Re-Coil - J.T. Nicholas Page 0,117
on my ass, vaguely aware of the crimson river blossoming on the deck. Was that coming from me? My vision swam and waves of nausea crashed against me. I did my best to shut off that part of my mind even as I felt my suit responding to the medical emergency, constricting against the wound. Indicators were flashing in my HUD, Sarah telling me that first-aid nanites had been dispatched, that the wound would likely not be life-threatening.
Well, not if I survived the next few seconds, anyway.
I was flat on my back, pistol clutched in both hands, vision wavering as I fired. It wasn’t quite blindly—no amount of pain could black out the aiming reticules Sarah continued to drop into my vision—but I was acutely aware of the inevitable press of infected bearing down on me.
“Clear the door!” Shay’s screaming voice cut through my befuddled thoughts. The door? I had fallen backward, but my legs were still dangling over the elevated threshold. The hatch was slowly coming down, moving with weird jerks, as if fighting itself.
“Clear the damn door!” Shay yelled again. Oh. Right. I hadn’t moved. I tried to stand. Bad idea. I nearly blacked out again and only the sudden alarm tone from Sarah brought me back. I moved the pistol to align with the reticule in my vision, only half-registering the infected hunching through the dwindling gap between Life Support and the corridor. Standing was out, so I did the most dignified thing I could—I crawled. Inch by agonizing inch I dragged myself away from the door. I used my left hand and good leg, maintaining a volley of fire from the Gauss pistol with my right as I went. My heels cleared the threshold with a few inches to spare as the hatch continued its inexorable descent. What the hydraulic-driven metal did to the coils piled in the doorway was indescribable.
“If you’re quite done, we can use some help here!”
Korben’s voice cut across the channel like a knife. I still couldn’t stand, suit and nanites aside, so I pushed myself in a half-crawl, half-scramble, trying desperately to turn as I remembered that the others were dealing with infected of their own. Shay, back to the console she had just been working on, was firing, expression horrified as she did so. I finally managed to orient myself.
The reason for her horror was clear.
Team Humanity was down to a grand total of five defenders. That included one hacker who hadn’t adjusted to her new coil, two Genetechnic security members, a bought-and-paid-for assassin, and me, a guy with what I suspected was a gaping axe wound that only the combination of the VaccTech suit and my own nanites prevented from being instantly fatal. Against us stood at least three times our number of cyber-zombies. Even as I watched, one of the two remaining Genetechnic security guards went down, felled by a claw hammer that punched clean through his face-shield.
For Korben and the now lone-remaining guard, it was down to fists and knives against seven-to-one odds. That was unwinnable by any measure. Shay’s weight of fire was making a difference, though. She wasn’t landing head shots, but the big ferro-magnetic projectiles from the Gauss gun did enough damage that they slowed the onrushing enemy. I propped myself up on an elbow and did my best to steady my own Gauss pistol. My hands were shaking, from shock or adrenaline dump or, hell, maybe blood loss, but I started firing as well, keeping my aim far to the flanks of the now back-to-back combatants.
A half-dozen of the infected broke off their efforts to finish the assassin and company man and came our way, sprinting to close the short distance. Shay dropped two and I managed to pick off a third, but then the remaining trio were on us. Two went for Shay, lunging past me, while the third hurled itself bodily atop me. I managed to lash out with my uninjured leg, catching one of the pair heading for Shay, causing it to stumble and crash to the deck. Then everything became a tangle of limbs and white-hot pain as the weight of the coil fell squarely on my hip. The shock drove the Gauss pistol from my hand and for a panicked moment, it was all I could do to keep a tenuous grip on consciousness. It was as if my entire body had locked up, frozen from the shock and pain. I couldn’t lift my arms to defend myself