Barchick paused at the end of the first cylinder, peering towards the second. The cylinders weren’t connected and there was a small area of open water between the two with the second cylinder sitting on the bottom of the quarry at about a forty-five-degree angle to the first. Crossing the juncture was one of the tougher maneuvers of the exercise.
Barchick waved that the way was clear and then attached a safety line. She was using one of the hand magnets to stay in place and as soon as the safety line was clamped she released the magnet and used the safety clamp to push herself across the open area.
When she was halfway across, a line of bolts drifted through the water towards her.
The Blood Lord corporal didn’t even see the bolts and there was no way for Herzer to warn her before they impacted. The bolts were blunted but they threw her off course and Herzer could tell that some of them impacted on unarmored portions, which would score as a kill.
He waved the first Blood Lord team forward, taking up positions on the inner side of the cylinder. There was a plan for if they got attacked at one of the junctures and now was the time to figure out if it worked.
First they attached safety lines to the inner side. Then, when the group was formed, they sprung for the far side of the juncture.
The safety lines were only thirty meters long and the point that they were aiming for was more than fifty meters away. They also had sprung off hard. The water would tend to slow them but they’d do the same thing in microgravity. The point was that the entire team suddenly appeared in the opening, moving fast and making for very hard targets.
As they reached the end of their tethers, the combined forces swung them inward towards the far wall. Herzer could see a group of fighters grouped there and the team was headed right into their midst.
There wasn’t much control in the situation but he did manage to get his feet down towards the approaching bulkhead before he hit. He’d engaged his mag-boots so he clamped with one, at least, the other taking a moment to get down.
The team had flown through a cloud of bolts in the crossing but nobody seemed to be hit. On the other hand, half of them had landed on their side or back and were now floating in the water instead of clamped down and prepared to fight. Lines had also gotten tangled and two of the team were bound up like a spider’s prey.
Herzer ignored the unavailable members of the team, concentrating on the bolt thrower. It was one of the newer crew-served versions that had a clamping base. At the moment it was skewing to engage the floating Blood Lords and ignoring the ones that had managed to clamp to the wall. It was also protected by a solid line of fighters bearing pikes.
Herzer drew his mace, then paused. He detached his previous safety line rather than trying to retrieve it and got out his second of three. That one went onto the wall of the cylinder. Then he undid his mag-boots and bounded off in the direction of the waiting wall of pikes.
Passing well over the pikes he, again, followed a parabola to the wall, but behind the defenders and also behind the crew-served bolt thrower.
The bolt thrower had “killed” at least three of the floating Blood Lords but now the crew slowly tried to turn it to engage the new threat.
Herzer didn’t give them time to pin him down. He was about six meters from them, a slow walk with the boots, but he had another weapon. He removed one of the hand magnets, now attached to a line similar to the safety lines but lighter, and carefully threw it at the crew.
The magnet missed to the side but when lightly retrieved it stuck to the armor of the gunner.
As soon as the magnet was in place on the shoulder of the gunner, who didn’t appear to notice the device, Herzer slid one foot forward and the other back to brace himself and gave the line a sharp tug.
The first reaction was to cause the gun to swivel away from him as the surprised gunner tried to maintain control. His grip slipped, however, and he went spinning off into the depths of the tank, arms flailing wildly.
Herzer dropped that line and plucked off another, spinning it towards the assistant gunner who was frantically trying to get the gun lined up on him. This one missed entirely but when it bounced back at the end of the line the line itself coiled into the gun mechanism.
Herzer gave it a tug and was pleased to see the gun swivel away again. Better still, it seemed to be snug. He leaned down and carefully released his boots and then used a gentle tug on the line to start himself towards the gun.
The assistant gunner tried, again, to get the gun lined up on him but Herzer was moving rather fast for microgravity and he passed the gun before it could get more than halfway slewed. As he did, he leaned down and lightly tapped the assistant gunner on the helmet with his padded mace.
The action caused him to pause and spin towards the wall of the cylinder, especially when he hooked the rubber pick into the gunner’s neck.
As soon as his feet were down and clamped, landing behind the assistant gunner who was now trying to turn and draw his mace at the same time, Herzer extracted a fake punch and laid it on the AG’s neck right at the seal.
“Kill,” he signaled with his hand, showing the AG the punch.
“Agreed,” the AG signaled, spreading his arms.
The pikemen had turned to engage the threat at their rear but they had more problems than that. The rest of the Blood Lords had gotten into formation and were advancing from the front. The pikes presented a formidable wall that was difficult to pierce given their armor and weaponry. So they didn’t bother. Instead, they, too, took magnets and tossed them into the formation. When one stuck they would find a solid handhold, there were metal rings sticking out of the walls at intervals, and give a good, swift, tug. This, generally, meant the magnet sprung loose. Sometimes, however, the target lifted off the walls and came sailing in their direction.
The pikes, at that point, became a two-edged sword. They could be used to fend off the walls and redirect the floating soldiers. But as weapons they were less than useless. And they made handy handholds for the Blood Lords facing them. Generally, two Blood Lords would grab one of the pikes as the pikeman floated past and then use it to throw him at the far wall. Hard.
Herzer used a slightly different technique. The pike wall was trying to form to stop him but he wasn’t about to give them time. He strode forward as fast as he could until he got to the line of rotating pikemen and then began swinging his mace upward.
When the padded mace hit the pikemen’s armor, and often crotch, it tended to knock them off the wall. And it didn’t displace him at all. As they floated upwards he sometimes turned the mace around and struck them with the pick in various vulnerable spots.
Before long the formation of pikemen were so many targets, floating out of control. At which point two of the Blood Lords strode over to the bolt thrower and started some target practice.
One of the safety divers drifted down and waved at Herzer, signaling that the engagement was at an end. Herzer had lost four Blood Lords to over twenty of the enemy, a fair exchange rate.
The rest of the team moved forward at that point and Herzer reconfigured them. The lead Blood Lords, who had engaged the enemy position, rotated back and the support team forward. The techs were behind with a small group of Blood Lords at the rear for security.
As they began moving again, Herzer considered the engagement. It wasn’t a realistic test in his opinion. Among other things, it assumed he had all six teams, including the pure Blood Lord team, at his disposal. He doubted that would be the case. But it was as good as it was going to get and it allowed everyone to show that they could move in the environment.