Twin suns of Carrola (Starshatter Book 2)

by Dark Knight

  The freight elevator opened its doors for the third, and last time, revealing neither foot troops nor power armors. Instead, stomping over both dead bodies and crates, one space mecha slowly walked out of it. The towering TA was not taz’aran but wore Clan Aleska colors, it was bristling with integrated weapons, energy shields and from what it could be seen from the outside, covered with thick, multi-layered armor-plating.

  “Stand your ground star blood! This enemy will not break us but rather break upon us, for we fight as one! We will overcome anything that comes out from these doors and survive!” – the Kil’ra’s booming voice and eloquently spoken words breathed new energy into his allies and they moved rapidly, surrounding the mecha.

  “Watch out, for it will fall hard soon!” – snickered the hamster on open comms – “Guys, have you heard this one? It is about a mech whose knees were lasered a million times over...”

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  In but a mere minute all of the station’s combat capable personnel was alerted. Pion base had a garrison many thousands strong, and armed to the teeth. Yet, you couldn’t commit all your troops at once to this particular battlefield, because certain places acted as and were in fact natural, deadly choke points. It was according to the very plan of those whom had designed the ancient pirate space station and was to be used in case one Clan or another tried conquering the entire base for themselves. Yet those days of greatness were long gone and instead of a full raid complement the base’s troops were now two thirds taz’aran star infantry, with only one third consisting of true pirate Clan warriors. Some sections had PA support but most were “reinforced” by local security – hired criminals and bandits, whose loyalty was bought for cheap by taz’aran decats. After the first alarms had alerted nearby sections and they walked out to meet their doom inside the main hangar, the rest of the cowardly rabble immediately ran away in the opposite direction. As a matter of fact, they ran in every other direction, than toward the battle that is. That clogged many of the routes that the reinforcements were supposed to use and slowed the overall troop movement of the Pion base’s garrison. The massive base swarmed with thousands of armed pirates from many clans, but the two most numerous were Push’va slavers and Aleska mech warriors. The latter jumped into their power armors and fearlessly ran towards the deadly battle now raging inside the hangar of their base.

  The rest had to pass through one of the aforementioned choke points; a corridor that provided the shortest and most direct way into the base’s hangar. Because of this reason, local commanders had initially placed there one whole squad of elite troopers backed up by an Aleska power armor. They had thought the position secure.

  They were wrong.

  Seconds after the initial explosions and panic, one elongated jet black object slammed into their ranks with a terrible force. It bended bulkheads, ripped through the doors and finally crushed into the PA, that was unable to dodge it since its sensors never registered the thing in the first place. It was a breaching pod covered with stealth composites and heavily modified by somebody very, very skilled in starship construction. The pod had augmented engines, heavily reinforced hull and on top of that a battering ram which could punch through most armored bulkheads. Shrouded in a low intensity plasma field, it melted those obstacles which it could not rip to pieces. The pod was now sticking out of the smoldering remains of their commander’s PA, and as enraged troopers began shooting at it with their rifles, its outer armor plating exploded. A thick cloud of thousands of megasteel balls propelled by shaped charges flew in all directions, piercing, mangling and eviscerating the soldiers.

  The pod then slid open and out of it leaped not one, but two Terrans. A bulky, towering man who wore the heavily-armored exo-suit of a Terran star marine and a woman, diminutive in comparison, encased in a beautiful, brightly colored spacesuit. The duo stood still for some counted seconds, and exchanged looks, faces covered by their armored faceplates. Surrounded by the dead and dying troopers, they readied their weapons and prepared themselves to meet whatever forces the station’s commanders would spare to throw at them, head on.

  Reinforcements poured from the other side of that corridor and were met with a wall of railgun fire. The star marine had raised his hands and aiming carefully, sprayed devastating barrages at the station security sections as they were running in the open. It looked like his hands were burning, as the never ending hurricane of railgun projectiles howled towards them, ripping through armor, flesh and bone. The troopers frantically screamed on their comms for additional heavy weapon support, yet before the teams could deploy, one more squad was blasted into bloody chunks. Those warriors who survived the barrage were shot by the spacer woman beside him, who also used a high powered railgun, albeit of a different type. Finally taz’aran heavy weapon teams deployed their particle beam guns behind the cover of shield carrying pirate marines and started shooting. Yet, all of their beams were soaked by an energy shield projected from the Terran’s pod! The humans, unphased, continuously moved forward and, firing their weapons, cut a bloody swath through their enemies ranks, as more and more troops came to reinforce the failing unit. Encased with heavier armor and sporting melee weapons, those newly arrived pirate warriors prepared to attack the insolent humans. It should’ve been easy to overwhelm and defeat them the clanners thought, as they advanced forward. They couldn’t have been more wrong.

  The Terran man and woman team charged forward with their pod following, floating on its grav-engine behind them. Taz’arans and Aleska slayers together counter-attacked with their various melee weapons in hand, and the tight corridor soon became a scene of an intense clash.

  As it was in ages past, the sword, axe and spear again came to dominate the battlefields. With the advent of better armor tech and the wide usage of energy shields, armies started training and fielding soldiers armed with cutting edge vibro weapons. Maces and warhammers, their heads sometimes arcing with hundreds of kilowatts, long vibro-spears, halberds and glaives – all weapons mostly forgotten by humanity, were used daily on the Galactic battlefields. In this new reality strategists had to make a choice; would they arm most of their space born troops with long range weapons, or split the soldiers into specialist teams? They choose the latter. It had become the common norm for star marine equipment and overall strategy, which Terrans, of course, did not follow at all. To the surprise of their enemies they fielded infantry squads that were balanced almost equally between melee and ranged weapons.

  The star marine whom both taz’aran and pirate was facing head on was one such merciless example of Terran brutality. To make boarding easier for their star marines, the Terrans had installed as many ranged weapons as they could fit inside their heavy, exoskeleton assisted spacesuits, leaving their hands free to use long melee weapons. Exactly like the greatsword that this monster of a man was cleaving through their ranks with. Supported by the nimble woman he could concentrate all of his attention forward, while his flanks and back were well protected by a devastating hail of body shredding fire. The female spacer held another of those hated Terran weapons in her hands – a Winchester rail-shotgun. It didn’t need to fire large projectiles. A cloud of thousands of pellets the size of sand grains moving at insanely fast speed, was more than enough to chew through light and medium armor, blasting targets back. Or to pieces – lots and lots of gory pieces.

  When her rifle finally overheated, the woman pulled a plasma revolver from her mag holster, and stepped in closer to her partner. What followed was a dance the likes of which no pirate, or taz’aran soldier, had ever witnessed in their lives, no matter how elite or experienced they were.

  Blade and guns acted in complete harmony, their body movements flowing together like water, always one after the other they moved, never competing. Step closer and aside, an all severing sword swing, multiple head shots, then jumps, kicks and punches to their enemies faceplates. In the deadly chaos of melee, the man and woman represente
d an unconquerable harmony. A unity that brought death to all those who wished to do harm upon them. Both had surrendered completely to each other where every breath, thought, movement, and action belonged not to themselves, but to one another. Every time he overreached, swinging his sword, there was his woman covering him, guns blazing. This Terran display of martial dance completely threw off any sort of organized and concentrated attack; the pirates simply moved closer and then died. All of them. In droves, which the duo “danced” through with ease and deadly efficiency. In stead of moving forward, the garrison troops were being pushed back!

  For a time both Terrans were protected by their energy shield. It, however, was soon overpowered by enemy fire and their suits began taking hit after hit. Seeing the devastating combo that their Terran opponents were capable of, pirates called forth their power armor equipped reinforcements and began pulling back what was left of their decimated foot troops. Soon the bloodied and tired Terran warrior family faced a wall of sixteen feet tall mechs blocking their way.

  The star marine impaled his sword through the last adversary he’d cleaved and into the floor-plating. He then reached inside the pod, while his wife used her PDA to activate another one of its functions. Rapidly sheathing her guns she grabbed one of its long lids and held it up as a shield while her man produced another weapon from inside the pod. It was a sleekly designed Terran heavy plasma gun with big power packs, the ergonomics of a bullpup rifle, and twin, rotating mag-rails. The barrel of that beastly weapon was long and extra large heatsinks protruded along its length. Moreover, the gun’s color and overall look precisely matched the star marine’s exo-suit cammo paint. While his woman held the pod-shield up, soaking enemy fire, he aimed his new weapon and then, switching it to full-auto, fired. Hundreds of plasma bolts, encased in decaying magnetic fields, much larger than the ones that his wife’s revolver shot, met with his targets’ hulls.

  One after another the PAs’ began to fall or outright explode. They also fired back, and with their larger weapons soon melted that pod-shield to slag. Evidently amused, the woman simply reached over into the floating pod, and pulled yet another similar shield from it. The star marine stopped firing as his plasma gun overheated, and suddenly the remaining pirate warriors saw their chance. Clan Aleska slayers had only to engage in melee to rob the Terrans of their advantage in ranged weaponry, and so they tried doing so. With their own shields raised high, forming a shield wall, the pirate warriors darted forward in formation, well trained and executed. Seeing their advance, the star marine deployed his trusty armor-piercing laser cannon from behind his left shoulder. Rebuilt and improved after being destroyed during his last fight at the ’Bremen’ – the hellish weapon unleashed a now orange colored beam which almost incinerated the entire Aleska shield line with one continuous, fiery swipe.

  The clanners were reduced to a heap of molten slag. Mingled together with their charred, still smoldering flesh, it quickly filled the corridor with a thick layer of smoke. Through it, both Terrans continued moving forward, their weapons speedily cooling down, they reloaded them from a seemingly unending reserve of power-packs stored inside their pod. The rest of their adversaries screaming, finally broke ranks and ran before them. The Terrans leaped on top of their pod and glided behind their running adversaries, weapons shredding everyone whom they could aim at. It looked very much like a raid, and that was something that pirates did to others, yet none had expected that somebody could do the same to them. For far too long Pion base had been a quiet, safe and backwards post. Its garrison had become complacent, relaxed even, with the assumption that nobody would be brave or brazen enough to attack them. Now they were paying the ultimate price. Even with all of their apparent skill the Clan warriors could not hold the merciless Terrans on their own while their indolent taz’aran allies were running scared.

  Pion base garrison commanders were beginning to panic.

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  The Star Diamond Cartel Boss and his enforcers were not about to panic from a single fire alarm. After all Pion base was huge; there was enough trained personnel, equipment, and competent people who were paid to deal with minor trouble like this. After that Aleska ranger had so skillfully swiped that much of his cash, the boss had to somehow break even. Taking one of his enforcers’ PDA he called some his slave owner friends, presenting them with a lucrative offer on the young telepath. He had to win back at least some of those decats and lucky as he was, the boss got a positive answer on his offer.

  “It seems that you love birds will be soon separated. Exchange whatever sobbing, mewling promises of an impossible future that neither of you will experience and then accept your inescapable destiny, slaves.”

  Instead of the usual tearful scene, all variations of which he had witnessed a million times over, both were still calmly standing next to each other. The woman was smiling as she turned towards him with a look of profound sadness in her eyes. Yet, after a couple of seconds the boss was sure that she was not sad about herself. While the woman spoke, her gaze and all of that worry was directed at the young man standing beside her. As if the avern’a was sorry for something that was soon about to transpire.

  “But we are not slaves.” – she finally spoke and with such a silken voice that it could make any humanoid male forever mad with lust for her – “We were once, but not anymore. Isn’t that right, husband?”

  The cartel boss stood stupefied. If he hadn’t paid that many decats for this woman, even as stunningly beautiful as she was, she would’ve been beaten to an inch of her life. The male human slave sighed mildly annoyed and then casually puled the slave collar off his neck, breaking it apart with his bare hands. That he did even with all limbs still mag-locked, as said locks simply buckled and splintered as he moved his arms and feet. Those shackles were as real as they could be and the slave collar was working perfectly well also. He’d checked all of them personally before paying all of those decats, as had his enforcers.

  Still in shock, the boss murmured:

  “But, how can this even be pos...” – the human managed to pull apart his mate’s collar too before the shocked cartel enforcers finally sprang themselves into action. Swarming over him with their weapons, brains still unable to grasp the situation they were in, his enforcers relied on the telepathic inhibitors that were installed in all slave processing facilities. He was a telepath. No matter what, he was supposed to be physically weak.

  They didn’t see what happened to them. First two suddenly fell with fist sized holes in their chests, exactly where their hearts were and punched through the armor as if it didn’t exist. The other pair got kicked so hard and fast that one of them splattered to pieces all over the courtyard. Second one’s upper torso got dented inward, back armor exploding from the force of impact. The telepath then turned his gaze at the cartel boss, head slightly canted to one side and with star fire in his eyes finally spoke:

  “Your wife was in need of a sex slave you said.”

  It wasn’t so much a question as a final statement, and pronounced with such an intimidating tone, the likes of which the boss hadn’t heard even from the most terrible of Cartel Lords. Both of the bosses arms were suddenly engulfed in flames, and as he tried screaming something pulled the very breath from his lungs away.

  “She was to be used in her latest ploys you said.”

  The cartel boss was slowly being burned alive, limb by limb, organ by organ. Choking, he felt that telepath rampaging inside his mind, pulling out every little thought that he could reach. Ripping neurons and causing multiple brain hemorrhages, the Terran was searching for something or... someone. His very blood burning, the cartel boss collapsed to the floor, eyes exploding from his face. The last words he heard in his mind before darkness took him were:

  “I thank you criminal. In the name of all those citizens of the Terran Minarchy whose lives this information will save. Now, you may die.”

  A group of dozen or s
o enforcers and slave guards chose this moment to enter from the courtyard, weapons ready to fire, only to be met with an invisible, giant blade. Their thinly, perfectly sliced bodies slid down on the ground in pieces, quickly covering the entire facility’s floor with another, this time fresh, coat of blood.

  “I won’t deny it, the Universe cares not for these lives.” – sighed Kera, walking past the still twitching bodies.

  “Wife, I am happy that IT doesn’t, yet to me, this makes little to no difference. From what I’ve seen in this idiot’s mind, these people, and mind you I am using the term loosely, have committed multiple atrocities on such a level that their punishments were long overd...”

  “We should hurry.” – Kera gently interrupted his husband. Her eyes squinting, head slowly and understandingly nodding, as if she had just been told something important.

  “The newly released slaves and our brave, smart captain are in desperate need of assistance. Their lives are in mortal danger husband!”

  Boris grabbed Kera and leaped through the already melted front door, his feet moving with the unnaturally augmented speed that only someone like him could achieve. A group of the pirate warriors who aimed their weapons at him suddenly exploded, as, from stealth, Lilly used her sling to lob a cluster of small fragmentation grenades at them. The bunny vanished out of everyone’s sight, just to snipe another group of taz’arans ten seconds later, who, carrying a heavy particle-beam gun were about to deploy it, threatening her captain. Her small shadow leaped in the air, legs augmented by her exoskeleton, her trusty Manlicher shooting trooper after trooper, covering Boris’ flanks while he ran as fast as he could. Soon the last of the micro mines his bunny crewmate had placed while he was taking care of the cartel boss started blowing up. Certain doors that the base’s troops could’ve used to pour in and reinforce the already engaged and badly losing taz’arans simply refused to open, as the bunny hacked them shut. Lilly had turned off her voice link and was madly screaming inside her helmet, tears running, while she expended power-pack after power-pack and lobbed grenades at the enemies around her. The taz’arans were now broken and running, yet she chased them down to the last person, shooting their backs to shreds with her carbine. There was no longer any place they could retreat nor hide, because she had mined and bobby trapped everything along their Exfil’s path. And the ones who the bunny had marked as noble officers, she made sure to slit their throats with her dagger. With each taz’aran killed, in her ears Lilly heard the voices of those friends she’d lost, and saw her neighbors’ mummified corpses instead of the bleeding, mutilated taz’aran bodies. For the troubled bunny’s mind, her nightmares soon became all but indistinguishable from battlefield reality as she continuously stalked her taz’aran prey, sinking ever deeper into a maddened rage.