Axis Six leapt onto deck 27, a crew recreational and sleeping area. With that, Jingle, Swift, Allen and Keep darted off down an adjacent corridor. Sikes, Labcoat, Hand and Daredevil ran down the carpeted corridor of toward one of the elevators.
“How did they get through the swarm of patrols that were outside this ship?” Daredevil asked.
“The Revs used one of our old heavy cruisers mounted with some of their own turret weapons and blew them away,” Sikes said.”
“God, when did they learn that sort of warfare?” she said. “They haven’t been that good ever.”
“Looks like they are getting better,” Hand added.
Alpha reached the lift. “Labcoat? Get up here and activate this thing,” Sikes barked.
Piper Sevens, breathing a bit heavy now, moved toward an unnoticeable point on the wall and pressed it. A small panel popped open revealing a gateway into the ship’s neural system Labcoat removed some cabling from the THIEF7, plugged it into the paneling and began his work on a touchpad.
“Whoa,” he said after a moment. “It’s a fortress skipper. Heavy, heavy encryption here.”
After about 10 seconds, Sikes grew impatient. “They must have it locked down. Can you do anything with it?”
“Let me see,” Labcoat said, and continued to finger the keypad. Then, he removed a thin sheet of what looked like sheet metal and pressed it against the control panel. He gleaned it for a moment.
“No, sir. The lift is locked tight as a drum and it’s going to take me a fair amount of time to crack the firewall they’ve got around the rest of the network. I mean, we could break it, but they’d send somebody down on us in a second,” he said
“Plan B then. This way,” Sikes said.
Sikes led Alpha down a sub-corridor. The team arrived at a small access door marked “maintenance” in seven languages. Labcoat knelt down next to it and wired himself again to the control panel.
“This one’s not encoded,” he said, tapping a few buttons and the door slid open.
“This is a maintenance service area. It runs vertically up the ship’s belly. There’s not much room to move around inside, so don’t be claustrophobic now. If my memory is right, this will take us all the way up to the command deck.
As Sikes begin to kneel in to crawl inside, his HUD blinked into activity and produced two blips, blinking in and out of range.
“Tango,” he said. Sikes lifted his rifle. “Daredevil, mine is fuzzy. What do you have?”
“Two tangos, sir,” she said, reading sensor data from the inside of her helmet. “They are armed with something – locked and loaded. He’s about 10 meters to our starboard. He should be coming out right there.”
Just as she pointed, a laser blast exploded over her head. She whirled and fired seeing three Rev soldiers near the spot where the Viper had docked.
“Company!,” Sikes said, taking cover behind a corner. “Return fire, Alpha!” The new blips appeared on his HUD, in addition to the earlier starboard target. He crouched and waddled back toward the main hallway, rifle ready and returned fire.
With the integrated targeting system, Sikes didn’t have to do a lot of aiming. Two blasts hit their marks, sending a shower of white-hot sparks throughout the hallway and two Rev soldiers soaring into the bulkhead. His third shot missed, scattering heated metal fragments across the hallway.
Almost simultaneously, Daredevil and Hand had taken up points in the hall and began firing. Daredevil missed twice, cursing herself on the comm system. Sikes fired again on the spot, missing and Hand followed with a series of shots again missing their target.
“What the hell is wrong with these targeting systems. They stink!” Daredevil yelled. “Guess we’ll have to shoot them the old fashioned way!”
The prone Rev fired back, a bright white stream of microwave energy streaming by Sikes’ head. “These Revs are well equipped,” Sikes said, “and how did they catch us so quickly? We’re cloaked and scrambled. How did they see us?” Sikes fired again. “We need more firepower. Lay down a strafe for me. I’m going to get this clown!”
“Roger that,” Hand said, laying down a salvo of shots into the carpeted floor. When he did, Sikes activated the armor’s rapid movement feature and sprang toward the prone fighter. He fired on the shooter almost 25 times. When he ended his leap, Sikes looked and saw the prone Rev smoldering, twisted and grotesque.
“Good Work Hand -,” the colonel said, but turned back in time to watch an explosive charge go off in Hand’s face. When it exploded, a green gelatin sprayed over the warrior’s body. Daredevil, only inches away, dove away just as the gelatin imploded on Hand’s torso and scattered his body in the hallway.
Sikes grimaced, catching the flavor of vomit rising in his throat and pushing it back down. He reached for a new magazine for the rifle and fired several maximum powered blasts in the Rev’s area.
Two shots sheared a corner of a cabin away. As it did, the metal framing and walls caught the Rev square in the nose, sending him into the opposite bulkhead, smashing his skull and killing him instantly.
“Jesus,” Annabelle said looking around the bloodied hallway, “I think I’m going to puke.”
“Get a hold of yourself, Sergeant,” Sikes said, catching his breath and shouldering his rifle. “We’ve got bigger issues. Hand knew the score. He wasn’t prepared.”
Sikes keyed his voice comm system.
“Bravo team, we’ve had an encounter. We’ve lost Hand. Something strange is going on here,” Sikes said. “Take caution. Give me a status report.”
There was no response.
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