Hull Scrappers Volume 1: Shattered Diaspora by Andrew Seiple

Author:Andrew Seiple [Seiple, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-03-15T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 11: ESCAPE

The bad news was that the train did stop moving before they’d reached their destination. The lights flickered hard once, flickered again as something rumbled back the way they’d come, and then everything shut down.

The good news is that they were out of the tunnel by that point, out on a plain full of tall yellow-green grasses, seedpods hanging down from full stalks. Occasionally the wind blew, sending them rustling and waving in a gentle susurrus.

The effect would have been calming, if it weren’t for the fiery streaks in the sky, the smoke and dust plume rising from the east, and the vibration of the earth as every last missile in the orbital bombardment struck home.

The streaks definitely looked like T-ball contrails. There were probably some railgun rounds mixed in there too, for hitting deep into the bunker they’d just fled. To his trained tastes, it looked sloppy. The Storner ships must have jumped on their window and thrown everything they could at their targets.

“How much further do we have to go?” Doc Lysanda asked, stopping Kril’s train of thought as neatly as their own railcar had been depowered.

“They’re not far ahead,” Basque said, pointing to a place where the grass broke. There were a few lines of metal visible above the foliage, either a structure or the ship that Basque’s former friends were escaping on, Kril didn’t know.

“You sure you can’t tell me nothing about that gadget?” he asked for the third time.

“Not a thing until we get clear of this world,” Basque said. “I have good reason for it. Please bear with me.”

“You are not making my life easier, Mister Pieterzoon,” Kril shot back.

“No, but perhaps I am keeping it from getting harder. Or stopping entirely,” Basque said. “Come. Let’s go make Chatterly pay for his cowardice.”

“Hey, I’ll back you up, but I don’t know him from Eve,” Kril shrugged. “This is your play, big guy.”

“Then we are on the third act, and the curtain is coming down soon,” Basque nodded grimly.

“I got no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Plays?”

“Yeah, how do you want to play this?”

“No, I was talking about... ah, forget it. Just be silent; there may yet be a chance we can sneak up on—”

A seedpod exploded, bursting into flames as the air boiled in a long, thin, straight line a foot from Kril’s head, as a distinctive SNAP echoed down the tracks.

“—them,” Basque finished, looking stunned.

“Get to cover!” Kril yelled, then took his own advice and leaped into the tall weeds alongside the track. He knew laser fire when he saw it, and several more lines cut the air with that snapping noise you never forgot after you saw a friend drop with a smoking hole in their head. Lasers were deadly as fragg.

But they weren’t a guaranteed kill, and as he heard Lysanda and Basque grab their own cover, he put his head up, watched shadows move against the distant weeds, and chose his target carefully. The first two shots missed, but

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