by Cameron, TR
“I recommend you continue to try to scrape them off of your base. The Washington will attach at the midpoint and transfer our Marine contingent to help evacuate your people. We’ll also set mines as we retreat as a backup plan to destroy it. Our ships will screen our boarders, but we would welcome your fighters to back us up. We brought none of our own.”
“Affirmative,” Dima replied. “Tell your Marines good hunting.”
Dima watched as the Union forces swarmed to their destination, arranging themselves in a protective formation around the Washington and her boarding party. Her support ships flew in deliberate ellipses centered on the base—watching, prepared for incoming enemy weapons.
Dima switched back to the general battle channel, and informed his fellow officers that the Union ships were there to help, and that they would board the base to rescue the people trapped aboard. The inevitable protests materialized, accusing the UAL of entering to gather intelligence. They were more subdued than he had expected, and he didn’t care in any case. It was beyond time to set aside old ways of thinking.
“Helm, let’s make these uncivilized interlopers’ lives difficult. Chart a trajectory that will put us out of weapons range for all but one of the enemy ships and send that point in space to our squadron. Tactical, make sure our defenses are balanced so they can take a few hits once we reach that position. Let’s attempt to bring all of our energy weapons to bear on one ship and see if we can burn through his shields.”
Dina returned to his executive officer, who had been feeding him information throughout the battle. “I do hope you’re recording the results of all of these experiments.”
The exec nodded and replied, “Of course, Captain. Someday, when you become an admiral, I plan to give my own executive officer such important tasks.” The wry sarcasm brought the smile back to Dima’s face, and he returned his gaze to the main screen.
Several moments later, all of his ships were in position, and they stabbed their foe with all of their energy weapons at once. The gravitic shields bent the beams at first, but as the multicolored lances stayed on target, the redirection diminished, until they all coalesced on one point, burning through the protective barrier and the ship behind it.
“Tactical, report,” Dima snapped, his fingers working on his own display.
“We have nine ships remaining, Captain, and the enemy now has eleven. With the addition of the Union vessels, we outnumber them, but as we’re operating as two disparate forces, this does us little good. One of ours has an engine leak, but otherwise we appear to be fully functional. The aliens also appear to be undamaged, but are focused on defending their boarding party.”
Dima swore softly in Russian, his angst reaching only the ears of his exec, who was well acquainted with how Dima operated in battle. “It’s a stalemate. We cannot stop them boarding, nor can they let down their guard to destroy us.” He tapped a couple more icons on his display, highlighting two ships.
“Send the Singapore and the Hanoi to evacuate the lower part of the base. Send all remaining Alliance forces to defend the evacuation, even if that means leaving the aliens to their task. Have some of the fighters harass them, but only if they can do so without taking significant damage.”
He keyed the communication channel that connected him to the Washington again. “Captain Okoye, we have reached a stalemate and are evacuating the bottom section. Your Marines can focus on the center and the top. We will plant our own scuttling charges and coordinate with you on discharging them.”
“Affirmative,” Okoye said. “We’re working with your personnel to secure the airlock and will soon breach the station to evacuate your people. The Washington should be able to hold them all if our spies have given us truthful information about your bases.”
Dima laughed. “I’m sure we told them to do so, since all your spies are really our spies.”
He cut the channel and sat back in his command chair. “Keep a close eye on these alien barbarians, tactical. Until they do something, or until our evacuation is complete, all we can do is wait and watch.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Kate grabbed the side rails of the ladder, locked the sides of her feet against the outside of the railings, and allowed herself to slide down the three decks to the transfer level. The sleeves of her tunic protected her hands, and her boots were durable enough to absorb the friction and control her descent.
She landed with a bounce, turned, and took in the seeming chaos of the Marines as they prepared to board the Alliance base. Jumping to see over them, she looked over the milling crowd to find someone in charge. She spotted Cynthia Murphy and wove through traffic to get to her.
“Captain says you’re coming with us,” the Sergeant greeted her. “You’re a little small for a Marine, but I think we’ve got a skell that’ll fit you. Come right this way.” Kate followed her to the far side of the room where several crates had been stacked and opened to reveal the Marines’ gear.
“You’ll need to put on the sensor suit,” she said, looking at Kate with an expression that on anyone else she would’ve called sheepish. On the Marine, it just looked wrong. She nodded and peeled off her boots, tunic, and her uniform pants. She accepted the sensor suit and stepped into it, shrugged it into place, and allowed Murphy to seal her inside it. Her lack of modesty got her a nod of support from the gunnery sergeant.
“Over here,” the Marine said to her, pulling her less lightly than she might have expected toward a standing exoskeleton. “Feet here, arms here, lock the braces around your forearms and your shins.” She pointed out all the main parts, then walked away. Kate followed her orders, clambering into the skell by stepping into the foot rests and clasping the braces at shin, waist, chest, and arms.
The exoskeleton negotiated with the sensor suit in silence, and upon reaching agreement, powered up. She took several slow stomping experimental steps, and waved her arms around, careful not to remove the heads of any friendlies standing nearby.
“I could get used to this,” she said as Murphy returned.
The Marine laughed and clapped her on the exoskeleton arm hard enough to rattle the entire frame. “We’ll turn you into one of us yet, Flynn.” She pointed across the room where the rest of Kate’s gear awaited her.
The modular design of the Marines’ armor was appropriate for a recon unit that would need maximum flexibility in loadouts for a variety of mission objectives. Pieces of gear could be easily swapped out among exoskeletons, and mission-critical components could be assigned to any team member.
The Marines had picked out modules for Kate, and Murphy assisted her in locking them onto the exoskeleton. Once in place, securing bolts extended and connected the armor plates as if they’d been welded together. Kate’s modules included an upgraded sensor array and communication suite, located in her chestpiece and helmet, respectively.
As her heads-up display offered diagnostics, Kate reviewed those systems and the proper sequence of verbal commands and eye patterns necessary to trigger the suit to release her in case of malfunction or damage. She noted that her arm modules both had accessories, a targeting laser in the left and a grappling hook with a retraction motor in the right.
“Catch,” Rhys St. John’s voice jolted her out of her reverie.
Kate hadn’t realized that he had joined them and was distracted for a moment. That plus the minuscule delay between desire and action in the armor almost caused her to miss the projectile, but she caught the Marine rifle without embarrassing herself. She received another nod of something like approval, and St. John launched into operation instructions.
“Since you’re not fully trained on this equipment, you won’t be able to use the sighting function as it’s meant to be used, but that’s okay. As long as you know which end to point toward the enemy, you’ll be just fine.” He pointed at the trigger guard, which had a strange scalloped design. “All four of your fingers have something to do. Your index finger pulls the trigger, your middle finger selects multi-shot by r
esting on the guard, your ring finger triggers the weapon’s targeting laser the same way, and a flick of your pinky against that little nub on the bottom will launch a grenade.”
Murphy grinned as she anticipated Kate’s question. “We wouldn’t want your thumb to get lonely or bored, so that’s what you use to select the next target in your HUD. When the yellow overlay matches the red one, your aim is good and you can let it off the chain. Questions?”
Kate frowned. The gear she’d trained in during her Marine rotation (which was on a training base—they rarely put new naval officers into active ground combat during first rotations) had more features than this. “Ammo select? Grenade select?”
Murphy gave a short laugh. “You’re my kind of mammal, Flynn. In this rig, those are controlled with eye movements or vocal commands. You have fire and frag grenades, and both standard and explosive rounds. Because we’ll be on a space station, I recommend against using frag or explosives unless things are going bad in a hurry.”
“Affirmative,” Kate responded in a distracted tone, already trying to find the eye controls to select munitions. Her reverie was broken by St. John’s voice over the communication system in her helmet.
“Form up, people. It’s time to do that thing we do best.”
As one, the Marines shouted, “Ooh-rah,” in response. Kate shook her head and decreased the volume of the audio. The next sound emanated from a different part of her helmet, indicating a separate comm channel than that used for the entire squad.
“Flynn,” St. John said, “you’ll be our liaison with the DC.” She felt a warmth from their use of the crew’s affectionate name for their vessel. “If our orders change, or if new information about the tactical situation comes in, I expect you to communicate it to me and to Sinner. This channel is just the three of us. You can access it as comm six.”
“Affirmative,” Kate said again. “Report changes in orders and new information.” He gave her the Marine hand gesture for understanding in return.
She got into line where the gunnery sergeant put her and used the next several moments while the Marines organized themselves to set up her connection with the Washington.
Okoye’s voice came over the comm channel. “Forty-five seconds to hard dock. Standby to breach.”
Kate took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and drew her awareness inward, focusing only on the moment. When she opened them again, she was ready.
* * *
With a loud clang, the Washington completed its connection to the base. The outer door opened, and the first two Marines in line fired grapnels and winched themselves across to the other side, assisted by a powerful jump from their exoskeleton legs. They were working to gain access even as the airlock sheath was extending to provide atmosphere.
By the time the airlocks were ready, so were the Marines, and the inner doors on both sides released. They moved in lines across the airlock, spreading out into a tactical deployment covering the entrances to the room they entered on the other side.
Each Marine had a wireframe map of the base overlaying their real-time view of the space, with their objective marked in green and a path toward it glowing in their augmented vision. She reported back to the Washington that they were safely in the airlock. After listening for a moment, she then activated comm channel six.
“The aliens are pushing for the command center. The estimate is that they will be there long before we can scuttle the base or get everyone evacuated. Alliance command is concerned that the data present in the facility may prove a significant vulnerability if the enemy takes it.”
“Damned inconsiderate bunch of aliens, if you ask me,” St. John said. “Okay people, now we have two priorities. Sinner, you and half of third squad evacuate the personnel according to our initial plan. Set limpets on your way back.” She clicked an affirmative across the comm channel and organized her force. “The rest of third squad, deploy here and guard our exit. “First and second squads, including Flynn, you’re with me. Let’s go deny the command center to those bastards.”
Kate heard the fuzz of people switching to different channels, and then the members of first squad moved off through the left entrance. “Kid, take point. Huge, you’re second. I’m third. Flynn, behind me. Flame, stick to Flynn and make sure we don’t have to explain how she got killed on our watch. That would seriously mess up my day—and yours.” He pointed at her. “Keep yourself alive, Flynn.”
“Red,” she replied.
“Red it is. Second squad, same deployment in reverse to guard our backs. No one should feel the need to bring any ammo back. Now move.”
* * *
Kate’s rotation among the Marines was a long time in the past, but she remembered the basics well enough. Stay with your unit, keep your head down, try not to get seen or killed. Destroy anything that tries to stop you from doing these things. She figured she could handle it.
As they moved through the base, she used her advanced sensors module to tap into the base’s computer system. It required a great deal of conversation with her armor to hack the system’s protocols, but she persisted and negotiated her way in. She called up the security interface, getting immediate access to hundreds of cameras showing nothing useful, since she was unsure of their locations.
Delving further into the system, she was able to overlay an infrared schematic atop her existing wireframe map, which enabled her to pinpoint the location of different bodies throughout the base. Clustered around the command center were several figures that were either humans with lethal levels of fever or alien beings with a higher natural body temperature.
Kate sketched what looked like the safest route from their current point to the objective and linked it to Sergeant St. John. He gave it a quick review, then clicked twice for affirmative across their communication link. He redistributed the signal to the squad, and the new trail appeared in each of their overlays.
As they advanced further into the base, Kate noticed that it was organized in an almost identical fashion to the Union bases that she’d visited. Although the exterior designs were different, the interiors suggested that the architects were working from the same plans all along. She sighed at the unnecessary waste that was the current state of human affairs.
The explosion came without warning and scattered the Marines like leaves in the breeze. Kate slammed into the upper part of the corridor wall and fell to land face-first on the floor, the armor and exoskeleton padding keeping her from harm. Her systems had reacted quickly enough to protect her hearing and sight. She took in the blasted remains of the hallway. The damage was significant, but didn’t put the structure in danger.
She pushed herself to her feet as Sergeant St. John called for a comm check. One by one the members of teams two and three reported in by callsign. When all eight of them had finished, she added her own.
“Resume formation and advance,” the gunnery sergeant said. His voice was somewhere on the continuum between determined, irritated, and bored.
She followed behind St. John, noting that all the Marines moved their weapons in a precise pattern, a choreographed routine that kept them focused and aware of their surroundings. The sergeant carried the same weapon as the team’s point person, callsign Surfer. It was bigger than the rifle she held, with several round magazines attached to the underside that fed the grenade launcher below the barrel.
Hugo, the team’s heavy gunner, lugged an absolute monolith of a gun—so big that it was mounted on a hardpoint at the waist of his power armor. A backpack fed the weapon through a pair of cables that snaked around his torso. This model was unknown to Kate, but she knew she was glad to be behind it, rather than in front of it.
They advanced, meeting no enemies until they were within a hundred meters of the command information center, then Surfer stopped them. Ahead was a maze of crisscrossing defensive traps, presumably set by the aliens, visible in their heads-up displays as a series of crimson lines shooting all over the hallway. She was sure that they could detect motion, s
ound, body temperature, and who knew what else.
St. John’s voice resonated through her headset, “Looks bad, Red. Your opinion?”
“Standby,” she replied, and toggled her communication to the Washington. A few moments later, she was speaking with Cross because the captain was busy coordinating battle operations for the Union forces. She described the situation to him, and he responded, “We need it. You’ve got to get in there.”
“Yeah, well, easy for you to say.”
“True, but that’s why the captain sent you. You’re the smart one. I’m just the good-looking one.”
Kate exhaled the tiniest of laughs at his stupid joke. Then she remembered a conversation they’d the last time they were together, and cut the link to him, connecting instead to the engineering section.
“Hey, Jannik,” she said, “I have this idea. How many of those spiders do you have, anyway?”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Cross tapped commands to track the Marines’ movements on the display built into the executive officer’s chair. Using a pad in his other hand, he scrolled through a continuous data report on the status of the Washington. It was his task to maintain the ship’s point defense and operations while Captain Okoye dealt with the overall tactical situation as commander of the Union forces in the system.
While the Washington was attached to the base, there was little to do. He drummed his fingers as the small dots that represented the Marines moved through the tiny map of the space station on his display and wished he could trade places with Kate.
To distract himself, he watched the forces fight for primacy on the main monitor, now given over to the battle schematic rather than any real-time view. The icons looked like pieces on the game board.
He fell into the strategy and tactics of the battle, except for the part of his brain that stayed focused on Kate and the Washington’s dataflow, and the broad strategies of each force materialized. It was a mental challenge because there were three sides—the aliens, the AAN, and the UAL. His view showed the latter two weren’t working well together against their common foe, even though he believed both Okoye and Dima wanted to.