The Dead Fleet (Juggernaut #3)

Fifty Seven

Grace took a step back toward the alcove of the mess hall door and the little cover it provided. She lowered her left hand, sweeping Tila behind her for safety. Her hand touched small pouches on the small of her back. When it swung back up to support the carbine it held two red discs.

With a flick of her wrist one disk flew left, the other right. Grace turned, forced Tila down by the shoulder, shielded her with her own body, prayed.

The grenades exploded. The thundercrack filled the room, reducing all other sound to silence. The noise rolled over them and through them. The boom resounding through their core.

Tables fountained up and away from the blasts epicentre, and the cover behind which the pirates and agents had been hiding was suddenly gone.

The conflict paused for half a beat as both sides regrouped. Then the room erupted.

Cabal agents and the pirate crew fired at one another through the chaos. Energy bolts flashed through the air glowing through the residual smoke of the grenades. Agents determined to complete their mission. Pirates desperate to escape the slaughter.

Grace pivoted on one knee and held her carbine at the ready. She was looking for targets of opportunity while trying to avoid becoming one herself. One shot would remind the opposing forces that she was a player in their game too.

She tracked pirates through the smoke, but all were intent on the agents. She turned to the agents, they were concentrating their efforts on the pirates. For now.

Wild blasts ripped through the air around her. One hit a table on her left. One went high into the old menu display behind her. Another clipped the cutlery dispenser. Knives and spoons spun into the air in a hundred directions and rained onto the tiled floor.

Tila shouted in her mother's ear, the only way to be heard over the gunfight.

'We need to get through the agents. They're blocking the way out.'

'In a minute. Let them fight among themselves and we'll see the moment we need.'

'We have to go now.'

'Tila, wait.'

Tila crouched on the balls of her feet, ready to spring up. She rested one hand on her mother's back, ready to follow or ready to pull her to safety. Even through her body armour Grace could feel Tila's tension.

She didn't feel Tila slip another disk from the pouch on her back.

Elsewhere in the mess hall the agents were gaining the upper hand. Better training and discipline was taking the field from the disorganised and desperate pirates. Two agents had broken from the main cabal force and were crawling behind tables and chairs along the wall to their left. Tila's wall.

'There!' Tila shouted, stabbing at the danger with her staff.

Grace looked, saw, turned, fired. A dozen blasts from her carbine ripped into seat fabrics, sending pieces of yellow foam bursting out of taut cushions like a fountain. Laminate tabletops fused and cracked under each impact.

The two agents covered wrapped one arm each over their heads, as if that would save them, and halted.

'There!' Tila shouted again, pointing the other way.

Grace turned on the pirates this time, spraying the entire side of the room with laser fire. Wall mounted menus shattered and fell, safety notices caught fire. One blast hit a condiment dispenser. Red and yellow sauce plastered the wall, the sugars within crystallising and burning at once.

Cabal agents opened fire in their direction but still under fire themselves from the pirates, their shots went wide.

Grace took no chances. She pushed Tila back toward the door then dived forward and rolled behind an upturned table pointed at the docking bay exit. That meant it provided cover from the Cabal agents but left her exposed to flanking attacks from the pirates. She fired blindly over the cover, not caring what she hit. The point was to become the threat, to draw their attention away from Tila.

But Tila, as usual, had her own ideas.

Emboldened by Graces wildfire attacks on the Cabal, the pirates moved deeper into the room and almost parallel with Grace's position.

Tila, at the mid point saw them coming before Grace did. She shouted again. Grace switched positions and with her back against the underside of the upturned table fired a warning shot at the pirates to keep them at bay.

Just one shot, Tila noticed.

Grace popped her head above cover to take in the room. She ducked just as quickly as the Cabal agents returned fire. Grace rested the carbine across her legs, and checked it quickly, fearing the worst. The last power cell was exhausted. She discarded the weapon and drew the heavy pistol from her thigh holster, held it in both hands, and counted to three. She counted slowly, measuring the moments. Seeing the room in her mind's eye, picturing the scene she had just taken in.

She knew the tactics the cabal were using. She understood their strategy, she had taught it: overwhelm the enemy, surround them, make them afraid to come out. She saw her position through their eyes. One woman pinned in place by a numerically superior force. A more heavily armed force. They saw her position as tactically weak, cowering behind her table, waiting for the end to come.

Trapped.

Prey.

We all make mistakes.

Grace popped up again, pistol held steady, and fired at the tactically superior positions she knew the Cabal would be holding or heading toward. Her efforts were rewarded quickly. Her shot caught the corner of a table already on its side. The table flipped up, pirouetted on one leg up and over the agent hiding underneath it. He looked up in surprise, saw Grace. Grace shot him and dropped back into cover as agents returned fire.

That's one.

Tila watched from the sidelines, relatively safe in her alcove. If the pirates decided she was a threat, or if the agents reached the halfway point in their advance through the mess hall, she would have nowhere to hide. Until then all she could do was watch. Tila held the staff tight in her right hand. This was a battle she was not equipped for. Her left hand squeezed the stolen grenade disc.

Pirates or agents? It wasn't really a choice. Only one way was forward. Only one way was out.

Tila opened her palm and pressed her thumb hard on the centre of the grenade, a black with a white circle on both sides. A small white light started flashing on and off with increasing frequency. Tila ducked out of the alcove, threw the disc at the agents, and ran to join her mother behind her table.

The agents stopped firing, distracted by something landing in their midst.

'Get ready,' said Tila, she cupped her hands over her ears and braced herself for the explosion.

Grace knew immediately what Tila meant. She reached for the grenade pouched behind her back, knew which ones were full and which were empty, and knew what Tila and just thrown.

Her face fell. 'Oh Tila, what have you done?'

Something small and hard bounced off the table in front of them. A black disc with a white circle. It rolled between them, wobbled and fell over. The white light flashed too rapidly to follow.

It stayed lit for half a second, then the light went out.

Tila looked at her mother in horror.

Then all the lights went out.