Re-Coil - J.T. Nicholas Page 0,111

any part of the ship.

The cyber-zombies kept coming, despite the pile of dead clogging the door. That was actually starting to be a problem, as the infected clambered over and around them, rather than coming in a nice straight line to our little shooting gallery. They’d already started to push past the hatch, despite the weight of our fire, an endless tide of flesh and blood that would pull us under if something didn’t happen soon.

“Any time, Shay,” I panted into the comm.

“Ten seconds,” she replied. “The concentrations have to be right.”

I had no idea what she was talking about, but I knew that ten seconds would seem like an eternity. My subgun clicked back on an empty chamber and I let it fall, transitioning to my Gauss pistol. I fumbled the draw, and in that moment, everything seemed to fall apart. It was testament to how much of a razor’s edge we’d been walking with trying to contain the Bliss-infected. I didn’t get my weapon back in line; another of the security guards got caught mid-magazine change. And just like that, they were among us.

I fell backward, dropping supine and bringing the Gauss gun to bear as the ambulatory coils loomed over me. I didn’t feel the recoil—negligible to begin with and now buried under the terror and adrenaline—as I squeezed the trigger again and again, barely conscious of the hand-to-hand battle being joined all around me. For a moment, just a heartbeat, it was contact shots and butt stocks in a swirling chaotic melee.

Then the world exploded.

I may not have been able to hear the blast, but I felt it as the concussive force swept down the hallway in a gout of flame. It knocked everyone, human and infected alike, to the ground. I had a brief sense of heat before the VaccTech suit did its thing and regulated the temperature. Warning indicators flashed in my vision, indicating that the suit was nearing its limit, but then the warnings faded. I pushed myself to my feet, and realized that somewhere along the way I’d lost my pistol. I wasn’t thinking clearly—just staring at the people around me. Then, I realized that one of them was Korben and that he was moving with purpose.

Moving from Bliss-infected to Bliss-infected and methodically delivering death blows to the seemingly unconscious coils. That brought me back to my senses. My subgun was still dangling from its strap, so I dropped the empty mag and slammed a new one home. There didn’t seem to be a need. The security personnel, and it looked like all of them had made it this time, were regaining their feet and looking around with the same bewildered expression I knew must be on my face.

The coils were down, and as Korben did his work, not likely to get back up again. The hatch to the machine room—or whatever it was—was visible and a dark smoke backlit by a blue light was leaking from the room. There may not have been any oxygen aboard the ship, but there were plenty of other fuels available and it looked like Shay had managed to tap into a few of them.

Shay.

She was still on the ground but at least she was moving, struggling to regain her feet. I hurried to her side, grabbing an arm and heaving to get her up. It would have been a simple enough exercise before, but now she weighed damn near as much as me. “What the hell was that?” I asked.

“Had to catch enough of them in the blast,” she gasped. “God. I think I cracked a rib.”

“What are you talking about, Ms. Chan?” Korben asked, wiping his knives clean on an already blood-soaked handkerchief that he produced from somewhere in his vacc suit. “We were within moments of being overrun. No,” he corrected. “We were overrun. We’re lucky we didn’t lose anyone else.” His voice had a different note in it, one more icy than calm. There was something in that tone that reminded me that whatever our present circumstances, Korben was still a killer.

If Shay was bothered by that fact, it didn’t show in her voice. She matched him ice for ice. “What I did was save your ass, assassin. You and your corporate bully boys. You’d all be waking up in new coils if it wasn’t for me. You wanted a way to break contact and that’s what I gave you, and something more besides.”

I moved without conscious thought, putting myself between Shay