Price Of War Book 3 in The New Glasgow War Series
The whole ship shook with a powerful explosion. Lights flickered in Duncan’s cabin. The marines were jarred from their positions. One marine pitched forward and fell on the ground.
“What the hell was that?” one man screamed out.
“Shut it,” Duncan yelled. She switched to the command net, “Marines, status report!”
Of the five sections she had aboard, only four responded. It was Gordo’s squad that didn’t respond. This was her first losses of the battle.
She reached out to the bridge, “Captain McDermont, what happened?”
There was no response. The connection was made, but McDermont was too busy fighting his ship.
…
The cargo container they had rigged to explode, did. It was hammered by fire from the Adamant’s rail guns. The explosion vented away from the Saint Mary. It looked impressive to the enemy’s sensors. Other rail guns had ripped open a section of hull venting it to space.
Gordo’s squad was in that hull section. Three of his marines were ripped from their seats and thrown out into space. Gordo held in place. He grabbed one marine as he floated off. He engaged his magnetic boots to hold on to the floor. The other surviving marine did the same.
Their armor had engaged to provide them with their oxygen. They stared out of the gap in hull, at the wreckage and space beyond. Gordo could hear one of them hyperventilating over the squad net.
“All right grunts, we are going for a walk. Keep the magnets on. Let’s look for an airlock.” Gordo barked his orders.
The two marines turned to Gordo, who checked his weapon to verify that it was loaded. He smiled at them through his faceplate and walked. He climbed out of the wrecked cabin onto the surface of the ship.
…
Captain McDermont was nearly tossed from his chair when the cargo container exploded. His helmsman was thrown from his and earned a large gash across his forehead from slamming into the console in front of him. Lights flickered on the bridge.
McDermont yelled, “Damage report!”
“Sir, the cargo container was hit and exploded. Section 4128 lost pressure and isn’t responding.”
“Cease fire!”
The entire bridge crew turned and stared at the captain as if he were mad. The rail guns and the point defense guns were silenced.
“Power down all lights.” He switched frequencies, “Duncan, we are pretending to be lame. Take out those boarders.”
The crew complied with worried looks on their faces.
…
The captain was playing a dangerous game. Duncan sent out a code word order to her teams. The four moved out. There were only three accessible airlocks that the Adamant could board the Saint Mary through. Each of the teams made their way towards an airlock.
Duncan’s team and one other arrived at the same time. They took advantage of what little cover there was and waited.
…
Gordo started his walk across the hull. He could see the enemy ship in the distance. It had stopped firing on the Saint Mary. He said a quick prayer of thanks for this one little break his team had been given.
A flash of light from the enemy ship caught his eye. He could see shuttles leaving the Adamant and heading towards the Saint Mary. Gordo checked his weapon. He missed the heavy gun he used to carry. But fortunately, Alphonse Ruiz, was one of the survivors and he had one with him.
Using hand signals, he had them take a prone position on top of the hull. He directed them to open fire on the middle shuttle. They spread out with a distance of ten meters between each man. That should make them a harder target.
Gordo switched his rifle to launch grenades. He saw the other rifle man do the same. The heavy gunner deployed a bipod and settled himself in behind the gun.
Gordo waited and then said one word on his squad net, “Fire.”
The heavy gun spat out a heavy volume of fire that the gunner walked into the approaching shuttle. The view screens on the shuttle fractured and the shuttle pulled up and to the left. Gordo and his Johansen fired their grenades at the shuttle. They each fired five times before they had spent their current magazine. Of the ten rounds fired, only three found their mark. The shuttle rocked and turned off of its trajectory spouting atmosphere. The continued off in a spin as it dove out of their sight.
In the meantime, the other two shuttles docked with the Saint Mary and were effectively out of their line of fire.
…
Gordo stood and had his team moving again. They moved as quickly as they could on the outside of the hull. Without the magnets on their boots they would have just floated away into the deep dark like their compatriots.
They were moving towards the airlock that the shuttle they shot at had been headed towards. The surface of the ship was pock-marked with battle scars. Things looked far worse than they actually were. Most of the damage was surface level and didn’t penetrate the ship’s armor. But Gordo didn’t know that. He thought the Saint Mary was doomed.
“O2 Check,” Gordo called out.
The suits came with enough oxygen to survive decompression but the tanks weren’t infinite. He could still lose his whole command in just executing this walk.
“Thirty-five percent, sarge,” came the call from Johansen. He was the one that almost floated away. Panic used oxygen.
“Fifty percent, Gordo,” was Ruiz’s response. That was a steady hand in a storm.
Gordo checked his own reading. He was down to forty-five percent. Well, he wouldn’t let Ruiz know. He would give him shit for the next month. Johansen was the only one in danger.
“Johansen, slow your breathing. Calm down and we will be just fine.” Gordo tried to sound reassuring but doubted that it was helpful to the man.
They had at least another fifteen minutes to reach the airlock.
Full Copyright © CN Stoesen 2017
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without prior written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination, obtained with permission of use, or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without prior written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination, obtained with permission of use, or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.