Undying Mercenaries 2: Dust World by B. V. Larson

with the aliens when we had them boxed in. He sounded confident of victory.
    I wasn’t comforted. I couldn’t stop thinking that we were facing unknown alien invaders who’d been smart enough to board a starship in warp and disable it.
    We broke down into squads and advanced. Corvus was a big ship—huge in comparison to Earthly vessels. It wasn’t like exploring a ship at sea; it was more like exploring a labyrinthine skyscraper. Fortunately, the Skrull were nothing if not efficient and logical. They’d laid out the vessel in geometric patterns. The command deck was surrounded by corridors that converged like spokes on a wagon wheel. Eight ways in—no more and no less.
    All we had to do, according to Graves, was cover all eight of those escape routes. If we sealed the enemy inside, they couldn’t come at us without facing a barrage of fire down a long passageway.
    Our unit was assigned lucky passageway number seven. We marched up and encircled the entrance. The hatch was big, about ten meters in diameter. All the passages to the bridge looked that way. When we were in position, Graves moved to the panel and used his tapper to override the security. I was glad he was here. Corvus wouldn’t have listened to any of the rest of us.
    Before he opened it, he paused, receiving a message. I listened in as I was still connected to command chat. I made sure I didn’t transmit anything. I figured Graves would revoke my permissions and kick me offline when he remembered he’d put me into the loop.
    “Graves?” asked a female voice. “What’s the situation on seven?”
    I knew the voice. It was Primus Turov, our beloved cohort commander.
    “We’re about to open it up, sir,” he said.
    “Hold on that. We have a problem.”
    I looked at Graves. He was frowning now, but that was nothing unusual.
    “May I ask the nature of the trouble?” he asked.
    “The central torus has stopped rotating. There’s no gravity in the aft of the ship, and we’re having difficulty moving up to join you at your position. You beat the rest of us to seven.”
    “Standing by,” he said.
    Now that Turov’s voice was no longer buzzing in his helmet, Graves looked around, gazing up and down the passageways. He signaled Adjunct Leeson, who was my direct superior and who’d brought the rest of my platoon to the party over the last few minutes. Veteran Harris and Weaponeer Sargon were with him, I was glad to see. Altogether, there were now better than a hundred troops jammed into the intersection. Gravity was light here, and we were holding onto the walls ten feet or more up. Like lazy monkeys, we relaxed and gripped rungs that were placed strategically all over the ship.
    “Leeson, take your squads and spread out!” Graves shouted suddenly. “Move your people down toward the next junctions.”
    Leeson looked confused, but he didn’t argue. He didn’t even ask for clarification. Anyone who was in Centurion Graves’ unit knew better. He waved to me, and I began to follow him.
    “Hold on,” Graves said. “Leave me with two weaponeers, McGill and Sargon.”
    A minute later, Graves had dispatched platoons in either direction down the curving passageway. They were only about a hundred meters away, but we couldn’t see them.
    Carlos came close to me and clicked his helmet up against mine. To non-spacers, this would have seemed like an odd action, but it was quite common when troops were suited-up. By pressing our helmets against one another, we could talk without the muffling effects of being englobed in armor. That way, neither party had to shout or use our radios. It worked especially well in vacuum where there was nothing to carry the sound otherwise.
    “Graves is dispersing us,” Carlos said. “That means trouble.”
    “Don’t wet your suit,” I said. “He’s just being cautious before we open this door and confront the enemy. We’re too bunched up here in the passageway.”
    I didn’t tell him about what I’d overheard from