The Honour of the Knights, Stephen J. Sweeney [reading women .txt] 📗

the accuracy of the shots he had gone on to fire, had more than asserted his marksmanship.

Dodds rubbed the back of his head and looked on at the carnage in front of him. What he had just seen was impossible: Estelle had shot the invader four times, landing all the bullets in the torso. Yet a few minutes later, the man was back on his feet as if nothing had happened. He spotted one of the bullets that he believed had been embedded in the man, now resting on the floor close to the body.

Had the bullet missed? No, it couldn't have. There had been blood, the man had fallen. He had heard the cries of pain behind the mask. The bullet he had picked up had also been sticky with blood and the man's suit had been torn where the projectile had entered. Surely he couldn't have imagined all of that. And the strength! If it weren't for the pain in his lower back - he considered himself lucky he could still walk - he might not have believed how far he had travelled with the throw, either. He felt at his aching throat. It was painful to swallow. He was certain that beneath the lining of the flight suit, there would be some rather pronounced bruising.

“That man was dead! Estelle shot him down! How the hell did he get back up?!”

Whilst Dodds was silently considering everything that had just happened, Kelly was voicing her opinions aloud. Enrique made his way over to reassure her, as she pointed at the still corpse of the solider Chaz was plundering. She looked a little hysterical, as if her worst fear of dead bodies had at last been realised.

“Is he really dead now?” Kelly said.

“He's dead,” Enrique said.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, he is, calm down.”

“How do you know he's not going to get back up again?”

“I don't think he'll be getting up after that.”

“Yeah, but we thought that after Estelle put four damn bullets into him...”

“Are you okay, Enrique,” Dodds asked above Kelly's ramblings, as he stumbled forward.

“Fine. Are you all right?”

He looked in the direction of the two corpses on the floor by the locker. “I meant what I said earlier: should bloody well have stayed in bed.”

“What was that all about?” Enrique wanted to know.

“Don't know. I've got about a hundred thousand questions, but answers that I could count on one hand.” He realised his voice was shaking. But then, so was everyone else's. “Did that really just happen?”

Enrique nodded, an arm around Kelly, rubbing her back. Dodds left them to it and made his way over to where the solider had fallen. He caught a glimpse of what remained of the man's head before turning away. He spotted some more red-stained brass-coloured objects on the floor. Two more bullets; that made three. He had no idea what might have happened to the fourth. One hundred thousand and one.

Chaz was still removing things from the soldier. He had so far collected what looked like four grenades and a fuel cell for the plasma pistol. Other items were being tossed aside.

“Chaz, where's the card? Did you get it?” Estelle asked through sharp intakes of breath.

Chaz continued to search, ignoring her question.

“Chaz?” Estelle asked again louder, rubbing at her stomach.

“What?” he roared, looking back at her, anger and impatience clear in his eyes.

“Do not speak to me that way, Lieutenant!” Estelle said, the stress causing her own temper to flare. “Did you find the data card?”

Chaz tossed the capsule in her direction. She caught it and wiped the remains of the blood away, revealing the contents. She caught Dodds' eye and held it up as if requiring a second opinion. He nodded; he could see the small blue card within was marked with the Confederation insignia.

“Right, we've got what we came for,” she stated, and began to secure it in her flight suit. “I think what it might be worth us doing is trying to contact...”

“What we have to do is get out of here now,” Chaz said, snatching up the items he had removed from the soldier's body and stuffing them into various compartments and pockets of his own flight suit. “Enrique: how many more did you see?” he asked as he set about retrieving the shotgun from where it lay under a gurney.

“Four, maybe five,” Enrique said.

Chaz swore, then looked around the morgue, his face becoming quite grim. “Doesn't look like there is any way out of here except for the way we came in.” He glanced at the shotgun in his hand and then turned back to the group, his eyes flickering over each of them. He then turned back to Enrique. “Do you know how to use one of these?”

“Sure,” Enrique said. “I've done my fair share on the firing range.”

Chaz tossed the shotgun to him.

“Magazine holds seven rounds, but it has a low effective range, so anything over about twenty-five meters is hardly going to be worth shooting at; especially if you don't have a steady aim. Don't waste it on pot-shots, it won't do us any good. Only use it when I tell you.”

The tone in his voice let Dodds know this was far more than just a mere suggestion. Enrique nodded as he began to familiarize himself with the handling of the weapon, turning it over and bouncing it in his hands to feel the weight. Dodds looked at Chaz in confusion. It seemed that the big man knew a lot more than he was willing to let on, but quite why, he didn't know. His usual silent and steady demeanour had abandoned him, and Dodds wondered if they were now seeing his true colours.

Dodds pointed at the body. “Chaz, that guy...”

“Do you really want to stand around and talk about this now?” Chaz said.

Dodds didn't.

“Right, everyone ready?” Chaz asked, as he started off to retrieve his equipment. “We're not exactly going to have an easy time getting out of here in one piece.”

“Lieutenant, what the hell!” Estelle snapped, a furious expression on her face. “Don't make me remind you who is in charge of this mission, Mr Koonan! I am a first lieutenant, you are a second lieutenant; I am the wing commander of the White Knights and I won't have you giving orders to my team whilst...”

Dodds reached out and took a grip of her shoulder, prompting her to stop talking.

“Estelle, I really feel that right now we should be listening to Chaz,” he said.

Estelle glared back at Dodds before her eyes strayed to the body of the dead soldier on the floor. She stood in silence for a time, looking from Dodds, to Chaz, to the body. She then shrugged Dodds' hand from her shoulder.

“Fine, we'll follow your lead, Chaz,” she said with reluctance. “For now. But once we get out of here, you will have a lot of explaining to do.”

Chaz acknowledged her with a mere nod of his head before the Knights retrieved their gear and made their way from the mortuary. On the way out Chaz paused, and then turned around and walked back to Barber's gurney. He picked the linen sheet off the floor and spread it back over her body, bending down to give her a kiss on the forehead before covering her completely.

Dodds studied him as he did all of this, but Chaz gave no explanation for his actions; and neither did Dodds seek to ask.

XXIII

— The Fate of an Empire —

The infirmary lay still and quiet, and as Dodds continued his slow, crouched walk towards the main door, he was confident that they were alone. At Chaz's request, he and Enrique had sneaked forward, leading the group towards the medical unit exit. Chaz had covered their backs, keeping Estelle and Kelly with him. Dodds and Enrique moved to either side of the door, signalling the all-clear to Chaz, who hurried forward with the two women.

Dodds noticed that the light on the control panel on this side of the door was blinking on and off and guessed that the lock he had engaged earlier was no longer in effect. Judging by what had just happened in the morgue, it would not have stood up to anything more than a shoulder barge from their attacker.

That whole sequence was still quite vivid in his mind: had it really happened? Were they all really here, crawling out of a morgue where they had just cut open a dead woman and fought a man who had somehow come back to life?

“See anything?” Chaz asked Dodds and Enrique in a low tone.

Dodds rose and took a cautious peek out the circular infirmary door windows. The central hall appeared a great deal darker than when they had first arrived.

“Nothing,” he said, choosing not to linger by the window any longer than was necessary. “But it looks like a number of lights have blown.”

“No, the soldiers have shot them out,” Chaz said with a shake of his head. “They do that so that it makes it harder for their enemies to see where they're going.”

Dodds nodded, quite willing to accept just about anything the big man told them. Questions could wait until later.

“Take a step outside, carefully. Keep low and don't make any noise.”

“OK,” Dodds nodded. He pushed at the door, but found it almost impossible to move, as if there was a lot of weight in front of it. Enrique came to his aid and between them they managed to open the door just wide enough for Dodds to squeeze through, the bulky propulsion pack on his back making it more awkward than normal.

As he stepped out into the darkened main hall, his boot slid on something. He looked down and saw he was standing in a pool of blood. The mass that had been holding back the door was a rather large woman, who had died as a result of multiple plasma wounds to the torso. Her dead eyes gazed straight ahead into the rest of the main hall. The hall was not as dark as Dodds had first thought and as he followed her gaze he became aware of the fate of the refugees. What he had first believed to be the random scatterings of abandoned coats and luggage, were in fact dead bodies. Dozens of them. Men, women and children lay all about the floor. If it were not for the terrible wounds and the blood, Dodds might have thought that they had all fallen victim to some mysterious plague. As the hideous smell of burnt flesh started to fill his nostrils, Dodds pulled himself back through the door.

“What did you see?” Enrique asked in a low voice.

“They're all dead,” Dodds said.

“Who?”

“The refugees. They've all been killed.”

“Did you see any soldiers?” Chaz cut in.

“No,” Dodds said.

Chaz forced himself out the narrow gap to take a look for himself, before returning back to the corridor and confirming that the hall was clear of danger; though there was much evidence of the slaughter that had taken place. At this point, Chaz concluded that they would simply have to make a run for it.

He slipped through the door and then beckoned for the others to follow, telling them to stay low and stay quiet. In a line, headed up by Chaz, they walked as fast as they could in their crouched positions, keeping the wall of desolate coffee shops and other stores to their backs. The air was heavy with the stench of burnt materials and flesh, and all five of the Knights did their best not to gag and cough with every breath they took.

They looked all about themselves as they moved, keeping an eye out for any sudden appearance of the soldiers Enrique had mentioned. Glass and plastics crunched loudly under their feet, as though wishing to expose their position on purpose. They did not have all that far to go to return to the airlock, but out in the open they would have little hope of surprising their enemy, as they had done in the morgue. And this time, they would be facing off against more than one of them.

Halfway to the airlock, the sound of running feet came from close by.

“Down! Get down!” Chaz hissed, waving a hand to the floor. “Keep still and don't move!” The group dropped to the floor, lying on their stomachs among the dead, the propulsion packs on their backs making it difficult to assume any other position.

As Dodds lay in wait, his eyes fell on two faces that were within his line of sight. One was that of a young woman, the other an older man, somewhere in