Hugens saw something…or thought he did twenty yards ahead. Shelves stacked with bags and crates extended as high as thirty feet. Hugens opened up, flaying shelves and everything on them in a fiery torrent of flechettes.
Chain and Josik directed their rifles in the same direction, joining their fire to Hugens’.
“He’s over there somewhere!” Hugens shouted. He ran toward the first aisle.
Josik followed, but Chain hung back. “You sure you’re not chasing shadows?”
“Shadows my ass!” Hugens retorted, infused with fresh courage. “I swear to the devil himself I’ll turn the bastard into one before this day is…”
A beam of deadly coherent light ripped from the darkness of the aisle, slicing through Hugens’ left side. His body burst into flame like dry kindling touched by fire. A second light beam ripped what was left of him apart in a blinding explosion.
“Before this day is done, to complete your sentence,” Dern taunted, briefly gazing at pieces of the dead criminal before turning his HIE on the second hijacker to dart into view.
A blaze of plasma surged from the bracelet, torching the man just as his finger depressed the RI4’s trigger. A spray of flachettes sparked across the ceiling before the hijacker’s melting weapon tumbled out of his grasp
Chain didn’t bother to stick around to see what turned her comrades into bonfires. She hurled the CX charge and sprinted on panic-fueled legs out of the cargo section.
Dern leapt out of the aisle in time to spot the 3rd hijacker racing for the exit. His suit’s warning censor flagged the airborne explosive. He caught a glimpse of the object and attempted to dive out of its path. The CX exploded and Dern absorbed its impact like a giant mallet to the body.
A CX charge was designed to breach the hardest material through the rapid release of hyper-condensed pressure. Limited strictly to military use because of its sheer devastating output, a CX had no business in the hands of a criminal. The sleeper ship possessed none of the external or internal impregnability of a military vessel; which is why it was so easy for the CX blast to punch through the bulkhead like a boulder through glass. Dern was pulled into a flaming pressure current that torpedoed him through a blast-gouged aperture into the adjoining engine room.
Hot glowing agony afflicted Dern when he collided with a thruster control generator, putting a deep dent in its titanium-layered surface. There was no specific area of discomfort he could pinpoint. The pain was all over, smothering him in a cruel throb. Dern heaved himself out of the dent and dropped to his knees, waiting for a fresh infusion of Flare to melt away the pain. In seconds, he felt refreshed and than ready to resume the fight.
The floor tilted sharply beneath his feet, toppling him off balance. Again, he crashed into the generator.
Status boards were mounted on every major piece of equipment in the engine room.
Dern didn’t need to check the data on any of those boards to tell him that the ship was going down.
Tunnal listened to Chain’s report after the woman’s near frantic arrival on the bridge.
Two more of his people dead! Whether Tunnal was aware of it or not, he bore an unsettling resemblance to a rabid wolf with his bared teeth and wide-eyed stare.
“Captain,” the pilot called out. “Controls are sluggish. I won’t be able to keep us in the in the air for long.”
“Generator conduits are bleeding fuel at a dangerously rapid rate,” Said the engineer. “If we don’t land within the next fifteen minutes we will definitely crash. What the hell is going on?”
“We’ve got a hero running around on this ship killing my people, that’s what’s going on.” Tunnal gazed coldly at captain. “Someone is going to tell who I’m dealing with or I’m going to be extremely upset.”
The captain spread his hands in an appeasing gesture. “Mr…Tunnel…I…”
Tunnal unholstered his Viper, walked over to a communications officer and shot the man in the back of the head. The officer slumped forward, blood and brain matter spilling out of a massive exit wound in his forehead, pooling on his console.
Bridge crew members cowered in terror at their stations. The captain stared at his fallen subordinate, pale with shock.
“I want answers!” Tunnal yelled, holding up his pistol. “Or I’ll be forced to express my displeasure a second time.”
“Lowtower, damn you,” said Alita. “His name is Dern Lowtower. He’s former SD.”
Tunnal lowered his weapon, pinning Alita with a baleful gaze. “Special Deployment?”
Mention of the Coalition’s ultra elite soldiers had a sudden and very sobering effect on the hijackers. They tightened their grips on their weapons as if expecting this Lowtower apparition to come bursting on the bridge at any second.
“What is he doing on this ship?” Tunnal asked.
“He accepted a job on Ceres 3 as a settlement patrol officer.”
“Does he have a suit?”
“Yes.”
“That’s crap!” The big hijacker, Welch, disputed. “You said former. How can he have a suit if he ain’t SD anymore?”
“Ex SDs are allowed to keep their suits if they go into a law enforcement capacity,” Alita explained. “But the suits are drastically reduced in capability to fit within a civilian context. His suit has been stripped of battle mode.”
Tunnal rubbed his chin. “Battle mode. Now that’s a sight to see.” He turned to Welch. “I served on Yuttrol during the Ish Insurgency. My brigade was tasked with taking out this huge ass mobile artillery platform. We launched so many attacks against that thing I lost count. Armored units were decimated, aerial bombardment couldn’t put a dent in the thing. A thousand troops, scrubbed out of existence in the first half hour of the first assault. Thousands more in the second and third. I don’t know how I survived that meat grinder.” Tunnal gave a twisted, humorless grin. “Somebody eventually came to their senses and sent in the SDs. Twenty of them. Twenty. They got inside the platform, eliminated the operators and disabled it in less than an hour. That’s Battle Mode for you.”
“But like she said, Boss,” Welch cut in, pointing at Alita. “He don’t have Battle Mode. He’s weak.”
“SDs are never weak,” Alita countered with a defiant edge. “Even without their armor.”
“But I get Welch’s point,” said the hijack leader. He looked at Alita. “Your friend may be formidable, but without a full suit, he’s not what he was.” He turned to Chain. “Do you think the CX did any damage to him?”
Chain lowered her eyes as if embarrassed. “I don’t know…I didn’t check.”
“That’s all right.” Tunnal thought for a second. “Captain, open a channel to Routh.”
The captain looked at the body of his communication officer. Since he had no backup officer to fill that capacity, he went to the blood smeared console and performed the task himself.
“What are we going to do, Boss?” Asked Welch with a jittery gaze.
“We’re going to make Hooper earn this ship.”
