Spineward Sectors 03 Admiral's Tribulation

by Luke Sky Wachter

  Too much lead in my pants from driving a desk job for the past decade, he thought grimly, as he crouched forward and then pivoted bringing his ion cannon around in one swift motion.

  His locked up hand didn’t slow him down, although it did mess with his aim until he managed to get it properly repositioned again.

  Good aim or poor, he depressed the trigger and cut loose with a storm of ion bolts into the mass of what passed for engineers on this ship.

  Servicing the weapon from left to right, the pirates screamed and dropped like flies, at least until their own blaster tripods locked back onto his position and opened up.

  When a pair of blaster bolts sizzled into his armor, locking up the shoulder joint of the same arm with the bum hand and not inconsequentially knocking him spinning to the floor, he knew it was time to reposition.

  Moving with both a bum shoulder and hand on the same side was no picnic, but a scorching shot to his rear when he failed to move fast enough lit the hind quarters of his suit a cherry red, and the cooling system built into his armor didn’t work fast enough for his personal taste or comfort.

  Scrambling up just long enough to dive behind the nearest cover, Colonel Wainwright was more than a little surprised to find another metal head hiding behind the very same workstation he had been planning to use himself.

  A quick thrust with his good hand pounded the butt of his ion cannon into the pirate’s head, quickly settling the issue before the metal head could bring his vibro knife to bear.

  He was just starting to congratulate himself on another quick escape, when the pair of pirate tripods once again opened up on his position.

  “Blast and double blast,” he cursed. Reaching down, he tried to grab the fallen pirate, but his seized gauntlet made that virtually impossible. With an angry thrust of his torso, he smashed his locked up hand into the pirate and levered him up. If his marines still weren’t interested in coming in and getting him, then more drastic measures were called for. He was just going to have to settle those tripods himself!

  Human shield raised before him to take the weight of the blaster fire from those infernal tripods, Colonel Wainwright leveled his captured Ion Cannon.

  Roaring his defiance from within inside the deafening silence that was his sound proofed helmet, he staggered as the pair of enemy tripods started tearing up his human shield.

  Resting his cannon on the top of the workstation he’d been crouching behind and wedging it between the desk and his shield as best he could, he lined up on the nearest enemy cannon and cut loose with a flurry of fire.

  Refusing to cower behind cover anymore, he stood tall even when his other shoulder took a hit that had him struggling to stay upright.

  Tracking his fire visually, because his visor was damaged and was never designed to link up with the pirate weapon in his hand in the first place, he kept firing until the enemy cannon ceased doing likewise. Quickly switching targets, he had just started laying down suppressing fire on the second cannon when a pair of thermal detonators landed at his feet, courtesy of a braver pair of the pirate scum than usual.

  With only a split second to decide what to do, he dropped what was left of his smoking shield (which was minus both arms and a leg at this point) right on top of the detonators and then threw himself back, desperately scrambling for cover.

  Before he could reach anything worthy of the term, the detonators went off and he slammed into the wall behind his position so hard that the cushioning in his helmet wasn’t enough to protect him, and there was a flash of red across his vision.

  Chapter 33: Mopping up?

  Aware of the faint sounds of heavy combat, as if coming from a holo-screen in the next room, Wainwright’s eyes snapped open. Flashes of angry red strobed across his field of vision, giving testament to the fact that the sounds he was hearing were not from a holo-screen, nor where they happening the next room over. He must have only been out for a matter of moments, minutes at most. It was time to get back in the game.

  The HUD normally portrayed on the visor of his helmet was no longer functioning, and the spider web of cracks that had previously crisscrossed his field of vision ever since slamming into the hull of this pirate battleship were no longer present. Instead, pieces of the visor where entirely missing.

  He tried to roll over but stopped when a series of verbal alarms went off, his suit informing him of severe joint damage to all the places he was already familiar with and a few that he wasn’t. Even more importantly were the razor sharp fragments of visor that had fallen back into the front of his helmet when he flipped over.

  He could feel them all around his face and neck, and he knew he might very well end his own life if he wasn’t careful, as the term ‘cutting your own throat’ gained new meaning for the Marine Colonel. More than damaged joints, those razor sharp fragments encouraged him to move very carefully.

  Out of the corner of his eye he spotted a trio of marines, leap-frogging further into the room, providing suppressive cover fire for one another.

  Picking himself ever so slightly up off the floor was an effort in utilizing one semi-functional arm and one nearly non-functional one. With a grunt of effort, he finally achieved the position he was aiming for and shook his head from side to side, causing a small cascade to fall out the cracks in his helmet.

  When that wasn’t enough to get all the fragments out of the helmet through the cracks and holes in his visor, he reached up and tore another section loose. This time, a cascade of diamond dust and fragments fell out of his helmet. He once again grabbed the pirate ion cannon after his field of view was no longer obstructed by visor fragments.

  His left side was locked up at both the shoulder, wrist and finger joints, with only limited elbow mobility. His right, on the other hand, still had over 80% function on hand and elbow, the shoulder was down to 50%, but for Colonel Wainwright’s purposes that was more than sufficient.

  Popping up one more time, like a rabid children’s toy that refused to say die, he once again propped the cannon on his less functional arm to stabilize it and depressed the trigger.

  Keeping in mind the phrase ‘friendly fire isn’t,’ he made sure to keep the ion bolts blasting out the end of his gun well away from his fellow marines. Pirates fell and machines exploded in a series of electrical sparks as he raked his ion bolts across the enemy crouched and in some cases cowering behind any pieces of cover they could find.

  A plasma grenade exploded suddenly, reducing the team manning the second and final pirate tripod to a smoking pile of body parts. Then the remainder of the scratch squad he’d followed down to Engineering, plus what looked like a few reinforcements, pelted through the still cherry red remains of the blast doors leading into Main Engineering.

  Like any rat that’s been backed into a corner, the pirates of engineering put up the fight of their lives, but without any significant power armor of their own and their tripod blaster cannon mounts disabled they were quickly suppressed, pushed into fallback positions deeper in the hold and then finally overrun.

  Chapter 34: The Aftermath, and Tries against Our Interests

  There was a blow against his shoulder and another marine raised her visor. It was the leader of the impromptu squad that had coalesced around them; the same marine that had helped keep Wainwright from drifting off into cold space during his rocky landing.

  Unfortunately, his visor seemed stuck. Not only was it busted up, but now it wouldn’t raise either.

  “Hey Stupid,” she snarled, “I wondered if you were crazy or just plain dumb when I first dragged your hind end back onto the hull after that hot dog stunt you pulled on the way in, but after seeing you try to make like a one man army and take off without orders or fire support, I finally figured it out,” she glared, and if eyes could act as daggers, hers would have skewered him in place.

  “I’m sorry, Marine?…” he began with deceptive mildness, deliberately trailing off to invite her name and rank.

  “That’s Buck Sergeant, Melissi
andra Kopenhagen to you Private,” she snarled, slapping his unadorned and very much damaged power-armored arm for good measure, the same place where a chip was installed so that friend or foe systems automatically updated their HUD with rank and unit designation.

  He’d left his chip deliberately and deceptively blank, a paranoid fear perhaps of the enemy breaking into their encryption channels and targeting the senior officer. Then, as his visor had been damaged in the boarding action and his communicator knocked out by the screamer, there had been no way for him to either send or receive such information.

  “Well, Sergeant,” he started only to be cut off as her eyes flared with molten fury.

  “You’ll stand at attention when you address me, Stupid,” she said jumping in his face, “and you can thank the fact we’re in a warzone that you’re not holding a salute while doing so!”

  “Now hold on just a minute, Buck Sergeant—” he started hotly, only to come to an abrupt stop when the business end of her blaster rifle pointed at his head.

  “You will stand at attention and address me with military courtesy, you old reservist,” she snapped, “because you’re too old to be one of our green recruits, and only a reservist would be old enough and stupid enough to try a pair of stunts like that and attempt to get himself killed twice while on my watch,” she flared. “You’re lucky I don’t report you to my CO!”

  He opened his mouth only to be cut off.

  “After the series of stunts you just pulled, the next words out of your mouth had better begin and end with words ‘yes Sergeant,’ or ‘yes Buck Sergeant,’ Private Stupid, or as Murphy is my witness I guarantee you won’t like the results,” she added grimly.

  He stared at her through narrowed eyes, most of the effect of which was lost due to the shattered visor. “Buck Sergeant, of course, Buck Sergeant,” he drawled, fully cognizant of the situation’s irony. He swung his captured Ion Cannon up over his shoulder in the closest possible approximation to port arms he could manage one handed and with an oversized, normally crew-served weapon.

  He was about to say more and firmly put her in her place, when she cocked her head to one side and slapped her face plate closed.

  “Incoming hostiles rigged in power armor detected,” her outside speaker blared, no doubt for his benefit. “First team: continue to secure Main Engineering and establish blocking positions in case they get past us. Bernadino, you and your team are with me,” she paused then turned around and smacked Colonel Wainwright on the arm. “Stupid, you’re rear guard since you still don’t have a working comm. Just try not to shoot any of us in the back with that oversized popgun of yours!”

  The team had just deployed outside the entrance when a series of yips and howls could be heard coming down the hall.

  “Blood Guards,” screamed the first figure equipped with mismatching power armor, wielding a plasma rifle in one hand and a Vibro-blade in the other. Behind him came a stream of pirates also dressed in rust red power armor.

  A storm of uncoordinated firepower was unleashed on the marines guarding Engineering.

  Wainwright leaned forward to get a decent shot.

  “Take cover, Stupid,” Sergeant Kopenhagen ordered, knocking his legs out from under him and then scrambling around behind so that she could use him as an improvised firing position.

  Rolling onto his front, he once again pointed his weapon at the incoming enemy. While it was safer than standing up, it was much harder to aim.

  Finally free to fire, he cut loose with a hail of ion bolts aimed at the center of the Blood Reaver horde.

  One, two, three metal heads and genetically enhanced pirates fell to his fire as their cobbled together battle suits locked up. Around him the marines and their standard issue blaster rifles also took their toll on the pirate swarm in from them.

  Dropping blaster rifles in favor of vibro-axes and handheld ion spikes, every marine except the Colonel popped to their feet and the battle descended into hand to hand. Wainwright didn’t give up on the Ion Cannon that had served him so well so far, not because of any attachment to the pirate weapon, but instead because with almost no mobility on his left side and with his shoulder actuator down below 50%, he figured he was as good as gone without it.

  Instead he rolled on his back, set the cannon between his legs and took careful aim, or at least as careful aim as he could, blasting every foe that came within range with a series of ion pulses until their armor stopped working. When that failed, he wasn’t above kicking with his power assisted legs swinging the cannon like a club to ward off enemy attacks.

  The First pirate to get through the other marines saw Colonel Wainwright flat on his back, legs in the air and ion cannon out of position and led with an overhand swipe of his vibro-sword.

  Kicking with his feet to block, the vibro blade was knocked aside with a clang, sparks flying as it carved a chunk of metal off the outside of his leg from the force of the pirate’s power-assisted blow.

  Bracing his back by arching against the floor for leverage, he kicked with his other leg to back the pirate off and pivoted on the floor. The pirate struck with another mighty clang, this time cutting half his metal armored foot off, but the force of the blow allowed the Marine Colonel spin far enough to get a bead on the pirate with his Cannon. Firing from this position, his lone remaining functional arm wasn’t quite enough to overcome the kick back from the cannon and the butt of the weapon drove into his well armored chest. The clag when it hit caused him more distress than his near complete inability to feel the blow. For the pirate it caused a lot more distress, taking him clean in the head.

  The pirate twitched and spasmed, dropping to the floor, but just to be on the safe side Wainwright hammered two more ion pulses into his prone figure just in case he was faking and not as badly injured as he was making out.

  All around him pirates screamed battle cries over their external speakers, while the Caprian Marines battled silently on the outside, although he knew from experience there was a lot more noise and action occurring on the inside of those sound proof helmets.

  Then from the rear of the pirate formation a hail of blaster fire erupted and a new battle cry could be heard.

  “ROSSSSSS!” came the traditional battle cry of the Caprian Marine force, no doubt for intimidation purposes.

  An unwilling smile came over Colonel Wainwright’s face at the sound of reinforcements, followed almost instantly by a scowl. His marines should be exercising better noise discipline than this. Whoever the officer in charge of the relieving unit was needed to remember that this was a professional fighting force, not some ragity-tagity group of over eager barbarian warriors like the type he’d heard were currently onboard the Lucky Clover.

  Quickly feeling the pressure, the pirate force finally stopped yelling that terrible ‘Blood Guard’ nonsense and instead turned like the rabid dogs they were on everyone and everything nearby, even each other, in a desperate attempt to retreat.

  Chapter 35: Command Changes, or Changes in Command?

  “Well-well-well, what do have we here,” said the voice of Major Gaspard, a particularly vicious specimen of 1st Regiment of Wainwright’s 2nd Independent Strike Brigade.

  Wainwright’s face hardened, even as the other members of the hastily thrown together squad assembled for inspection. There was no reason to be performing an inspection during the middle of combat, much less doing so verbally, instead of through battle suit’s built-in systems.

  “Main Engineering has been secured as instructed, Major,” announced Sergeant Melissiandra Kopenhagan’s hard bitten marine voice. “The Pirates put up one heck of a fight but in the end every marine in the squad pulled their weight and those pirate blood-bums were like grass and we the lawnmower, Sir,” she snapped.

  The Colonel could all but feel the Sergeant Kopenhagan’s ill regard over his taking the initiative blowing up the main blast doors into engineering and then taking the fight to the pirates, even as she stuck up for her team and its successes.


  “Good work, Buck Sergeant,” Gaspard allowed slowly, his Stonelander accent making a hash of the Sergeant’s proper title, “your team did quite a number on the blast doors though, didn’t you,” he remarked, striding down the hastily assembled line of marines standing outside the entrance to Engineering.

  “Thank you, Sir,” the Sergeant said with much more respect than she’d ever shown to the actual Colonel in command of her entire Brigade.

  Wainwright scowled. She was probably right to do so he allowed in the privacy of his mind. But after a decade of being shunted off to the side, stuck pushing an electronic pencil in an empty, nearly abandoned supply dump back on Capria, he’d needed to knock some of the rust off. To get out front and show his people he could still lead them in combat.

  He might have…he paused, no he certainly had over done it. If not for the Sergeant’s quick acting, the Brigade would be short its latest commanding officer.

  “Who authorized the use of a portable bunker buster, Buck Sergeant,” Gaspard asked, his voice as thick as ever with that heavy Stonelander accent.

  “I expect my people to show initiative, Sir,” Sergeant Kopenhagen replied stiffly, “as you can see, we were successful and Engineering now belongs to the Corps.

  From where he stood, Colonel Wainwright could see the Major give the Sergeant a hard stare before letting the matter pass.

  “It’ll take a bit of work to repair those, Staff Sergeant,” Gaspard said pointedly with a hint of a growl.

  “We’re marines; we break things, Major,” she paused, “and I’m just a Buck Sergeant, Sir,” she added.

  “Not anymore, Kopenhagen,” Gaspard said decisively, “job well done.” He then turned to face the rest of the assembled squad outside the ruined blast doors.

  “Listen up, Marines,” he barked, causing the men and women all around Wainwright to stiffen to attention.