Theirs Not To Reason Why: A Soldier's Duty (38 page)

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Authors: Jean Johnson

BOOK: Theirs Not To Reason Why: A Soldier's Duty
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“Amphibious atmosphere,”
D’kora ordered on the platoon channel.
“Everyone stay suited. No sweating allowed.”
The corridors here were a singularly uninspiring shade of muddy beige, oddly mossy under the green white glow of the overhead lights. It was something which might be considered soothing to Choyan or Salik eyes, but which would send a Human twitching within an hour, unfiltered. Ia fired a short burst at a grey shadow on the far wall of the side-corridor joining this one. The source of the shadow jerked back, unharmed but no longer sneaking up for another attempt at a counterattack. Paint smoldered on the bulkhead, charred black from her laser fire.
A couple chuckles came back on the comm. Even Ia smiled, though she didn’t take her eyes off her target corridors, the ones straight ahead and the one to the left.
“Corporal Ia, take Alpha and Beta straight ahead and find a way down. Gamma, Delta, Epsi, you’re with me. If this is a Choya ship, the bridge will be located somewhere on or near this deck. If it’s Salik, it’ll be down below. If we’re lucky, it’s just Choya. Salik is a
shak
k-load of paperwork.”
“Sir, yes, sir.”
Dashing across the opening, Ia fired twice as she spun, putting her back to the bulkhead on the far side of the opening. Shots streaked out of the corridor. Estes, taking up Ia’s former position, squatted down and fired back from a low crouch. Double-E joined her, firing over her head. A
fzzzt . . . fzzzt. . . .fzzzt
approached from both directions, growing rapidly louder.
“
Shakk.
Force fields, sir! They’re pinning us down,”
Harkins announced.
“They might intend to blow the airlock anyway!”
“Pirates who are rich as well as paranoid?”
Estradille asked.
“They can’t have the
whole
ship sectioned off.”
Turning to face the forward corridor, Ia aimed at the corner of one of the panels. A sustained burn cut a smoking, glowinghot line diagonally into the bulkhead and ceiling. The faint glow of the nearest force field sputtered and vanished.
“Burn through the conduit cables. Use a thirty-degree angle, about a palm-length from the fields, and just pick a corner,”
Ia called out, shifting up and lasering through the upper left corner of the next one.
“Most ship-built fields are vulnerable at corners and midpoints. It’s faster to cut out the midpoints, but you do more structural damage at the corners. Cut enough corners, and they can’t blow the airlock without the risk of cracking open the ship.”
“That’s devious, Corporal. I’m glad you’re on our side. Do it,”
D’kora ordered the others.
As she burned through the bulkheads, cutting through each force field in succession, Ia blink-programmed her comm channel for Alpha and Beta teams alone.
“Okay, people, listen up. Elevators are death traps. But if this is a Choya ship, we won’t fit down the emergency ladder ways in our mech. If it’s Salik, they’ll have stairways. They don’t do ladders. We’ll take this corridor, up here.”
“Salik, sir!”
The shout was broadcast on the platoon channel.
“PSC Jundran Pzettisva, D Squad Beta, bow boarding party, I have visual confirmation of a mechsuited Salik on board. Repeat, visual confirmation! Salik on board, armed and armored!”
“Find that bridge, A Squad!”
D’kora ordered.
“Harkins, you’re with me. Estes, take Double-E,”
Ia ordered, lasering through the power conduits for the last of the force fields slowing them down.
“Platoon policy is to keep teammates paired together, Corporal,”
Estes reminded her.
“You and I are short enough to crouch in front of them for a firing line, Corporal,”
Ia shot back.
“They can’t say the same. Start opening doors left side. I’ll take right. Kill all sensors you see. If a room is clear, shoot it shut as we go.”
“—Choya on board, sir! PFC Juno Dexter, E Squad Beta, I have visual confirmation of Choya on board, armed but not armored!”
The interior doors they encountered were controlled by simple rocker switches. Storage closets, crew cabins with oddly shaped furniture meant for bipedal but otherwise non-Human bodies, some with signs of hasty evacuation since some items had been left out on tables and such.
“Where are all the crewmembers?”
Double-E asked quietly after a few minutes of searching.
“Split between the two ships,”
Ia offered, sealing the latest door shut with a stuttering blast from her rifle.
“They’ll be hoarding any Gatsugi prisoners for shield-hostages, and protecting the engines, lifesupport systems, and the bridge.”
“Those they haven’t eaten, you mean,”
Harkins offered grimly.
“This is either a door to a section seal, or hopefully a stairwell, since that looks like a set of lift doors up ahead,”
Estes observed, reaching a heavy metal door with a crank handle.
Ia positioned herself across from the door, opposite the hinge side. She gestured for Harkins to take point on her far side, watching the cross-corridors. Aiming her gun, she nodded at Estes.
“Crank it open, Corporal.”
Nothing met her but a stairwell, with treads big enough for Salik-sized feet. Plenty of room for mechsuited Marines to descend.
“Harkins and I go first. Estes and Double-E, watch our backs. Wait for us to descend two turns before you follow, and scan as you go. I don’t want all of us caught in one trap.”
Stepping carefully, Ia descended.
The leg-joints on a Salik were odd. They had a thigh that bent backwards, and a rear-facing, hock-style knee, like the legs of an Earth ostrich. Below that was a long shank for a shin, and then their oddly shaped feet. Despite the length of their lower limbs, Salik never stood up completely straight; their legs were always bent, ready to flex and bounce. The accordion-folds of joints made them prodigious leapers in open terrain. The relatively low ceilings of a spaceship would prevent any of the enemy from leaping down upon her team, but facing them on a planet’s surface would be a whole different matter. Backwards knees and meaty thighs weren’t the only oddity, however.
Ankle and foot attached to that calf-shank backwards, so that a Salik’s clawed, webbed toes trailed the foot, rather than led them. Salik young were born in water and breathed through gills, spending the first seven to ten years of their life almost completely underwater. It took a Salik adolescent roughly an additional five years to fully develop their lungs and be comfortable breathing air, so long as it was humid. Their big flipper-feet were essential for movement through water, if somewhat cumbersome on land despite the way they pointed backwards.
In the water, there was no sentient species faster than a Salik, not even a dolphin. On a ladder, the Salik were slow and clumsy, thanks to their version of feet. Those feet were flippers designed to send them darting through the water after their prey, which they preferred to eat alive. Cooked food was an affront to their digestive systems, and fire had been one of the last technologies the Salik had mastered in their ancient past, long after the wheel, lever, and even writing had been developed.
The oddness didn’t end with their legs. Their heads were bulbous, with almost no neck, and their eyes projected out of their heads on either side, giving them a wide field of view with a modest but useable amount of depth-perception. Big mouths concealed sharp incisors meant for rending and tearing flesh.
Their arms were the strangest of all; while they did have a stout upper arm bone like most sentient races, their lower arms were boneless, muscular tentacles that split twice, forming four tips at the shank-long ends. They were also suckered down the undersides, starting from the first split about one fourth of the way from the ends. Naturally, they took advantage of this fact in their technology. Toggles and switches and buttons which could be depressed did exist, but all sensitive equipment was designed to work by
pulling
on buttons, not by pushing them down.
In contrast, the Choya were fully amphibious throughout their lives, born with lung structures that worked as gills, and thus had to be kept moist at all times. The Choya were also more bipedal with somewhat normal-looking legs, webbed hands and feet, if with six fingers and toes instead of the Human five. They did eat cooked food, but didn’t hesitate to eat their meat raw. Their eyes were set more on the sides of their heads than forward, and their ears had crest-like fans which could spread up and out or flick down and in. Unlike the Salik, they had a finned tail when born, but it shrank and vanished around what passed for their version of puberty, leaving them to walk and swim bipedally.
Stairs were no problem for the Choya, either, though they wouldn’t have bothered to accommodate the other amphibious race. This was a Salik vessel.
“Estes, Double-E, seal the door and follow.”
“I thought I heard something,”
Double-E replied.
“I should check it out.”
“Seal the door and follow, soldier,”
Ia ordered.
“Our priority is the bridge.”
“I’d have checked it out,”
Harkins grumbled. They could hear Estes and Double-E closing, cranking, and lasering the door shut.
“You don’t leave an unknown force at your ba—”
BOOM—KLANG!
The ship rocked with the force of the explosion. Everyone grabbed for the railing or the wall. The stairwell reverberating with the sound of whatever metallic object had struck the section seal door.
Hit by the fuel pipe that would’ve impaled Harkins, if I hadn’t dragged him down here . . .
“Headcount!”
D’kora’s voice snapped through the full platoon channel.
“I want a headcount!”
As the lead soldier in A Squad, Ia’s HUD lit up in a grid of ten names. She blink-toggled her own box green, and watched the other nine light up with verdant health as well. Though she couldn’t see it, she knew D’kora was seeing all fifty-three names on her own heads-up grid.
“Thank the gods, we didn’t lose anyone. It seems they took exception to our presence and blew the airlock anyway. Entrypoint deck and the decks above and below for that section appear to have vented to vacuum. A Squad, find that bridge and lock them down, meioas! B and C, find engineering, cut them off cold!”
“Enemy fire, sir! I think we found engineering. This corridor’s heavily guarded!”
The conversation dropped off the platoon channel, leaving Ia and her three teammates in the silence of the stairwell. Estes spoke up.
“Now what?”
“I’m looking at a Choyan number right now. At least, I think it’s a number,”
Ia added, wanting to sound uncertain.
“If I remember it right, that’s their symbol for 8. We go down five more decks, and we should be on deck 3. Most Salik ships have their bridges on deck 3.”
D’kora’s voice cut through their link on the squad channel, echoing Ia’s words.
“A Squad, no sign of a bridge on this deck. Proceed downward. Salik designed ships usually have a bridge on the third or fourth up from the bottom. Stay paired; watch your backs.”
“Why would the Salik build a ship and put Choyan numbers on it?”
Double-E asked her as she started down the stairs again.
“For that matter, why would the Choya build a ship in the Salik style?”
Harkins quipped.
Estes came to her rescue.
“You saw the hull. They probably just grabbed an old Salik wreck out of some battle junkyard and slapped together whatever repairs they could manage on it. And then the Salik somehow got a hold of the Choya pirates and apparently cut a deal.”
“Keep alert, meioas,”
Ia interjected, easing down another flight of steps, rifle at the ready. There was an eighty percent probability they would make it down the stairs just fine, but twenty percent was still enough to worry.
“We’re headed down, and the Salik are built to look up. We need to be ready if they spot us coming.”
Red light lanced down over the railing, blackening a tiny box in the corner of the next turn.
“What, like they won’t notice us shooting out their cameras?”
Harkins asked sardonically.
“They know***ing.”
“Wh**? You’re br***up,”
Estes asked. Or tried to ask. A burst of static came across the comm from her link, vehement enough not to need a translation.
Damn, indeed,
Ia thought, grimacing.
Onboard jammers. That was low on the probability chart.
Stopping Harkins on the landing between decks 5 and 4, she beckoned the other two down to meet them. Once Estes and Double-E were in range, she triple-tapped all four of their helms, and triple-tapped Estes’ helm a second time. Estes levered up the silvered outer layer of her faceplate, meant to protect her from laser fire, as did Ia, though neither unsealed their suits. The two women looked into each other’s eyes, Ia’s amber brown to Estes’ hazel green.
“Either they want to overhear this,” Ia stated slowly and clearly, “or they want us to unseal. Stay suited and switch to hand signs. I repeat, switch to hand signs.”

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