The Black Gate (The Messenger #11) - J.N. Chaney Page 0,82
enemies.
Dash smacked his last magazine into his mag-pistol and cocked the action. In the few seconds it took him, a pair of Deepers raced forward, intent on bowling him over. Only a rapid series of shots from Benzel kept the creatures at bay long enough for Dash to resume firing. When his fire joined Benzel’s, the first Deeper went down hard, rolled over, and began methodically tearing the innards from its neighbor in a kind of death throe—
—not a death throe. Intentional. The Deeper being shredded was spraying caustic ooze everywhere, adding yet more lethality to the fight.
“How much further?” Dash shouted without looking back.
“Just a . . . a few meters,” Westin said. “You’re almost . . . back at the hatch . . . to the hangar.”
For a wild instant, Dash considered just ordering them all to turn and run. He had less than a half a mag left, and then things got hazy in a hurry. But he didn’t issue the order, knowing full well that would be suicide. The instant they turned away, the Deepers would pounce. He made himself keep facing them, firing, backing up, firing, backing up again—
His heel hit the coaming around the hatch leading back into the hangar. Wei-Ping and the Marine, both of whom were out of ammo, had already stumbled through. That left only him and Benzel facing the tide of Deepers. But only one of them could pass through the hatch at a time.
“Benzel, go!”
“Dash—!”
“Just go!”
Benzel hesitated another heartbeat or two, then clambered backward through the hatch. Dash fired the rest of his magazine into the seemingly endless swarm of Deepers, then leaped back. He had a spike of fear when his foot caught on the hatch coaming, then someone caught him, heaving him to one side with a muffled oof.
Deepers came boiling out of the hatch—
And into the open.
Heavily armored Marines immediately closed in, forming a ring of determined slaughter around the hatch. They wielded boarding weapons—axes and cutlasses and pikes—and chopped and hacked at the Deepers, who slashed and stabbed back with their blade-like forelegs.
Dash grabbed a boarding ax and leaped into the fray, swinging and cracking open the carapace on a Deeper as it scrambled out of the hatch. He saw more Marines establishing a firing line further back in the hangar bay, all armed with snap-guns. Unlike mag-weapons, snap-guns focused their destructive force on the point where their twin beams converged. They were ideal weapons for boarding actions. The beams began to flicker forward, cutting into the Deepers with ruthless efficiency.
Dash prepared himself to fall back, to clear the lines of fire for the Marines with the snap-guns. As he did, he found himself opposite Benzel, wielding a boarding pike against a Deeper. Benzel struck hard, slamming the thing to the deck with a prodigious stab. Dash followed up with an ax blow that crushed the Deeper’s head. Gasping, he turned back to the hatch—
But nothing else came through.
Aside from a few feeble twitches, the Deepers that had come boiling out of the hatch were just a heap of broken limbs, shattered carapaces, and viscous, noxious sludge, all oozing out in spreading pools that simmered like a launchpad in the summer heat.
In the stunned silence that followed, the Marine commander, a fierce-eyed Lieutenant, immediately deployed the second squad of Marines—the ones armed with snap-guns—back into the hatch. They would sweep the corridors and compartments back to the embedded missile, secure the area, and see if there were any survivors.
Or enemy. Either way, the search would be thorough.
Dash stepped back a few paces, still clutching the ax, to open the way for the Marines. It dripped slimy gore onto his boot. He shot it a disgusted look and dropped it to the deck, then took a moment to catch his breath. Around him, injured Marines and crew members were being treated or evacuated. That included Captain Westin and the Marine who’d retreated with them, both of whom were being hurried away on a grav-gurney. They were more seriously wounded than Dash had realized. As they left, a third squad of Marines clattered past them into the hangar bay, and the Lieutenant immediately directed them to cover the hatch opening. Four other Marines covered the pile of Deeper corpses, in case they held any further surprises.
Benzel walked around the gory heap and stopped at Dash’s side. “You okay?”
“Yeah, fine. How about you? Saw you take a hit,” Dash said.