Re-Coil - J.T. Nicholas Page 0,101

ferocity, his vacc suit already stained and dripping with the gore from his previous kills. It was hard not to be entranced by the spectacle. If killing was an art form, he was da Vinci. He moved with lethal efficiency, no wasted motion or effort. It was beautiful and terrifying all at once.

It also bought me the second I needed.

I lunged forward, stabbed at the console reset with one finger. If I’d set the jumpers correctly, if nothing had been damaged in the process, if the AI hadn’t figured out some way to override the override, then the system should reboot and the flight path of the ship should stabilize.

If.

I couldn’t just wait and watch. I brought my weapon back in line. I couldn’t risk firing into the melee where the assassin was systematically cutting down the infected. Too great a risk of hitting Korben by accident. Instead, I fired at those making their way into the room, hoping to cut off the stream of new bodies at the source. My subgun clicked on an empty magazine, the HUD in my vision letting me know that I was out of reloads. I dropped the weapon, letting it fall to the end of its retention strap as I transitioned to my sidearm, continuing to pour fire downrange. I was aware, in a peripheral sort of way, that Korben had managed to drop the last of those in the room with us and was taking a roundabout path to the door, keeping well clear of my line of fire.

System reset complete, Sarah informed me.

I felt a surge of hope even as I dropped a magazine from my pistol and slapped in a fresh one. Korben and I might fall here, but there was still a chance.

“We’re on our way,” Shay’s voice came through the comm. “Hold tight. Just a minute or two and we’ll be there. Just keep fighting.”

I’d never stopped broadcasting, so Shay and the others had had a first-person view of the madness on the bridge. It must have been dizzying, watching the battle unfold in that manner, but at least they knew what they were getting into.

Now, all we had to do was hold.

The seconds ticked by in a maddened flurry of chaotic limbs. I kept up a steady salvo of fire from my pistol, sending round after round punching through the open hatch and into the massed coils. I turned my mind off, shut out the savagery as much as I could, and focused on finding the intersection of the pistol’s HUD-projected aiming point and Sarah’s suggested targeting interval. I was a long way from perfect—the headshots were harder to come by with gravity adding another vector to the equation, but I didn’t need to be perfect. Those who slipped by the barrage found Korben and his blades.

Then, without warning, the pressure stopped. I was halfway through a reload, Sarah indicating with a pulsing red circle that this was my last magazine, when the final Bliss-infected through the door was, suddenly, the final Bliss-infected through the door. For a moment I could only stare in wonder, gun still held out before me, trembling slightly under the strain of keeping the hunk of metal and composite at the ready. I noticed that the barrel glowed ever so slightly, the heat buildup from the electrical discharge that drove the rounds unable to dissipate fast enough given my rate of fire. Even in vacuum. Christ.

Then my reverie was broken as a hand touched my shoulder and squeezed softly.

I damn near jumped out of my boots, whirling around at the unexpected pressure, fighting to bring my weapon to bear. I could hear my heartbeat, locked within the confines of my suit, thudding rapidly. Someone was panting, and it took me a moment to realize that that, too, was coming from me. Of course.

A hand caught my arm as I spun, keeping my weapon pointed in a safe direction. “Easy, Carter. Easy. We’re here.”

I recognized the voice, Shay’s voice. Her real voice, not the voice of the coil she was currently in. Funny how I’d come to accept my new coil’s voice as my own, but Shay’s would always be several octaves higher, several notes richer than the one that bore her words outside of electronic manipulation. A surge of exhaustion hit me at the words and recognition. My arms dropped to my side. It took a real effort of will not to let the pistol slide from my fingers.

Then Shay’s arms were