‘Confirmed. Yes confirmed.’ The Hanni skittered backwards and took over a terminal.
‘Captain, take cover,’ Solace said, positioning herself in front of the main door. ‘Behind me and Timo, please.’
Rollo, who’d obviously had dreams of leading the charge, backed off reluctantly.
‘Got it,’ Olli said. ‘Door’s open.’ Then the gravity in the corridor shut off.
Someone had tried to get clever with the gravitic drive, Solace realized. A ship’s artificial grav was only a specialized function of its engine, after all. Thankfully, this was what she trained for, and none of the spacers would be strangers to it either. The hijackers might just have shot themselves in the foot.
Even as she thought it, the door hissed open to reveal a welcoming party on the other side. Their boots were clamped to the floor and they probably expected to see a group of intruders in helpless freefall. What they did do right was start shooting even as the door came up.
Three projectiles struck Solace. She felt the momentum of their impact even through the complex plastics of her combat armour. Boots fixed in place, she swayed backwards – bending at the knee to absorb the muted energy of the strikes, one hand back to push herself away from the floor.
Three hostiles, two humans and a Hanni. She was already aiming Mr Punch one-handed, because she had a strong wrist and suddenly the weight of the weapon wasn’t an issue. Of course what she hadn’t factored into the situation was that she wasn’t leading a squad of trained soldiers, who knew not to get in each other’s fields of fire.
Olli’s Scorpion rushed past her on the ceiling, taking up almost all the space, saw-edged tail whipping left and right. One ratcheting limb rapped Solace’s helm on the way through, slamming her back against the floor. She heard another two shots from the hijackers before the remote specialist reached them. Abruptly the air was full of blood, a thousand little pellets of it, each accelerating away from the man Olli had just torn into. Solace charged up her faceplate, repelling the droplets so they spun away in every direction. The other human hijacker had a leg pinned by one of the Scorpion’s heavy work limbs – it looked more broken than trapped, but he also had his gun against the clear plastic of Olli’s capsule. Solace snapped off a single shot from Mr Punch, puncturing his temple and the wall behind him. Hope there wasn’t anything essential there. The Harvest’s Hanni was retreating, sending out a wild spray of bullets from the gun clutched in its mandibles. The recoil sent the creature spinning backwards in freefall, but at the far end of the corridor, it caught itself against the wall with four or five legs and started aiming properly.
Olli was right after it, apparently believing her Scorpion frame was entirely bulletproof. When she was just halfway, a lance of fire lashed across her, severing one of the frame’s legs entirely.
The Castigar was there, the big wormlike one with the weapons-mount hood – the one that had killed Medvig. Solace put a couple of pellets through it, but Castigar tissue was dense and unspecialized. Unlike humans, they lacked discrete vital organs; accelerators weren’t a good weapon against them. She settled for drilling her next three shots through the Hanni, sending its body spinning disjointedly into the top corner of the room.
The Castigar’s weapons hood swung towards her and she braced herself for significant suit damage. Olli was on it in the next second, the loss of one leg barely an inconvenience. There was a great blackened furrow across the Scorpion’s back, but she must have routed around the damage. She grappled fiercely with the alien, trying to bring her cutting arms and tail to bear, even as it wrapped its twisting length around the Scorpion and fought to aim its down weapons.
‘Go get the others, I’ve got this fucker!’ Olli shouted, even as Rollo let out a roar of fury. Solace looked up to see a suited figure sticking its head out to see what the hell was going on. The suit was one of the Vulture’s but the face inside the helmet was none other than Mesmon the Tothiat’s. Then he shut the door between them, abandoning his fellows.
Rollo was already after him, yelling at Kit to get the door open. ‘No—！’ Solace shouted; they needed to give Olli backup. Between him and Olli, though, the captain needed her most. Solace cursed all civilians in war zones and ran after him.
Once through the door, the sudden space of the drone bay caught her by surprise. She wasn’t as familiar with the Vulture’s layout as its crew. Rollo had dived behind a tangle of pipes and was shooting at a handful of suited figures entering through the ship’s remotes hatch. It was connected to the Oumaru, Solace realized; this was their salvage party hurrying back on board the Vulture. She sent a scatter of shot in that direction, pure intimidation rather than a determined attempt to kill anyone. In response three heavy impacts struck her like fists, lifting her from her feet and sending her cartwheeling across the bay into the wall. Rollo returned fire, though one of the pipes he’d been sheltering behind was now a jagged-edged stump.