Deep Space
Uhlek Badlands
The Shanghai

The Marines paused.

For several long moments they held off as Grssn’s delaying action kept them pinned down beneath a wave of masking fire. Assessing the situation quickly, Sergeant Nussgj punched a bass command from his lungs. “Rsha-Shack!” he bellowed. His team doubled the intensity of their fire, giving him a respite to breach-load his launcher and send a concussion grenade down the corridor. As it detonated, the four Marines were already lunging up from their cover and bounding ahead.

Several levels below, the crew was running down the last two hundred yards to the jury-rigged mating clamp where the Belfast Windfall was docked. Arella and Mack ran at the trailing edge of the group as Biggs led the way to the hatch. “Something’s wrong,” huffed Mack, ducking behind a pylon, stealing a look back. “Shanghai hasn’t taken a single hit since our company dropped in.” Arella didn’t bother suggesting the Thrynn commander was thinking of his boarding party’s welfare. “Where’d they go?”

As the Marines charged full bore down the corridor toward their prey, a lucky blast caught Private Tsat’s abdominal armor, sending him careening into the bulkhead with a flank of cracked ribs. The rest of the team descended on Grssn’s position in a storm of point blank fire and slashing bayonet-swords.

“They can’t know where we were going,” said Arella to Mack as they pulled back from the last junction. Two steps later she decided she wasn’t buying it. “Of course they know. There’s something we’re missing.” Mack dropped the last pressure hatch and locked it down.

“You said it—maybe somebody’s out there. How’d they hide from the Uhl? You find out how they did that and you can start look—”

“Let’s go you two!” beckoned Boz, waist-deep in the docking hatch. “We’re out of time.” He slid down the ladder toward the Windfall as Arella and Mack skidded to a halt just above him. On the bridge Grix was already bringing the engine wells up to temperature. He had never taken them off standby—little lesson from a little place called Koann.

Grssn threw his full weight and his last energy behind his rifle as he drove the stalk into one of the Marines. It made square contact, smashing a jawbone in same instant that a speeding truck crashed into Grssn’s chest. At least, that’s what it felt like as Sergeant Nussgj jammed a rifle against his sternum and pressed the trigger.

Arella jumped from the last rungs on the ladder as Boz sealed the hatch and manually de-coupled the Belfast Windfall from the Shanghai. “Gravity,” she realized, hitting the deck just before Mack. “It’s bloody gravity,” she exhaled, planting her hands on her hips. Mack knew her well enough to believe she had something. He hit the intercom. “Skipper, Mack—you’d better have Grix gun the engines. This just turned into a race.”

The world screeched to a watery calm. Grssn felt nothing. His eyes tracked across the arc of his vision, seeing the sergeant even as he slid the bloodied bayonet back. His body had gone limp, crumpled to the catwalk, propped awkwardly against a rusted guardrail in a wash of his own blood. No thoughts or memories flashed to the front of Grssn’s blurring consciousness as settled to the floor. Grssn’s life stopped. A cold, living civil war that danced its battles in shadows and quiet hollows reaped another victim. But this one had claimed a small victory. His companions had escaped.

The Marines moved on.

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Next: “Silent Run”

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