Poor Man's Fight (40 page)

“We did an arms run to Moorehouse a couple months ago,”
shrugged Venkatesh. “Had to bring everything through the passageways because of a dumb local offloading process. Lemme guess, you’re picking up chemical indicators?”

“Yeah,” Freeman nodded.

Venkatesh kept leading the others along as he spoke. They passed a crew berth hatch, then came to a corner and finally to the port cargo bay hatch. “Lots of inspection crews on that job while we were offloading, too. They kept asking us to open things up right in the passageway. Now every time we get boarded, we have to explain the sniffer readings because of those paranoid bastards.”

With the hatch opened, Venkatesh let his crewmate move through first, then
Stumpy. Tanner brought up the end of the line. He heard something behind him, and had just a split second to wonder if someone had joined them when he was seized from behind. An arm encircled his neck while his assailant’s other hand grabbed Tanner’s right wrist. Tanner gave a yelp.

Bodies rushed past him. Someone grabbed at his hip, snatching his pistol from his side. Tanner was then flung to the floor on his back. Shouts came from all around. His helmet, its faceplate still open, protected his head as he hit the deck. Then a longhaired, muscular man d
ove at him with a knife in his hand.

Tanner block
ed the blade with a forearm, throwing his assailant off-balance. The freighter crewman landed with his knee in Tanner’s gut while an ally stabbed down at Tanner’s face with another knife. Tanner turned his head more out of reflex than anything else, just in time to take the strike against the side of his helmet.

Buried in the dogpile, Tanner hardly noticed as the ship s
uddenly rumbled and shook.

***

The blast felt as if it would blow
St. Jude
in half, but the ship remained intact. Every crewman fell to the deck or against a bulkhead as the thundering boom echoed through the passageways. On the bridge, alarms blared and the ship lost all orientation as she spun away from the freighter.

Harper fell to the floor of the bridge. Reed and Gagne reeled in their chairs. The XO recovered just quickly enough to see the freighter rush away with its engines firing at full blast.

St. Jude
had a hull breach. There was a fire somewhere, too, but Gagne couldn’t read where because the world kept spinning. Alarms that Gagne had only heard in drills shrieked in wordless tones, warning of weapons systems actively targeting the ship.

Reacting on instinct, Gagne jabbed his fingers on the evasive computer assist buttons.
St. Jude
lurched in another direction as maneuvering jets fired across her hull, spinning just in time to avoid laser fire from the freighter’s small turret—and several others that had popped up from concealed hatches. Chaff missiles fired and exploded around the corvette, further disrupting the fleeing craft’s weapons.

Disorientation cleared. Automatic systems sealed the hull breach. Gagne realized it was in the cargo bay. With no one in the hold,
St. Jude’s
computer closed off the cargo bay on its own initiative to prevent the spread of flames as supplies burned. Atmosphere was quickly vented from the compartment to choke off the fire.

“Gah. Damage… damage control!” Gagne yelled. “Tactical! Harper, you okay? Reed?”

The older ops specialist wiped away the blood from where his nose had come down on the control panel. Harper rose, grabbing onto the astrogation worktable. “We’ve got her course,” Harper winced.

Gagne threw on the ship’s damage control network, which automatically brought to life every holocom on board. “Chief, damage report!”

“Something blew up in the cargo bay, but we’re mostly fine in engineering,” the chief groaned. “Engines are both live. We’re not venting anything.”

“
Sarah’s Dream
is still—“ Harper’s warning was cut off by a red flash and the wail of new alarms throughout the ship.
St. Jude
trembled again, but not nearly so violently as before. “We’re hit, sir. Dorsal section, starboard quarter. Think it’s not bad, but they’re still firing.”

“Flores is hurt!” someone else announced.

“Chief, we’re going to pursuit speed again,” Gagne said. “Reed, give me a course and pursue. Harper, you sure that hit wasn’t anything important?”

“Checking…yes, sir. It was your quarters, sir.”

Relieved that it was only his room on the ship, Gagne brought
St. Jude
to battle stations and charged up the guns. The freighter sped away on a line perpendicular to Ophanim’s orbit around Archangel. It was the most practical course for a point far enough from the planet’s gravity well to allow for a safer FTL jump.

St. Jude
could beat her in an open race, but the freighter had a head start on a short track.

***

“Goddammit, shoot him!” growled the pirate wrestling with Tanner.

The knife had fallen loose, but only after slashing into Tanner’s left shoulder. Tanner had no idea where his gun
was. He fought only one assailant where a heartbeat ago it had been two. He heard screams.

His first thought had been that this must have been some mistake. That this could be talked out if his attackers just allowed a moment to think. That maybe someone was mixed up, that this couldn’t be for real, or maybe this was some misunderstanding
. Then he heard the scream from down the passageway and the man tangled up with him demanded Tanner be shot.

He got an arm around the man’s head as they struggled on the floor. His free hand reached for his survival knife and pulled it loose. “Kill him!” the other man shouted. “Kill him, Ron!”

There wasn’t time to process. No time to sort things out. No way out of this.

Tanner shoved his knife up under the man’s jaw. There was a terrible, gurgling half-shriek, half-whimper.
Wrenching the knife out, Tanner lurched away and made it to one knee before he came face to face with a man pointing Tanner’s own laser pistol at him.

The pistol beeped plaintively. Its wielder didn’t wear the magnetically-keyed gloves of an Archangel navy vac suit.

Tanner’s foot shot out at the man’s knee, which buckled with a crunch. He grabbed his attacker by the hair and laid the man’s face open with the survival knife. As the crewman howled and rolled away gushing blood, Tanner scrambled for his laser pistol.

A third assailant rushed up at him from the chaotic brawl just down the passageway, brandishing an axe with a frantic expression. Tanner had the gun up and ready just as the man was on top of him. He could hardly have missed at so close a range. Thin red flashes of light burned through the axe-wielder’s chest and neck, and suddenly his forward momentum wasn’t under his conscious control. He collapsed beside Tanner in a heap.

With the third attacker down, Tanner had his first clear look at the fight in the passageway. Freeman and Leone were both down. Stumpy had apparently gotten hold of his attacker’s weapon and brought it down on the head of the man struggling with him. One of the freighter crewman had a knife in the small of Freeman’s back. He yanked it out as if to plunge it in again.

Venkatesh
stood in the middle of it. He had Leone’s riot gun and leveled it at Tanner. It wasn’t keyed like the laser pistols were. The riot gun was a real threat.

Tanner fire
d first. More red flashes burst from his weapon, bringing Venkatesh down with three hits before the riot gun went off. Its cloud of steel shot ricocheted wildly off the bulkheads.

Affording himself little more than half a second to aim, Tanner fired again, clipping Freeman’s attacker across the back of his skull.
The man jerked back out of reflex and then fell to the deck.

“Motherfucker!”
Stumpy raged, slamming the wrench down on his opponent again and again.

“He’s down, he’s down!” Tanner shouted as he made it over to the others. Fr
eeman groaned and coughed. Leone lay unmoving in a pool of blood with fatal holes slashed into his neck and torso. Tanner winced and turned away.

“What the fuck is this?!”
Stumpy demanded. “Where’s my gun?”

“It’s over there,” Tanner gestured. He
turned his full attention to Freeman, who bled heavily. “Keep guard. I’ve gotta help Freeman.” The young crewman tore his minimal first aid kit from its pouch on his utility belt. He found more than one serious knife wound on Freeman, along with a nasty gash on his face. “BM1, you with us? You okay?”

The boatswain’s mate’s eyes didn’t track at first. Half formed-words fell from his lips. “Shit,” Tanner said, “I think Freeman’s got a concussion.”

Beside them, Stumpy checked his holocom in hopes of raising their ship. “I’m getting nothing but fuckin’ static. They must be jamming.”

“Ship’s moving,” Freeman gasped as Tanner slapped skin-contracting pads over the wounds. He groaned louder when Tanner drew him up to a sitting position to wrap bandages around his lower torso. “They gotta be running from
St. Jude
.”

“Right,” huffed Tanner.
He had been in situations like this before; they just hadn’t involved so much blood and he always got a grade at the end of the simulation. At least, he told himself it wasn’t that different from training. The other option was to crawl into a hole and wish it all away, and that didn’t sound promising. “Freeman. Listen to me. You know how ships like this are laid out, right? You’ve boarded them before?”

“Yeah.” Freeman’s words seemed to fall from his lips. He tried to shake off the cobwebs, but it was tough going. “Listen, Tanner—“

“Which way’s engineering?”

“What?”

“Engineering.”

“Tanner, we’ve got to go… get to a lifeboat…
bail out before they jump.”

“No no, think it through.
They’ll shoot us before we get out of range. They’re jamming comms. That’s gotta be because
St. Jude
is still out there. Where’s engineering?”

***

“Hari? Hari! Son of a
bitch
,” Ming roared. He’d taken his eyes off of Hari’s holocom projection just to make sure
Yaomo
made good time and scored a couple of hits on their pursuer, and now he saw nothing but a picture of a bulkhead.

Again, Ming turned his attention to the sensor bubble.
St. Jude
chased after them, putting on enough evasive maneuvers that
Yaomo
landed only glancing hits. The corvette’s reflective armor was good; even despite her much smaller size,
St. Jude
could clearly survive serious punishment. The little corvette hadn’t returned fire yet.

St. Jude
poured on the speed, but even with her superior acceleration, she wasn’t yet making up for
Yaomo
’s head start. Her evasive jinks and rolls cost her even more speed. Five minutes. That was all Ming needed. It would be close.

Spitting in frustration, Ming keyed a button on the ship’s network. “Mansoor! Mansoor, you there?!”

“We’re here. Trying to nail this bitch, but at least we’re—“

“I need you to send people to check on Hari. Anybody you can spare. I think he’s down. Port cargo bay. If any of those fuckers are alive, they’re probably headed for the lifeboats.”

***

“Fuckin’ suicide, man,”
Stumpy muttered. Freeman leaned heavily on the shorter crewman, limping as best he could. “Taking on engineering all by ourselves, three guys and Freeman’s gimped already—“

Pressed up against one side of the bulkhead just ahead of
Stumpy, Tanner turned to glare through the lenses of his helmet. “Stumpy,” he hissed urgently, “
shut the fuck up
.”

Stumpy
blinked. It occurred to him that Tanner actually seemed awfully scary while covered in other peoples’ blood.

Swallowing his fear, Tanner crept closer to the corner. The two-minute rush from the cargo bay hatch to the corner to engineering
provided just enough time for Tanner to consider things besides immediate tactics. He realized that Stumpy was chattering because he was scared. Tanner was scared, too.

He came to the lip of the bulkhead. Around his left wa
ited either an unguarded door to engineering, or men with guns watching for him. He tried to remember what they taught him to do in weapons and tactics school. He tried to remember what Janeka and Everett had taught him. They’d done this before. They’d done this in Squad Bay Oscar, on
Los Angeles
, in buildings and on other ships.

For a terrifying moment, Tanner’s mind went blank. It was a corner.
Danger lay around the corner. He was supposed to do something. He was supposed to
have
something he could
use
here. Something to throw. A grenade. He was supposed to have grenades, but he definitely didn’t have any of those, even though he checked his harness for them anyway.