DREADNOUGHT 2165 Read Free Page B

going to Altair. We will engage
the Dreadnought and we will remove that abomination from the starry
sky."

 
    Chapter
Three
     
    The redsuits and the junkers came
down Hardway's hollow spine
like a flood with Holdout and Dirty at its head. In the low gees
the crew didn't so much carry Jordo's pilots as toss them back and
forth over the crowd as they came. It was as if his pilots in their
orange, prison-issue exosuits were, themselves, the trophies of the
battle.
    Holdout and Dirty beamed and laughed like
they were having the time of their lives. They waved and mock
saluted Jordo as the crowd first pushed him to the side and then
swept him along with its irrepressible flow.
    He wanted to ask them how the hell
they flew like that, but now wasn't the time. This wasn't a moment
he wanted to interrupt. This was the moment Hardway finally welcomed the 133rd. They were
finally giving Holdout and Dirty the heroes' welcome the whole
squadron deserved.
    There had been 44 Lancers in the 133rd
when they came on board. Now, there were only 14. Nobody had been
anxious to get friendly with the fighter pilots. With casualty
rates like that, they'd become like walking ghosts. They were a
reminder of how cheaply war held all their lives and so Hardway's crew had steered clear of
them until now.
    As the flood rolled victorious down the
spine with Holdout and Dirty held high as the champions of the
hour, the crew chanted, "Lan-cers! Lan-cers!"
    An hour later, Jordo came up the tube into
forward Hab, Lvl 2 A, where the Lancers berthed and he heard more
chanting, but even before he could discern the words, the sound of
it chilled him. There was bloodlust in those voices. Maintenance
crews clogged the passageway around the Lancers' hatch.
    Who the hell was fighting in the 133rd's
birth? Jordo pulled redsuits out of his way until he remembered he
was an officer. Jordo barked out commands and made a lot of
officer-style noise, imitating what he'd heard from Devlin and Bolo
and even Admiral Harry Cozen. The redsuits all ignored him. He
still had to fight his way through. When he got to the open hatch,
he saw the Lancers and a bunch of crewmen inside and in the middle
of it all was Holdout and Dirty. They circled each other and Jordo
thought it was just harmless idiocy, another stupid fight between
two pilots out to prove who was baddest. Then he saw the knife and
the genuine confusion on the rest of the Lancers' faces and the
murder in Dirty's eyes.
    By the time Jordo realized something was
horribly wrong, Paladin was already moving. Dirty slashed at him,
and as the knife arced, the freshly scraped metal shined crimson.
She'd already drawn blood with that pot-metal blade. She missed
Paladin, but Holdout's jumpsuit had been split open at the belly
and shone dark with deep purple, arterial blood.
    "Get back!" Dirty shouted, "Or I'm gonna cut
the bacon off this fat bitch!" Dirty slashed backhand at Holdout
and missed. That was Paladin's opening. Those long limbs entangled
her and enveloped and twisted her like a pretzel. He pointed the
arm with the knife harmlessly to the side and she couldn't move the
rest of her body. It was a little chilling to watch if you knew
what crimes they sent Paladin away for.
    The way he held her, she couldn't do
anything with that knife. Jordo thought the fight was over and
done, but when Holdout saw Dirty couldn't move, she lunged. Her
hands shot out for Dirty's face, now contorted with rage and barely
recognizable. Holdout's looked like a mask, too, like an ancient
Samurai's mask...ferocious, terrible and merciless. She raised her
arms as she lunged, and Ram hit her in the ribs with his shoulder.
It lifted her off her feet and knocked the wind out of her. He
heard ribs crack on impact.
    Doc Ibora could fix that in fifteen minutes.
He'd fix her belly wound just as fast, but there was something
wrong with Holdout and Dirty, something far worse than a couple of
broken bones and deep lacerations. "Hold them down!" They