From Darkness

[l3wt]

ARLAND

James walked briskly, gun half-raised as he edged around the corner and entered the next corridor quietly. Corridor wasn't quite the right term, though. Walkway seemed more right - there were people just underneath - one male, one female, from what he could hear of their conversation. As he activated the thermal filter in his optics, he saw the female was armed, somewhat nervously fidgeting with a pistol. He strained his hearing, trying to discern their words over the hum of the power plant.

"...Seriously, what the hell is happening on upper deck? First our shields go, then we get an airlock malfunction. What the hell kind of atmospheric disturbance does that?"

"I dunno, I just don't know. I don't like it either, captain sent Drebin and Sykes up to check it out. Hopefully that's the end of that."

Swearing under his breath, James turned to see the magnetic lock in the centre of the door at the end of the walkway rotate. In less than a second it would open and then the investigators, Sykes and Drebin, would probably be stepping through.

James decided then to abandon any attempt to hide, just began a mad dash towards the self-same door. The first man to die didn't even have time to be surprised at the black blur racing towards him, a bullet already having passed through his brain, sending his twitching body staggering back into his friend.

The second man had another second or so. Enough for a tiny "What?" to pass his lips, but not enough to bring his weapon to bear past his dead friend before the butt of a pistol smashed into his face with enough force to break his nose and send him spinning to the floor. Another bullet ended him.

James didn't stop to register his handiwork, or even the features of the two men he'd just killed. He simply did not have time. He estimated there were another thirty crew left, more or less.

Two turns, slicing the pie around each. Passed the infirmary, the ship's doctor died with two rounds in his chest and one in his forehead. Tried to defend himself with a scalpel. No time to think about that either. Just move.

He heard someone finding the body, screaming for help. The female he heard earlier by the sound of it, no time to go back and deal with it, he had to find the mainframe - near the fore in the "neck" section of the ship, just behind what passed for the ship's bridge. Found it, large cylindrical structure, but there could be personnel in the bridge, couldn't risk them coming to investigate.

Barged through the door, killing the male captain and the female pilot, emptying the rest of the magazine into the backs of their chairs, reload, turn, heard footsteps and shouting and the mechanical clack of weapons being chambered. The storage unit with the programs letting JADE hijack the ship, he inserted that into the frame and held his ground as he waited for it to unpack its contents and do its work.

He slowly slid his combat knife out of its sheath, and listened for the steps. A large man, probably security, turned the corner first, forgetting to keep his distance. James' knife entered his throat with enough force to sever the spine. The guy behind him was smarter, stood back. He opened fire, cutting loose with a submachinegun, rounds passing through the corpse of the man who went first. The rounds weren't powerful enough to penetrate James' suit after passing through the corpse, but it knocked the mercenary down with the corpse on top of him. James' handgun coughed politely at the second assailant as well, and he sank to the ground with his finger still on the trigger, his gun spending the rest of its magazine wildly - a lethal web of ricochets mangling the bodies further.

After the shower of low-energy rounds had subsided and the ominous metallic ringing stopped, the mercenary shoved the corpse off himself and staggered to his feet, coughing a couple of times. For the first time he was really noticing the pain coming from his battered ribs, even through the dull cloud of painkillers in his system. Now there was probably blood on the inside of his mask, too, great. It still didn't matter any. He wasn't done here. He pointed his handgun out around the corner and popped off another couple of shots to dissuade any further attempts to rush him. Nobody came, except for a few bullets exchanged in return from a way down the corridor.

Ah. So they were learning. Gold star, A for effort.

It wouldn't save them.

He kept standing by that corner for a good long while, listening to the panicked discussion of the now very much alarmed and panicked crewmen covering the exit he was standing by.

"He's still there, he's, he's gotta be, Trev and Sasha have the other walkway covered, look!"

"Then let's grenade him already! I don't know about you, but I don't wanna take any chances with this psycho."

"What? No! He's standing right next to the ship mainframe, if that goes down now, we're boned! Look, the people in engineering probably took some of the munitions in cargo, last I heard they were coming up to clear this asshole out."

"Keep it down, what if he heard that?!"

This was, of course, a very interesting thing for James to hear.

Then he felt the ship lurch as it suddenly changed course, and he knew that he'd done the main part of the job. He whispered into his comm, between ragged breaths. He wasn't sure if the taste of blood was the residue staining the inside of his mask, his imagination, or coming up from his lungs.

"It's done, the ship's changing course. Moving to primary airlock."

Then just outside, from an elevator out by the one of the exits to the walkway, he heard movement and shouting, lots of voices. An assault was impending that he was not likely to survive.

So James would simply not fight them. He waited until he could hear the door begin to open, then he went out on the walkway opposite to the approach of the men from engineering, enduring the fire that immediately opened up on him from the two people covering that exit. The suit could take another few hits, at least from pistols. And though he flinched as he absorbed every impact - one in his leg, one in his shoulder - he sent them ducking for cover again with a flurry of return fire before promptly jumping the railing to the lower deck.

Some unfortunate technician down there was left with a knife buried to the hilt in his rib cage and his automatic rifle relieved from him. He ran and ran, and before he knew it, James had reached the main airlock down near the entrance to the cargo hold.

"And here, I hold my ground," he told to nobody in particular. He pulled the charging handle once, with deliberate violence - knowing the noise would signal his intent to the crewmembers closing in on him.

He should be afraid, he knew.

But he had already accepted death.

And he would ensure it reached the crew of this ship before it came to him.