The Orcs regrouped and moved to the ship. On the video feed displayed on our HUDs, we watched them move toward opposite ends of the ship. The Rihla had been a long, cigar-shaped vessel. Both ends were smashed and torn open, so getting on board was easy enough. The interior of the ship was built with an open concept to give the feeling of more space. The decks wrapped around the interior like a running track or large, indoor shopping complex. From the interior railing, I could look down at the deck below me, but there was only one stairwell on the half of the ship that had survived the crash.
“All right, you’re going to hold the stairs,” I told Trip. “It’s a narrow space built for us, not them. They’ll have to come single-file, and you’ll be able to hold them back.”
“And what if they bypass the stairs?” Trip asked.
“I’m going to discourage that,” I told him. “But if it gets hot, we fall back to Echo deck. And if for any reason you lose communications with me, go to your hidden brewing space and stay there until Scout 2 shows the Orcs leaving.”
Trip nodded but didn’t say anything. We both knew the odds of living through the attack were slim. I left him just inside the stairwell. The landing for Delta deck had a perfect view of the door leading into the stairs. If anyone tried to come up through the stairwell, he could take them out. Meanwhile, I moved back along the concourse that ran around the open area. The larger group of Orcs was coming in through the far end of the ship. The railing was transparent and no good for hiding behind. It was safety glass of some variety, but it wouldn’t stand up against plasma, which was what the Orcs would be firing at me. I moved quietly along the deck, watching for movement below. Eventually I saw them.
An Orc with huge shoulders and a colorful head covering walked in. The head covering looked like a bandana with odd markings, and it was tied over the blocky top of the alien’s head. It covered the short, bristly hair and hid the leaf-shaped ears. I had never seen any of the Orc troopers wearing something over their head. Perhaps it meant that they were in training, I wondered—or worse still, special forces. TAC team members wore eagle emblems on their uniforms, so perhaps the head coverings marked the Orc troopers as the elite fighters. There was only one way to find out.
I leaned over the railing and fired before ducking and scrambling back the way I had come. My shot hit the Orc in the top of its head and killed him instantly. I heard his body thump on the deck, followed by the growls and barks of his comrades. A barrage of plasma was fired up onto Delta deck and the bottom of Echo, but none of it was close to me.
I would hit the Orcs and move on—basic guerrilla tactics. I couldn’t let them corner me or cut off my escape; as long as I could move, I would be okay. Smoke was hanging like a cloud where the Orcs had fired. The deck in that direction was compromised as the plasma burned through the metal deck plates and melted the support girders.
I leaned out over the railing again and spotted two more Orcs. I fired a quick barrage, taking them down, but the return fire was faster than before. I felt the heat of the plasma shots. The deadly gel splashed toward me. I was breathing heavy as I retreated toward the stairwell. I had plenty of ammunition to kill all of the Orcs, but I didn’t have the opportunity. We had only taken out a fourth of their number, and the aliens were closing in.
“Staff Sergeant, you still with me?” Trip asked over the com-link.
“Right outside the stairwell,” I said. “Stand by.”
I wanted to take my shot and retreat to the next level, but I had to wait. We needed the Orcs to find the stairs. It was a good trap that would net two or three more kills. Fortunately, I didn’t have to wait long. I heard the firing inside the stairs. That was my signal to make my move. Flicking the indicator on the LAR to full automatic fire, I leaned back over the rail and shot blind. It was a short, raking barrage that lasted maybe three seconds before draining the power in my battery completely. I heard shouting and wails of pain, but I really had no idea how effective the barrage had been because I immediately pulled open the door to the stairwell and ducked inside. There were shouting and boots banging on the metal stairs. One glance down showed an Orc trying to climb over the bodies of two dead troopers. I popped a fresh battery into my LAR, yanked back the charging lever, and fired a quick burst down at the Orc. It died suddenly with a bloodcurdling yelp. Smoke was rising from the bodies where our lasers had cut through them, vaporizing flesh and bone. I hobbled up the steps behind Trip.
“They’re coming through,” Trip warned me.
I stopped halfway up to the next landing. Glancing up, I could see Trip leaning over the railing, his LAR pointed down. I could hear the grunts and growls of the Orcs moving their dead or crawling over them. There was movement below, but I didn’t want to get between Petty Officer Malik and the enemy. Friendly fire was always a possibility in battle; it was best to avoid unnecessary risks whenever possible.
The stairs had handrails on both sides. It was a standard stairway, open in the center. But staying close to the wall gave a person some cover. I pulled myself up, using the handrail to steady my lumbering gait and give some power to my weak side. I made it up to Echo deck without problems and moved past Trip to get back out on the main concourse. It looked the same as the deck below: dark, dirty, a haunted ruin of a ship. Still, the Orcs hadn’t made it up that high. I chanced a glance over the rail and saw two groups of Orrkasi troopers climbing up to Delta deck.
“They’re trying to climb up,” I warned Trip. “Keep that stairway clear.”
“Roger,” Trip replied, just as I fired three quick bursts at the climbers. Two fell, and another screamed in pain but managed to hold on.
There was movement on Delta deck. I started to fire at the shadowy figure, but a blob of blue plasma lit the darkness. In the movies, you sometimes see people dodge bullets or laser fire. That’s fiction—it’s impossible. The jets of plasma fired from Orrkasi rifles doesn’t travel at the speed of light, but even on my best day, I couldn’t dodge it. Especially in close quarters. I was maybe twenty meters from the assailant shooting at me, but probably less. There was a flash of light, then the plasma hit the glass railing, and a tiny portion splashed over it. I flung myself back, crashing against the stairwell door, but it was no use. A blob of superheated gel hit me square in the chest. I felt the impact, which wasn’t severe—but the smoke billowing up was.
The problem with plasma as a weapon is that it has a very limited range. The Orrkasi rifles could reach seventy-five, sometimes a hundred meters in the right conditions. Our LARs had three times that range. They were heavier weapons too, since they actually fired something that had to be stored inside the weapon. A laser blaster fired focused light powered by a battery pack that was easy to swap out. Still, the plasma was a more visceral weapon that left a much greater mark on the target. Where a laser might leave a hole as small as a pinprick, plasma spread out on impact and clung to the target. There was no way to escape it once it made contact; it had to burn itself out.
With a band of plasma about two fingers wide stretching nearly ten centimeters across my chest, I gave myself three seconds before I would be incapacitated by the plasma burning through my chest toward my vital organs. With nothing left to lose, I leaned out and over a section of the railing that was still intact and fired on the Orcs below. I hit the shadowy figure who had fired at me, then raked a barrage of laser fire across a group of orcs still down on the bottom level of the ship.
More plasma shot past me, but the shooters were firing blindly, just trying to get a lucky hit. I shuffled around, my mind so paralyzed by fear that I didn’t realize that my three seconds had already passed. Seeing more Orcs, I screamed in rage and fired at them.
“Staff Sergeant?” Trip asked over the com-link.
I dropped back toward the stairs, flicking the battery release latch without even thinking about it.
“I’m hit,” I said, looking down at my chest while my hands replaced the spent battery in my LAR on autopilot.
“How bad?” Trip asked.
“Got me in the chest,” I said as relief rolled through me. I was almost giddy at the realization that my heavy armor plating had stopped the plasma from burning through to my flesh. “But I’m okay. The armor stopped it.”
“Good,” Trip said. “They’re making a charge up the stairs again.”
I heard Trip’s rifle firing. I ripped open the stairwell door and was met by plasma splattering around the enclosed space. Smoke was billowing from the metal. I couldn’t go in, and Trip was already dashing up the stairs. I leaned in, fired down the stairwell, then dodged back out.
“I can’t follow you,” I warned Trip. “The stairwell is too hot. At least you’ve got a few minutes. The Orcs can’t follow you, either.”
“Roger that. What are you going to do?” Trip asked, his voice pitched high with fear.
“Keep fighting,” I said.
It was the mantra of the TAC teams. We never stopped. I hobbled back down the concourse and watched for more Orcs, but they were moving slowly and staying out of sight.
“Any sign of movement on the stairs?” I asked Trip over the com-link.
“Negative…at least I don’t think so. There’s a lot of smoke in here.”
I was leaning against the bulkhead just inside a barracks room where two dozen seamen had once been berthed. Looking out, I could see through the transparent railing down to the opposite side of the lower decks, but it was dark on the ship, and there was no sign of the Orcs. They had either given up their assault or were moving much more carefully.
Several minutes passed. There was no sign of the Orrkasi on the ship, and my tension was on the rise. Then Scout 2 beeped a warning at us. I didn’t have to read the red “WARNING” light flashing at the bottom of my HUD to know that it had picked up movement.
“They’re running,” Trip said excitedly.
There were Orcs running away from the Rihla , but I didn’t think they were retreating. They were spreading out, looking for cover. It also didn’t mean there weren’t any left in the ship. I counted eight of the Orcs outside the ship, but I didn’t know how many were dead. Even if I had kept a close count, you couldn’t rely on numbers alone in a combat situation. No one wanted to die just because someone miscounted.
“No,” I said after a moment of watching them on the video feed from Scout 2. “They’re taking up defensive positions.”
“What?”
“They’re going to make sure we don’t leave,” I said. “If I were in their shoes, I’d be calling for backup right now.”
“What does that mean?” Trip said. “What do we do?”
“Only one thing we can do,” I said, feeling a bitter taste in my mouth. “We kill them all.”
There are different kinds of combat. Sniping at enemies from a safe distance isn’t the same as being in a close-quarters battle in which there is no time to think, only to react. In a battle in which you could die at any moment, your mind is numbed by fear. All you want to do is survive and get your friends to safety. But there’s a third kind of fighting—a kind when battle shifts from holding a position or taking a target to becoming a killer. The Orcs outside the ship had to be killed, and that meant going on the offensive—not just waiting for them to stumble into an ambush, but hunting them down where they were strongest and killing them to the last man. Not that there was anything humane about them. They weren’t men; they were monsters, and they would have to be hunted like monsters. It was what I was built for, despite my injuries. I had thought that the dark times were behind me, but I could feel the need to return to that place where the only thought was to kill, no matter the consequences to myself.
“Are you insane?” Trip said. “How are we going to do that?”
“We aren’t,” I said. “I am. You stay put. If another Orrkasi ship arrives before I contact you— ”
“I know, hide. I’ve got it. But maybe I could help.”
“Look at where they are,” I told him.
It was hard to see the details on the video feed, but I would have bet everything I owned that none were more than fifty meters from the ship—still within range of their plasma rifles. They were the last line of defense; their job was to stop us from making a run for it until help arrived.
“They’re close to the ship. If we show ourselves, they’ll blast us,” I said.
“So what are you going to do?”
“Kill them,” I said, “before they see me.”
It wasn’t hard to come up with a plan. I was near the wide end of the opening, where the center of the ship had once been. But to get the angle right, I would have to climb out to the very edge of the ship, where I could aim down on the Orcs. That part of the ship would be very unstable, and all the Orcs would have to do was fire back at me. One hit from their plasma weapons would probably be enough to cause me to fall. And if I fell…well, I didn’t want to think about that. I wouldn’t even be able to hurry away once the fighting started—not because of my injuries, which made me slow to begin with, but because I couldn’t risk a fast move that might cause the unstable part of the ship to crumble around me. It would be like crawling out on thin ice to reach for a person who had fallen through; you didn’t want to do anything that might fracture the ice underneath where you were lying to spread out your weight.
“This sounds a little desperate, Staff Sergeant,” Trip said. “We don’t have to do anything hasty.”
“There are more Orcs coming,” I told him. “We’ve been lucky so far. We won’t survive a second wave.”
“I’m worried we won’t survive this wave,” Trip said.
“Trust me,” I said. “I’ve got this. I’m going offline for a while. Just stay put and keep an eye on that stairwell.”
“All right,” Trip said. But he sounded worried, and I couldn’t blame him.
I reached up and unfastened the latches that locked my helmet into place. The HUD flickered off, and as I pulled the helmet up, I could smell the smoke. But there were other odors. The Orcs had a unique stench, and I could smell it along with the odors of death, ozone, and decay. I set down the helmet and my LAR. It took a few moments to remove my ammo vest and the outer layer of heavy armor, but I couldn’t risk the extra weight. I took only the LAR and one extra battery. Leaving my other weapons behind was frightening, but my fear was being overcome by my desire to kill.
Hate can be a powerful emotion. If left unchecked it will consume a person, but harnessed it can be a powerful motivator. I hated the Orrkasi. I hated what they had done to the Rihla and to the good people I had known, like Captain Dunning, Master Sergeant Carney, and even my old roommate Gunny Sergeant Patel. He would have liked Trip’s moonshine whiskey, I thought, which made me long to hurt the Orcs even more. They had killed indiscriminately, and it was time I returned the favor. It didn’t matter that I had already killed so many of them on Leonis B, that I had destroyed their secret weapon, stolen their transport and crashed it, or shot down their other aircraft. My hate was bypassing my fear, and that’s what I needed. I could deal with the damage to my soul later.
I was not fluid or fast, but I could still be silent. I moved out of the barracks and toward the gaping end of the ship. There was no sign of movement on my deck or those below, but I wasn’t searching for the Orcs who might still be alive down below. Trip and I had been effective at raining down death on the Orrkasi troopers. They feared us, and rightly so. We had the high ground and could fight defensively with superior weaponry. Their strength lay in numbers and savagery, but I could be savage too. When I got about fifteen feet from where the deck suddenly ended in a blackened, jagged hole in the hull, I slowly got down onto my stomach with my LAR strapped across my back. Using my arms and feet, I inched forward like a worm. It hurt to bend my bad knee, so I didn’t use it. I pushed with my good leg and pulled with my forearms on the deck. It wasn’t a smooth surface, and crawling the final ten meters was difficult.
The metal groaned from time to time, causing me to stop and wait. I focused on my hatred for the Orcs so that fear didn’t hold me paralyzed. Maybe the sounds would alert the Orcs, but I didn’t care. All I thought about was getting to the edge of the ship, where I could get a shot at them.
More than once I felt the metal deck swaying under my movement. If it had moved much more, it would have collapsed—I was sure of that. Eventually I reached the staging point, just a few centimeters from the edge. I carefully rolled onto my side, pulling my rifle around and checking the power: I had a fully charged battery. One easy flick of the firing indicator switched the weapon from full to semi-automatic. Then I rolled toward the edge of the deck. The sandy desert came into view, as did five of the Orcs. They were spread out at different spots. Most were down on their stomachs, just watching the ship from behind bushes or stones. I pointed my gun at the closest of the five and fired.
The shot rang out, followed by a ghastly wail of pain. I shifted my aim to a second Orc, who was looking over at his wounded companion in surprise. If he knew I was above him, he didn’t have time to look up. My second shot hit him in the back of the neck and killed him instantly. The alien fighter didn’t even make a sound.
As I was targeting the third Orc, it was firing back at me. But while I had easy work aiming at the aliens below me, they had to turn and aim up. Their first shots were too low and didn’t reach me. My shot wounded the third Orc, hitting it in the thigh. It wasn’t a mortal wound, but it was painful enough that the Orrkasi trooper dropped his rifle and grabbed his leg with both of his huge hands.
I adjusted my aim at the fourth Orc, but the coward rolled to his feet and ran. I didn’t bother trying to wing him on the run but focused on the last Orc. The final warrior was not a coward, and he hadn’t stopped shooting back at me. I felt the plasma hit the bottom of the deck, which shuddered. It was going to fall, and I couldn’t stop it. Nor could I escape it, but I could take my shot at the last Orc. I hit him between the eyes and watched him collapse—just as the floor beneath me did the same.