Sean-Michael Argo - Carrion Duty

Rhett rose to a crouching position and started firing with his pistol, going more by instinct than anything else, certain that the other ravager was pressing the attack. Indeed, Rhett’s feeling was correct, and no sooner had he started squeezing the trigger than the ravager burst through the shower of blood streaming from his comrade and into the tiny restaurant. The ravager was already firing, and several of his needles buried themselves in Tae Mae’s shoulder and chest even though sustained fire from Rhett altered his trajectory. The ravager, now dead from several lethal pistol rounds, careened into the low end of the bar and then began to gently drift.

Rhett rushed to his feet and recovered his rifle. The sounds of battle were loud enough to reach his ears despite the rush of air from the deck decompression. He turned to see Tae Mae still alive, working her way to the back room, presumably to shut herself in. With her re-breather and the heavy shawl, he saw her snatch up to bring with her, Rhett figured she would survive for at least a few hours once the main deck was fully decompressed. The air would keep her breathing, and the shawl would fight the cold for at least a little while. Hopefully, she had a few heat packs stashed somewhere. Not that it would matter if the ravagers torpedoed the station. Rhett shouldered his rifle and left the restaurant.

Rhett walked right into a firefight. The remaining Port Authority cor-sec troopers and a handful of civilians were shooting it out with boarders pouring out from the corridor.

The cor-sec troopers had recovered some modicum of discipline and were firing in tight bursts, doing their best to keep the boarders on the defensive. The civilians were all long-haulers, still wearing their mag-clamps, and though their pistols were small caliber and somewhat inaccurately fired, the added salvos of hard rounds helped keep the boarders from advancing. It wouldn’t last, Rhett knew, in moments the defenders would have to re-load, and that’s when the boarders would rush them on full-auto.

The bounty scrapper flexed his hand over the grip of his rifle and was about to enter the fray when another explosion from above rocked the deck. He glanced upwards and saw that the black mech had slagged another airlock. He was dimly aware of a furious exchange of fire unfolding above the mech as the twins engaged the other intruder, though his attention snapped back to the freshly ruined airlock as a familiar body tumbled out.

Andromeda raked her hands across the corrugated gangplank as she desperately sought purchase. Her fingertips were raw and bloody in seconds as the decompression drug her across the floor. She struggled desperately against it, only to lose her grip and soar upwards. The table girl hurled through the open deck for several meters before she managed to thrust her hands outwards and grip the railing of the next deck. The young woman happened to look down and saw Rhett standing several levels below her. The former trooper knew she recognized him despite his armor and helmet.

“ Bossman! ” she shouted down at him, though in the rush of decompression he could only read the word on her lips, before her fingers slipped and she sailed up towards the ragged hole at the top of the main deck.

The gun fell from Rhett’s hands and would have flown up to join the table girl had it not been strapped to his armor. The scrapper crouched low, gathering his legs underneath him as his awareness of events slowed to near stillness. Rhett deactivated his mag-clamps and launched himself upwards, the power of his legs combining with his body thrusters to propel him with tremendous speed.

Above him Dante and Drago were putting the teachings of the Fenrir gun cults on full display. They had known the feel of the trigger before they could stand, having been born into the cult before it had been purged. The boys knew the names of every weapon manufactured by humanity and recognized its voice when it spoke. Now, as adults, they carried those same weapons they’d been raised to worship. On paper, it was for the profit of Aegis corporation, for them, it was for the glory of the guns themselves. The gun, as they’d told Rhett once, was the only pure thing in this scrapyard of a universe. To the men and women of the cult, there was nothing more honest than a gun fulfilling its purpose.

The black mech that had blown out the airlocks hung in the air at the center of the main deck, its onboard thrusters holding it down against the rush of decompression. The mech spun in a circle as it clumsily attempted to track the twins.

Dante had engaged his mag-clamps and was running along the thin edge of the gangplank, the lack of gravity enabling him to defy the architecture of the station as he sprinted across it to attack his enemy on the horizontal. The cultist’s combo-weapon was on full-auto as he fired down at the mech. His brother, Drago, ran in the opposite direction across the main deck, the two of them punishing the mech with bullets.

Rhett streaked towards Andromeda as she tumbled through the air above him. He narrowly avoided being bisected by a shot from the mech’s plasma lance as he sailed through the firefight in progress. Dante released the trigger just before Rhett sped past them. Drago switched from small arms to a slug thrower and used a well-placed shot to divert the mech’s plasma lance away from Rhett.

As Rhett continued upwards, the mech attempted to adjust its fire by raising one lance towards him as it spewed plasma wildly with its other lance at where Drago had been moments before.

The change in targets proved to be a fatal mistake.

As the mech fired the lance at Rhett’s rapidly ascending form Drago took the opening to launch himself at the war machine. Dante opened fire again, this time having slung his combo-weapon and now brandishing two heavy caliber pistols.

The mech’s pilot was distracted by the potent impacts of the heavy bullets. While not enough to damage the beast, it did prove sufficient to knock out several onboard thrusters and damage the feeder line to its left plasma lance, shutting the weapon down, leaving the mech without any functional firepower.

Heedless of the debris and mechs, Rhett focused only on Andromeda, narrowing the gap between them with blinding speed as his thrusters carried him with the rush of decompression. He passed the other mech warrior as it rushed downwards. The war machine abandoned its destruction of the airlocks, ignored Rhett, and moved to engage the twins.

Andromeda caught sight of Rhett as he sped to her. She turned her body to face him while she opened her arms wide.

The hole was just behind her, and Rhett had no idea what he was going to do once he reached her, only that he had to.

The scrapper slammed into the table girl and they wrapped their arms around each other in a desperate and crushing embrace. They hit void the next instant, and Rhett moved to reverse his body thrusters, hoping with everything he had that they had not fully exhausted their boost capacity.

Drago soared across the open air and engaged his mag-clamps just as he reached the mech, and his boots snapped into place on the beast’s metal shoulders. The cultist slammed his salvage tool into the seam where the cockpit met with armor, his momentum helping wedge the thin tip of the tool into place. He hit the spreader and the power tool whined with effort as it pried open the seam a mere centimeter. With speed born from a lifetime of active worship, the cultist slid a small caliber pistol from its holster and jammed it into the gap. Drago had always preferred the tiny calibers to the larger ones, and thought of them as little wasps that gave a high velocity sting.

The gap in the seam wasn’t enough for the barrel, but it was wide enough for the bullets. Drago kept his hand steady despite the sudden thrashing of the mech warrior, and squeezed the trigger as he let out a steady breath.