Drysine Legacy (The Spiral Wars Book 2) (25 page)

“We gotta go!” Vijay bellowed above the din as more fire came in. “It’s a firezone, Lisbeth’s unarmored and we’re drawing fire!”

“I gotta stay with my guys!” Ruiz yelled back, and smashed through a wall panel to search for a fire position. Carla hauled Lisbeth up and dragged her after Vijay, as Lisbeth tried to resist, staring back at where Corporal Penn was dragging the screaming and cursing Herman back under fire. Beyond them, Private Bernardino was not moving.

“Bernie!” Penn was yelling as Carla hauled Lisbeth away. “Bernie get the fuck up! Bernie!”

And then she was running after Vijay, weaving along the broken, unfinished corridor and feeling suddenly naked with only two lightly armoured bodyguards. Powered armour was tough as hell, but hacksaw chain guns had gone straight through it…

Ahead, Vijay skidded to a halt by a corner more completed than the others, and peered into a T-junction hall. Lisbeth held up, then Vijay waved her and Carla forward. Several more marines ran by, and heavy fire came from the docks to the left. A marine Lisbeth didn’t recognise through the visor and drifting smoke was yelling at Vijay, “…getting it cleared the fuck out! There’s no-one left up there, we checked! They’re coming through the fucking walls, they’re getting us encircled!”

“We can’t get her out on the docks, she’s not armoured!” Vijay yelled back.

“We’ve got guys downstairs, lower level! Use the stairs… look,
Phoenix
won’t wait forever and we’ve not enough shuttles…” boom! as something exploded by the docks, and marines up there cursed. “Not enough shuttles to get off those left behind, and no way to rendezvous without coms!”

“Got it!” said Vijay, and ran to the right, away from the docks… and Lisbeth recognised the corridor, this was the main entrance to
Phoenix
’s accommodation block. Strewn on the floor were crew duffel bags, brought on dock for personals and a change of clothes, now abandoned in the mad rush to get back to
Phoenix
.

Vijay ran straight past the elevators, as suddenly station power flickered and the main lights dimmed. Red emergency lights replaced them, speaker announcements echoing in Palapu, drowned by the rattle and thud of gunfire from behind. Vijay peered into a stairwell, rifle checking up then down as Carla guarded their rear. A ventilation fan in the stairwell wall roared, trying to haul in the wisps of smoke from some nearby fire…

Movement made Lisbeth look up the corridor… in a doorway, a small figure waving at her. And her heart stopped. The small figure had long ears and scruffy fur within an oversized marines’ jacket. “Oh my god Skah! What are you doing here!”

“Kid!” Carla yelled, beckoning. “Furball! Come here!”

Skah shook his head and pointed back up the corridor from his doorway, shouting something unintelligible. “Skah no!” Lisbeth shouted. “We’re leaving! You have to come…”

The stairwell blew up, a hammerblow that hit her from behind… and then she was on the floor, rolling and coughing and unable to hear a thing. She struggled up by reflex, and Skah seeing she was okay yelled something she couldn’t hear, waved for her to follow, and disappeared.

Lisbeth followed in panic. She couldn’t leave Skah here, and if she didn’t follow then Carla and Vijay’s only responsibility was herself — they might just figure Skah was secondary and not worth the risk. The new corridor swam and buckled as she ran, but that was just her knees, and she fended a wall before she fell into it, and turned another bend past abandoned hotel offices where it looked like Skah had surely come. If the hacksaws were guarding the stairwells, probably one of them had fired a grenade down from a higher level, she’d heard tales marines told of how to clear stairwells effectively…

And she burst into a common room, upturned furnishings and wall displays destroyed and smoking, drilled with bullet holes. And here was Skah, down behind some sofas, tending to someone on the ground. Lisbeth stumbled that way and found a spacer in a
Phoenix
jumpsuit — no one she recognised, no nametag on the clothes to tell who it was, but he’d been shot through the side and Skah was trying to stop the bleeding.

Lisbeth ran and knelt beside, in a new panic because she didn’t have a first aid kit and didn’t know where there’d be one. But Skah grabbed a cushion off the chairs and bit it, tearing the fabric with a great rip and pulling against sharp teeth. Lisbeth helped him, and they got the cloth free, and Lisbeth bunched it and tore the spacer’s jumpsuit aside to stuff the cloth over the worst of the blood.

“Hey!” she tried to talk to him, barely able to hear her own voice through the ringing. “Hey spacer! Hey buddy, we’re going to get you out of here, okay?” He stared up at her, and it wasn’t the pain in his eyes that struck her, it was the fear. It was a ‘how can this be happening to me?’ fear, and Lisbeth’s stomach flip-flopped, because she knew exactly what that was even though she was still in one piece.

Then she realised that neither Carla nor Vijay had come after her. They’d been closer to the stairwell than her. She’d assumed they were okay since she was, and come running after Skah before she lost him… oh god, what if they weren’t? What if she’d run off and left them wounded, or worse? What if they weren’t coming to save her, and she and Skah were now on their own? Skah was looking up at her with those big golden eyes, desperate but trusting. Trusting that the adult would know what to do. But she didn’t.

“Okay Skah, we’re going to have to…” move him. But she couldn’t. The spacer was an average-sized man, and while she had G-augments, those dealt mainly with internal body stresses and barely made her stronger. And Skah was just a kid, and while kuhsi were faster than most humans, they were kilo-for-kilo no stronger.

Abandon the wounded man? She didn’t know him. For a brief, terrified moment it was almost plausible… except that Skah, who was even newer to this crew than she was, had risked his own neck to come and save him. And Skah was just a kid, and not even of the same species. And then she felt horribly ashamed.

“Skah? I’m going to have to go for help. I have to tell one of the marines.” Because she could still hear shooting far up the corridors, and out onto the docks. And better that she went, because Skah’s English was deserting him under pressure, and at least here he had a chance of hiding if anything came…

A metallic clatter somewhere behind. Lisbeth spun. Midway along the opposite wall was a large pair of sliding doors, with frosted glass that showed only shadows beyond. Shadows, and movement. Something beyond those doors was moving, a whine-and-clicker-clack, and a slide of something heavy. And all the fear she’d felt until now faded by comparison.

She stared about, and saw an adjoining bar beside a small music stage and potted plants. “Skah, over there!” she whispered frantically. “We have to drag him over there! Help me!” She stood bent, and grabbed the man’s armpits, while Skah grabbed an arm and tried to keep the cushion cloth pressed to his bleeding side. He was heavy, and the carpet made friction so he didn’t slide much. Lisbeth tried to keep low, and hoped that through the frosted glass her silhouette wouldn’t show above the sofas and low tables.

Somehow she got the spacer to the bar door, then undid the top lid so the door would open. And could not resist a look back at the frosted glass doors. There was a dark shadow that had not been there before. It seemed to fill the entire corridor beyond. A shadow with legs.

She grabbed the man once more and pulled him in behind the bar with desperate effort, as Skah thought to close the bar door and put the lid back down. And she grabbed him, and pulled him close as she heard the frosted glass doors not shatter violently, but hum neatly open. As though whatever was on the far side had pressed the entry button.

The metallic clatter came into the room, a sound like a hundred ball bearings bouncing on a polished floor. Accompanying it was a deep, throbbing hum, like a powersource, and the whine of servo motors, like the noise marines in powered armour made when they moved. It came across the floor, and Lisbeth could hear metal feet thudding hard on carpet, then softer as it crawled across leather chairs, then a hard clack as a foot hit a glass tabletop. Lisbeth tried to hold her breath, but her heart was hammering so fast that she had to breathe before her lungs ran out of oxygen. She looked down at Skah, pressed tight against her, and found him just as scared. He was a smart kid, he knew exactly what was in the room with them. He’d seen her studying them, in Romki’s Engineering enclave. His eyes were wide and ears down, as though facing into a strong wind. The wounded spacer closed his eyes, and tried not to groan in pain.

Clatter-clatter-click. It moved past the bar. Movement caught Lisbeth’s eye — high in a corner between wall and ceiling, a piece of angled mirror gave her a clear look at the floor beyond. It was a hacksaw drone all right. The size and mechanical intricacy of it took her breath away. Insects and spiders had nothing on this. At least five pairs of main legs, multi-jointed, some for walking, others for integrated weapons. The rear-quarter pair wielded massive multi-barrelled chain guns, the feeds for which wound cleverly into the big armoured thorax. The big, many-eyed head swivelled, ducked and peered, as though sniffing the air. Smaller arms picked up the torn cushion that Skah had used, and sniffed at the blood on the carpet.

It picked up the sofa, effortlessly, then with little inner arms whipped out a tool and emitted a bright flash. The sofa came apart in smoke and burned leather, and the drone sniffed the insides, as though suspecting someone might have been hiding there. That cutter was how they got through the walls, Lisbeth thought. And different drones were differently equipped. A group would mix weapons and tools for the best balance, like a marine platoon’s mix of riflemen and heavies.

Then it paused, as though realising something, and turned to look. Straight at the mirror. Straight at Lisbeth. Because of course, Lisbeth realised in horror — reflections went both ways, and if she could see it, it could see her. But it hesitated, staring, as though uncertain what it saw. Why was it waiting?

Something thudded into a wall, and the drone leaped back, its huge thorax elevating as paired chain guns levelled and howled in spinning preparation to fire… and a huge explosion knocked it sideways, as whatever had hit the wall detonated late. Gunfire followed, the unmistakable thunder of a Koshaim-20, and Lisbeth glimpsed drone debris flying, a weapon arm falling, the big machine staggering then returning fire with a roaring hail of bullets, spent cartridges spraying across the room, rattling off the bar-top and bottles. Another explosion, and more gunfire, and the drone leaped and scuttled with incredible speed, smashed the frosted glass doors and was gone.

A pause, then footsteps, then, “Clear!” A human voice, and familiar. “Watch it! Clear that corridor, it hasn’t gone far!” Corporal Penn, Lisbeth realised.

“We’re back here!” she shouted. “We’ve got one wounded, you’ve got to carry him!” She staggered upright, and then a thud as Carla slid over the bar. Not wasting time, she grabbed the wounded spacer and lifted him effortlessly onto the bar for another heavy-armoured marine to grab and take away. Lisbeth wished she could have lifted him like Carla.

“Come on, go,” said Carla, and Lisbeth scrambled over the bar, Skah following. The room beyond was smoke-filled and torn by shrapnel and gunfire, one wall aflame and localised fire retardant spraying down, several more marines up by the broken doors where the drone had come, even now laying down cover fire.

Lisbeth jumped down and helped Skah, who didn’t need it, then “Down!” yelled a marine by the doorway as something hit further up, and Vijay grabbed and hustled her for the door as an explosion rocked the corridor. Both marines were up and firing back up the corridor immediately, and Lisbeth looked back as Carla jumped the bar… and was hit by a roar of chain gun fire from up the corridor, disintegrating bar, wood panels and bodyparts in all directions.

Lisbeth screamed as Vijay rushed her at the door, yelling “Go, go!”, marines behind laying down fire and swearing furiously. A side wall exploded, and again the howl of laser cutters.

“Marines!” Corporal Penn bellowed. “Pull back! Pull the fuck back now!” And then Lisbeth was running up the way she’d come, Skah alongside as Vijay hustled her along, heavy armour thudding behind as gunfire roared.

“Oh my god Carla!” Lisbeth sobbed.

“She’s gone, now move!”

There were more marines in the main accommodation corridor now, and Vijay made no more for the stairwells, as it looked like reinforcements had arrived. Lisbeth ducked amidst the armoured bodies, the shouts and yells, the thunderous retort of guns as marines expanded this perimeter. Smoke was overwhelming the ventilation fans, forming a choking blanket at the ceiling, and nearby explosions and splintering shrapnel clanged at random off steel wall frames.

At the dock, Lisbeth could see the difference immediately — there were marines all along the far wall between Berth 19 and 20, using parked jeeps and other vehicles for cover. Many were heavies, and they were laying down the most incredible barrage of fire on the upper levels overlooking the high dock, chain guns howling on massive arm supports, rapid cannon thudding, explosions from above sending debris falling down like rain. Some of those vehicles were commandeered for more ammunition — Lisbeth had seen the ammo crates stacked in the
Phoenix
main corridor and wondered at the point of it. Well here was the point, being expended at a hundred rounds a second at the upper dock levels.

“Yo Lisbeth!” announced Lieutenant JC Crozier in her stomping great armour rig — she seemed to be in command of this stretch, and had scorch marks on her rifle’s muzzle from all the firing. “And Furball, good! Corporal Penn, you got her?”

“I got her sir,” Penn confirmed as he arrived behind. “Hacksaws behind at accommodation ground level, we lost Lisbeth’s other bodyguard.”