Atonement

[Vogel]

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"The natural idealism of youth is an idealism, alas, for which we do not always provide as many outlets as we should."

Had there been power, piercings alarms would be drowning out his own thoughts. But, instead, there was simply a red-tinted abyss, and at any moment some foul creature of some sort would leap from the shadows...

... Like now.

The darkness was violently broken by a barrage of gunfire and tracer rounds, as slug-throwers from a group of Coalition Marines spat metal in Petrovin's direction. He skipped around a corner and bolted; that they had missed the first salvo was nothing short of miraculous, and wouldn't happen twice.

The trek to his destination had rapidly turned into a frightful chase in the dark. Konstantin was straining his eyes in order to not run headlong into a wall or closed doorway, but it didn't always work.

Of course, the four Marines on his tail were conveniently equipped with a brand of fully encased combat suit. A purpose-built strike team. Among other things it afforded them such useful tools as Infrared sensors and body-armor on top of already burly frames and nasty firearms. They didn't have the advantage of the deck's bug-tracker, but at this rate that was inconsequential.

To his credit, door security was no longer an issue, but every closed hatch had to be pried open by hand, giving his pursuers added closure he could not afford. Sooner or later they'd have a clean line of fire down a hallway, and that would be sooner rather than later.

Petrovin, running full tilt with few alternatives, slipped into the other side of a divided corridor and smashed into a tall metal frame. Whatever it was fell to the ground with a loud clatter alongside its unfortunate victim.

He reached out and grabbed it.

A ladder. A service ladder, of course, and chances were there was...

Indeed, in the faint red din of an emergency light he could spy an opening in the ceiling, a panel displaced by a technician. Had the tech been recalled by the inevitable evacuation? There was no way to tell in the chaos.

Chaos which was catching up with him like a whirlwind.

The sounds of heavy boots banging against the decking in tandem prompted Petrovin to spring to his feet and assess what was left of his situation.

An inset doorway, a ladder, and a hole.

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"The door's shut," a Marine grunted over the short-range radio in his helmet, "He took the other corridor."

The four slipped into the other side of the divided corridor and stopped in front of a tall metal frame. Service ladder, with an open access panel in the roof above.

Along with a heat signature.

"Light it up."

With a sound akin to an artillery battery discharge, the four Marines unloaded dozens of slugs into the ceiling, up and down the length of the hallway. Anything inside was surely shredded into bits suitable for disposal.

"Check it."

A Marine bounded up the ladder and shoved his head, and rifle, up into the hole in the roof.

"Dead?"

"Not the right target, it's-"

Before the Marine could inform the rest of his squad of the unfortunate mishap, the ladder was violently kicked out from under his feet, sending the bulky figure tumbling.

Out of the darkened crevice that was an inset doorway on the side came a thin figure which rounded the falling behemoth and wrapped an arm around the neck of one of its compatriots. Petrovin's other hand slapped onto the Marine's trigger finger and wrenched it back, sending a hail of metal into the rest of the squad, including the man who had ended up on the floor.

He found it clever, bypassing the security clearance on their guns by using their own fingers. How very clever.

Not that it stopped the unwilling Marine from elbowing him in the chest. The blow had such a force that it knocked the wind out of his lungs and sent him flying backwards, tumbling along the floor. Blood red from emergency lights whirled in a pattern he couldn't stomach, and in conjunction with the blow he felt ready to wretch his guts out onto the floor.

Except vomiting was something only the living could afford; by the time he'd stopped his roll and ended up on hands and feet, the Marine had already whirled around and was bringing his rifle to bear.

Moments. Mere moments would determine the course of this fiasco that he had inexplicably felt compelled to undertake. To have it end in some dark hallway by "the Marine that got away" had an awfully pathetic ring to it. What was he to do, a quickdraw with his revolver, necessitating a perfect shot in the neck or eye socket? Freeze and die like a dog, forever resigned to ignominy and disgrace in his own, short-lived opinion?

In fact, there was nothing left but rage.

Pure, mindless rage, brought on by a mind so broken that it knew not the difference between right and wrong, foolishness and courage, life and death.

So he rushed.

He bolted from his position like a track runner and let out the loudest scream he could muster, hoarse by dryness and excitement. He even began pulling out the vibroblade at his belt for emphasis, not that he could draw it in time to stop the inevitable chunk of metal which would slice through his body.

But he rushed anyway. He threw himself into the fray like his forefathers before him, motivated only by that one common feeling that every human felt when surrounded by insanity and injustice.

Rage.

And for a moment, the Marine's mental programming failed him, and in its place reigned that one common feeling that every human felt when faced with an enemy who simply defied all logic and refused to succumb to the influences of everything else around him.

Fear.

The Marine took a step back onto the spread-out corpse of his comrade in arms, his boot slipping over the unexpected surface and compromising his balance. His finger kept true to the original plan and pulled the trigger, but the shot went wide, into the ceiling, as he fell backwards to the ground. Recognizing the error after the fact, he let go of the trigger to stop the needless waste of ammunition.

Before he could realize his next error, Petrovin was already on top of him, with a humming vibroblade.

Primal, vicious, screaming, he brought it down square onto the Marine's forehead. The best personal armor in Sirius was no match for a blade that was capable of piercing solid steel. Vibrating at ultrasonic speeds, the blade slid through the man's helmet and into his brain as if it were a sheath.

Dismayed at how clean it had been, Petrovin wrenched the blade back up and stabbed the Marine's face again.

And again. And again.

Droplets of blood were flung from the blade at high speeds, spraying it across his face, arms and torso like a fine rain.

With one last anguished cry, Petrovin pulled the blade out and rolled over onto his back next to the corpse he'd just brutally hacked to pieces. There he laid, dazed and twitching, as the better parts of his mind tried to regain control now that the crisis had passed.

He stared idly at the ceiling and thought of what was left of the technician in the rafters.

"Thanks, Tovarisch," he managed to mutter with a crazed smile.

Aching, bleeding, Petrovin leaned up and got to his feet. They probably heard what he'd just done for kilometers; there was no time for rest here.

Turning around, he wobbled down the hallway at an uneasy pace and stopped to pry open the next door.

Without warning, what was left of his lunch went spraying onto the floor; by this point the burning bile in his throat simply added insult to injury.

But he kept prying at the door. No time for rest.

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