Chapter 18: Memento Mori - Part 2

Almark. 17

The door was open.

There was a part of her that understood the logic of that. The concussive blasts from grenades, for example, were much more dangerous in confined spaces like the corridor outside. Having the doors open let that blast spread out and dissipate before it could do more damage than it usually would have done. Luckily, no grenades had landed within the trio of fearless defenders yet... yet... but a few had come close.

But the other parts of her couldn’t help but acknowledge one simple fact: the open doors were forcing her to watch.

She’d had a vague idea of the fighting when she had been with her airwing above the beach, but aside from a few instances of returning fire when they had been taking refuge in that makeshift fort, she had been prohibitively too far away from it to grasp the concept properly. She now realized, with mounting dread, that–before now– she’d had no comprehension whatsoever of what infantry combat was really like. Not really.

Her eyes were locked onto Mac, watching him unleash pure carnage onto the boarding Sys-Def Marines that were throwing shots back at him with terrifying accuracy and volume. More than that, she was watching his face, his expression, his determination and ... well, calmness, held in his eyes. This was what he knew. This was what he did. And no matter how close those laser bolts came to hitting him, he didn’t flinch, he didn’t waver, and he didn’t stop. The shields on his powered armor bounced away the shots that did find their mark, but Emylee had no idea how powerful those shields were or how long they would last. All she knew was that her man, along with his friends, were not just fighting for their lives right before her eyes; they were fighting for hers. They were fighting for every life that was in this maintenance bay.

What had really taken her by surprise, though, was how loud it was. Aerial combat was ... well, it wasn’t quiet, but the sounds from the guns were muted by the sounds of the engines and the fuselage itself. It made the whole thing seem more distant. There was no such luxury here. Even from where she was crouching, a dozen or so meters away from the door’s opening, she could hear the high-pitched zipping of laser bolts sizzling through the air as they raced past. The louder, flexing-metal-like “whump” of Angel and Ryan’s battle rifles returning fire punctuated the din, but it was the screeching roar of Mac’s cannon - its three barrels spinning into a blur and the heatsinks glowing in shades of whites and oranges - that was the most deafening.

And it was the torrent of green, magnetically constricted plasma being hurled toward the enemy that was the most terrifying.

Perhaps even more terrifying than the quickly silenced screams echoing down the corridor from where those bolts hit their marks.

Those bolts were just a scaled-down version of the heavy weapons she’d had on her broadsword, but even then, they weren’t scaled down by much. She had watched them obliterate hardened bunkers with relative ease, so she could only imagine what one would do to a human body.

If the noise and the fear were taken away for a moment, though, she couldn’t help but marvel at the Rebel Marines. There were three of them, three, against an ever-growing number of Sys-Def attackers, and they were holding them. She had often commented to herself that Mac, her gentle giant, could move with an agility and grace that belied his enormous, hulking size, but she had never considered that the other Marines in his squad were capable of the same feat. Even Ryan, with one prosthetic leg, was hopping out of the path of incoming fire before springing back to his crouched position and unleashing all hell onto his targets. Angel, perhaps the only one of the fireteam that didn’t surprise her with her agility, seemed to move like a shadow. She was in one position one moment, and then, in the blink of an eye, she was in another, her weight of fire never seeming to diminish for a second.

The corridor outside the maintenance bay was a tactical bottleneck, and both sides knew it. The boarding soldiers had landed in the cargo hold, the yawning expanse of the hull below their feet. It was, she assumed, a good place to board, concentrate, and coordinate men in an action like this, but the elevators down there had been sealed and isolated from the power supply at the first sign of boarders, meaning that to get out of the cargo hold and into the rest of the ship, they needed to take the stairs. There were two sets of them, one fore and one aft, and both of them led into this corridor and straight into the Marines’ field of fire. To get anywhere else on the ship, the Sys-Def attackers would need to take this corridor; both the elevators and the next set of stairs were here; the elevators were just to the right of the Maintenance bay doors, maybe five meters away on the opposite side of the hallway. The stairs were the same distance away, but to the left, Mac and his team were holding the ground between them. There was no way for the enemy to get to either the stairs or the elevator, let alone Emylee and her team, without getting through the Marines and their withering hail of fire.

But it also meant that the enemy was attacking them from both sides. Right now, Mac was hunkered down behind the retractable cover, aiming down the corridor to the right, while Angel and Ryan were doing the same to the left. At least, she thought, there was no room for them to be flanked.

There was a fair bit of distance between the fireteam’s position and the point at which either set of stairs emptied out into the corridor, and Angel had been right; the Marines were able to engage them for the full measure of that distance and, aside from a few empty rooms and a few door alcoves along that distance, there was next to no cover for the attackers along the corridors entire length.

Normally, that would mean a pretty easy day for Mac and his team. They could sit there and pick them off piecemeal, but there were so many of them. There had been four shuttles worth of boarders when the first report came in, that was about one hundred and twenty men, but there were unconfirmed reports of at least another two shuttles landing since then, and the possibility of more landing before the battle outside was over. The radio next to Darius was playing out the frantic reports of the other Marine squads, an even more terrifying sort of music to which this fight was being played out. The enemy seemed to be everywhere on the ship, and although the Marines seemed to be holding their ground in every instance, it sounded to her that the largest concentration of force was being thrown directly against her lover outside the door. It also meant that no help was able to get to them any time soon.

Stevo’s deep, authoritative voice came through the channel a few minutes before the first shots in the hallway were fired. She couldn’t remember the exact words he had used, but the message to Angel—the squad sergeant—had been clear: Trouble was coming, and they were to hold to the last man; help would come, but it would take some time. Until then, they were on their own.

She knew Stevo well enough to know that he wouldn’t leave any of his men to fight to the death without doing everything he could to get to them, to help, and, if necessary, die with them, but he had problems of his own. He had been caught up in the battle being fought outside main engineering while trying to get from the top of the ship to them, and even she had to admit that battle was vastly more important to the longevity of the Hyperion than this one. If Mac and his men fell, the attackers would kill her and her team; then they would advance to the rest of the ship, but, in the grand scheme of things, that was about it. They could be stopped elsewhere before they got to any of the primary systems or command staff. Compared to that, the R&D team was pretty far down the list of importance. It was a shit way to think of herself after everything they had achieved, but cold, hard triage like that was one of the first things drilled into any soldier - be that pilot or infantryman: losing yourself to a lost cause was a stupid thing to die for, it was better to make the enemy pay for it later. But that didn’t help her now. She needed to know what was going on, how the team was coping, if they were in trouble, if there was anything at all she could do to...

The radio!

A spark of inspiration flashed through her mind. She couldn’t contribute to the battle, no matter how much she wanted to; she was barely armed - at least not compared to the forces outside - and she wasn’t armored at all. Going out there to help would just put her in more danger, and it would force the Marines to defend her rather than stop the bad guys. But she needed to know.

She reached past Abdul and yanked the radio into her lap, flicking through the comm channels until she found the internal frequency for Mac’s squad.

“ ... went to market, this little piggy went home,” Ryan’s casual, almost playful voice came through the channel. Emylee and Abdul just blinked at it before casting a confused look at each other. “This little piggy had roast beef ... oof, I could use a roast beef sammich right about now. I’m starving!”

“Do you only ever think about food?” Angel chuckled back.

“Nope, your ass does things to me that I probably shouldn’t talk about, but aside from that, yeah, food is pretty up there.”

“It’s okay, you can think about my ass. But stop talking about eating; you’re making me hungry!” Angel snorted.

“What about eating your...”

“Don’t say it! I promise you’ll regret it! And stop singing that fucking nursery rhyme. You’ve been through the whole thing about five times already.”

“Fair.” Ryan laughed. “How many are you on?”

“Fuck knows, I lost count.”

“I call bullshit; you just don’t want to compare scores later, cos you know I’m fucking slaying!”

“Hey! I’m the Sarge now. You’re supposed to be all respectful and shit.” Angel grumbled. “You’d never have spoken to Stevo like this when he was our Sarge!”

It was Mac’s turn to laugh, and the sound sent a jolt of ... something ... through Emylee. “Are ya kidding? He spoke ta him like that all tha time!” How the hell could they be so casual about the situation? Not the killing; that part was easy: kill or be killed; there was nothing callous or inhuman about it; it was just the dark humor that got soldiers through combat. But how could they push down the fear? She could hardly think clearly through it. There was bravery, and then there was stupidity; at least one of them was needed to get through combat, she knew that, and both were present in equal measure on the battlefield. One needed to be pretty stupid to ignore the fear that was hardwired into every living creature; it kept a person alive, and she knew that none of the Marines outside could be called stupid, but to be joking at a time like this? That was something else entirely.

“Ooof, holy shit, you see that?” Ryan howled through the com, snapping her attention back to it.

“How the hell did his head hit the ceiling?” Angel giggled. “Okay, I admit, that was pretty impressive.”

“I bet I can do it again!”

“How are you doing back there, big guy?” Angel called to Mac. He could, after all, be the only person able to be accurately called that.

“Doing grand, lass, I mean, Sarge ... Shit, tha’s gonna take some gettin’ used tah ... Gotta few more mins in Bessie here before I have ta let her cool down.”

“I still can’t believe you called your cannon ‘Bessie,” Ryan snorted. “I mean, I get it, Big Bessie, but Jesus, dude. Big Bertha was right there. That’s a fumble if I ever heard one. It makes her sound like a cow.”

“Oh, Aye?” Mac answered, “Whaddya call yours?”

“Simon,”

“Simon? I dunnae get it”

“Yup, as in, Simon says, “Take a round to the throat so perfectly that your head pops off and hits the ceiling.”

“You’re gonna be going on about that forever, aren’t you?” Angel grumbled.

“Of course I am; that was the best shot of the...” There was a loud explosion in the corridor, loud enough to yank Emylee’s eyes up to the door. “Did you ... Did you just shoot that grenade in mid-air?” Ryan’s awe-sounding voice asked slowly.

“She did what?” Mac called back.

“C’mon, that had to be...” Emylee watched as Ryan turned to look at Angel, “Holy shit, you shot that on purpose, didn’t you.”

“Yup.”

“Jesus,” Ryan’s voice drawled. “Mac, we have the most badass Sergeant ever! Please, Sarge, I promise to never talk about your ass or food again ... but you have to teach me, oh masterful one.”

“See, that’s the kind of respect I’m talking about,” Angel chuckled. “Looks like they’re getting ready for another big push.”

“Okay, I got the left side, you take the right again?”

“Worked pretty well last time, you ready Mac?”

“Aye, Bessie’s ready to dish out tha hurt.”

“Alright, here they come!” Angel shouted. The sounds of fire from the doorway seemed to explode in volume. Emylee could almost see the vibrations from the sound of the battle rippling the fluid on her eyeballs. The roar of Mac’s cannon ripped through the air, the shrieking howl from it seeming to get higher and higher pitched as he kept up the barrage of fire on the advancing enemy.

“Does anyone else think there are more than a hundred and twenty of them?” Ryan called out over the din.

“I was just thinking tha, too. They’re still coming!” Mac answered.

“How’s Bessie, Mac?”

“She’s starting ta struggle, Sarge; I may need ta duck out to cool her off soon.”

“Alright, Ryan, you ready to move?”

“Ready, boss lady!” Emylee had to stamp down on that reflexive cringe for a moment. Boss lady is what Joker used to call her before...

“Alright, Mac, Move!”

In an instant, Mac bounded for the door, half stooping and half rolling to clear his cover as Ryan, in a single fluid motion, lifted his weapon, spun around, and started firing as he moved to the cover Mac had just left. Mac pulled himself into the room, casting a smiling glance over to Emylee before he started ripping the glowing heatsinks out of the barrels of his cannon, tossing them onto the deck before swapping them out with ones he was pulling from his pocket ... or whatever the power-armored equivalent of a pocket would be. It was a good thing those composite gauntlets covered his hands; she could see the heat shimmering in the air above the discarded sinks, even from where she was watching.

“Ooh, that’s it Bessehh,” Ryan’s teasing voice came through the comms in a mocking imitation of Mac’s accent. “Yer sooo hot, let me get mah fingers into yeh!” Both Mac and Angel snorted out a laugh; even Emylee had to hide a chortle. “Don’t let Em catch you with your fingers inside another girl, Mac. She’d kill you ... with Bessie!”