Salvage Marines (Necrospace Book 1) Page 13

  The marine had hoped to skirt the edge of the container and work his way around behind the mech-warrior, but as the plasma-lance fired, his world became one of steam and pain. The lance fired its bolt of super-heated plasma at the decking instead of the marine. The incredible heat from the shot had instantly turned hundreds of gallons of standing water and what still poured out of the container, into steam that expanded outwards like an explosion.

  Samuel was knocked off of his feet by a surge of lethal steam that sent him into convulsions of pain. His Reaper environmental suit had kept him alive, even though many of the seams in the armor had been heated sufficiently to burn his skin. The marine blinked through the pain and did his best to scamper the rest of the way around the corner to get one of the massive turbines between him and the mechanized enemy.

  Through the shouts and gunfire he could make out the voice of Lucinda Ulanti and Wynn Marsters in his com-bead shouting orders. He realized that the pinned down squad had used the steam explosion as a cover for maneuvering into a better position. The marines were engaging the mech-warrior from both sides. Now that the enemy was using a plasma-lance, the chance of damaging the turbines was dramatically high.

  Samuel reached into his med-kit and snatched a stimulant vial, slotting it into his hypo and dosing himself into full alertness. He knew he was playing a dangerous game with the drugs, as the stim boost would only last for a few minutes before it began to slow his system down. The shot was designed to keep the victim from going into shock before gently easing them into unconsciousness.

  Samuel got to his feet and began searching for a way to engage the mech. While the small arms fire from the marines would keep it busy, it was doubtful that they would be lucky enough to score a direct hit on the warrior’s weak-points before the war machine was able to inflict significant casualties. It was a miracle that Squad Ulanti was still at full strength. As Samuel took a moment to survey the battlefield, he could see that another squad of salvage marines, from what platoon he couldn’t tell in the gloom, had been killed to the last marine. They must have been the ones to send up the emergency call in the first place.

  In all likelihood, the mech-warrior had fled the battle when the tide took a hard turn against Helion. When the enemy corporate forces had decided to back out of the fight, their various ships, tanks, and speeders had made their exits so swiftly that several pockets of enemy troops and vehicles were left behind by their comrades in the chaos. This mech-warrior was likely engaged against elites and was driven inside the turbine station, though once such a highly prized piece of salvage was in play the elites were pulled away from the engagement to be replaced by Reapers. Samuel gritted his teeth and silently raged at the callous indifference of the administration as he realized that the shift manager, or her superior, had made the decision to send in salvage marines, who carried no anti-armor weapons or demolitions, to engage the mech-warrior that they knew was inside. If management had sent in elites, who were equipped to deal with that class of hostile, then blame for the damaged turbines would fall squarely upon management. However, if the shift manager or her superior followed protocol, even though it flew in the face of real world events on the battlefield, and sent in the salvage marines, then there would be no blame to bear.

  Samuel nodded his head grimly as he realized that management knew that the turbines were unlikely to escape this battle undamaged, but because they followed the rules of engagement their jobs would be secure. The balance sheet might have had a smaller profit margin for the loss of the turbines, but the report would be much cleaner and easier to file seamlessly without the black mark of allocated collateral damage.

  If the salvage marines were sent to deal with the mech-warrior then the damage to the turbines would be written off as standard battle hazard, and all because of the way the conflict would look on the after-action report. Nowhere in any of those calculations would there be the consideration for the lives of the marines who were knowingly marched into that deathtrap by their leaders.

  Imago’s words rattled around inside Samuel’s head as he crept towards the mech-warrior while it exchanged salvos with the marines who were now scattered around the station. It was all about the money, until you were in the fight, and then it was about your comrades, recalled Samuel as he watched his friends fighting hard against a superior foe.

  The lights in the station were on emergency levels only, so much of the station was bathed in a murky darkness, temporarily lit by muzzle flashes and tracer fire as the combatants fought. It was in that moment that Samuel decided to let Grotto’s apparent policy of indifference work for him and his comrades.

  “Tango Platoon, listen up!” Samuel shouted into his com-bead as he crawled up the service ladder of the turbine he’d been hiding behind. “I’m tracking critical turbine damage to Unit 12 and Unit 17 from gunfire, and the whole D Block looks like it might have shorted out after the hydro-container breach.”

  “Prybar, I’m not seeing anything wrong on Unit 17,” responded Boss Ulanti from somewhere in the gloom. “What’s your position? What are you seeing?”

  “I’m above it all, and I see everything,” replied Samuel, his voice taking a low tone of authority that surprised himself and the others, “The turbines are lost, so instead of getting killed trying to protect damaged goods, let’s get this fight over with.”

  “Hyst, our mission is to preserve the turbines and from here I don’t see that any have been damaged!” snapped Boss Ulanti. “You’re stepping out of rank, soldier.”

  “Lucinda, I’m seeing the problem too, Prybar is right, this place is lost,” piped up Boss Marsters from his vantage point at the top of the walkway. “We can use the turbines for cover once they are reclassified as scrap.”

  “I don’t see anything, but it’s your call, Marsters,” snarled Boss Ulanti over the com-bead. “If management wants to hang someone out to dry, it won’t be me.”

  “Copy that, Ulanti,” said Boss Marsters in a flat tone, and then he shouted, “Tango Platoon, you are now officially in a weapons free environment! Take cover when and where you choose. Stay scattered and draw his fire, eventually this guy is going to run out of ammunition, so all we have to do is keep him gunning without getting pasted.”

  Now that they were free to engage the mech-warrior through the turbine columns the salvage marines had much more access to hard cover, in addition to better firing positions.

  Samuel could tell that some of the new recruits from Squad Ulanti had been killed, as they did not join the rest of the marines in the surge forward. Somewhere out there in the darkness were more marine corpses to tally against the value of the turbines, thought Samuel as he fired several rounds down at the mech-warrior.

  For four years now, he had fought and killed for Grotto Corporation, and though he’d always known in the back of his head that all of his actions and decisions carried a certain monetary value, it never really hit home as hard as it did today. It was as if took the battle for the turbine station combined with the Errolite mercenary’s recruitment speech to tear away the last scraps of the illusion he had been living.

  His loyalty was not to Grotto and the Corporation’s loyalty was not to him, it had always been about the money, for both sides. Only now was he seeing clearly that his relationship with Grotto was one-sided, even when it didn’t have to be. He felt powerful in that moment, and it galvanized him to win this fight for himself, and Grotto could gnaw at the scraps.

  The mech-warrior turned and spit rounds at his position after Samuel took a second potshot at the hostile war machine. Samuel held his hands on the ladder and his feet out to the sides so that he could control his rapid descent to the floor. His decision to move had been just in time, as the enemy’s bullets tore a multitude of holes in the turbine and shredded much of the inner column. The mech-warrior’s combat rifle might have seemed like a less than impressive weapon to have mounted on a war machine, but Samuel had to respect it more as he realized the rounds were armor piercing. />
  An explosion rocked the station as the plasma-lance burned through the heating coil of the turbine at Unit 17 and caused a series of secondary explosions. The marines were attacking the mech-warrior on all sides, and the Helion pilot was moving his machine in a continuous, even graceful, series of pirouettes as its mounted guns attempted to track the multitude of targets.

  After a few moments of furious firefighting the mini-gun finally went dry and the plasma-lance sputtered through its final blast. In a matter of perhaps sixty seconds the marines had surrounded the mech-warrior.

  Spencer emerged from the shadows with a “sticky” bomb and hurled it at the war machine. The bomb was a standard fragmentary grenade, as salvage marines were allowed no other type of explosive for fear that they would cause an unprofitable amount of collateral damage if allowed to have more incendiary devices. Spencer and a few of the other marines had started carrying sticks of a wax-like adhesive they used to coat their grenades to make them stick to whatever they were thrown against. The tactics did not work one hundred percent of the time and were not standard kit, but it worked enough that they kept doing it.

  The pilot must have realized that he was about to be overrun and the mech-warrior’s servo-legs groaned as he pushed the war machine into a sprint towards the exit.

  Samuel had been approaching him from that side and realized as the mech-warrior turn towards him that Virginia was between them. Samuel raised his rifle and began pounding the mech’s thick cockpit armor with concentrated fire as he got the pilot’s attention. The war machine rushed past Virginia, who managed to fire a parting shot before hurling herself over the railing and into the shallow sump tank under the turbine.

  Samuel turned to find cover as the mech-warrior opened up with its mounted combat rifle. His senses flared in pain as an armor piercing round drilled through his armor and struck him somewhere in the back. He instantly lost feeling from his chest down and collapsed in a heap. The force of the strike had spun him around and Samuel had landed on his back. He tried to raise his hand to reach for his gun, but found that he could not make it move. Before he could give too much thought to his unresponsive limbs, Spencer’s sticky bomb exploded.

  The frag grenade by itself would have not been enough to crack the mech’s armor, but it had gotten stuck between a shoulder joint and what looked like the mech’s empty ammunition canisters so the force of the blast did the real work. The mech’s right arm was blown off, in addition to the ammunition canister, and the entire war-machine went crashing to the ground.

  Samuel couldn’t move his head, but from his vantage point he could see that the mech’s pilot had been turned into something unrecognizable by the concussion of the blast inside the cockpit.

  Samuel felt the darkness of unconsciousness start to slide over him, and he would have moved to inject himself with another stim hypo if he could only have moved his hands.

  His mind wandered, moving from one moment in his life to the other, as if he was watching critical times in his life on playback, and he knew his life was coming to an end. In medic training they’d taught him about how the mind cycled through faded memories at the moment before expiration, as if searching for any last scrap of knowledge to aide in surviving.

  Samuel found himself imagining his wife, standing before a beautiful house in a dark forest, the daydream they’d shared so many times since he became a Reaper. It was a pleasant fantasy, he thought as he felt himself finally slipping beneath the waves.

  The gloom swallowed him and Samuel Hyst lay still as blood pooled underneath him.

  UNTIL THAT DAY

  A Note from the Author

  Thank you for taking this grim adventure alongside the Reapers of Grotto Corporation. Though this was a hard end to a hard tale, this story is far from over. Forces align against one another in the depths of space and behind the closed doors of corporate boardrooms.

  Stay alert for the next installment of the Necrospace series, where the journey will continue for some, and end for others.

  This is the job.