Sean-Michael Argo - Carrion Duty

In the blink of an eye, someone out there in the darkness had reduced the defensive grid by half and grounded most of the ships that were already docked. Two more that were in waiting cut sharply and sped away from the station. Rhett was keenly aware that had this attack come much later it would be the Vulture Six down there in the wreckage.

“Calibos, get your people back to the ship!” ordered Estrada, the sound of his voice prompting Rhett to turn away from the station and towards where Vulture Six hung in the void just above the scrap yard ring.

Rhett and John scampered up the ladder as Doak appeared from the other side of the ship. Once Rhett reached the airlock he opened it and turned to give John a hand. The former trooper pulled the marine up and into the airlock, then he looked down to where Doak appeared at the bottom of the ladder. In the distance, far behind his team member, Rhett could see a looming shape begin to take form, a ship of some kind, and not a small one either.

Doak deactivated his mag-clamps and gathered his legs underneath him before pushing off hard from the hull of the cursed slave ship. He kept his fingers gently riding the edges of the ladder and in the zero gravity environment was able to clear the length of the ladder in seconds. Rhett felt the ring shake as he watched Doak rushing towards him, He could see the flash of some kind of mounted gun on the ship begin to fire. Doak slammed into Rhett’s open arms, slowing the cutter’s momentum with his own body as John slammed the airlock hatch shut and the ring shuddered again with multiple impacts.

“That’s the warship, Fatalis !” breathed Vitrian over the channel as the wicked vessel filled Rhett’s vision through the wide viewports of the yard’s observation deck. The three men rushed across the sealed gangplank that led towards the temporary mooring tube that connected the yard’s circular form to the main hatch of the Six .

Rhett stopped at the hatch, looking out at the station while John keyed in the commands to gain entry. The hatch pressurized and slid open, yet the three of them stood silently as the grim ship launched another fusillade of what Rhett could now see was railgun fire slicing through one of the housing decks. Rhett could see furniture and bodies tumbling out of the rents in the station along with debris from the impact and rapid decompression. The initial cluster of torpedoes had already taken out the handful of defensive batteries maintained by Port Authority, and without a cor-sec frigate on hand to draw fire, the station was at the mercy of the attacking ship.

“Seal us up and strap in people, we’re cutting the cord,” said Captain Estrada. No sooner had the three men closed the airlock behind than the joining seals blew as Vitrian disconnected from the ring.

Doak and John rushed through the bay and deeper into the ship, presumably to find a secure position, as any second now Vulture Six would be screaming through empty space and away from the sudden attack. Rhett started to follow them, then stopped, his gaze falling upon the weapons rack embedded into the launch bay’s wall. Before he realized what he was doing, the former trooper strode to the rack slid his access peg into the slot and turned it, opening the sealed cover of the rack.

Rhett drew down his usual compact assault rifle, slapped in a fresh magazine, and then began filling the empty slots on his chest and thighs with additional magazines.

“Calibos, what are you doing?” said Captain Estrada in the bounty scrapper’s comm-bead, “We’re going full burn, get strapped in!”

“I have to do something, Andromeda is under attack, sir!” spoke Rhett as he clenched and unclenched his hand several times, somewhat involuntarily, before he pulled a semi-automatic sidearm out of the rack and slid it into the holster at his waist.

“The station is done, Calibos, the best thing we can do for ourselves is get clear while the Fatalis is focused on Andromeda,” said the captain, and Rhett could hear it in the man’s voice that it was costing him something to give the order to leave, as Estrada too had taken a liking to their home berth after so many years, “The Six has to come first.”

“You aren’t wrong, sir, you should go, but I have to do this,” said Rhett as he closed the rack and walked briskly over to the control panel that would allow him to enter the airlock and begin his descent towards the station, though as he punched in his activation code he saw that the panel had been locked down remotely from the pilot’s deck.

“One man with a rifle isn’t going to change anything, Calibos,” the captain snapped.

“Captain Estrada, with all due respect, sir, if you do not open the hatch I will shoot the panel and pry it open myself,” growled Rhett after punching in his activation code once more, the blood pounding in his head as he stepped back and raised his rifle to point it at the panel.

“You know I cannot willfully endanger company assets without an open bounty on file, we just closed the slave ship not five minutes ago,” retorted the captain, his usually commanding voice noticeably weary from the exchange. “We have no mandate to protect Andromeda Station, and if I authorize deployment, then as captain I would be in violation of Fleet Profitability Protocol 17. We could lose the Six .”

“Calibos, why risk it?” added Vitrian, his question filling Rhett’s comm-bead as the former trooper looked up to see Quinn enter the launch bay alongside the fully armed and armored forms of Dante and Drago.

Quinn quietly walked over to the control panel, popped off the frame with a swift application of her multi-tool, and began tinkering with the guts of the device.

The twins came to stand on either side of Rhett, neither of them speaking. Rhett had never seen them bedecked with so much firepower, and at first he couldn’t fathom why they would wish to join him on his reckless endeavor, until he noticed the tiny Fenrir logo emblazoned on Drago’s combo-weapon.

They couldn’t care less about the ravagers, he realized, or the station, for the twins it was about the action. It was this infatuation with the tools of the gun trade that made Fenrir cults incompatible with civilized society, and yet time after time Rhett found himself thankful to be in the company of such men, twisted as their worldview might be. As if in answer to Rhett’s silent question Drago turned his face towards the former trooper and smiled as he made a show of tapping the logo with his finger.

“Holt already has the engines cooking, he’ll burn any second now,” said Quinn to the three armored men as she activated the hatch door, looking rather pleased with herself as the doors slid open to reveal the airlock. “If the station falls, this is a one-way trip.”

“ Eros! Dante! Drago! Stand down! ” ordered Captain Estrada through the team channel. “We’re Vultures, there is no anti-piracy commission in our credentials, this will go on all our records! That means a heavier indenture sentence at best. Dante and Drago might even get purged!”

“Understood, Captain,” said Rhett as he and the twins stepped through the door into the airlock. While Quinn sealed the hatch behind them, the former trooper and the former cultists secured their weapons for zero-G deployment.

“ Calibos! ” said the captain once more before the airlock doors threw themselves open at Quinn’s command and the three men launched themselves through it, kicking off hard from the deck and using their body thrusters to add to the slight decompression of the chamber.

The instant the armored men hit void, the pilot of Vulture Six ignited the engine, sending the scrapper vessel rocketing out of its mooring and away from the embattled station. Andromeda Station loomed before Rhett, this rare occasion to see it from the outside giving him temporary pause in consideration of it. The Tardis system had been home for a long time, even when he was in prison, and yet this station, this lonely hunk of metal and atmosphere drifting on the borders of space, had taken root in his psyche.