Pixie Hazard by Archibald Bradford (top young adult novels .txt) 📕

a full second as she waited for the guy with the rocket launcher to poke his head up.

When he did, she was ready, her pistol cracked in her hand and a burst of death took the top of his head off, helmet and all.

But even as he dropped, yet another laser rifle lit her up from the right and she had to duck again, cursing at the heat as the armour on her chest glowing cherry-red.

Her HUD was flashing multiple temperature warnings at her and her tits were feeling a mite crispy so she dropped all the way into a puddle of filth with a crackling hiss as the armour plate rapidly cooled.

Then someone took up the first guy’s pulse-rifle and they were really in trouble, Eva having to likewise drop to the ground to evade the superheated laser bursts.

With the enemy spreading out, they were crouched low on either side of the hatch, effectively pinned in the crossfire from the advanced weapons. Kyle was huddled down over Maria while Eva and Donnie did their best to return fire, blindly shooting over their cover to keep the enemy ducking.

Over the din of their repeaters a voice called out for the Junkers to ceasefire and after a few more pot-shots from the lasers the enemy laid off them.

With the respite Donnie took a second to check on their downed crewmember.

“Talk to me Sledge! You dead?”

She could hear the woman working to respond, clearly she’d been winded.

“Took the hit.” She said with a wheeze; “Don’t you bury me.”

“You kidding? I ain’t digging a hole that big.” Eva muttered as she reloaded her weapon with practiced movements.

Despite her joke, Donnie could hear the relief in the redhead’s voice.

Another voice broke into their conversation then, and it wasn’t linked to their coms.

“Ahoy down there! You folks had enough? I get that ya’ll have your fancy pants armour, but this time we brought the tools needed to melt through ‘em. So I got an offer for ya! Hows about we take that truly substantial find off your hands, while you mosey on out of here, eh?”

Donnie ignored him, having no intention of negotiating.

“Reeves, ETA?” She murmured intensely, not that the man could hear her through her helmet.

“Less than a minute out.”

Donnie smiled like the predator she so often was, but the Junker called down to them again.

“Oh come on now! Aren’t you even gunna consider taking the easy way out? It’s a fair offer: you get to live and we don’t have to damage the goods to kill you.”

Again she ignored him, focusing on giving the Pixie’s flight crew their orders.

“We’re all bunched up like idiots, so draw a circle around our transponders. But don’t hit the scrap heap we’re up against unless you have to. You copy?”

“Copy.” Eniella replied tersely, likely busy priming the Pixie’s weapons.

“Then fire for effect.”

“You’ll hear the thunder presently.” The gun-nut promised.

Donnie made a whirling gesture with one finger then clenched her fist and jerked her elbow down to communicate the incoming air support to Eva, then she hunched as low as they could with Kyle and Maria.

Just as they ducked down a panicked voice sounded from one of the scrap heaps above them.

“Leroy! There’s a ship coming in fast! I think it’s-”

The Pixie came over the horizon and cast her shadow down on them; less than fifty feet above their heads the powerful whirr of her thrusters abruptly drowned out his shouting.

Then the old girl’s Javelins cut loose and drowned out even that.

When railguns were first mass produced they were a seemingly unsolvable problem for ship engineers.

A single solid tungsten round from one of the Pixie’s Javelins was capable of punching a hole straight through an unhardened vessel from bow to stern and carrying on into the void of space still traveling about five kilometres per second.

Eventually though, a certain mega-corp developed their famously patented ‘Carapace Armour’ and rebranded itself as the Dungeness Corporation, named after a nearly extinct species of crustacean relocated from Old Earth to serve as finger food for rich people.

The hardened neutron plating they patented was so incredibly dense that it could withstand the by-then ubiquitous railgun fire, and quickly became the standard for every ship in the galaxy whose owners didn’t want it torn apart by rival corps or pirate clans.

So pretty much everyone.

It also meant that as ex-marines for the corporation that invented the stuff, Donnie and her people slept better at night knowing that each of their exo-rigs had a thin sheet of neutron plating layered over the entire surface.

It was nowhere near enough to protect them from the Pixie’s ship-killing rounds, but was certainly capable of withstanding small arms fire, excluding high-impact energy weapons like Donnie’s shotgun, or high temp weapons like the Junkers’ pulse-rifles.

Hence why Maria took a rocket to the gut and just had the wind knocked out of her.

Using the anti-ship weapons the Pixie was packing on a bunch of shitheads with no real armour to speak of was just about the definition of the word ‘overkill’. But the tri-barreled railguns were the smallest that the ship could bring to bear and the ammunition was cheap, so nobody was going to complain about the noise.

And what a noise it was.

Eniella wasn’t holding back, not with one of her best friends on the ground, so three batteries were each letting loose a gut-thumping two hundred rounds per minute as they tracked on separate targets while Davie guided the Pixie through a drifting swoop overhead.

The five kilogram shells from the weapons were punching holes in the terrified Junkers that a basketball could fit through, and the piles of metal beneath them were being likewise hammered from the barrage.

Two of the now unstable heaps buckled and collapsed in on