He spun on his heel and cut through the cubicle wall just under the woman's helmet, cutting through her throat. Jake followed through with a single shot to her helmet, flinging the woman's head back and opening the wound to gaping. Blood surged into the air. What do I have to do to intimidate these people into surrendering? Jake thought to himself as self disgust threatened to overtake him.
As if in direct answer to his notion, two soldiers stood up and flung their rifles to the ground. “Surrender! We surrender!”
Jake trained his sidearm on the nearest of the two soldiers and set it to full automatic. “Open this section and let me out on the port side of the ship.”
“I can't, they'll execute me for that.”
Jake squeezed the trigger for less than a second and five shots struck the man's upper breastplate. The first three rounds didn't penetrate all the way through, the last two opened great gaping, flaming wounds inside the man's ribcage. The sparking fire and smoke from the thermite rounds flared from the large wounds as he fell to the deck and for several minutes after.
Jake's aim was immediately brought to bear against the other guard, who nodded. “Let me go with you.”
“Do you have the codes and clearance I'll need to get off the ship?”
“Yes, I have my own codes and my Lieutenant's.”
“Good, get to work.” Jake directed, slowly gesturing towards the large security control booth in the center of the room. “The rest of you get out of here! Anyone left in this room besides me and my new friend will be killed!” he caught sight of a soldier hiding several meters behind him start standing up, brandishing his rifle.
Jake spun, took aim with his sidearm and just as the soldier got his first shot off he killed him with the last three rounds in his thermite clip. He clicked the release, let the clip fall to the ground and put the weapon behind his back, where the loader inside his long coat fed a fresh clip into the weapon.
“Now, where were we?” Jake asked the soldier who had volunteered to help him escape.
As the unarmed security office workers and surrendered soldiers hurriedly left the room, lockouts across the center of the command carrier started to come down.
Riding The Needle
None of them ever thought they would see the inside of a rail cannon. The deck and repair crew had pointed one of the planetary cannons so it was aimed over the surface of the island. To everyone inside the Needle it looked like their trajectory would take them between two of the largest buildings.
A near miss at that speed has to have repercussions. Oz found himself thinking. “How long are they taking the shield down for?” He asked over the sound of the capacitor coils humming at the base of the cannon. The electromagnetic field was building up all around the long cylindrical ship.
“A little less than a quarter second. More than enough time to get through at the speed we'll be moving,” Ayan replied as she checked the inertial dampeners using her command and control unit. It was tied into the ship with well insulated wires, so there would be no chance that any jamming or wireless signals could interfere. “The dampeners are all ready,” she told Minh, who sat ahead of her at the main flight controls.
“Are you sure that's enough time?” Oz asked.
Jason chuckled and shook his head.
“The math is solid, it's more than enough,” Ayan answered.
“You know, I used to watch a cartoon with a monkey and a panda. The panda loaded the monkey into a cannon once, and until now I thought that cartoon was hilarious,” Minh said just loudly enough for everyone inside the small craft to hear. “That episode isn't quite so funny now.”
“I'm guessing it didn't end well for the monkey?” Jason asked.
“Monkey all over the place.”
“You know, I think of it more like sky luge. We're all lined up in a relatively thin shell, have one pilot, and the only thing we have for control are brakes,” Jason commented, knowing he was only making Oz more nervous. “Biiiiig flaming breaks.” He was so frightened he was about to start shaking as well, but torturing Oz made him feel better somehow.
“It's not too late to do this the hard way, you know, with refurbished tanks and soldiers and the biggest guns we can find,” Oz offered.
“It is too late, the cannon's fully charged, count down is down to fifteen seconds, oops, fourteen, thirteen…” Minh teased as he took a firm grip on the controls.
Everyone braced themselves, the sound of the inertial dampeners whining at their highest setting and the rail cannon building an intense magnetic field around them filled the small cabin. Before anyone but Minh was ready they launched. Even with the intense inertial control field inside the cabin, everyone was pressed into the backs of their steel frame seats. Their vacsuits protected their hearing from the sonic boom that erupted as they erupted from the barrel.
Then there was relative silence. The sound of air moving over the sleek pointed shell and the hum of the inertial dampeners running were almost soothing. The night sky above was filled with stars, and a strange, momentary serenity settled over the four of them.
The needle flipped upside down, all the crew members but Minh-Chu watched the city below go by in a dizzying blur. They missed some of the taller rooftops by what seemed only meters. “Pull up!” Oz called from the rear seat.
“No one likes a back seat driver!” Minh replied through clenched teeth. “Deceleration thrusters in three! Two! One!”
Ayan pulled two levers above her head hard and the afterburners from the Warpig fired, filling the forward view with thick smoke and flame. Everyone was slammed into their restraints as the ship began decelerating from its incredible speed. Minh expertly guided the path of the tiny speeding ship between the two largest buildings. Transparesteel windows broke free of their fastenings, parts of the structures were torn apart and scattered across several city blocks of the city below as the fireball passed.
“Oh God,” Jason whimpered.
“Don't worry, we're on course,” Ayan called over her shoulder, not sounding nearly as sure as Jason and Oz would have liked.
The thunderous sound of the large afterburners mounted on the front end of the ship increased in pitch and the inertial dampeners whined even louder as they struggled to compensate for the gravitational forces being exerted on them. “We've hit the loose pack fuel! I don't see the landing zone yet!” Minh yelled.
“It's coming up, right on the other side of the spaceport,” Ayan answered.
“It better be, or they pointed us in the wrong direction!”
The large spaceport passed underneath just then, they had slowed enough so it wasn't just a large, round grey blur, but a more well detailed complex of landing bays, debarkation and embarkation ramps. Half a second later they were over an extensive sugar cane field.
“Should we be upside down?” Asked an alarmed Oz.
“Hold on, we're hitting!” Minh warned as he flipped three switches in sequence. As he hit the third the needle was engulfed by flame as the last of the fuel in the afterburners was expended in a massive burst. Something exploded inside the cockpit, showering them with sparks the instant before they hit the ground.
The vessel dug into the earth and all light turned to darkness as the ship careened through the field filled with green sugar cane stalks, leaving a trial of deeply turned black soil in its path. The night was alive with the sounds of violent explosions and the rumble of the ship coming to a halt seconds after impact.
The four of them hung upside down in their restraints, each of them checking for injuries. Despite the sounds and explosions, the impact had been very mild for the passengers. “I'm all right,” Oz said in the relative silence.
“Me too, not a scratch,” Jason replied.
“I'm okay, don't ever want to do anything like that again, but I'm okay,” Ayan said quietly.
“I think I peed a little,” Minh said as he reached to something between his feet and pulled it sharply. “Thank
