some damage, but mostly to keep from being buried in the snow and pushed back into the oblivion of hyperspace.
Jym clasped Penny’s wrists and stood up with her assistance.
“Thanks,” he said, gathering himself.
He seemed about to say something else, but Penny raised her hand to quiet him. She leaned toward the cockpit door. Somewhere aft, she could hear the hiss of plasma torches and the clanging of outer hull plating. “They’re already cutting their way inside,” she told the others. “I don’t think they’re happy with our parking job.”
“We’ll make our stand in the cargo bay,” Mortimor told her. He patted Jym on the back, and both men reached for their blades.
Penny nodded her agreement, and the three of them made their way aft, leaning to one side to compensate for the tilt of the deck and the Bern craft’s busted grav panels.
“If anyone gets caught and interrogated, this was the extent of the raid, okay?” Mortimor gave them both a serious look. “It was just us, and our goal was to bring down one of their ships and damage the village. No word of the other crews, no matter what they do to us.”
They nodded, each of them well aware of the Luddite fondness for removing limbs.
Mortimor led them out of the cockpit. “Penny, you stay behind as backup in case one of us goes down. Jym, you cover the port side.”
“Don’t try and protect me,” Penny said. “I’m the best here with a blade.” She stepped ahead of the other two. “I’ll take the starboard—”
“Watch out!” Jym yelled, raising his buckblade.
Penny turned and got hers up as well. Two Luds stormed into the bay, slowing up when they saw they were outnumbered. “Do this fast,” Penny said. “We’ve got to take them in small bites.”
Mortimor ran down the far side of the cargo bay, threatening to flank them. Penny pushed forward, forcing them to think about two dangers at once. One of the men seemed timid, the kind who would throw his sword at a foe, then run. Penny screamed and lunged at him, giving Mortimor time to get behind.
The coordinated attack took just a few seconds, and then there was more mess piled up in the ship, Human and Bern bits indistinguishable.
“Are we better off down on the village deck?” Jym asked “It’s gonna get awful crowded in here.”
Penny looked to Mortimor and saw a grim seriousness in his furrowed brow and set lips. “It’s just a numbers game, isn’t it?” she asked him. “We’re just seeing how many we can take with us?”
Mortimor nodded. “Hopefully this’ll scare the Bern and speed up the invasion. Maybe we’ll end up ushering the other groups through the rift quicker. I say we take out a few more Luds here. After that, they’ll know what they’re up against, that this isn’t a friendly crash landing.”
“And then what?” Jym asked.
Mortimor shrugged. “I don’t suppose it’ll be long before we find out.”
Cole sprinted away from the crashed ship and toward the bow of the Luddite village. He angled to starboard, his improvised plan hatching as he went. He headed for the edge of the giant wedge that parted the horizontal snow of hyperspace and kept the flurries from settling on the deck. It was nothing more than a thick, vertical wall of steel in the shape of a V, creating a sideways roof over the mobile town. With his sword extended and held firmly by his waist, Cole jogged close to the wall, the handle of his blade held just centimeters away. He could only hope that the invisible buckblade was long enough to extend all the way through the metal plating. Looking back as he ran, he saw a jagged line being created—the rise and fall of his gait measured in a fine crack of destruction through the tall shield.
Cole paced himself, recognizing that he had a decent jog ahead. He settled into a rhythm and concentrated on his breathing, trying to ignore the increasing heft of his boots. He followed the tall V to the bow, checking now and then to ensure that his blade was still on. Then he traced his way down the port side.
Before he got through three quarters of the other side of the wall, Cole heard a satisfying groan of steel as the remaining section struggled to hold up the rest. He cut another dozen meters, running faster and waiting for the wails of distressed steel to increase their pitch, and then he sprinted down the rail directly aft, pumping his legs as fast as he could to outpace what he figured to be a toppling mountain of metal about thirty meters tall.
He looked back only once, which was all it took to run even faster. The wall was bending around the portion still connected, singing and shrieking as thick metal crumpled like tin. An avalanche of snow shivered from the wedge, and more than a meter of hard pack calved off like a fractured iceberg. The great white sheets crashed and exploded on the deck, followed soon after by the cliff of thick, welded plates that formerly made up the bow shield.
The force of the impact shot up through Cole’s boots like an earthquake, throwing him to the ground. He rolled and slid, came to a graceless stop, then spun around, gasping for breath as he surveyed the damage he’d wrought.
He had easily cleared the falling wall, even though it had felt a lot closer when it hit. The massive wave of packed snow had slid closer, but probably never posed a threat even if it had reached him. Hitting him in the face— spotting his dark goggles with blooms of moisture—came the only bombardment from his efforts:
Looking aft toward the crash site, Cole watched the spreading veil twist its way toward the distant structures, swallowing everything in a sticky cloud. Dark shapes could be seen moving about, the ferocious slam of steel having created just the sort of panic he’d hoped for. The other part of his impromptu plan seemed to be working as well: He could now see the dark figures more clearly. Swaddled in their matted furs, they stood out stark against the new white land he had unleashed.
Cole jogged aft and stopped to retrieve his grav chute. He found it already dusted with snow. He slung it over his white uniform, then pulled his buckblade back out and flicked off the safety. Picking out the nearest Luddites, he stole their direction, his sword armed and at the ready. As he closed the distance—their beastly shapes standing out clear as day against the snow—he wondered just how well
Penny and Mortimor stood over another pair of overanxious Luds, the pieces of them leaking fluids. She heard someone barking orders further down the hull and knew the easy kills were done. The furballs were getting organized.
“We can’t stay here,” Mortimor said.
“What about the floor?” Jym asked. He traced an imaginary slash through the decking.
“No!” Penny said, holding out a hand. “There’s no telling what you’d slice through. The forward thrusters might get their fuel from somewhere aft of here.”
“Then how about around the portholes?” Jym asked. “Maybe there’s a rooftop to jump to—”
“We’re too high for that,” Mortimor said. He pointed to the flakes of snow drifting through the busted canopy. “In fact, are we higher than the camp’s bow shield?”
Penny powered down her sword and ran toward the cockpit, disappearing into the swirling flurries leaking through the hole in the canopy. “No way we’re that high,” she called back to them. “The main deck can’t be more than twenty meters up.” She looked out through the shattered glass at the rooftops below. The mast in the distance was just a hazy strand of black rising up through a sudden blizzard.
She turned back to the others. “I think the impact of our crash took out the bow shield—”
A loud bang cut her off, followed by a shudder that travelled through the deck. Penny stepped back into the cargo bay as several identical, calamitous sounds reverberated through the hull.
“What is
“Careful,” Penny said, flipping on her own blade in case she needed to protect herself from his.
Another bang. Extremely close.
Mortimor looked up at the ceiling. “I think they’re surrounding us, preparing to come in from the top.” He motioned with his hands. “Everyone in the center of the bay, back to back. Watch your angles.”
