one of them had been accidentally shot by one of his fellows. Still, through sheer numbers, they were advancing dangerously close. Close enough that even idiots like them couldn’t miss.

  A woman’s scream sounded behind Connor, followed a split second later by a man’s. He looked back to see Charisma holding her leg, blood oozing between her fingers and two of Akshay’s fingers on the floor.

  Connor’s jaw clenched in rage as he turned back to the advancing hoard. He squeezed off three rounds, and three guards dropped to the deck. Only one still moved, thrashing as he died. Jackie dropped two more to the deck before Connor heard Lavi curse behind them.

  Risking a glance back, he saw Lavi still working on the door but favoring her left arm, a bullet hole in its bicep. He risked another look at Charisma. He was worried about her, but not as worried as he should have been. Or, at least, not as worried as he used to be. She sat in the corner of a bulkhead and wall, tying a bandage onto her leg. It looked like a clean through and through, his suspicion confirmed by her quick nod.

  Connor saw Akshay take the time to bend down and collect his lost fingers, placing them in one of the large pockets of his cargo pants. Instead of bandaging his bleeding hand, he grabbed the unused weapon in Charisma’s holster and tucked his wounded hand under his armpit between shots.

  “Got it!” Lavi’s voice rang out. Connor couldn’t hear the hiss of the outer door’s servos as they opened it, but he felt the wind of Markab’s unending desert. “Tejeda! We need an extract at our position now!” she shouted.

  “Understood,” Tejeda’s replied. “I’m five minutes out.”

  Wild Bill took stock of his team, glanced out the airlock, then shouted “Jackie and Connor, cover our exit. Everybody else, out!”

  The others filed out, one by one picking their moments between enemy fire. A slight limp from her leg wound, Charisma collected one of the unconscious women and waited behind the other side of the airlock. When Akshay grabbed the other woman with his good hand and followed, Charisma grabbed his jacket as he exited and yanked him out of sight.

  “Alright, Connor,” Wild Bill called. “Your turn.”

  Connor cast a glance at Jackie who shot him a wink and a smile, then let go of his last three rounds as he bolted through the airlock. He took cover next to Charisma who was bandaging the bleeding hand that Akshay hadn’t bothered with. When Jackie finally was out, Lavi reached around, yanked some conduits from the panel she’d been working on and whipped back just in time to keep from losing an arm by the closing outer airlock door.

  “We go up!” Wild Bill called. “Everybody move as fast as possible!”

  “Don’t we have to worry about them shooting from the ground?” Charisma asked.

  “All I’ve seen them use is shotguns and pistols,” he shouted back as Akshay started up one of the ships eternal maintenance ladders. “Until I see rifles, we have to assume we’re out of range. Now is our best chance to put some distance between them and us.”

  Lavi went second then Jackie carrying one of the unconscious women slung over his shoulder. Heyerdahl and Connor followed, the latter carrying the other woman, the former the bridges. With one last look at the ground fifty feet away, guards already spilling out of the ship into the hot desert, Wild Bill scrambled up the ladder after Charisma.

  Bullets spattered the hull but, like the Texan had anticipated, the shots were wild. In minutes they were at the highest point of the water tanker, a grated metal decking which spanned the top of the upper two tanks.

  There were too many access ladders to cover them all, so Wild Bill redistributed their ammunition, then spread them out into strategic positions at the left end of the platform. Connor and Lavi crouched behind a massive circuit box that was mounted to the deck and looked like a three-foot-high footlocker. The unconscious women and Heyerdahl were placed behind the pair in relative cover. Wild Bill and Charisma found another circuit box, while Akshay and Jackie took position behind a secured pile of spare metal tubing. The group’s defense formed a triangle, a relatively strong defensive position. Except they only had about three rounds each.

  “Make each shot count!” The Texan called. A bullet smacked into the circuit box before him, shot from a man climbing one of the many ladders. Wild Bill’s return put a neat hole in his opponent’s left eye. The back of the guard’s head seemed to melt away, its crimson mist vanishing into the wind’s scarlet dust. His body fell back into several of the men climbing after him, jostling a couple free to join him on the long way down. Their falling screams mixed with that of the other wounded as each corner of the defensive triangle inflicted a heavy toll on the first wave of Paxton’s guards.

  Connor was thankful for the Texan’s personal attention on the firing range when a man suddenly appeared at the top of a ladder 80 feet away. The muscle-bound guard raced for cover, but one bullet from Connor had the man sprawled onto the deck. He screamed as his blood streamed through the grating.

  From decades of training, Lavi’s reaction time was fantastically better than that of Connor. A man had only just stuck his head above the deck when Lavi’s bullet struck his neck. He fell back out of sight, his hands clawing at his ruined throat.

  Akshay had a plan to save ammunition. He waited behind cover, pistol in hand and huge kukri in his teeth. When a guard poked his head up and saw the backs of Wild Bill and Charisma, Akshay had the man in his sights. But he waited to see what the guard would do. As he’d hoped, the guard wanted to be completely on the deck before firing his weapon.

  The tall Indian dropped his pistol, catching it between his wounded hand and body and grabbed his kukri. Paxton’s guard reached the deck just in time to see the incoming blur of flashing steel before a blade was buried in his throat. Akshay whipped the kukri around, using it and the curve of his wrist to pull the shotgun free as the guard dropped onto the unforgiving metal grating.

  Jackie had known Akshay for years and could anticipate his actions. When Akshay moved to the attack, Jackie aimed his pistol at the ladder. Seconds later, a second guard stuck his head up, intent on shooting Akshay in the back. Jackie’s gun barked once, and the man fell away from the ship.

  “Tejeda,” Wild Bill shouted as he fired his last round. “We’re getting overrun! You have to…” His words died in a gurgle as the crack of a gunshot cut through the wind. Tejeda’s reply was drowned out by the blood pounding in Connor’s ears. He whipped his head around and saw his friend lying on the metal grating, hands clutching at his wounded throat. Blood spilled between Wild Bill’s fingers. Charisma had already bent over him, her medical bag open, its contents splayed out as she worked to save his life.

  “Go!” Lavi shouted, elbowing Connor for emphasis. She needn’t have bothered. He’d already started moving. Connor ran as quickly as he could in a crouch, firing his pistol at a guard climbing onto the deck. In his panic and rush, Connor missed the man’s chest, his bullet instead hitting the man in his hip.

  The guard screamed and pitched to his right as his leg collapsed under him. He hit the edge of the platform, his momentum carrying him over the side. A bloody pair of hands
managed to grasp the edge of the platform’s grating and he hung over the dusty abyss, screaming for help.

  Connor slid to a painful stop, raising his pistol to fire at yet another man just beginning to crest the platform. But the trigger was slack, and he yanked it several times before he realized the slide was locked back. The weapon was empty.

  A guard suddenly stepped into view, shotgun at his hip. Connor looked at Wild Bill’s pistol, laying three feet away, then the dark, hard eyes of the hateful man. A sick, sadistic grin spread across his ugly face as he raised his shotgun toward his three helpless victims.

  A sharp staccato pierced the air behind Connor, and four red holes appeared on the guard’s chest. Connor stared in shock at the man as he toppled backwards, his eyes blank and face slack.

  “Don’t just sit there, Connor!” The distinctly familiar Chilean accent snapped him out of his daze. He looked back just in time to see Tejeda standing in the side doorway of a hovering shuttle, firing a P90 at their attackers. “Everybody on board!” she cried.

  “It’ll take a moment to finish here!” Charisma called back as she worked on Wild Bill’s neck. It appeared she had somehow stopped the bleeding, but the man was unconscious. Even being exposed from several different directions, her attention was entirety on her patient.

  Tejeda tossed her weapon to Lavi, then disappeared inside. A moment later, she reappeared with two more P90s, tossing one to Connor. In a split second she’d cast an appraising glance over Jackie and Akshay and tossed the other to Jackie. “This should make your job a little easier. I have to shut the door on these culeados!”

  Once more Tejeda disappeared inside, reappearing behind the transparent view screen. The shuttle moved almost silently forward to land at the edge of the platform, its door facing Charisma. With the nose of the shuttle blocking the ladder near him, Connor turned his attention to Lavi.