I turned my attention back to the map, and the new scattering of green lights dotted all over it. This ostensibly meant I now had visibility of every person on the ship, but I had no way to tell the difference between enemy and ally. I hastily activated the tracking function and tagged everyone who was in the storage area, turning their icons orange instead of green. That way, I could keep track of all the Alliance personnel, in contrast to the pirates. It wasn’t foolproof. It was possible that a couple of the pirates were still in the rear of the ship, while a handful of the original crew were still lurking about the ship in an unknown location. But that would give me perhaps a ninety per cent likelihood of correctly identifying anyone I ran into.
The next problem was that the Alliance teams had no way of identifying me. Would anyone have thought of that? Andif they had, what sort of message could I send them, without inadvertently giving away any information to the pirates.
Presumably, the pirates didn’t have access to this version of the map, or it wouldn’t have been encoded. So if I could get my master to notice something odd about the way I was moving, he could tag me the same way I’d tagged them. I sent the brief messagebouncing ballto my master’s comm, then proceeded to push myself across the hallway to the opposite side, then back again, then again, three times, four times, five… My comm gave a very slight vibration and I checked the message that had just come in. It read simply,Yes.
Right, then. He knew where I was, I knew where they were – more or less – and that meant it was time to go kill some pirates. I zoomed in on my own location on the map, looking for the quickest way to the bridge that would send me past as few pirates as possible. Forward almost all the way to the front of the ship along this hallway, then left, towards the centre of the ship.
As I’d been taught during my training, I set aside my emotions, refocused my attention on the mission, then pushed off the wall and resumed my fast but cautious journey down the hallway.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
AIDEN
With a team of eighteen people behind me, I stared at the map on my comm, waiting with strictly controlled patience until everyone was in place. I could see Bryce’s team gathered at the far end of the hallway, just out of sight of the pirates. Behind me, Carver was ready to go, her makeshift weapon of a large wrench in her hand. Bryce’s team were clustering up at the corner, ready to create a distraction. As we watched, the little green dots that indicated the pirates began to move slowly towards Bryce’s group. “You there! Come back here,” one of them called out, then the group began moving faster towards the end of the hallway. That was our cue.
I peered carefully around the corner, wary of anyone being a diligent soldier and maintaining a rear guard. But the group had likely become too relaxed in the knowledge that most of us were safely locked away in the storage crates, and so they probably thought they would only be dealing with a small group, two or three stragglers who had escaped from previous scuffles.
Carver and I took point, swinging around the corner and propelling ourselves along the hand rails to float silently alongthe hall. We kept going, pulling ourselves faster, before finally pushing off to soar the last dozen metres or so. The rest of our team would be filling the hallway behind us, ready to overwhelm the pirates with sheer numbers.
As I floated along, I picked out a likely target. He was Anicrian, with his back turned to me and his weapon raised, though he was currently letting those in front of him investigate the small noises that Bryce’s group were making – sounds that suggested an ambush in the making, but were actually designed purely to get their attention.
I spun at the last minute, flipping over so my legs were going first, then I latched onto the Anicrian, my legs clasping around his waist, the hammer in my hand slamming down onto his head with heavy blows. I gritted my teeth and tried not to think about what I was doing. I’d killed plenty of people in my military career, but there was a stark difference between shooting someone with a laser gun and bludgeoning them to death with a hammer.
I struck him three times in quick succession, hearing a sickening crack on the third blow, then I yanked his hand towards me, neatly grabbing the laser gun out of his fist and firing at the pirates in front of me. I’d taken out two of them before they knew what was happening, and by then, Carver had successfully disarmed her own target, and she took out one more. Three more soldiers surged past us, tackling more of the pirates.
But the one Carver had attacked wasn’t dead, though he was certainly stunned, and he flailed about, yelling incoherently. I swung around, using the railing on the wall as leverage, and shot him in the head. A stream of blood floated out of his head and up towards the ceiling, and I cringed. That was going to be an unpleasant side effect of fighting in zero gravity; any stray item or drop of fluid would just float about, randomly bumping intowalls or splattering over any surface it came into contact with. By the time this was over, the ship was going to need a full scale decontamination.
Down at the end of the hallway, Bryce was grappling with the last pirate, not yet having managed to disarm him, so I lined up my gun, waited for a clear shot, then fired. The laser beam shimmered down the hallway, slicing a neat hole through the pirate’s chest. I didn’t think it had been quite accurate enough to kill him, but I’d been more concerned about not accidentally killing Bryce in the process, and the shock and pain of it was enough to give Bryce an opportunity to wrench the gun out of the pirate’s hand, turn it on the pirate, and shoot him in the head.
That left Bryce untethered to any kind of anchor point, and he spun head over heels, up towards the ceiling. Thankfully, one of the others in his group managed to reach up and grab his ankle, halting his spin and pulling him back down to the floor.
The couple of privates in the group were looking a little green, as their gazes wandered over the now lifeless bodies floating in the hallway, like a scene out of a horror movie, while globules of blood drifted around them. The rest of us simply compartmentalised the carnage, as we’d been taught, and moved on to the next objective. “Search them,” Bryce ordered the team. “Take any weapons. Hand them to the more senior officers first. Next target is…” His head snapped up, almost destabilising him from his perch by the railing. “This way! One group chasing another,” he added, glancing at his map again, and I hastily checked mine. Sure enough, there was a group of five green dots, moving rapidly down a hallway, with another group of four dots following at a short distance. “My bet is those are the rest of the missing crew,” Bryce said, as he pushed off the wall, heading in that direction. “Let’s go and piss off the guys chasing them.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
JAI
The first pirate I came across that I couldn’t find a way around was – just my luck – a Fenton. Fentons were strong, fast and agile, and this one was doing a very diligent job of guarding the hallway that led to a staircase. I watched him through the spy camera on my comm. The tiny lens was attached to a thin, retractable extension cable, and I’d extended it around the corner I was hiding behind, so that I could watch him, but he couldn’t see me at all.
I considered my options for how to distract him. Throwing something down the hallway was an option, but the only things I had were my knives, and they were too valuable to throw away. If I tried to go around him, I’d have to deal with two Anicrians in the next hallway. Even if they were smaller, going in two against one when I didn’t have any long range weapons was not a good idea. But despite the Fenton being the better option to fight with, he was being too diligent to simply wait him out. His back was to the wall, giving him a wide field of vision, and he scanned his gaze in both directions every couple of seconds. Meanwhile,I was on a time limit, even if I wasn’t entirely aware of what the countdown was.
Given that he was armed with a laser gun, and I only had my knives, I couldn’t tackle him head on. But it occurred to me that maybe the thing that distracted him didn’t have to be a real thing. I tapped through the options on my comm, still not entirely familiar with all its functions, and found a number of different light settings. Usually, the main light would be used to light a room or a path in a dark environment, but there was also a laser pointer that could be used to direct people’s attention to diagrams on a screen, for example. If I made it too obvious, the Fenton would know exactly what was going on, and he wasn’t going to just follow a bright dot like some animals did. But Fentons had excellent eyesight, so maybe I could distract him just enough to give me a few seconds to kill him?
To make this work, I was going to need better leverage, so I carefully rearranged myself, easing away from the ceiling until I could reach the railing. I repositioned the camera, then kept watching him a few seconds longer, getting a feel for when he’d look the other way. The next time he did, I extended my arm out into the hallway and flickered the laser pointer on and off twice.
Luck was on my side, it seemed, because the Fenton caught the brief glimmer reflecting off the wall at the far end of the hallway, and his body went rigid as his attention focused on it. Taking advantage of the momentary opportunity, I moved, surging silently out of my hiding place and towards him. Halfway there, I flickered the light again, keeping his attention on the far end of the hallway. He took a step in that direction, bringing his gun up as he scanned the entire hallway, from floor to ceiling…
Two seconds later, I plunged my two short knives into the sides of his neck. Given that it was a symmetrical movement, I was able to put a fair bit of force into the action withoutdestabilising my own trajectory. He made a slight, gasping sound and tried to turn around, but I yanked the knife on the right out, slicing though his artery as I did so. A spray of blood shot out of the wound, small droplets scattering all over the hallway in a macabre dance. The Fenton went lax in my hands. I retrieved the gun from his now limp grip, then shot him in the head with it, just to make sure. As I did so, I appreciated the fact that we were all using laser weapons. They were almost silent, just a slight humming noise as they fired, but nothing loud enough to attract any attention.
Grimacing at the blood droplets floating around, I checked my map, then eased up the hallway, trying to edge around most of the blood on my way to the stairs. The stairwell was empty, but there was another guard in the hallway at the top who would need to be dealt with. Now, though, I had a gun to make that so much easier. I floated carefully up the stairs and used my camera to take a peek at the guard. This one was paying attention, gun in hand, but facing away from me. I caught him in the back of the head with the laser shot, and was quickly on my way again.
I wound my way along hallways which were notably shorter, now that I was nearing the bridge. This was where most of the staff facilities were – the kitchen, entertainment rooms, a few small offices – and the hallways wove around the rooms in a criss-cross pattern. It wasn’t long before I found my next target – an Anicrian who was being far less diligent than the other two. He was focused on some document or other on his comm, so it was a relatively easy thing to float up behind him, latch onto him with my knees, and snap his neck. The benefit of that method was that it didn’t leave blood droplets floating around to attract attention. The pirate was dead before he’d managed to do more than gasp. I checked the location of the other pirates on my map, then stowed the body in a nearby office, to prevent anyone else noticing it too quickly.
“What the fuck?” a voice said loudly, as I went to exit the office, and I instantly ducked back inside again. “What do you mean, he’s dead?” the voice asked again. There was silence, then the loud, clumping sound of someone walking in magnetic boots along the hall outside the office. I watched the green dot on my map until it passed my hiding spot and the pirate turned the next corner. I opened the door – thankfully, these were well maintained and all but silent – and floated up to the corner, peering around it to see a Polvron standing with his back to me. “Well, go and find them, then!” the Polvron snapped at whoever he was talking to, and I wondered whether another of their crew had found one of the bodies I’d left lying around. Then again, I’d been aware of the orange dots of the other Alliance soldiers moving steadily towards the front of the ship, so it could just as easily have been some sort of mess they’d left lying around.
Regardless, the man was currently engrossed in his conversation, so I took careful aim and shot him in the back of the head. The body jerked, but remained attached to the floor, thanks to the mag boots, and it was a little odd to see, his body weightless, but still appearing to stand there, given the way his feet were pinned to the floor.
Given the reminder, I took a moment to see how the Alliance soldiers were doing. They were moving in a tight cluster through the hallways, and right at that moment, they had just surrounded two green dots. One of the green lights went out, and then the other, and I realised they must have been destroying the comms on the pirates they’d killed. It was a good tactic, as it would prevent them from accidentally doubling back to kill people who were already dead, or worse, dismissing a live threat on the mistaken belief that they’d already killed that one.
