| |
Mack pursued Roper into the sprawling complex of storage containers that filled the cargo hold they had fallen into. With far less cover than up on the mess deck, the two cyborgs found their fight to be much less a game of hide and seek and more of a running gun battle.
In order to pump out enough energy to burn Mack’s armor, Roper had to be cycling his plasma caster at or near its highest setting. That meant fewer shots on each cell and a very slow rate of fire. Mack was starting to conserve flechette ammo as well, so the fury of their previous exchanges had settled to a more sustainable level.
But Mack’s woes were compounded by the arrival of the dagger-wielding assassin ‘droids. They were clearly not designed for heavy combat roles, and The Twins did not struggle in bringing them down. But the ‘droids had to be kept well away or Mack risked a fatal stab wound.
Every round that went into a ‘droid did not go into Roper, and every second spent shooting robots was another second for Roper’s weapon to recycle. Mack had no neurological upgrades, but he did have an excellent combat AI to run the chassis. His coded attack macros kept Modi shooting ‘droids and Magni peppering Roper, all while Mack ran the sensors and kept the chassis moving.
A few direct hits had creased Roper’s external armor, leaving visible trails in the grey paint. It was going to take more than a few glancing hits to chew up his enemy, but The Twins had brought down bigger game than Roper before. Mack focussed on the task at hand with only a cursory thought to complex strategy. The former miner was pissed off, and he was willing to do whatever it took to get munitions into Roper, and all other considerations could be damned.
The plasma caster’s firing cycle was impossible to shield from EM scans, so Mack’s HUD would warn him of another imminent plasma blast. The alarm pinged direction and distance as it detected the focusing arrays charging, and Mack dived for cover behind a large shipping container. The green beam sliced though the container above his head and began to scorch downward toward the prostrate mercenary. But the small ‘caster was only good for about a half second of burn time, so the beam fizzled out before touching Mack.
Mack leapt out from behind the container to send a burst of his own back to his opponent, but his fire was blocked by two ‘droids and Modi cut them down instead. Magni roared and spun tracers through the place Roper had been, but the enemy had already moved on, and his shots went wide. Mack pursued with reckless abandon.
His two primary ammo drums were near-empty and he dropped them on the run. Throwing his arms back over his shoulders he connected The Twins to his reload canisters and released them from the hardpoints. The two big drums snapped into the mag wells and Mack rotated the weapons back into place under his arms. The entire process took less than a second, and the merc burst from between two containers with weapons recharged and scanners probing. Roper was ahead of him, and the grey behemoth sprayed a hail of beads from his second hard point into Mack. Mack ignored them, bartering his armor’s resilience for the opportunity to land solid hits on his opponent. Magni screamed like a demon from hell and a string of flechettes carved a swath of fire across Roper’s torso.
A dozen clean hits spun Roper ninety degrees to the left and caused him to stagger, but the armored knight appeared none the worse for wear. Never one to squander an opportunity, Mack overrode the command macro for Modi and used both cannons to rake the staggering creature with a hundred-round burst.
Roper’s escape degenerated into a lurching, skidding scramble as the rounds tore into his armor. Mack grinned with savage elation as he witnessed the plasma caster mounted over Roper’s left shoulder detonate in a shower of eldritch blue fire and a flaming burst of escaping gas. The exploding weapon threw Roper all the way to the floor and Mack tossed caution to the winds as he thumbed both cannons to their maximum cyclic rate. With a snarl of purest hate, he bathed his downed enemy in a merciless shower of burning flechettes.
Sparks and steaks of flaming metal blossomed like fireworks as the hail of ordnance abraded armor and weapons from Grim Roper’s body like engine parts in a sandblaster. Mack gave reign to his rage while he gleefully punished his enemy for having the temerity to challenge him at his favorite game.
Roper lurched to his feet under the barrage and started to run for cover, only to stagger and fall again as the relentless fusillade continued to hammer into him. Twice more the giant rose to flee, and twice more The Twins brought him down. His course could be traced by the fragments of armor and pieces of weaponry that tumbled from his frame as Roper tried to get away from the unceasing onslaught.
That armor is good shit, Mack growled to himself, But I can do this all goddamn day.
When the black blade slid though his left arm, Mack did not even recognize it. His armature did not feel or transmit pain, so his only indicator that something had gone wrong was when Modi stopped firing and his HUD lit up with damage reports.
The blade withdrew and struck again, a darting blow that separated half of Modi from the arm completely. Only then did Mack recognize what was happening. He swung the left arm with all the strength at his disposal and the blow connected with enough force to collapse his antagonist’s torso.
He was forced to stop shooting Roper and clear another ‘droid that was clattering toward him like a metal insect. He let Magni have that one, and the smoking pieces of robot had not even settled to the deck before he had turned back to Roper.
A roar of frustration burst forth from the enraged cyborg,
“FUCKING HELL!”
Roper was gone. A trail of fluids and broken metal leading off into the labyrinth of shipping containers was all that remained.
More ‘droids were showing up as well. Either Mindy was clear or Vladivostok had decided to throw everything at Mack before the whole ship got wrecked. Either scenario was fine with the gun-toting mercenary. Though down to a single cannon, and with dozens of androids scurrying from between shipping containers, Mack was revelling in the beautiful clarity of it all. There was no morality here, no judgement. Nothing but the sweet, simple joy of battle. Here and now, Mack could truly be himself.
“Come on, then!” he roared, and let both his anger and his combat AI take over the fight, "COME ON!".
The assassin androids were not unlike other fighting robots. They attacked the enemy with singular ferocity and extremely linear problem-solving algorithms. Surging in endless waves of midnight-blue suicide charges, the machines were oblivious to their own mounting casualties and the near-certainty of their own destruction. It’s like a swarm of army ants, Mack thought to himself, uncertain if he was impressed or disgusted.
With his back firmly against the wall, the man called Mack carved a white-hot ribbon of destruction through the burgeoning sea of enemies and left nothing in his wake but smoking metal husks stuffed with expensive electronics.
At one point, he heard Mindy’s voice over the comm telling him to disengage and make for an airlock.
“In the middle of something!” he snarled back, “Gonna be a minute!”
“I’m coming back in to back you up then!” she replied.
“Negative!” Mindy was tough, but she would be cut to pieces if she tried to help. This wasn’t her kind of fight, “I will exfil on my own! Stay clear!”
He began to move toward a door and then abandoned the idea. The closest airlock was two decks up, and he recognized there was no chance he would make it that far.
“Get the pod to the cargo bay!” he shouted, “I’ll be coming out that way!”
“WHAT?!?!” Mindy screamed.
“I’ll be fine for a few minutes in vacuum. Just be ready!” Dumb plans were Mack’s bread and butter, and this was a very dumb plan.
He edged along the bulkhead, working his way backwards as he cut down androids with short bursts. He had a long way to go, and ammo was running low. There seemed to be no end to the blue bastards, but Mack’s aim was nearly infallible and they continued to stagger and fall as Magni opened them up like soup cans. At two thirds of the way to his goal, Magni ran dry. Transferring Modi’s drum to Magni took two seconds, which would have been very fast under most combat situations.
But this was not ‘most combat situations.’ Four ‘droids covered the distance to their prey and the daggers began striking like the scorpion tails they were named after. Mack swatted and flailed with wild abandon, and he smashed or tossed away the mob in short order. But the androids were fast, and Mack took several wounds in the exchange. A dagger had gone through his abdomen and lodged against armor. Another blade had punctured through his left shoulder and damaged some actuators. A third stab wound was leaking blood in a pulsing river just above his hip. His armature began administering stimulants and coagulants immediately, but Mack had been around long enough to know he was hurt badly.
Momentarily clear of enemies and fully reloaded, Magni roared to life and the ‘droids started falling again. Mack continued his slow retreat toward the back of the cargo bay, now leaking blood and other fluids as he moved. Perhaps sensing that their target might escape, the ‘droids surged again, dozens at a time. Mack moved more quickly now, shuffling as fast as he thought safe as his lone auto cannon kept the blue tide of robots at bay. The ‘droids, scrambling and dashing madly to get at the limping cyborg, began to make headway against the cannon. Magni cycled faster and faster as more enemies charged the gun, and just as Mack’s back hit the cargo bay door, the weapon clicked home on an empty chamber.
Mack dived for the control panel. Thirty androids piled onto him as he stretched his hand out and located the big red button under the plastic shield that said “STOP!” Blades pierced him a dozen times as he smashed his fist on the button, but it was too late. With an ear-shattering crash, explosive bolts ripped the door away and the irresistible force of decompression hurled the whole crowd of androids into space in a flailing, kicking exodus.
Outside the Kalashnikov, Mindy and Pops saw the cargo door hurled from its moorings and saw the white plume as the bay vented air and debris into space. Her fingers flew over the control panel and she threw the shuttle pod toward the drifting cloud of condensed water vapor and broken androids. Cruising with reckless haste, she scanned the mess with both sensors and eyeballs for signs of her lost partner.
She found him floating in the center of it all, drifting slowly and twisting gracefully in a sea of his destroyed enemies. Her heart leapt into her throat as she pulled alongside the motionless figure. She threw a vac suit on as fast as she could and frantically cycled the airlock. The woman wanted to scream while the sequence dragged on for fifteen agonizing seconds and she leapt through the hatch before it was all the way open.
In the excruciating quiet of space, she attached a tether to her partner while checking his armature for functionality. She held him tightly as the winch reeled them both in. When the airlock finished its cycle again, the tiny woman dragged the six-hundred pounds of cyborg into the pod and began to shout at him, “Mack! Mack! Wake up!”
“Mindy...” Pops said quietly.
But the woman did not hear him, “Mack! Come on, Mack!”
“Mindy!” Pops said, sharply now. She looked up to see the old man’s finger extended toward the front of her vac suit. “Look, child.”
She looked down and realized that her vac suit was covered in blood.
She saw that Mack was covered in puddles and rivers of blood as well. The charcoal color of his armor had hidden it, but the man was drenched in blood from a dozen or more gruesome stab wounds. One of the tell-tale black daggers was still lodged in his side, buried to the hilt.
“NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!” Mindy screamed. It was a primal scream. A scream of rage and hurt that said nothing and everything in a protracted moment of unpolluted, horrible suffering. Trembling hands fumbled with the mag locks on Mack’s helmet and tossed it aside.
Mack’s eyes looked up, glassy and still.
Lifeless.
“Oh god no! Mack! No....!” Great sobs came unbidden to the little blonde assassin. She held her partner’s head in her hands and rocked back and forth, bawling like a child, “No no no no no no no....”
For several long and painful moments, Mindy just cried.
Then, she stopped crying. An enormous sigh filled her lungs, lifting her shoulders and dropping them with a cleansing exhalation. Tears ran unchecked down her face, but the sobs were done and when she looked up her mouth was a grim determined crease in a mask of pure resolve. She gripped the dagger in Mack’s side and drew it clear in a smooth motion. With a practiced eye, the famous killer examined the weapon carefully and then looked past it to make eye contact with Pops.
“Get Pike on the line.”
Pops was not a man who took orders well, but he also recognized when a situation was not his to control. He raised an eyebrow and then keyed the pod’s comm to the station’s main security channel. Then he nodded to Mindy.
“Listen up, Privateers,” Mindy’s voice was clear and strong, “This is Mindy, a brother of one rotation in good standing with the Privateers. I invoke Auftrag.”
A commanding voice, gravelly and loud, crackled from the speaker, “This is Pike. Auftrag is granted, Mindy. Explain yourself.”
“The man called Mack, a brother of fourteen rotations, is dead. He was ambushed and killed by Sergei Nikolayevich Vladivostok and his agents claiming safe passage. At this time, I am claiming the Weregild for Vladivostok. I claim it in the name of Mack, who was my friend.”
Pike fairly growled his response, “Understood, Mindy,” then cleared his throat and said, “Privateers! At this time, I, Christopher Robert Pike, Commandant of the Privateers, claim the Weregild for Vladivostok. I claim it the name of Mack, who was a good soldier.”
Then another, heavily accented voice, “I, Anton Bruschev, Lieutenant Commander of the Privateers, claim Weregild for Sergei Nikolayevich Vladivostok, I claim it in the name of Mack, who was greatest among us!”
And then another, “I, Shannon Tanoshi, claim the Weregild for Vlad the Impaler. I claim it in the name of Mack, who was my teacher.”
The calls for Weregild kept coming, all with a different claim.
“... who saved my life.”
“... who led my squad.”
“... who taught me to walk with an armature.”
Over the next half-hour, two-hundred and-sixty of the hardest mercenaries and killers in the galaxy proceeded to declare the life and property of Vlad the Impaler forfeit on behalf of one dead cyborg. It would be the single largest claim in the history of the Registered Order of Privateers.
Pops found it all very touching. Mobsters had their own code, as did pirates, prostitutes, and thieves. The mercenary code was by far the most archaic, steeped as it was in the long tradition of brotherhood shared by all fighting men and women. But it was also the most unbreakable.
Having all of Pike’s Privateers on Enterprise claim Weregild meant Vladivostok would not be safe in civilized space until the Weregild was satisfied. By the end of the claims, Mindy was crying again. But this time she wept without despair. When the last claim was finally spoken, she signalled the Kalashnikov. Absent its forecastle and smoking from its wrecked cargo bay, the ugly vessel was turning toward the gate and firing up its gravitic actuators. The Pirate King was fleeing.
When the channel was confirmed open, Mindy spoke three words.
“Run, you bastard.”