The Recruitment: Rise of the Free Fleet

by Michael Chatfield

  I hadn’t realized how far my little saying had gone, when I’d been saying it I was just hoping that the people opposite me wouldn’t kill me. Instead it had spread like wildfire. Humans clasped on to that statement which proved we had honour to one another, those that didn’t were left to get pounded by the enemy squads.

  “What about the weapons stuff?”

  “Don’t try to undercut yourself; we both know you just went over as much as possible. We’re attacking a ship; there should be hardly any opportunities for us to use our firearms.”

  “Alright, though stay alive, we’re starting those classes as soon as we get back to the Re…fuge” I said, hoping that he hadn’t caught my slip as I composed myself as the weight I hoped to be gone from my shoulders firmly landed back on them.

  An unknown private channel opened. “Hello Salchar.” It had a southern drawl

  “Eddie?”

  “One and only, now you know the universal port in your forefinger?” He paused waiting for me to confirm.

  “Yes.”

  “Good, use this to connect to the data terminals in the ship, discover the truth. Me and Resilient will keep you guys covered and make sure the Syndicate and your Sarenmenti officers don’t see what’ you’re doing.” With that the channel ended. I shook my head clearing it as I focused on just staying alive in the next few minutes.

  “Henry you’re in charge of two platoons, I’ll take over one.” I changed to the general channel as I saw that leaders had been picked. I slotted them into the nets they would need to be in to keep command and control. I didn’t know how well it would go, at this stage it was adapt or die.

  “Alright, if someone comes at you with a weapon put them down. Don’t piss on them, they will kill you. They won’t fight according to our code. Watch out for your teammate, section squad and platoon and do your job. We’ll be back before you know it.”

  “Ten seconds.” A voice said through our helmets as the shuttle began jinking as we burned off speed.

  The shuttle rattled dangerously as weapon fire came close enough for a few projected screens to go blank. I gritted my teeth against the forces pushing us around as the shuttle stopped braking and jinking with the clink of magnetic clamps locking to a surface.

  “We’re on the hull.” A dull thump sounded. “Entry made!”

  “Alright you Human bags of scum! Move!” Turek said on our HUDs.

  We thumped our harnesses releasing them as we rushed to the magnetically clamped door, dual airlocks still closed as they equalized the pressure.

  “Up and at them! Come on, I’m getting old here!” I said as a few were slow getting out of their seats.

  I pulled my cocking handle, letting it go with a satisfying Mechanical click as my HUD warned me my weapon was loaded.

  I brought it up to my shoulder as the airlocks opened the pressure equaled on either side as pop up sights appeared on my visor, without a word me and Yasu moved forward her sword ready and her rail gun on her back. A squat green looking humanoid peered around the corner ahead of us I let loose a burst as I advanced, the kinetic forces ripping apart his smaller body. We continued advancing into the larger area to get more people into the ship.

  “Team two move right, three left, rest split up accordingly.” I said waiting for the two teams to be either side.

  “You peer around and move down we’ll go forward.” I told them, getting nods as they confirmed my orders. Beads rang off of the roof and ceiling as the enemy had other ideas as we all ducked back behind cover…

  “Four and five go through your respective walls with your plasmid weaponry.” I checked behind myself see them acting slowly.

  “Yasu.” I said with a gesture. In three powerful strokes she cut a triangle in the bulkhead kicking the panel through as she went in.

  “Clear!” She yelled as the other Mechas followed her sheepishly.

  “Keep doing that till you get behind them then shoot them in the ass.” I said to the now chastised group who rushed to the next bulkhead. Henry had his people split into two groups as he used my idea and cut through the deck and the overhead dispersing people throughout the ship.

  “Six and nine team on me.”

  “Two, three—fire down the corridor on my signal.”

  “Yasu we’ll jump across while they cover us.”

  “Yes.” Not wanting to deal with the contempt in that voice I did the smart thing and went to fighting my own deadly battle.

  “Two, three, now.” They fired as me and Yasu jumped across, our mechas legs on full power as we rolled to absorb the impact. “Six, nine follow!” I called back as I was scanning the hallway we were in as Yasu checked the nearest rooms. The other two teams followed quickly, scanning the area around us for anywhere the squat green men could pop out of.

  At that point our bulkhead cutters had flanked the initial attackers and cut them down as two and three moved up with their reinforcements to clear along the hallway they’d been covering. Every third team followed me and Yasu as we made our way deeper into the ship.

  “We need to disable the flight systems in engineering and the weapon systems that’ll stop us from getting off this thing and more reinforcements landing on it. Anything that looks like that gives it a wallop.” I said over the general channel. There were rooms filled with all kinds of alien goods from technology to simple metals. I quickly found the lines which would feed the fusion generator deviating from my initial line of approach as we came to a reinforced door.

  I placed a charge on it, getting behind a corner. I used the track balls in my fingers to activate it. The door blew inward, a mecha team was inside before the debris from the door had settled. The green aliens were waiting. The first team through was cut to shreds as hundreds of beads penetrated their mechas and exploded.

  “They have a crew serviced beader.” The team behind them yelled as they pulled back in to cover.

  “Shit.” I pulled up a map; everything below us was parts to do with the fusion reactors housed around us. Not something I wanted to cut through.

  “Don’t shoot anything in here. Unless I tell you to.” I told my teams as the beader let their presence be known with another few bursts.

  I grabbed a stunner grenade thumbing the activator as I tossed it.

  “Ready.” It went off with a muzzled thump and fizzle. “Go!” The lead teams charged their servos covering the twenty metres in less than a second as they fired point-blank into the five person group of mixed rifleman and beader group.

  “We got them!” One said with childish glee. They think it’s a video game. The speaker undoubtedly one of the younger Mechas despite their adult appearance.

  “Secure the area.” I detailed to a squad leader as I stepped to an interface putting in the universal jack.

  Ships logs, maps personnel files and any other information I found I copied into my internal storage and uploaded blueprints to my squad of the ship. We had bare plans from before but this would make taking the ship much easier. It was a hauler with a full load, the dishes that were essential to projecting a Wormhole were damaged; meaning the ship could only run away with main thrusters. Which the ship we were on, was doing.

  I checked, engineering hadn’t locked their stations as I used the manual override and cut the power to the engines and then took power away from the defence systems on the ship. The dull vibrations of weapon systems stopped as alarms sounded across the ship

  “Engines and defence arrays are offline. You should have an overlay of the ship on your HUD’s now. I’m linking in sensors showing enemy presence on the ship.” I left a bug to wirelessly update us.

  I changed to the squad commander I’d put in charge of creating defences.

  “Hold here with a half squad, I’m taking the rest.”

  “Yes commander.” He detailed who were to stay, the others grouping around me.

  “We’re going to the command centre.” They nodded as I traced the path on my HUD as two teams pushed before me.

>   “What are you doing?” I asked angrily.

  “Keeping your ass safe Commander.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Jeremiah.”

  “You’ve got balls Jeremiah.” I grinned despite myself as I hit the man on the back.

  “Lead on then Jeremiah.” We left the relative safety of the engineering deck following my route to the command centre. We found the odd fighter as we quickly worked our way to the blast doors of the freighter’s command deck.

  “Yasu do you have a charge?” She quickly moved to the blast door that separated us from the ships command centre. She pulled one from a Mecha double stacking it with hers before she stuck them to the door. They expanded so that they were on the edges of the door.

  We pulled back finding myself at the front of the stack as Yasu blew the door without warning. I rushed through the door turning and clearing the left side of the command centre, Yasu turning to clear the right.

  A plasmid sword came up from behind a terminal, cutting the barrel of my rail gun. I rolled forward into where the sword had come from drawing my pistol and pulling my sword free in a shower of sparks as it cut through another terminal and into the attacker that had cut my rail gun in two. As he fell another attacker was bringing up a shotgun. Without thinking I shot him in the leg with my pistol causing him to slip as I put another two rounds in his chest.

  Enraged by the death of their comrades more of the squat green aliens rushed from the depressed command deck firing wildly and attacking my Mechas with their plasmid melee weapons.

  The Mechas behind me waited unable to move on because of me blocking the way and me unable to move because of the aliens.

  “Widen the door!” I yelled.

  I fired my pistol killing four before it was empty I threw it at the nearest alien only a metre away making them flinch as I brought my sword down, cutting them in two.

  More swarmed Yasu and I as we used our bigger stature and strength to dispatch them with savage blows. Survival overcoming finesse.

  Finally there was no more of them and we advanced into the room the widened blast door pouring out Mechas who flooded the room.

  “Secure the stations. You four keep an eye on the blast door.” Quickly they rushed to obey, casting quick glances at the alien hardware in the room.

  I was mentally and physically drained; my stomach ached from the half healed wound. I moved to lean against the captain’s chair, being built for the aliens we’d killed it wouldn’t fit me and my Mecha. I looked at the purple and green coloured command centre. It was so alien yet it looked like a bridge on any one of the science fiction movies or television shows we had back on Earth.

  I looked away from the bridge studying the armrest, “There you are you little sucker.” I said to myself as I found a universal jack in the side of it. I pulled my finger tip off again and allowed my Mecha to drain it of information parsing it out to Yasu this time my storage mostly full.

  “Why am I downloading things?” She asked coming closer eyeing me warily.

  “We’re the first people to leave Earth into an unknown universe and we’re attacking ships we don’t even understand the basics of. We need information, if humans are going to come out onto the galactic level we need to know the dangers we face and how to best combat them.

  “Why would anyone attack Earth? We’re under the PDF’s protection.” Someone that had overheard our conversation asked. If I was still in command when we got there was going to be a few extra lessons on rank.

  “You know how terrorist organizations act when someone disrupts their plans. They attack the people that disrupted it; it was like the Americans and Al Qaeda. The Americans stopped supplying them weapons to fight off the Russians and Al Qaeda attacked them for not doing as they said, trying to make an example of the United states. Plus the PDF don’t seem all that worried about our lives do they? Best if we look out after ourselves first.” I turned now fully to the questioner the room listening.

  “Unlike back then we can’t fight these people, we don’t even understand the basics of Wormhole jumping. We don’t have ships or weapons on Earth to defend against, say a terrorist paying Earth a visit and dropping a few KEW’s on our heads killing all life on Earth and making it inhabitable by humans…”

  “KEW’s?”

  “Kinetic Energy weapons.” Still seeing they didn’t get it I leaned forward to better explain it pain exploding from my stomach, I grimaced leaning back.

  “It’s basically a very large and heavy mass that is accelerated until it hits a target. It imparts all of its gathered energy on the target. One KEW was the asteroid that killed of the dinosaurs and put Earth into an ice age. That one wasn’t even artificially accelerated.”

  I took off my helmet looking at them.

  “Earth needs to know how to defend herself and it’s up to us to find out how to give humanity those tools. If we don’t then Earth and possibly our race is susceptible to elimination.

  People don’t kid yourselves we’re the ones keeping the enemies at our gates at bay and the ones to make sure the human race keeps living on even if Earth itself isn’t there.”

  This sobered everyone in the room. My eyes had wandered finding the main view screens. It showed the ship in the middle the other two massive ships which made up its convoy and the ten ships of the free planets fleet.

  “You two see what you can get out of the sensor arrays.” I said pointing to a group near a computer bank.

  They slung their rifles as they dropped into the lower sections their implants allowing them to read the information on the screens.

  Yasu moved so she was scanning the one doorway which led into the command centre.

  “Alright you two are with me. The rest of you link up with second platoon and see if you can be of any use.”

  They found the other Mechas on their HUDs easily before they walked out, checking for threats.

  She’s if nothing if not vigilant. I brought up the captains logs on a small screen built into the armrest of his chair.

  As I read my mask became more rigid as underneath I warred with emotion. Confusion, panic, guilt and finally anger filled me as I hope the log to be a lie checking it against the other logs of the crew.

  “Fucking aliens.” I said my voice cold as I shut the view screen off with a fist through it, as everyone in the room jumped a bit looking at me. I waved for them to continue their work as I looked at the main view screens—brooding.

  “Can one of you try to connect me with the other ships in the convoy?” I said to the squad left with me.

  “I can try commander.” A woman said raising her hand.

  I waved her to the comms station not trusting myself to say more than absolutely necessary. After a few painful minutes she finally got a connection.

  “We have a connection to the second vessel, with a Rick.”

  “Patch him through.” I said turning to the screen and trying to look as if I wasn’t supporting myself on the chair.

  “Rick, good to see you.” I said as the man appeared sitting on top of rather than in his own captain’s chair his armour pockmarked from some kind of shrapnel.

  “Commander.” He said becoming straighter in his seat.

  “Wish you’d all stop that but we have something more important. You jacked into the ship yet?”

  A look came over his face.

  “Of course you did, now did you get all of the logs?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Well get them, read them and post them on the forums.”

  “Sure…” He trailed off, not certain what a bunch of logs would be useful for.”

  “Commander.” He set to work putting his port into the chair as I looked at the woman in the comms seat who’d spoken.

  “We’ve got contact, Iron Bok Soo he says he’s called.” She looked confused.

  “Got to go Rick.” I said, feeling as if my guts were in a vice.

  “Understood boss, I’ll get back to you as soon as p
ossible when I’m done.”

  “Good luck.”

  Rick was replaced by an angry looking heavily muscled man even visible underneath his Mecha who leaned forward, his look of anger being replaced with a grin.

  “Salchar! That’s you isn’t it!”

  “You better believe it Bok Soo.” I replied with a grin seeing the first member of Mecha Tail in months was a wave of relief. “I see you’re more mobile.”

  “Yeah first time in the med bay and voila my legs work again.” He said with a pleased grin I returned it happy he’d finally gotten the mobility back he’d been missing for so long.