Chapter Twenty Four Alexis

Alexis wakes up in a gut wrenching panic with Vaun shouting over the headset and the tilt-jet plummeting out of the sky. For as long as they are dropping out of the sky, she can’t fathom how they haven’t crashed yet. When she peers through the front cockpit window, all she can see is a darkish blue, but it doesn’t look like the sky. Slowly, Don levels out their decent and brings the Jet down to a slow circling hover.

Vaun unbuckles his seat harness and scrambles to the back of the jet. “Get your asses unstrapped and ready to jump. Don can’t keep circling, we gotta go!” He points to the back of the jet and yanks on one of the red nylon straps on the ceiling, showing them where to hold onto when they get up.

The light pouring in from the rear door when it opens is almost blinding. She was expecting it to still be dark out. It doesn’t make any sense. Once the door is all the way open, she spots the shuttle way down below them, panic surges through every nerve in her body. Vaun said they were going to jump, and they are still a long ways up. She can see nothing but water all the way around from horizon to horizon as they come around again.

She’s never even seen a lake before, let alone anything like this. The thought of the ocean scares the hell out of her and she’s already hyperventilating again. The only time she’s ever even swam was when Aaron taught her how to last week. She should not have told him she knew how. Vaun gives her and Mikel a stern look for a full ten seconds, knowing they’re scared. He isn’t going to give them more than that moment alone to buck up either. They can see it all in his eyes. They are SSS guards, and they’d better perform like it.

Vaun tugs on the red strap on his chest, reminding them where their safety devices are. “Remember, do NOT deploy your ascent bags until you have already plunged UNDER the water. If you pop them when you land, you WILL drown.” He looks at Mikel and rigidly points out the back of the jet. “Go!”

Vaun’s yell sends Mikel scurrying down the ramp. He doesn’t even slow to look over the edge first, and just disappears over the edge. She feels like she might be peeing herself right now, but her fight-or-flight response is sending her down the ramp in a panic nonetheless. She promised to have Mikel’s back and she can’t let him down now. Her throat is constricted and she can’t even get out a scream when she leaps out of the back.

Mikel is still falling through the air below her when she spots him again. She can feel the thunder of the jet above her, and even the heat of its engines. She has never passed out before, but she’s damn close to it. She can almost count the seconds between when Mikel hits the water and when she does. Her arms and legs are flailing in the air like she’s trying to climb back up through the air. At the last second, she seems to completely freeze. The dark blue below rushes at her and abruptly hits her like a dump truck on the highway.

When she plunges deep into the water, she completely loses sight of Mikel. He was just there, and now he isn’t. The sting of the saltwater makes her squeeze her eyes shut, but she forces them open again because she has to. At the sound of something under the water, she looks and spots Mikel’s yellow inflation bag expanding under the water and pulling him up. It reminds her to yank on her own pull cord.

As she rapidly sinks, the pain in her ears tells her she needs to equalize, Like Aaron had showed her, but she’s got to pull the red cord. She drags her hands across her chest armor till she finds it. When her system inflates, it immediately starts lifting her back up. The relief of it is incredible. With as much gear and armor as he has on, she didn’t have a chance in hell. While she holds her breath, she peers up at the light above her, and waits to reach it. Somehow, the shimmer of the light off the ripples above her help her collect herself.

Before she even gets to the surface, she hears the loud crash of Vaun and the two big bags of equipment he packed hitting the water close behind her. When she pops up above the surface, she finds Mikel hugging his flotation device and paddling backwards toward the shuttle. He doesn’t let his eyes leave her the whole time while she kicks after him. She doesn’t look back at Vaun, but she can hear him gaining on her, even with the heavy gear in tow behind him. The sound of his breathing alone sounds deliberate and focused. He’s a killer in space, air, land, and sea.

When the three of them reach the shuttle, there are four men and a woman in white jumpsuits standing out on one of its wings, watching them. The ship is far more massive than any of theirs back at base, by more than twice over. From up high, a big robotic arm reaches from out of the rear bay of the shuttle, being controlled by the woman holding the control pendant. One at a time, it picks them up out of the water, like they soggy cats, and sets them down on the wing. The others are already carrying-on about how some crazy robot had tried to climb onto their ship, forcing them into a dangerous high speed reentry. Vaun quickly cuts them off.

“This is why you deal with shit before it becomes a problem!” He’s getting madder by the second. “Who’s making these things huh? Was everyone else just gonna let this shit go on cause it’s none of our business? I hope you’re fukin happy! You know this is going down under our emergency rate right?”

The shuttle crew stands there looking at the three of them blankly. The lady controlling the robot arm continues to pick their two bags of gear out of the water, trying to remove herself from the lashing Vaun is about to give them. They all look at him as if this really all did come out of the blue and surprise them. She can’t tell if they’re playing dumb or what.

The guy with a blue shoulder path, one that the others aren’t wearing, puts his hands on his hips. “We were only hauling food this time, and why’n the hell would they attack us on the way back? No one should be attacking anyone!”

Vaun explains it to him as if to a child. “How much is this shuttle worth?”

“A billion or so, I suppose.”

“And how much to get it up there? Hmmm?” Yeah. And yet you guys still don’t carry any weapons.”

The captain retorts with a pretty good point. “You guys are the ones who started all this shit to begin with! We wouldn’t have this lawless shit show at all if it weren’t for all your stunts.”

Vaun has nothing to say about that. He turns to her and Mikel and points down to his feet at the shuttle. His voice is low this time. “You hear that. This shit’s worth a billion, We need to lock this shit down tight, like right now.”

She can’t even comprehend a billion, but that’s not what has her in such awe. She’s wondering how she’s remained so unaware of things like the ship she happens to be standing on. The wing alone is the size of their own shuttles. The thing has to be over one hundred fifty feet long, and the bulky wing they’re all so casually standing on is probably fifty feet wide alone. She didn’t know they were only playing with toy shuttles back at home. That’s what it makes her feel like.

The ship is quite beautiful compared to theirs too. Its smooth contoured body is all white, while some parts of it are smooth bare metal of some kind. With it being empty, the thing seems to float fairly well the way it is in the water. The waves only wash up onto the fat wings a little now and then. From the faint green scum residue on the back end of the ship, it looks like they must’ve used the engines to land vertically in the water. It had to have been insane.

Vaun begins to feel that this is not the situation he should’ve chosen to break in the newbies with. It is not that he doesn’t trust them with handling themselves, it’s just that there is a great deal more at stake than he’s comfortable with only the three of them handling. There’s nothing to be done about it now though. Within the hour, they’ll be finding out if they’re in over their heads or not.

He feels for the handle of his dagger hanging in its sheath on his chest, trying to shake off his own nervousness. Life at SSS has become too easy lately. Back in the day, every job used to feel like this. He, Sy, and Don were always getting in over their heads. The pressure to live up to their flagrant boasts is what used to drive them so fearlessly. Now, he feels complacent. He tries to convince himself that three SSS guards are more than enough. They’re the most badass gunslingers out there, ten to one.

While the astronauts update Vaun on the new satellite images they have of the approaching ship, Mikel hefts the two big bags of gear down into the cargo hold of the shuttle. As soon as he has it out of the bag, he opens up the bipod on his rifle and props it over the edge in the direction of the incoming ship. Apparently it’s big enough to haul off with their shuttle, so it must be pretty damn big.

When everyone else starts climbing into the open cargo bay, she hangs back a minute to look out around the horizon again. The rocking of the waves and the water washing up onto the wings makes her start to feel sick again, so she takes another one of the tablets Vaun gave her on the flight.

The cargo hold of the shuttle isn’t anything like what she was expecting. It’s rather barren, except for a bunch of mounting rails and the robot arm all folded up towards the front. It’s big enough to park a bus inside of though. When she looks closely at the ribbed structure of the hull, she recognizes some of the same machining marks as on the parts that Marek made for Monster. She shakes her head in disbelief that the whole thing has been cut from so much metal. After they all gather around, Vaun gives them the gist of the plan.

“Alright, so, if these people intend to cease this spaceship, they likely won’t be inclined to shoot it full of holes first. The three of us will hunker down here in the back and use it for cover. If we do happen to take fire, these folded main doors should be able to at least handle some small arms fire.”

One of the astronauts raises his hand. “Um, whattaya want us do?”

“You lock yourselves in the cab. I suggest you get ready to handle gunshot wounds. I’ve got all the stuff in this bag here. Do not open the door unless we give you the secret word.”

“What’s the secret word?”

“Uh… puppy. How’s that?”

By about the time their nerves start to calm down a little bit, a dark spot appears out on the horizon. It’s moving quickly, especially for a ship its size. Within another twenty minutes, it’s coming up on them. As soon as they get a good look at it, there’s no doubt it’s going to be causing them a whole lot of trouble. It’s an old unmarked military vessel, painted in angular patches of varying grey. It’s too old to be in current use by any of the nearby governments, but it looks to still be in pretty good order. Its crew clearly aren’t some random pack of shitbag pirates.

Vaun pumps a couple rifle rounds into the side of its control tower and hollers for them to “back it the fuck off!” When there’s no response, he unrolls a big blood-red flag down over the edge of the bay door so they can see it. It bares the three big black lightning S’s on it. It’s has the same meaning as the hourglass on the bottom of a black widow. Turn around and forget about it.

The barrel of a stern gun angles down at them but does not fire. Vaun was right. It’d devalue the ship about a million dollars a bullet if they do anything stupid. The ship eventually circles all the way around them and then floats right up next to the shuttle, not twenty feet away. They can all see the tops of people’s heads over the edge of the port hull as they run down the length of the ship. Vaun slips his ballistic face mask down over his face and shoulders his rifle. They’re in the shit now.

As soon as she has her mask down, she notices some cables on the big stern crane starting to move a little bit. Suddenly, someone with a short barreled rifle leaps over the edge of the ship, swings around on one of the cables out over the wing of the shuttle. Without even thinking, she blasts them right out of the air with a rapid burst from her rifle. Her headset automatically deafens the sharp cracks from the muzzle, but everyone else on the other ship ducks for cover. The kick of the rifle takes her by surprise, and almost off balance. It’s been a little while.

With the breeze against them, the fine cloud of pink in the air where the man had swung out on the rope, drifts down to them. Tiny spots of ruby red sprinkle the lenses on their masks. There’s only a gargled grunt from the man when his body slams down out onto the wet end of the wing. They aren’t dead yet, but they’re racked in pain from the extensive tissue damage. She watches as his fingers clutch at the smooth wet surface of the wing when a small wave washes up and pushes him over the edge. The rich watery blood on the pristine white wing makes for quite a shocking spectacle.

The shock of it has her heart beating like hell. She can feel it against the tight armor on her chest. “Oh geezus fuck! Was I supposed to shoot yet?”

The whites of Vaun’s eyes are still visible through his mask. “Ha ha, oh yeah. You smoked his ass!”

Mikel is super excited too. “Nice shot Alexis! Damn, I just about shit my pants! I can’t believe you got him in the air like that!”

Vaun is moving his rifle around erratically now, pointing it everywhere. “Keep your eyes open, I don’t think they’re gonna pull that amateur shit again. They probably did something while that idiot was distracting us. These guys are from the Lion’s group. They’re contractors, like us. You see that gold lion patch he had on his chest?”

All it took was one glimpse of the man for Vaun to know who these guys are. The one Alexis shot had decent body armor on. It wasn’t cheap, but it was light, and no match for their standard rifle. No one but the three of them would be wearing heavy plates on the water like this.

“These guys are basically our mortal enemies. They’ve been trying to even the score ever since the Moon. Trust me when I say they won’t be taking any prisoners.” He looks up and down at her. Well, they might try’n take you.”

She tilts her face mask back and yells across at the ship. “Fuck you, you bottom feeder nutsacks!”

There’s a short moment of inactivity, then all three of their combat coms activate. Sy and Clarice are on the line, watching in on their video feeds. Sy tells them what’s going on.

“It’s those two jack-holes, Cris and Gerald! Looks like they went and joined the effing Lions Group. I’ve got em on the other line here in the office. They’re dribbling this shit that their crew will spare your lives if you give up the ship right now. He says it’s a generous offer, cause we’re friends, and it’s the only one we’ll get.”

“What? Were they pulling your dick? Those guys are morons, and they’ve always hated us. Fukin traitors to their own country, is what they are!”

“Gerald heard you, he says they’ve got forty men aboard and that the three of you small-timers won’t make it through the first five minutes. Whatta ya want me to tell him?”

“I already put the damn flag out. Tell em what we always say.”

Sy sighs into the phone before he breaks it to Gerald. “I’m terribly sorry for your losses. I hope you and Cris don’t take it too personally.”

Gerald is confused. “What the hell are you talking about? Are you gonna surrender or get your asses kicked?”

Sy responds in a monotone voice. “We’re going to kill all of you.” He hangs up on Gerald, but keeps on the call with Vaun. “You heard him. You’ve got forty of them to go.”

She beats Vaun to it. “It’s only thirty nine now.” Then it sinks in how many thirty nine armed guards really is.

After about another long minute of silence, the three of them start to get a bit more nervous. If they’ve waited this long, the other guards must be doing something they haven’t considered. The three of them keep real quiet, listening for anything they can. The tall angled bow of the big ship slips over top of the wing as it bumps into the shuttle. At the same time they hear the outboard motors of two fast attack boats coming around the other side.

Without much of a choice, they keep their rifles trained on the bow, waiting for a dozen barrels to suddenly point down at them all at once. Their eyes almost pop out of their heads when the trampling sound of boots coming up both wings. Vaun keeps his rifle trained up high, leaving her and Mikel to take the wings.

Before any of them can react, the first of the Lions guards in black and gold comes running in across the top of the fuselage from the back of the shuttle. As fast as they can work their pump shotgun, they unload a good four rounds of buckshot at the three of them. They all take hits, but their armor does its job.

Vaun places three rapid shots in the man, exploding his hip, chest and skull. Before the man even splats down into the bottom of the cargo hold, two more are already trying to climb in over the bay doors. Suddenly, there are hands and boots reaching over everywhere all around them. Vaun yells for them to hold their ends of the shuttle. There’s a good twenty feet between each of them. She is at the front, Mikel is in the middle, while Vaun runs all the way to the back. It’s a lot to cover. She flinches at the sound of two more shots behind her. When she looks, two more bodies land at Mikel’s feet from off the bow over his head.

Two more men manage to climb up over the cockpit of the shuttle and are sprinting in on her. As she blows half the first guy’s head off, the second one leaps through the air down onto her. The last glimpse she catches of Mikel is of him unloading wildly into two guys while a third from behind him points a shotgun into his back and shoots. Seeing it happen so suddenly feels like being kicked in the guts. She was supposed to be there for him. Insane amounts of gunfire is erupting everywhere.

When she’s slammed to the floor, she abandons her overly heavy rifle, immediately spins around onto her back, and goes for her sidearm. In pure reaction, she unloads round after round at the dark silhouettes all around her, nearly blotting them out with fiery muzzle flashes. She only stops when her first magazine is empty. A good three black garbed men have fallen backwards against the cockpit door, smearing it with blood. The others are folded up in the corners.

As soon as she has her second magazine loaded, another shadow crosses her vision overhead. Still on her back, she jerks her arms overhead and fires on pure instinct. Someone yells in pain when the round hits them. That’s when she gets kicked in the head real hard. Her mask gets thrown off, and then she’s slammed against the inside wall.

This isn’t the first time this has happened to her. She’s ready for the next kick when it comes. The instant she catches the man’s boot under her arm, she has her dagger already in the other hand. She rams it in under his thigh until the tip of it pokes out through the top. The man yelps more in surprised shock than in pain, until she cranks back on the handle out of spite, then he really screams.

Someone else comes up from behind and grabs ahold of the back of her armor, trying to tear her away from who she’s stabbing, but she keeps a firm hold on him. They have her in a bad spot, and they think they’ve got her now. The man behind her shouts something that really gets her hackles up. She can’t understand the language, but she knows damn well what they said. She can tell by the boisterous inflection in his voice. “We’ve got some pussy over here boys” is what they said.

There’s something familiar about the man’s voice too, about his accent. It draws up the worst hurt from inside of her, the kind of dark hate too deep to ever burry. It feels like the foundational crack, in the cornerstone of her very soul, lets loose of a long-held poisoned breath. It unleashes the most fetid hate locked within it her. Her body catches fire with all of the heat of rage now pouring off of her.

In a yell like she’s never made in all her life, she pulls the dagger out of the man’s leg, sideways, opening the flesh up wide enough to see a flash of white bone inside. Nearly missing her own face she jabs it straight back over her shoulder, plunging it through one of the hands grabbing ahold of her armor. She feels the point of it gouge across one of the plates on her back.

Both of her guns are on the deck, and yet another ugly faced skinny man has already jumped in alongside the others. He isn’t stupid enough to try taking her alive like the others though. His small beady black eyes look like they are only pupils. As she spins around and lunges for him like a cornered dog, he dumps two slugs into her chest plate. He should’ve shot her in the face, because it was the only chance he ever had.

She slams into him with the absolutely furious full extent of her strength. The dagger in her right hand goes in under his armpit and pokes out through the top of his shoulder, while she grabs the other side of his vest in her other hand. He can only get out a squeal while she hauls him up off his feet and over on top of the other guy who’s leg is pumping syrupy dark blood everywhere. Her teeth are clenched tight enough to cut steel cable, and the breathy growl coming from her throat has them all wide-eyed.

With the two Lions guards wailing and falling over themselves, she back-rolls to her rifle on the deck and puts its buttstock right into her hip firing it with a knee still on the deck. Round after round “Boom-Boom-Boom” she paints the walls with both of them and the next guy dropping in too. With her headset and everything knocked off, the thunderous sound of the shots nearly stun her. All the other Lions guards that have been trying to rush in while she was being attacked have left themselves with their asses literally in the wind. She blasts them in the backs as they try to leap away off the top of the shuttle in retreat.

Behind her, Mikel is miraculously still alive. She doesn’t understand how, but he’s right there in front of her eyes. He’s a good foot taller than the man he has ahold of, and is repeatedly slamming them against the wall with a forearm to their throat. When the man relents and falls back against the wall, Mikel rifle butts him in the teeth with every ounce of panicked aggression he can put behind the weight of his standard rife. As the guard’s head is smashed sideways against the wall, his eyes lock with hers for the very last second of his life. She feels nothing but contempt for him.

The gore flying everywhere, and pooling in the recesses of the floor doesn’t even reach her consciousness yet. All of her other feelings of fear, panic, and shock are being consumed in the flames of anger. At the back of the ship, she watches a dagger rising and plunging down a good ten times while Vaun wrestles his rifle back out of the arms of the last surviving attacker. They’re screaming god-awful pleas of agony and fright as he destroys them in every way. It makes her almost hurl.

The movement all around her suddenly drops to a halt, and there’s no longer a sound left but the soft sloshing of the waves against the shuttle. When she spots her pistol on the deck, she snatches it back up as fast as she can, feeling like it might count against her if Vaun sees that she had lost it. There are heaps of bodies throughout the cargo bay, more than twenty of them for sure. While she stands there dazed, Mikel and Vaun brazenly swing their rifles over the edge of the doors, searching for anyone left to splatter all over the place. She feels like a hundred fifty pound bear trap, ready to chomp down on something, but the two of them are no less angry than prodded fighting dogs in a cage.

With no one left in sight, Mikel takes a knee and tries to work his fingers in under the bottom of his armor above his waist where he got shot point blank. “Oh my fuck.” He doesn’t come across any blood on his fingers, but when he pulls the waist of his pants down an inch, she can’t see any skin that hasn’t started turning all kinds of colors. He takes in a deep breath and holds it. “I’m pretty sure I’ve got a broken rib.”

She looks down at the dead guard who’s yellow teeth are scattered about in a quarter inch deep bath of blood on the floor, before responding to him. “Man, that sucks.”

Mikel picks his big light-gas gun up off the floor, lets some blood run off of it, and stands it up on his thigh. The optics don’t look like they’ve been damaged. “I aint wait’n round for more’a this horseshit.”

He breaks open the rear breach on the gun and chambers one of the foot-long gas cartridges into the back of the barrel. He groans and looks like he can barely lift the gun when he stands back up. There’s a pause while he slowly takes in another breath, but when he’s ready, he drops the body of the gun over the edge of the cargo bay looks through the optics, and pulls the trigger all in one motion. The ship has drifted back a ways, and is broad side with them now. He aims it at the rear of the ship, where the engine should be, and touches it off.

The insane blast sends both her and Vaun to their knees. They didn’t know he was going to shoot it right away like that. Neither of them have heard it go off before and were definitely not ready. When they stand back up to witness the catastrophic damage, they look back at Mikel with confused faces. He’s writhing on the deck, all the way back against the wall.

She rushes over to him. “Holy shit! What happened?”

All he can get out is “Effing got-damn shit…” he takes another labored breath. “I shouldn’a done that.”

Vaun looks out at the ship, to the rifle hanging off the edge of the bay door, and then to Mikel. He’s not bleeding, and the gun doesn’t look like it exploded. “You couldn’t have missed a goddamn ship from this close!”

“Did it work, did you break it, is your gun broken?”

Mikel holds up a finger. “Wait for it...”

As they pause to listen, quiet muffled screaming and shouting to starts coming from the ship. When they cautiously look over the edge at the ship, a little bit of smoke starts to pour out of the back of it, and then a lot. In a matter of minutes, the smoke is followed by fire. When a fireball erupts over the back of the boat, launching a big deck panel into the water, all hell breaks loose again. A few men with guns, one of them on fire, immediately start jumping overboard. Vaun tries to shoot at them in the water, but someone gets to the big gun on the stern and starts unloading at them.

A good fifty rounds zing over their heads, and even a couple end up going through both sides of the shuttle’s cargo doors. That really pisses Vaun off. The gunfire stops when someone on the other ship berates the gunman in another language. The space ship is clearly worth more to them than all their lives. Vaun takes the opportunity to answer back with their other big gun, what they call the flack cannon. He hefts the glorious thirty millimeter shotgun up and thonks it over the edge of the bay door.

Like Mikel, he doesn’t wait a single second to start unloading it. She and Mikel are lucky enough to have already clapped their hands over their ears this time. Between each heavy blast, they can hear the hard steel rods impacting the shield on the enemy’s gun. It sounds like scrap metal being dropped into rail cars.

The first two rounds buck Vaun back hard, raising the barrel up off the door. He hadn’t braced himself well enough, but he keeps pulling the trigger anyway. He can hardly hold onto the damn thing as it kicks the shit out of him. The huge blasts coming out of the muzzle break beat down on her, making her drop to the floor and curl away again. After the last shell is spent, Vaun ends up all the way against the other wall alongside Mikel.

“Ow damn. That was stupid.”

Mikel glares and shouts up at him as if he might be deaf now. “You happy now? I think you maybe hit em this time!”

Vaun shouts back, very likely deaf this time. “I don’t know! I got a whole bunch of shit!”

She pokes her head up real quick to see what happened. There are gouges, corners ripped open, and holes all over the stern cannon, hull, and bridge of the ship. The stern gun is now pointing up into the sky while a shredded body is hanging off the back of it. The dark splatter all over the side of the bridge is answer enough.

“Yeah…. Yeah, he got em.”

Vaun gets back up with his standard rifle shouldered again, and quickly scans over the edge once more before dropping back down. “I don’t see anyone. There’s no one on the wings or anything. No one alive at least.” He pinches the bridge of his nose. “Alexis, did you happen to shoot a guy right in the ass?”

She cringes at the thought of what it must look like. “Maybe?”

He sighs in disgust, having seen something he did not want to. “Looks like a huge… pitted cherry.”

Mikel almost retches. “Awww, come on you guys. No.”

She can’t help but chuckle. “Sorry. You think they’re mostly dead, or just hiding now?” She thinks for a second, and then her eyes get big. “Hey, what about the guys that jumped overboard?”

While Vaun angrily grumbles to himself, more shouting starts to pick up aboard the other ship. She quickly points her pistol over the other side, to see if anyone is trying to climb back onto the attack boats, but there’s no one anywhere. When she hears a “thunk” on the floor behind herself, she turns back to find that Vaun has dropped his armor and is stripping down to nothing but his underwear and chest rig.

He reaches out to her and unclips both of the high explosive grenades off the middle of her vest. “Alright, you guys cover me when I go over.”

He winds the time dial on one of them almost all the way around and then hucks it high into the air over the burning ship. It clanks on the metal deck abut doesn’t go off immediately. When it does explode, they jump up and start taking random shots over the edge of the boat while Vaun leaps over the bay doors on the other side and slides down the fuselage into the water.

In less than a minute, they hear a man scream all the way at the back of the shuttle, and then another. By the time Vaun is done checking over the entire shuttle, he’s killed another four of them.

Suddenly, their combat coms light up again. It’s Vaun, and he’s still in the water. “Ok, the shuttle is clean. Found em hanging off the engines. I’m gonna go n clean up the rest of em on the ship. Watch for anyone bailing off again, and don’t shoot me damnit. Place your shots.”

Shortly after Vaun climbs up the rope still hanging over the side of the ship, and disappears over the edge, there’s some strained screaming, yelling, and then gunshots. Both of them more than easily recognize the deliberate single shots from his pistol. While it’s only the two of them in the back of the shuttle now, she confesses that she though Mikel was a goner.

“I’m so sorry I couldn’t help you. I saw that guy shoot you in the back like that, and I thought it was over.”

“You saw that? Shit, I thought I’d totally failed you when I saw you get kicked in the head when they took you down. There was like three guys kicking the shit outta you. I couldn’t do a damn thing. It was fucking horrible. There was like four guys between you and me. I don’t know how the hell you pulled out of that.”

When a group of men race along the length of the ship towards the bow, where Vaun is, she and Mikel pick them off with easy headshots. She shakes her head, thinking about it. “We got lucky, that’s how.”

He squints his eyes for a second. “I reeely hope we have this kind of luck the next time. We’re gonna need it.”

When another huge explosion blows all the windows out of the bridge, She calls for Vaun on his combat com. His video feed comes up, and looks down at her for a second, but doesn’t answer. She and Mikel watch as his eyes suddenly look up with crazy eyes at something and then the feed spins all over the place. When it finally pauses again, they can see the bloody face of another man right up against the screen. The view from his wrist is grizzly. The man’s dark sweaty face is grimacing in pain and his yellow eyes look like they’re going to pop right out of his face. Each time Vaun patiently stabs the man, the look on his face becomes even more hopeless. It’s hard to watch.

There are shouts in the background somewhere near him. “He’s got a knife!”

As the man’s eyes start to stare off into death, muzzle flashes light up the narrow hallway Vaun is inside of. They watch everything in view swing wildly again as he changes magazines and continues to advance through the ship’s corridors. The floors are all slick with trails and boot prints of blood. When there’s nowhere but smoke and fire left to turn to, Vaun turns around starts working his way back up top.

After what feels like an hour, Vaun finally waves his hand up high over the hull at them, and climbs back over the edge of the ship. On his way down the rope, he sticks what looks like another high explosive grenade to the side of the hull on the waterline and then drops back into the water. They watch his white feet under the water as he swims back to the shuttle. It’s a good hundred feet back to the shuttle now, but he’s in a much bigger hurry to get back out of the water when he pulls himself up onto the wing.

“We’ve got sharks. A lot of em. I think everyone’s dead, but I can’t’ be sure. I never saw Cris or Gerald. I don’t think they were ever even on the ship. It wouldn’t have been so easy if they were. By my count, there’s a few still unaccounted for, but I don’t know. Keep your rifles up just in case. I’m gonna start getting rid of all the evidence.”

With his standard rifle, Vaun shoots the detonator on the grenade he stuck to the ship in just the right spot to set it off. The huge explosion blows up a plume of white water and makes a good sized tear in the side of the hull Water starts rushing into it like crazy.

Mikel stands there with his mouth open. “Why the hell didn’t we do that to start with?”

“Well, bring a bazooka next time. I haven’t done much of this stupid pirate shit. We did what we could.”

Vaun updates Sy and Don on how things ended. After what they’ve done, they suspect the Lions Group might be keen to blowing the shuttle out of the water out of spite now. If they can’t have it, they probably won’t let anyone else either. The thought of it puts them all on edge. If they have an aircraft anything like the tilt-jet, they could all be dead within a half hour.

Don is all refueled and ready in case anyone does come for them, but all he’d be able to do is pick them up, or try to scare the other aircraft off. With their reputation, no one would probably be stupid enough to risk facing it. The Lions Group just lost an entire ship, and they probably don’t want to lose anything else on top of it. Hopefully no one will end up launching a missile at them. They still have days to wait till their ship can reach them.

After about a half hour of keeping an eye on the sinking ship, they remember that there’s still four astronauts hiding in the front of the shuttle. The window on the cockpit door is all red, and they won’t have been able to see out of it since pretty much the beginning. She’s more than happy to say “puppy” to get them to open up. After stripping and looting what they want off the bodies in the cargo hold, they have the woman with the remote control dump them into the ocean with the big robot arm.

They Over the next four hours, they all watch the old warship slowly and finally sink under the dark red water surrounding it. Every once in a while there’s a splash of water from something big pulling another body down to devour it. They only keep one of the attack boats, in case they need to race off, or the shuttle decides to start sinking. Absolutely everything else is scuttled. They’ve got a long haul ahead of them while they wait for the barge to get to them, so they settle down and get some rest while the shuttle crew keeps an eye on the satellite.

When the sun sets, Vaun remembers something and digs around in one of their big bags of supplies. When he finds what he’s looking for, he brings two small pouches over to her and Mikel and has them hold their hands out. He gives both of them veteran patches to put on their armor and a little red x for every life they took. She looks at the handful of them blankly. She doesn’t feel one bit bad about any of it either. Maybe she really is home.