War Criminals by Gavin Smith (ereader for textbooks .TXT) 📕

off her feet, spun her in mid-air and slammed her into the wall. She felt someone grab her and drag her back around the corner to momentary safety and saw Kaczmar move with surprising speed as he ducked back around the opposite corner. Nyukuti was in the air. Miska half expected to see him torn apart by the Retributor fire but a stray round must have caught his shield or just winged him. He slid to the ground and half crawled, half dived back round the opposite corner.

‘It’s wild fire!’ Miska shouted over comms as she took a fast-release thermal smoke grenade from her webbing with her good arm, flicked off the cap with her thumb, depressed the arming button and threw it round the corner. The Honey Badger jockey either wasn’t risking direct fire, which was reasonable, or had panicked and wasn’t using his Retributor’s smartlink targeting system. Either way it had saved their lives.

‘La-las!’ Nyukuti shouted over the comms link. Miska pushed herself up, trying to get the shield into position so it protected Gunhir as well as her. The two light anti-armour missiles exploded in the air.

When she came to Miska felt like somebody had beaten on her with a sack full of hammers. She’d only been out for a second or two but that amount of time was crucial in a fight like this. She forced herself to move through the pain. Opposite her she saw Nyukuti slowly pushing himself to his feet. Kaczmar was some way further down the corridor, but he wasn’t moving. Miska glanced behind her. Neither was Gunhir. She grabbed the plasma rifle. She didn’t have time to run a diagnostic on the notoriously finicky weapon. She just checked that it was loaded.

‘Lay down smoke,’ she told Nyukuti over comms. He started removing smoke grenades from his webbing and throwing them down the corridor. She was pretty sure that the remaining Honey Badger would try and capitalise on the missile strike. ‘Draw its fire,’ she told Nyukuti. He hesitated for a moment but then unslung his Xiphos squad automatic weapon, leaned around the corner and fired off four grenades from the SAW’s under-barrel launcher. Then he ducked back as the returning Retributor fire ate away the bulkhead. Miska lay on the floor and rolled out into the open and found herself looking at a corridor of hot smoke. The smoke would confuse the Honey Badger’s thermographics. She hoped. And with Nyukuti drawing the combat exoskeleton’s fire they wouldn’t expect her to just be lying in the centre of the floor. She hoped. Nyukuti fired two quick bursts and then ducked back round the corner as more returning Retributor fire ate away yet more of the bulkhead. Miska felt the hypersonic 20mm rounds flying overhead, saw their passage in the eddies they made in the hot smoke. She held the Appolion plasma rifle awkwardly in her left hand, forcing her right, which felt broken but she knew wasn’t, to grip the weapon as well, despite the medgel covering the hand. ‘Now fall over,’ she subvocalised over the comms. She was aware of someone else talking to her over the comms link but she ignored it, she had to concentrate. The Honey Badger’s Retributor sounded again. She was aware of Nyukuti falling backwards as though hit. Even in her periphery it hadn’t looked convincing, but he had stopped firing.

At first she wasn’t sure if it was her mind playing tricks on her or if it was actually the Honey Badger moving down the corridor through the smoke, very cautiously. Miska felt sweat beading on her skin. She shut down the comms link. She needed to concentrate. It was the Honey Badger. The combat exoskeleton’s Retributor was moving from side to side in the smoke.

Just a little closer, Miska whispered to herself. The first shot went wide, just glancing off the Honey Badger’s shoulder, making it glow. The second shot went straight through the Retributor, burning through the weapon, splitting it in two and then catching the combat exoskeleton in the armoured face. The third round hit centre mass, the chest area. Behind the thick armoured plate was the pilot’s compartment. Miska fired again and again until the magazine counter in her IVD read zero. It was a very expensive way to kill. The Honey Badger was frozen mid-stride, burning. Nyukuti emerged from round the corner, covering the combat exoskeleton with his SAW. Kaczmar had sat up and Gunhir was stirring. The boarding shields had saved their lives. Miska opened up the comms link message that had seemed so desperate to get her attention.

‘-render. Repeat, we’re offering an unconditional surrender to the Bastard Legion, please acknowledge … please …’ Words were replaced by sobbing. It was the same voice as before but tension had been replaced by terror. Miska assumed that the Ultra had a blood-stained knife pressed to the man’s throat.

‘This is Colonel Miska Corbin of the Bastard Legion, we accept your surrender.’

Chapter 10

‘Smells like barbecue,’ Kaczmar growled. His voice sounded wrong because he couldn’t hear it any more. Miska could smell the Honey Badger pilot cooking as well. She was staring at the combat exoskeleton. Watching the armour burn. Something didn’t sit quite right with her about this but she wasn’t sure what. Miska was not feeling her warm, post-combat rush. She shook her head, momentarily worried that Torricone’s bleeding heart was somehow contagious.

Gunhir had staggered to his feet and retrieved the Appolion, changing the magazine.

‘That thing’s expensive, try to use the PDW if you have to,’ Miska told him as she retrieved her gauss pistol. She wasn’t really expecting trouble but she was still going to act as though she was until she was happy that the aerostat was secured. Miska checked the feed from Grig’s and Bean’s combat exoskeletons. Both of them were standing guard over prisoners. Bean was watching over the Dogs of Love mercenaries in what looked like a briefing room. They were