As always, critique and comments are welcome and encouraged.
Her thoughts drifted to her old life. Her father had trained her to be a survivor.
He had sold his gun arm for credits for over twenty years, mostly in service to
the colonists of Gaia III.
As Greek ethnic colony, it was underfunded from the start, and
new colonists were scarce. The locals had been happy to trade land for a
protection contract.
It had been a nice place. Gaia III was a little cold, but it
had trees, and rivers. There was even local plant and animal life, tough
nothing intelligent. At five thousand two hundred
light years from Sol, Gaia was rarely resupplied by the UN. The UN could not
spare the 250 day trip very often, it seemed. Colonists made do with what they
had, or they did without. For the most part, it was not so bad. There were no
real predators to worry about, and the arable land was well suited to Earth
flora.
Still, one bad year could wipe out a homestead. Medicine was
a guarded commodity, as were fuel cells and high tech goods. The UN ban on auto-doctors meant that medical
training was also in short supply on the colony.
She had learned young that only the strong survive, and ‘luck’
is the word lesser people use to describe skill. She had spent hours each day
working the farm, cooking and maintaining the equipment her father had worked
hard to acquire. Her father taught her basic mechanics, as well as math and
history, such as he could.
Her mother had died in childbirth; she had been old enough
to remember it. Her baby brother only outlived their mother by a few days. Her
father was the only family she had.
His work defending the locals had been easiest when she was
little. Gaia III was a far flung colony in those days, and bandits were scarce.
Still, not everyone who took up work as a hauler or miner can make it, and the
dispossessed have to go somewhere.
As in the ancient times on Earth, desperate people would
take to raiding to supplement their own failing fortunes. When Sharren was
twenty, free trader ships started to show up, usually two or three ships each
year. They had tech, medicine, data loads, and fancy booze. Everything folks
needed.
One such ship touched down near her own stead. They had come
in without any cargo, but were looking to leave with a full hold. Her father
had gone to meet the ship, to make a show of keeping order as he always did.
When he came home, Sharren had ben able to tell right away that something was
wrong.
“Bandits, my dear,” was all he had to tell her. She set to helping him, as he had trained her to
do. She set out their small collection of fire arms, mostly cheap, locally
built jobs. She checked her knife, and honed it’s edge. Her father saw to his
body armor, and the better of the rifles.
“They’ll be coming here first” He had told her. She remembered
that. He had always believed in meeting problems as head-on as possible. He had
set her up in a blind near the garden.
Her Job was clear, only fire if he engaged them first.
“We need to talk them out of this if we can. If it comes to
fighting, it will be a hard one. ” He never really seemed to believe he could,
though. “They will come in force, so
surprise is our game. “
They had not talked much more about it. The Bandits arrived
early in the morning, rolling up in a clean but old looking cargo vertol. It
settled in for a landing in their front lawn, between the house and the garden,
partially cutting her off from where her father planned to meet them.
They piled out of the vertol in a military like pattern,
fanning out from the side and rear cargo hatches, looking on all directions.
Their gear was new looking, but poor. Resin and alloy turtle shells over a web
rig, heavy resin helmets, and nifty looking shin guards. Neat looking, but most
likely made aboard their ship. Their fire arms were no better than her own
shoddy rifle.
The pilot got out last, bringing the total count of men to
nine. They approached her father, who had donned a poncho in the cool morning
air. Hopefully, it would help to conceal his armor, which was a fair shade
better than theirs.
The bandit captain and her father talked for several
minutes, but she could not hear them very well. She was a good 60 yards from
their position, and her blind was only good for visual observation. One of the
better equipped bandits broke out a thermal imager and checked over the house,
and the captain became more angry. Her pushed her father, a hard shove to the
center of his chest.
The captain was clearly not very observant. Her father’s
armor was old, but it was a power assist infantry model. Her Father threw his
left arm up under the captain’s right arm, and snapped the man’s arm at the
elbow with a classic standing arm bar, even as he stepped back into a weapon
retention stance and drew.
Sharren heard him scream in pain. Her father was a quick
draw, and a veteran mercenary. He shot the two men nearest him, his high end
pistol barking out three shots. He retreated to the shed, looking for cover as
the Bandits opened fire. Their assault rifles had good ammo, and the concrete
walls of the shed sprayed stone and dust and they were torn to shreds.
Seeing his cover erode away, her father made for the house,
trying to use the shed as visual cover for as long as possible. The six men
still on their feet moved in an organized pattern, two checking their wounded,
four splitting up to circle the shed on both sides. Sharren moved up from the blind, and took
careful aim, shooting one of the ones closer to her father in the hip, just
below his armor. The man dropped, and the other hesitated only to be shot by
her father a moment later. Dad had switched to his carbine. The heavy 7mm round
knocked the man to the ground, and her father shot him a second time to be sure
before heading to the house.
The other four regrouped, and moved behind their vertol for
cover, dragging the wounded with them.
Sharren moved to the other side of the barn, hoping for a better
angle. She heard a few more shots while
she was moving. Her father had seen them
move and circled around, she had thought.
The bandits had moved to the back area of the vertol, and were
taking shelter in the cargo bay’s opening, still dragging their wounded aboard.
She fired a round at one of the bandits doing the dragging. It caught him
center mass, and his armor held. He returned fire one handed, spraying his
rifle in her direction. Sharren dropped to the ground, and shot at him one more
time. This time she missed. She rolled closer to the barn as one of the other
fired on her as well.
She shot him in the leg, and he went down in a shout of
frustration. Sharren did not wait, and tried to crawl backwards, to get at
least visual cover form the barn. The bandits began to fan out, flanking her
in. she fired and missed again, and she remembered thinking that the bandits
should have had her number.
Her Father had flanked them as well, and shot each one of
them in the back with his heavy carbine. Seeing her on the ground, He forgot
his training and ran towards her, crossing he cargo bay as he did.
Sharren stood, up, thinking it was over, when one of the
wounded bandits inside the vertol sprayed a burst of fire into her Father. He fell like a puppet with its strings cut.
She screamed, and moved to where she could see into the vertol. She shot her
lest round into the head of a bandit who was reloading his weapon. She drew her
revolver and shot each of the other two inside 3 times. She kicked the man she
had wounded in the leg, but he had grabbed her leg, less wounded than she
thought.
He struggled to bring her down, but his grip was
unshakeable. She fell Hard on her ass, but her father’s training showed through
her fear and surprise, pain and anguish. She drew her knife, a simple affair of
hull alloy. She slammed the point into the Bandits arm, but is glanced off, sparks
scattering as it scored a mark along his fore arm.
His sleeve fell away to reveal an enhanced prosthetic arm.
The bandit crawled over her legs in a single drunken effort, and punched her
hard in the stomach. Sharren wanted to vomit. She had never been hit so hard in
her entire life.
She focused through the pain, riding high on the adrenaline
wave. His mechanical arm was still clutching her leg, and he drew back his
other arm to strike her again. As he brought it down she slammed the edge of
the knife into his forearm, hoping to at least deflect the punch. This arm was
flesh. The knife held a razor edge, the arm was fileted from wrist to elbow,
flesh waving like a flag on the wind.
She lashed out at his face, again and again, until it was
over.
