A/N: ShadowCub: He's still alive isn't he? ;)
SciFiFan96: Done!
I stay up on the deck with the LT for a while. I like the man, believe it or not, I met lots of incompetent officers in the COG, people who'd achieved rank through personal wealth and connections, like my first Sergeant, but the Lieutenant isn't one of those, he's a grunt who crawled out of the Pendulum war broken and confused, went back to school and took his fate in hand.
I have college tuition, Social Studies and Philosophy, in case you hadn't noticed yet, and that makes me pretty fucking smart for a Gear, but I still feel like an idiot compared to Lieutenant Jack Alphonse Turner.
He never went to college, never needed the hand holding, he went straight to the Ephyra Officer's Academy, took tests even I would fail lamentably and got himself enough schooling to make General.
Of course, you don't make General in the COG without some serious connections and the kind of money you can't earn from an honest military career, so they made him a Commander in the Navy, nevermind that his specialty so far had been crawling around in the mud.
He seconded a stealth Destroyer, official designation CNV 5N34/ky, or Sneaky, to its crew, and that's all he'll ever tell us about his time in the Navy, everything else is classified, including his return to the gritty world of ground pounders.
"Just because it floats doesn't mean it's a boat," He tells me, looking around with barely contained disgust, "I've known sailors who'd rather swim than climb aboard… This."
The boat groans and something creaks loudly under our feet. We wait a moment, then I quip, "We might just need to do that very soon…"
He looks away from the deck and back at me, "Do what?"
"Swim."
His scoff is not convincing, I meant that as a joke, but Turner seems to actually agree with me.
Demetrius arrives from the left, which means he was somewhere on the front of the ship. He's fully suited up and has guns in both hands. One's a Retro Lancer, the other is a rather well kept civilian hunting rifle. He hands me the rifle, then fetches a black tank top from his pack, reaching back and pulling it out without even a glance to his backpack.
I prop the gun against our fine vessel's railing and carefully slip the top on. It hurts, but the pain I feel seems to have reached a plateau, it can't get any worse no matter how much I twist around.
Just one spare magazine for my rifle, ammo is short, so I get eight rounds in total, but that's a predator hunting rifle, if I can get a good scope, it could be a decent substitute to a longshot.
"You sure Kleiner won't need it?" Demetrius shakes his head and leaves.
I turn to the LT, who doesn't look at me. His gaze is lost in the waves. Seems like he's not ready to talk about it, so I pick up and inspect the rifle.
The body is wooden, a rare thing these days, and it's well kept, which is rarer still. The cheek rest was replaced some time ago, but the owner only had leather at hand, so it's got what must be the only stuffed leather cheek rest in existence. The sights are another story, three gleaming red dots on dull metal, perfectly centered…
I rock the whole process of chambering a round and a faint smell of oil and metal reaches my nostrils.
Decidedly, whoever Demetrius got that gun from was very attached to it…
Only man I know takes care of his gear like that is Stefan Kleiner, and he wouldn't let me touch his shit, not in a million years.
"Kleiner's dead, then?" I ask the LT, slinging the weapon on my intact arm.
Turner nods once. "Thought he could snap a shot faster than the other guy…"
I'd like to say something nice about Kleiner, that he was brave or skilled or, at least, died well, but I can't even recall his face, don't want to. I knew from the day we met he'd get killed eventually; same goes for all of my squad. Maybe if they were somehow interesting, like the Lieutenant and Bear, complex individuals with dreams and free thoughts, I'd bother to know them but…
"Kleiner died ten years ago…" The Lieutenant slumps over the railing some more, the world weighting even more on his shoulder. He hold a tarnished photograph in his hand. "He died when she did."
The picture shows a man, vibrant, joyful, his eyes sparkling and his arm wrapped around a bashful looking young girl. Not a fiancé, no way, that girl must have still been in high school. She has blue straits in her brown hairs and a piercing in her lower lip.
They have the same mouth. Father and daughter…
Kleiner had a daughter. Fuck… How long did I know the man? About five years ago, I was getting kicked out of Two-Six RTI, spent four years in college before being conscripted again just as they were going to sink Jacinto, they threw me in Omega, under Lieutenant Turner, as a designated marksman, because that's the first designation they could think of… So, fourteen months.
Fourteen months I've known Kleiner, at no point was I ever close to knowing the man…
The Lieutenant lets go of the photograph and it flies away in the dusk.
Turner would die for every last of his men, he'd die for me, if given the opportunity. I wouldn't return the favour. Does that make me better or worse?
Maybe I wouldn't be such a coward if I had something tangible to fight for… Something more than ideology.
Maybe I should start giving a shit about the people who'd die to protect me.
"Hey… Boss…" Turner turns to me, something in my voice clearly has him puzzled. How am I supposed to say 'Sorry I was a douchebag up until this very point'? "Sorry I was a…"
Everything goes dark and my ears are ringing. Did I just faint? The boat's still rocking underneath my feet, so…
Blood smears across my cheeks as I wipe it from my eyes. The LT is nowhere to be seen, but the blood isn't mine, I'm sure of that.
Something whistles by; Lancer round.
"We're being fired on!" I roar, ducking into the cabin I just left. Laki jumps awake and looks around, her visor betraying no emotion but panic showing in her body language.
She pulls a Gnasher from the rucksack she used as pillow and takes position by my side as I lean forward for a peek.
"Good to see you on your feet…" Is all she says to me.
There's already a round chambered in my gun, so when I spot the black ship coming at ours from the left, the front, I pop out of cover, line up something vaguely human and squeeze the trigger.¸
Don't know if I hit something, but it drops out of sight.
Some more gunfire erupts from the enemy ship, answered in kind by the troops on ours. I line up my sights with an enemy muzzle flash and loose another bullet, putting an abrupt end to the flicker, like one blows a candle.
Funny, isn't it, that killing a man is no harder than smothering a candle.
The ship closes in on ours like it wants to drop by and say hi, and there's not much I can do about it except give hell to the shooters on its deck.
Soon enough, I'm down to my second mag, but they're close enough that I can see the pink mist when I deliver a face-full of fuck you.
Three shots. Mac calls dry, followed by one of the new kids who's name I never got around to learning.
Our ship is shaken so hard I end up sitting on the ceiling for a few seconds, before slamming back on the stairs.
"We're being boarded!" Bear is somewhere to the right, stating the obvious.
Their ship is bigger than ours, so they just jump the meter and a half difference. Stranded, pirates, corsairs. Fucking humans.
One drops in front of me, he has only a machete, made out of a lawn mower's blade.
He swings downward, his face hidden by a hockey mask, and I catch his wrist without a second thought.
The dude is strong, so am I, but I'm injured and the machete inches ever closer to my face as my damaged muscles scream for a respite.
There it comes again, terror, cold and sharp, in my guts, up my throat. I can already picture the blade cutting through my flesh, severing sinews…
Fight or flight… My body picks flight.
When my legs give, I think my own instinct failed me, but then I realize I've got a knee on the dude's chest and we're falling backward in slow motion.
The Stranded is pulled into the cabin and I kick him with all I've got.
Fight or flight. How many preys you know of send their predator flying?
If his close encounter with a metal wall didn't kill the poor bastard, Laki's point blank shotgun discharge in the back must have done the trick.
Someone on a loudspeaker tells us to lay down our weapons, otherwise they'll just pull away and blast us with their artillery gun.
It's a woman speaking. In other circumstances, I'd say she has a sexy voice, but now she's the enemy…
And the boss.
Oh, not that I plan to do what she's asking, but she just gave me my two mission objectives; Fuck up their big gun, fuck up their engine and, if the opportunity presents itself, fuck their Captain.
I mean, fuck up their Captain.
The Stranded won't need his machete anymore, so I take it, wink at Laki, who doesn't seem to understand what I'm thinking, and off we go doing something stupid.
We being me alone, because Laki doesn't follow me on the pirate ship, though she's quite vocal about what she thinks of my plan.
The enemy ship is not so large when there's a dozen armed guys trying to gun you down.
Their canon is an old howitzer, guarded by two hostiles, to the right. To the left is the bridge, atop whatever it is old tankers like this cram between the deck and bridge. I'm not big on ships.
The Stranded try to shoot at me, but they're shit shots and in such close quarters –the farthest hostile is taking cover behind a bulkhead to the left, close enough for me to guess how long he's gone without shaving- that they are as likely to shoot each other as they are to hit me.
It takes some kid braining his girlfriend for them to cease fire. I wasn't even in cover, just leaning down clutching my wounds for a moment. The machete in my good hand, I cut the kid's cries of anguish short.
They see me bee-lining for the howitzer and all come after my ass with chainsaws revving, loud enough that they can't warn anyone over radio. Didn't plan this one, but it suits me well.
The guard on the left opens fire, apparently not all that bothered by friendly fire, and that gripping panic hiccups once again, turning my bones to jelly and, before I know it, I'm on my knees, the armoured pads of my suit sparkling against the ship's metal deck as I somehow keep moving forward.
I actually make it right next to the dude without getting hit once, so I slash wildly at his legs and push myself back up, the roar of a chainsaw on the right reminding me I've got two assholes to contend with.
An upward swing eviscerate the unarmoured Stranded like a stock pig, causing him to drop his weapon just as he was about to swing, with gruesome outcomes for his face.
Turning back to the dead guy's friend, I find him missing a leg, trying to crawl away. He gets a machete in the back of his head on general principle.
There were two more hostiles chasing me, but two-face over here seems to have taken care of that as he tried to gun me down. I can't tell if they're both dead or just in cover, but hey, I'm not picky.
Now, how do you sabotage a big ass artillery gun when you've got only fifteen seconds to spare?
Put a shell upside down in the bore? Too long.
Chainsaw the shit of the barrel? Don't be ridiculous.
The issue here isn't this thing shooting, it can shoot all it wants as far as I'm concerned, just not at my friends.
Targeting systems. Well, if you can call a crank and two lever targeting systems. All I need to do is fuck those up… Speaking of which, there might be a way to kill three birds with one frag grenade…
I roll the crank as fast as possible and the gun lazily turns around. Someone is shooting at me, but I don't have time to indulge such childish antics and keep turning the massive fuck-off gun until it's pointed straight at the bridge. There are silhouettes up there…
There were silhouettes up there, they all scurried away two seconds after realizing what I was up to.
The voice returns, again over loudspeakers, "Hey, asshole, on the gun!" It calls.
"Yeah?!" I scream back, though I know she can't hear me.
"I got a deal for you!"
I load a shell in the canon, smiling, and yell back, "So do I! It's called 100lb HEAT!"
But the thing is, I've got no clue how to fire that thing. I'm still trying to figure it out when the offer comes.
"We let your friends leave, you guys haven't got shit anyhow, and you don't pull that trigger!"
There are Pirates coming out of every crevice now, but they're all straight ahead, unable to get a good shot, very much pissed and…
Scared shitless.
I'm not some bothersome victim, I'm the grim fucking reaper as far as they're concerned, they expected fishermen and now there's a dude built like a truck manning their big ass gun. These are civilians, untrained, soft, and I'm a Commando.
Why was I so fucking scared? This situation is mine, I own every second, what happens next is mine to decide.
I am in control.
"You've got a deal!" Of course I realize that means I'm stuck on this boat, but you just watch, those assholes will be giving me a lift and they'll be thankful for it.
That or I'll kill every last one of them with their own hip bones.