Revenge was a hollow request, but it was all the Pixie could do against the other ship with the crew so exposed onboard the station.
“Wilco Skip. Eva, I’m...” She paused as emotions unspoken flooded her mind until she could suppress them; “Don’t die.”
The pilot’s sister was busy dragging a solid cabinet towards the corridor to use as cover, Maria quickly stepping over to help.
“No promises. Love you. Now get the hell out of here Sparks.”
A childhood nickname not spoken in fifteen years?
Yeah, things were serious.
Chapter 33:
Overwatch
If they tried to hold the airlock the Junkers could just disconnect from the station and vacuum them into space, so Donnie and her crew had no choice but to defend the interior of the professor’s secret lair instead.
It wasn’t the most ideal situation, but they had dealt with worse.
Of course, that was back when they had the full backing of the Dungeness corporation’s marine units.
Billy tucked the container holding her precious nanites away in a corner and unslung her high-calibre pulse-rifle. The medic hadn’t had cause to fire it since before Bryan and Bunny joined the crew but she was still a proficient shooter.
While her marines worked to make the room as defensible as they could, Donnie pulled up the stations security holograms on a console safely tucked against the far wall.
“These bastards must be hungry. They’re ignoring the Pixie and moving in to dock.” She ran her hand through her hair and leaned heavily against the console; “Shit, we need overwatch if we’re going to pull this off.”
Searching for a solution to the problem, Donnie’s eyes clapped on Bryan.
Fuck his emotional state.
She stomped up to him and seized him by the rim of his suit, the surprised kid not struggling as she dragged him to the holo-feeds and gave him the single most important tutorial of his life.
“Here’s north. Here’s east. And here’s west. Once they get inside these are the only angles they can come at us without getting creative. Keep your eyes fixed on these feeds and call out how many are coming and from which direction.”
“I don’t-”
She jerked him off of his feet, barely having to rely on the gyros in her suit as she held him nose to nose.
“Half of my crew is bent over a barrel right now over you and your little drama with the dead professor! So you either help me get them out of this mess or I drop you right now!”
Everyone in the room heard the clatter of her plasma shotgun as she primed a charge with one hand.
Wide-eyed and terrified, Bryan could only stammer at the outrageous threat.
“Make the call kid. You have ten seconds before I make it for you.”
Her voice was so cold it made his insides shrivel, but after several tense seconds- like... maybe five, six at the most, certainly not ten- he looked to the holo-feeds.
“N-north, east, west.” He confirmed as much as asked, one shaky finger moving between them and the corridors they represented.
“Good boy.”
Non-to-gently she helped him put his helmet back on.
It wouldn’t do a damned thing to stop a bullet, but at least he’d be okay if the station depressurized or if he ended up back in vacuum again.
Once his suit was sealed, she reiterated his job.
“No matter what happens, you’re glued to that feed. We live or die on your say so.”
Though the words were meant to be encouraging, he could tell she wasn’t happy about it as she turned back to her crew.
“We got about the time it takes for them to cycle the airlock before this shit goes down. Hold your corridors or we’ll end up in a crossfire. I’m floating so call out if shit gets dicey. I want this mess behind us in time for chow.”
It wasn’t much of a speech, but that’s because speeches were for officers and at her core Donnie was just another marine, former rank be damned.
Maria and Eva were both positioned at their respective hatches, but Billy was further back in the room, behind a sturdy metal desk with her rifle’s bipod resting on its surface.
Not long afterwards Bryan’s nervous voice sounded out.
“They’re coming! Um, lots of them. North, east and west.”
Donnie groaned internally at the vague information but opted to let it slide as she watched over her marines.
“Keep it succinct kid: north five, east six. Like that.”
“R-right.”
“And speak up!”
Just then there was a flash as Billy’s rifle went off.
“One down.” She reported calmly.
In the wake of the first shot ringing out, marines were smirking in their helmets.
Despite their dire situation Donnie turned all the way around to face Bryan and held both arms out and to the sides in the universal gesture of ‘what the fuck dude’ as he blushed and blinked rapidly at the holo-feeds.
He stood up straight suddenly before she could chastise him verbally, his finger wagging at the console.
“East! Three of-”
He was interrupted when Maria’s repeater opened up.
“Two down, one falling back!” She called.
A few seconds later Donnie turned back to the task at hand.
“Better. Keep it up.”
It was a tense couple minutes before anything else happened, the Junkers marshalling themselves after having figured out rather pointedly that there were guns other than theirs on the station.
Neither they nor Donnie had any interest in a conversation.
Then things got exciting all at once as all three corridors were flooded with bloodthirsty pirates faster than Bryan could call them out.
Eva and Maria were holding their own, firing in quick bursts from what cover they managed to scavenge. Billy was winning though, her pulse-rifle had enough charge for several hundred shots and she was making each one count as she sighted down her scope.
The captain worked back and forth between Eva and Maria, occasionally helping them by popping a few rounds off with her charge-pistol; with limited ammunition, she was saving her plasma shotgun for when they really needed it.
Which wasn’t long after the shooting started in earnest.
“Flash!” Donnie called suddenly as an object rolled into the room and came to rest between her and Eva.
The two marines were suddenly blind and deaf as their visors turned black and their audio buffers ramped up to maximum for a split second, the advanced systems in their suits protecting them from the flash-bang and turning the tactical tool into a minor annoyance.
But even a split second made a world of difference in a firefight.
A group of Junkers, working with far more coordination than lowly pirates had any right to, rushed Eva’s position just as the flash went off.
Their repeaters were barking angrily as they moved and the redhead cursed as her shoulder and arm were flung back from the high impact rounds, the veteran reflexively taking cover behind the battered metal cabinet.
With so much inbound firepower it did little to protect her except make it harder for them to pinpoint her position and score proper hits, but it was better than nothing and had allowed her more flexibility than huddling to one side of the hatchway.
“Things are getting interesting over here Skipper!”
“I’m on it!” Donnie took up her shotgun and put her back to the wall next to the corridor Eva was defending; “Make ‘em duck for a sec!”
“Suppressive fire!” Eva replied as she popped out and let loose a barrage with her heavy repeater.
Her counterattack was brief and it wasn’t long before she had to duck back behind the cabinet again when the fire was returned tenfold.
But she was the distraction.
Donnie rolled out from behind the wall, her shotgun leveled at the Junker’s midsections as they advanced.
She pumped off five shots to clear the hal
f dozen unlucky bastards trying to push the position; a couple of their rounds struck her armoured chest and caused her to grunt but by then it was too late, the firepower now mostly on the side of her shotgun.
There was a reason she carried the monstrous thing.
It wasn’t long though before Bryan was calling out a warning and more reinforcements flooded the end of the hall, forcing her to fall back as smarter people with advanced lasers began to take pot-shots at her.
“Give them credit, we’re bleeding them hard but they’re not quitting!” Eva shouted as she was forced to abandon the cabinet altogether.
Putting her shoulder to the wall next to the hatchway opposite Donnie, she almost lazily popped off a couple bursts down the corridor without looking.
“I noticed!” The captain wheezed as she recovered from the painful hits to her breasts.
Across the room their medic heard the hurt in her voice, though she didn’t look up from her scope as she spoke.
“You still with us Donnie?”
“Yeah, for now. I have a date later with a sexy cat though so if you could wrap this shit up that would be great.” She quipped as she jogged back towards her more central position between Maria and Eva.
Billy didn’t bother replying.
Unlike her comrades’ weapons her rifle didn’t buck against her shoulder as she fired, the laser emitter relying on extreme heat rather than brute force to take down her targets. This would make it an ideal weapon for a precision sniper if it weren’t for the fact that firing it at night drew a rather memorable line to their position on the retinas of anybody looking.
She was no sniper, but in an enclosed station and behind cover the doctor was having an easy time of it as she racked up the kills, especially with the added warnings Bryan was calling out.
But that changed rather abruptly.
“Something’s coming!”
Despite being linked to their coms, the stress of the situation had Bryan shouting unnecessarily to get their attention, his voice breaking from the strain as terror sought to overwhelm him.
“We need more than that kid! What and where?” Donnie snapped as she moved closer to him and started to reload her shotgun.
“I don’t know! It’s north but it’s huge and moving fast! Like armoured or something!”
Billy sucked in a breath when she saw the inbound problem.
“I have eyes! Heavy coming in hot! Sledge I need you!” She cried out as she rolled to one side.
Several familiar blinding green bursts tore apart the desk she was hiding behind, narrowly missing her armoured hiney as she abandoned it.
A brute of a man in an aging suit of combat armour crashed through the hatchway she had been covering two seconds later; his rig didn’t look nearly as new or advanced as theirs, but the rust-coloured hulk lit up the room with a plasma repeater that was basically a rapid-fire version of Donnie’s shotgun.
In other words, OP as fuck.
Evidently Donnie wasn’t the only one who had been keeping cards close to her chest.
Eva and Billy both had to dive for cover while the captain smashed into the console in a bid to protect the suddenly exposed Bryan.
Without the forewarning it would have been curtains for all of them at that point, instead the brutish Junker’s horrifying onslaught only lasted for a couple seconds before Maria was on him.
Exo-suits served to enhance the abilities of the soldiers wearing them: strength, speed, stamina, reflexes.
Mediocre became good, good became great.
Donnie and her crew could run a marathon in their rigs and come away better off than any unequipped people running with them. And a marine like Eva could be shooting the wings off a fly one second then the next she could turn a perfect one-eighty and throw a knife with equally deadly accuracy.
But for a tank like Maria it was all about one thing: Power.
With a capital ‘P’.
She didn’t even try to hit the guy with her repeater, knowing full well how many hits his armour could take before he started to feel it, instead her weapon was forgotten as she collided with him in the middle of the room.
Two titans, having a good ol’ fashioned throw-down.
Maria held the advantage at first: the goliath she was up against hadn’t expected her to charge him so she was able to tear his outrageously dangerous weapon away and cast it aside.
But he recovered fairly quickly.
With a flurry of resounding smashes he drove his fist into the side of her helmet again and again.
“I see some tiddies hiding in there!” He taunted with a roar; “I’m going to enjoy peeling that suit off you and fucking ‘em RAW!”
Maria had lost the initiative but she was adaptable, smashing a beaker of thick blue fluid into the Junker’s face-plate.
If the professor was alive he’d be screaming at them to stop fucking up his lab; tables full of medical equipment, test-tubes, data-analysers, all of it was getting smashed to pieces as Maria and the Junker spun each other around crudely.
Even half-blind the brute fought on, and despite the heavy blows to the head Maria wasn’t finished either.
When he swung for her helmet again she shifted her arm around his and locked it in place with a screech of straining metal, pulling him over with a mighty cry and flattening what was left of the desk Billy had been using.
“Fuck him up Sledge! Show me you haven’t gone soft!” Eva ordered.
With the two heavies occupied she refocused her repeater fire on a trio of Junkers trying to take advantage of Maria’s abandoned position in the chaos.
She took two of them down, but she had to turn on her hip and duck down to catch the third, her aim taking out one of his legs and causing him to crumple to the floor, by that point she had her own problems to deal with as her corridor was filling up again.
While his Junker buddies tried and failed to follow through with his assault, the enemy heavy tangled his legs with Maria’s, dragging her down to join him on the flattened desk where the pair were soon locked in a brutal grapple.
“Gunna fill up your cunt!” The taunting humour was gone from the bulky pirate’s voice as he struggled to regain the upper hand.
He never got it back.
Instead he ended up flailing beneath her like a turtle, the powerful blonde’s knees pinning his shoulders and rendering him harmless; her armoured hands then formed a hammer-fist and brutally slammed down into the top edge of his faceplate as she began to return the favour from earlier.
“This is why I hate guys my size!” She grunted out, then annunciated each word with heavily augmented blows of her fists; “They- are- all- fucking- PIGS!”
With her last strike the Junker’s helmet buckled, and she followed up immediately by drawing one fist back and plunging it down with all of her strength.
The faceplate crumpled inwards and she felt the man’s face do the same, but for good measure she gripped the inside rim of the broken helmet and tore it free, half of his skull coming with it.
In the shocking silence Maria stood and towered over her fallen opponent, his helmet gripped in one hand, dripping with his blood and brains.
She threw it in Eva’s direction.
“Tell me I’m soft Hooker!” She roared over the coms; “Go ahead and say-”
She didn’t finish her sentence.
Maria might not have gotten soft, but Eva was right: she had gotten sloppy.
With the adrenaline pounding through her veins from the brawl with the enemy tank she had lost her situational awareness.
And in that opening the Junker that Eva had winged and thought was dead had taken up his buddy’s plasma repeater and gotten off a single devastating shot.
A brilliant burst of green plasma particles tore through Maria’s armour under her left arm, knocking her to the floor and out of the fight.
Chapter 34:
Dying Stars
As Maria toppled Eva lit up the guy that had dropped her before he could g
et another shot off with the plasma repeater.
But the damage was done.
“Medic!” She cried out unnecessarily.
Still covering Bryan, Donnie’s HUD flashed multiple warnings about Maria’s suit integrity and she burned with icy rage as she realized their luck might have finally run out.
With the armoured Junker’s death they had a brief reprieve, so she moved with purpose towards the center of the room.
“I am over this shit! Billy, you do your thing!” She ordered in a snarl; “Hooker! Get on my ass! We’re ending this!”
With deliberate movements she scooped up the plasma repeater before tossing her shotgun into Eva’s waiting hands.
“Copy.” The redhead said coldly.
Ignoring the laser fire and a fresh barrage of repeater rounds slamming against their armour they tilted their heads down and rushed straight towards the enemy like a pair of enraged bulls, multitudinous blasts of green plasma leading the way as they left the room.
Meanwhile Billy quickly cleared the corners and looked to Bryan huddled behind the console.
“Eyes back on the feeds Bryan! Maria needs you to pull it together!”
By the time she finished speaking she was kneeling at the fallen woman’s side.
Years of training and experience kept her breathing steady and her mind focused on triage and assessment as she linked her suit with the wounded marine’s to check her vitals.
“Not kidding Bryan. On your feet. I can’t cover the room and keep her alive at the same time.”
As if to show the truth behind her words she left Maria’s side for long enough to sweep the entryways again before scooping up the container of medical-grade nanites she’d stowed earlier.
Dazed from being shoved to the floor by the armoured captain during the heavy’s assault, Bryan found himself unable to do anything but what Billy told him to do as he stumbled to his feet and leaned on the damaged console.
“North is just... people moving on the floor.” His voice was faint as his addled brain replayed the sight of Maria going down over and over, he’d been staring right at her underneath Donnie arm when the deluge of plasma particles had hit home; “West is the same. East I-I can’t really see.”
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