Sergeant (The United Federation Marine Corps Book 2) (16 page)

Doc Grbil, with the
red cross illuminated on his shoulder, was easy to spot as he worked on one of the civilians. The much taller Doc Francis, one of the battalion aid station corpsman attached to the platoon for the mission, was there assisting. From the civilians waiting, it looked like many of them needed help.

The civilians
were in “walmarts,” the cheaply made but effective emergency suits that were never intended to be worn for long. By Federation law, there had to be at least one temporary emergency evacuation suit for each and every soul on board. Ryck wondered why the first man they’d seen and the family hadn’t gotten into their walmarts. The recon team had reported 133 people alive on the ship. Take away those killed in the bridge and close to it, and there still would only have been a little over 200 people. A ship this size would be able to provide emergency suits to that number and more.

Unless more were killed
, Ryck thought soberly.

There were a few commercial
evac suits being worn, so it looked like some of the crew had survived. They were sized for each wearer, not like the one-size-fits-all walmarts. Ryck could see at least two baby bubbles, so at least some infants had made it.

This was a deflated group, a
nd they didn’t look to be offering any resistance. Only one crewman, in the far corner of the gallery, had a defiant posture that suggested different. He had stationed himself in front of three bodies, all in walmarts, but obviously dead. The walmarts were actually a pretty good piece of gear, but they seemed to have failed with the three dead people in front of the man. In the maelstrom of the air rushing out of the ship, they could have been breached when the three had been pushed up against something hard or sharp.

The crewma
n reminded Ryck of the vids of dogs, guarding over their dead masters. None of the Marines were bothering him.

Ryck made his way to the lieutenant and SSgt Hecs, who were with the Navy chief from the engineer division as they discussed what could be done to make
conditions better for the civvies. Most of the work was being done by Capt Davis and the head engineer up in the destroyed bow as they evaluated the damage done to the ship.

“Sgt Lysander, spread your teams out. There doesn’t seem to be a threat here now, but keep alert. We’re awaiting orders at the moment. If
we get them, I’m going to want you to escort Senior Chief Han here to aft engineering. But for now, just spread out, keeping it low key. I want eyes open, but no aggressive posture,” the platoon commander said as Ryck came up.

“Aye-aye, sir,” Ryck acknowledged as he turned and went back to where the squad waited.

He’d wanted to get more of the scoop as to what was going on, but orders were orders, and he figured that whatever he needed to know, he would be told. Keeping the “no aggressive posture” part of his orders, he broke the squad into teams, sending each team to a position towards the back of the galley. He put each team on a different plane, one on the overhead, one on the deck, and one on the bulkhead. This would give them a better view on the people. This was right out of the training pubs, as people tended to process things better when what they were observing was on the same plane as they were.

Ryck decided to move around his little claimed sector of the galley. There were around 20 or 25 people crowded in the back. Most seemed to be ignoring him, but that could be just shock. They’d been through a lot.

Doc Grbil
popped a ziplock out of his med-pack and deployed it. Normal ziplocks were simply clear bags that could hold a person and maintain an atmosphere for a number of hours while people were transported to safety. The corpsmen had special ziplocks that had small stasis units that could slow down the metabolism of whomever was inside. These were not the same stasis units as those which were in a ship’s sickbay. They were portable units that slowly lowered the metabolism, never reaching full stasis. Still, the time they gave a patient could make all the difference between life and death.

The
civvie was unresponsive, and he was probably fading, but Doc must have thought the ziplock could help. He and Doc Francis maneuvered the civvie inside, then partially closed the ziplock. Doc Grbil reached in with a scalpel, and with a quick slash, slit the man’s walmart before pulling his arm out and sealing the ziplock. Almost immediately, the ziplock puffed out.

Ryck wondered why he’d compromised the
walmart. Maybe it would have interfered with the stasis? He’d have to ask Doc later.

Ryck turned back and pulled himself along, using the galley tables as anchor points. Three civvies, a man and two women were sitting at one of the tables, their legs under
the tabletops and keeping them in place. These walmarts were the basic ones, without comms, so they weren’t talking but just keeping each other company. As Ryck pulled himself past, he gave them a thumbs-up. The man and one woman stared at him blankly, but there was a flicker in the eyes in the second woman as she inadvertently glanced over to the recessed fabrication nook of the galley.

Ryck looked over in that direction but didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. There were three fabricators, a double sink for clean-up, and cupboards for plates and utensils. He glanced back at the woman, but she was
once again staring blankly ahead.

Ryck
pushed off towards the nook, pulling his legs under and thrusting them in front so he hit the sink area feet-first. He couldn’t see anything that caught his attention. He felt eyes on him, though, that weird, tingling feeling that he could not explain. Casually glancing back into the galley seating, he could see one of the crewmen carefully avoiding looking at Ryck, in a way that told Ryck the man had seen Ryck’s interest in the nook. Ryck moved to his right, and he thought the crewman relaxed slightly. He then reversed and moved back to his left. He could swear the crewman tensed up again.

There was nothing there, though. The nook ended. There was the small access hatch
through which the bases for that meal’s recipes came. But that was only a passage leading up from storage. It wasn’t a compartment. But that small compartment they’d taken from Alpha to Bravo deck hadn’t been designed for people, either. On the
Marie’s Best
, it had been crew berthing. Ryck casually left the nook and approached Cpl Beady.

“John, bring your team and follow me. There’s something fishy about the fabrication nook. I don’t know what it is, but at least two people out there seem to be very interested in it.
Could be something there. All I can see, though, is the feed tunnel for the food bases, but let’s take a look.”

Cpl Beady motioned for his team to follow. All five Marines looked over the nook, which
was only about five meters long and two meters deep. Ryck pointed at the small hatch, about one meter square, though which supplies were delivered. If this was like any other delivery chute, when the hatch was opened, a small tray would slide out on which the supplies would be loaded. As one carton was lifted up, another would slide in to take its place.

Ryck took a look back. The crewman who’d been so studiously ignoring him before had abandoned all pretense now. He had moved closer and was staring at them.

Ryck pointed at the access hatch with the muzzle of his M99. Cpl Beady motioned Ling to the overhead, where he would be looking down at the hatch. He positioned LCpl Martin to the sink, just to the side of the access hatch. Martin put his feet in the sink, his grip-tites keeping him in place. He motioned Lips Holleran to get ready to open the hatch.

“First and
Second, it may be nothing, but we’re checking out the supply access hatch here. Keep an eye on anyone who might not want us to take a look,” Ryck passed on the squad circuit.

He joined Cpl Beady, oriented on the deck, facing the hatch. They had three of the four directions around the hatch covered. The fourth was the nook bulkhead, and there wasn’t room for anyone to fit in given the half-meter between the edge of the hatch and the bulkhead.

“OK, Lips, let’s see what we’ve got,” Ryck passed.

Just as LCpl Holleran started opening the hatch, Ryck couldn’t help but turn slightly to see what their crewman friend was doing.
The crewman had edged forward, but had stopped and was simply watching. Ryck knew he should have put one of the other Marines on him.

Holleran had opened the hatch, which opened
outwards to the rest of the nook. Ryck turned his head just as the hatch was forced open quicker, pushing Lips back. A small blue light flashed in the dark recesses of the tunnel, followed by a shape erupting out of it. Ryck felt more than saw Cpl Beady getting hit.

In front of
Ryck, coming out was a man in a white, military EVA suit. It was Legion design, Ryck realized, and the Legion Sallie Gun that had hit Beady was swinging right at him, the hypervelocity darts making a stream that could easily puncture his EVA suit.

In null
G, it is impossible to quickly turn and dodge. Ryck had shifted his attention to the
Marie’s Best
crewman, moving him out of position. Martin was out of position, too, on the other side of the open hatch and with Lips tumbling between him and the legionnaire. Ryck started the kip-around to get his own M99 deployed, but he knew he wasn’t going to make it in time.

Just as he expected to feel darts impacting
on him, something big and heavy hit him from above, sending him flying. He started spinning, bouncing him off the deck and back up. He tried to get a grip with his toe, but his momentum was too high.

As he spun, though, his M99 was out, ready to fire. In null G, the M99 automatically shifted from the
Roeniger Display scope to old-style “iron” sights. The Roeniger scope inputted drop from gravity, coriolis, wind, and any other influences that could affect the trajectory of a dart. In null G, those forces did not exist, so what you saw is what was hit. As he bounced off the deck, Ryck caught a flash of white through his peep site. It wasn’t a good sight picture, but at a meter-and-a-half, it was good enough. He depressed his trigger, sending three or four darts into the legionnaire before he spun past. Martin was clear by that time, and he also fired a burst into the man.

Cpl Mendoza and LCpl Khouri bounded in just then.

“Cease fire!” someone shouted, but Ryck was too busy regaining control to pay attention to just who passed that. He kipped his legs under and absorbed the shock as he hit the overhead. His grip-tites kept him in place.

“Doc, get over here. Man down!” he shouted into his
mic.

A
bove him, he could see Cpl Beady, arms barely moving as he drifted slowly backwards. A small pink mist was coalescing in front of his chest. It looked like he’d taken two hits, through and through, but his suit had already sealed the holes, the bright blue sealing patches very visible.

Ryck’s helmet speakers exploded into a cacophony of talk. That suddenly quit as the lieutenant over-r
ode the circuit, switching Ryck to the command circuit.

“Report!” he commanded.

Ryck could see the lieutenant pulling himself over the tables, rushing to the scene.

“We’ve got one man down. There was what looks to be a legionnaire hiding in the supply tube, and he came out firing. We took him out,” he said, glancing to where the legionnaire floated lifelessly.

Oddly, for a moment, all Ryck could notice was that legionnaire EVA suit patches were red, not the blue of Federation suits. Ryck could see half a dozen or more red patches on the front of the man’s suit.

It was only then that Ryck noticed the blue patch on Ling’s arm. Suddenly, he realized that it was Ling who had hit him. Ling had seen that he was o
ut of position, and he’d launched himself at Ryck, knocking him out of the line of fire. Ling had taken at least one round as a result. This was the brown-noser who Ryck thought might be a liability. The kid had saved Ryck’s life.

“Correction, two down. Beady and Ling,” he sent to the platoon commander.

By then, the lieutenant, SSgt Hecs, and the two corpsmen had gotten there. More Marines would have come, but the lieutenant had ordered them to maintain total security. Hecs immediately checked the access tunnel for anyone else, something Ryck should have done, he realized.

Doc Grbil went right to Cpl Beady, checking his vitals on the readout. The EVA suits recorded O2 consumption, pulse, and perspiration, less than what a PICS monitored, but things that were valuable to a corpsman. Doc Francis went to check Ling, but after a cursory inspection, came back to Beady. That was not a good sign.

Ryck pushed off the overhead, spun around, and came down to where the two corpsman were working on John. The fire team leader was not doing well; even Ryck could see that. Blood had frothed up against his EVA suit face shield.

Grbil and Francis were pretty obviously on a medical circuit, one Ryck could not listen in on. By their gestures, Ryck could tell they were arguing. Ryck was getting frantic.

Quite arguing and save him!
he shouted in his mind.

Doc Francis reached out and put his hand on Doc
Grbil’s shoulder, only to have the platoon corpsman knock it away. Francis seemed to deflate, and Ryck could swear he saw the moment when he capitulated to Grbil. What that meant for Beady, Ryck didn’t know.