by James Evans
And so it was that Warden waited behind a team of ogres to board Moscow while Hayes attacked Omsk and Carruthers dealt with Bratsk.
“Cutters retracted, no pressure loss, inner door opening,” said the pilot.
The two ogres at the front of the pod stepped forward as the door opened and shoved at the ship’s outer hull. It was heavy, but it slid backwards, the lasers having sliced through wiring, insulation and inner hull. There was a loud clang as the whole section of hull fell into the room beyond, opening the way for the Marines to enter the vessel.
The room beyond was unlit, and the Marines activated their suit lights to reveal a warehouse-sized storeroom.
“Lieutenant, there’s a drop to the floor of about two metres,” Corporal Green said as he jumped down with a clang. The other ogres followed, rushing forward to secure the beachhead then fanning out into the huge space. Within seconds, the whole troop was inside, and the militia followed.
“Nobody here, sir,” reported Green as the ogres completed their search of the room.
“Good,” said Warden as Sergeant Adams began setting up to guard the breach.
There was a large pair of sliding doors on the opposite wall to allow transport sleds to move pallets around the ship. On a vessel this size, you couldn’t hand carry the rations for lunch or you’d be at it all day.
Goodwin produced a security card they’d found on New Bristol. She had cracked it and, in theory, this one would be good for all low-security doors. The light went green as she flashed the card and the doors opened to reveal a wide T-junction.
Ogres flowed through the doors, taking up positions to the left and right and directly opposite the doors. Now that they had proved the cards would work, Goodwin handed one to each trooper as they passed her position.
“Section 1 go left, Section 2 straight ahead, Section 3 go right. Find Goodwin a console she can hack; we need to find the deck plan. We want the ship intact, no quarter to be given.”
Each section moved swiftly to complete their assigned recce of the ship.
In minutes Section 2 had found a promising room. Warden ordered the other two sections to cautiously explore further, dealing with any resistance they met, while he and Goodwin moved quickly to catch up with Section 2. They found themselves in a repair bay full of racks of power armour and the tools and machines required for their maintenance. Three Deathless corpses, technicians maybe, were laid out on the floor.
Goodwin slid into one of the technicians’ chairs, carefully wiping the blood from the console before calling up her notes.
“Still logged in,” she muttered, shaking her head. Moments later, the tech specialist had access to the shipboard systems and was searching for the deck plans. The other sections were doing fine, according to the HUD updates, so Warden spent the time checking their feeds and getting a feel for what they were seeing.
“I’ve got the plans,” said Goodwin quietly, “scanning them now.” She pointed her HUD at the screen and flicked through the pages. Each image was captured, translated and incorporated into the Marine’s tactical maps for display in their HUDs.
Warden and Milton reviewed the updated tactical map as soon as it was available.
“The bridge is a fairly straight shot and we’re about midships,” he said.
“Do you want to just steam down these corridors and see if we can get there before they know what’s going on?” Milton asked.
“Yes, but I expect we’ll get held up. Let’s send the ogre team off on this route and the rest of us will use these other two corridors to get there as quickly as possible. If we meet resistance, the ogres should be able to flank it here, here or there,” he said, flagging three junctions.
“Yes, sir,” Milton said, moving off to assign responsibilities to the corporals in charge of the sections.
Warden paced the room as his sergeant organised the troop. Here there was a half-dismantled Deathless power glove, there a grenade launcher being stripped and cleaned. He found a rack of weapons and looked through them, as one might browse a bookshop. Halfway along, he found a wicked-looking item, all blackened alloy and vicious edges. He picked it up and swung it experimentally. The hilt had a familiar button where his thumb rested, and he flicked it idly, hearing a familiar telltale thrum.
“Lieutenant, everyone is briefed, we’re ready to go,” said Milton.
“Good, get to it, folks. Not you, Marine X, I have a job for you.”
“Yes, sir?” said Ten.
“I saw this and thought of you,” said Warden, passing him the weapon, “it seems to be in working order but remember we found it in a repair bay, so it may not be in top knick.”
Ten nodded and smiled as he took the sword, like a gleeful child with a birthday present.
“We’re off to the bridge. I thought you might like to have a look around and see if you can find any Deathless to mop up. Just keep an eye on your tactical map in case we get into trouble.”
“Yes, sir,” said Ten, a big grin on his face. Then he was off, loping away to cause mischief.
Warden shook his head.
“He’s like a big kid, isn’t he?”
“Yeah, a fucking dangerous kid with an unhealthy fondness for sharp, pointy things,” agreed Milton. “Shall we crack on?”
“Yes, let’s get going. Goodwin, you’re with us.”
33
Fletcher swiped the access card, and the doors slid open with a hiss.
Unusual, she thought. Did they add a sound so you’d know the door had opened?
She stepped over the threshold and found herself in a hangar. Goodwin had hoped to get the HUD to automatically translate Deathless signage, but it required more work than they had time available.
The hangar was enormous but completely empty. From the sheer size, it had to be the bay the Deathless had housed their huge base-building mothership. Right now, it was an empty cavern with support equipment, repair stations and storage around the sides. There were static and movable gangways to allow the technicians to effect repairs or modifications to the ship while it was docked. The scale of the room seemed too big, though it doubtless felt cramped when there was a ship docked within it.
They fanned out, ogres to the left of her, ogres to the right.
Damn, that leaves me in the middle, she thought, right across from that massive airlock door used to deploy the ship.
The airlock was clearly marked with yellow and black stripes all the way around the door. Above it, docking clamps hung from the ceiling. The design was familiar but she’d never seen it on this scale. The clamps would hold the ship in place, the four segments of the door would retreat to their corners, then the clamps would push the smaller ship down and out before releasing it entirely.
That meant the bay had to be cleared before launch or the technicians would have to be in environment suits, not to mention strapped down, along with all the equipment they were using. If the bay didn’t reach hard vacuum before launch, even a small amount of atmosphere could drag objects or people towards the airlock.
The room was empty, though, and all she had to do was make it to the other side and then to the rest of the ship. Her HUD showed Lieutenant Warden making good progress towards the bridge but now they needed to make up for lost time, since their route had required a diversion to get further into the ship. Fletcher broke into a run, eating up the distance with long, power-assisted strides, her team coming on behind.
And then large swathes of cloth floated down from the upper catwalk, billowing out in silver-grey waves, and from beneath them came the enemy.
“Bollocks,” she spat. “Contact!” she yelled over the local comm as six Deathless ogres, their EM-blocking camo-blankets discarded, leapt from the catwalk two storeys up, crashing to the deck. They charged immediately, spikes jutting from their shoulders and clawed gauntlets extended.
Fletcher’s shotgun boomed. No time for finesse, she emptied the drum as she panned the weapon left to right. All along the line, the Marines fire
d, but the shotguns weren’t effective against the Deathless power armour. Two of the ogres were knocked down, but they rolled with the impact and bounced back to their feet, hardly even slowed by the shotgun rounds.
Fletcher, no time to reload, dropped the shotgun and popped her own claws. This was going to get extremely physical and the Deathless had had plenty of time to train with their power armour.
The enemy crashed into her with an almighty wallop. Fletcher grappled at the ogre, gripping both wrists to prevent the Deathless bastard from slicing into her. Her muscles strained along with the fibres in the suit as the evenly matched pair tried to twist and turn to gain an advantage. She lashed out with a boot, aiming for a knee joint, but her opponent was quick enough to lift his leg, and her kick clanged uselessly against his shin, glancing off the armour.
He answered by trying to fall back and pull her off balance, but Fletcher countered that move by stepping into his left shoulder, lifting his right arm up as she let go. Then she powered a left cross into his face. She followed by grabbing his left pauldron and trying to wrench it down as she pulled the arm up, she almost had it, but he dropped to one knee and scythed his leg out, bringing them both crashing to the deck and separating them.
Fletcher rolled to her front and pushed upward, kicking her leg out hard to slam into his chest just before she brought herself upright. She spun around and in that moment saw that it was going badly for her team. Two Marines were down, she didn’t have time to see who. That left four against six.
“Form up on me, let’s back off and see if we can’t get them to do something stupid,” Fletcher suggested.
Lance Corporal Long was furthest back from his opponent, having executed an impressive sacrificial throw that had flung the Deathless trooper across the bay. Now, he drew one of the enormous pistols and fired repeatedly at the Deathless that had downed Marine Patricia Scott.
The high-calibre automatic boomed and rounds slammed into the helmet of the ogre. His magazine emptied, Long quickly swapped in another as the Deathless trooper fell backwards. Fletcher drew her own pistol and got off a couple of rounds before the Deathless responded.
Bringing up their left arms in front of them, the five standing Deathless looked crazy for a moment, like a bulked-up boyband. Fletcher didn’t get it, couldn’t see what they were doing, the mad fools.
Except they weren’t crazy. With an audible clang, large metal shields sprang forth from their vambraces and rerebraces. Plates of metal shot up and down, and suddenly they had protection from incoming fire.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Green roared and retorted with a flashbang. That only provoked the enemy – their group burst apart, and they came on, rushing forward with shields held high.
That was better than what Fletcher had expected, which was for them to pull their own pistols. She located the hitherto unidentified control for her own shield, activated it and lunged forward to meet her opponent.
She dropped to one knee as the Deathless ogre came on, right gauntlet and claws raised for an overhead blow. She slammed the shield up under its guard and into his chest and then she pressed the barrel of her pistol into the groin of the enemy and squeezed the trigger repeatedly, emptying the magazine.
At least one round must have broken through the joint as the barrel slide into just the right spot. The ogre jerked back and crumpled to the floor, clearly injured and out of the fight.
Pulling back, Fletcher saw that Jack Long was down, and Corporal Green was hard-pressed by two of the ogres. She holstered the pistol and scooped up the shotgun, switching in a new drum then aiming at the face of one of the ogres attacking Green. One burst, two bursts, three bursts, and it tumbled back. Its fellow slammed into Green and they rolled across the deck, furiously hammering blows at each other, each trying to score a fatal hit.
Fletcher turned as a cacophony of heavy machine gun fire drew her attention, just in time to see Marine Ann McGee punched from her feet.
And now the barrel swung towards her, as if in slow motion. Fletcher’s shotgun was moving to meet it but too slowly, far too slowly to save her. The other two ogres were aiming their pistols, rounds pinging from Fletcher’s shield as she crouched and struggled with her shotgun.
Headley, the only other Marine still standing, was backing away, tilting as if wounded and in no shape to help. This was it, she thought, they’d bought as much time for the troop as they could. She didn’t look at the tactical map, not wanting to know if the mission was failing before she died.
And then a figure appeared from the shadows behind the three ogres, a bright shining bar of light held high over its head in both hands. The bar came down with ferocious speed and struck the right shoulder of the ogre’s power armour, near the neck, cutting all the way through to the left side of its ribcage before spraying blood across the deck.
Fletcher gaped as Ten lunged to his left, following the momentum of the glowing sword and closing behind another of the ogres. She could only watch as Ten brought the blade up in a vicious backstroke, slamming it into the midriff of the Deathless ogre. It cut through to the spine, and then the light went out, sparking as the sword died.
The final ogre turned to face Ten, but it was too slow. The Marine had abandoned his new toy the instant it had failed him and now he dived towards the final enemy. Fletcher was still trying to bring her shotgun back around to target the ogre but Ten was a blur. He grabbed something from the floor, went into a forward roll, came up into a crouch and pulled the trigger.
The machine gun spat a torrent of death into the chest and face of the last Deathless ogre. Fletcher wondered if his last expression had been of horror, amazement or stunned surprise at the sudden appearance of Marine X.
Ten stood up as the ogre toppled back. He dropped his gun and walked back to the second corpse, wrenching the blade free. He looked at it forlornly, pressing the power switch and slapping hopefully at the hilt.
“Bugger,” he muttered crossly. “I think I broke my glowstick.”
34
“Anyone got a shot?” shouted Warden but the only response was a sullen silence. Great. Pinned down by a bipod-mounted weapon that was a combination of multi-barrelled shotgun and heavy machine gun. It was heavily armoured and the gunner wore power armour in a design they hadn’t seen before. The bulk suggested it was intended for holding exactly this sort of defensive position.
“It’s no use, we’ll have to send someone around to flank him,” he said to Milton. “I don’t know how much ammo he has, but we can’t sit here all day.” Milton nodded her agreement.
The annoying thing was that Goodwin had a micro-drone up that was giving them a wide-angle view of the corridor, but they just couldn’t get at the gunner. Warden didn’t want to risk grenades this close to the bridge, and a couple of flashbangs had done nothing to shift the gunner from his position.
Warden was watching the feed in his HUD while he tried to decide who to send and what route they’d take to get around Section 2, who were stuck in a tough firefight of their own.
Then, from the right-hand corridor of the T-junction the gunner was defending, a large object sailed end-over-end passing over the head of the Deathless guard and clanging into the left wall. The gunner watched it go, eyes irresistibly drawn to it. Big mistake. Once it stopped moving and hit the floor, Warden recognised the sword he’d given to Ten.
And then, sure enough, Ten barrelled into the gunner, covering the ground inhumanly fast and tackling the Deathless trooper while he was distracted, knocking him clear of his weapon.
Warden reacted immediately, breaking cover and sprinting up the corridor towards the struggling pair. The gunner rolled Ten onto his back and got in a cou
ple of good punches as Warden brought his rifle to bear.
“Nice try, sonny!” Ten roared as a glowing knife appeared in his hand. Then he punched it up under the chin of the Deathless trooper, the vibro-knife cutting easily through the thin under-jaw armour and slamming home. The gunner jerked like a fish gasping for air then collapsed on top of Ten.
Warden helped the struggling Marine flop the enormous over-armoured corpse to one side then grabbed his hand to pull him to his feet.
“Nicely timed, Marine X,” said Warden, “take a breather. You’ve earned it. Done? Great, let’s crack on then, shall we?”
He looked down the corridor in the direction from which Ten had appeared and saw that he had brought the ogres with him. Half of them, at least. Corporal Green and Marines Fletcher and Headley were trotting up the corridor. Warden checked his HUD for the first time since the firefight had begun and saw that Lance Corporal Long and Marines McGee and Scott were dead; the fight with the enemy ogres had clearly taken its toll.
“On, on,” he shouted and began jogging toward the bridge, his Marines behind him, trying to catch up. A few unarmoured and lightly armed crew members offered little more than token resistance and the Marines rolled over them with ease. Then they were at the doors to the bridge.
“Fletcher, Headley, Green, open these for me, would you please?” said Warden when his card failed to grant access.
He stood to one side as Fletcher, Headley and Green sprinted down the corridor opposite the central pair of doors, their ogre suits making a colossal din as they raced towards the bridge. They cannoned into the doors together and their combined effort buckled them inwards. The stepped back a few paces and charged again, this time knocking clear through the doors and barrelling onto Moscow’s bridge.