Refusing Excalibur (12 page)

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Authors: Zachary Jones

BOOK: Refusing Excalibur
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At about the same time, Toren and Dom both appeared with kits.
“Open one of those and bring me the bolt gun,” Victor ordered. He turned to Gaz. “Can you hold this down while I secure it?”
Gaz nodded and held the improvised patch in place.
Dom broke open her kit and handed Victor a pistollike device.
He took it and fired bolts into the bulkhead, drawing a circle just outside the breach. When he was done, he said, “You can let go now, Gaz.”
“That patch ain’t gonna hold,” he said.
Victor put down the bolt gun and picked up his utility knife. “Just need it to buy a few minutes while we put on a real patch.” He cut away the excess material outside the ring of bolts. He then pulled out the actual patch, which looked something like a stove pot cover. He pulled the strip off the edge of the cover, exposing tar-black sealant.
Victor placed the real patch over the makeshift one and pressed down until the sealant was secure. “All right. That should hold until we have a chance to patch the exterior.”
Gaz nodded. “Good work, fucker.” He patted Victor shoulder. “I look forward to seeing if you know how to fight.”
They returned to their seats. No one made an effort to identify the crewmember whose insides were decorating the ship’s interior. Victor suspected it would be his job to clean that up. Joy.
Several minutes after Victor strapped himself back in, the
Fortune
vibrated again. This time, only once.
“Got ’em! One pirate vessel disabled. Gaz! Get your people ready, they’re about to earn their pay,” announced Captain Hyde.
“You heard ’im. Time to get ready,” Gaz said.
The precombat jitters the hull-patching job had pushed aside now returned. Victor went back to checking his gear over and over again to distract himself.
Several long minutes later, Gaz shook his shoulder. “Time to see what you’re made of, fucker.”
Victor nodded and got up and headed to
Fortune
’s front airlock. Just outside the inner door, he grabbed a handhold.
Behind him, Gaz said, “Fara shot out the pirate’s engines without breaching the pressure hull, so it’s likely most, if not all, the fuckers will still be alive.”
Victor heard a
thunk
on the other side of the inner door as the
Fortune
docked with the pirate vessel. Gaz unslung a grenade launcher. “You fuckers better get ready. Things are about to get loud.”
Gaz pressed a button on the control panel, and the inner hatch swung toward the ceiling. Victor followed behind Dom as she took position on the left side of the outer airlock door. Gaz, with Toren in tow, took position on the right.
The inner door closed behind them, and, for a moment, they were trapped inside the airlock. Then Gaz hit the release on the outer airlock hatch. As soon as it swung up, he looked around the corner.
“Their outer airlock is closed.” Gaz’s head turned to face Toren. “T, breachin’ charges.”
“Got it.” The stocky man walked up and planted four cone-shaped charges on the hatch.
Victor noticed the airlock pressure was increasing. He looked up and saw Gaz turning a dial on the controls.
As if sensing Victor’s question, Gaz said, “I’m overpressuring the airlock to make sure the door goes into the pirate ship instead of being sucked toward us.”
Victor nodded. Toren finished planting his charges and returned to his spot behind Gaz.
“They’re ready to blow.” He held up the detonator, his thumb hovering over the button.
Gaz nodded, and Toren hit the button.
A great metallic bang and a puff of smoke resulted as the charges detonated. An instant later, Gaz brought his grenade launcher around the corner and fired a couple rounds without aiming. Both grenades detonated with loud pops.
Dom was the first to round the corner. As soon as she did, a blast came from the other side, and multiple flechettes tore through her body, leaving long bloody streaks as she dropped to the deck.
Gaz fired more grenades around the corner and then yelled, “
MOVE, FUCKERS
!”
Victor swallowed and rounded the corner and went through the breached airlock. He yelped with surprise as gravity disappeared the moment he crossed the threshold into the pirate vessel. Their artificial gravity was out. Victor’s uncontrolled free fall carried him right into the body of a pirate killed by Gaz’s grenades.
Two more pirates came around the corner, leveling their weapons. With no other cover, Victor grabbed the dead pirate and used him as a shield, face-to-face.
A burst of fire crashed into the back of the pirate’s body, pushing Victor into the bulkhead near the outer airlock. Gaz, clearly expecting the gravity to be out, smoothly transitioning from 1 to 0 g and fired his grenade launcher. The rounds detonated in the air right between the two pirates, shredding them.
“You can play with your new friend later, fucker. Take point,” Gaz said.
Victor pushed aside the dead pirate and floated to the open inner airlock, his shotgun held before him. He looked around the corner and immediately pulled his head back into cover when a staccato of gunfire erupted from farther down the corridor.
He fired his shotgun blindly around the corner, hoping the flechettes would hit something, and then pumped it to chamber a fresh round. The spent casing floated away.
Toren took a position above Victor and aimed his drum-fed assault rifle through the airlock, firing a long burst down the corridor.
Gaz pointed through the hatch. “
MOVE
!”
Well, here goes
. Victor kicked himself from the airlock toward a corner, his shotgun held before him.
A pirate leaned around the corner to Victor’s left. Victor fired, hitting the pirate, and sending himself tumbling.
He slammed into a bulkhead and let go of his shotgun while scrambling to find an anchor, desperate to keep from bouncing into the line of fire.
The chatter of Toren’s assault rifle and the thumb-bang of Gaz’s grenade launcher reverberated through the corridor. Victor didn’t hear any return fire from the pirates.
Victor grabbed the strap holding his shotgun to his suit and was about to pull it but decided against it and detached it instead. The weapon needed two hands to operate, making it a liability in 0 g. He wished someone had explained that to him beforehand.
He drew the big revolver from his hip.
Gaz floated up to the corner opposite Victor. He had traded his grenade launcher for a pistol of his own. Toren remained in the airlock, covering the corridor with his assault rifle.
“Follow me, new guy,” Gaz said as he rounded the corridor, pushing himself along with one hand while holding his pistol before him.
Victor did the same, covering the right side of the corridor while Gaz covered the left.
The pirate vessel was not what Victor would call inspection-ready. The walls were bare plastic stained a thousand shades of brown. The closest thing to fresh paint was the blood splatter. Apparently pirates didn't believe in keeping their ships clean.
A part of Victor was offended someone would take such poor care of their ship.
Gaz and Victor came upon a T-section where the bodies of five pirates floated in a cloud of blood. Victor had to wipe his visor when a globule struck it, leaving a red smear.
Turning the corner, Victor saw the pirate he had killed floating in front of him, his chest a pin cushion of flechettes.
Gaz signaled Toren to reach their position. When the short heavy-worlder arrived, Gaz said, “Toren, you cover the right corridor and waste any fucker who comes through. Me and the new guy will clear the left.”
“You got it, Gaz.”
Gaz looked to Victor. “You got point, new guy.”
Victor nodded. He wasn’t pleased to be the point man but neither would he argue about it. He took a calming breath and moved up the corridor, handhold to handhold, keeping his big revolver pointed in front of him.
He checked around the corner and saw no one. Sending the clear signal, he covered Gaz while he moved up ahead. Gaz then signaled Victor to move up.
After looking around another corner, Victor saw a closed hatch. “I’ve got a closed hatch here.”
“Comin’ up,” Gaz said. When he arrived, he handed Victor a cone-shaped breaching charge. “Put that on the latch. I’ll cover you.”
Victor floated up the hatch, pulled the adhesive strip off the bottom of the charge, and placed it where Gaz told him to.
He then kicked himself off the hatch as hard as he could and made his way around the corner behind Gaz.
“Fire in the hole!” Gaz said, pressing the detonator.
A deafening bang erupted from around the corridor, and then Gaz grabbed Victor, said, “In ya go!” and threw him toward the open hatch.
Victor flew through the broken hatch into what looked like a galley. It was full of smoke and floating debris from the blast, along with three dazed pirates. They were all armed.
Victor aimed his revolver at one of them and fired two shots, both going wide. The light recoil of the gun put him in a slow spin.
Luckily for Victor, the pirates didn’t return fire until he reached the hatch on the opposite side and pulled himself into cover. Bullets tore into the bulkhead he hid behind.
As they did, Gaz appeared and fired a full-auto burst from his pistol, bracing himself with his free hand.
The gunfire coming Victor's way stopped, and he pulled himself around the corner and emptied his revolver, not so much aiming as simply throwing fast-moving metal in the direction of the pirates.
When his gun clicked on an empty chamber, all three pirates were floating lifelessly in the galley. Victor was pretty sure he didn’t hit any of them. Gaz floated over to him, replacing the magazine of his machine pistol.
“You make a good decoy, new guy.”
Victor sneered at the pit fighter. “Fuck you, Gaz.”
Gaz gave Victor a spike-toothed smile. “Hey, you lived! And we still have the rest of this tub to clear.” He opened the hatch behind Victor and called on the radio. “T, the way is clear.”
Toren arrived with his assault rifle. “We done yet?”
“Not yet. We still got the bridge to deal with up ahead. That’s where they’ll make their last stand. New guy—”
“Take point, got it,” Victor said. He ejected his revolver’s spent cylinder, letting it float away as he put in a fresh one.
Gaz nodded. “Get to it.”
Victor moved through the galley, careful not to blunder into any more blood. He didn’t look forward to cleaning what he already had smeared over his suit. Boarding a hostile ship was a dirty business. He reached the hatch to the bridge and found it locked.
Gaz and Toren floated up behind him and placed their breaching charges over the latch and hinges of the hatch. Backing away, they detonated the charges and blew the hatch in. Victor didn’t wait to be thrown in, like last time; he went in the instant after the charges blew.
He flew through the smoke, blind at first. But when he reached a console, he pulled himself behind it and used it for cover. Peeking over, his revolver trained forward, he saw five pirates, none of them in armor, holding their hands up, their discarded weapons floating from reach.
“Gaz, they’re surrendering,” Victor said.
“They are? Well, ain’t that nice.” Gaz floated onto the bridge, followed by Toren. “You know what to do.”
“I do?” asked Victor, then Gaz and Toren leveled their weapons at the pirates and opened fire.
Victor flinched from the bursts of fire. All five pirates spasmed as bullets tore through their bodies. When the firing stopped, the pirates drifted, surrounded by globules of their own blood.
It took a moment for Victor to process what just happened. He sneered at Gaz. “They surrendered!”
“So? The bounty on dead pirates is the same for live ones. And dead ones don’t suck air,” Gaz said.
“But…”
“But nothin’. These fuckers killed one of my crew, and the captain’s orders are no survivors. We’re not cops. We’re exterminators,” Gaz said. He pointed toward the aft hatch. “Now cover that hatch with T. I’m gonna let the captain know we’re on the bridge.”
Minutes later, Cormac, the
Fortune
’s engineer, floated in. Moving with ease through the zero gravity, his pressure suit’s bubbled helmet and his long spidery limbs made him look like an insect.
He got to work hacking the pirate vessel’s controls, attaching a wire from his large tablet to a port of what Victor assumed to be the main computer.
For several minutes, the starchild’s narrow head twitched this way and that as he tapped on the screen of his datapad. Then he said, “Captain, I have control of the ship, including the internal security system. At least four pirates are still alive in the stern pressure hull.”

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