Refusing Excalibur

by Zachary Jones

  Instead he settled for a short curved blade with a basket hilt—a cutlass, as the vendor had called it. It had a tip like a Japanese tanto sword and was sharp enough to shave with.

  The most expensive item he bought was a vacuum-rated suit of armor. While the suit itself was sound, he had to spend a fair amount of money on replacement filters, which he had to then install while in flight. But he needed these for all the environments he was sure to encounter.

  He also bought a couple vacuum-rated firearms. They were both simple weapons: a pump-action shotgun with a detachable magazine, and a revolver that fired low-recoil, high-velocity rounds. The latter wouldn’t have much stopping power, but it would punch through most body armor and wouldn’t launch Victor into an escape trajectory in the process.

  He spent a few hundred more credits on changes of clothing and sundry items. He deposited what money remained on the card in a bank account on Mustang. It wouldn’t do to lose thousands of credits by having the card slip from his pocket.

  One thing Victor became accustomed to was carrying his weapons on his person. All the mercs on the Fortune did. He wasn’t sure if it was just the look for mercenaries or because they simply didn’t trust each other. Possibly both, he supposed.

  He kept his cutlass in a sheath on his back; wearing the blade at his hip like he was accustom to simply got in the way. He holstered his pistol at his right thigh and stored his shotgun in the locker under his bunk.

  It was somewhat amusing, spending his time on ship armed to the teeth, as well as worrying. All the guns being carried around presented a very real risk of a negligent discharge. The Fortune’s hull was more than capable of surviving a hit by a bullet, but stray bullets could still bounce around the interior, hitting important things. Like Victor, for example.

  Other than managing his equipment, Victor cleaned the ship's head, per Fowler’s orders. Victor hadn’t cleaned a head since his days as a midshipman, and the heads of the Fortune were far dirtier than those of any Republic warship, at least before he brought them up to navy standards.

  After the fourth day of bathroom cleaning, Victor was polishing a metal surface when Captain Hyde walked in and whistled. “Damn, I don’t think this head has been so clean since the Fortune left the shipyard. You should’ve told me that you used to be a janitor.”

  “No, Captain, I just like to keep things clean,” Victor said.

  “Hrmmph. Fowler should have you clean the kitchen,” Warwick said.

  “If you say so, Captain.” Victor smirked. “Just so long as I don’t have to cook, I’m afraid I’m no good at that.”

  The Fortune’s captain smiled back. “No, I think we’ve found your talent. You’re a very neat man. Military neat.”

  Victor kept his face carefully blank.

  Warwick’s smile broadened. “I suspected as much. You fold hospital corners when you made your bunk. No one else on the crew does that. Not even Cormac, and he’s the neatest creature I know. What outfit were you with?”

  “I’d rather not say,” Victor said.

  Warwick regarded him for a moment. “Fair enough. Dishonorably discharged, I take it?”

  Victor couldn’t help but smirk. “After a fashion.”

  “You mentioned a lot of skills—piloting, navigating…”

  “And gunnery, Captain.” Victor had done time as both a helmsman and a gunner early in his career, before he had settled into command.

  Warwick nodded. “An officer then. That would explain the diverse skill set. Well, if you survive your time in Gaz’s goon squad, then perhaps I could put your other skills to use.”

  Victor was curious why Warwick didn’t want to put Victor’s skills to use now. “Yes, Captain.”

  Warwick nodded and left. It was the first time since coming aboard that the captain had talked with Victor.

  A day out from Trine, Victor was in the workshop, spending his free time checking his suit, making it ready for combat. The suit was steel gray, with darker gray protective plating covering the vitals. It wasn’t power armor, so it wouldn’t stop any really heavy-duty weapons, but most small-arms fire would be stopped by the plating. At least he hoped they would.

  “Hello there,” a woman said.

  Victor turned. It was Fara, the nightwoman, standing at the hatch. “Hi.”

  She pointed at Victor’s suit. “Working on your suit, I see.”

  Victor looked down at the suit laid out on the table and then back to Fara. “Just testing the airtight integrity. Hopefully I won’t run into anyone testing its ballistic integrity.”

  She chuckled. “I wouldn’t hope too hard. The captain likes taking jobs where people get shot at.”

  “People like me, you mean,” Victor said.

  She smiled, her large black eyes studying Victor. “Yes. Though you don’t seem too worried about it.”

  Victor smiled. He hadn’t been worried about anything since his world was destroyed. Just angry. “I know the risks.”

  “Do you?” she asked incredulously. “Are you aware of how many boarding specialists we go through?”

  “A lot, I take it,” Victor said.

  She nodded. “Gaz is the only one who’s lasted more than a year. But, as he’s a former fighting slave, he’s bred for close-quarters combat.”

  Victor didn't know that, but it made sense. Based on his appearance, Gaz was meant to kill, and probably die, spectacularly. “I take it all the others didn’t get promoted out?”

  “The only ones who didn’t die were the ones who got wise and quit when we returned to port,” Fara said.

  Victor looked at her, curious, and not just because he found her attractive. “Why are you telling me this?”

  She smiled cryptically. “The heads are cleaner than they’ve ever been. For that, you deserve to know Captain Hyde likes to expend boarding specialists like ammunition. They’re easy enough to replace. Just have to hire some tough guy at the next port.”

  “Well,…thanks for telling me,” Victor said.

  A thin black eyebrow rose. “You seem awfully calm for someone who’s just been told they’ll probably die.”

  “We’ll all die at some point. Some sooner than others,” Victor said.

  “Hrmm.” Fara stroked her pointed chin. “A fatalist, I see.”

  Victor thought about it for a moment and then nodded. “Yes, I suppose I am.” He shrugged. “Comes from living longer than I should.”

  Fara’s brows furrowed. “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

  Victor responded with a cryptic smile of his own.

  Chapter 7

  The Fortune arrived in Trine without incident, flying from the Messer 32 jump point at several hundred kilometers per second.

  Captain Hyde ordered the ship to battle stations before the jump, so Victor sat with the three other boarding specialists in full combat gear. He locked his helmet over his head but kept the visor up.

  “Contact!” announced Captain Hyde. “Looks like we lucked out. We got a twofer. Just caught a couple pirates knocking over a freighter. ETA to intercept, thirty minutes.”

  Victor did some quick math in his head. Despite being a smaller ship, the Fortune had the same acceleration as his long-lost Osprey. That meant the contacts were a mere two million klicks away. Well within missile range, but missiles were expensive and tended not to leave much to salvage.

  Warwick would want to close the distance and use kinetic weapons to disable both vessels. Then it would be Victor’s time to get to work.

  “You fuckers all ready?” asked Gaz from his seat. His combat armor was as decorated as him, with patterns drawn over the plating using white enamel, matching the pattern of the black ink over his skin.

  Toren and Dom both gave Gaz curt acknowledgments. Their suits were Spartan compared to their leader’s but still far more decorated than the uniform armor Victor had encountered during his navy days. Mercenary life was more colorful in both a literal and figurative sense.

  “’Bout you, new fu
cker?” Gaz asked, looking Victor in the eyes.

  Victor looked right back into the pit fighter’s eyes and nodded. Gaz nodded back and turned his attention to the feed inside his helmet.

  Victor busied himself by checking his straps and weapons. He kept his pistol in a holster built into the suit’s waist and the shotgun secured to his chest by a magnetic connector.

  The cutlass remained on his back, as usual, the handle just peeking over his shoulder. He reached up and grabbed the hilt and gave it a soft tug; the scabbard was tight enough to keep the blade from floating out in 0 g.

  He repeated the process again and again as the Fortune moved to engage the pirates. He always got a little nervous before combat, but this was different. Every other time he went into battle, he fought from a control console and could easily distract himself by doing his job.

  Now, as a mercenary boarding specialist, all he could do was sit here and wait. He developed a whole new level of empathy for the Republic Navy armsmen, all dead now, who had served under his command.

  After half an hour passed, Victor felt the Fortune tremble as she fired her spinal gun. Victor counted the bursts. One, two, three—

  As the fourth burst fired, he heard a bang and then a hiss. Instinct made him slam down his visor. Over the radio he heard Gaz’s rough voice echo through his helmet.

  “That’s near us, fuckers.” He undid his straps and stood. The others, including Victor, followed him from their compartment.

  The hissing sound continued over their suit feed, as they found a hole in the side of the ship’s pressure hull. The rest of the corridor was a scorched mess. The puncture likely came from a plasma jet generated by a hit to the outer hull.

  On the opposite bulkhead were the scorched and splattered remains of an unidentified crewman.

  “Well, that fucker’s dead,” Gaz said. “Cap, we got a hole in access corridor four. Gonna patch it. Also looks like…someone got splattered. Can’t tell who.”

  “Worry about that later, Gaz. There’s still one more pirate ship I need to deal with. Patch that hole quickly. Air costs money.”

  “You got it,” Gaz said. He walked over to a storage locker and pulled out an emergency patch kit. A hole had punched neatly right through the center of it. “Well, fuck me.”

  Toren and Dom ran down opposite ends of the corridor, presumably to find another patch kit. Or so Victor hoped. For his part, he knelt down over what was left of the crewmember’s body and pulled out his utility knife.

  “What are you doing, fucker?” asked Gaz.

  “I’ll fashion a temporary patch from the dead guy’s suit so we don’t lose more air while the others look for a patch kit,” Victor said as he made his cuts. He peeled away the suit from one of the dead man’s legs until he had a patch of material large enough to cover the hole. He tried to ignore the pale white flesh of the leg revealed by his efforts. He walked over and covered the hole. The suction pulled the patch outward, but Victor kept it from being sucked into space.

  Most important, the gush of air escaping from the hull stopped.

  At about the same time, Toren and Dom both appeared with kits.

  “Open one of those and bring me the bolt gun,” Victor ordered. He turned to Gaz. “Can you hold this down while I secure it?”

  Gaz nodded and held the improvised patch in place.

  Dom broke open her kit and handed Victor a pistollike device.

  He took it and fired bolts into the bulkhead, drawing a circle just outside the breach. When he was done, he said, “You can let go now, Gaz.”

  “That patch ain’t gonna hold,” he said.

  Victor put down the bolt gun and picked up his utility knife. “Just need it to buy a few minutes while we put on a real patch.” He cut away the excess material outside the ring of bolts. He then pulled out the actual patch, which looked something like a stove pot cover. He pulled the strip off the edge of the cover, exposing tar-black sealant.

  Victor placed the real patch over the makeshift one and pressed down until the sealant was secure. “All right. That should hold until we have a chance to patch the exterior.”

  Gaz nodded. “Good work, fucker.” He patted Victor shoulder. “I look forward to seeing if you know how to fight.”

  They returned to their seats. No one made an effort to identify the crewmember whose insides were decorating the ship’s interior. Victor suspected it would be his job to clean that up. Joy.

  Several minutes after Victor strapped himself back in, the Fortune vibrated again. This time, only once.

  “Got ’em! One pirate vessel disabled. Gaz! Get your people ready, they’re about to earn their pay,” announced Captain Hyde.

  “You heard ’im. Time to get ready,” Gaz said.

  The precombat jitters the hull-patching job had pushed aside now returned. Victor went back to checking his gear over and over again to distract himself.

  Several long minutes later, Gaz shook his shoulder. “Time to see what you’re made of, fucker.”

  Victor nodded and got up and headed to Fortune’s front airlock. Just outside the inner door, he grabbed a handhold.

  Behind him, Gaz said, “Fara shot out the pirate’s engines without breaching the pressure hull, so it’s likely most, if not all, the fuckers will still be alive.”

  Victor heard a thunk on the other side of the inner door as the Fortune docked with the pirate vessel. Gaz unslung a grenade launcher. “You fuckers better get ready. Things are about to get loud.”

  Gaz pressed a button on the control panel, and the inner hatch swung toward the ceiling. Victor followed behind Dom as she took position on the left side of the outer airlock door. Gaz, with Toren in tow, took position on the right.

  The inner door closed behind them, and, for a moment, they were trapped inside the airlock. Then Gaz hit the release on the outer airlock hatch. As soon as it swung up, he looked around the corner.

  “Their outer airlock is closed.” Gaz’s head turned to face Toren. “T, breachin’ charges.”

  “Got it.” The stocky man walked up and planted four cone-shaped charges on the hatch.

  Victor noticed the airlock pressure was increasing. He looked up and saw Gaz turning a dial on the controls.

  As if sensing Victor’s question, Gaz said, “I’m overpressuring the airlock to make sure the door goes into the pirate ship instead of being sucked toward us.”

  Victor nodded. Toren finished planting his charges and returned to his spot behind Gaz.

  “They’re ready to blow.” He held up the detonator, his thumb hovering over the button.

  Gaz nodded, and Toren hit the button.

  A great metallic bang and a puff of smoke resulted as the charges detonated. An instant later, Gaz brought his grenade launcher around the corner and fired a couple rounds without aiming. Both grenades detonated with loud pops.

  Dom was the first to round the corner. As soon as she did, a blast came from the other side, and multiple flechettes tore through her body, leaving long bloody streaks as she dropped to the deck.

  Gaz fired more grenades around the corner and then yelled, “MOVE, FUCKERS!”

  Victor swallowed and rounded the corner and went through the breached airlock. He yelped with surprise as gravity disappeared the moment he crossed the threshold into the pirate vessel. Their artificial gravity was out. Victor’s uncontrolled free fall carried him right into the body of a pirate killed by Gaz’s grenades.

  Two more pirates came around the corner, leveling their weapons. With no other cover, Victor grabbed the dead pirate and used him as a shield, face-to-face.

  A burst of fire crashed into the back of the pirate’s body, pushing Victor into the bulkhead near the outer airlock. Gaz, clearly expecting the gravity to be out, smoothly transitioning from 1 to 0 g and fired his grenade launcher. The rounds detonated in the air right between the two pirates, shredding them.

  “You can play with your new friend later, fucker. Take point,” Gaz said.

  Vi
ctor pushed aside the dead pirate and floated to the open inner airlock, his shotgun held before him. He looked around the corner and immediately pulled his head back into cover when a staccato of gunfire erupted from farther down the corridor.

  He fired his shotgun blindly around the corner, hoping the flechettes would hit something, and then pumped it to chamber a fresh round. The spent casing floated away.

  Toren took a position above Victor and aimed his drum-fed assault rifle through the airlock, firing a long burst down the corridor.

  Gaz pointed through the hatch. “MOVE!”

  Well, here goes. Victor kicked himself from the airlock toward a corner, his shotgun held before him.

  A pirate leaned around the corner to Victor’s left. Victor fired, hitting the pirate, and sending himself tumbling.

  He slammed into a bulkhead and let go of his shotgun while scrambling to find an anchor, desperate to keep from bouncing into the line of fire.

  The chatter of Toren’s assault rifle and the thumb-bang of Gaz’s grenade launcher reverberated through the corridor. Victor didn’t hear any return fire from the pirates.

  Victor grabbed the strap holding his shotgun to his suit and was about to pull it but decided against it and detached it instead. The weapon needed two hands to operate, making it a liability in 0 g. He wished someone had explained that to him beforehand.

  He drew the big revolver from his hip.

  Gaz floated up to the corner opposite Victor. He had traded his grenade launcher for a pistol of his own. Toren remained in the airlock, covering the corridor with his assault rifle.

  “Follow me, new guy,” Gaz said as he rounded the corridor, pushing himself along with one hand while holding his pistol before him.

  Victor did the same, covering the right side of the corridor while Gaz covered the left.

  The pirate vessel was not what Victor would call inspection-ready. The walls were bare plastic stained a thousand shades of brown. The closest thing to fresh paint was the blood splatter. Apparently pirates didn't believe in keeping their ships clean.

  A part of Victor was offended someone would take such poor care of their ship.