Read Online Vitalis Omnibus by Jason Halstead - Free Book Online Page A

thousand feet per second , they were no better than paper-mâché. He collapsed onto the deck, gasping for breath and clawing at the hole in his suit over the hole in his chest.
    Another beam staggered Kira, this one warming her thigh. It had come from the pirate in the airlock that had remained to cover the others. She gestured at him with the uncharged laser rifle, making him duck behind the wall. The beauty of beam weapons was that they fired at the speed of light and the beams themselves were invisible to the human eye. Calling her bluff would have been a very dangerous gamble.
    Even with that threat momentarily averted , Kira had no idea how she was going to survive. The man near the senseless Tarn was a heartbeat from firing at her. The man who had slipped through the hatch to cover Captain Sharp had stuck just enough of his body out to fire at her. She winced internally, preparing to be consumed in a painful fiery death.
    “ The wall! ” the same voice inside her said. “ Jump to it, spring off it, and put a round through the man ahead of you. Then use the laser to deal with the man in the hatch. ”
    Kira stumbled and realized her body was her own again. Her stumble saved her, based upon the curse she heard from the pirate in the hatch. She lurched forward, knowing she only had a few feet to go. The laser rifle throbbed in her hand, a feedback control in the grip notifying her that the capacitors had recharged. She leapt to the side, dodging the beam from the man ahead of her, and then planted her foot on the side of the passage as instructed and boosted herself higher into the air so that she had a better angle at him over Tarn’s slumped figure. She fired and felt a jolt of exhilaration flare through her as he fell back to the floor and fed a growing pool of red liquid.
    Then her head hit the ceiling of the passage. She hadn’t considered what the extra boost might give to her already impressive height. She fell down, crashing to one knee, and struggled against the pain that threatened to tip her over. She struggled up while the remaining nearby pirate shouted something at her. She failed to make it out, so intent was she on her own course of action.
    She felt her right arm on fire even as it swung the laser towards him. The rifle broke in half as it hit him, but so, too, did the viewport on his suit crack. The pressurized suit hissed as air escaped from it and the pirate fell back, stunned by the physical assault. She fell on top of him, reversing her broken laser rifle and jamming it into his body time and again until she was certain he was no longer a threat. The sharpened fragments had pierced both suit and skin many times.
    “One left,” she whispered to herself without looking at the persistent pain in her upper arm. She dropped the broken laser rifle and considered picking up the pirates. She left it, realizing her own Toledo Systems MAR-7 was weapon enough. She smirked at the understanding that she knew the exact model number and specifications of her rifle. She wondered what else she knew, and then discarded the thought. If this worked out right, she would have more than enough time to have a long talk with herself.
    Kira dove through the hatch and tucked into a roll that left her feeling freshly bruised. She dimly heard Captain Sharp blurt something out behind her, but she ignored him. Killing the last of the pirate boarding party was all that mattered. There had been nine sensor contacts and eight of them were now down. Ignoring the pain, she pushed herself off the wall and rolled up onto her feet. She jumped ahead, each leg alternately driving into the decking to propel her into a different place as she closed on the airlock. She screamed in denial when she saw the door close ahead of her, spurring her to run faster.
    The door shut before she could reach it, though only by the barest margin. She crashed into it and beat her fists against it angrily. The green light cycled to red, indicating it was