jeriendhal | Fic: First Blood, cont. (No warnings. Yet.)

Final published title will probably be changed to "Blooded". Rambo Ali is not, yet anyway.

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Ali-Kat sat strapped into the seat of the raiding shuttle, between Sgt. Jack and Fahdah, a female wazagan. The wazagan's familiar scent, similar to that of wet rubber, helped Ali-Kat forget about the more unfamiliar and oversized clamshell armor she wore, the interior stuffed with a couple of spare shirts to make it fit properly. At her hip was a pistol, the real thing, charged to kill, not just firing light beams to use in the firing range, and at her other hip a flashbang grenade.

The shuttle shifted back and forth, maneuvering thrusters firing, sounding like hammers beating on the hull. Forward, the shuttle pilot shouted back, “Thirty seconds to contact!”

“Okay Ali-Kat, there's gonna be a lot of bad guys shooting at us, so I want you to stay between me and Fahdah, you understand?” Sgt. Jack told her.

“Yes, Sergeant,” Ali-Kat replied, trying not to let her voice squeak.

“Keep your weapon holstered until I tell you otherwise. Got it?”

“Yes, Sergeant.” Ali-Kat touched the pistol at her hip, marveling at the weight.

“Ten seconds!” the shuttle pilot called. Around Ali-Kat, the other squad members checked their weapons and fingered the quick-release buckles on their seat harnesses. Ali-at swallowed back the butterflies in her stomach. It was really going to be her first boarding. She hoped she'd do well.

“Contact!” There was a loud bang up front, and then everyone was getting up from their seats. Ali-Kat pulled at the quick release, but it wouldn't give, until Fahdah reached over popped it loose for her. She stood, squeezed between Fahdah and Sgt. Jack.

“Standby!” Sgt. Jack shouted. “Open the hatch!” The shuttle's forward hatch cycled open, revealing the white washed outer hatch of their target. “Cutters!”

The cutters moved forward, carrying a steel frame that they set again the hatch. Ali-kat covered her nose as the thermite attached to the frame began to burn through the hatch, filling the shuttle with th smell of burning metal.

“Shielders!” Two more squaddies moved forward, holding portable blast shields as the cutters stepped back, guarding the rest of the quad as it moved into the airlock. No blasts or bombs greeted them, so the cutters moved forward again and cut through the inner hatch.

Still no defenders greeted them. At Sgt. Jack's orer the squad moved forward out of the shuttle and into the passageway, pausing when they reached a cross-corridor.

Sgt. Jack checked his hand comp. “Okay kiddies, this is a Kratus Z-12 freigher. Standard crew complement between ten and twenty all told, Terran registry. Family ship from the check we made on her hull registry back aboard the Relentless.”

A few of the squaddies laughed, in the sort of nasty way that reminded Ali-Kat of the Relentless' First Officer, Mr. Compton. She'd learned to avoid Mr .Compton when he laughed like that.

“Keep it pro,” Sgt. Jack growled. “We do this fast. Don't give 'em too much time to think. Joser, your team with take Engineering. Faz, yours will take the bridge.” Joser and Faz, a green feathered gliten and an olive skinned human, both gave a quiet “Aye-aye” at that, and led their fire teams away. “Fahdah, Ali-Kat, you're with me.”

Sgt. Jack led them both down a side corridor and then down one deck, occasionally consulting his hand comp along the way. They stopped in front of a large ventilation grill set in the bulkhead. “Okay, Ali-Kat, time to earn your share. I need you to climb into the vent shaft and secure the one of the compartments for Lady Margo.”

Fahdah's tail lashed, and she said apprehensively, “You want her to secure the vault?”

“That's the idea.”

“Can't we get the cutter team...?”

Sgt. Jack shook his head. “Hatch is too thick, you know that. We'd risk damaging what's inside.”

“I want to help,” Ali-Kat piped up.

Fahdah looked deeply unhappy. “Bismillah. You don't understand what you have to do, child.”

Sgt. Jack cut in before Fahdah could voice another objection. “Lady Margo's orders. She wants Ali-Kat blooded, so this is how she's going to get blooded.”

“Bismillah! Aye, Sergeant.” Still looking glum, Fahdah went to work prying the off the vent grill, while Sgt. Jack covered the corridor with his rifle.

“Where am I going, Sgt. Jack?” Ali-Kat asked.

Sgt. Jack went down on one knee to meet her at eye level. “What I want you to do is crawl into that vent. You go forward about...” He checked his hand comp briefly. “...about five meters forward, then go left at the t-junction until you reach the end of the shaft.

“What's there?” Ali-Kat asked.

“The ship's vault, where they keep the most valuable cargo.”