Over a ton of Midnight mass—comprised of CASPer, Suffolk beef, and North Sea monsters—smashed through the upper tier of armor, easily bending it back.
A split second later, Ripper smacked into the upper tier alongside him, snapping it off entirely.
The seconds that followed were discombobulating to say the least. Jex was knocked arse over tits by the impact, sharing the space with flailing Zuul, one of whom was now a head lacking a torso. To add to the confusion, a couple of tell-tale explosions of laser rifles came from below him, blowing up in their wielders’ snouts—thanks to the damage taken from the uncanny accuracy of the pollywiggles.
Talking of which, the Goltar marines had careened through the air with him.
The deck forcefully reminded Jex of the reverence demanded by six Gs. He landed with a thump and skidded, thoroughly winded, across the deck until he crashed into a bulkhead.
“Up!” he shouted. “Up and at ’em!”
He got to his knees. Both his laser shields were smashed, but it didn’t matter because from his angle he could see the remaining Zuul lying prone with rifles trained on McNeil and Plunger, who were just about to slam into the barricade. He put a burst of fire into the Zuul with his arm-mounted auto cannon.
Then the second wave of maidens hit and reduced the shiny armored cake to a tangled mess of metal, blood, and limbs. But the Zuul weren’t giving up; one popped its head out of the smashed-up heap. Its helmet gone, it glared at him with its matted fur dripping wet from the hissing sprinklers.
Jex’s targeting reticle hovered over the alien snout. The Zuul was lifting its laser to shoot back.
Jex fired first.
And missed, triggering a warning in the Tri-V that told him what he’d just worked out for himself: using his CASPer as a battering ram had bolloxed up his targeting.
Jex continued firing, panning the channel of destruction his cannon was wreaking to the Zuul.
Too slow!
The Zuul’s laser rifle emitted its deadly beam.
And also missed!
“Teach you to use something made in Essex,” he taunted as his cannon fire exploded the Zuul’s torso into blue mist.
Jex cut his fire, lost for a moment as the cannon cycled clear. He panned his viewpoint left, just in time to see Ripper fall backward, a smoking hole through his canopy, right where the Human pilot’s head would be. It was a small hole, and water dripping from the sprinkler slid toward the breach, steaming in the heat residue from the laser’s enormous power.
The status icon for Ripper’s vital signs went black.
“No!” Jex got to his feet, screaming defiance at the heavy Gs pulling the blood out his head. “Not again!”
He wanted to rip the Zuul’s head off, but it was already too dead. Instead, he grabbed the bottom of the twisted pile of wreckage and lifted. Servos whined and hydraulics pumped as the CASPer interpreted the motions of the Human pilot pulling with all his might inside his haptic suit.
Buried deep in modern CASPer DNA was a common ancestor shared with cargo load lifters. When times had been tough for his old unit, the Suffolk Punch CASPer pilots had kept themselves from destitution by using their mechs to load freight containers at the Felixstowe docks where they were based.
The passageway filled with the screech of tormented metal and crunching bones, topped off with the tinkle of the sprinkler’s rain. Through it all was Jex’s amplified cry of rage and loss.
His CASPer lifted the defensive position and pushed it onto its side.
Bodies thumped and screamed within the mess of torn metal and fur.
Jex punched down, activating his sword blade as he swung. A meter of titanium-edged composite snapped out of his forearm mount and stabbed through a hole in the wreckage where he’d seen movement.
When he pulled it back, the blade was slick with blood and fur.
Blades from the other CASPers were also stabbing down. The nimble tentacles of the pollywiggles darted between the swords, firing their bone guns into the cracks.
It was over in moments.
The Zuul didn’t beg for quarter. Or if they did, Jex didn’t hear.
“On! On!” urged a voice in the translator pendant around his neck. “The slaughter’s just around the corner. I mean…let’s rescue our friends.”
Betty was beckoning them from farther up the passageway with two of her massive limbs.
Jex came down from his high and took a moment to take in the scene. One of the Goltar was dead and several were slicing off damaged limbs. Weird.
Ripper was the only casualty from his squad.
“Check your weapons and ammo,” he ordered. “Let’s finish this.”
* * * * *
Chapter Ten
Mishkan-Ijk rolled the spy cameras to the end of the passageway. The Goltar devices looked like marbles, but the Zuul around the turn in the passageway weren’t playing games.
The bulkheads echoed with the demonic pop, pop, pop as the crew-served magnetic cannon pulverized the cameras and tore chunks out of the bulkhead. Smoke billowed from whatever equipment had been unfortunate enough to be down range. A desultory volley of hypervelocity darts and laser beams followed, adding their collateral damage to the ship.
“Will you cut that out?” Jex yelled into the Zuul-controlled corridor. “When this ship surrenders to us, I’m making you pay for the repairs.”
Sun expected jeers and taunts from the Zuul, but there was nothing. Maybe they were so exhausted from the strain of operating under the big Gs that they had nothing else to give. She knew how that felt. So far, only two of her four squads had combined forces, and already her CASPer pilots were at the limits of their endurance.
Jex had a point, she thought, as she reviewed the curtailed camera footage. The Zuul mercs were equipped for assault operations, not ship defense. A battlecruiser this size would have its own marine complement, which meant there would be other defenders lurking who wouldn’t damage their ship so readily, but they would know every nook and cranny of their home territory.
Twenty meters up the contested passageway, she saw a smoking CASPer among a heap of a dozen dead Zuul. This marked D-Clock 5/3’s breaching point. The red beak was visible, having bitten through the outer hull.
Fifteen meters farther up the passageway from the beak, three Zuul served a heavy magnetic cannon, supported by more Zuul bearing laser rifles and portable coil guns.
Almost directly opposite the beak, but offset a few meters, the barrel of another heavy magnetic cannon covered the corridor from an open compartment. It didn’t quite have the angle to rake the inside of the boarding pod with lethal fire, but she could see now why Kruse’s team hadn’t made it out.
Cleggy’s team now, she corrected herself.
The Goltar eyeballs had given her what she needed, confirmation of what Cleggy thought they would be facing.
“Are you ready, Corporal Oranjeklegg?”
“Cleggy’s always ready, ma’am,” he replied. At this close range, his radio signal carried only a slight fuzziness from the jamming.
“Execute when ready. Good luck.”
“It’s the Zuul who will need luck, ma’am. Out.”
She gave the “get ready” hand signal to her team waiting near the turn in the corridor. The Humans were in the vanguard, on hands and knees.
She had to stifle a laugh when Jex lifted his CASPer’s hand off the deck and gave her a thumbs up.
The sergeant looked as if he’d been mud wrestling in molasses.
Branco would have found the whole battering ram idea funny.
Her laugh died at the thought of Branco. She hadn’t thought of him since they’d boarded. Guilt attempted to stab her, but she’d armored her heart too well. There was a reason she couldn’t let herself think of him, and that reason was comprised of the twenty-four individually precious components of her assault team, thirteen of which were about to move into action.
The awkwardness was broken as a rocket roared out of 5/3’s beak.<
br />
It was followed by a bang of impact, heavy Zuul fire, and even more energetic Zuul yaps of alarm.
If all had gone to plan, Sergeant Kruse’s empty CASPer had made one last ride, its jumpjets remotely triggered to fire it face-first out the boarding pod’s beak, through the heap of Zuul corpses, and then steer it to the compartment opposite containing one of the heavy cannons. The CASPer was adorned with a necklace of K-bombs.
The explosion was enormous.
Her CASPer reduced the gain on the audio pickup, but she felt the shuddering vibration through the deck, and it set her internal organs shaking.
She was hoping the surviving Zuul would turn their fire on 5/3’s beak, expecting Cleggy’s team to assault.
The Zuul opened up with heavy fire, but Sun didn’t see it impact the bulkhead in front of her. The plan had worked. Cleggy’s team were hiding at the very back of their boarding pod. They weren’t making the attack. Her team was.
“Punch it!” she yelled.
* * * * *
Chapter Eleven
Jex lobbed a brace of smoke bombs into the passageway. Clouds of stinking smoke erupted, impenetrable to laser beams, eyeballs, and sensitive snouts.
The instant they went off, he led the CASPers charging into the danger zone on their hands and knees. Then he stood up.
The mech’s motors worked hard, but it was the man inside who suffered most from the maneuver. His overworked heart couldn’t pump against the force all the way to his brain. Before he’d even got fully upright, his head was swimming, but he needed the height and his new team needed him. He wouldn’t let them down.
He pointed his left arm at the Zuul thirty-five meters down the corridor, still firing at the beak. His other arm stretched out behind him, his CASPer hand gripping two K-bomb sleeves lashed together, which held a total of eight K-bombs. If the K-bomb was the CASPer grenade, this lash-up was either the CASPer shuriken or the CASPer discus. He never could make his mind up, but he did know it worked.
Of course, he said to himself, I’ve never tried throwing inside a starship under thrust.
These Mk 8s were nimble compared to the earlier models he was used to, but they still couldn’t twist into the discus stance he’d known well as a college athlete. So, he made do with bending his trailing leg and whipping the CASPer’s arms into a release.
The bomb had good spin as it sailed up the passageway toward the Zuul.
He was unable to focus his eyes on the damned thing.
Lights flashed on the status board overlays. Too much information. He couldn’t hold it all. He was being shot at. The warnings were probably telling him something about that.
Jex wobbled inside his retaining straps as he peered after his discus bomb.
Then he remembered the gray smoke clouds. He couldn’t see because of the smoke, that was his problem. But the smoke seemed to have penetrated his mind…everything had turned gray.
“Oh, bollocks,” he muttered. “I’m supposed to be proof against this sort of thing.”
Jex’s head fell forward. The sudden pull of his head brought excruciating pain to his neck, but he passed out anyway.
* * * * *
Chapter Twelve
Under cover of the billowing smoke and the suppression fire from her CASPers on the deck, the Midnight Sun Free Company’s newest recruit showed his mettle by spinning like an arthritic superheavyweight discus thrower and launching his bomb up the passageway.
She’d never heard of such a thing. Why would she? This was a job for a missile pod, but the company was completely out of CASPer-compatible missiles, still awaiting a long overdue resupply.
“Keep firing!” she shouted at her team, who were now beginning to take heavy fire.
She itched to pull them back, but she wanted the enemy worrying about keeping their heads down, not about shooting down Jex’s crazy exploding discus.
A heavy cannon round slammed through the overhead just above the top of Jex’s cockpit, followed by the distinctive pop of the heavy Gauss weapon. The Devil’s fart was how Branco described the sound, and he wasn’t wrong.
Sparks from the brutalized overhead showered over Jex, his CASPer motionless. She registered the warning sign on her display telling her Jex was unconscious. The Gs had got to him.
When Jex had thrown his contraption, she’d set a five-second countdown—the maximum K-bomb fuse delay—and it reached zero. The discus had failed, and her people were being shot to pieces for no good reason.
It was a struggle to think, to breathe, to stay alive in all this noise and smoke and, above all, the relentless crushing weight, but some thoughts were so routine as to be almost automatic. Sun assigned fire zones to her CASPers that would avoid accidental friendly fire while allowing Kenngar and the Goltar to press the assault up one side of the passageway, and Cleggy’s squad up the other. Meanwhile, she forced herself up into a crouch, ready to leap through the fire and onto her sergeant’s CASPer to tackle him to the ground where his heart wouldn’t have to work so hard to supply his brain.
You’re not a trooper, Sun Sue, she reminded herself. It helps no one to act like one. “Lieutenant Mishkan-Ijk, pull Sergeant Jex to a safe location and lie him horizontally.”
“I obey,” replied the alien. Two Goltar advanced on Jex with their peculiar stiff-legged march that looked weird but was more effective than the Humans in these conditions.
Jex’s double bomb exploded.
Son of a bitch. He’d said something about optimizing the fuse.
The Goltar moving toward Jex were knocked off their…tentacles. Panels and cabling fell out of the overhead which also bathed the passageway in strobing light from shorting power cables.
Her CASPers were merely rocked from the blast.
“Oranjeklegg, advance! 5/1, advance. Betty, you take point.”
Satisfied the Goltar would take care of Jex, she joined her troopers in their assault of the enemy position, shuffling on hands and knees through the smoke, debris, and blood. There was so much blood…
The advance was pitifully sluggish except for one trooper. Pulled down by six Gs, Betty had slowed, but only to a fast walking pace. If either of the Zuul heavy cannons were still operational, even the Tortantula’s armor wouldn’t stand a chance.
“Midnight-One, Midnight Two-Two-Zero. We’re fifty meters behind you.”
Top, at last. “Can you see my location, Two-Two-Zero?”
“Yes, Major.”
“Advance to my current position, then assess. I’m expecting this to all be over by then.”
“Roger that. We’re moving as fast as we can.”
Frantic yapping snapped out from the position the Zuul were defending. The extreme Gs had tried to pull Sun’s heart down through her rib cage. The sound of the Zuul made it sink still farther. The alien mercs were excited about something, and that did not bode well.
Then the translation came into her mind.
“We surrender.”
Sun crawled out from the smoke and finally saw what she was up against.
The bomb had landed on the far side of the heap of Zuul corpses, blasting them into blue paste. Further along the corridor, the remaining Zuul stood groggily with their hands up, coated in the blood and entrails of their comrades.
“Please, we surrender.”
Some of the Zuul mercs looked nervously at the weapons they’d dropped onto the deck, then back at Betty striding purposefully toward them. They barely registered the CASPers of Cleggy’s squad crawling out of their beak.
“I am Major Sun of the Midnight Sun Free Company. I accept your surrender. Identify yourselves.”
“I am Captain Towgrix of Victory Scent Mercenary Company.”
“What is your current contract?”
“Space assault. We are to seize your vessel. Is this Tortantula under your command?”
“She is. Betty, if any of these Zuul carries a weapon, you have my permission to eat them. Otherwise, do not harm them. You know the SOP.”
> “Yes, Major,” Betty answered. “Don’t eat Zuul. Don’t eat Humans. Don’t eat tasty Selroth. Don’t eat MinSha.” She sighed like a Human, something Branco had taught her to do. “But Betty can eat—”
“That’s enough, Trooper,” Sun warned.
Towgrix licked a long tongue around his lips. He didn’t look convinced.
“You have my word,” Sun told him.
“But you are Human. Many Humans have no honor, and you Midnighters are known pirates. I don’t trust you.”
“You have my word, too,” said her Goltar commander, tottering up the passageway to stand alongside Sun. Man, it sucked to be crawling along the ground like an Altar. “I am Lieutenant Colonel Mishkan-Ijk of high family and standing,” he lied—sort of. That’s who he had been before falling afoul of his superior officer. “This Tortantula will not harm you unless she sees weapons upon you. Be aware, her eyesight is sharper than yours and mine.”
“The Goltar, we know of old,” said Towgrix. “We trust your word.”
The surrendering Zuul hurriedly divested themselves of concealed knives and sidearms while glancing nervously at Betty. Some of them looked as if they would remove the teeth from their muzzles if they could, just to be on the safe side.
“Colonel,” said Sun, “please secure the prisoners.”
“Roger that, Major,” replied the disgraced Goltar officer.
With the Goltar taking control of the scene for the moment, Sun let her head drop to the deck like a thirsty dog and rested for a few moments.
But there was to be no timeout for her. A thumping noise from the overhead made her angle up her Tri-V view. Cracks appeared in the panels—damn thing was about to collapse. Hell, this assault was turning out to be every bit as exhausting as trekking through the jungles of Rakbutu-Tereus.
Endless Night (The Guild Wars Book 3) Page 7