Dirk had left the Captain's office, Gandu in tow , and they were halfway to his quarters before he said anything.
"So, XO, on a scale of one to ten, how fucked am I?" He asked Gandu.
Gandu gave every appearance of considering the question for some time before answering.
"In my expert opinion, based on my long service and friendship with the Captain, I would say that the scale you are on isn't limited to just double digits." The XO answered, smiling.
Dirk said the only thing he could think of that was appropriate to the situation.
"Ah, crap."
They made it the rest of the way to Dirk's quarters in silence. He went to his footlocker and keyed in the code that unlocked it, he removed his ballistic armor shirt and pistol case, and, after removing his uniform jacket, put the former on. The armor he wore could easily be dismissed as an ordinary T-shirt at a distance, but a close inspection would reveal otherwise. Its latticework of thin hexagonal metaceramic plates were bonded to a shirt woven of carbon nanofiber cored metaplast threads, and it would stop most light small arms fire. Not without a lot of bruising, of course, and if someone were to use high velocity armor piercing ammunition, then it would be like wearing a shirt made of cheese covered in hard candy, but it was better than nothing.
He opened the flat black Pelican case in which he kept his personal sidearm, and quickly inspected it for function before locking the slide back to ensure that the action was clear of obstructions. He set the weapon down and grabbed the custom made cross-draw holster, and fastened it to his belt just over his left hip. He loaded two of the eight round magazines, placed one in the carrier attached to the back of the holster, grabbed his pistol from where he had set it down and inserted the other in place, ramming it home with the heel of his hand. He pressed the release for the slide, chambering the first round, reset the safety, and holstered his pistol. The whole process took less than a minute, and he did it with such incredible economy of movement, that Dirk knew that he could do it blind.
"Looks like you have done that before. What sort of handgun is that? I don't recognize the make." Commented Gandu from the doorway where he was waiting.
"I'd be surprised if you did. It's a little war trophy from my days on Draconis, a Hollis Mk21, 11mm semiautomatic. The basic design dates back to the year 1911, before the First World War, as I recall, and various manufacturers have been making them for over 250 years." He explained, as they left the room to go look for Porter.
They used the terminal in Gandu's quarters to track Porter's location by pinging his ship's com badge, and were surprised to discover that his badge wasn't responding. Dirk was about to try scrolling through the ship's internal camera network when they got a call from the Captain.
"Gandu, Dirk; Otto just got the case open, and it looks like Porter is a seed courier. Be careful, this guy is carrying enough to get him locked up for a very long time, and given where he's likely coming from, he's just as unlikely to listen to reason. Understood?" He said over the com in Gandu's quarters.
Dirk was about to ask for clarification on the subject of what his point of origin had to do with anything, when Gandu answered the Captain with a simple, "Yes, sir." Dirk looked at the XO in a way that asked a question without saying a word.
"What the Captain meant," he said, "is that Porter is probably acting as a courier for one of the seed producers on Jefferson, and transporting to growers on Minotaur."
Dirk was still confused about why any of that was relevant to taking Porter into custody, but he was a master of compartmentalization, so he moved on to the problem of finding him first. He decided to go with his original idea of tracking his movements on the security cameras. He found the camera with the best view of the corridor outside of Porter's room, and simply watched the the footage at high speed, in reverse. Once he saw him walking backwards into his quarters, he paused and then programmed the security system to track his movements, replaying from that point on. Dirk sped the footage up where it was obviously unnecessary to watch what was going on, like eating in the mess, or at his duty stations for instance. He paid close attention to his movements between those, however, looking for any sign of unusual behavior. It wasn't until after his shift had ended that things got interesting; Porter went from his work area to the ship's lower decks, where he really had no business being, and he appeared to be heading to the well deck. The cameras showed him entering through the bulkhead door and going in, but as soon as he entered, the security system changed to the cameras in the well deck area, and they showed nothing but static.
"Looks like Mr. Porter has found a way to disable the ship's security cameras in that area." Said Dirk, somewhat unnecessarily, and noted the time stamp on the screen. "He went in there just five minutes ago, XO, if we hurry, we can intercept him on his way out of the bay."
He didn't wait for Gandu, and was on the move before he'd even finished speaking. He ran flat out for the stairwell instead of waiting for the lift, and went down, taking them two at a time, jumping the last three at once. He could hear Gandu following behind, but even if he hadn't, he would have still kept going at the breakneck pace he had set already. He ran straight down the main access corridor that ran along the ventral spine of the ship's frame from just below the main hold of the ship to the well deck, and shuttle bay beyond.
Dirk was within five meters of the well deck entrance, when the door began to slide open revealing Porter on the other side, weapon in hand, looking incredibly pissed off. Dirk didn't hesitate once the weapon came into view, he spun around, grabbed Gandu by the lapel of his uniform jacket, and shoved him to the side of the corridor. The momentary confusion on Porter's part, gave Dirk the precious fractions of a second that he needed. As his hand darted to the holster on his hip, he could see more clearly that Porter was holding a smartlinked flechette pistol in his left hand, and bringing it up to fire. Dirk was aware of how dangerous such weapons could be, after all, the Marine Corps issued a rifle that fired a similar type of ammunition, and flechettes were typically, innately, armor piercing. The awareness of these facts was just background noise, and he focused on the man in front of him. His entire body was responding to the threat of violence with all of the smooth certainty of hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of practice, and his cybernetically enhanced reflexes allowed him to get his own weapon into position before Porter.
His vision was focused on the front sight of his gun as he pulled the trigger, sending a 13.5 gram, 11mm bullet screaming downrange at just over 290 meters per second. The report of his shot, in the close confines of the corridor, was deafening, and his ears stung from the auditory assault.
He had fired one-handed out of expediency, throwing his aim off, and his shot struck Porter across the edge of his ribcage, inflicting more pain than actual injury, but forcing him back nonetheless. This also had the peripheral effect of throwing his aim wide, sending a full auto stream of hypervelocity darts into the opposite wall of the corridor from where he had thrown Gandu. Porter must have had his hand on the door's controls, because it closed a second after his machine pistol stopped firing.
His com badge was beeping at him with increasing urgency, and he saw the Captain's ID on the unit's small screen. He answered, for no other reason than because he needed to talk to him anyway.
"Captain, you need to lock the well deck access hatch leading to the shuttle bay, and open the one in front of me, before he can get dug in." He said, very calmly, hoping he wasn't going to say different.
"And let the two of you do more damage? Not a chance. Right now, he's contained, and I plan on keeping it that way." The Captain told him firmly.
Dirk knew that there were all kinds of ways for someone with a little imagination, and a lot of motivation, to make life miserably exciting with the contents of the well deck to play with. He couldn't imagine a more motivated person on the ship than Porter, and he hoped that the man's imagination was limited to mentally undressing his attractive coworkers. He attempted once more, to make the Captain understand, but his explanatory appeal was cut off before he could finish.
"Dirk, I'm not in the habit of repeating myself, so do as you're told, and make sure that he stays locked behind that door. Once we exit FTL, I intend to let the Alliance Navy deal with him." He told Dirk brusquely.
Dirk knew that there was nothing he could say, so he settled for a reply of, "Yes, sir!" and moved back down the corridor to the Crypt. He was about to creatively interpret his instructions, and he opened the storage locker next to his personal exosuit, removed his weapon, and began undressing. He was confronted by Gandu as he was putting on the skintight biofeedback suit that was worn under the exo itself.
"What do you think you are doing?" He asked, as Dirk finished sealing the suit, and stretched to ensure that it wasn't binding anywhere.
"I'm preparing for the inevitable, Mr. Mkaba." Dirk said, enthusiastically. He knew that his manner of addressing the XO was technically proper, but he only used it when he wanted to make it clear that he thought you were being an ass. "When Porter figures out that he's trapped, he is going to want out, and the area he's in gives him all to toys he needs to do some real damage getting there. I was told to keep the door locked, and him in, and I will do just that, but I will not stand here unsuited, waiting to see if he decides to hull the ship, with nothing but my clothes on." His tone was sarcastically chipper, but it served the purpose of driving the point home.
He checked all of his exo's systems, and plugged the suit's neural droud into his cranial interface before he stepped into its warm embrace. It automatically sensed that he was climbing in, and began to settle itself around him, in accordance with the specific parameters which Dirk had set, for everything from resistance feedback, internal temperature, air pressure and oxygen levels. The suit's helmet had a fully enclosed face shield with a stereoscopic VR display fed by twelve microcameras mounted on the helmet's exterior, fully protecting his head in its metaceramic shell, and he felt it molding itself to the contours of his head as he leaned forward. He felt the spinal and shoulder plates, which carried the suit's powerpack, settle across his back and lock into position. Dirk performed a quick range of motion test, more out of habit than necessity, and used one of the equipment anchors on the left pectoral plate to attach his holstered pistol, then marched back into the corridor outside of the well deck.
Dirk used his exo's communications uplink to access the Jester's primary systems network, opened his cranial interface's military override protocols, which he had paid a hefty sum to keep active after his discharge from the Marine Corps, and forced the door to the well deck open. He turned to Gandu, who had been yelling at him to stop what he was doing, and said: "I'm going to drag this ass-clown out of there, before he gets it in his head to do anything that puts this crate at serious risk. You and the Captain can have me court martialed if I live."
He sealed the door behind him, stared into the dimly lit bay, and turned on his exo's advanced LIDAR array. A full three dimensional map of the well deck sprang into view, giving Dirk a clear map of the area. He quickly activated his helmet cameras' thermal vision mode, looking for recent signs of heat on every surface within his field of view, and made out faint spots with a fractionally higher temperature than the surfaces on which he saw them. He realized that he was seeing blood drops that had fallen on the floor, and he paused to push the gain on his suit's infrared cameras to the max. The floor became a sudden riot of multicolored spots, which he assumed were a result of the grazing shot he'd inflicted on Porter, and he decided to follow the trail. The thermal image led him around Mule-1 to the port side of the deck where there was a first aid kit; he could see that the kit was missing, and that more blood had fallen in the area.
"Dirk, you Gung Ho son of a bitch, I told you not to go in there, that I wanted the Navy to handle Porter. What the fuck do you think you're doing?" Came the angry voice of the Captain over his suit's comlink.
"Actually, Captain, you said not to let him out, and I don't plan to. Porter's wounded - badly - from the amount of blood he's lost, and when I'm done with him, I'll be happy to let the Navy clean up." Dirk replied, coldly, then continued, "but if we let him dig in and improvise a few weapons, then the Navy'll put a Marine combat team aboard. Believe me when I tell you, that's not what you want, they'll get Porter out using as much force as they can, whether it's justified or not. I should know, I was on an MCT for two years."
He didn't wait for permission, instead he crept over to where the first aid kit had been removed, and saw that a much fresher trail led between Mule-1 and Mule-2. He came around the stern of Mule-1, and saw Porter, a portable plasma saw in his hands, about to swing. Dirk jumped back out of pure instinct, temporarily blinded as the saw's 'edge' overwhelmed his suit's thermal imaging, and he landed on his back.
The arcing blue-white edge of the saw left a 25cm long, glowing line of super hot metaceramic, devoid of paint, down his suit's left arm. Porter obviously didn't have much experience with one, because when he failed to connect, the weight nearly dragged it out of his hands. Dirk reached up to jerk his pistol out, and put an end to this once and for all, but grabbed nothing but air. His sudden impact had knocked it out of its holster, coming to rest next to one of the docking struts under Mule-1.
"Die, you unbelieving whoreson!" He heard as he jumped to his feet.
Porter had recovered his balance, and raised the plasma saw over his head to take another swing screaming curses as he came. Dirk did the only thing he could think of at the time: He rushed Porter with his suit's strength augmentation redlined.
Dirk brought his left arm up as hard as possible, meeting his opponent's coming down with the edge of his hand; the suit was capable of augmenting his strength by twenty percent under normal circumstances, but redlined, it brought him up a full third. The result was like having a steel cricket bat hitting Porter mid forearm, at something like 75 kilometers per hour. Porter, arm clearly broken, let go of the plasma saw, and it fell to the deck, inert. He would have wailed in pain, but Dirk's right leg came up, slamming the top of his knee into Porter's ribs, robbing him of breath. There was no conscious thought about what he was doing, years of training having taken over, and the fingers of his right hand stiffened straight out and he would have rammed them into - and probably through - Porter's neck, but he heard the Captain's clear, commanding voice say "NO! Stand down, Dirk!"
The world that he had shut out while he was fighting came rushing back, and he became aware that there were other people in the well deck with him. He realized that he had the front of Porter's work coveralls in his left hand, and he let go, allowing him to slump to the floor moaning. Looking down at his exo's left arm gave him a chill, the plasma saw had only grazed his arm, burning away the paint along its path in a 20mm wide stripe, and exposing the metaceramic underneath. He also saw Porter's blood smeared on his suit, and wanted nothing more than to hose it down, but he knew that the USPF would likely want it left as is. They would also want to ask him about the incident, probably at length, over and over again. The Captain was probably not feeling particularly charitable towards him right now either, meaning that he could kiss any shore leave goodbye, and that was going to really piss Alex off. He suddenly realized that someone was talking to him.
"Sorry, what was that again?" He asked, generally, while looking around to see who was speaking.
"I asked if you were alright," said the Captain, "and if you could come to the Crypt, we need to get your exosuit quarantined, as well as your official statement for the Navy and USPF."
He was considering asking Ujio Morishita, the ship's doctor, to check him for a brain first. He had jumped into the line of fire again, without thinking of the consequences beyond the emergency at hand, and this time there would be a public record. He was beginning to think that his grandfather had been right all those years ago, that maybe he was a man with serious impulse control issues, who only lived for the fast rush of adrenaline that came with risking his life. He caught himself before his mind got too far down that particular rabbit hole.
"Aye aye, Captain. If at all possible, sir, I'd like for Chief Engineer Brostowski to stand as my advocate, until the USPF decides whether a judicial hearing is required. Oh, and you'll need to send someone to retrieve my pistol, last I saw, it was under the portside strut of Mule-1." He said, as he made his way out of the well deck, giving Jinx and the Doc more room to tend to Porter's injuries.
"No problem, Guns, but let's get as much as we can on the record while it's still fresh. You know as well as I do, that the authorities are going to want it all in triplicate." The Captain said, sounding less like he was going to skin Dirk alive than he had before.
"Yes, sir. I'm on the way." He replied without further comment, and made his way to the Crypt, wondering just how much trouble he had caused for himself.
"So, XO, on a scale of one to ten, how fucked am I?" He asked Gandu.
Gandu gave every appearance of considering the question for some time before answering.
"In my expert opinion, based on my long service and friendship with the Captain, I would say that the scale you are on isn't limited to just double digits." The XO answered, smiling.
Dirk said the only thing he could think of that was appropriate to the situation.
"Ah, crap."
They made it the rest of the way to Dirk's quarters in silence. He went to his footlocker and keyed in the code that unlocked it, he removed his ballistic armor shirt and pistol case, and, after removing his uniform jacket, put the former on. The armor he wore could easily be dismissed as an ordinary T-shirt at a distance, but a close inspection would reveal otherwise. Its latticework of thin hexagonal metaceramic plates were bonded to a shirt woven of carbon nanofiber cored metaplast threads, and it would stop most light small arms fire. Not without a lot of bruising, of course, and if someone were to use high velocity armor piercing ammunition, then it would be like wearing a shirt made of cheese covered in hard candy, but it was better than nothing.
He opened the flat black Pelican case in which he kept his personal sidearm, and quickly inspected it for function before locking the slide back to ensure that the action was clear of obstructions. He set the weapon down and grabbed the custom made cross-draw holster, and fastened it to his belt just over his left hip. He loaded two of the eight round magazines, placed one in the carrier attached to the back of the holster, grabbed his pistol from where he had set it down and inserted the other in place, ramming it home with the heel of his hand. He pressed the release for the slide, chambering the first round, reset the safety, and holstered his pistol. The whole process took less than a minute, and he did it with such incredible economy of movement, that Dirk knew that he could do it blind.
"Looks like you have done that before. What sort of handgun is that? I don't recognize the make." Commented Gandu from the doorway where he was waiting.
"I'd be surprised if you did. It's a little war trophy from my days on Draconis, a Hollis Mk21, 11mm semiautomatic. The basic design dates back to the year 1911, before the First World War, as I recall, and various manufacturers have been making them for over 250 years." He explained, as they left the room to go look for Porter.
They used the terminal in Gandu's quarters to track Porter's location by pinging his ship's com badge, and were surprised to discover that his badge wasn't responding. Dirk was about to try scrolling through the ship's internal camera network when they got a call from the Captain.
"Gandu, Dirk; Otto just got the case open, and it looks like Porter is a seed courier. Be careful, this guy is carrying enough to get him locked up for a very long time, and given where he's likely coming from, he's just as unlikely to listen to reason. Understood?" He said over the com in Gandu's quarters.
Dirk was about to ask for clarification on the subject of what his point of origin had to do with anything, when Gandu answered the Captain with a simple, "Yes, sir." Dirk looked at the XO in a way that asked a question without saying a word.
"What the Captain meant," he said, "is that Porter is probably acting as a courier for one of the seed producers on Jefferson, and transporting to growers on Minotaur."
Dirk was still confused about why any of that was relevant to taking Porter into custody, but he was a master of compartmentalization, so he moved on to the problem of finding him first. He decided to go with his original idea of tracking his movements on the security cameras. He found the camera with the best view of the corridor outside of Porter's room, and simply watched the the footage at high speed, in reverse. Once he saw him walking backwards into his quarters, he paused and then programmed the security system to track his movements, replaying from that point on. Dirk sped the footage up where it was obviously unnecessary to watch what was going on, like eating in the mess, or at his duty stations for instance. He paid close attention to his movements between those, however, looking for any sign of unusual behavior. It wasn't until after his shift had ended that things got interesting; Porter went from his work area to the ship's lower decks, where he really had no business being, and he appeared to be heading to the well deck. The cameras showed him entering through the bulkhead door and going in, but as soon as he entered, the security system changed to the cameras in the well deck area, and they showed nothing but static.
"Looks like Mr. Porter has found a way to disable the ship's security cameras in that area." Said Dirk, somewhat unnecessarily, and noted the time stamp on the screen. "He went in there just five minutes ago, XO, if we hurry, we can intercept him on his way out of the bay."
He didn't wait for Gandu, and was on the move before he'd even finished speaking. He ran flat out for the stairwell instead of waiting for the lift, and went down, taking them two at a time, jumping the last three at once. He could hear Gandu following behind, but even if he hadn't, he would have still kept going at the breakneck pace he had set already. He ran straight down the main access corridor that ran along the ventral spine of the ship's frame from just below the main hold of the ship to the well deck, and shuttle bay beyond.
Dirk was within five meters of the well deck entrance, when the door began to slide open revealing Porter on the other side, weapon in hand, looking incredibly pissed off. Dirk didn't hesitate once the weapon came into view, he spun around, grabbed Gandu by the lapel of his uniform jacket, and shoved him to the side of the corridor. The momentary confusion on Porter's part, gave Dirk the precious fractions of a second that he needed. As his hand darted to the holster on his hip, he could see more clearly that Porter was holding a smartlinked flechette pistol in his left hand, and bringing it up to fire. Dirk was aware of how dangerous such weapons could be, after all, the Marine Corps issued a rifle that fired a similar type of ammunition, and flechettes were typically, innately, armor piercing. The awareness of these facts was just background noise, and he focused on the man in front of him. His entire body was responding to the threat of violence with all of the smooth certainty of hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of practice, and his cybernetically enhanced reflexes allowed him to get his own weapon into position before Porter.
His vision was focused on the front sight of his gun as he pulled the trigger, sending a 13.5 gram, 11mm bullet screaming downrange at just over 290 meters per second. The report of his shot, in the close confines of the corridor, was deafening, and his ears stung from the auditory assault.
He had fired one-handed out of expediency, throwing his aim off, and his shot struck Porter across the edge of his ribcage, inflicting more pain than actual injury, but forcing him back nonetheless. This also had the peripheral effect of throwing his aim wide, sending a full auto stream of hypervelocity darts into the opposite wall of the corridor from where he had thrown Gandu. Porter must have had his hand on the door's controls, because it closed a second after his machine pistol stopped firing.
His com badge was beeping at him with increasing urgency, and he saw the Captain's ID on the unit's small screen. He answered, for no other reason than because he needed to talk to him anyway.
"Captain, you need to lock the well deck access hatch leading to the shuttle bay, and open the one in front of me, before he can get dug in." He said, very calmly, hoping he wasn't going to say different.
"And let the two of you do more damage? Not a chance. Right now, he's contained, and I plan on keeping it that way." The Captain told him firmly.
Dirk knew that there were all kinds of ways for someone with a little imagination, and a lot of motivation, to make life miserably exciting with the contents of the well deck to play with. He couldn't imagine a more motivated person on the ship than Porter, and he hoped that the man's imagination was limited to mentally undressing his attractive coworkers. He attempted once more, to make the Captain understand, but his explanatory appeal was cut off before he could finish.
"Dirk, I'm not in the habit of repeating myself, so do as you're told, and make sure that he stays locked behind that door. Once we exit FTL, I intend to let the Alliance Navy deal with him." He told Dirk brusquely.
Dirk knew that there was nothing he could say, so he settled for a reply of, "Yes, sir!" and moved back down the corridor to the Crypt. He was about to creatively interpret his instructions, and he opened the storage locker next to his personal exosuit, removed his weapon, and began undressing. He was confronted by Gandu as he was putting on the skintight biofeedback suit that was worn under the exo itself.
"What do you think you are doing?" He asked, as Dirk finished sealing the suit, and stretched to ensure that it wasn't binding anywhere.
"I'm preparing for the inevitable, Mr. Mkaba." Dirk said, enthusiastically. He knew that his manner of addressing the XO was technically proper, but he only used it when he wanted to make it clear that he thought you were being an ass. "When Porter figures out that he's trapped, he is going to want out, and the area he's in gives him all to toys he needs to do some real damage getting there. I was told to keep the door locked, and him in, and I will do just that, but I will not stand here unsuited, waiting to see if he decides to hull the ship, with nothing but my clothes on." His tone was sarcastically chipper, but it served the purpose of driving the point home.
He checked all of his exo's systems, and plugged the suit's neural droud into his cranial interface before he stepped into its warm embrace. It automatically sensed that he was climbing in, and began to settle itself around him, in accordance with the specific parameters which Dirk had set, for everything from resistance feedback, internal temperature, air pressure and oxygen levels. The suit's helmet had a fully enclosed face shield with a stereoscopic VR display fed by twelve microcameras mounted on the helmet's exterior, fully protecting his head in its metaceramic shell, and he felt it molding itself to the contours of his head as he leaned forward. He felt the spinal and shoulder plates, which carried the suit's powerpack, settle across his back and lock into position. Dirk performed a quick range of motion test, more out of habit than necessity, and used one of the equipment anchors on the left pectoral plate to attach his holstered pistol, then marched back into the corridor outside of the well deck.
Dirk used his exo's communications uplink to access the Jester's primary systems network, opened his cranial interface's military override protocols, which he had paid a hefty sum to keep active after his discharge from the Marine Corps, and forced the door to the well deck open. He turned to Gandu, who had been yelling at him to stop what he was doing, and said: "I'm going to drag this ass-clown out of there, before he gets it in his head to do anything that puts this crate at serious risk. You and the Captain can have me court martialed if I live."
He sealed the door behind him, stared into the dimly lit bay, and turned on his exo's advanced LIDAR array. A full three dimensional map of the well deck sprang into view, giving Dirk a clear map of the area. He quickly activated his helmet cameras' thermal vision mode, looking for recent signs of heat on every surface within his field of view, and made out faint spots with a fractionally higher temperature than the surfaces on which he saw them. He realized that he was seeing blood drops that had fallen on the floor, and he paused to push the gain on his suit's infrared cameras to the max. The floor became a sudden riot of multicolored spots, which he assumed were a result of the grazing shot he'd inflicted on Porter, and he decided to follow the trail. The thermal image led him around Mule-1 to the port side of the deck where there was a first aid kit; he could see that the kit was missing, and that more blood had fallen in the area.
"Dirk, you Gung Ho son of a bitch, I told you not to go in there, that I wanted the Navy to handle Porter. What the fuck do you think you're doing?" Came the angry voice of the Captain over his suit's comlink.
"Actually, Captain, you said not to let him out, and I don't plan to. Porter's wounded - badly - from the amount of blood he's lost, and when I'm done with him, I'll be happy to let the Navy clean up." Dirk replied, coldly, then continued, "but if we let him dig in and improvise a few weapons, then the Navy'll put a Marine combat team aboard. Believe me when I tell you, that's not what you want, they'll get Porter out using as much force as they can, whether it's justified or not. I should know, I was on an MCT for two years."
He didn't wait for permission, instead he crept over to where the first aid kit had been removed, and saw that a much fresher trail led between Mule-1 and Mule-2. He came around the stern of Mule-1, and saw Porter, a portable plasma saw in his hands, about to swing. Dirk jumped back out of pure instinct, temporarily blinded as the saw's 'edge' overwhelmed his suit's thermal imaging, and he landed on his back.
The arcing blue-white edge of the saw left a 25cm long, glowing line of super hot metaceramic, devoid of paint, down his suit's left arm. Porter obviously didn't have much experience with one, because when he failed to connect, the weight nearly dragged it out of his hands. Dirk reached up to jerk his pistol out, and put an end to this once and for all, but grabbed nothing but air. His sudden impact had knocked it out of its holster, coming to rest next to one of the docking struts under Mule-1.
"Die, you unbelieving whoreson!" He heard as he jumped to his feet.
Porter had recovered his balance, and raised the plasma saw over his head to take another swing screaming curses as he came. Dirk did the only thing he could think of at the time: He rushed Porter with his suit's strength augmentation redlined.
Dirk brought his left arm up as hard as possible, meeting his opponent's coming down with the edge of his hand; the suit was capable of augmenting his strength by twenty percent under normal circumstances, but redlined, it brought him up a full third. The result was like having a steel cricket bat hitting Porter mid forearm, at something like 75 kilometers per hour. Porter, arm clearly broken, let go of the plasma saw, and it fell to the deck, inert. He would have wailed in pain, but Dirk's right leg came up, slamming the top of his knee into Porter's ribs, robbing him of breath. There was no conscious thought about what he was doing, years of training having taken over, and the fingers of his right hand stiffened straight out and he would have rammed them into - and probably through - Porter's neck, but he heard the Captain's clear, commanding voice say "NO! Stand down, Dirk!"
The world that he had shut out while he was fighting came rushing back, and he became aware that there were other people in the well deck with him. He realized that he had the front of Porter's work coveralls in his left hand, and he let go, allowing him to slump to the floor moaning. Looking down at his exo's left arm gave him a chill, the plasma saw had only grazed his arm, burning away the paint along its path in a 20mm wide stripe, and exposing the metaceramic underneath. He also saw Porter's blood smeared on his suit, and wanted nothing more than to hose it down, but he knew that the USPF would likely want it left as is. They would also want to ask him about the incident, probably at length, over and over again. The Captain was probably not feeling particularly charitable towards him right now either, meaning that he could kiss any shore leave goodbye, and that was going to really piss Alex off. He suddenly realized that someone was talking to him.
"Sorry, what was that again?" He asked, generally, while looking around to see who was speaking.
"I asked if you were alright," said the Captain, "and if you could come to the Crypt, we need to get your exosuit quarantined, as well as your official statement for the Navy and USPF."
He was considering asking Ujio Morishita, the ship's doctor, to check him for a brain first. He had jumped into the line of fire again, without thinking of the consequences beyond the emergency at hand, and this time there would be a public record. He was beginning to think that his grandfather had been right all those years ago, that maybe he was a man with serious impulse control issues, who only lived for the fast rush of adrenaline that came with risking his life. He caught himself before his mind got too far down that particular rabbit hole.
"Aye aye, Captain. If at all possible, sir, I'd like for Chief Engineer Brostowski to stand as my advocate, until the USPF decides whether a judicial hearing is required. Oh, and you'll need to send someone to retrieve my pistol, last I saw, it was under the portside strut of Mule-1." He said, as he made his way out of the well deck, giving Jinx and the Doc more room to tend to Porter's injuries.
"No problem, Guns, but let's get as much as we can on the record while it's still fresh. You know as well as I do, that the authorities are going to want it all in triplicate." The Captain said, sounding less like he was going to skin Dirk alive than he had before.
"Yes, sir. I'm on the way." He replied without further comment, and made his way to the Crypt, wondering just how much trouble he had caused for himself.
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