Fracture sf-5

by Randolph Lalonde

  He scrolled through the list of arms and nodded to himself. They had one stationary slug thrower that would be useless in the heavy gravity, several plasma rifles that suffered from the same issue and they were piled up with the rest of the equipment. Most of the raiders walked around with energy weapons that would work in the heavy gravity but wouldn't be as effective against their armour and personal shielding.

  “Stealth up. We're going to surround them before I offer the Captain's terms,” Alaka ordered.

  That was Victor's favourite part. The stealth systems developed by Freeground. He could stand right in front of someone and they couldn't tell he was there unless they bumped into him. Before his eyes the entire squadron, even Alaka, as massive as he was, disappeared. His heads up display marked everyone's location, so they wouldn't trip over each other, but to anyone else they were just gone.

  “Move in, touch nothing. Let nothing touch you.”

  The squads had practised the manoeuvre and ran in spaced out double file, watching their step with the assistance of the stealth system, which highlighted small objects and hot spots where they could give themselves away. The stealth systems were worthless if you weren't careful. Bumping into a loose bulkhead or kicking a broken bracket on the deck could alert others to your presence.

  They ran right between the raiders standing watch with rifles at the ready beside the doors leading into the warehousing section. Victor's heads up display offered more forensic data but he knew what it was as he took a position behind a trio of armed raiders in bulky, discoloured vacuum suits. The firefight they had detected on their way in was over for the time being. The defenders had retreated behind the heavy interior doors the raiders worked to cut through after several of them had been killed. The corpses were piled in a corner, all wearing Caran Enterprises sealed work suits.

  The north eastern quadrant of his tactical display came to life, marking the other two squadrons. It was no surprise that Alaka and Radics had been coordinating all along, and the other squads were rushing in the large warehouse space in stealth mode. They fell into place as quickly and smoothly as Alaka's squadrons had and in moments the raiders were unknowingly surrounded by twenty eight heavily armed Triton soldiers.

  “Nice having the upper hand for a change, isn't it Vic?” chuckled Marc Burgess, one of the few people who had made it to Triton with him from Pandem.

  “I'm not betting on that just yet. These raiders hit this installation hard, didn't care much for keeping it in any kind of usable shape either.”

  “Commander Radics and I agree. Here's what's going to happen. I'm going to offer Captain Valance's terms once. His orders are to offer terms, disarm and detain if they accept. If they resist we kill them all. There could be other raiders in the installation, we have to make an example.”

  “Harsh,” whispered one of the soldiers beside him.

  “Realistic. He doesn't want us to risk our lives just so a prisoner can turn on us later,” Commander Radics reinforced. His habit of pronouncing every word he spoke with clinical diction grated on some people, but he couldn't help it. As a shape changing issyrian he had learned to speak the most common galactic languages in college and he spoke it as he learned it; clinically. “You have the honours Alaka.”

  Alaka addressed the raiders on their own proximity radio frequency. “This is Commander Alaka Murlen of the Free Ship Triton. We are offering you one chance to cease your boarding operations and surrender arms. Our forces have you completely surrounded.”

  Everything stopped, raiders looked around in alarm. “I don't see anyone!” announced one alarmed marauder.

  “There's no way, I don't see anything,” said another after he looked in all directions.

  “This is a bluff. It's the workers trying to scare us off,” said the female voice, silencing all others. “It's must be why they stopped jamming us. Get back to work.”

  Alaka fired a quick burst from his beam cannon at the raiders trying to cut through the heavy interior doors and took several quick steps to the side. The stream of bright blue light startled the raiders and the cutters scurried away from the door. The warning shot had left a perfectly round four centimetre wide scorch on the doorway, not enough to weaken the metal but enough to prove a presence.

  Three raiders opened fire in Alaka's general direction. One shot struck his shoulder, leaving a red hot mark visible to everyone before the massive nafalli managed to dive behind a stack of heavy crates.

  “They've got some kind of cloaks! Fire at the open air and watch for hits!” shouted the female raider as she sprayed an arc of blue hot energy rounds between her comrades.

  Victor dropped onto his belly and returned fire from the prone position. She was almost behind cover when he and a few other Triton soldiers scored flaring, scorching hits that broke through the skin of her old vacsuit.

  “Jarisca's down! What do we do?” asked one panicked raider.

  “Keep firing you idiot! Like we have any other choice!”

  “If you lay down arms we will allow you to surrender peacefully,” Lieutenant Commander Radics announced over the proximity radio in response.

  The air was filled with bright yellow, red, and blue energetic bursts as the Triton troops took cover and returned fire precisely, taking their time, each man or woman disabling or killing only the threat nearest them. “What do we do Commander?” asked one of Alaka's group as he ducked between two tall crates. He'd been shot twice. The first hit had done no damage, the second had heated his armour and vacsuit severely enough to leave third degree burns. Victor's screen marked him as being under the influence of localized pain killers and partially disabled.

  “Shoot to kill,” Radics replied before Alaka had a chance.

  “Shoot to kill.” Alaka agreed. The nafalli had crept behind several crates, taking him out of the direct line of fire.

  Victor had ducked down nearby and couldn't help but wonder what would possess a group of people, especially raiders, to stand their ground and fight when they couldn't detect their attackers. He lined up his first shot, a marauder who was firing from bended knee, concentrating on firing into the open air at waist level. It was futile. Only five Triton soldiers had been noticeably hit, the injuries were minor, and they had all taken cover. With a quick burst from his high energy pulse rifle Victor riddled the raider with rounds from chest to helmet. He crumpled to the deck as atmosphere escaped from his suit in a rush. Mechanically he lined up three more such targets and with trained, cold precision he squeezed the trigger, struck each target with lethal energy blasts in turn and watched as they each fell.

  Alaka only opened fire after lining up more than one target. As Victor went about his butcher's work he could see the stream of deadly light erupt from the nafalli Commander's beam weapon in bursts. Each burst resulted in the burning, cutting death of an enemy raider.

  The entire incident lasted one minute and nineteen seconds according to Victor's vacsuit heads up display but it felt so much longer. By the time the last three raiders finally dropped their rifles and put their hands up the large storage and sorting area was filled with bodies. He followed Alaka's lead as he moved in to lower a restraint ring around the nearest surrendering raider. The ring was a thin circular strip that expanded around a captive's torso and squeezed around their forearms or wrists to pin them to their backs or sides. It was an Earth designed device, very easy to use and impossible to escape.

  “No! Stay back!” the raider shouted frantically.

  “Shut the fuck up Arien!” one of his comrades cursed.

  Across the clearing Victor watched as one of the surrendering raiders leapt onto a Triton boarder and held tightly. “Get off!” the squad member, Lizelle, screamed.

  Victor's heads up display flashed red and marked the raider atop her as an explosive hazard an instant before he and Lizelle were obliterated by a blinding explosion. He lost his footing and toppled to the deck. His suit showed no damage but the squad status screen alerted him to the death of
eight members and injury of fourteen. Alaka had been knocked out and Lieutenant Commander Radics had been placed in stasis after his suit re-sealed and severed what was left of his ruined hand at the wrist.

  At a glance it appeared that all the raiders, dead and alive, had exploded with the force of at least three grenades apiece. The Triton crew's vacsuits provided field triage, administering localized anaesthetics, putting the dead and dying into stasis and resealing breaches. He and a handful of others were left with minor armour damage. It was as though time had frozen as he looked around at the charred and broken storage area.

  Crates made for heavy gravity environments had busted open, small craters marked dozens of places where the raider's bodies had detonated and the squads picked themselves up off the deck. He couldn't help but cock his head as he watched one of his squad mates lower himself from a scattered pile of crates. He had been hurled up to the top of the three meter pile but somehow his armour had completely protected him. The black surface of the plating was still dented, scratched and cracked, but according to Victor's visor Junior Sergeant Mills was in perfect health.

  “What's the word Vic? What do we do?” asked Jenny Machad. He realized then that he was the ranking officer.

  “Clever Dream, Cold Reaver. This is Sergeant Victor Davis declaring an emergency.” His own voice surprised him, he didn't expect to sound panicked. He made a conscious effort to calm down before he continued. “We've put down the raiders but they were carrying some kind of bomb we couldn't detect until the last minute. We've got a lot of people down. Forwarding my squad status screen to you.”

  “This is the Cold Reaver. We see it Sergeant. The Clever Dream is currently engaged in the field and we've come under fire. There was a squad hidden somewhere nearby, we've closed off the ship entrances but can't leave.”

  Victor looked at his squad status summary and at the devastated storehouse all around him. It looked like something had come along and bombed the hell out of the place. Whole stacks of crates had been reduced to rubble, the floor was cratered, unidentifiable debris was scattered about and two large hatchways had been completely bowed and twisted. The area couldn't be secured, especially without reinforcements. His squad status screen told him that Alaka had taken a head injury and only seven of his people were mobile.

  He looked towards the field medic software installed in all their vacsuits and hesitated for a moment. It was set to treat and preserve. The next urgency level would treat everyone using reconstructive nanobots, taking more risks. If it worked they might be back up to nineteen able boarding troops. With the fighter squadrons busy, the Clever Dream engaged, the Cold Reaver pinned down and the Triton outside of the barrier there was no way to get reinforcements.

  An idea struck him. “Have you been able to communicate with the survivors barricaded inside?” He asked the Cold Reaver.

  “No, as far as we can tell they've got life support and that's about it. There's also an EMP shield in place, looks jury rigged and over powered so there's no getting a signal through.”

  “An EMP shield? That's pretty high tech for a jury rigged solution. All right, stand by Cold Reaver.” Victor selected the two most critically injured squad members and exempted them from nanobot treatment. “All right everyone, grab onto something, I'm enabling nanobots. We'll be back and fit in no time.” He glanced at the activation icon and elevated the automedic software's urgency level.

  Nanobots were released into the bloodstreams of every injured soldier at once.

  “Oh God that's just weird. I'm watching my leg set itself, thank God for local anaesthetic,” Jenny said as she leaned against a half crushed crate.

  There were many similar sentiments and a few complaints as less anaesthetized injuries were repaired, causing furious itching and burning sensations as the technology did its job. He watched Alaka's life signs change as his head injury was treated with nanobots, anti-inflammatory and other medications. After a few seconds the system administered a stimulant and he was brought out of stasis.

  “What hit us?” he asked no one in particular.

  “Looks like there were explosives on the raiders, someone set them off. The Cold Reaver is ready to send another squad to back us up but they're pinned down. We must have missed a few raiders on our way in,” Victor reported. “Radics is out of commission and five others were killed. We have two more still in stasis, I didn't think they'd survive emergency medical measures.”

  “Good work Vic. Everyone check your gear, especially your weapons. Make sure they weren't damaged in the explosion. We'll secure our injured, break into two groups, seek and destroy the remaining raiders. Our stealth systems are dead for the most part, so be careful,” Alaka instructed. Everyone heard him open a channel to the fighter squadrons outside. “Ronin, are you receiving?”

  “This is Slick, Ronin's a little busy. How can I help?”

  “This is Alaka. We've taken casualties and the Cold Reaver is pinned down.”

  “All right, we'll instruct them to find a docking port closer to your location and pass the word onto Triton. Help should be on the way.”

  “Good. Until then we'll try to take the raiders from behind and clear a path. One more thing, it looks like all the raiders we've run into are wired with explosives. They pop if it looks like they're about to lose. That's what got us.”

  “I'll pass that on, thanks Alaka.”

  The communications tower on the broad, rectangular hulled ship marked Palamo took several hits but continued to build a charge. Ronin strafed and rolled as he tried to close in. The rough plated hull of the three hundred ten meter long ship showed scorch marks from several missiles and rounds from his squadron, but it was still intact for the most part.

  The few energy weapon emplacements left fired at him and the Clever Dream well behind him. They had just finished coordinating their attack on the vessel's engines but didn't disable them in time. The Palamo had gained enough inertia to drift out of the obscuring barrier.

  “Hurry the hell up, we can't take many more hits and if we don't take care of that tower she'll finish charging her micro wormhole generator and get a message off,” Slick reminded him.

  “I know! Help me out with the belly turret here!”

  “It's fried, you're on your own.”

  Several energy rounds struck the nose of their Uriel fighter, the last of which broke through and super heated a patch of the port side hull. Ronin opened up with the single 21mm railgun and particle accelerator cannons and finally tore the transmission tower to pieces as the Palamo’s nose breached the obscuring energy barrier. The fighter jostled and Ronin struggled with the controls as he watched one of his port engines super heat and explode into thousands of pieces.

  “That's it! We're down to no shields, three engines and we've got a two meter crack in the outer port side hull. Time to get back to the Triton,” Slick said firmly.

  “Redirect power to the emitters we have left and get us some cover. I think every gunner on that ship is trying to take us out,” Ronin retorted as he took drastic evasive manoeuvres. The space around them was filled with energy weapons' fire, Ronin's heads up display flickered as a shot grazed them. “Something's dodgy with my instruments.”

  “Mine too, switching to backups.”

  All but Ronin's visor display went dark. It linked into the starfighter's basic control systems, providing only the most essential information about engine power, disposition, speed and energy levels. “What did you do?”

  “Our backups are dead, trying to switch back!” Slick replied.

  “Don't bother! Just get on comms, get ready to transmit our boarding squads' status to the Triton.” Ronin shook his head as he controlled the fighter manually using the foot pedals and sticks. The responsiveness of the machine was down and he had to exert much more force to maintain control. It took all his concentration to maintain the exertion and try to stay clear of the incoming fire from the Palamo’s gunners.

  They broke through the obscuring f
ield and caught sight of the Triton. She was beginning a slow descent towards the field. The dorsal side was facing them, bristling with rail cannon turrets, all turning towards the Palamo. An energy round struck the aft side of his fighter's hull and Minh cringed as the sound of decompression filled the cockpit. “You okay back there?”

  “The seat's secure, otherwise I'd get yanked out through the great big hole in our backside. Transmitting status to Triton.”

  “Tell them we're coming in for a landing while you're at it!” Ronin said as he tried to stabilize the fighter and correct their trajectory. The sudden decompression had caused them to drift between the Palamo and the Triton.

  “Gunnery deck to Ronin. You're in the way, lad,” informed Gunnery Chief Frost over the emergency channel.

  “One moment please,” Ronin grunted through gritting teeth as he spun the fighter and the two remaining engines. The Triton loomed closer, only a few thousand kilometres away as he thrust as hard as he dared. The chassis of the starfighter groaned as they corrected course. The T shaped grouping of railgun turrets spread across the top of the Triton lit up as Ronin's fighter narrowly slipped past the starboard edge of the massive carrier's hull. He noticed the sound of Slick's panic quickened breathing and grinned. “A little close you think?” he teased.

  “A bit! I'm stating to look forward to having my own rig thanks to all the near misses today. Speaking of which, we're cleared to land in bay three for two minutes.”

  Ronin struggled to get in line with the open landing bay door, firing the engines to slow down before they passed it altogether.