by Neal Jones
"Colonel Serehl. Welcome aboard Exxar-One."
"Commodore Gabriel. I admire your courage and fortitude. Very few commanders would so willingly and so immediately recognize the futility of fighting a losing battle. I assure you that I am not a butcher, despite what you might have read about me in the historical archives. I will honor the codes of interstellar law and abide by the accepted rules of engagement." He paused, clearly expecting a reply.
Gabriel nodded, still holding Serehl's gaze. "I'm pleased to hear that, colonel. However, I am puzzled by one small fact. How do you plan to secure this starbase when my crew outnumbers yours by a ratio of at least thirty to one? That doesn't even account for the civilian population. Not only that, but I have completely wiped our central computer memory, taking everything but emergency life support off line in the process. Assuming that your soldiers successfully take this station, you will have to rebuild the central database from scrap." He cocked his head, a ghost of a smile twitching at the corners of his mouth. "Are your engineers as good as mine?"
Serehl's expression turned into what could only be described as sneer, and on any other visage it would have been almost comical. But the cold fury in his good eye chilled Gabriel's blood. "I have already factored all of that into my plans, commodore, and you may take comfort in the fact that I will not allow your civilians to come to harm. I will, in fact, let them leave this starbase via the ships that are currently docked here. There's not enough room for everyone, of course, but I'm sure that least a quarter of the population will be able to fit aboard those vessels."
"And what of the rest of them?" Saveck interjected. "Are you expecting reinforcements?"
"Yes." Serehl looked at the major with even more contempt than he regarded Gabriel. "A Jha'Drok legion is already en route."
Commander Hiller gasped. "The Jha'Drok?"
"The first rule of galactic warfare is to use every distraction to one's advantage. The Jha'Drok allowed the conflict between the Federation and the Chrisarii Alliance to run its course, while they finalized their own plans. The legion should arrive in the next few hours, a day at most, and I doubt that its commandant will honor the rules of engagement as I do. It would be best for you and your crew, commodore, to surrender yourselves completely and not waste time with the guerilla warfare that we both know you have set up in several critical areas of this station." He smiled coldly. "I'm sure that Jha'Drok engineers are far more competent than yours."
Gabriel swallowed but refused to give Serehl the satisfaction of showing any fear. "If you want this station, colonel, you will have to slaughter every last member of my crew to get it."
Serehl nodded, his smile vanishing as quickly as the holo-image of the station several minutes earlier. "So be it." He motioned to the pair of soldiers who were flanking Gabriel. One of them produced a pair of handcuffs from a hidden pocket and he put them on the prisoner as Serehl continued. "I will give you credit, commodore, for playing your hand so well. You had me convinced that you were really going to surrender. I'm pleased, however, that you chose to resist. Your empire and mine were never meant to fight on the same side." The colonel turned to Saveck as Gabriel was escorted through the cardon field. "I will give you one opportunity to join my crew, major. I would be honored to have someone with your military record under my command."
"I'm sure you would," Kralin replied in a tone as frigid as space itself. "But I would rather die than serve under a traitor to the empire."
"Very well." Serehl nodded as if he had expected that response, and he turned to his soldiers. "Take them all out of here."
The infantry obeyed, and within a matter of minutes, Colonel Serehl was the sole occupant of the command deck. He smiled to himself as he pressed a button on his commlink. "Major Ri'Lmor, you may begin the assault. Launch all fighter squadrons and tell the fleet to remain at condition one."
"Yes, sir."
Serehl turned, walked back across the threshold, and the cardon field disappeared.
( 6 )
Staff Sergeant Michael Frakes clutched his pulse rifle and steadied his breathing as he crouched at the bend in the corridor outside the entrance to CPC-1. The primary and secondary spheres of Exxar-One were so massive that each required its own computer core to operate and sustain life support for each sphere, as well as the billions of technological processes that went into maintaining daily life and operations aboard a starbase the size of Exxar-One. But there was also a necessary security redundancy that was served by having the two spheres operate independently of each other. In case one core was corrupted and/or destroyed, the other could serve as backup. And in case both went off line or out of commission completely, there was the third core that controlled all technical operations for the central hull that connected the two spheres, as well as the six docking spheres. CPC-1 and 2, which were located in the primary and secondary hull, respectively, each spanned ninety decks, and there was multiple entrances to each core. The forty soldiers of second platoon, Bravo Company, were scattered throughout G section of deck ninety-six, and Squad D - which was Frakes' squad - was guarding the entrance.
Five meters ahead of Frakes' position, in the center of the corridor, was a large, square piece of equipment that served as a portable EW drone. It was currently blocking the formation of any cardon field, thus preventing the Haal'Chai from transporting any troops into this part of the corridor. Each drone could cover a maximum field of five hundred square meters, and several dozen had been set up inside all the CPCs as well as the other L1 sectors. If the Haal'Chai wanted control of the station, they were going to have transmit their cardon signals to non-secured sections and go from there.
Frakes glanced at Corporal Chen who had taken the point position on the same side of the bend opposite Frakes, and Chen smiled devilishly. He twitched his index finger near the trigger, signaling that he was ready to slaughter some red-heads, and Frakes grinned as he nodded. He peeked around the corner once more, checking to be sure that the drone was still operating and that all was clear. With the dim lighting of emergency power and the lack of the barely perceptible thrummmmm of main systems that could always be felt in the decksole, the corridor was eerily silent.
Frakes carefully shifted his weight from his left foot to his right, and he wondered again why the Haal'Chai didn't just fire an EM pulse at the station to disable all equipment - including the EW drones. Surely with all the enhancements brought on by the alien technology, it would be a simple matter to network the forward deflector arrays of all the ships in the fleet and generate one hell of an EM scattering field. After that, it was a piece of cake to transport in the infantry and go from there. Of course, one didn't want to charge into a sensitive area like Computer Processing Control and start firing one's disruptor. If Colonel Serehl was truly intent on taking the station intact, he was going to need every piece of the core's hardware - especially if he was going to initiate the daunting task of rebuilding the operational software.
But then again -
Lance Corporal Higgins, Squad D's tactical officer, was positioned close to the CPC entrance, and he gave a sharp gasp as the screen on his portable sensor array popped up a readout. "We've got company, boys!" he shouted in a loud whisper. "Multiple contacts headed our way from both directions!"
Frakes snapped his thoughts back to the present. There was a sudden, distant shout, followed immediately by pulser fire, and the soldiers of Squad D steeled themselves for an onslaught. More shouting and gunfire ensued, closer this time, and Frakes fought the urge to break radio silence. Gunnery Sergeant Matthau had been insistent that all squads maintain a radio blackout so they wouldn't give away their positions to the enemy.
Frakes spared a quick glance to check the status of his body armor's repellent. The tiny indicator light flashed green, and he pressed a button on the side of his helmet that lowered his tac screen into place. The screen resembled a pair of old-fashioned night vision goggles, but the eyepieces were slimmer and more streamlined, and they were connect
ed directly to a narrow pocket inside the front of the helmet. Modern infantry soldiers didn't need the antiquated scopes that had once been attached to the equally out-of-date rifles that were once employed by pre-space era Marines. Instead, what Frakes and his fellow soldiers now possessed was computerized scopes that laid out the field of fire in a tactical grid and were networked to the pulse rifle. In other words, one didn't need to squint along the barrel of one's weapon to take aim. One simply interpreted the information on the tac screen, pointed the rifle in the right direction and pressed the trigger.
"Damn!" Higgins gloated. "Those motherfuckers are going down! Still a big swarm, but it's going to be manageable, boys and girls! They'll be on our position in three minutes, give or take!"
A ripple of murmured "Hoo-ahs!" echoed back, and Frakes double checked his rifle's battery pack and magazine. The M71 PPR was a beautiful weapon, capable of firing real bullets as well as phase disruptor pulses. A standard battery pack held a hundred pulse rounds, and the mag cartridge held fifty. The entire assembly was only seventy centimeters long, and Frakes felt the familiar tingle along his spine as he rested his index finger on the trigger.
Something bounced and rolled into Frakes' field of fire, and an explosion blinded his tac screen. He reacted on instinct, laying down a spray of disruptor fire, and the cries of pain told him he'd hit multiple targets. More shouts and explosions came from Chen's side of the corridor, and the entire squad joined him and Frakes as the battle finally arrived at their position in full force. As the smoke cleared from the flash grenades, Frakes estimated a quick head count of the enemy in his quadrant. He'd knocked down three with his initial burst, and at least a dozen more were barreling towards him, weapons blazing, and he leaned forward to counteract the thudding effect of their disruptors on his armor. His shield plating popped and sizzled as it harmlessly dispersed the phased energy bolts, and the Haal'Chai armor did the same with the disruptor fire from the Marines. Frakes' right thumb flicked the switch that changed the rifle's ammo setting and he began hurling bullets at the Chrisarii. Most of them, too, were deflected or stopped by the battle armor, but enough got through the cracks to knock down half the oncoming squad.
Another explosion rattled the corridor as the EW drone disintegrated beneath the point blank fire of a Haal'Chai pulser, and then the Chrisarii were on top of the Marines. Frakes had only a second to disengage his tac screen, and he slammed the butt of his weapon into the jaw of the first soldier and then rammed it into his gut before he could recover. The Chrisarii went down and Frakes attacked the next one. By reflex, Squad D had moved to form a wall at the intersection, completely blocking the CPC entrance. They all moved with lightning speed, their training and years of experience taking over, and they deflected nearly every blow while giving worse than they got. But then a silver blade flashed, and Frakes wasn't fast enough. The dagger rammed through the slit between his torso armor and his groin piece, but he managed to bring his forearm down hard against that of the Chrisarii's. The force was enough to snap the blade off the hilt, and Frakes shattered the soldier's elbow by bracing it against his other arm and shoving up and out. He then slammed his own elbow into the Haal'Chai's jaw, crushing it as well, and the enemy collapsed, gurgling pain and blood.
Frakes immediately fell back behind the wall, and dropped to his knees. He gingerly probed the wound, and then grasped what little of the blade he could and slowly, gently pulled. He managed to get enough out to get a firmer grasp, and he gritted his teeth while counting silently to three. He removed the blade in one swift yank, and the pain was almost enough to make him black out. Like the Kali'Fhan swords, Chrisarii dagger blades were notched on either side to create talons, and while the blade wasn't very wide, there was enough blood covering it - as well as gushing from the wound - to suggest that it had done serious damage.
The battle was suddenly, abruptly over. The Marines had succeeded in holding their ground, but Frakes was not the only one wounded. Corporal Sosa, the field medic, immediately began treating the staff sergeant, while three others - Chen included - sank to their knees against the closest wall to remove their armor and examine their wounds. The rest fanned out to walk among the fallen Chrisarii and make sure they were all dead. A few weren't, but a blast to the head at point blank from a pulser finished the job.
( 7 )
The scene at CPC-1 was played out in almost the same fashion all over the station. In main engineering, Garrett and several of his officers took shelter in one of the lower decks, close to the base of the reactor core. There were two sections of the station that remained fully on line during emergency power. One was the reactor core, and the other was the medical sector. Even though all three computer cores had had their memories and operational databases wiped, emergency power was made possible by a fourth backup core, a small one that spanned only fifteen decks in one of the upper sections of the central hull. In concert with the reactor core, it maintained life support for the entire starbase, as well as enough power for the medical sector to keep their equipment and bio-computers functioning.
That made the engineering hull the coveted prize for Colonel Serehl and his soldiers. If he successfully took that section, he could shut down the core and thus eliminate life support for the entire station. Everyone aboard would be dead in minutes, and the battle would be over. Because of this, Gabriel had delegated a third of Exxar-One's security forces to cover the fifty decks that comprised the engineering hull. While all was quiet where Garrett and his team were sequestered, it was not so up on deck twenty-five, a.k.a main engineering. The three squads of Marines assigned to that section managed to hold their ground, but they suffered heavy losses. The Haal'Chai were relentless, barreling forward with a speed and ferocity that was almost supernatural. When the gunfire ended and the smoke cleared, there was almost as many Marines dead as there was Haal'Chai. Staff Sergeant Goff ordered the few men she had left to start piling the bodies against the double doors that served as primary entrance to main engineering. The EW drone was unharmed, and Goff thanked Ares for small favors while she watched her soldiers strip the dead Chrisarii of their weapons and body armor.
On the promenade, three squads of station security exchanged gunfire with six squads of Haal'Chai. The forty-five Federation soldiers were on the second and third levels, and they had done their best to spread out and lay enough cover fire to maneuver around the Chrisarii and attack from the rear. But there was too many of the Haal'Chai to make it work, and their commander was two steps ahead. He'd split his seventy-one men into four groups, one for each level, and they were slowly but surely surrounding and cornering the enemy. In the same half hour that it took for Staff Sergeant Goff's soldiers to clean up the mess in main engineering and prepare for the next attack, section twelve of the promenade's second level fell to the Haal'Chai. They slaughtered all three squads of station security, including four Chrisarii, and then split up. Half entered a PTL and the other half marched to the third level to continue the assault.
When Colonel Bryant had first announced Commodore Gabriel's plan to his Marine battalions, his soldiers had thundered back with a powerful "Hoo-Ah" that rattled the deck plating and shook the walls. In AGC, the pilots were even more eager than the Marines to get a piece of the action, but their time wouldn't come for awhile yet. They sat in their cockpits, their stingers' engines in standby mode, trigger fingers twitching as they waited for the signal from Commander Scoletti. Two squads of Marines were spread throughout the bay, but not so much as a whisper on Sergeant Worely's portable tac monitor. Apparently Colonel Serehl didn't think that Air Group Command was a strategic enough prize to warrant an assault by his soldiers.
Like the Marines in AGC, Krael Zar and three squads of his security forces were camped out in Zar's office and the various corridors that branched out from its pair of rear exits. It was a pretty sure bet that Serehl wanted nothing to do with the CSI labs and the empty holding cells, so he probably wasn't going to send an assault team to the security sec
tor. But since EW drones were placed in all the L1 sectors, there was a slight possibility that several squads of Haal'Chai infantry were going to use the corridor outside the office to set up camp.
Jerren sat behind his desk, his left hand resting on the butt of his pulser that was laying on its side next to his computer terminal. There were five other soldiers in the office with him, and their presence made the normally spacious room seem cramped. Commander Teske was one of them, and he glanced at Zar every couple minutes, asking the same silent question over and over.
Why are we sitting in here like caged rats while our comrades are out there dying?
Jerren ignored the question and kept his gaze focused on the double doors that served as the main entrance to his office. Beside Commander Teske was a portable tac monitor, and it was as silent as the soldiers guarding the office.
( 8 )
With the battle only just begun, there wasn't very many wounded in the ER. Like AGC, the medical sector wasn't a vital section of Exxar-One, and the several dozen doctors, nurses and med-techs stood or sat at their stations, choosing not to break the thick silence. Because there was an EW drone activated here as well, there was a good possibility that the ER would see very little action. The cardon field allowed for instantaneous transport between any two points anywhere on the station, so without it the PTL system was the only other way for the wounded to get here.