Re-Coil - J.T. Nicholas Page 0,88
that the pain in the ass was a preexisting condition.”
A little chuckle escaped my lips and the pain seemed to ease a bit. “Roger that,” I replied. “Be advised, more discussion on such may be required at a later date.” The tinkling laughter of her reply was like an analgesic. I drew a breath and sent mental instructions to Sarah to pull up a schematic of the ship. “I’m a bit off target,” I told Shay and whomever else was listening over the shuttle channel. “Going to take a bit to get back to the bridge.”
“Understood,” Shay commed back. “We’ll keep as close a sensor watch as we can to make sure the AI doesn’t try and get cute and send anyone out to play with you.”
Shit. That thought hadn’t even occurred to me. “Thanks for that, Chan. Langston out.”
I cut the comm and adjusted the strap on the submachine gun. If there was a chance of resistance, better to keep the firearm at the ready. The recoil would be interesting in the weightlessness of space, but I’d just learned the hard way that the VaccTech magboots could take a hard impact and keep their hold. And, despite what planet-bound “experts” might think, the chemical burner would shoot just fine in vacuum. The powder was a direct descendant of good old-fashioned gunpowder and contained its own oxidizer to fuel the burn.
I held the weapon at the low ready and willed one boot to release. Then it was step forward, engage. Release the other foot. Step forward. Engage. And on and on. The distance wasn’t terrible in terms of absolute meters but untethered against the hull of a wildly maneuvering ship, I wasn’t about to take any risks.
It was going to be a long march.
“They’re coming!” Shay’s voice snapped into my helmet.
The words jolted me from the monotonous focus of shuffling along the deck and I cursed silently. Maneuvering along the surface of the ship as it continued its random maneuvers had taken far more concentration than I’d hoped. Twice, I’d almost been thrown free of the vessel as it executed a maneuver at just the wrong time, catching me mid-stride and pulling hard against the magnetic attraction of my boot. The second time, the boot had actually come free, and it was only quick work with the thrusters that got me back to the surface and locked in. I was well past bingo fuel and close to bleeding into the reserves. The rapid course changes of my arrival coupled with the near constant burns I’d had to make even while walking across the deck—in order to mitigate the ship maneuvers—had left me wondering if I had enough left to even make the few dozen meters separating me from the bridge. The last thing I needed was to try and fight my way through some Bliss-altered meat-puppets.
But it looked like that was exactly what I was going to have to do.
I’d had Sarah focused on running the thrusters, but at the ping from Shay, my agent interfaced once more with the helmet sensors and red reticules popped into my vision, each one marking the position of an enemy combatant making their way out onto the deck. Sarah didn’t have all the data—but she could tap into the shuttle’s sensors and provide me with a much clearer picture than I could get with the naked eye alone. They were coming from an airlock just aft of the bridge. A half-dozen had already made their way onto the deck and I could see more emerging from the ship.
“I got problems here,” I said over the comm as I shuffle-stepped my way to a protruding antenna array. It wasn’t much of a barrier, but at least it offered some obstacle to the Blissful headed my way. “Fuck, there’s a lot of them.”
“Working on it,” came Shay’s terse reply. “I’ve almost got the doors. I was hoping to give us an easy entry so you wouldn’t have to cut your way in. Gonna have to go the other route now and slag all of them.”
Her voice had taken on that tone of distracted and conversational that she got when she was deep into a hack. She wasn’t really looking for a response. Hell, she might not have been aware that she was talking at all. She was working her way through a problem, and I hoped to God that she’d figure it out. In the meantime, I had my own problems to worry about.
I shouldered