The Long Black (The Black Chronicles Book 1)

by J. M. Anjewierden

  “Pirates,” he mouthed to her, then shifted about to get a better firing angle.”

  Clutching her pistol tightly Morgan moved to get her whole body behind the barrier on that side of the intersection, careful to keep her finger off of the trigger. She hadn’t been able to practice as much on the station, since she’d had to keep an eye on Haruhi. On board the Fate of Dawn, though, it had been easy to get time in at the small range they maintained, mostly for the mercs’ use. Despite that, she was finding it hard to remember the training and advice through the adrenaline and the rapid fluttering of her heart.

  A head appeared around the corner at the far end of the corridor, pulled back quickly as Hudson let of a single shot from his rifle. This time it was a PR round, the charge blowing a ragged hole in the bulkhead at the corner. Morgan winced. There were going to be so many things to fix tomorrow.

  A few moments passed, then several rifles stuck out awkwardly into the corridor, literally firing blind at the lone merc. Hudson seemed to be content to let them waste their shots and he motioned again for Morgan to stay low. The barricade shuddered under the impacts, but it was designed with explosive rounds in mind, and it held.

  The sheer noise level was something Morgan hadn’t counted on, however. Within moments all she could hear was the ringing in her ears. With her free hand she awkwardly hit the buttons to manually deploy her suit’s helmet.

  Silently, the folded collar of her suit slid upwards hood-like as it deployed into the flexible yet tough helmet. The segmented clear faceplate slid down and snapped into place with a hiss as the suit’s oxygen systems came online.

  During a pause in the fire, Hudson cupped his mic in one hand and said, “I’ve got a couple tangos poking their noses around the armory, approaching from the starboard. I’m fine for the moment, but if they try and flank me. . .” He paused, listening to someone on the other end. “Roger that, dispatch. Five minutes. Be advised, I have one crewwoman here with me, and she is armed.” Another pause. “No of course I didn’t give her a weapon. Crazy little thing brought her own.”

  “Hey!” Morgan cried out, ducking involuntarily as a dart pinged off the top of the barrier.

  “I copy. Backup will approach from the stern. Hudson, clear.”

  “They’re sending more people?” Morgan asked, trying her uplink com into his headset.

  “Yeah. Keep your head down. We’ll be fine.” He returned fire at them, either to keep them from trying to peer around and aim, or try and hit the ends of the guns, Morgan wasn’t sure.

  Morgan put her back to the barrier, pulling her legs up to her chest, resting the gun on her knees carefully pointed away from Hudson. There was a bit of movement down the hall in front of her. Wait, he had said they would be coming from the stern, not port. . .

  “Behind you!” Morgan yelled, throwing herself back towards the final barrier in front of the door where she could get at least some protection from both sides. She wanted to just shoot at them, but she wasn’t sure which side they were on.

  Apparently Hudson didn’t have that problem. He only took a single look before sending a full-auto burst whizzing down the hallway with the newcomers. Instead of pulling back this new group just kept coming forward, even as the group to starboard intensified their fire. Morgan didn’t dare move to get a better look, but there were at least four or five of them, large imposing shapes in red colored skinsuits. No helmets though. She wondered why they weren’t wearing them, and why Hudson wasn’t either.

  Morgan hadn’t handled anything like his rifle before, but she definitely wanted a look after this. She hadn’t seen him change magazines yet but he was easily switching between normal and PR rounds and single fire, burst, and fully automatic.

  “Ah, crap.” Hudson said, putting down his rifle for a moment to pull something off his belt.

  “Is that a grenade? Are you insane?” Morgan asked, leaning to one side to shoot two rounds towards the starboard group now that he had stopped keeping their heads down.

  She hadn’t actually fired any of the IS rounds before. The recoil was noticeably greater than with the practice rounds, enough that the second round put a neat hole into the ceiling rather than the end of the corridor. The sound was drastically different too. Much more high pitched for one thing.

  “You have a better idea?” He said, poking a couple buttons on the grenade before pulling the pin. . .

  . . .And promptly getting shot in the shoulder, a lucky ricochet from who-knows-where. It didn’t look like it had breached his armor, but the force and surprise were enough to knock him about a bit. The grenade dropped from his hand bouncing a foot or so away as he stumbled. Oh, she was going to die, she was going to die and she didn’t even know why the pirates were here.

  That was the loudest voice in Morgan’s head. It wasn’t the calmest though. Her eyes firmly on the grenade Morgan lunged forward, her fingers missing it as she fell almost onto it. Shaking she scooped it up, standing up fully as she flung it towards the bow as hard as she could.

  Time seemed to slow, the grenade tumbling end over end from her clumsy throw. Somehow it flew straight enough, actually hitting the lead pirate right in his mustachioed mouth. His face erupted in blood as it dropped to the floor at his feet. “Oh sh. . .” was all he got out before the grenade detonated, Morgan only thinking to drop down to the ground at the last instant. She had expected a fireball, a huge sound, something flashy, but apparently it wasn’t like in the vids.

  There was a single thud, loud to be sure, but only a bit louder through her helmet’s noise reduction than the shots had been. The walls and ground shook, just a little bit, she probably wouldn’t have noticed at all if she hadn’t been hugging the ground with all her might. The fire from the other corridor stopped. They probably were pulling back in case he had another grenade ready. Morgan grabbed the rifle, moving to cover the starboard corridor, then realized that she didn’t know the first thing about it. She put it back down and trained her pistol around the edge of the barrier instead.

  “You okay?” she whispered, not daring to look, at least not yet.

  “Armor stopped it,” he said, and she could hear him start to get up off the floor. “Nice work with the grenade, I could kiss you.”

  “Yeah. You got this?” Morgan asked, not daring to comment about the offered kiss one way or another.

  “We’re in trouble if they decide to come at us from both angles again.”

  “Can I hope that you have more of those grenades?”

  “You can hope, Darlin’, but that won’t add to my empty belt. All the rest are in the armory.”

  “How are you for ammo?”

  “Well, that depends on how many targets show up.”

  “That low?”

  “It’s not as much as I could wish for, no.”

  “We’d have better cover inside the armory. Ammo too.”

  Hudson shook his head. “I wasn’t kidding when I said I don’t have the codes. They won’t transmit them to me with the enemy close enough to intercept it either. We only need to hold out a few minutes more. We’ll be fine.”

  The universe being what it was, that was the precise moment five more pirates showed up.

  Morgan squeezed off the rest of the magazine towards the newcomers. Slow, aimed shots that failed to do more than force them back around the corner. Hudson fired at the other three. She couldn’t spare the second to look, but it sounded like he hit at least one of them. Surprisingly, the pirate’s scream was audible over the gunfire. That woman sure had a loud voice.

  “Can you cover me?” Morgan asked, stuffing the empty magazine in her suit before sliding a new one in.

  “Not for long, especially if you’re doing something stupid.”

  “We need to get in there. I’m going to persuade the door.”

  “I’m sorry, I heard you say you’re going to ‘persuade the door.’”

  “That’s right, can you cover me?”

  He shook his head, “You’ll never be
able to hack the door. We used military grade encryption. Even if you could, I don’t think I could hold back both groups at once.”

  “Well, let’s fix that second problem then,” Morgan said with much more confidence than she felt, “And I’m not going to hack the computer system.”

  Shots were still pinging off of the barricade steadily, as well as more than a few thumps from the explosive rounds. Pieces of the barricade started breaking off, chips and splinters bounced off of everything, including their suits. One collided with Hudson’s cheek, leaving a small cut. He grimaced, but otherwise ignored it.

  Morgan took in a deep breath, trying to calm herself. She needed steady hands for this, both for aiming and what came after. Five, maybe four, to port. Probably only two to starboard.

  She waited for Hudson to fire, then glanced around the corner and took the time to look. One pirate was lying in the hallway, unmoving. Judging by figure it was the woman she’d heard scream earlier.

  Morgan crouched down farther, propping her elbow on her knee to steady her hands even further.

  “I’m going to let up, get them to think I’m reloading. Wait for them to come more into view before firing.”

  “And what will you be doing?”

  “Reloading.”

  Morgan focused intently on the corner they were hiding behind. She tuned out the sounds of gunfire from behind then, edging closer. She ignored her sweaty palms in her suit gloves, her ragged breathing, even the pounding of her pulse in her ears. All that mattered was that corner.

  Hudson pulled back, the empty magazine clattering to the ground at their feet. No wonder he’d lasted so long on a single magazine; it alone was far larger than her whole gun. Morgan could see him tugging a fresh one out of his boot, but still she focused on the corner.

  First a barrel appeared, firing a couple shots blindly. No reply. A head popped out. Morgan leaned to the side, getting as much of her small frame behind the barricade as possible, but gave no reply.

  She waited agonizing seconds as the two pirates cautiously came out into the corridor. The fire from the port slackened. Morgan figured they were being careful not to run afoul of friendly fire. When they were ten meters forward of the corner Morgan fired.

  The first shot struck the closer pirate squarely in the chest. He screamed and fell to one knee, but didn’t fall.

  If there was one major drawback to the Iridium Specials, besides the small bullet size, it was the fact that so much was focused on penetrating the armor the bullet didn’t deform at all once it did.

  Even now, centuries upon centuries later, standard bullets were made primarily out of lead. Sure, it was cheap and easy to work with, but mostly it was because lead flattened and spread out when it hit someone, causing more damage. Either way all a bullet really did was poke a hole in someone. If you didn’t hit any organs or cause enough shock damage, the wound was only fatal quickly through blood loss.

  Given the choices of bouncing rounds uselessly off of the armor and making smaller holes the choice was obvious.

  The solution to the problem was also obvious. More holes. So Morgan shot him again. It wasn’t hard, in that he was now that much closer and no longer moving, but at the same time it was one of the hardest things Morgan had done.

  When she had thrown the grenade at the pirates it had been instinctual, more reflex than anything else. Now she was coolly and coldly shooting someone whose face she could see, whose eyes she could look into.

  Sure, he was trying to hurt or kill her, but he was still a person.

  All of this ran through her head in less than a second. The second bullet hit him a bit higher than the first, and a bit to the right. His cry cut off into a ragged gasp. Maybe she hit a lung or something. He fell, still writhing and moaning, but clearly not an immediate threat.

  Meanwhile Hudson had gotten his rifle reloaded, and his first shot hit the last pirate to starboard just above the collar of her suit.

  It had been a penetrator round. The suit wasn’t effected much by the explosion, though the penetrator did punch through. Her faceplate, on the other hand?

  Morgan closed her eyes to the sight, but not fast enough.

  Later. She could deal with that later. For the moment they were clear to starboard and within seconds Hudson had reengaged the pirates to port. Right now she had to deal with the door.

  Hands shaking, she put the safety back on her pistol and slid it into the holster in her suit pocket. From a thin pouch on her thigh she pulled out her lucky spanner and went to work on the panel beneath the armory’s sophisticated lock.

  “You’ll never get it open,” Hudson said over his shoulder as the last bolt fell and she yanked the panel free. He was taking more risks now, standing next to the barricade, his rifle braced along the top of it. He had forced the pirates back around the corner, but it also left a lot more of him exposed to their fire. He barked a command and his helmet deployed itself. It was slightly different from hers, with a much smaller viewport in the faceplate. Maybe that was why he hadn’t deployed it before? Because it interfered with vision and hearing? Morgan idly thought to herself that she’d have to rig her suit to give her voice control over the helmet.

  “Stop worrying about me and start worrying about them.”

  Really, the task before her was quite straightforward. The question wasn’t ‘how do you defeat the security lock’ but the much simpler, ‘under what circumstances would the door open anyway?’

  The most obvious was an emergency situation, something requiring evacuation of the ship.

  It wasn’t as simple as that, of course. If the computer thought the room was empty it wouldn’t open up even in an emergency, and it was also designed to double check any sensor triggering said emergency with the rest of the ship.

  So straightforward, but not easy.

  The first thing to do was to convince the computer that the room was occupied. Morgan dug around in the wiring and encased nano-circuit boards, more by feel than sight, until she found the heat sensors. She couldn’t do anything to the system directly, unfortunately. It was notoriously hard to manipulate molecule thick boards at the best of times, after all.

  The normal cables linking systems together though? Those were designed to be user friendly.

  Morgan pulled out a small knife and began cutting and splicing the wires. It was trickier with her gloves on, but there was too much active current in there to risk taking them off.

  A few judicious changes later and the computer was convinced that the armory was occupied by two people, and the corridor empty. Amazing what you could do simply by swapping inputs.

  Disabling the damage control system in such a way that it thought it was still working was distressingly easy. Morgan supposed they had put all their effort into protecting against the ways it could become damaged and non-responsive rather than worrying about how it could be intentionally circumvented. Something else to look into later, it seemed.

  The last step, triggering the emergency, could have been as simple as triggering an alarm. That was a bad plan, however, since it would be ship-wide, and any areas the pirates were locked out of would suddenly become vulnerable, including the bridge.

  Morgan certainly wanted to live, but not if it meant putting everyone else at risk to do it. Besides, it wouldn’t do her any good if she got this door open and the rest of the pirates captured the ship anyway. So, she had to sever the local alarm system from the main hub. She was up to her elbows in the wall, making a fine mess of the cables and various circuit board boxes. Finding the armory’s hub took her a bit, her own fault really since she’d been shoving things out of place.

  Then she just had to follow the cables back to the relay hub. . .

  . . .and her hands ran smack into the wall where the cable disappeared into the space running under the door.

  Well, things had been going her way so well, it was certainly time for something to go wrong. She yanked the alarm box forward until it was at the front, then scrambled o
ver to the other side of the door, right where Hudson was standing.

  “Coming through,” she said, crawling between his legs so she could get to the bolts holding the paneling in place.

  “What in the galaxy are you doin’, Darlin’?”

  “Working,” Morgan grunted. “Just be glad the armory wasn’t part of the original ship design. I doubt this would work otherwise.”

  A dart ricocheted off the floor next to Morgan’s knee, causing Morgan to flinch back instinctively. It was amazing how quickly she’d been able to tune out the sounds of gunfire. Adrenaline sure had some funny effects on the body.

  Why were they even bothering with the gas rifles? They were both in skinsuits, after all.

  Pushing that random thought aside Morgan got back to work on the panel. Once off she started in on the bundle of cables. They were labeled, but reading them under present conditions wasn’t a quick process.

  Yellow, yellow, yellow, why were so many of the cables yellow? Did the designers have something against red or blue? Ah. There is was, the orange of the emergency system. Morgan reached for her knife, realizing she’d left it on the other side.

  Grumbling under her breath she slid out from under Hudson and scooted over to grab it. He had started saying something, but she couldn’t make out the words. She was almost afraid to ask, and she definitely was afraid to look over to see where the pirates were.

  “What are you saying?” She asked as she got back into position.

  “What?” He said, almost absently, momentarily ducking down as he reloaded.

  “What are you saying?”

  “Sorry, wasn’t talking to you. Don’t worry about it.”

  “You’re not cracking are you?”

  “No I was just. . . I was just praying.”

  “What?” Morgan had gotten the first couple cables bypassed, only three more to go. She was slowing down, too many things to align, too many different feeds, power lines to leave intact.

  “You know, praying?”

  “Is now really the time to talk to someone you can’t even see?” Morgan asked, not looking up from the cables.