Free Mutiny in Space by Rod Walker

made sure the second pistol’s safety was on, and it jammed it into my belt to join the other. Then I gripped the ladder and went down a few rungs, and then kicked my legs out, bracing my boots against the sides of the shaft while my hands held a rung. It was like some sort of dangerous workout position, and I couldn’t hold it for very long, but it did permit me to look down into the next deck’s maintenance walkway without anyone seeing me.
    I saw the back of the commando a dozen feet away. The man stood motionless, his K7 still cradled in his arms. I couldn’t hear anything coming out of his helmet, but I had the distinct impression he was listening to something over his radio. Maybe Ducarti was giving a speech. Or maybe he was listening to his favorite ship-boarding tunes, I don’t know.
    I pulled myself back into the maintenance walkway.
    “There’s just the one,” I said. “He’s facing the other way. I think he’s getting orders from someone.”
    Murdock nodded. “All right. Set your pistol to maximum.” He shut off the safety on his gun and turned a dial, and I followed suit. A little readout on the back on the gun informed me that at maximum power I would only get sixteen shots off before depleting the power. “Aim for his center of mass, and don’t stop shooting until he goes down. You take the ladder.” I swung back onto the ladder. “I’ll drop down.” Murdock perched on the edge of the shaft. “Ready?”
    My mouth suddenly felt dry as dust.
    I managed a nod.
    Murdock nodded back. “On three. One. Two…”
    I gripped my pistol in my right hand, my left holding a rung of the ladder.
    “Three!”
    I slid down the ladder and Murdock jumped. He landed into the next level about a second before I did, his boots clanging against the grillwork of the floor. The Social Party commando heard it loud and clear, and he spun, bringing up his K7 rifle to fire.
    A lot of things happened in a very short time and space, and I remember all of them as clear as day.
    I swung my gun towards the commando and fired. A laser-burst pistol is silent, has no recoil, and issues an invisible blast, but firing a handgun while hanging one-handed from a ladder isn’t exactly ideal accuracy. My first blast missed him, and I knew it missed him because a patch of the inner hull behind him glowed white-hot from my gun’s discharge.
    Murdock had more skill, or maybe better luck. His first shot hit the commando in the right hip, and the ceramic armor there burned away with a flare of hot fire. The commando staggered, which saved our lives because it threw off his aim. The burst of full-auto gunfire that he directed at us would have cut us in half instead of splattering harmlessly against the wall behind us.
    I’d dropped to the walkway and was now in a proper shooting stance, one knee down, both hands wrapped around the pistol’s grip, just the way Nelson had taught me in his endless security drills. I squeezed the trigger again, and this time the blast burned through the armor on the commando’s stomach. Murdock had recovered his balance, and he shot once more, the blast hitting the commando in the chest. I squeezed my trigger a third time, and another hole in the armor appeared next to the one Murdock had made.
    One of the blasts had burned through the armor and through the commando’s heart. He staggered forward, bounced off the inner hull, and fell upon his face.
    I had just killed my first man. Or helped kill him, anyway, which was the same thing.
    I know you’re supposed to feel bad when you kill someone, that it’s supposed to be a shattering experience that gives you nightmares and regrets and maybe post-traumatic stress disorder, but I didn’t feel any of that. I mostly felt furious that he’d shot at us, and annoyed that my first shot had missed him. I suppose I should have felt bad that I had killed someone, but let’s be real. If he had been given the chance, he would have shot me in the head and not blinked