by Lee Guo
Marine Cutter 001, Delta Battalion
Currently attached to Ga Light Cruiser
Deployment Compartment…
Captain Huang Rui did not know what this particular feline ship was called. The only thing he knew was the ship’s schematics made available to his in-helmet display through the resonance scans from all 50 flyer-cutters that have now clamped themselves around the hull of this enemy ship.
And—there was a problem.
There were automatic sentries throughout the vessel. Not enough that it would make every attempt to gain access to a new part of the ship impossible, but enough to really stagnate his marines’ progress. What made it even worse was that from the looks of things, there was enough armor inside the ship to make it difficult to cut through hull parts to gain access to a new corridor. As skilled as Huang Rui had been trained in shipboard combat, he knew just from looking at the schematics that this would be tough nut to crack.
He looked at the drilling progress. 90 percent done.
…100 percent.
“Alright marines! Let’s go!” he yelled. “Prepare for the other side!”
He popped open the hatch that led the team into the hole, the cutter had drilled. He aimed his rifle and ran through it.
The first thing he noticed was the darkness of the corridor inside the ship. All the lights had been turned off. He knew the Cats saw the world using the same visible spectrum as humans. As his men ran through the hole behind him, each of them had to switch to night vision.
Then, just when he thought it was safe, a kinetic round slammed into the man beside him. The man’s armor took much of the impact, but it didn’t matter—he was dead when another bullet penetrated his head, which exploded in a red mess.
“Fire at will!” Huang yelled, who purposely fell to the ground.
Space inside the corridor erupted with magnetic rounds shooting in every direction. Bullets slammed into the armor of his men, sometimes penetrating it, other times bouncing off. His men yelled and screamed as the wounded increased. Huang targeted his adversaries across the corridor and continued firing.
He saw them. The Cats wore armor just like humans did. There were seven of these large black armored bodies holding their end of the corridor steadfast while they continued shooting rounds into Huang’s men.
“Ahhhh!” someone yelled over the net.
Everything around him exploded as armor-penetrating bullets bounced off walls and armor then crashed into metal and carbon. Sparks flew everywhere. Across the other side, the same thing was happening to the opposite wall. Armor-penetrating rounds from human forces that missed smashed into the wall behind the Cats.
For the longest time, there seemed to be no change in the level of ferocity between the two combatants, but as more human exoskeletons poured through the hole that the flyer-cutter had made, the tide changed little by little. More and more Cats were hit, and less and less of them continued firing. Huang was not an expert marksmen – he was a good strategist – but he was certain he had hit at least three of the Cats with his scopes. Finally, when the last Cat stopped firing, Huang yelled out, “Cease fire!”
The passageway became quiet, except for the sound of panting from his men.
Huang walked towards the dead armored Cats, looking for any sign for movement. When he was certain they were dead, he passed them by and signaled the big ‘OK’ to his men, who all hurriedly got up and followed him through the next tunnel.
Meanwhile, in his helmet’s HUD, he checked on the status of his platoon leaders from the other cutters and felt an unusual feeling—optimism.
Yes, it might actually work out…
…until he encountered the first robotic sentry.
Betelgeuse Combined Fleet
Flagship, Beginner’s Luck
Flag Bridge…
Another MAB exploded as its ventral power plant took a direct hit from a feline h-wave. A thousand marines, gone, just like that, along with the incapacitated ship it was currently boarding.
Vier winced as she watched the MAB’s warp bubble fade to nothing on her personal holo. She wished she could order one of her warships to extend their warp bubble around the ‘system’, but it was impossible. That type of equipment was only carried on the Valkyries. And she had no free Valkyries left.
Seven more to go, she thought to herself. Oh, she had tried to protect them, but it was too damn impossible. The light attack Cats could move fast, and they could flank, and they could destroy all opposition, including the warships she jammed in front of the Valkyries to protect them.
At this rate, she could potentially lose all her MABs, which, she surmised, was all the more reason it was necessary to win the battle. If she could force the enemy’s warships to retreat, then she would have all the time in the world to dissect and learn from her trophies.
At the moment, the battle was still undecided. Vier still found it hard to believe that she had a forty to one tonnage advantage, and she could not win.
If only she had more missiles left! If only she had more fighters!
She sighed, fully knowing that regrets were pointless waste of time and energy. She had to work with what she had.
There must be something she could do to tip the balance…something!
Suddenly, a thought occurred to her that she could try to evacuate the fast-moving MABs off the battlefield while surrounding them with her lightest ships. That way, even if she lost the battle, she would be able to save her trophies. But logic shut that thought down immediately. One, even if she took the remaining MABs and provided them with all her light escorts, they would not be able to protect themselves against all of the enemy’s light attack ships. She was having trouble protecting them just by using her entire fleet. It was true, the MABs were fast, but could they get out of the battle fast enough? Secondly, if she did that, she was essentially condemning the rest of her fleet to death. She couldn’t do it, yet a saying occurred in her head, “the person who wants everything gets nothing”.
She thought about it a little more, but ultimately decided not to gamble here.
Better to win the main fight. Just a little bit more. Just a little bit more effort!
Ga Light Cruiser
Unknown Corridor…
The robot sentry killed four of his men by blasting armor-piercing rounds insanely accurately at a rate of one hundred times a minute. Each round zoomed at about 2,000 meters per second, enough to break a bone with the percussion even if it didn’t penetrate human armor. Huang almost bought the farm too, if it were not for one of his men yelling, “It’s a trap!” Just before that same man was skewered by a tungsten round that chemically exploded after it tore into his torso. Huang was glad it wasn’t a larger nuclear detonation, because he stood right nearby. The sergeant’s body expanded in a ball of fire, blood, and flesh, independent of what type of explosion ignited it.
“How the hell do we get past that thing, sir?” yelled Private Ritter yelled over the comm net, standing beside Huang Rui as they watched bullets fly past the corner.
Huang took a second to recall that they did have a weapon against that. “Bring the XG-108, Private Greenhill!”
“Yes, sir!” a voice replied over the comm net.
An armored suit ran up to where Huang and his men stood. It held a giant rifle called the Cornershot, which could bend around a wall like a snake. The only problem, Huang thought, was that there was a possibility that the sentry might hit the XG-108 before it could hit the sentry. Nevertheless, he had to try. He took the massive rifle from the trooper and held it in his arms. It weighed about eighty pounds, but to a person in exoskeleton armor, it felt like feather.
Here goes nothing.
He crept close to the corner and aimed his rifle around the bend, and—the world around him lit up with armor piercing rounds. Bang! Bang! The wall to the side and the wall he hid behind exploded. Luckily, it was everything except his rifle. Using a visual sensor tied into a monitor in his helmet’s HUD, he fired the Cor
nershot.
The Cornershot bullet skewered the sentry like a machine gun, creating sparks and explosions throughout the alien apparatus. After twenty of these rapid and large penetration rounds, the sentry blew up in a giant metal fiery mesh. Bang!
Score, again!
“It’s done. Let’s go!” Huang yelled into the net.
“Yes, sir!”
They ran around the corner and past the dead metal hulk of the sentry. They kept moving until they reached another corridor. Huang felt relieved that it wouldn’t take much effort to neutralize a sentry as long as he had a XG-108—until he met his next robotic sentry, which could actually move—and some more Cats behind it.
Betelgeuse Fleet
Alpha-nine Wing, Squadron 8 “Night Shadows”
Fighter 1
I’m a sadist.
Pilot Lucinda Sanford, Lieutenant, Senior Grade, suddenly found a sick pleasure in seeing her squadron’s third kill die. In a way, she had always suspected she was—now it was absolutely true.
As she watched in her HUD the very object of her hate explode in a white-hot fireball into a hundred pieces due to a power core containment failure…and then fade away into nothing, she was washed over with relief. At least she had taken away from them what they had taken away from her. Although nothing could replace the loss of a loved one, there was such a thing as respite and comfort—a sense of justice in this cruel universe that didn’t give a shit for human concerns.
Out of the 25 members in her squadron, only nine remaining fighters could still align with her in a new distributed flat sheet. The rest were gone. She had trained and bled with them—now they were gone.
“Next target,” she said. “We take on that big cruiser, number 609.”
In her HUD, she saw it. It looked like a massive beetle – all of them did – but this one was twice as large. She wondered how fast it could go. Staring at her sensor readouts, she was surprised to see that it could move as fast as one of the feline destroyers half its size. Measuring five hundred meters from head to tail, with a hundred legs moved back and forth emitting the feline version of a gravitron shield, it was certainly the Cats’ largest asset within the immediate battlefield.
“Night Shadows, attack!” Lucinda shouted.
While hearing the affirmative responses come back at her, she carefully monitored her fighter’s readouts on her HUD. She was running a little low on energy. Her antimatter stores had been bled to death from her rampant use of power in her impressive calisthenics. She had, at most, enough power for one or two more battles before she could no longer power her warp suspenders.
A thought crept into her head, something that she found repugnant, which was that she should retreat back to her carrier and reload on antimatter.
No.
Now was not the time to retreat. She had a battle to fight and a team to lead.
No, she would rather disappear from the universe than leave her comrades in their moment where every single bit of help mattered.
Ride! Destiny awaits!
Disappearing from existence in hyperspace seemed like a great way to die.
Light Cruiser Hukna Sevank
Unknown Corridor 2…
“Fire!” Huang ordered.
Anti-armor rounds smashed into metallic walls and explosions detonated everywhere inside the corridor within the feline ship. Huang fired his cornershot at every opportunity he could get, taking down more armored Cats than he could count.
The Cats across the hallway fired their own version of the cornershot, which killed many in his platoon. And of course, there was that robotic sentry, which could shoot armor piercing rounds faster than his remaining members combined.
But Huang had one advantage that none of the feline defenders of this ship could reciprocate.
More men.
Out of the 1000 men he began with, he was now left with 825. From the computer resonance analysis and nanoprobe data, he believed his troops had killed at least 210 of the 650 enemy ship’s personnel. He had also taken at least a dozen feline prisoners during the assault. That, combined with the reasonable pace in which his forces were starting to intrude into the core areas of the ship—Huang was certain he had this one in the bag.
Provided he had enough time, of course.
Another blast blew a giant hole in the head of one of his platoon mates. His soldiers responded furiously. They fired and fired, giving the enemy nowhere to go but hell, but even then—that was not enough.
That blasted robotic sentry—its frontal armor was tougher than anything Huang or his platoon had encountered so far. And it could move.
It continued going down the corridor, getting closer to where his squad was entrenched, roaring its cannons. Anything that didn’t hit his men sent shrapnel and debris that bounced off their nano-c armor. At this rate, he would either have to retreat his men or witness the annihilation of his platoon.
How many of these metallic monsters were inside this ship? Huang wondered, as the robot got closer and closer. He grunted. The problem was…the moment he told his men to get up and run away…that was the moment his men would be most vulnerable to line of sight attacks. They would be exposed to all kinds of fire, especially from that sentry.
But he had no choice. Even his Cornershot could not kill it. Also, the heavy particle gun that his platoon carried had been destroyed earlier in another fight.
Huang took in a deep breath and was about to say, ‘Men, retreat!’ When suddenly, the Cats stopped fighting, and screaming could be heard from outside his helmet.
Puzzled, Huang shouted, “Ceasefire!”
“Ceasefire!” people shouted down the platoon net.
One by one, his platoon obeyed.
Huang gazed around the corner with his cornershot sensors and saw the heavy robotic sentry lying on the metal ground, spurting fire and sparks. The armored Cats around it were on the ground, too. Some of them screamed in their own unique feline tenor. One of them, however, knelt on the metal meshing, begging for mercy.
An armor piercing round from nowhere struck and penetrated its torso and blew its body into a hundred fiery metal and flesh fragments.
“I said ceasefire!” Huang yelled into the platoon net.
“That wasn’t us!” said Private Shelby.
Huang zoomed his 3D HUD map out a little bit, so he could see the surrounding corridors and saw where the bullet had come from.
Another platoon had made quick progress behind the enemy blockade and had gained line of sight on the feline combatants Huang had been fighting for the past five minutes.
“Lieutenant Dunbar, do you read?” Relieved Huang asked the CO of this new platoon.
“I read you, cap,” Dunbar’s voice came back.
“Thanks for coming to our aid, D. We would have lost a lot of men if you hadn’t reached that intersection just in time.”
“No prob, cap, do you need assistance?”
“No, let’s continue forward as separate groups. Maybe you can try that trick again when we hit another roadblock.”
“The pleasure is mine, cap,” Dunbar replied on the net. “Men, you heard the cap, let’s go!”
Still relieved, Huang retracted his cornershot and led his platoon through the metal tunnel past the mess of incapacitated and moaning felines along with their fragmented armor. Another team will come to take prisoners, thought Huang, but for now, he had a battle to fight and a ship to take over.
Betelgeuse Fleet
Alpha-nine Wing, Squadron 8 “Night Shadows”
Fighter 1…
It was big. It was quick—and it fired back.
A massive H-wave slashed through the matterless space behind Lucinda.
“Ahhh!” voices yelled in her helmet. Pip and Irri were gone, eradicated from the universe—just like that.
Inside her cockpit, Lucinda sighed.
For the last thirteen minutes, she had dodged and fired, dodged and fired against that gigantic beetle that had already killed five members
of her remaining squadron. Now, she only had four pilots, including herself. Yet, the blasted feline insect would not go down.
It wasn’t because she could not fire enough shots on its gigantic armored body, but instead because her tiny h-beams just weren’t strong enough. Sure, she had eradicated entire sections of its outer hull – the very act of which gave her a release of pleasure – but the sheer amount of hull made it very difficult to puncture into its innards.
She needed more firepower. It was so big, it could take all this damage from her squadron’s h-beams. “Alpha nine, group eight, requesting assistance,” Lucinda said into the tact-net.
A second later, a controller’s voice responded, “Assistance is coming, alpha-nine-eight. Continue holding 609 at bay. Well done so far.”
Half a minute later, a new object entered the immediate battlefield. She knew it had come because she saw the beetle turn its entire body to face it.
Lucinda glanced at the new object in her nav display and saw its metallic, sword-like familiar shape – a human battlecruiser named Veritas. In her HUD, her computer tagged it as a Pulsar class miniature dreadnought with a crew of four thousand. Armed with four h-beam cannons and plenty of h-deflector ports, it was an arsenal ready to counter anything in hyperspace—anything human, that is. For a moment, she felt relieved, but reality took that emotion away from her quickly. By weight, the Pulsar class battlecruiser was about nine times as massive as the feline beetle it faced, but that mattered little.
Both ships fired at each other simultaneously.
Four h-beams from the Veritas slashed towards the beetle at incredible speeds. Three of them were deflected, bouncing harmlessly off the insect’s stabilization shields. The one that managed to get through — cut into the beetle’s topmost portion, eradicating about twelve thousand tons of hull space, causing inner atmosphere to leak out, as well as feline crewmen, hull parts, and minor explosions.