The Apex Warriors

by Marc Stevens

  Trantor had a valid point. I walked out of his cell and Justice closed the door and blacked it out. Tria, Coonts, Klutch, and Sael were all discussing what they heard. I could tell they were just as worked up about the intel, as I was. We were getting another step closer to some very unsavory people. If the opportunity presented itself, I was damn sure going to correct the situation with a permanent solution. The way my strike team was looking at me, they were thinking the same thing.

  “Commander,” Klutch said. “We can interrogate the prisoners after we go get Glock and the Syndicate representative. The longer we wait the better prepared they will be.”

  “It would be a way to collaborate Trantor Lux’s story,” Sael added.

  Tria nodded to me and Coonts gave me a thumbs up. It was time to tie up some loose ends.

  20

  I took Klutch’s word that the opposition was preparing as best they could for a boarding. “Justice, move two drones in close to the battleship. I want you to make a hole as close to the Combat Information Center as possible and send the drones in to see what we can expect in the way of defenses.”

  Justice came alongside the battleship and sent a five-round burst of rail cannon fire through its hull. The basketball-sized projectiles made a five-foot hole just aft of where the CIC of the battleship was located. He then took the Legacy over the top of the spacecraft to the opposite side. The drones would have no problem entering the thirty-foot hole where the cannon rounds exited the side of the ship. The drones activated their shields and entered the cavernous exit wound. We started getting a live video feed from the drones in our heads-up displays. The first thing we noticed was the wreckage of a large mech scattered across the deck. It was a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time for the crewmember that was manning it. I no longer wondered why the crew could not get access to the deck. The war machine undoubtedly had shields that could withstand just about anything the mutineers could bring against it.

  The CIC on a Galactic Union battleship was a fortress built within a fortress. The armored cube had walls that were several feet thick and made of the finest hull alloys. It was designed to survive ship-to-ship engagements and protect the AI and Specialist techs that fought the ship. If we wanted the drones to breach the reinforced walls, they would have to use their beam weapons to do it. Unfortunately, that option would also kill everyone inside leaving little to no traces of the people we were looking for. If we wanted live prisoners to interrogate, we were going to have to do it the hard way, and go in and get them. About the time my brain processed that thought two more mechs came out of the passages that surrounded the CIC. They opened fire on the cloaked drones because their shields made a pale white halo around them that was visible to the naked eye. The drone’s shields were almost the equal of the Legacy’s and had no problem shrugging off the incoming fire. The same could not be said for the mechs. The drones returned fire and reduced the mechs to glowing shrapnel. Even though Justice attenuated the drone’s weapons, they still pierced the outer hull. The large breaches sent clouds of hull fragments out into the void. We could now see one of the protective walls of the CIC. There was a large heavily armor hatch that was big enough for the mechs to pass through. We had to assume that the hostiles had a few inside the CIC just waiting to greet us. Hanging down from the passage ceiling were two twin-barreled anti-boarding weapons. Their power sources had to be located inside the CIC. They opened fire on the drones and got the same treatment that the mechs suffered. Now there was an even larger hole in the side of the battleship that exposed the deck above the CIC.

  Klutch pointed at it. “We can use that opening to gain access above the Combat Information Center. It would be a good way to drop in on the heads of our enemies. I doubt if they would be expecting that.”

  “What will we do if there are mechanized sentries inside the area of operation? If we engage them with our beam weapons we might end up killing our targets.” Sael said.

  Tria was shaking her head negative. She didn’t like that scenario any better than we did. The weapons the mechs were packing could easily bring down a shuttle. They would be a serious danger to us all. “We need to give them a good reason to leave the CIC of their own accord.” She commented.

  “What have you got in mind?”

  Coonts answered for her. “Nanites Commander.”

  Sael didn’t like using weaponized nanites because it was a high crime in the eyes of the majority of races. “If we resort to that, we must make sure there is no trace of them left behind.”

  Klutch was frowning. He rarely did that even when we were being shot to pieces. “Commander, there are going to be a lot of witnesses if you stay true to your word and let the crew live.”

  This was getting more complicated by the minute. I hadn’t heard anything from Justice and decided to get his opinion. “Justice, I know our nanites dissolve after they complete their assigned functions. Can they still be detected?”

  “Yes, Commander. The nanites will no longer be present, but evidence of their destructive processes will remain and be obvious to a Forensic Scholar.”

  We never had this problem before because we always completely destroyed our targets. You couldn’t investigate what you couldn’t find. It was my fault this was turning into a goat rope. The Troop Master has told me on more than one occasion to kill all our enemies all the time, and let our maker sort them out. I used to think he was just messing with me when he said it, but it made a lot of sense to never leave anything behind that could point a finger directly at us.

  “Commander!” Justice suddenly called. “I am detecting an unusually large distortion wave forming near our location. I am launching all our drones and will make a short transition when I can identify the source of the disturbance.”

  Justice turned the Legacy sharply away from the derelict battleship. As our distance from the ship increased, he started rapidly launching the balance of our full complement of forty-five stealth drones.

  “Commander, I have identified the new target. It is a Constellation class freighter.”

  To say we were shocked by Justice’s report was an understatement. When we finished our mission here, we were going to actively start searching for the remaining ships in that class. I would have never guessed they would save us the trouble by coming to us.

  Justice gave us a live feed in our displays. We were still a considerable distance from the ship’s transition point but it was big enough to be easily observable. It had its shields up and was making a course correction for the battleship. Twenty-five of our stealth attack drones headed directly at the new target, and the rest vectored for the battleship.

  “Commander, the freighter is launching Galactic Union gunships. The ship count is currently five and they are heading directly at the disabled battleship.”

  My stomach took a sudden churn as Justice made a fast jump in and out of hyperspace. The massive freighter was only a small dot on our displays.

  I was a little confused why we were jumping at all but knew Justice didn’t do something without good reason. “Justice, what is your plan of action?”

  “Commander, it is my intention to make it appear that we have fled the area of operation. The duration of my transition sequence should only be detectable as a single jump.”

  Justice turned back toward the target area and increased our speed to maximum.

  “Commander, the gunship count is now seven, and they are taking up defensive positions around the disabled battleship.”

  Justice transferred the feed from the view dome to the bulkhead we were standing near. He put blue circles around all forty-five of our drones and red boxes around the hostile spacecraft. The display showed just how effective our negation and cloaking systems were. Twenty of our attack drones were shadowing the gunships and the other twenty-five were just outside of the shields of the Constellation class freighter as it slowed its forward velocity. If Justice could covertly send one or more attack drones inside of the freighter’s han
gar bay, it was going to be in a world of hurt right afterward.

  Our video feed changed and came from a drone near the battleship. It showed one of the gunships moving in almost against the hull of the wrecked warship. It was a no-brainer that they were going to rescue the targets of our operation. As the gunship came to a full stop, it momentarily dropped its shields. Justice maneuvered two of our drones down near the gunship’s hull just behind its elevated bridge. The gunship brought its shields back up and moved away from the battleship. When the other gunships rapidly moved away from the wreck it told us they had no intention of rescuing any of the crew. When the small fleet was about halfway back to the freighter, each of the gunships launched a pair of missiles back at the battleship. Justice put red tracking lines on the missiles. All fourteen of the weapons struck the battleship close to the engine spaces. There was a bright flash and the remains of the battleship were gone. The mutineers thought they saw a way to keep their lives. In the end, it was nothing more than a short stay of execution.

  As the gunships closed with the freighter, they lined up for the approach to the hangar bay. A hole appeared in the shield and they quickly went through in single file. Unknown to the hostiles, four of our attack drones went through with them. The escapees may have thought their ordeal was over and their freedom was no longer in question. They had no idea just how bad of a day they were going to have.

  Justice was closely following the huge vessel. When the hangar doors on the freighter closed we lost our video feed. It rapidly increased speed in preparation for a hyperspace transition. Justice’s subsystems that controlled the drones had no problem autonomously fixing that situation. Six pinpricks of light flared from the hull of the freighter. Each was accompanied by a gush of debris and atmosphere. The ship's straight-line course suddenly wavered. A huge explosion erupted from the side of the ship just forward of the hangar. Our video feed from one of the drones went live again. It was a view of the hangar. The place was an inferno. Four of the seven gunships were burning and another was laying on its side in pieces. Our drone’s shields were obscuring the view because of the incoming fire from the freighter’s anti-boarding defenses. It was only temporary. The drone’s return fire picked them off as fast as the batteries came online. Our view switched to another drone in the hangar and we saw hundreds of mutilated bodies scattered all across the deck near a huge airlock. The drone that was suppling the video feed fired point-blank into the pressure door. The monitor Justice put up on the bulkhead, showed another massive explosion burst from the side of the freighter. The vessel suddenly pitched its nose upward and rolled a hundred and eighty degrees before partially righting itself. Its forward velocity was rapidly decreasing.

  Justice closed to spitting range and gave its aft shields a beam shot that made them flare a brilliant white. His second shot went through the aft portion of the ship and out the opposite side. The ship’s shields shimmered and disappeared altogether. It was now a sitting duck and Justice started picking off the defensive weapons that started popping up from the freighter’s massive hull. Missile ports along the spine of the ship managed to fire seven missiles before they were turned into molten craters. All seven of the missiles were destroyed seconds later. Our drones surrounded the floundering ship and within minutes the counterfire dropped off to nothing. Justice moved over the top of the ship and put several rail cannon rounds through the prominent forecastle that dominated its forward section. The lights that could be seen on the hull began flickering and then went out. About thirty seconds later, less than half of them winked back on as the freighter’s emergency power systems came to life. In a futile act that made me smile, the hangar doors started parting and the two remaining gunship’s shields came online as they lifted off the deck.

  I assumed there was a good reason why Justice’s subsystems left the two gunships intact. Before I could ask, he showed us why.

  “Commander, here is some video recorded just prior to the drone’s attacking the hostiles in the hangar. It will be self-explanatory.”

  The recording started playing in our displays and it showed the huge interior hangar of the freighter. It was clean and neat but cramped with the seven gunships sitting in staggered parking positions. In the background were several hundred heavily armed and armored troops. Their physical forms indicated they were from many races. They were marching in the direction of the lead gunship. The drone zoomed the video feed. It showed five individuals surrounded by eight guards that had the unique bodily dimensions of Tibor. All eight were wearing armor that resembled our second-generation Zaen battlesuits. Of the five individuals the Tibor were surrounding, three were Grawl wearing some pretty flashy outfits that brought back memories of my old foe Drayen. The other two were wearing armored pressure suits that resembled the Rugerian’s who called himself the Collector.

  The boarding ramp on the ship came down and before anyone could exit, the drones opened fire on the other parked gunships. The Tibor guards took immediate action. They herded the dignitaries up the ramp into the gunship and closed the hatch. Six of the Tibor guards stayed outside the gunship and opened fire at the source of the trouble. They couldn’t see the drones, but could easily follow the beam shots back to their source. Their bravery was rewarded with a swift death. One of the drones swept them from the side with a beam shot that reduced them to whiffs of smoke. The shot also scythed down a huge swath of the mercenaries that were charging at the gunfire. The majority of the troops were dead within thirty seconds. They had no viable defense against weapons that could take down a shielded starship. Even with the drone’s beam weapons set to their lowest power requirements, they were devastating everything in the hangar.

  As usual, Justice was correct. The video was indeed self-explanatory. We now had at least five criminals that were apparently high-ranking leaders holed up on one of the gunships. There was also an unknown number of others from the battleship already onboard the ship as well. One of which we believed to be the Coram Warlord, Glock. If we could capture them all alive, we would have a wealth of information that just needed to be harvested.

  Both ships accelerated hard for open space but it was a futile act. The pursuing drones hit them with beam shots that quickly dropped their shields. Justice raked both with precise rail cannon fire that destroyed their stardrive nozzles. The sudden loss of directional control left them tumbling uncontrollably. The attack drones converged on the out-of-control gunships and took turns shooting several of the biggest weapons from their pylons. Both ships went dark as Justice stabilized one and then the other, bringing both to a full stop.

  I looked at my strike team. “You don’t get an opportunity like this very often. We need these people alive if at all possible. I am going to try and convince them to surrender without a fight. I don’t know if that is possible but I am going to give it a try. Troop Master, I want you and Coonts to take out the two Tibor bodyguards. I suspect they will fight to the death no matter what. Tria, Sael, and I will try to isolate the others and convince them to come along peaceably.”

  Justice brought the Legacy in close to the gunship. We stacked behind Klutch at the hangar door and Justice opened it just enough for us to jump. We cloaked and boosted down to the ship in our combat formation. Klutch led us right down close to the hull. He was being cautious in case the occupants could bring one or more of the ship’s weapons back online. We set down near the bridge and Klutch commed me.

  “Commander, if we take the bridge, we will have control of the anti-boarding systems, and more importantly, the ship’s weapons and life support.” Some of those Throggs weren’t wearing pressure suits. We might be able to make them surrender if they know we can shut it off.”

  I gave him a thumbs up. “Take us in at your discretion Troop Master.”

  We moved in close to a sensor array one of the drones had shot from the hull. Parts of the outer hull were melted away exposing the inner hull maintenance spaces. Klutch went inside and took a look around. He did a quick scan that t
urned up nothing. He liked what he saw and waved us inside. We slipped through the ragged opening and Klutch pointed down a passage that went toward the bridge. We came to a large round passage that went from the outside of the hull into the inner hull and bridge. It had “Rescue” stamped across it in Galactic Standard. We crawled under it and kept going. We weren’t about to use such an obvious entry point. Klutch finally stopped to one side a large superstructure support beam.

  He pointed at the inner hull. “We should be just aft of the pilot’s seats if we breach here.”

  I nodded and held up my spike launcher. “Let’s keep this quiet as long as possible. Make sure of your targets. I want the command personnel alive if possible, but don’t risk injury if they put up a fight.”

  I got four quick acknowledgments. I put my hand on Klutch’s shoulder as he stood close to the bulkhead readying the portal device. I looked back at my strike team’s avatars and they each nodded. I slapped Klutch on the shoulder and he activated the device and got a good hole. He rushed through with us close on his heels. No sooner than Klutch exited the portal he collided with a tall Murlak wearing body armor. He had his back to us and Klutch slammed him to the deck and crushed his helmet with his boot. He fired his spike launcher at another who was holding a beam rifle at port arms near the bridge hatch. He was dead before he hit the deck. I went immediately right and saw a Grawl near an instrument panel. I boosted into him smashing his face into the panel. He went down hard and I raised my arm at a Murlak that was going for his sidearm. I put a spike through his face shield, killing him instantly. Tria grabbed another Grawl that bolted for the exit hatch. She picked him off the deck and sent him flying into the back of the pilot’s seats as the hatch opened. A Tibor was standing guard outside the hatch. He turned when it opened and Sael shot him in the head with two spikes. They exited the back of his helmet and struck a combat mech that was in the outer passage. Coonts was right behind Sael and saw the heavily armored war machine pitch forward from the impacts. He put three Containium spikes with molecular acid payloads into the machine’s back as it righted itself. Unlike Sael’s spikes that were slowed by the Tibor’s skull, Coonts’s penetrated deeply into the machine’s armor. The Containium tips of the spikes exploded and discharged their acid reservoirs into the machines operating systems. The machine turned to confront us and locked up like it was frozen. We expected it to open fire with its impressive array of weapons, but it fell over on the deck smoking.