Stand Against The Storm (The Maxwell Saga Book 4) (24 page)

“Everything’s ready on the freighter, Boss,” his subordinate reported.

“Good.” Bairam lifted his right hand and fumbled with the fasteners of his coverall. “I got the co-ordinates an’ instructions right here.” He frowned in irritation as he found he couldn’t get his right hand all the way into the right side of his clothing. The angle was wrong. He lowered the console, allowing it to hang at knee height from the line looped around his belt, then reached into his coverall with his left hand, taking out a folded piece of paper.

Now!
Steve thought to himself, and pressed the button next to the panel.

With a thunderous crash of sound, the carefully pre-positioned line charges beneath the edge of every panel in the hidden compartment blew up simultaneously. They hadn’t dared use a lot of explosives for fear of rupturing the pressure hull, but there was just enough to blow out every panel and allow instant access to every part of the cargo shuttle without hurting those waiting in ambush.

As the blast drew screams and shrieks from the hostages, Kwok pulled the slider control for the artificial gravity field all the way down to zero. Instantly the field disappeared, leaving everything and everyone in the cargo shuttle in free fall. Steve and Kinnear were expecting it, and had braced themselves against the shuttle’s framework; but the rebels didn’t have anything to support them as they tried to react.

Kinnear was carrying a Colonial Guard submachinegun. It fired beads of metal powder, fused into a ceramic base, at hypersonic velocity and a very high cyclic rate. He didn’t bother to align its sights on a particular target; he simply locked his legs around an upright, tucked the butt of the weapon into his shoulder, held his aim at waist height and swept a continuous burst of fire across all four of the guards as they began to spin around towards him and reach for the weapons slung over their shoulders. The torrent of beads tore through them like a scythe, almost cutting them in half as he swept the muzzle left to right, then right to left, then left to right again. Some of the rounds missed the guards and hit parts of the shuttle, but their ceramic base, designed for use aboard spacecraft, allowed them to break up on impact, preventing penetration of the hull or ricochets that might endanger others. Kinnear kept his finger on the firing button until the only movement visible was the twitch and shudder of impact as his rounds tore through the rebels’ lifeless bodies. They drifted, twisting, bumping into each other and the bunks and lockers nearby.

As Kinnear opened fire, Steve lined a short, stubby carbine at Bairam and pressed the firing button. A burst of three rounds tore into the burly man’s chest, staggering him as he began to grab for the dangling console. Even as his feet left the floor and he began to float, twisting with the impact of the rounds, Bairam snatched at Turgay with his left hand, trying to steady himself against him while he drew his pulser with his right hand; but the old spacer was also drifting, his feet already clear of the floor. The rebel leader tugged the Bosun across his body, trying to shelter behind him. Steve swore in frustration as he changed his aim and sent a three-round burst into Turgay’s head, struggling to hold his carbine steady as his weightless body tried to twist in reaction to its recoil. The Bosun jerked, then went limp.

Bairam fired, but he was still off-balance and way off target under the shock of his wounds and the pull of Turgay’s body against his. His shot went wide of Steve, slamming into the slider control for the artificial gravity field, shattering it, making Kwok jerk his hand away as it was spattered with fragments. As Turgay’s body drifted clear of him Bairam exposed part of his left shoulder, and Steve instantly put another three-round burst into it. Eyes glowing with hatred and insane fury, the rebel leader lowered his pulser, aiming at the console floating in mid-air just beyond the grasp of his now-useless left arm. Steve shifted his aim slightly and put a burst through Bairam’s head just as the rebel leader fired. His single shot smashed through the white casing of the console and erupted from its far side in a shower of plastic splinters and debris.

As Bairam went limp, releasing his pulser, an orange light began to flash on the damaged console. Steve realized instantly what it meant. He knew with a sickening lurch in his stomach that he’d killed his opponent an instant too late.

~ ~ ~

The bellow of the explosions and subsequent gunfire reverberated through the airlock and bounced off the walls of the lifeboat. The two guards spun to look at the airlock, mouths gaping in astonishment as they reached for the carbines slung over their shoulders.

The spacer behind the console drove himself upward, using the powerful muscles of his thighs and calves to propel himself at the guard standing next to the console, holding the nanotool knife in his extended right hand as if it were a spear. Its point stabbed deep into the man’s inner thigh, severing his femoral artery. Blood spouted as he screamed and began to double over, clutching at the gaping wound. The spacer tore his hand and the knife free from the rebel’s clutches, grabbed his hair with his left hand, forced his head forward and down, and stabbed deep into his neck from above and behind. His thrust penetrated between two of the extended cervical vertebrae and severed the guard’s spinal cord. He collapsed to the floor, killed instantly.

Releasing the knife, still stuck in the dead man’s neck, the spacer grabbed the carbine from his shoulder. Flicking off the safety catch, he brought it up and aimed at the second guard, now struggling to save himself from being dragged off balance by the garrote slipped around his neck from behind by the second spacer. Even as blood fountained from the skin of his throat and from his grasping fingers as they tried to stop the cord cutting into him, the first spacer fired. His single shot struck the second guard on the bridge of his nose, dropping him in his tracks.

The other spacer released his hold on the garrote, grabbed the dead guard’s gun and headed for the airlock. His comrade spun around to look at the panicking, screaming hostages.
“Shut up!
Everyone get down and stay down! Don’t move! This is a rescue!”

He turned towards the airlock again as a shout echoed from the cargo shuttle.

~ ~ ~

Steve bellowed,
“EVERYBODY OUT!
Three minutes until she blows! Kwok, restore the gravity!”

The spacer pointed helplessly at the place where the knob had been. “I can’t! The slider’s useless!”

“Then push the hostages into the lifeboat! Brace yourselves against structures!
MOVE!”

The second door of the docking bay’s airlock opened, showing the interior of the newly-docked cutter. Clearly the two men inside had been listening to everything that went on, and had overridden the safety interlock that normally prevented both doors being open at the same time. Steve blessed the efficiency of the cutter’s Qianjin crew as one shouted, “We’ll take some people too – that’ll speed it up!” He braced himself against the frame of the airlock and stood waiting.

The cargo shuttle interior erupted into action. Steve, Kinnear, Kwok and the other spacers thrust themselves through the air, diving in free-fall towards the bunks. They wrapped their legs around uprights and braced themselves against the beds as they dragged stunned, shocked, sometimes screaming hostages from their beds and threw their weightless bodies towards the airlocks leading to the lifeboat and cutter. There was no time to be gentle or delicate. As the hostages reached the airlocks, a spacer standing ready grabbed each one and pulled or pushed them through. They collapsed to the floor as the artificial gravity in each craft restored their weight, only to be ruthlessly hauled clear by another spacer to make room for the next person.

Everything was chaos and confusion as they worked as fast as they could. Steve tossed a child towards the cutter, then glanced at the time display. Already more than a minute had passed since Bairam had shot his console, and the seconds seemed to be ticking down faster and faster. Less than half the hostages had been evacuated. He raised his voice.
“Faster, dammit!
We’re running out of time!”

“The kids are clinging to the bunks like leeches!” Kwok called in desperation. “I can’t break their hold!”

“Break their fingers if you have to! If you don’t they’ll die!” Kinnear yelled, throwing a woman towards Steve, who caught her and pushed her towards the cutter. As he did so, the paper Bairam had taken from his inside pocket drifted close to him. Without conscious thought Steve seized it, thrust it into his pocket, then turned to grab another hostage.

Kwok glanced at Kinnear for a moment, shock registering on his face: then he nodded, turned, ripped a child’s hands free from where they clutched at a bedframe – drawing forth a scream of pain – and dragged the boy out before shoving him violently towards the lifeboat. His body collided with that of a male adult hostage as they arrived at the airlock simultaneously. The spacer waiting there seized the boy, thrust him through while holding off the struggling man, then pushed the adult through after the child. They disappeared into the other vessel.

The number of hostages in the shuttle dwindled as they were passed through to the cutter and the lifeboat. The final sixty seconds began to count down as the flashing light on the dead Bairam’s console changed to red, an ominous warning of what was coming. Steve yelled, “One minute! That’s all we’ve got!”

Fifteen hostages were gone… sixteen… seventeen… Steve grabbed a drifting man, kicking and struggling, and shoved him violently towards the cutter. “That’s all for you! Get him aboard, then get out of here!”

“Aye aye!” the spacer in the airlock called as he grabbed the man, hauling him through by main force as his left hand slapped at an emergency control. The inner door of the airlock slammed closed with an audible
thump!
Steve knew that the outer door would close within seconds, whereupon the cutter would make an instant emergency departure, snapping any cables and connections that linked it to the cargo shuttle. This was no time to worry about damage to external fixtures and fittings.

He spun around, checking the bunk area. All the hostages were out now, and the spacers were hauling themselves along the bunk framework towards the lifeboat. He and Kinnear began to do the same, but suddenly a female face appeared behind the spacer waiting for them in the airlock.
“My baby!
She’s still in there!”

Steve and Kinnear instantly recognized the woman whose three-year-old daughter had screamed every time a rebel guard had come too close. The Gunny called, “She always gets under her bunk! I’ll look!”

“Hurry up!” Steve yelled, but the NCO was already hauling himself down the bunk framework and looking under the bottom bed.

“Yes, she’s here!” he called, and thrust himself into the narrow gap. Steve heard the girl shriek with fear, and Kinnear cursed. “She’s fighting me! She’s trying to get away!”

“You’ve got thirty seconds!”
Steve yelled, fighting anger and terror simultaneously. “If she won’t come, save yourself!”

Kwok vanished through the airlock. Now it was only himself, Kinnear and the child left. He began to thrust himself towards Kinnear’s legs, to grab them and drag him out. “Twenty seconds, Gunny!
MOVE!”

Before he could reach him the Gunnery Sergeant twisted beneath the bunk, wriggling, and half his upper body emerged holding a writhing, twisting, terrified girl. He threw her at Steve. “No time!
Get her out!”

Steve instinctively grabbed the child, reached out to a nearby bunk stanchion for support with his free hand, twisted his body and kicked off hard against a bunk, launching himself towards the airlock. As he reached it he held out the girl, intending to go back for Kinnear: but the spacer grabbed his outstretched arm instead of taking the girl from him, hauling both of them into the airlock with a pull so hard Steve felt like his right shoulder had been dislocated. He shouted,
“Wait!”
, but it was too late. The spacer brought down his fist hard on an emergency switch, and the airlock door to the shuttle slammed shut.

“GUNNY!”
Steve screamed: but even as he spoke he felt the lifeboat tremble as the brackets securing it to the cargo shuttle were disengaged. An instant later there was a muffled
clang!
as something hit the outer airlock door very hard – hard enough to bend it inward in a sharply angled, clearly defined dent. Steve knew at once it must have been caused by part of the cargo shuttle’s structure, blown clear by the explosion of Bairam’s charges – explosions they couldn’t hear thanks to the vacuum of space that already separated them from the dying cargo shuttle, even if only by a few centimeters. The spacer dragged him back through the airlock, both of them staring at the dent, waiting for the weakened metal to rupture and vent the lifeboat’s atmosphere to space, killing them all… then they were inside, and another spacer activated the inner airlock door. It slid closed with a swift
whoosh!

Steve found himself on his hands and knees, staring at the airlock door, unable to move. Every fiber of his being was vibrating with shock. Kinnear was dead – or, if he wasn’t, he was dying right now, a death so horrible that Steve physically flinched as he visualized it. The big man would be flailing, his eyes bulging, his…

No!
Steve forced his mind to turn away from the hideous vision of what he knew was taking place in the cargo shuttle.
I’ve still got a job to do,
he told himself desperately.
Focus on that! I’ve got to get the hostages to safety!