Oort Rising

by Magnus Victor

  Another 'CRACK' sounded down the corridor. Another mine. Still nothing followed it.

  By the timing and distance between the charges, the rebels would reach the bend in the corridor in less than thirty seconds. A damn fast advance for troops who must be rattled by the mines going off in their faces. Antoniy suspected that these wouldn't be the same pushovers that had attacked his ship last week.

  A third, and then a fourth 'CRACK' came down the corridor. The last of the camouflaged mines had detonated. No sound followed.

  But the Marines had stacked the deck in their favor, though, with a little help from engineering. The air systems were blowing away from them, to keep the corridor clear of any gas weapons the rebels might use. When the shooting started, the ship's grav systems would project a steep gravity field, facing away from the defense. This would speed up friendly projectiles, and slow incoming rounds. Hopefully, it would be enough to tip the balance.

  He tensed, waiting for combat. The corridor remained quiet — he should have heard the rebels' footsteps by now, for goodness' sake.

  After all, he was close enough to smell the primer from the mines on the incoming breeze. His armor's sensor suite took in all available data from his environment, and then faithfully replicated all the senses, and then some, inside his helmet. He read no IR of burning ordnance. Heard no sound in the wavelength of human screams. The breeze told him nothing. — Wait, incoming breeze? What could have caused...oh, Hell.

  A dark grey, rectangular wall of metal came around the bend. A pair of stubby quad-mounted railgun barrels on ball mounts flanked the rounded, jet-black hemispherical boss in the center. The whole arrangement almost filled the corridor with its side-panels extended flush with the forward face, but Antoniy could see green-suited rebel troops behind the contraption.

  His breath caught. How the hell could the rebels have an assault gun? Antoniy had rarely faced them, and then only in basic! Those things were for training missions where the review officers hated the trainees!

  For a moment, the corridor was silent, as Antoniy's Marines paused a moment in stunned silence.

  But only for a mooment. A single, flat 'crack' rang out as a single railgun bullet spat forth from the Marines' line.

  It bounced harmlessly off the assault gun's armored front. The grav field of the Tannenberg shifted, but it had little impact on the assault gun, which had a grav projector of its own. It hesitated only a moment, and then came on again.

  One of the quad railgun mounts swiveled. A roar filled the corridor, and the HUD icon for Antoniy's railgunner went black. KIA.

  They couldn't hurt the assault gun. Its grav projectors prevented the Marines from using the Tannenberg's systems to retreat from the corridor at high speeds. The corridor was arrow-straight for nearly a hundred meters behind him - retreat would be suicide.

  They couldn't hurt it from its front. If they stayed in front of the assault gun, they'd accomplish nothing, throw their lives away. But even two quad-mounted weapons couldn't kill them all before they got too close for their firing arc.

  "Fix-bay'nets-and-charge!" In his haste he made it just one word. As he ran, he slapped the toggle on his coilgun, and the titanium-alloy blade snapped into position. Twenty centimeters long and polished to a shine, it could pierce through any suit's armor. Even more importantly, the bayonet remained an excellent terror weapon.

  He scrambled forward, over the barricades, followed by the rest of his Marines. They were all either very brave, or smart enough to realize that staying put was suicide. Together, they stood a good chance. They could not shoot at the troops behind the assault gun, because the vehicle was blocking them. Which meant that those troops could not shoot them, either. And the massive guns on it were meant for really heavy armor, and did not have the rapid-fire mode needed against infantry.

  He was almost level with the assault gun now, gauging how best to climb around it, when a sharp pain exploded on his hip. He was flung aside, flying into the blue-painted wall to his left.

  Blue? Ceilings were blue, not walls! He blinked, trying to clear his head. Of course, the grav generators. They would spin, trying to impede the assault gun, which would also mess with his 'down'. He stood, and winced. The armor over his hip was buckled, melted and creased where a railgun round had just barely ricocheted.

  The gravity fields shifted again as the armored vehicle's gravity generators fought the Tannenberg. Two of his fellow Marines scrambled through the gap between it and the wall, barely making it before the heavy vehicle slammed home. The crew of the assault gun were clearly not fools. They must have realized that they were about to be flanked, and were attempting to crush the Marines as they squeezed past the multi-ton vehicle. But they were evidently not experienced enough to move their heavy weapon quickly, and Antoniy's Marines were well-trained.

  His hands scrabbled for purchase on the side of the armored behemoth. This close, its guns could not reach him, and the narrowness of the corridor kept it from throwing him off. Even so, it was a close thing. The pain in his hip burned up his spine, and he fought to claw his way forward. The walls of the Tannenberg would be no help to him. While they were rougher from long service than those of the Overlord, they were still too smooth to provide enough traction.

  As if to highlight his fears, the assault gun lurched sideways and crushed two Marines against the opposite wall. Two sickening, wet crunches, and a dark red smear of blood and oil on the wall. Two lights on his squad display going black.

  Damn.

  Over the low-pitched rumbling of the enemy's railgun fire, came the higher-pitched crackle of coilgun fire. His Marines — a good number of them, by the sound of it — had made it past the vehicle, and were engaging the rebel infantry.

  He frowned, happy that they had made it, but concerned that they had not followed orders. That could put all their lives at risk. He had called for a bayonet charge, and his well-trained soldiers knew full well that stopping to fire sustained bursts was just wasting momentum. His Marines would be very closely-packed as they squeezed past the assault gun. All it would take was a single rebel trooper holding down the trigger, and half of Antoniy's squad would be down. His troops needed to get in close, so that the enemy wouldn't have a shot at them. So why were they stopping to fire?

  Finally managing to get a solid grip, he pulled himself along the side of the assault gun with one hand, coilgun held in his other. The gravity fields shifted, the vehicle moved under him, and one of the Marines screamed in pain over the comms circuit. On his heads-up display, one of the Marine icons was outlined in red, but only its right leg was shown in black. Just lost a leg. No blinking red, so the suit's auto-medic was handling it. Non-fatal. He pulled himself past the assault gun, which had stopped dead in its tracks, two of his Marines prying at the hatch.

  And lowered his weapon. Now the coilgun fire made sense.

  Of the dozen or so rebel infantry whom he had glimpsed following the assault gun, two were curled on the ground, wriggling like worms on a hook. They'd had the misfortune to be in the front ranks of what passed for a formation. The blood pooling around them, smearing across the green paint, bore testament to the effectiveness of the Marines' bayonets.

  Behind them, stood seven green-suited rebel 'soldiers. their hands in the air, weapons on the deck at their feet. They were coilguns, but short-barreled models. No penetration, useless against suits. Civilian weapons.

  The enemy must have figured that out early, and dropped them the instant that they saw the armored Marines coming at them with fixed bayonets. The best option available to them.

  "Sergeant," he commed, surprised at how thin his voice was. "Set two men on recon. Make sure we haven't missed anyone."

  "Sir!"

  Antoniy fought to catch his breath, and he muted his mic so that the others would not hear. He forced his shaking legs to hold him upright, when all he wanted to do was sit and catch his breath, and rest his aching hip. But he was in command, and there were enemy to attend to.
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  Behind the surrendered troops, four corpses lay unmoving on the deck further down the hallway. Must have been trying to run. Antoniy sneered. He'd picked the ambush position in large part because it was twenty meters to the next bend in the cover-free corridor. Those cowards had never had a chance of running away, and were too stupid to realize it.

  Well, that wasn't quite fair. They were likely enough just green troops — appropriate enough, Antoniy smirked, given their armor color. And he had deliberately played on the fear factor. It took thorough training — and then some — to keep a man from running from an armored soldier wielding nearly two feet of 'cold steel.'

  "That's all of 'em, sir." reported his sergeant. Antoniy started, realizing that his troops had been almost completely silent over the – only fifteen second! - engagement. Good training.

  “Good.” he replied, watching as the squad's medic — thankfully not one of the troopers harmed by the vehicle — tended to the soldier who had lost his leg. Antoniy's HUD updated — the man was stabilized, would survive, but he was combat-ineffective for the time being.

  "Shit." The muttered curse made Antoniy turn around. "Goddamn cowards." The two Marines had finished forcing open the rear doors of the assault gun.

  "Bastards offed themselves before we got the door open."

  Antoniy peered inside the vehicle. The brightly-lit interior made the two helmet-less corpses inside all the more striking. The driver was slumped over the steering panel, and the gunner still twitched on the floor of the vehicle. White foam flecked their lips. Cyanide.

  "These two were probably the only hard-core rebels." Antoniy said. It took one right-hard soldier to go out like that. Or a zealot. He gestured to the surrendered troops. "I mean, do these other guys look seasoned?"

  His sergeant grunted. “Probably the only ones who knew anything, too.”

  Antoniy searched the bodies, looking for any paper, any live electronics that could tell them something. It was certainly an unusual battle squad. Fanatical soldiers driving military-grade hardware - and obviously experienced enough to maneuver it down those hallways - "supported" by a mob of "soldiers" who surrendered at the drop of a hat?

  Antoniy shook his head. The soldiers certainly behaved like conscripts, but conscription had been out of military fashion for more than a century. Were the rebels this short on manpower, then? He looked at the idling assault gun. And how did that square with such advanced military hardware? Maybe the rebels had good finances, but couldn't find any mercenaries worth a damn this far out-system. Made sense. The only people out here at all were miners.

  A priority message pinged over his comm. The voice was rushed, not one he recognized. "Rebel troops outside command deck. Need backup, urgent. Sealing entrances." Antoniy heard a loud explosion through the system.

  In the background came another voice, faint but panicked, "They're through the blast doors!"

  The first voice returned, the words jumbled together. "Lieutenant, get your section here ASAP. We'll try to hold them, but we're locking the systems all the same." The sound of coilgun fire erupted on the other end of the link, and it went dead.

  Antoniy gritted his teeth. "Sergeant, recall the scouts. We move out in one." He pulled up the ship's schematics on his HUD, planning the fastest approach to the bridge. That explained why he had faced such green troops. They were a diversion, he supposed, as the more veteran unit advanced to the core of the ship.

  It made sense, of course, for the rebels to bypass the main opposition. Almost all of the troops on board the Tannenberg had been readied for boarding near the outer perimeter of the hull, and the rebels would have expected that.

  But even so it should have been impossible to slip through and get to the ship's command deck, at least without hitting another Marine squad. He had heard nothing over the comms, so how had they managed it without any engagement?

  Thankfully, as long as the bridge crew had locked the ship's systems, the rebels at least couldn't control the ship or its gravity systems. Only someone with command-level access codes could unlock the ship. So at least his troops wouldn't have to fight the Tannenberg's own gravity systems on the way to the bridge.

  But the rebels could easily do a lot of damage. If they were thinking fast, they could execute enough higher-level officers so that the Tannenberg's systems wouldn't be working for anybody for hours.

  It all depended on how desperate the rebels were to put the Tannenberg out of action. Their tactics implied that they meant to capture her, and that meant they would do the least damage possible. If they were well trained. Of course, their desperation would depend on how the Overlord was doing. Either way, getting to the bridge fast was key, and his HUD notified him that the ship's grav systems were now offline. Of course they would be, with the bridge systems on lockdown.

  Antoniy cursed briefly, inventively, but then grinned. The rebels had thoughtfully brought them just the tool they needed.

  He waved his troops closer to the assault gun. "All right, new plan. Rebels got through to the bridge. We're needed there yesterday. Everyone grab hold of the tank."

  "Assault gun, sir," corrected Gutierrez, who was the squad's best pilot.

  Antoniy ignored the comment. "Gutierrez, you drive. We'll ride it until we hit rebels."

  "Literally, sir?" one of the Marines joked.

  "If necessary." The assault gun's own gravity systems could be set to hold people against its hull, and if unopposed it could move almost as fast as the ship's grav system could have transported them.

  Of course, that carried a risk. They'd be bunched up while riding, and the assault gun would have to partially retract its shield to move quickly. If they ran into a rebel ambush, the troops riding the vehicle would be sitting ducks. But if he was right, and the rebels had very few trained troops, there might not even be any organized ambush. He had to run the risk. "We'll run 'em over if possible. Can't stop to fight." Speed would be their best defense.

  “What about the prisoners, sir?” the sergeant stood over a dozen seated rebels, their hands bound behind their backs. Their eyes were bloodshot from the acrid smoke that hung in the scorched, dimly lit space. Several of them started shaking, and one gave a stifled sob. No, not seasoned soldiers at all.

  “The only combatants died in that gun,” he replied, pointing back over his shoulder. “These are civilians. Snap their guns, double-check their cuffs, fry their electronics and leave them here.”

  “Sir!” came the reply, accompanied by a crisp salute. Antoniy turned back to the assault gun, so that only his own men could see his face, and grinned. No true soldier wanted to kill civilians, and the sarge was a true soldier.

  Antoniy deployed his best pilots into the assault gun, and clambered into position on its exterior. His hip ached, and he fought to keep the pain off his face. He took a hold near the front, of course — a Marine leads from the front — and gave the command.

  "Gutierrez. Go."

  He glanced over his troops, hanging all over the outside of the modern 'tank'. One of the soldiers started humming softly, almost under her breath. A tune that Antoniy recognized. “And I swear that the first person I hear singing 'Katyusha' is walking to the bridge! I'm looking at you, Sergeivich!”

  A wave of strained laughter swept the section, and Antoniy grinned, despite himself. The squad needed the break. It was the only one they'd be likely to get for a good while. He watched the walls blur by to gauge their speed, but could not manage to be any more precise than 'scary fast.' His HUD showed that they occasionally hit eighty kilometers per hour. He fought to keep his hold on the vehicle, his injured hip screaming at him as the gun shook violently. Assault guns were not built for speed.

  Still, they were fast enough that it was a severe shock for the eyes whenever they turned a corner at speed. The vehicle's grav systems kept his Marines from being thrown off, but the inner-ear didn't know that. Antoniy thanked God that he had never suffered from motion-sickness.

  They passed another ba
ttle scene, walls scarred and floor littered with shattered equipment and broken bodies. He could not tell who had won the engagement, or where the survivors were. On the other hand, the fact that the enemy had pierced all the way to the bridge told him that it hadn't been the Marines who won those firefights.

  Had his section gotten off light, even with a God-damned assault gun to deal with? What had the enemy hit these other fire-teams with? As they got deeper into the interior, he passed a scene of massive damage. An assault gun lay on its side, tendrils of smoke still pouring from it. Bodies littered the floor. A whole squad of Marines, none moving from the quick look he got. He swallowed hard, but kept his own squad moving.

  He would have halted the vehicle and detached his squad's medic, but they could not afford to slow down. And frankly, Antoniy knew his own troops would need their medic soon enough. Rebel resistance at the bridge would be stiff.

  Antoniy did not allow his thoughts to distract his eyes from scanning the corridor in front of him alertly. Line-of-sight identification would be all the warning he'd get of an enemy roadblock — with the Tannenberg's systems locked down, the ship's internal sensors wouldn't help him one bit.

  As they moved further towards the bridge, the deep scarring and scorches of pitched battle disappeared. The lighting became brighter and more regular, and the haze of smoke and vaporized metal thinned out until it was all but gone. Antoniy felt as if he were emerging from a deep, dusty coalmine, into the crisp relief of daylight.

  Chapter 18: Long Shot

  "Klaus!"

  "What is it now, Johann? By the way, I am headed your way. The osmium piping looks good to go." Klaus was supermanning back to the coding lab, as the damage repair crews could function well enough with one less supervisor, and he could do more good if he helped Johann get the QMP drive operational.

  "This is goin' along well enough, but there's too much bloody code to write! Dammit, I'm a physicist, not a programmer!"