As a marine it is inevitable that you will have to board a ship at least once in your career. Don't let those vids fool you. It's not a pleasant or easy thing to do.
You will be fighting an enemy on their own ground. They can open the airlocks dumping you into hard vacuum. They can pump poisonous gasses through the ventilation systems. They can cut gravity or increase it to the point where all but mechs will be pinned to the floor.
Make sure you outnumber your enemy by at least two to one and have a good mix of skills on your teams. Even then you can expect to have a high casualty rate.
-excerpt from United Galactica Space Marines Text Book: Boarding Tactics.
"What do you think?" Yuri asked, taking the rail rifle from the weapons rack.
"It will clash with everything you own," Kei told her.
"Funny." Yuri's tone made it evident she thought Kei was anything but.
"Does it have enough ammunition?"
"Six hundred rounds." Yuri laid her hand across the stock bandolier that held several ammo-cassettes, each full of flechettes.
"You do remember that lecture we had on fire control don't you?" Kei pulled on her grenade harness.
"You're one to talk." Yuri slung the weapon over her shoulder.
Kei picked up her assault cannon from where it lay on the floor, made a quick examination of the weapon then cocked it.
"Quite a bit of fire power," Yuri said.
"Why this little thing?" Kei pulled the sling over her shoulder. Shells for the weapon were attached to the sling.
Tamikia came into the arms locker wearing an armour cloth, body glove. The body glove colours shifted slightly as she moved; indicative of a chameleon field. Several neutral grey armour plates had been clipped over the most vulnerable areas of her anatomy. She wore an SMG, in a holster, low on her left hip.
"Loose all the plates, except for a couple of the abdominal and pectoral ones," Kei said indicating the armour. "They'll just get in your way."
"What about the ones on my back?"
"Never put your back to the enemy," Kei told her.
"Try this." Yuri handed Tamikia a gyrojet rifle. "Plug it into your neural interface and its one of the best sniper rifles you'll find."
Tamikia took the weapon, checked its balance and then slung it over her shoulder.
They left the arms locker.
Tamikia paused to plug the gyrojet rifle into her datajack, getting a feel for the weapon.
Yuri went into her cabin. When she came back she was carrying an armoured briefcase.
Kei went to the ventral airlock and extended a boarding tube from the Lovely Angel to the other ship. Once it was sealed she pressurized the tube.
Tamikia and Yuri arrived, watching her work.
Kei checked the seal and then opened the airlock. She jumped down onto the space-chilled, hull metal of the other ship. Kneeling down she attacked a blocky looking device to the hull and took a sensor reading.
"Forty centimetres." Kei looked up at Yuri.
"What type of metal?"
"Military grade, hull armour by the look of it."
"Think we can burn through?"
"Only one way to find out." Kei climbed back into the Lovely Angel.
"What if there's an ambush waiting for us?" Tamikia asked.
"We'll burn that bridge when we come to it," Yuri said.
"Get clear." Kei said as she took a heavy plasma torch from a nearby locker. It was a big device; she had to carry it slung over a shoulder.
"Do you think they know what we're up to and have depressurized the cargo hold?" Yuri asked Kei.
"Thank you for bringing that up Miss Sunshine. Just one more problem we don't need."
"Sorry."
"I'll just cut a small hole so we can take a look," Kei told them as she removed a set of goggles from where they hung on the torch and pulled them on.
Kei pointed the heavy torch down at the hull, set the cutting beams radius as small as she could and pressed the ignition switch.
There was a short burst of light and a wave of heat from the beam. Kei held the torch over the hole as several seconds passed. Suddenly air rushed out of the hole, ruffling Kei's, Yuri's, and Tamikia's hair.
"Over pressure is always better than under pressure in these cases." Kei powered the torch down and put it aside. "Hand me the fibre-cam."
"Here." Yuri handed her the camera.
Kei plugged one end of the camera into her datajack and fed the other end of the cable into the hole.
"Looks clean, big empty cargo hold," Kei said after several seconds. "Let me switch to IR just to see if anyone is hiding." She was quiet for a few seconds. "No. Zero hot spots, nothing human."
"Could be cymechs, surface temperature set to match surrounding air." Yuri looked down at Kei.
"They arranged that in the last minute or so?"
"Good point."
"Okay, time to do some serious cutting. Here." Kei pulled the camera from her neural interface and handed it up to Yuri. She picked up the plasma torch again and reset the beams, checking the safety features. Setting her feet wide apart she hit the switch.
Yuri and Tamikia closed their eyes and turned away from the intense light. Kei felt the heat from the torch; if it were not for shielding she probably would have been burnt. She kept cutting for a little over a minute. Then the tool's charge ran out.
Kei lifted the torch up and put it up on the Angel's deck, careful not to let any of the hot parts touch. She pulled the goggles off and tossed them beside it.
Yuri looked down at where the hull had once been. Now there was a hole leading into the other ship. "Here," Yuri said, giving Kei a canister of coolant.
Kei took the coolant, aimed the nozzle at the edges of the hole, squeezed the handle, and sprayed the foam coolant over the heated metal. The rapidly cooling the hull made pinging sounds. Some of the metal near the edges flaked and cracked.
"Ready?" Kei asked.
"Ready," Yuri said.
"As I'll ever be," Tamikia told her.
Kei drew her laser carbine, jumped down into the ship and realized her mistake almost instantly. The Angel's artificial gravity was at a right angle to the bigger ship's. As soon as she passed into it the pull on her changed. She fell to the floor, her back hitting the deck plates.
"Ow." Fortunately the fall had only been a meter and no serious damage had been done.
Yuri climbed carefully through followed by Tamikia.
"That wasn't very bright." Yuri helped Kei to her feet.
"Now you tell me. Come on, we have to find you a terminal." She set off, Tamikia following her.
Yuri paused and looked back the way they had come. The Lovely Angel's airlock sealed.
Kei looked about as Yuri sealed the Angel. She soon found what they needed. "Over here," she called out.
Yuri jogged across the hold. Kei pointed at a computer terminal near one of the hold's doors.
Yuri stepped out and kneeled by the terminal, placing her briefcase on the floor. She placed her palm against a reader on the case. There was a click and a hiss as the case opened.
She took out her deck, custom built. It was flat black, a red heart on the back of the flip up screen. She plugged one interface cable into the terminal, the other into her neural interface.
"Going use the hijacking program?" Kei asked.
"Too many defences between a peripheral slave like this and the mainframe for it to work. We'll have to get access at either engineering or the bridge."
"Well Melkar is likely to be on the bridge," Tamikia said.
"So that's where we'll go," Kei said.
"What was that about a hijacking program?" Tamikia asked.
"Yuri collects black lab stuff and illegal programs. One of these days she's going to get caught. She has stuff even 3WA would frown upon. Don't tell anyone or she'll be forced to kill you." Kei smiled.
"You say that as if you are making a joke," Tamikia said, "and yet I can't help but feel you are being serious."
Kei only continued to smile and turned to look over Yuri's shoulder. "What are you using this time?"
"A 'never-mind' program. It's choice. It makes the ship's security computer ignore us totally. As far as the security system is concerned we don't exist as... of... now," Yuri said with flourish.
"Nice," Kei told her.
"I've also downloaded the ship's plans into internal memory." Yuri touched a finger to her temple.
"You have to tell me where you get your programs," Tamikia said.
"No I don't," Yuri said in a friendly enough tone, but it was a flat refusal.
Tamikia frowned, as if she had just realised an unpleasant truth.
Kei opened the hatch and went out into the corridor beyond to reconnoitre the immediate area. When she returned she found Yuri packing her computer away in the armoured briefcase.
"Ready to go?" Kei asked her.
"Yeah." Yuri kicked the case across the floor, sending it sliding towards the hole cut into the hull.
"Aren't you worried someone might try to steal it?" Tamikia asked.
"Nothing I can't rebuild. And the case will blow up if anyone but me tries to open it." Yuri's tone was matter of fact.
"Interesting security system."
"The same we have on the Angel," Kei told her. "They're our toys and no one else is allowed to play with them. Let's go."
They made their first contact with the ship's crew several minutes later and six decks above where they had started. Kei heard them first and dragged Tamikia into a maintenance alcove. Yuri leapt up and pulled herself up and into some conduits that lined the ceiling.
From their hiding places all three watched a group of six--four men and two women--pass by. They carried weapons but not in a relaxed manner that suggested they were not ready to use them. Yuri guessed they were heading towards the cargo bay. Either her program was not working as well as she hoped, or some warning alarm had gone off before she had a chance to infect the security computer.
Yuri waited until they had passed by and then swung down from the ceiling. Her lower legs were wrapped around a conduit and she hung upside down in the middle of the corridor. Her long, black hair almost brushed the floor.
It was a tough shot but it would not be her first. The rail rifle was set on full auto. The only sound it made was the crack of the flechettes as they left the barrel at many times the speed of sound.
Attacking from behind might not have been honourable, but it certainly was smart.
In a few seconds all six were sprawled on the deck plates, unmoving. Not one of them had managed to fire a weapon.
"Show off," Kei said to Yuri who was still hanging upside down.
Yuri put her rifle on the floor and V'd her fingers, smiling. She then swung up, grabbed a piece of the support structure, freed her legs and dropped gracefully to the floor.
Kei walked over to the fallen bodies, stopping just outside of the growing puddle of blood. "Mercs," she said as Tamikia came to stand beside her.
"How do you know?"
"They all have different weapons."
"But they are wearing the same uniforms." Tamikia indicated the bloody, one-piece ship-suits they all wore.
"Someone is trying to mould them into a fighting force," Yuri said as she came up behind Kei.
"So we have a crew that is unused to working together and a ship that is undermanned. That's a plus for us." Kei kicked one of the bodies.
"How do you know the ship is undermanned?" Tamikia asked.
Yuri switched her rifle to semi auto and put a shot into the head of each one of the bodies to make sure they were dead.
"If it had a full crew we would have run into someone almost as soon as we left the cargo bay. Plus that cargo bay would have been full of supplies needed for a large crew," Kei told Tamikia.
"Come on," Yuri said. "Someone is bound to miss these six sooner or later. Better we're not around when they do."
"Well?" Yuri whispered.
"Boarding party." Kei said as she slid back into the side corridor. She put the small mirror she used for looking around corners back into one of her belt pouches. It was low-tech, but that was kind of why she liked it.
"How many?" Tamikia nervously stroked the stock of her rifle.
"About thirty. Six of them cyborgs."
"They're in our way." Yuri brushed a lock of hair back from her eyes. "I should have tied this off."
"Worry about your hair later. We've got to deal with more immediate problems." Kei took her assault cannon off safe.
"I can't think of anything more immediate than my hair, and I think we can take out about half before they realize what's happening," Yuri said.
"If we get among them they'll be hampered by their own people."
"Unless they are willing to shoot allies."
"You're little Miss Pessimist today aren't you." Kei's tone was soft but still angry. Sometimes Yuri's observations really bugged her.
"Sorry," Yuri said.
"Tamikia hang back. Play sniper from a safe distance."
Tamikia nodded. "You won't have to tell me twice."
"Let's rock," Kei said.
The men and women waiting in the boarding room were not expecting an attack. That gave Kei and Yuri a precious few moments to maximize the value of the surprise as they burst into the room. Yuri sprayed a hail of metal darts into the room, saturating the air with fire. Kei targeted the borgs with her cannon, focusing her offensive power into concentrated packages.
Within seconds they went from thirty to fourteen, much like Yuri had predicted. Tamikia used a piece of heavy equipment for cover and the rifles array of sights ensured she did not have to expose anymore than was required to stick the rifle up above her. The gyrojet ammunition was very deadly at such close range.
Yuri twisted to her side as one of the mercs squeezed a burst at her. She did not move quite fast enough as one of the rounds grazed her arm. Gripping the pistol grip of the rifle, she swung the weapon around her, as if it were a much lighter and smaller firearm. Holding down the trigger as she did so wasted a great deal of ammunition. It also cut the man who had shot her in half, and took out the people on either side of him.
The empty flechette cassette was ejected from the receiver group. She moved evasively as she pulled a full cassette from the stock and slapped it into the weapon.
Kei dodged back as the big cyborg swung its axe at her. The huge, bladed weapon whipped by so close that she could feel the breeze. Had it hit it likely would have cut her in half. She was not about to give it another chance to swing the weapon.
Stepping inside of its attack arc, while the axe was still in its back swing, she jammed the rifle up against its chest she pulled the trigger.
The recoil sent her stumbling back a few steps. The heavy, fin-stabilized sabot flipped the borg over on it's back as it punched through the armoured body. Organic and inorganic fluids leaked from the ragged hole as it lay motionless on the floor.
An axe, Kei thought as she targeted another borg. A bloody axe. Someone had jacked into one-too-many fantasy sims.
Tamikia ducked as a stream of bullets chewed into her cover. A piece of the equipment was blown out and cut across her thigh, tearing at the armour cloth. Too close she thought.
She pushed the rifle up above the equipment, using the camera sights to target her attacker. She closed her eyes; all the information entering her visual cortex came from the gun camera. The sites locked on the woman with the machinegun. Pulling the trigger Tamikia put a fist sized hole in her chest.
Switching the weapon over to semi-autonomous target-acquisition, she dove out from behind her cover. The weapon tagged the remaining enemy in the room--except for Kei and Yuri as the computer recognized them as friendly--and locked their coordinates and visual recognition parameters into the gyrojet projectiles, even as it fired.
The small rockets sped towards their targets with deadly accuracy, each one exploding a few milliseconds after contact. Enough time for the charge to enter their bodies.
Then it was over.
"Well that was fun." Kei took the empty magazine from her cannon and reloaded the magazine from the rounds on her sling.
Yuri looked down at the flashing light on her rifle. Almost empty she though. One of the bodies on the floor groaned, she put him out of his misery. Another cassette fell to the floor.
"Things usually get this messy?" Tamikia stepped onto the bloody floor of the ready room.
"Yes," Kei slapped the magazine back into her cannon.
Yuri slid a fresh cassette into the rifle.
Kei heard Yuri gasp and turned to look at her. Yuri was kneeling down by one of the bodies. "What are you doing?"
"Not entirely to pleased with the rail rifle," she told Kei as she pulled the backpack off the dead man. "It's a bit too long for in close fighting and feels a little unstable at times."
"So what are you scavenging?"
Yuri pulled the backpack on, and then dragged up, by its armoured belt, a five-barrel, short, mini-cannon. She grunted under the weight of it. "This," she said.
"Are you even going to be able to carry that?"
"Has AG weight compensators," was all Yuri said as she fiddled with the controls on the cannon. "There we go. Light as a feather." She sounded relieved.
Kei walked over to stand beside Yuri. She looked at the indicators on the weapon. "Switch on the fly ammunition selector. HEAP, HESH, AP... Why do you get the best toys?"
"God loves me. I'm her favourite." Yuri grabbed the interface cable and checked it to make certain the jack was not damaged. Then she plugged it into her neural interface.
"I must be her second favourite then," Kei said as she picked up an automatic shotgun from the floor. "We get out of that clear?"
Yuri cocked her head to the side. After a few seconds she said, "There's a lot of talk on the coms net. They know something is going on, but don't know what. They suspect their security has been breached."
"Swift aren't they." Tamikia slid a new magazine into her rifle.
"Assuming that isn't misinformation," Kei said.
"Assuming."
"Oh well. We better get moving." Kei set off towards an exit with Yuri following and Tamikia bringing up the rear.
Kei considered the group. The three men and the one woman blocking the way ahead were not much of a threat. The two cymechs with them were another matter entirely. She slid her mirror back into her belt pouch and crawled back to Yuri and Tamikia.
"It's not good," She told them. "There are two cymechs, heavy armour types."
"Can we go around?" Tamikia asked.
"It would mean backtracking and chancing running into another group," Kei told her. "It will cost us time."
"We can't afford the time," Yuri said.
"Oh?"
"Looks like they finally figures they are chasing a ghost. Com traffic says they are coming around and heading back to the Dark Lady."
"That settles it then. Yuri, you're going to have to take point," Kei told her. "Your weapon is about the only one that has a good chance of taking them down. And god loves you, so you'll have nothing to worry about."
"Me and my big mouth," Yuri said softly.
"Tamikia, you'll come up on Yuri's left. I'll move up on her right. Targets of opportunity."
"I understand," Tamikia said.
Yuri stood and started the barrels spinning on their silent bearings. "Wish me luck."
"Luck," Kei said.
Yuri was not entirely pleased with the plan, but it was what they had.
The bulkiness of the weapon system dictated that Yuri perform no acrobatic feats. She simply stepped out into the corridor, dropped to one knee and pulled the trigger. A mixture of AP, HEAP, HESH and tracer spun out of the barrels.
She swept the weapon back and forth, chewing up the walls and the soft targets easily enough. The heavy armour cymechs were able to stand up to that fire, and the charged her. From the corner of her good eye she saw Kei come up beside her, firing her cannon.
One of the cymechs raised its arm, on which was mounted a very large, energy cannon. Yuri pushed the rate of fire close to red line and locked her fire on it, blowing the entire arm off with the stream of metal. The temperature on the barrels was climbing rapidly.
The other cymech was almost on her. She swung the mini-gun to cover it and hosed it with fire, increasing the fire rate even further. Its chest armour finally disintegrated under the punishing rate of fire. It opened up its softer, internal structure to Yuri's fire. The cymech collapsed to the ground a meter away from her.
In her field of vision information about the weapon was projected. The ammo counter had dropped to an alarmingly low number, the temperature gauge was firmly in the red zone, and several warning messages were flashing warnings of impending problems.
The second cymech, less its arm, came up behind its fallen comrade and was much too close for Yuri's comfort. She could see the effect of Kei and Tamikia's fire on it, and was upset to see how little that amounted to.
She did not have much choice. The weapon's computer gave her a great number of warnings as she pushed the rate of fire up to its maximum.
The cymech sprang at her, Yuri fell backwards, glad for the padding on the ammo pack's harness. The hail of bullets actually slowed the mech down and pushed it up as it passed over her. It took almost a full second of point blank fire before it was gone from Yuri's field of vision.
The ammo ran out a moment later.
There was a strange, rattling, clacking sound. It took her a moment to realise that the rotating barrels had warped so much they were hitting each other.
Yuri stared up at the large hole in the ceiling. "Bitching," she said softly, and wondered if the cymech was about to step on her head.
"Pretty intense." Kei said, looking down at Yuri.
"Is it dead?"
"And then some." Kei smiled.
"I believe the phrase, in the vernacular, is 'majorly blown away'," Tamikia said from somewhere behind Kei.
Yuri released the harness and then took the hand Kei offered to get to her feet. She turned to look at the cymech. It had nearly been cut in half from its head to crotch. She turned again to look at the bodies at the far end of the corridor.
"I know what I want for Christmas this year," Yuri said. She pulled the interface cable from her neural interface.
"Get in line," Kei said.
"Are you two really this fascinated by weapons, or is this something you just do to keep people from getting close to you and learning that you are sensitive and caring individuals?" Tamikia asked.
"Huh?" Kei said.
"What?" Yuri asked.
"Never mind." Tamikia shook her head. "Too many psychology courses in university. Don't we have to get to the bridge?"
They left, Yuri only slowing to swing her rail rifle around, ready for use.
"I think we should split up," Yuri told Kei.
"Chancy," Kei said.
"But good tactics." Yuri had called up the ships plans from her internal memory and the deck plans were superimposed over her visual field. "There are two ways to the bridge from here. They've either split their forces or left one way unguarded."
"Okay. Rock, paper, scissors?"
"Fine," Yuri said.
They shook their fists three times then Kei held her hand out flat, Yuri had V'd two of her fingers.
"You and Tamikia take the upper passage, I'll take the lower," Yuri said. She plugged a datasoft into her datajack and downloaded the deck plans. "Here," she said, handing Kei the datasoft.
"Thanks," Kei said, plugging the datasoft into her own datajack.
"Shouldn't we stay together?" Tamikia asked.
"If we split up it increases the chances someone makes it to the bridge. It also deals with potential reinforcements who could be waiting along either route," Kei explained.
"See you in a while." Yuri grabbed hold of a ladder and slid down it.
"Come on." Kei set off down the corridor.
Kei didn't notice the man hiding in a maintenance alcove until he stepped out in front of her with a rifle levelled at her chest. Sloppy of me, Kei thought. Those alcoves are great places to hide. She should have expected such an attack.
"Hands up and away from the trigger," he barked out.
Kei judged the distance between them and considered that he had not seen Tamikia yet. She did what he said.
"Throw the weapon down," he told her.
"Are you sure of that?" He looked young to Kei. She did not think he was very experienced.
"What?" He sounded confused.
"It might go off."
"Okay, put the weapon down on the ground, then unbuckle your holster, keeping your hands away from the weapon. Remove the cannon and put it down, the grenades too. No sudden moves." He waved the rifle menacingly. It sounded to Kei if he was saying things that he had learned from a manual.
Kei did what he said. He watched her closely. So closely that it was no surprise that he did not notice Tamikia move in for a shot. Kei was bent down and unbuckling her holster when Tamikia fired.
The gyrojet tore into his head and took it from his shoulders. His weapon went off as his body fell back. The shot went high over Kei's head and hit the ceiling.
"Nice shooting." Kei gathered up her weapons.
"No problem," Tamikia told her, a little breathlessly.
They continued on.
Yuri almost did not see her attacker and almost did not raise her rifle quickly enough to block the knife slash at her throat. It was a close thing, and the knife cut deeply into the rifle. Yuri lost her balance and fell back against a door. Her attacker had moved with her their bodies almost pressed together in a parody of intimacy.
The door slid open behind Yuri and dumped her and the woman attacking her into a head. Yuri twisted around to keep her head from cracking against a sink. She lost hold of her rifle, grabbed the woman's arm instead. The woman put all her weight behind the knife as she pushed it at Yuri's exposed throat.
Gritting her teeth she got her feet between the woman and herself, and then kicked out.
The woman, older than herself and whip thin Yuri noticed, stumbled back against a wall. Yuri sprung to her feet and followed after her. Using an infighting technique Kei had taught her, she took the weapon from the woman and then twisted the woman's arm up behind her back.
Stupid, Yuri thought as she noticed the pistol the woman wore, the pistol the woman was trying desperately to reach. She had chosen to use a knife when she had a pistol. Likely due to some odd desire to see the pain one caused, up close. Yuri took her pistol from her shoulder holster, put the pistol against the back of the woman's head, and squeezed the trigger.
The lifeless body slid to the ground. Turning, Yuri put her pistol back in its holster. She caught sight of her reflection in the mirror. Taking a moment she straightened her sunglasses and pushed a few loose strands of hair away from her forehead.
After picking up her rail rifle from where it had fallen Yuri began to run, hoping to make up lost time.
"How do we handle this?" Tamikia asked. There was a group of guards in front of the access to the bridge section.
"The easy way." Kei armed one of her grenades.
"Isn't that dangerous?"
"Only for them."
She tossed the grenade and then pushed Tamikia to the floor.
The force of the explosion washed over them, alarms started going off.
"I guess Yuri's program wasn't as good as she thought." Kei stood and helped Tamikia to her feet.
"Everything has its limits." Tamikia said, reasonably sure she was reaching hers.
"Come on the bridge is close by," Kei stepped over a body and opened a blast door.
The two men in front of the elevator saw Yuri silhouetted in the door way as she stepped through. Both of them had their weapons ready, but Yuri had surprise and boosted reflexes on her side.
She squeezed the trigger of her weapon, firing from the hip. She was still not entirely pleased with the rail rifle, but it did have its benefits.
The men went down, both dead. The single shot one of them had fired had missed her.
She stepped over the bodies and tapped the elevator call button. She suspected something was up so she stepped to the side.
When the doors opened a hail of gunfire erupted from the elevator. A moment later a young man stepped out. He was holding a light machinegun. He looked in horror at the two bodies, likely believing he had killed them.
Yuri did not give him long to wallow in guilt. She drove the stock of her rifle into the side of his head, killing him.
After pulling his body out of the elevator she set the timers on two of her grenades, placed them on the floor of the elevator then sent the elevator up to the next level.
There was a maintenance shaft nearby that led up to the next level. It would be a tight fit, but she knew she could make it. She pulled the cover free and then climbed into the shaft, snaking her way upwards.
The elevator doors opened and four crewmembers began to fire into it car. They stopped, confused, when they saw it was empty. Then the grenades exploded.
Yuri pushed open the cover over the shaft and pulled herself into the acrid smoke filled corridor. Alarms were going of but it did not matter. They did not need quiet any more. She fired a burst at the people lying in front of the elevator, just to be sure, then turned and sprinted towards the bridge.
The two trouble consultants arrived at the bridge within almost a minute of each other. Kei came close to shooting Yuri before realizing her mistake.
"Nice shotgun," Yuri said, looking at the weapon pointed at her.
"Good to see you made it." Kei pointed the weapon at the floor.
"Likewise." Yuri slipped pass Kei to look at the bridge door. "This will take a bit of time." Yuri handed one of her remaining grenades to Kei and then took a small tool kit from one of her belt pouches. She went to work on the door's locking mechanism.
Kei looked at the grenade that Yuri had handed her. There was a pink dot on the arming end. She took a matching grenade from her harness and set the timers on both. She did not arming them, but placed them carefully on the floor.
"What are those?" Tamikia asked.
"O'Donell neurostun eight," Kei told her. "Effective in seconds, breathed in or absorbed through the skin. Non-persistent and knocks any one out in seconds. Only a ten percent allergic rate."
"What if you're allergic?"
"It's not pretty. Here." Kei handed her a slap patch. "That's the antidote." She placed a second patch on her own neck and pressed down on it to activate it. Tamikia looked at the patch and then placed it on her own neck. Kei placed one on Yuri's neck, careful not to disturb her too much.
Yuri cut a fibre optic lead and spliced it into another. The locks in most ships were not impossible to pick but they were tough. In most cases Yuri would have preferred to rewrite the access programs but she had not brought her deck. Bad planning on her part she had to admit.
Convincing the hardware of the lock that it should open the door was a major pain in her opinion, but it was faster than several other options she had.
"Okay, get ready," Yuri told Kei as she placed a set of bypass links into the lock. "When I complete this bridge and give it a little juice the door opens. Take away the juice and it closes. I'll fry the mechanism once we are inside. No one will be opening this thing from this side for a long time."
"Gotcha." Kei armed the grenades.
Yuri pushed the links in.
There were a few discharges of energy--Yuri felt her fingers go numb--and the door slid open. Kei tossed the grenades in. Yuri sealed the doors.
"Ow." Yuri looked at holes in her gloves, burned by the discharge.
"I'm pretty sure I saw Melkar in there, " Tamikia said.
Kei swung the assault cannon to the ready position. She ejected the magazine and looked at it. "Two left. I shouldn't have wasted all those shots on the cymechs." She slid the magazine back in.
Yuri looked her rifle over. She had a cassette in the weapon and one left on the stock. Not as much as she would have liked to have. Her pistol had a full magazine, less one, and she had two full clips for it. The pistol was of even more questionable use than the rifle when it came to full conversion borgs.
Tamikia put her last magazine into the gyrojet rifle.
"Gas should have dispersed by now," Kei said.
Yuri winced as she shoved the links back in and the shock hit her. They entered the bridge, weapons ready. Yuri burnt the mechanism out to seal the entrance behind them.
The bridge was much larger than it would have been in a normal freighter as there were more stations. A huge screen on the ceiling displayed the Dark Lady. Already the Star Hauler had begun to fire on her.
The crew lay on the floor or slumped over their stations. In the middle of the room stood Melkar. He was wearing a ship suit and a leather jacket. The jacket was marked with the rank of a commodore.
He smiled at them.
He stood straight, his hands clasped behind his back.
"I'm pleased that you have managed to make it ladies," he said in a smooth tone. "Tamikia I must admit I'm surprised to see you here. I thought that you'd be hiding on their ship, with your children."
"You thought wrong," she told him. "Not the first time for that, ne?"
"Ah," he smiled in a self-deprecating manner, "I admit to having made mistakes. Still, let's..."
"Enough talk." Kei swung her cannon up and fired the two remaining rounds.
Vecroy was knocked back a few steps as the first and second round hit him. He almost fell over one of the crew stations. He straightened and coughed. There was a white, bubbly liquid on his lips. "Ouch," he said, and then laughed. "Hardly nice."
"You'll hate this." Kei swung the shotgun around her body and began firing.
Yuri switched her rifle to full auto and burnt off what was left in the cassette in only a few seconds. She slapped a new cassette in and kept up the rapid rate of fire.
Vecroy stumbled back under the onslaught, his body jerking about as the rounds impacted against him. A slug from the shotgun tore the skin off half his face revealing a metal skull beneath. Yuri's flechettes shredded clothing and skin, revealing more cybernetics. Even the hits to his eyes only shattered the cosmetic covers, revealing the shiny, steel orbs behind.
Kei's shotgun ran out of ammunition first. Then the last cassette in Yuri's rifle emptied. Kei hurled her empty weapon at Vecroy, for all the good it did. Yuri simply let her rifle fall to the ground as she reached for her pistol.
"Got that out of your systems, feel better now?" Vecroy asked. The half of his face still covered by flesh smiled.
"Definitely a full conversion borg," Yuri said. "Maybe a grenade?"
"I wish we had that minigun." Kei drew her laser carbine from its holster.
"Or a missile launcher."
"Would you two mind using what passes for your brains for a short while?" Vecroy said. "You can't win so you might as well give up. Tamikia my dear while I can and will use Catherine for what I need it would be much easier if you joined willingly with me."
"You need me, don't you, you bastard," Tamikia said.
"Yes, I need you. What we will need to do is fairly radical. Your board of directors won't let Catherine do any of it for at least several years. They may not control the majority of shares but they can stonewall my attempts. You on the other hand would have no problem. They think you're divinely touched."
"So you need me to achieve your dreams of empire that much sooner. Do you actually believe in this cause or do you just want power?"
"Isn't power better then slavery or death? You are perhaps one of the most powerful people in the known galaxy. You know the true value of power."
"And you think this little scheme will actually work?"
"I know it will work, I have history on my side. England, old Earth, for King and for country, they built one of the greatest empires ever known on the planet, covering continents."
"Which collapsed," Yuri said.
"And Japan. In a space of less than fifty years the Japanese people went from pre-industrial, almost medieval, to a point where they were willing to take on the United States of America. They fought and beat the Russians, and the Chinese and all of it they did by rallying behind their Emperor."
"Unfortunately I think he might have a point," Kei said. "History is on his side. History bites."
"Ah, a voice of reason." Melkar smiled. "Let's talk about you two. We could find a place for you. Wouldn't you like to have the respect you so richly deserve? Wouldn't you like to get away from the press and their treatment of you? Work for us and eventually take up a position in the new power structure."
"And you'll be the Emperor of it all," Tamikia said.
"Of course not. The Emperor or Empress will be a fairytale type figure. The type of person the masses can love and who will be, unfortunately, a target for assassins. I'll be in the background, an advisory position or something, where the real power is. So what do you say?"
"Archduchess Yuri," Yuri said dreamily.
Tamikia looked at Yuri, an expression of surprise on her head.
"I prefer Countess myself," Kei said to Yuri. "Countess Kei. I could have reporters put to death."
"Whatever you want," Vecroy said, a note of triumph in his voice.
"All those boring affairs of state you have to attend, and no doubt older fashions would come back into style. Corsets aren't my thing," Kei said disgustedly.
"Probably wouldn't be all that much fun anyway," Yuri said as she lifted her pistol.
"You're wasting your time," Vecroy growled.
"It's ours to waste," Kei said.
Tamikia opened up on him. The small gyrojet missiles tore even more of his fake skin and clothing off and seemed to have a greater effect, but it was her last clip.
Kei and Yuri opened fire on Melkar, their weapon doing a great deal of cosmetic damage, but hardly doing much to the metal under his skin.
Kei tossed her carbine to Yuri. Yuri caught it and with both weapons continued to fire. Kei pulled the receiver group of a weapon from one of her belt pouches, the grip and its battery from another. She clipped them together. Finally she took a three round cylinder from another pouch and locked it into place.
The last round from Yuri's pistol hit Melkar in face, ripping away most of the skin left on his skull. She kept firing with Kei's carbine.
In a two handed firing grip Kei pointed her new weapon at the cyborg and fired all three rounds in rapid succession. The three rounds slammed into Melkar who was knocked over onto his back.
"That was too easy," Kei said with a smile. "Got to admit," she held the small pistol up in her hands, "I didn't really think that this thing was the mech-killer that Kuan Yin advertised to be."
"You were right to not believe the hype," Melkar's synthesized voice sounded a bit strained as he rose to his feet. There were three dents in his chest, but Kei doubted that any of the rounds had penetrated.
"Shit." Kei's hand went to her belt pouch for the last magazine. Yuri was juggling weapons as she reloaded her pistol. Tamikia drew her SMG, raising it to her hip and working the top-mounted, cocking lever.
Melkar pointed his left arm at Kei. From his wrist three, thin, steel coils whipped out. One wrapped itself around Kei's weapon while the other two encircled her neck. The weapon was torn from her hand and she was drawn, stumbling, towards him.
He grabbed her throat and lifted her off the floor as the steel whips retracted back into his arm. What was left of the flesh around his lips formed a smile.
"You should have cooperated," he told her.
It looked as if Kei was trying to say something, perhaps a witty and clever comeback. However it unlikely she had the ability to talk with her throat being crushed.
Yuri dove between his legs, hoping that he might be distracted, what with his attention focused on Kei. Unfortunately he was not, and he lashed out at her with his foot. His kick tore the skin on her upper right arm and almost snapped bone. She lost her hold on the laser carbine.
Still, Yuri was able to get in close. She shifted her rail pistol in to a two handed grip, aimed at where his left arm joined his torso, and emptied the clip.
Melkar's fingers jerked open and Kei fell. She tucked and rolled to get away from him. Yuri sprang away just a moment behind a counter attack that probably would have crushed her ribcage had it hit.
"You two are just prolonging the inevitable," he told them, his voice rough with anger, or perhaps from the damage he had taken. His left arm hung at his side, the hand opening and closing in different patterns. Diagnostic check, Yuri guessed, upset she had not done more damage.
"Melkar, over here," Tamikia said from across the room.
He looked towards her.
She opened fire on him, spraying him with her SMG.
The bullets hit his cybernetic frame and squashed against it, sticking, as if they were gum.
"This is supposed to stop me?" he asked as he stalked towards Yuri.
He had only walked two steps when a web of crackling energy began to play over his body. The energy came from each of the deformed bullets that stuck to his body, each one an anchor point for the web. His body jerked to a stop, his limbs all in spasm.
Yuri and Kei took advantage of the time to scramble away from Melkar and to retrieve fallen weapons. Kei cursed softly as she found her Kuan Yin pistol bent and broken.
"What the hell is that?" Kei asked, pointing at Melkar.
"New product," Tamikia told her as she loaded a new magazine into her SMG. "Each bullet contains a powerful capacitor."
"I got to get me some of those," Kei said.
The electrical discharges around Melkar faded and then stopped. He collapsed to one knee, thin wisps of smoke rising up from his body. Then he stood.
"I think they still need work," Yuri told her as she aimed and fired.
Melkar was not a happy man.
Nothing had really worked out as he had hoped.
The Dirty Pair had sent him on a fool's chase as they had boarded his ship. They had killed his crew and were now on the bridge. They had not even seriously considered his offer of power to them.
Furthermore they had managed to hurt him far more than he would have thought possible. The damage was still, in many ways, minor, but even minor damage was more than he had expected.
All he wanted to do was to kill the Dirty Pair, rip them up into pieces, and then throw the bloody mess at Tamikia until she agreed to serve him. It would be enjoyable. All he had to do was get his hands on them.
He dodged to the side at Tamikia fired another burst at him from the SMG with it damnable ammo. He avoided some of the fire, but a number of the soft rounds impacted against him, sticking. He tried to brush them off, and managed to get a few, but then the capacitors in them discharged.
His limbs jerked as the spasms froze him up. The damage that the discharges were doing was minor, but it cost him time. There was also a build up of heat, from both the energy cracking across his body and the effects of Kei's laser. Another minor problem, but minor problems added up.
Tamikia emptied her magazine against him, while he was unable to avoid the attack. She ejected the empty magazine and slapped a full one into place.
Kei kept firing at him, burning away what little skin and clothes that had remained.
Yuri was firing at him, picking her target carefully since he could not move or counter attack. Several of the rounds found openings into his body and did damage.
Tamikia emptied the magazine into him. It appeared that was her last.
As the final electrical discharges played over him he fell forward, shutting down a number of his systems. Once the capacitors were dead he would bring it all back on line, letting everything reset. It would help.
Tamikia tossed her SMG aside and then went to one of the fallen crewmembers and took his side arm. She straightened up and cocked the weapon.
Melkar still lay on the floor, his body spasmodically jerking, smoke rising from his prone form. She wondered, as she pointed the pistol at him, if she had managed to kill him. He hoped it was the case, but that body of his had proven very resilient so far.
She regretted never taking over Melkar's company when she had the chance. It seemed to do good work.
The capacitors emptied the last of their charges and went dead.
Melkar lay still. Tamikia let herself hope up until the moment he shifted his body and began to rise.
"What does it take to make him stay down?" Kei yelled, and began to fire.
Tamikia wondered that herself, but did not voice her concerns. She simply fired.
Kei was considering a tactical retreat. If they could get to the Angel they could get their hands on some big weapons. Of course that would leave the Dark Lady in a great deal of trouble. From the looks of things someone on the ship was firing at the liner. They needed to take Melkar out so they could take control of the ship.
Just how she and Yuri were going to manage that, she did not know.
As Melkar walked towards her, his pace slow and slightly unbalance, she saw Yuri moving behind him. When Yuri saw she was looking she made a quick hand signal, pointing at her, and then drawing her finger across her neck in a rapid motion.
It looked like Yuri had an idea.
Kei waited until Tamikia ran out of bullets, and then she stopped firing as well.
Melkar was momentarily confused when Kei stopped firing. He immediately shifted his attention to Yuri. His systems were, however, overtaxed, and he was too slow to notice her.
Yuri had given up on the weapons they had and had chosen something a little unconventional. All she needed as the chance to use it. Once Kei stopped firing she had her window of opportunity.
She ran straight at his back, sprung up, doing a hand stand on his shoulders. She could feel the heated metal of his body through her gloves. Her right hand slapped a datasoft plug into the neural interface in the back of his neck. She pushed off with her left hand, twisting about and landing on his right side.
She readied to spring away, but his hand snapped out shattering her sunglasses. Yuri did not mind. A few centimetres closer and it would have been her skull.
"You're missing an eye," he growled. "Let me balance your face." The fingernails on his hands snapped out, becoming blades, and he reached out for Yuri, or at least he tried to.
His hand closed on empty air, low and to her right. Then his knees folded and he collapsed to the ground. It seemed if he was trying to get up, trying to do something, but his movements were abortive and uncoordinated.
"What happened?" Tamikia asked.
"Loaded a datasoft with every smart virus I have and spiked him with it," Yuri told her. "They'll punch through almost any defence there is."
"That had to be a lot of smart viruses." Tamikia said. "Aren't they are very illegal?"
"Well, I think nanotech is considered to be slightly more of a danger, but both technologies are right up there in the 'only god needs to know' security levels."
"Ooh, poor Melkar. Are you having some trouble?" Kei said, her tone dripping with exaggerated concern. "Perhaps you should lie down." She kicked him in the head, laying him flat out on his back.
"I'm going to take over the ship," Yuri said, running over to the captain's station. She took a small, armoured case from a belt pouch and opened it, revealing a slightly scarred, rectangular computer disc. She slotted the disk into an interface port on the Captain's station and then used an interface cable to jack herself in.
"This make take a bit," Yuri said.
"I'm not sure we have a bit," Kei said, looking up at the ceiling screen. The Star Hauler had closed on the Dark Lady and the rail cannons were beginning to tell. As she watched a large section of hull was blown free of the liner's port side. She could see the atmosphere leaking out.
"See if you can do something," Yuri said.
Kei moved to the gunner's station, pushed the dead man--he had been killed by a stray shot during the firefight--out of the seat, and then sat down. "Let's see," Kei said, thinking out loud. "I could stop the ship but that would attract attention, and until Yuri's got full control that's probably not a good thing, and engineering may very well just override us. Could cut power to the guns, but that would likely cause the same problems. Could go and kill all the gunners myself, but I don't have the time."
"Could you screw up the targeting computers?" Tamikia suggested.
"Yeah, right."
"Just an idea."
"What do I look like, a computer geek," Kei mumbled as she cut the power to the guns.
"I thought you said that would attract attention," Tamikia said, looking over Kei's shoulder.
"What can I say? I'm desperate."
"Chief gunner to bridge," a woman's voice came over the ships com. "we just lost power, what's happening?"
"Diagnostic check," Kei tried.
"What? Let me speak to the Commodore," The woman demanded.
"He's tied up at the moment."
"Engineering this is weapons. I think the bridge has been compromised. Return power to the guns and re-secure the bridge." They heard over the com.
"Oh no you don't," Yuri said as she redoubled her efforts.
She punched into the computer systems, performing a cyber lobotomy on several nodes. Then she went to work doing the impossible, since the impossible was currently the best way to deal with the situation.
All through the ship every doorway locked open, except for the one leading to the bridge. While most of the airlocks were one-way, rotating entry spheres, there were a few, in the cargo holds mostly, which had been designed for utility as opposed to safety.
There were also a number of emergency hatches. They would only open if the pressure outside the ship was above a certain level. However those protocols were no longer in effect.
Before anyone knew what was happening the airlocks and emergency hatches opened.
"Oh my," Kei said, seeing all the internal environmental sensors flash red.
"What happened?" Tamikia asked.
"Everyone on the ship decided to step out for a breath of hard vacuum," Kei told her.
"Don't you think that was a little excessive?" Tamikia looked over at Yuri.
"Nothing 'little' about it. Couldn't think of anything else that would work quickly."
"I'm going to get the Dark Lady on the com, see if she needs help," Kei said.
Yuri took a deep breath and then settled down to get full control of the ship.
"We might have a problem here," Tamikia said.
Kei and Yuri looked away from their work. "What?" they said in unison.
"Melkar. He's still moving. It's looking a little more coordinated as well."
Yuri got up from the Captain's station, unplugging herself, and went over to see what Tamikia was talking about.
"I think she's right," Kei said from beside Yuri. "Really, shouldn't something more impressive have happened by now? Maybe some small explosions or something?"
"Now that you mention it," Yuri said softly, "and considering he had to have at least one component that would explode when the computers went down... Yes."
"So he's not finished yet?" Kei gave the cyborg a hard kick to the head.
"Think not," Yuri said.
"So now what?"
"Now we cut him open," Tamikia said as she crossed the floor and started opening the storage lockers that lined the rear of the bridge.
"With what?" Yuri asked.
"There's got to be something in here."
"Maybe we can do something with our remaining grenades," Kei said, taking one from her harness.
"I always get wary when you start talking about impromptu charges," Yuri told her.
"Stand back." Tamikia came up to the body carrying a suitcase-sized, plasma torch. She placed it beside Melkar's body and then knelt down. "You'll probably want to turn your back," she said to Kei and Yuri.
They did so.
The light from the plasma torch was bright, even reflected off the walls of the bridge, and Yuri had to squint her eye against it.
Tamikia worked for almost a minute before the plasma torch shut off. Yuri turned around and looked down at what Tamikia had done.
Melkar's chest had been cut away, opening up the cavity within. Nestled safely within ballistic foam, with several small components attached to it, was clear container. Within the container was a brain.
"Well," Yuri said, "that would explain why the viruses did not finish him off immediately. He was not quite against humanity as I first thought."
"Separate computer to control life support for his brain," Tamikia said, "Biological/cybernetics interface attached to brain stem, no internal brain modifications that I can see. I so want his patents."
"There's a talented hacker in there, fighting all my viruses." Yuri shook her head.
"What do you think this will do?" Kei asked as she grasped the brain case and yanked it from the body. The feeds and cabling popped free.
"No!" Yuri shouted, and then knocked Kei back.
Something body's abdomen, no longer controlled by the brain, exploded. It was contained, but had anyone been close they certainly might have been injured.
"That answer you question?" Yuri asked Kei.
"Yes," was all Kei said as she placed the brain on the floor.
"Look at that." Tamikia sounded excited. "The legs are still moving. If I can just beat everyone else to his company I'll be able to corner the cybernetic market."
"So what do we do with this?" Yuri looked down at the brain.
"Could turn it over to the UG police," Kei said.
"We could break it open and toss the brain into space."
"I like the sound of that."
Tamikia was kneeling beside the body that Melkar had used. "Look at this," she said, reaching into the chest cavity. "Brain tape." She pulled it forth.
"Just in case, I guess," Yuri said.
Tamikia snapped the cartridge in two.
"Okay," Kei said as she kicked the braincase, sending it skittering across the floor, "let's get the Dark Lady on the line and this ship under our control."