Artemis Files 0.5: Lexington (7 page)

Aiming and firing down the corridor, he saw one of the men go down with strikes over the armoured chest. He was scrabbling to get back around the corner and one of his companions was leaning around aiming directly at him with a shotgun. The barrel was wide and menacing, and even though it was at least fifteen metres away, the muzzle appeared to be as large as
a man-sized tunnel, attracting his eyes as if to lock him in place.

Hypnotised by the sight, he blinked as the muzzle of the weapon drifted away and the man went down to the deck. Behind him, Harry was yelling a whooping war cry and firing triple bursts past his head to the corridor and had
just saved his life.

Glancing at Gibney
struggling to grip the rifle, he scooted toward the man and grabbed at the two grenades discarded on the deck by his feet. While the man he had shot and knocked down crawled for the cover of the cross corridor, Harry’s shots took him in the thigh and legs as they disappeared out of sight. Ignoring both Gibney and Harry, he turned back to the corner where the other boarders were located and peered around with his pistol held ready.

Two of them were creeping toward him and as they saw his face, gauss and shotgun rounds erupted from their weapons
to pepper the air around him. Squeezing the trigger of his pistol as he pulled back, he saw them dive while his rounds passed overhead. Behind them, he could see the other two moving out of the cover of a cabin to join their fellows.

While Harry kept him covered with the boarders to the rear, he tugged at the pin
for one of the grenades, feeling it come loose with a solid pull. The pale white light on the crown near where the restraining pin had been turned red, and he knew it would go off at any time. He had no idea what they were fused for, it might be ten seconds or it might be more but without a thought, he threw it around the corner.

He heard it bounce off the wall before dropping to the deck and as the attackers around the corner yelled out curses and scrambled for their former cover it detonated. Diving around the corner after the debris and shrapnel burst past, he fired at the figures on the deck. One was unmoving, but the others were rolling about with one clutching his face, the other his side and the third seemingly unharmed.

With the weapon in his hand dry firing, he knew he’d used up both clips and there was still one boarder capable of shooting back once recovered from the shock of the grenade. Without thought, he pushed the empty pistol into his thigh pocket and leapt to his feet, hands scrabbling to draw the cutlass from its sheath at his belt.

He was upon the doorway faster than he planned, the blade only just being transferred to his fighting hand when the boarder peered around with his weapon coming into sight. He saw the man’s eyes go wide, surprised at the charging cutlass, but faster than he expected the barrel of the carbine in his hands came up to block the blade.

Twisting the cutlass away from the barrel, he swung it low and found the metal stock of the carbine meeting it to thwart his counter move. Letting out a bellow, the boarder pushed forward trying to get within the swing of the cutlass and body bash him away. He felt the man’s mass connect with both of them letting out a loud whoof from the contact, the forward motion of his cutlass attack halted.

In desperate fear for his life, the man’s eyes were wide as he tried to use the length of the carbine as a barrier, thrusting it toward his face and causing him to lean away. In return, he swept out a leg while his head went back, catching the boarder’s ankle in a sweep that sent them both to the deck in a tangle. Bellowing at each other in rage or panic, he didn’t
know which, they leapt back at each other without weapons, fists swinging for purchase upon the other.

His opponent was a similar height and weight, and almost the same age based on what he could see under the helmet of the face. The man was trying to throw him back to the deck, his grip catching on the side of the combat skin and attempting a pivot that would throw him off balance and down
across the hip. Grinning, he let the man’s momentum carry him around and before his own feet lost purchase on the deck propelled himself forward instead of resisting the attempt.

It was enough to send the boarder off balance
when he went around in the direction with a greater speed and force than expected. While the man went down he lunged with his boot into the face, hearing a crunch as the side made contact with the nose. To his credit, the boarder ignored what must have been blistering pain and lunged for the boot, attempting to take hold and grip it tightly.

The man was successful and forced off balance by the tactic, it sent him down to the deck again. Scrambling up his body, he felt the man desperately trying to pin him down until close enough to finish the desperate hand-to-hand combat for his life.

Rolling around, he suddenly found the grip of the cutlass under his hand as the attacker reached for his throat. Without thought, he pulled the blade up and hammered it toward the head. Clanging off the helmet’s rear, it seemed to energise the boarder into locking hands at his throat with thumbs pushing against his windpipe.

Shaking his head from side to side, he tried to prolong the inevitable, knowing that if his opponent found his target it would be crushed and he’d die from asphyxiation before he could resist. Swinging
the cutlass again, he felt it hit flesh beneath the helmet’s base.

The mouth in front of him let out a screech, but the hands continued their maddened scramble for purchase. Dragging the cutlass as much as he could over the neck it had sliced into, he changed tack and swung it like a club at the face hovering over him with teeth bared. The edge of the blade struck the side of the helmet, but it was the guard that had the effect he was after. With the thickened pommel bashing against the man’s jaw, the guard hit home in one of the eyes blazing fury at him, grinding deep enough into the socket to bring a higher pitched screech of pain from above.

Feeling the hands release their frenzied grip and reach for the face, he used the diversion to throw a punch into the jaw above and send the man tilting to the side. Rolling from underneath, he pivoted around and slashed down with the cutlass while his opponent clutched at where his eye had been. The twenty-five inch blade cut through the hands and deep into the face with a diagonal slash that sent fingers and blood in different directions. Grunting as he brought the blade back from the other direction in a follow up slash, the edge went through the boarder’s throat deep enough to cleave it in half.

Dropping to his knees, he forced himself to gasp for breath as the man shuddered in front of him, blood pulsing out of the slashed throat and single remaining eye staring in confusion. Shaking his head, he turned away and made for Harry and Gibney, pausing briefly to reload the snub pistol and fire a shot in each of the bodies on the deck as he passed them. Gritting his teeth at what he had done, he knew there was no other way. If the boarders recovered and came after them again, there would be no hope of saving the packet boat.

He saw Harry watching up ahead, his face bleeding from where a shotgun pellet or gauss round nicked the cheek. Giving a nod as he arrived at the corner, he motioned toward the bridge.

“Gibney’s in a bad way, but he’s gonna try and cover our backs until he passes out. It’s up to us to get to the bridge and stop the bastards from taking the boat, are you ready?”

He turned away, ignoring the man’s questioning glance. Taking three paces back into the cross corridor, he bent down and retrieved two of the weapons on the deck, scooping up spare magazines from the bodies at the same time. Slinging one of the weapons, a Merovingian
Minié
gauss rifle over his shoulder, he stalked back to Harry and met the watching gaze.

“Now I’m ready.”

Sliding the works of the combat shotgun to chamber a round, he ignored the unused round that flew out of the chamber and then checked the ammo count on the bottom of the small magazine inserted into the base. He had ten rounds, almost a full magazine plus the two spare magazines he’d retrieved now sitting in his thigh pocket.

Grinning at Harry, he motioned toward the remaining corridor. “Let’s finish this so we can save Gibney and give him a chance
to tell the tale of how he saved a Packet Boat singlehandedly… without a harem.”

“I heard that!” The man grunted from behind, following the comment with a curse at his pain.

Following Harry as the man quickly dashed to the end of the corridor and the hatch that would open to the final passage to the bridge, he tried to focus. With every step, the bulging eye of the man he’d killed stared at him with a bloodied throat and face offering astonishment at his pending death. He knew he’d be haunted by the memory if they survived the battle for the ship, and it would be another one to add to his growing collection of dead bodies and defeated enemies.

It was different when you were on an attack boat because you never saw their faces or thought of them as anything more than an enemy boat trying to shoot you out of space. In person, as he’d discovered long ago during a shore action with a naval brigade sent to restore order on a troubled world, the dead clawed back at you and never left you alone once battle was over. He knew the old adage shared by veterans, that when it came to killing someone up close it was always a choice of them or you, but hearing the phrase and actually being there to experience it first hand were two different things that people didn’t understand if they haven’t been there.

Some of the other’s he’d served with never let the memories go, turning to drunken binges or drugs to overcome the guilt, while others went emotionally dead, closing their emotions down and shutting off friends and family. He’d struggled with the morality when he was young, especially after that first boarding action on the slaver and death almost took him. He didn’t know how he managed it, but the advice of a senior rating was probably what kept him sane; and that advice was to compartmentalise the experience. You’ll never forget it, he said, but over time you’ll find a way to keep them with you but get on with life. If you don’t, then it means they win in the end and you die.

Pausing at the hatch, Harry palmed it open and then leaned through as the echoes of gunfire sounded from around the corner.
The noise pulled him back from the wandering thoughts, enabling him to focus on the struggle to save the ship.

With Harry leaning low, he leaned
over the man and saw three boarders at the gaping bridge hatch, firing inside and then ducking for cover from return fire. Behind them, two more waited at either side of the hatch, although in the quick glance he noticed one was clutching a leg instead of a weapon and tying a compression patch around the upper thigh. The second was changing out the magazines of his
Minié,
discarding the empty and tapping a new one into place while gathering his courage for the next time he was needed to fire into the bridge.

“On my count, we charge them.” Harry whispered. “No more
stuffing about taking potshots and getting hit in return, we’ll charge them and go toe to toe until they’re down. On three….”

He barely heard the counting, his mind fixed on the targets and gripping the shotgun. Sliding his thumb over the selector, he unconsciously double-checked the safety was off and it was set to the second notch for semi-automatic fire. As the man beside him let out a roar and pushed around the corner, he followed suit with the same banshee cry he’d been taught to use as a rating all those years ago
in basic training. With his legs carrying him forward, everything seemed to happen in slow motion.

Charging toward the enemy with time slowing down, firing as they moved, he watched as one went down from a lucky shot, quickly followed by a second with his lower torso exploding from shotgun slugs tearing
through the flesh. The other boarder at the hatch didn’t hesitate. Without even looking around, he ran for the far corner in long strides and disappeared from sight unharmed, weapon dropping as he went.

The injured man on the deck gazed in horror, scrambling backwards
without his rifle and trying to use slippery, blood covered hands to pull up a pistol while the boarder beside him brought his weapon to bear upon the charging lunatics. He could see the man’s finger jerking on the trigger, caught by surprise but reacting without thought in an attempt to survive.

The rounds were whizzing past his head and he heard Harry give a surprised grunt and then the firing went quiet with Harry’s
Grail
unleashing fire point blank into the face. Ignoring the sight of the head exploding, he focused on the remaining boarder who had a pistol up, aiming with a shaky grip and pulling the trigger. Even though it was point blank range, the rounds went past while his own finger squeezed the trigger of the shotgun to silence the man.

Harry kept moving, leaping past the bridge hatch and dashing for the far corner. Crouching, the man kept firing down the other corridor while yelling curses at the boarders in sight. Taking a deep breath, he ignored Harry and leaned close to the gaping bridge door.

“I’m a friendly… we’ve cleared the access way. I’m going to step into view, so don’t shoot!”

Waiting for a muffled response, he peeked his head around the corner to see three of the bridge crew aiming weapons from behind stations. One of them was the
skipper, and with a sigh of relief, he held the shotgun out at arms length and moved into view.