Outpost Hell Read online

  “Come on!” Wapnik yelled as he pulled Chann to his feet and yanked him back to the door of the building.

  Once inside, Chann pulled a hand welder from his belt, lit it up, and sealed the hinges of the door.

  “That’ll buy us a few minutes,” Chann said.

  “We’ll need more than a few,” Wapnik growled as the sound of heavy boots echoed down the corridor. “How do we get out of here?”

  Chann brought up the map of the building then pointed to their right. “That way. Scanners show six hostiles converging on us from there, but fifteen coming at us from behind.”

  “Six sucks, but it’s better math than fifteen,” Wapnik said. “Charge up.”

  They both ejected their power cartridges and slapped in fresh ones, neither mentioning that they each only had one left on their belts.

  ***

  Six then five then seven then six then nine. The Skrang kept coming.

  Chann dropped his plasma carbine and tore a rifle from the grip of a dead Skrang. Wapnik did the same, wincing at the motion. His shoulder was a scorched patch of uniform and flesh. Chann frowned at him, but the corporal nodded and pointed his chin forward.

  “Two more corridors, right?” Wapnik gasped.

  “Right,” Chann said. He cocked his head and smiled. “Hear that? The drop ship is still here and tearing shit up. We’ll make it.”

  Wapnik grunted.

  Chann took point and led the two of them into the next corridor. No Skrang. From the sound of things outside, the guards left were engaging the drop ship. Chann headed straight for the noise.

  The two Marines hit the front door and kept their fingers pressed on their triggers until they were halfway from the building to the open hatch of the drop ship. Their rifles went dead simultaneously, and Chann wrapped an arm around Wapnik’s waist as he helped the corporal sprint to the waiting ship.

  Manheim and the rest of F1 were laying down cover fire, sending Skrang guards scrambling for cover. That cover was ripped apart as the turret guns from the drop ship locked on and opened up.

  “Move!” Manheim shouted at Chann and Wapnik. “Wheels up now!”

  The ramp to the cargo hold was already rising when Chann stepped onto it. Wapnik cried out and collapsed, his hands going to the back of his right thigh. Blood spurted from between his fingers and he looked up at Chann, eyes panicked, even the cybernetic one.

  “Need some help here!” Chann shouted as he pulled at Wapnik’s collar.

  He was falling back on his ass before he realized he only held a strip of material. The rest of Wapnik’s collar was gone, as was half the man’s upper torso. Chann stared at the strip of material and screamed.

  He kept screaming even as the ramp closed and he was pulled into a jump seat welded to the side of the cargo hold. He didn’t stop screaming until Manheim’s fist hit him right between the eyes.

  2

  “Chann?”

  “What?”

  “Sarge wants you.”

  Chann opened his eyes and sighed.

  He was still strapped in to the jump seat. Private Kay was kneeling before him, her vertical slitted pupils focused intently on his face.

  “How long was I out?” Chann asked. He pinched the bridge of his nose then pulled his hand away immediately as a sharp pain shot through his skull. “Ow. Shit.”

  “Sarge knocked you good,” Kay said.

  The woman was a halfer—half-human, half a feline race called Cervile. Her whiskers twitched as she shoved her helmet back from her face, letting it rest at an angle on the back of her head. Her pupils narrowed, widened, narrowed, widened, matching the movement of her nostrils.

  “You’ll be fine,” she said. “Eyes are bright and clear. You don’t smell like you pissed yourself, so he didn’t hit you as hard as he could have.”

  “I lost my shit,” Chann said as he unstrapped and stood up. He paused to make sure he didn’t fall over. Kay stood with him, a hand close to his elbow, obviously thinking the same thing. “Who made it?”

  “You’re the only one from F3,” Kay said.

  She was a foot shorter than Chann, but that didn’t mean much since her feline musculature, and retractable-clawed fingers, could rip him apart in seconds if she wanted to despite his superior size and strength. Chann was glad she didn’t want to. At least not in that way.

  “I know,” Chann said, trying to keep the bitterness from his voice. “F2?”

  “No,” Kay said. She looked about the cargo hold to make sure they were alone then stood on tiptoes to give him a quick kiss. “Come on. Manheim is not feeling patient.”

  She hurried to the ladder at the end of the hold and began to climb. Chann watched her move, not because he liked looking at her body, which he did, but because she was still in full combat armor and every movement she made projected alarm.

  “We’re not out of the shit, are we?” Chann asked as he followed her up to the landing above. He grabbed her arm as she punched the controls for the lift. “Kay? Has the drop ship even gotten to the Romper yet?”

  “We’re docking now,” Kay said. “You weren’t out for long.”

  They stepped into the lift and Kay hit the button for the bridge. The two Marines stood in silence for the ten-second ride up to that level. When the lift doors opened, they were plunged into a world of shouting and blaring klaxons.

  “Turn that shit off!” Manheim yelled.

  The drop ship’s pilot killed the klaxons, but she couldn’t do anything about the shouting Marines.

  “Four Skrang fighters coming fast, Sarge!” Private Nordanski, a human, yelled. “It’s gonna be close!”

  “You get us on the Romper,” Manheim snarled into the pilot’s ear. “You hear me?”

  “Get away from me, Manheim,” the pilot snarled back. She was human, but half her face was a melted mess of scarred flesh stretched over jagged bone. Old injuries from a mission long gone by. “When this bird is in the air, I’m in charge, got it?”

  “You want to test that?” Manheim growled as his hand went for his sidearm.

  “Stop it!” the co-pilot yelled.

  A Leforian—a quad-armed, strange-looking mix between a huge beetle and a Great Dane—the co-pilot shook with anxiety. Intensely loyal, and incredibly competent soldiers, Leforians also tended to nearly worry themselves to death despite being close to seven feet tall and covered in chitinous armor. Most everyone called them “moms” because of their propensity to worry about everyone around them.

  “Rosch, don’t start,” the co-pilot, Teffurg, snapped. “Same with you, Manheim.”

  Rosch huffed loudly, but that was all the reply she gave her co-pilot as she pulled back on the throttle and aimed the drop ship for an open portal in the underbelly of the Galactic Fleet Marine Assault Transport ship known as the Romper.

  “Sarge?” Chann said as the drop ship was swallowed up.

  “Chann, you’re awake,” Manheim said. “Good. We need all hands on deck. You and Kay will take port side turrets. Nordanski and Ma’ha will have starboard. I have missiles.”

  “I have the controls,” Rosch said as she undid her straps and leapt up from her seat to shove past Manheim. “Teffurg. Make sure this drop ship is secured before you join me on the bridge. Then I want the flight crew to strap in and get ready for battle.”

  “Completing lockdown checklist now,” Teffurg said, his bug fingers clicking across the console at a blinding speed. “Be there in less than five.”

  “Five more fighters coming fast,” Nordanski said. He swiped his hand across the console, and the reading he’d just been watching popped up as a hologram projected directly from his wrist. “Make that ten. Where the hell is Ma’ha?”

  The bridge door opened and a massive Gwreq appeared. Like Leforians, Gwreqs had four arms and all four of Ma’ha’s were crossed across his stone-skinned chest. He didn’t bother wearing battle armor since his flesh was hard as granite.

  “Flight crew is powering the drop ship’s fuel cells in cas
e we need to bail,” Ma’ha said, his voice a deep, rumbling timbre. “Only two left.”

  “Fuel cells?” Chann asked.

  “Flight crew,” Ma’ha said. “Two didn’t make it.” He looked to Manheim. “Eject the bodies?”

  “Once we’re out of this mess,” Manheim said. “You hear me over the com?”

  Ma’ha tapped at his earhole and nodded. “I’m on starboard turrets with Nord.”

  “You have your assignments, people,” Manheim barked. “Get to them!”

  ***

  The ship rocked as its shields were pummeled by the Skrang fighters’ plasma blasts. Chann cringed with each impact, but he knew the shields would hold. They always held.

  The “Assault” part of “Assault Transport” was a misnomer. Four gun turrets and a small battery of missiles, the Romper was designed for the “Transport” part more than anything else. Its entire reason for existing was to punch through enemy fire so that the four drop ships it held could deploy and land each Marine squad right where they were supposed to land.

  Without superior shield tech, only a tiny percentage of Marines would have ever made it to their targets. Not that many made it out once they had been deposited in their various fields of battle.

  The Romper had been decommissioned four years earlier and was scheduled for commercial retrofit, but Manheim had finagled some deal where it was taken off the books and held in storage. Chann had no idea how the sergeant had managed the nearly impossible task of making a transport disappear from Galactic Fleet records, but when the heist mission to raid the Skrang general’s compound had been proposed, Manheim had instantly said transportation was covered.

  The squad had been tight during the War, so the idea of not following Manheim hadn’t even occurred to any of the Marines. The GF brass didn’t blink when Manheim put in for R&R for everyone; they were happy to have a squad’s less worth of supplies to deal with for a month. It was almost like the GF had set the stage for the ill-fated mission.

  Ill-fated mission…

  Chann struggled to keep his thoughts on firing the gun turret instead of the fact that his entire fireteam had been wiped out a little more than an hour earlier. He struggled to keep his eyes on the targeting system, not on the images of his comrades’ faces that kept shoving their way to the front of his mind.

  He’d lost plenty of friends in battle, all Marines had, but the op was supposed to be a cakewalk, not a death trap. It was supposed to set them all up for life so they could retire from the Galactic Fleet and experience the freedom of the Treaty that the rest of the galaxy was experiencing.

  In a way, Wapnik, T’Zen, and Ou’guul were free. And in the same way, Chann would never be free, no matter how many chits the treasures were worth. He had a sinking feeling he’d be trapped by the memory of the botched heist for the rest of his life.

  Not that his life looked to be a long one. That was made clear by the ship suddenly listing to port as a barrage of Skrang missiles hit the aft shields, taking out one of the engines.

  Chann followed two Skrang fighters with his targeting system, sending plasma blast after plasma blast at the ducking and dodging ships. One took a hit in the starboard wing and went spinning out of control into the depths of space. The other dove hard and avoided Chann’s attacks then swung back up and came at him full throttle.

  “Shit,” Chann snarled as he opened up on the fighter with everything he had.

  The pilot was good. Surprisingly good for a Skrang. They weren’t known for their finesse in battle. Half the time, they collided with their targets in a suicidal offense that was impossible to defend against. A glorious death in battle and all that Skrang crap.

  “Come on, come on!” Chann yelled as he stopped firing and reset his turret’s position.

  He’d simply been spiraling after the fighter, chasing it instead of leading it. Chann slowed his breathing, narrowed his eyes, watched the fighter get closer and closer, then pressed the duel triggers of the turret gun’s controls and sent the Skrang ship to one the many Hells the galaxy boasted.

  The Romper’s shields lit up as the fighter’s debris pummeled the area directly in front of Chann’s gun turret. He dimmed the targeting display as explosion after explosion filled his vision.

  “We’re gonna lose the second engine,” Rosch called over a general channel. She sounded pissed off, bordering on frantic. “I’m putting everything I have into it and heading for the closest portal.”

  “They’ll be waiting for us,” Manheim barked back over the comm. “Shoot for a secondary wormhole.”

  “There is only one sanctioned portal in this system,” Rosch replied. “The two other wormholes are backdoors and not stable.”

  “This ship isn’t stable!” Manheim shouted. “We stay where we are and we’ll be ripped apart by the Skrang! I’d rather risk getting ripped apart by an off-the-books wormhole portal. That way we have a chance of escape. You hear me, Rosch?”

  “I hear you, Manheim,” Rosch growled. “It’ll still take twenty minutes to get us to the closest backdoor. Can you fight these bastards for twenty minutes? Not looking like you can.”

  “I’ll handle the Skrang, you handle the Romper,” Manheim said. “Get us out of here in one piece, without being followed, and there’s a ten percent bonus on top of your cut.”

  “Make it twenty and I’ll hide us somewhere where not even the GF can find us,” Rosch said.

  “Fifteen,” Manheim countered.

  “Deal,” Rosch said. She chuckled. “Hang on. This is going to get ugly.”

  The gravity stabilizers cut out, and Chann was glad to be strapped into his targeting seat. If Rosch was cutting off the grav, then she planned on executing some maneuvers that were not going to be fun. Chann swallowed hard and was thankful he hadn’t eaten in the last twelve hours.

  The Romper angled sharply, and Chann had to swivel his turret halfway around to get a shot at the next two Skrang fighters. He sent plasma flying at the enemy ships, taking out one and forcing the other to disengage and retreat from his target area. Chann doubted that the ship was flying home, but for the moment at least, it wasn’t his problem.

  “Scanners show two dozen more fighters have just broken from the planet’s atmosphere and are heading our way,” Kay announced over the comm. “I’ll be out of plasma before they get here. No time to recharge.”

  “Do what you can,” Nordanski replied. “If we have to, we can suit up and take the fight outside. Just me and my carbine against two dozen Skrang fighters. It’s an uneven fight, but that’s what the lizard bastards get for messing with a Fleet Marine!”

  “Shut up and concentrate,” Ma’ha barked. “You missed your last two shots.”

  “But I made the six before that,” Nordanski replied. “Give credit where it’s due, Ma’ha.”

  The Romper continued to climb, and Chann watched in alarm as his heads-up display showed energy being siphoned off from his turret’s reserves.

  “Hey, Rosch?” Chann called.

  “I said it was going to get ugly,” Rosch responded.

  “Yeah, well, can it get ugly without powering down my turret?” Chann asked.

  “Guns ain’t gonna cut it anymore,” Rosch said. “Take a look.”

  Chann’s display was filled with the sight of two Skrang destroyers popping out of the system’s official wormhole portal. Bright white tracer lines faded as the ships exited the portal and became solid once again instead of merely quantum theories flying through trans-space.

  “Rosch!” Manheim yelled.

  “What, Manheim, what?” Rosch shouted. “You think I’m suddenly going to be able to fly faster and better because two destroyers are now heading our way? I’m doing what I’ve been doing the whole time and that is pushing this bucket to its limits so we can get out of here alive! So shut the hell up!”

  “You’re doing a fine job,” Nordanski said.

  “You shut up too, Nord!” Rosch snapped. “I don’t need your smart ass in my ear rig
ht now!”

  “That brings to mind an interesting picture,” Nordanski responded.

  “I’m done,” Kay said, joining the chaotic conversation. “Turret is out of power.”

  Chann sent one last volley of plasma bolts towards three fighters before his display began to flash red and his targeting shut down. He pushed back from the controls and spun his chair around to face the small door behind him. He unstrapped and kicked his toe against the door’s controls. As it irised open, he shoved off from his seat and floated through the door out into an empty corridor.

  The corridor wasn’t empty for long as a second door irised open and Kay came floating out. She nodded at Chann before spinning her body so her boots hit the opposite wall, their magnets engaging and keeping her from rebounding back to the closing door.

  “Sarge? We getting in one of the drop ships?” Kay asked, her eyes on Chann as she listened at her comm.

  “No need,” Manheim replied. “Those destroyers would pick us off in a half-second. Our only shot is for Rosch to get us through one of the backdoors.”

  “What part of shut up do none of you understand?” Rosch barked. “Shut up!”

  “We best head to the bridge,” Kay said, waving a hand at Chann. “It’s the most protected area of the ship.”

  “Good idea,” Chann said.

  He steadied himself against the wall then copied Kay and engaged his boots’ magnets. Chann’s head still hurt from Manheim’s knock-out punch, and the sideways orientation wasn’t helping.

  “Can’t we walk on the floor?” Chann asked.

  “We can,” Kay said as she hurried along the wall to the closest bulkhead. She waited for Chann to get to her then punched a bright red button, sealing the bulkhead and that part of the corridor from the rest of the ship. “But I like walking the wall when we’re in zero G. Keeps me from getting disoriented when the ship goes ass over tea kettle. Which it’s going to do, knowing Rosch and her evasive maneuvers.”