were released.
She opened the case and let loose the breath she had not known she was holding. Inside was a folded piece of cloth that shimmered in the light. Eric let out his own gasp, drawing Kira’s gaze. “I thought there’d be something else.”
Kira reached in with trembling hands and picked it up. It unfolded, hanging loosely in her hands until she stretched it taut as she held it up. “What is that? Lingerie?”
She shook her head. “It’s a bodysuit designed to diffuse energy weapons. It offers protection against any radiant beam weapon, but not something like a plasma weapon. Those have a highly energized form of matter.”
“ How do you know that?”
She looked at him and saw the pale color of his cheeks. “Eric, this is mine. I don’t know how, I’ve never seen it before, but it opened to my thumb prints. And I can’t think of a better time to find out.”
“ Find out what?” His question went unanswered. She stood up and stripped off her clothes, standing nude in front of him in the single least sexual moment she could ever remember being in. She slipped the diffusion suit on, pulling the shimmering material into place and noting how it fit her perfectly.
“ Wow,” Eric whispered. “Pretty crude of me, but you’re beautiful.”
Kira smirked. “That is crude, but there’s never a bad time to tell me I’m beautiful. What I need to know is how you knew it was there?”
Eric fell silent. She saw him struggling internally. His eyes dropped and he gasped. She followed his gaze and saw what had stolen his breath. She dropped to her knees and reached in, pulling out the strange pieces of metal that the bodysuit had hidden. Her hands slid across them, feeling a sense of familiarity even though she had no idea what she was doing. She looked at Eric, meeting his gaze, and then closed her eyes. Her hands worked the items, putting them together in a smooth and practiced manner that left a dryness in her mouth.
When Kira opened her eyes she held a rifle in her hand that was light weight and possessed a deadly beauty. Her eyes went to a magazine that was loaded full of ellipsoid shapes, with each narrow end coming to a point. She slipped it into the rifle and cycled a round into the chamber.
“ Damn…”
“ Yeah,” Kira said softly. She looked up abruptly. “Shit! The others! We’ve got to help them.”
“ You really know how to use that?” Eric stood up and asked.
Kira rose as well. “No, but I’ve got a hunch I’ll figure it out. Come on! And Eric, you’re going to tell me how you knew about this later. I don’t even want to think about it right now, but as soon as this is over I’m going to seriously freak out and either I’m going to need you there to hold me or I’m going to need you there so I can slap you silly.”
Eric grinned. “So long as you need me.” He followed her out of the bunkroom and back towards the main airlock where their shipmates were presumably waiting for them.
Chapter 9
They paused at the top of the stair well that led down to the passage with the airlock. Sharp shouted something that was drowned out by the sound of a scream. Eric looked at Kira, his eyes impossibly wide. She held up her hand to him, acting without thinking, and used her long legs to fly down the stairs in two steps.
She knew Eric was following but she didn’t wait. It was exciting and terrifying, but she somehow knew what she had to do. She burst through the open hatchway into the passage and threw herself into the far wall. She felt the heat of a passing shot and it brought the reality of the situation to her. She’d already seen several of the invaders through the open door to the airlock. One on the inner side of the door, two on the outer side, and a third kneeling further back in the middle. She had also seen the twitching leg of a fifth on the ground.
Tarn was kneeling behind an open panel that he’d removed from the wall. He was also sporting multiple scorch marks on his clothes. The panel glowed in a few places from strikes from the raiders energy weapons. Captain Sharp stood in another hatch, trying to angle for a shot but she knew he was being driven back each time he attempted it.
Kira threw herself forward, springing off the wall and crashing on the floor in the middle of the passage. Her rifle was held ready for the moment she stopped moving. She pulled the trigger mechanically and jammed her right hand and right knee into the floor.
When next she came to rest she was kneeling with her left was on the deck and her right knee spread wide for balance. She sensed more than felt the beams from the pirates’ lasers that missed her spinning form. She held her breath long enough to send another high density sliver at supersonic speeds through the faceplate and head of the pirate that stood on the right side of the hatch, then she dove forward into a roll. She felt the heat along her buttock and thigh from a highly focused light beam that grazed her. The suit fragmented and disbursed the energy, causing discomfort but not injury.
A cry behind her proved far more distracting. She risked a glance back, her only thought one of fear that Eric had been hurt. She saw him clutching his forearm and scrambling backwards. Another shot hit her, this time squarely in the side beneath her left arm. The body suit prevented it from burning through, but the heat blistered her skin beneath the second skin.
With teeth clenched, Kira fired a round blindly then let her mind go enough to drop supine to the deck. Her rifle hummed as the magnetic rails in the barrel sent forth a round into the crouching invader on the left side of the air lock door. It hit him high on the left side of the chest, near the shoulder, but the spray that coated the wall of the airlock behind him and the way he spun away from the impact gave proof that he was out of the fight.
With only one visible attacker left Kira knew what her next move should be. She gathered her legs in preparation to spring then noticed the spherical ball that was only now slowing its roll toward her. It had just passed Tarn, leaving it half a dozen feet behind Captain Sharp. With less than ten feet until it reached her, she drove her hands into the deck.
The concussive blast from the grenade swept over her, knocking her off balance and leaving her disoriented. It was a LF grenade, or Low Frequency, which let loose a powerful subsonic blast that was great for disorienting people and even damaging delicate electronics. She tried to make sense of how the floor and the ceiling seemed interchangeable, fighting back a wave of nausea at the same time.
The remaining pirate held his position while five others rushed past him and down the passage. Tarn was slumped against the wall, the steel panel resting on him. Captain Sharp was rolling on the ground, trying to find his feet much the same as Kira. She rolled onto her back, clamping down on her lips to prevent her stomach from emptying. She tasted the bile and screwed her eyes shut. When she opened them she saw one of the men pointing their laser rifles at her.
They had been modified, she noticed instantly. Without knowing how, she understood the bulky modifications amplified the power considerably. As a trade off she estimated the guns had to cool longer between shots or, if ignored, would shut down to prevent damage. That or the pirates went through a lot of weapons.
Tarn and Sharp were both being covered as well, though Tarn was only beginning to show signs of coming out of the grenade induced stupor. The fourth boarder walked up to Kira and chuckled when he saw her rifle laying in the passage. “Well well, what have we here?” He said. He had opened up the external speakers on his suit to allow his voice to be heard.
The man guarding her turned to look at the other pirate as he bent down to pick up her rifle. Kira realized that if any life lay ahead of her would be short at best, or long and filled with pain and suffering. Her body wanted to act now that the dizziness was fading. She was terrified of blacking out again, but living through what was about to happen scared her more.
“ One last time,” She thought to herself, surprised at the thought and the fact that she was not sure it had even come from her. Kira let out her breath and fell back within herself.
She watched, almost as though she was staring at a display screen, as her body spun on the floor so her legs were between the man’s standing above her. She scissored her legs open, hitting his at the ankles and sending them flying. With barely a yelp he fell, pulling muscles in his groin and slamming into the deck roughly.
Kira, or her body at least, sat upright and grabbed the laser rifle from his hands. She lay back down and
