by Ryk Brown
“Lieutenant Haddix,” Cameron called to her pilot. “Jump us to Rakuen, but stay out of range of that battleship.”
“What battleship?” the lieutenant replied.
“Get us there now!” she ordered.
“Razor, TAC COM,” Cameron replied over comms. “We’re jumping to Rakuen. Stay with us, but stay out of range of their guns. You may be the Aurora’s only hope.”
“TAC COM, Razor, understood,” Loki acknowledged.
“Now we’re having fun!” Josh exclaimed.
“Protect engineering, power generation, life support, and the bridge,” Jessica instructed over comm-sets.
“What about Eagle Squad?” Lieutenant Brons asked as he and Master Sergeant Willem marched between the two rows of combat-ready Ghatazhak soldiers.
“Two trapped, two active,” Jessica replied. “Not enough if they come in force.”
“How many alive in the bridge?”
“Three active, including myself. One alive, but down.”
“And the captain?”
“He’s fine, thanks to the general’s armor.”
“Good to hear,” the lieutenant replied. “Don’t worry, Lieutenant Commander. Those bastards won’t take this ship while I still draw breath.”
“Damn straight, Lieutenant.”
“LISTEN UP!” the lieutenant barked as he reached the front of the line. “Multiple Dusahn boarding pods have pierced the hull. Unknown number of intruders, unknown number of entry points. The only confirmed sightings were in the medical section, but you can bet your ass they’re busting in all over the place. They’ll go for the bridge and engineering first; power gen and life support, second. Blue Squad protects the command deck. Red Squad protects engineering and power gen. Gold will be hunter-killers.”
“What if they go after life support?” Sergeant Rossi asked.
“This ship has separate life support for every major compartment; the bridge included. If they do go after main life support, they’ll be doing us a favor by making themselves easier to find and kill,” the lieutenant insisted. “Rules of engagement are simple. If it carries a gun, kill it. If it looks like a threat, kill it. If you don’t like the way it looks at you, fucking kill it.”
“We’ve got a lot of non-combatants on board, Lieutenant,” Sergeant Estabol warned.
“And if they’ve got half a brain, they’ll find a place to hide and stay the fuck out of the way!” the lieutenant barked. “This is the shit, gentlemen! We are fighting for survival! OUR survival! If a few friendlies have to die to ensure our success, so fucking be it! Now MOVE!”
Without another word, thirty-nine highly trained, well-equipped, and well-armed warriors double-timed it out of their ready bay and toward the enemy, wherever they might be.
The Aurora shook repeatedly…three, four, five times at least.
“Please tell me those aren’t more boarding pods,” Nathan said, pacing back and forth nervously.
“We don’t even know how many one of them holds,” Jessica reminded him. “What if they’re like their drop pods and only carry four each. We’ve got more than forty fully armed Ghatazhak on board.”
“I need power,” Nathan complained. “I feel helpless in here, with no control over my own ship.”
Several overhead lights flickered to life.
“Finally,” Nathan exclaimed, moving to the helm station and pushing fallen debris out of the way. “Reactor three is up at one percent and climbing slowly. Jesus, half this panel is busted.” He got up and shoved the rest of the debris forward, using the extra strength provided by the Ghatazhak suit to push it off the navigation-side of the console. “Jump drive is offline, plotting, position calc…this whole side is useless.” Nathan sat back down at the helm station, checking what still worked. “I’ve got no flight dynamics data, no thruster status, no main propulsion control. About the only thing I do have is a control stick and docking thrusters, and I don’t even know if the control stick works without the flight dynamics display.”
“Maybe I can help,” Lieutenant Commander Kono suggested. “I’ve got some short-range sensors. I can determine position somewhat accurately, using our accelerometers to calculate rate of motion on all axes, and extrapolate all that into course and speed data.”
“Can’t you just look out the window and fly it?” Jessica wondered.
“Look out the window?” Nathan asked.
“I can probably get you a few forward cameras and channel them into your heads-up screen,” the lieutenant commander suggested.
“Why not the main view screen?” Nathan asked.
“It uses a lot of power, and it requires special computers to stitch the views together into a seamless, three-dimensional image,” Lieutenant Commander Kono explained. “If it fluctuates or distorts, it could be misleading.”
“Okay, the heads-up screen it is,” Nathan agreed.
“Give me a minute,” the lieutenant commander replied.
Vol’s forward window was suddenly filled with a Dusahn battleship, nose to nose, only a few hundred meters away from the Aurora. Small, pointed, cylindrical pods were being dispatched, immediately turning toward the Aurora upon departure, from the underside of the massive black and crimson warship. “What are those?”
“Some sort of breach pods,” Isa said. “I’m picking up six life signs in each of them.”
Vol stared at the battle as they closed, as several of the pods slammed into the hull of the Aurora, driving down so deep that barely a meter of them remained visible above her outer hull line.
“The battleship is targeting us,” Isa warned. “And they’re launching octos.”
“Shenzas Two through Twelve, attack the breach pods,” Vol ordered over comms. “Everyone else, attack either the octos or the battleship itself. Jump around like a kala bug on a hot deck, and don’t let them target you for more than a few seconds!”
“Let’s do this!” Tariq shouted.
Vol twisted his ship into a spiraling turn to port, diving toward the Aurora, as point-defense fire from the enemy battleship lit up their starboard shields. Within seconds, the commander had acquired his first breach pod and blasted it out of the air with a single burst of cannon fire. “They’re not shielded!” he announced with glee. “How many of them have already made it in?” he asked his weapons officer.
“I count thirteen,” Isa replied. “Make that fourteen.”
“That’s eighty-four men. They can handle that, right?”
“They say a single Ghatazhak is equal to ten regular men in combat,” Isa replied.
“Well, no more of them get aboard,” Vol insisted. “Not while the Gunyoki are here!”
“Jump complete,” Sasha reported.
Robert looked out the forward window of his Cobra gunship as the Gunyoki pressed their attack on the Dusahn warship and her auxiliary ships. “What the hell? Kas, what are those pointy things?”
“Some sort of breach pods, sir,” the sensor officer replied over comm-sets. “Six bodies on each. The battleship is launching dozens of them, but the Gunyoki are shooting them down as fast as the Dusahn can spit ‘em out.”
“Striker Leader to all Strikers. Pound that battleship! We need to drive her away from the Aurora! Cycle your angles, odds by evens, high to low, port to starboard! Follow me in!”
“Looks like the cavalry has arrived!” Nathan exclaimed as his heads-up tactical screen lit up, displaying a limited view forward.
“I’m picking up a lot of weapons fire!” Lieutenant Commander Kono reported, “none of it directed at us!”
“Nathan, we’ve still got a full charge on all four forward tubes!” Jessica reported urgently. “We can fire one round from each tube, whenever we want.”
“I’m afraid it won’t be enough to get through thei
r shields,” Nathan said, “let alone, do any damage. Not by a long shot.”
“At least we’ll bloody that fucker’s nose before we go down,” Jessica insisted.
“Oh, I’m planning on doing a lot more than bloodying their nose,” Nathan assured her.
Jessica and Lieutenant Commander Kono exchanged concerned glances, both well aware of what that meant.
Sergeant Rossi led his squad charging up the zigzagging central ramp structure that connected every deck on the Aurora. The longest run was the section that tied the lower hangar deck with the main flight operations deck. While most decks only had two switchbacks, this one had six, as it had to pass through the main fore-aft truss structure and machinery corridor running the length and width of the ship.
At each reverse of direction, the sergeant and his fire team had to stop, take up firing positions facing up the next run, and wait for the next two fire teams to pass them. The process repeated as they ascended, and with each ramp, they grew closer to the upper decks; the ones on which intruders had already been spotted.
With only one ramp left before they reached the flight operations deck, otherwise known as the main deck, they encountered their first obstacle. Energy weapons fire rained down from above, ricocheting all over the place, cutting down two of his men in the first few seconds of the engagement.
“Siewert! Haycook!” the sergeant barked, calling on two of his men carrying the most firepower.
The two men quickly joined their sergeant at the front line, tucked around the corner from the enemy firing down toward them. They raised their weapons, adjusting them slightly, and then nodded their readiness to the sergeant. The sergeant looked at the corporal next to him, and both men pulled out a small, flat, metallic disk. They activated the disk, and the sergeant nodded at the two shooters.
As the energy weapons fire continued to rain down around them, the two specialists leaned out slightly, firing four times each. Their bolts of energy ricocheted off the wall, then off the overhead, above the enemy’s position, raining down and striking several of the shooters, dropping them.
The pause in the rain of enemy fire was all the sergeant and corporal needed. Both men stepped out and tossed the small, metallic disks upward. The disks stuck to the wall in line with the deck the enemy was on. The sergeant and corporal ducked back around the corner as both disks exploded, sending a wave of red-hot shrapnel spraying into the group of unwelcome visitors, cutting through their armor and their tissues underneath. The men fell, screaming in pain as their bodies burned inside their combat armor.
“Go!” Sergeant Rossi ordered, charging up the ramp. In four bounding steps, he reached the next corner and opened fire as he and his fire team charged up the last section of ramp, mowing through the remaining Dusahn soldiers on the next level.
The sergeant leapt over the fallen bodies of the enemy, immediately diving into the main corridor of the flight ops deck, tucking and rolling, coming up shooting forward down the corridor, until he reached the other side of the corridor unharmed. He held up two fingers, and the corporal, still on the previous side, tossed him two grenades, activating each as he passed them to his sergeant. The sergeant caught each grenade, immediately throwing them down the corridor, bouncing them off the opposite wall. The first one entered the corridor bouncing to starboard, while the second one was angled just enough to cause it to bounce down the corridor going to port. The grenades exploded a mere second apart, and the rest of his men charged into the corridor, the first four laying down suppression fire, while the rest of them crossed the main corridor to join the sergeant, on the opposite side, and head up the ramp to the command deck.
“Blue Charlie, hold this position,” the sergeant ordered as he followed his men up the ramp.
“Blue Charlie One, we’ve got you covered, Sarge.”
“Jump complete,” Ensign Weston reported from the cockpit of Reaper Six.
“That does not look good,” Lieutenant Haddix said, half under his breath.
“Multiple contacts,” the ensign reported. “Octos, Gunyoki, Strikers, flatbed gunships, and some long, cylindrical things that I’m guessing are some sort of breach pods, since they’re showing six life signs in each, and they’re all diving toward the Aurora.”
“How bad does she look?” Cameron asked, standing behind the ensign, peering over his shoulder at the distant battle.
“She’s got power again, but not much. I’m showing one reactor is back up, but only at two percent.”
“That’s barely enough to run life support, let alone maneuver or raise shields,” Cameron realized. “How many of those breach pods made it to the Aurora?”
“It looks like six or seven,” the ensign replied. “Hard to tell without getting a look at all sides of her.”
“They’re trying to capture her,” Cameron said as she tapped her data pad, tying her comm-set into the local combat communications channel. As soon as she did, her comm-set became alive with chatter from the Alliance forces battling to defend the Aurora. “TAC COM to all Alliance forces,” she called over her comm-set. “Do not allow anymore breach pods to reach the Aurora. Strikers and flatbed gunships, try to force that battleship away from her. Gunyoki are to engage the octos that are trying to provide cover for the breach pods.”
“How many Ghatazhak are aboard?” Lieutenant Haddix asked.
“Forty,” Cameron replied. “If there’s six pods on each side, that’s one hundred and forty-four men they’ll have to fight off.”
“Can they do that?”
“I don’t know,” Cameron admitted. “One thing’s for sure, the captain won’t let them take the ship. He’ll try to get close, and then blow the ship.”
“He can do that?” the lieutenant said, surprised.
“He can’t, but the Cheng can. All he has to do is force one of the reactor cores to breach and let physics do the rest.”
“Uh, won’t that affect the planet, as well?”
“Probably,” Cameron replied, unsure of her answer. “But if that battleship survives, the entire system is doomed.”
“If the Aurora is lost, it’s the same result,” the lieutenant pointed out.
“I’m pretty sure he knows that, Lieutenant,” Cameron said. After a sigh, she added, “Limited options, and none of them good.”
Ghatazhak forces pressed their attack down the Aurora’s main engineering corridor, exchanging heavy energy weapons fire with Dusahn boarding parties. In practiced fashion, Ghatazhak troops in full, flat-black combat armor, rotated between laying down cover fire and advancing toward the enemy position.
Unlike other parts of the ship, the corridor leading from the main junction, just aft of the flight deck to the engineering section in the back half of the ship, was considerably larger. Its vertical structural members stuck out half a meter from the corridor walls, providing excellent protection against enemy fire. Unfortunately, it provided excellent cover for the enemy, as well, and the Dusahn had the advantage. All they needed to do was slow the Ghatazhak’s advance long enough for the rest of their forces to capture the Aurora’s engineering and power generation sections. Once they were firmly entrenched in those sections, they would have control of all the Aurora’s resources. Then it would only be a matter of time until they had control of the entire ship.
“They’re not going to give up their ground easily,” Corporal DaPra commented as he fired around the vertical beam at the Dusahn position, ten meters down the corridor.
“Just keep them focused on us,” Sergeant Estabol told him. “Red Bravo, report!”
“Red Bravo is engaged!” Corporal Prater replied over the sergeant’s helmet comms. “Deck E, corridor one one eight, section fourteen! Just forward of power gen! Estimate six! Heavy guns and well-shielded.”
“Keep them busy,” the sergeant ordered.
“We’ll make them hurt!”
“Red Charlie, report!”
“Red Charlie, in pursuit of four! Deck D! Corridor forty-two! Approaching junction seventy-five!”
Sergeant Estabol touched the control pad on the side of his helmet, calling up the Aurora’s deck plan. “Red Charlie! Right turn at junction seventy-five, then left at sixty-seven. Double-time it and you should be able to cut them off!”
“Right at seventy-five and left at sixty-seven!” Corporal Robson replied.
“Moving!” Corporal DaPra barked.
“Go!” the sergeant replied, bringing his weapon around the vertical beam and firing over the head of the advancing corporal.
“Aurora, TAC COM, do you copy?” Cameron repeated, her frustration growing. “Are you having any luck?” she asked the flight crew.
“Negative,” Ensign Weston replied. “I’ve tried every channel and nothing, but we’ve been jumping about to stay out of weapons range, so we could have missed their reply.”
“If their comms were working, they’d be broadcasting something. A repeated hail, a mayday…something,” Cameron insisted.
“Razor just jumped in off our starboard quarter,” Lieutenant Haddix reported.
“TAC COM, Striker One!” Robert called over comms. “The battleship’s shields are holding fast, and we’re throwing everything we have at them!”