Carter got his first good look at the enemy as the thing kicked convulsively and then lay still in death. A light brown, almost tan, in color. It was neither furred nor scaled, as were many reptiles. It was about half the height of a man. Skinny and weak looking, but that was probably deceptive. A long snout was filled with thin needle-teeth and visible even at this distance, great green eyes that probably saw as well in the dark as he saw in broad daylight.
This entire Carter noticed in the milliseconds time before he jerked back behind the protective statute, and none too soon, as a rain of projectiles drove against his cover and in among the statues, where whining ricochets filled the air with buzzing death. None found a mark. Truly only luck, but better to be here than back out there in the open, where death was coming to the hapless Troopers in stifling waves.
His comrades were finding cover behind the growing piles of those already dead, and were now delivering a pulverizing rain of blaster fire into the enemy's ranks. Carter got off two more well-placed shots before having to duck back again from the deadly fusillade of fire filling his retreat. Lan was the closest of the enemy invaders and suddenly he had all of their attention.
Thudding footsteps behind him brought Carter around in a blur, weapon up and finger poised over the actuator stud, but it was the woman from his own Squad. The girl. The girl who had questioned him aboard the Troop Transport before touchdown.
She raced into the protection of the alien statues and dove to the ground amid an angry burst of enemy fire, rolling up beside Carter's feet, and then she looked up at him from the ground, an expression of uncertainty upon her face.
"You ain't gotta worry what I think." Lan said. "It's them out there you gotta worry about." He nodded towards the enemy line on the other side of the statue.
The girl's eyes followed his movement, but she did not reply. Surprisingly, she had found somewhere the courage to charge across that open area. Under that withering hail of fire! That had taken balls! No question about it, Lan was impressed.
He turned back and snapped two more quick shots around the right edge of the statue, then yanked back as enemy fire rained where he had been, but the girl was no longer behind him; she had moved to the other edge of the statue and was firing out at the enemy. She kept right on firing, despite the return fire, her blast rifle leaping in her hands, against her shoulder, the flames jumping strobe-like from the end of her weapon. Lan jumped at her, grabbed her and yanked her back fiercely!
"You crazy bitch!" Lan screamed in her face. "You ain't gotta be no hero! Heroes get dead! Are you fucking hearing me?" He emphasized his screams with violent shakes that nearly took her off her feet. When Lan relented, she nodded her head up and down vigorously, while staring at him out of wide open petrified eyes. Lan shook his own head, in wonderment, and let her go. She nearly sagged to the ground but caught herself, again giving him that uncertain look.
"Everyone was dying!" She said tremulously, simply unable to hold it in any longer. "I didn't know what else to do. I was the second one out of the Transport. I saw you run here, but the Lieutenant was screaming for everyone to line up, then he was hit, and he was screaming in pain! He was screaming so horribly! A medic gave him a shot and he shut up, and everyone was dying . . .”
"You're alive. That's all that matters." Lan said interrupting her, not unkindly, then he turned to look around the edge of their protective statute but projectiles spanged off the metal of the statue the moment he showed his face and he hastily pulled it back.
The girl had taken her place on her side of the statue again, but was looking over her shoulder at him for a signal. Lan waited for a lull before leaning out to fire again, and heard her weapon firing simultaneously as his own. When he pulled back, after firing twice, she pulled back as well.
The Troopers behind were savaging the enemy line and taking a lot of the heat off them now. Working in sync with one another, Lan and the girl wreaked deadly havoc among the enemy in front, and soon there was a discernible lessening of enemy fire coming their way.
Secretly Lan was very impressed by the girl's performance. She'd been in the middle of the Transport! That she had gotten out second showed great instinctual reactions. Lan suspected she possessed incredible natural instincts, if only she could be kept alive long enough to come to an understanding of them; all of the natural instincts in the Universe weren't enough to keep the inexperienced alive on a new battlefield! Not when your first lesson was usually your last! The ridiculous Boot Camp training these recruits received was entirely inadequate; those who survived in the Corps survived on their own merits, or as in most cases, did not survive at all.
She sure didn't look like much though, Lan decided, glancing at her surreptitiously. Looks can be deceiving, he knew though, and in her case he suspected, entirely deceiving. She looked incapable of fighting her way out of a wet paper sack, much less overcoming hardy reptile defenders fighting for their homes, their land, their families, and their lives. There was little in existence more ferocious than a cornered lizard.
It would be nice Lan decided if the Squad could have one regular besides himself to share his remaining years in the Corps. Was something like that possible? It didn't seem probable, not with the weight of experience to the contrary, but Carter would do what he could to make it happen. It was a first for him, to care; it wasn't the first time he had tried to save someone's life, but it was the first time, in a long time, that he found himself caring.
The weight of experience told him that he should not care, but he did. Was he a fool?
Chapter 3
Even in a hopeless situation there still exists some possibility of success, some chance for salvation, even in the most untenable of circumstances. However, Rebecca had never been in one worse, in all of her conflict ridden life, as that which she found herself within now. And this situation did seem entirely hopeless, but as long as she breathed, could move and think and act, there was always hope.
A green glare erupted in the darkness of the Bridge. It was shining from the cuff light of Rebecca's uniform sleeve. It was but dim and feeble, but it was bright enough to illuminate the wreckage of what had once been the Bridge. It hardly seemed possible that the destruction that lay around her now had, only moments earlier, been the luxuriously accommodated Bridge of Benefactor. It looked like a tornado had struck, smashing everything in its path.
The stink of fresh blood nearly overwhelmed her, a natural physiological reaction, but the sight of the shredded, mutilated bodies evoked no feelings within her, either negative or positive. She was familiar with the sight of such, had been inured since an early age.
Forcing herself to ignore the cloying stench, she stood up to survey her new surroundings. What she needed was an operational Control Console, but she doubted she was going to find one. She was confronted with wreckage and destruction on all sides. Nothing left seemed to be operational.
Benefactor was accelerating into the gravity well of the planet. She could feel it clearly through her body. It meant she had little time. The only factor that gave her any hope at all was that the Internal Environmental Gravity was still functioning. The deck under her feet was still down and she appeared to still retain her normal weight. It meant there was still power in the ship, somewhere. It could go at any time however, and once gone would extremely complicate matters.
Complicate being the understatement of the day, Rebecca thought unhappily. If there was almost no chance for survival now, there would be even less then. Less than none. It was not a lot.
Rebecca walked from Console to Console searching for a flicker of functionality on the black Control Panels, squishing through pooling blood and stepping over shredded bodies as she made her way. There was no activity on any of the Control Consoles at all. They were all completely dead.
Not knowing what else to do, and feeling completely helpless, she slammed the Captain's Control Console, in front of which she now stood, with the heel of her hand, then watched in horror as the whol
e assembly toppled over and fell to the deck with a tremendous crash, having already been partially wrecked by the hail of flying debris.
"The Manual Override . . .”A voice said out of the darkness. The voice was hardly recognizable as human. Death was in the drawn out rasp of the voice, and it's owner knew it. That was there as well. Rebecca felt a terrible empathy for the man, but had no time for such sentiments.
Rebecca scanned the wreckage again, her dim green light playing over the macabre scene, until she located the author of the voice. When she did, she almost wished she had not.
The man had been torn apart and lay in a pile of spilled intestines, gore and more blood than it seemed possible for a human to contain. She'd never seen anyone in such terrible condition yet living. Death would not be long in coming, and it would be a welcome relief.
She hoped, for his sake, that death came before the shock wore off. If it did not, she would put him out of his misery herself.
"What Manual Override?" Rebecca asked. She had to know now, before he died or before it became too late to institute the procedure, whatever process that entailed. For a moment, when he didn't respond, she thought him already gone, but then he spoke;
"In the Engine Room." The man said, looking up at her with eyes that were very much aware of his imminent death. "You . . . must . . .” Then his head lolled to the side and he was dead. Rebecca was running even before his head had finished falling. He had no more to offer.
There was a huge chunk of bulkhead blown away. She went through the opening on the run, thanking whatever providence had created the quick exit; her blaster would have taken a lot of valuable time on the hardened carbon armor of the reinforced Bridge, time she did not now have.
The hiss of leaking atmosphere sounded off on her left somewhere distantly, but not that far. She couldn't feel the breeze that would indicate depleting levels of atmosphere, but it wouldn't take long; Benefactor held a lot atmosphere, but space was much larger and emptier. Benefactor must not have been able to sell seal all the ruptures before she lost power, Rebecca thought. It would surely complicate matters. Matters that were too complicated already.
Rebecca was now faced with two major dilemmas, but Benefactor's plunge would shortly make all other issues immaterial, inconsequential. It was possible that if she could restore power through this Manual Override, whatever that was, that Benefactor could seal her leaks herself. If not, there were spacesuits for emergencies such as these, if she could get to one in time. She wished her training had involved some basics on Starship Operations, but it had not, her training had been specialized; she nor Benefactor had ever been meant to see such a battle. Hindsight is twenty-twenty, she cursed.
She'd been trained to act, however, so that is what she did. Familiar with the layout of the ship at least, if not of its operations, she ran through the wreckage of what had once been nearly a work of art, and which had been reduced to a state of near total destruction, even though her miniscule cuff light barely illuminated her way through the Stygian darkness.
She ran, twisting and turning through the cramped, debris strewn corridors more on instinct than on what her visual senses told her, and soon stood before the sealed hatchway of the Engine (Drive) Room.
There was no response as she approached the heavy Security Hatchway, but she had not really expected one. That would have been too much to ask, and she was not expecting it to be easy.
A sign said; 'Authorized Personnel Only'. Though a Colonel, technically she was not an Authorized Person, and the retinal scan, if it had been functioning, would not have acted to open the hatchway anyway. More than likely it would have signaled a Security Detail. In this case, a non-existent Security Detail, if it had been able to signal in the first place, which it had not.
When her presence caused no reaction, she turned and ran back down the corridor up which she had come. Reaching the T intersection at the branching corridor, she skidded to a halt, noting as she did so the converging gravitational forces now acting on Benefactor, and upon herself, that of the Environmental Gravity Control and that of the inertia caused by the accelerating ship.
Her blaster came out of its holster and appeared in her hand, a blur of speed. Her hand was definitely faster than the eye. She stepped behind the left wall while turning to face back down the corridor. Now all that remained in the corridor was her arm and the blaster held in her hand. Her finger closed on the actuator, and the weapon lurched in her hand, spewing its energy.
Rebecca opened her eyes and looked around the corner. The dim cuff light barely illuminated the end of the corridor, but it was enough to see that the heavy Security Hatchway still barred her way, though it was scorched and appeared slightly buckled. She pulled back behind the corner and fired again, the sizzling concussion as her weapon fired followed by the second, louder explosion when the energy struck the hatchway itself at the end of the corridor.
It still had not breached the hatchway. Angrily she pulled back and double fired her weapon. When she looked again, she was rewarded by the minutest breach in the heavy hatchway, but it looked large enough for her to climb through at least. She wasted no time, and ran to the opening, holstering her blaster on the run.
The jagged gash in the solid wall was still red hot and glowing. Slag glowed on the deck where the wall had been melted. She was very careful not to touch any of it. She'd seen what molten metal, in this case it was some kind of carbon composite, but she was no metallurgist and frankly, at the moment, did not give a damn what it was, as long as she did not get any of it on herself, could do to flesh, and it was not pretty! Very carefully, she squeezed through the opening, managing not to burn herself. The heat was palpable on her skin.
More damage greeted her as she squeezed into the Engine Room, but it didn't seem as severe and the huge Drive Unit Housing did not appear to have been affected at all. As the most important section of the entire ship, Rebecca guessed that its Housing would be many atoms thick, and nearly impregnable. She hoped she would not have to blast through it as well. It might not even be possible.
There were the same shredded bodies here as elsewhere, struck down by the rain of flying debris that seemed to have struck everywhere, but they weren't her concern; if any of them survived, the only way she could help them now was by first saving Benefactor.
The possibility that she would be able to do so seemed to be growing less likely as Benefactor continued her plunge, and the converging forces became more evident. She had no idea how much time remained, but it couldn't be much and it was quickly decreasing.
The dim green glow cast by her cuff light did not illuminate much of the vastness of the huge chamber. Its light did not even penetrate the darkness all the way in only one direction. The area was very vast.
The Engine/Drive Unit itself was secure behind its carbon nano-composite housing, a huge box set in the middle of the chamber. The housing was the size of a small office building. The larger containment chamber with all the regulatory computers and Control Consoles was another box, a box within a box within the ship. She was in the outer box, the Controls Chamber.
She had absolutely no idea what she was looking for, and none of the crew who were strewn about seemed to be in any position to tell her. It seemed unprofessional to her that she did not know, even if her duties in no way included the operation of Starships It was a tiny bit of data, or lack thereof, that was about to make all the difference. Wasting no time, she ran along the carbon shielding/housing, flashing the green cuff light along the dull black surface as she ran. If the Override was not on the housing itself, there would not be enough time to find it. It just had to be on the housing. It had to be.
Familiarity with zero and near zero gravity now stood her in good stead as the Environmental Gravity continued to vanish under the inertia of the ships fall. If the Internal Gravity completely disappeared under the differentiation of the inertia to Internal Gravity ratio before she found the Override, the consequences were assured. She would never get to
it.
Conversely, if Benefactor were suddenly to lose Internal Gravity, Rebecca would be slapped against the ceiling and spread out like butter on toast. At less than half her normal weight already and steadily decreasing, she continued her frantic search.
Outside, the friction of Benefactor's plunge began burning away the hull. Even carbon nano-composite, hard and heat resistant as it is, had a melting point, and it had reached it.
And then Rebecca's eyes fell on that for which she was searching. Large lettering clearly stated; 'Manual Override: Use Only In Case Of Extreme Ship Malfunction!'
The lever itself was under several non-locking clasps. What position they would've put her in if the damn thing had been locked. Her blaster was hardly designed for fine detail cutting. If anything she would have blown away the whole lever and been worse off than she had been in the first place. Her fingers were already digging at the first catch.
Click. One catch was free. Frantically she scrabbled at the next catch, and broke her fingernail halfway down the cuticle.
She snatched her hand away to shake off the pain, but in mid shake reached right back up to dig at the stiff metal with her middle finger, and the catch released. Click.
The fingernail hadn't broken this time, but had been wrenched slightly free of the skin underneath, sending a new stabbing pain through her hand. Ignoring the pain, she reached up with her left hand and clicked free the last catch with her stronger thumb. The catch clasp fell away and the lever was free to be thrown.
Rebecca reached for the lever itself. Midway there she was thrown violently to the deck as a massive explosion rocked Benefactor, a power overload somewhere. She landed on her left elbow and rolled agonizingly across the deck before she could halt her sliding roll.
The ship slipped nose-down into the atmosphere, canting in its fall now. The force the Environmental Gravity exerted was working against the force of the inertia caused by the rapid acceleration planet-ward; it was like being pushed in two directions at once. The Engine/Drive Unit Housing was now uphill from her position. She would have to run uphill to get to it.
Duty, Honor or Death the Corps Sticks Page 3