20
Moments later, I was carried into another elevator across the engineering deck.
I wanted to scream and raise holy hell; and I did, in the hermetically sealed solitude of my skull, but not so much as a squeak escaped my paralyzed body. I could do no more than squirm in protest.
A couple of minutes later the elevator reopened and the knights set out running down the connecting corridor between the station hub and its ring of bays. Halfway down the slidewalk, sensation began to return to my extremities. I flexed my toes and fingers and silently willed my body to recover from paralysis.
Commander Appraxin’s voice addressed us through the station’s speakers, “Lieutenant Zapatas, I recommend you hurry. We have squadrons of Starwings inbound and corvettes unloading marines to breach…”
The station was suddenly and violently shaken. We were thrown to the ground by the quake. I landed hard on my back and the lieutenant fell equally hard on my shoulder. Fortunately I was numb enough not to feel much of either impact. The knights and nun rose to their feet even as two smaller tremblings rocked the deck beneath them. A second and then a third violent quake rocked the station. Sister Elizabeth fell again. The knights kept on their feet with great effort.
“Commander Appraxin!” Zapatas called through his commlink.
There was no response.
“Commander Appraxin, come in.”
Silence and another series of light trembling.
The Imperial Knight re-hoisted me onto his shoulder and we took off again.
The screech of pulse weapons, the roar of plasma rifles and the crash and crunch of battling mechas reached our ears as we approached Beta Bay.
Lieutenant Zapatas surveyed the battlefield for several seconds from the wide entrance way to Beta Bay. “Keep your head down, sister, and stay right behind us.”
We darted into the bay, half-crouching and keeping along its interior wall. Enough of my voice returned to grunt and groan as I bounced uncomfortably on Zapatas’ plated shoulder. My recovery from the paralysis was continuing, albeit all too slowly for my liking. With a little effort I was now able to flex my hands and feet and bend my knees and elbows.
We stopped suddenly and Zapatas lowered me onto an empty luggage cart. It was parked behind three other such carts, each of which was piled high with luggage. Keeping to a crouch, the Imperial Knight took a few moments to survey the battle from both ends of the train of luggage.
“Stay with him, sister,” Zapatas said, returning to us. “There’s a group of Feds behind a pair of cranes straight ahead of us on the far end of the bay. They’re trading fire with a group of our boys at three o’clock. Unfortunately, you’re going to have to cross the Fed’s field of fire to get to the Strumpet. Ringo and I are going to circle to their right flank and draw as much fire as we can our way. Splitting their attention between us and our boys should create an opening for you two. Make for the Strumpet as soon as you see it, sister. Don’t hesitate and don’t worry about Ringo and me.”
Sister Elizabeth nodded. “God be with you, good knights.”
“And with you, sister.”
“Wath haphenin?” I asked.
The Imperial Knight turned my head to face him. The mirroring gold of his helmet’s visor faded to transparency. He regarded me with smiling eyes. “It’s just another day in the life, my buccaneering brother. Listen close. The neural inhibitor I injected you with will be wearing off shortly. If you make it to the ship, get her out of here as quickly as possible. We’ll try to circle back and join you once we see you reached her stern. But don’t wait for us for too long. Evacuating the civilians on board is your chief priority.”
I nodded.
“Where’s your gun?” he asked, looking me over. “Never mind. Here, take mine.”
“Thanks,” I said, accepting the pulse pistol.
“God be with you, Gaelic of Arkum!” Lieutenant Zapatas said, gave my shoulder a slap and then nodded at his man. “Let’s go!”
Zapatas and Ringo hurried off and disappeared behind the wall of luggage.
“What’s happening out there?” I managed to articulate clearly.
Sister Elizabeth crawled on her hands and knees to the edge of the luggage wall and poked her head around it. After a few seconds, she began filling me in. “We’re being boarded. Fed troopers are slipping through the shield curtain. Every fourth or fifth one is a mecha. There are a dozen Imperials firing from underneath a line of foundry shuttles. Some of them are trading fire with several light-armored Feds, the ones our lieutenant mentioned taking cover behind a pair of cranes. The other Imperials are trying to pick off as many of the boarders coming through the curtain as they can. They’re having better luck with the light armored troops than the mecha. A lot of mecha are getting past the firewall.”
“How many so far?”
“Fifteen… seventeen... maybe as many as twenty,” the young nun said. “It’s hard to tell. They’re in close quarter combat with seven or eight Imperial mechas.”
“And my Strumpet?” I asked, reaching over my head and grabbing one of the cart’s guide bars.
“You’re ship is fine,” Sister Elizabeth said. “Most of the fighting is happening well in front of her.”
“Good,” I said and, with a grunt, hoisted myself up into a seated position.
“Lieutenant Zapatas and Ringo have started firing on the Feds!”
The nun scrambled to the rear of the cart holding me. “Hang on, Gaelic.” She flicked the cart’s power switch to the On position. She raised herself onto her toes and craned her neck to peek over the wall of luggage. Sister Elizabeth then took a long, preparatory breath, exhaled resolvedly and crossed herself.
“Here we go,” she said, grabbing the steering handles. Her thumbs pushed the drive toggles forward and the cart gently lurched into motion.
With my head on a swivel, my gaze combed the expanse of the bay, quickly digesting as many details of the battle raging across it as I could. My cursory assessment strongly suggested that we had arrived at Beta Bay as the battle turned against the Empire.
The Imperial troops had set up defensive positions at two ends of the bay, placing the shield curtain squarely in their intersecting fields of fire. The left hand position had since collapsed. Its protective wall of foundry shuttles had been reduced to their frames and a large puddle of slag. The wrecked and torn bodies of several knights lay dead in the ruin. To their credit, I noted a good score of light armored Federation marines, five Fed mechas and the smoldering form of a Psion battle-bot fallen in their midst.
The defenders’ second position was holding, thanks mostly to a pair of shield wall projectors placed between the foundry shuttles. A dozen or so light armored Imperial Knights, tucked under the shuttles, fired from behind the safety of the energy shield. They were trading pulse fire with their Federation counterparts behind the two cranes parked across the deck from them. Zapatas and Ringo split the Federation troopers’ attention when they breached their right flank, firing on the Feds from behind a pile of plasteel crates and an overturned robo-rack.
There was a knight on top of each of the shuttles, their backs strapped with the plasma generators that fed their rifles through coiled crysteel cables. They concentrated their deadly jets of fire on the Federation Mechanized Corps slipping through the shield curtain. Scores of light and mecha armored troops already burned beneath the curtain in a mangled pile strewn with the smoking remains of a dozen or more breach drones.
Cooking a mecha trooper in his armored suit was not something that was either easily or quickly done, even with a plasma rifle. The neutronium alloy plating was not only formidable, but mecha armor also generated a protective energy shield around itself. Imperial plasma fire had accrued a significant body count but it would not stem the enemy tide for much longer. For every two Federation mecha they managed to take down, a third slipped through.
The Fed mechas which made it past the blistering fire that welcomed them aboard Krestor Stat
ion joined the melee roiling before the Strumpet’s bow. Some thirty meters from my ship, ten mechanized Imperial Knights fought a desperate, clangorous close quarter battle against nearly twice their number. The Fed mecha were painted in broad chevrons of red, gold and blue, the Imperials were mirror-bright silver with golden highlights and crosses. Swords and spontoons, hammers, shields and axes crashed together with explosive bursts of light. The mechanized giants traded blows while they trampled back and forth over the wreckage of their fallen armored brothers. Crackling arcs of ions traced the swings, sweeps and lunges of their weapons through the air.
Sister Elizabeth and I couldn’t help but keep an eye on the clamorous, wildly coruscant combat as we crossed the bay. We were approaching the Strumpet’s port side, the nun arcing the cart towards the ship’s stern. The loading ramp began to lower itself when it came into view.
“Good girl, Strumpet,” I said into my commlink. “Get us out of here as soon as I’m aboard.”
“Yes, captain.”
Off to our side, we watched an Imperial mecha drive his spontoon through the torso of a Federation counterpart. The Fed grabbed the Imperial’s arm and yanked his opponent forward, driving the shaft further through itself. The move however brought his enemy within range of his sword, which he used to lop off the Imperial mecha’s head before collapsing into an inanimate heap.
The Imperial mecha, rendered blind by the loss of its head, staggered backward. Its arms flailed about wildly in an effort to stay upright. The struggle for balance came to an abrupt end when the mecha tripped over the legs of one of its fallen comrades. It toppled backwards, slamming hard onto the deck. The cross on the mecha’s breast plate popped off, spun in the air a few times before crashing loudly against the Mecha’s legs. The pilot began climbing out of the chest cockpit. A knotted tangle of his neuro-servo harness hampered his exit. It slowed him down long enough for another Federation mecha to close in.
The Imperial mecha pilot never saw the axe fall. The double headed blade sliced cleanly through the man’s abdomen. The pilot’s legs dropped back into his mecha’s cockpit. His torso flew through the air and landed with a meaty thud beside us. The young man’s eyes and mouth were open wide, his face frozen in surprise. His brown eyes blinked a couple of times before their light vanished.
The sight made the young nun scream. The scream drew the attention of the Fed mecha which had just dispatched the young Imperial soldier.
The fifteen foot monstrosity fixed his red-visored gaze on us and then heaved his axe from the body of another Imperial mecha crumpled at his boots. A trail of blood droplets and ions arced into the air behind the axe when he raised it, triumphantly, in the air. The Federation mecha then slowly lowered the double-headed axe. He held it before him in two hands and began making his way towards us.
“Hurry!” I urged Sister Elizabeth on, even as I judged that the mecha’s long strides would allow him to intercept us before we could reach the ramp.
I dialed the pulse pistol to full power, raised it and fired on the advancing mecha. High voltage, blue-white bolts flew in rapid fire from the pistol. The energy bursts splayed and scattered in strobelike fashion inches from the looming hulk. I imagined the trooper was smiling under his helmet, if not outright laughing at me. He knew full well that I would need to drain a couple of power packs before I sapped his armor’s energy shield. And then I would need another pair of power packs to burn through the mecha’s neutronium plating.
But I did have a grenade.
“Get ready to hit the deck, sister,” I said, plucking the grenade from my belt.
“What?”
I flipped up the grenade’s top, depressed the trigger and then tossed it underhand towards the mecha. I was confident that it would slide unseen under the flares my stream of pulse fire lit in his sensors. The grenade landed a couple of yards in front of the trooper and continued to slide towards him. It was a good shot. It looked like the grenade would blow just as the mech stepped over it. And though it was hoping for too much, I prayed the blast would make tonsils out of his testes.
With my throwing hand, I then grabbed the sleeve of Sister Elizabeth’s habit and forcefully dragged her to the deck. My other hand dropped the pistol and grabbed the edge of the luggage cart. Throwing my every ounce of weight behind all of my remaining strength, I managed to flip the cart on its side, presenting its belly as a wall between us and the mecha and the...
The grenade exploded as I landed on top of the nun.
The blast slammed the luggage cart against us. We rolled with the blow for a few yards.
“Let’s go! Go! Go!” I said, rolling off her when we had come to a stop.
Despite the urgency of my command, I was unable to rise beyond my knees. Sister Elizabeth staggered to her feet and cleared her head with a shake. Ahead of us the mecha was sprawled out on its back but stirring. Its armor was intact. We had seconds before the mecha’s systems optimized again.
Sister Elizabeth turned to me. “Can you get up?”
I shook my head. “Not on my own.”
She hoisted me up by the armpits. The mecha rose to a sitting position. I threw an arm across the nun’s shoulders and she wrapped one around my lower back. The mecha picked up its axe. The nun and I hobbled hurriedly towards the ramp. The mecha rose to its feet. In four strides the mecha reached the ramp before us. We stopped short when his bulk blocked our way. It raised the axe. All I could do was shove Sister Elizabeth behind me and stand up straight to meet the killing blow.
21
The axe never fell.
A roaring jet of plasma struck the mecha square in the back. The strike hurled the Federation trooper forward. Sister Elizabeth tackled me from behind, clearing us out of the giant’s path. We landed hard on our sides. The roar of plasma fire continued unabated. I looked up to find its source. It was Chief Engineer Asaph Greeley. He had a generator strapped to his back and was firing on the mecha from the top of my Strumpet’s loading ramp. The trooper rolled across the deck, trying to get out of reach of the high energy stream. Greeley walked slowly down the ramp, keeping the jet of plasma fixed on the mecha.
“Captain! Sister!” Greeley yelled over the roar of his weapon. “Get your arses on board double quick!”
Sister Elizabeth lifted me to my feet. We put our arms around each other again and made for the loading ramp. Upon passing Greeley on the ramp, I noticed two more Federation mechas approaching us. The last of the Imperial mecha had fallen and their Federation counterparts were now wreaking havoc on their opponent’s remaining defensive position, slaughtering their light-armored rivals. The pair of Fed mechas bearing down on us sheathed their swords and reached for the large pulse rifles holstered on their thighs.
“Incoming at four o’clock!” I cried out.
I threw the young nun down and dropped on top of her as the mechas loosed a fusillade of pulse fire. Behind us, Krestor Station’s Chief Engineer let out a short but agonized scream. Greeley and his plasma rifle then fell silent.
“Gaelic, keep moving!” Lieutenant Zapatas barked over the screeching of pulse rifle fire. “And keep low!”
Sister Elizabeth and I crawled up the remainder of the ramp on our bellies as Federation mechas and Imperial knights traded fire over our heads. A stray shot hit the nun’s habit, lighting a segment of its hem on fire. We continued forward. A yard or so from the top, I heard the pounding of running bootfalls.
“Raise the ramp, Gaelic!” Zapatas bellowed behind me.
“Strumpet,” I yelled out. “Raise the ramp and get us the hell out of here!”
The loading ramp lifted and shut, dropping the knights, the nun and me onto the crowded deck of my former cargo hold. A score or more of frightened faces regarded us anxiously as the Strumpet lifted from the bay’s deck. Two of the more intrepid among them stepped forward to stamp out the flames eating away at Sister Elizabeth’s habit.
“Can you walk?” Zapatas asked.
“Maybe,” I answered.
> “Well, we don’t really have the time to find out,” the Imperial knight said and then hoisted me over his shoulder again. “Ringo, make a hole for us.”
“Make a hole!” the young knight’s voice boomed across the deck.
Before the crowd could respond, Ringo began pushing them back with broad sweeps of his arms. Zapatas and I followed in his immediate wake and Sister Elizabeth trailed behind us. I was carried forward and up the ladder to the Strumpet’s new upper deck. More frightened civilians stared at us in silence.
We reached the cockpit as the Strumpet cleared the shield curtain of Beta Bay. Zapatas lowered me into my captain’s chair. Ringo, who was already at my flight console was staring at the monitor and shaking his head.
“They’re all dead,” he said.
Zapatas and I looked at the monitor as I strapped in. We watched Federation troops dragging corpses of the Imperial fallen to the center of the bay. Chief Engineer Greeley was among them.
“It’s not right, us leaving like this, Lieutenant,” Ringo added.
Zapatas laid and avuncular hand on Ringo’s shoulder. “I don’t like it any more than you do. But we’re not retreating, soldier; we’re following our orders to return to the Lyonesse.”
The young knight shook his helmeted head.
I switched the monitor from rear view to scope. The sector map showed Krestor Station afloat in a bottle of fireflies. Squadrons of Federation Starwings and flights of Imperial Angels swarmed about the station in dizzying, deadly dogfights. Further out, clusters of corvettes and halberds traded broadsides. Beyond them, the dreadnaught Constitution and her destroyer escorts were maneuvering to trap the Excalibur and Galatine, between hammers and anvil.
One Last Flight: Book One Of The Holy Terran Empire Page 20