by David Adams
*****
Operations
TFR Beijing
One hour later
LIAO FELT HERSELF BECOMING DROWSY, her eyelids heavy. Perhaps it was just her, but when the Forerunner had jumped away, Liao had secretly expected the Toralii Alliance fleet to react almost instantly; Saara had told them that the Alliance kept a small fleet on standby for just such an occasion. But while her “gut instinct” told her the Toralii would come for them immediately, her military mind spoke common sense and reminded her that no military reacted instantly and that, no matter how fast the gears of the Toralii war machine turned, their enemies would need some time to gather themselves before any jump could be made.
“I’m bored,” came the predictable whine of Rowe's voice. The freckled redhead gently thumped her forehead against the metal of her console in frustration, creating a rhythmic thump, thump, thump that echoed faintly throughout the otherwise quiet operations room.
“Perhaps, then, you could entertain yourself by checking those reactors again. We’ll need that power to charge the hull plating when the Toralii Alliance arrive, and our rail guns are going to chew through a lot of juice. They can’t have any more problems. Also, verify that our fire control systems are giving accurate data to the Martian batteries. They’re shooting a very long way, and I don’t want any mistakes.”
“Right,” murmured Rowe, who began absently tapping on some of the keys in front of her—not enough to press them, but enough to cause Liao a mild degree of frustration. “I’ll be sure to check and recheck the exact same shit I checked only a few minutes ago. I’m sure that’ll help.”
Ignoring her sarcasm, Liao turned to her communications officer. “Mister Hsin, if you could, please collect a status update from the Sydney and the Tehran.”
A brief moment of quiet, punctuated only by the youthful man’s voice as he made the request. While they waited, Liao rubbed her eyes with her thumbs, desperately trying to keep herself awake. Now was not the time to yawn, not in front of the operations crew, and not right as they were about to engage in the first mission featuring all three Pillars of the Earth.
“Captain Liao, the Sydney and the Tehran both report, again, that they are still ready for engagement and operating at—”
“RADAR CONTACT!”
The voice made everyone in the room jump. It was Ling, the radar operator, and all eyes fell upon him.
“Report!”
“Captain, it’s a jump-in… cap-ship sized. Two hundred thousand tonnes! Exactly the same configuration as the last Toralii ship we saw!”
Rowe's laughter could be heard over the din. “I just love it when a plan comes together!”
Liao stood from her chair, striding over to the command stations. “Launch the strike craft! Missile batteries one, two, three: fire! Rail gun operators, find and engage targets of opportunity!” She turned to Mister Hsin. “Inform the fleet we have engaged the Toralii!”
“Missiles away, Captain!”
“Major Aharoni reports that the strike craft are away!”
“Captain, the Tehran and the Sydney report that they have engaged the contact with strike craft and nukes. Effect on target unknown at this time!”
“Captain Liao! The surface batteries on Mars are reporting that they have engaged the Toralii with their high-speed rail guns, and missiles are en route!”
Liao nodded, her eyes flying over her various screens as she took in a torrent of information. “Good,” was her only immediate reply, as she watched the ship’s missiles, followed by a cloud of strike fighters, scream towards their targets.
Ling, the radar operator, spoke up again. “The Toralii vessel is launching strike craft, Captain,” he called, but his voice was partially drowned out by another call from Hsin.
“Captain! I’m receiving a… transmission from the Toralii!”
Liao grabbed the long-range communications headset, slipping it over her head. The deep, guttural voice of the Toralii she spoke to previously once again echoed in her ears.
[“This is Warbringer Avaran of the Toralii Alliance Vessel Seth’arak.”] Liao swore she could hear a definitive snarl at the end of the sentence, and the Toralii’s voice was clipped and abrupt as though he were holding back indescribable rage. From the corner of her eye, she also saw Saara visibly relax as the Toralii ship identified itself as being of the Alliance. Liao, too, breathed slightly easier; that was one major drama they had averted.
[“You humans… you have the gall to think that you could possibly get away with attacking an outpost of the Toralii Alliance?”]
Liao clicked the talk key, glancing at the radar display she had pulled up on one of her many screens. “The way I see it, Warbringer Avaran, what I believe is basically irrelevant. We did attack your outpost, and we did get away—and now we’re about to keep up our winning streak. Your sensors will tell you that your vessel is completely surrounded and, in moments, will be destroyed.”
A low, echoing chuckle filtered down the line, a sound that seemed to be very alien yet also very human in its composition. [“Your threats are spoken with such fire, Captain Liao, but… I’m afraid that your situation is far more perilous than you could possibly imagine.”]
“Captain!” Jiang’s voice called to her. Liao turned to face her tactical officer. “Captain, the Toralii ship is projecting some kind of energy weapon. They’re targeting the Sydney’s strike craft!”
Commander Iraj nodded to Jiang. “That’s to be expected. The strike craft should easily be able to evade that fire at this distance—”
Jiang shook her head, her cropped black bob flying around with the effort. “No, Commander, it’s not their standard weapons array. This is something different! It’s one large blast!”
Liao’s eyes widened. A glance towards Commander Iraj confirmed he was thinking the same thing; it was the weapon that had struck the Tehran when it was in the Hades system. She knew that it had to be avoided and turned to Hsin. “Lieutenant! Hail those strike craft, tell them to—”
From her peripheral vision, she saw the radar screen on her monitor crackle with a wave of static, immediately drawing her eye to its bright light. For a split second, the image was overwhelmed, and then a wave of bright green dots surged out and over the swarm of tiny radar blips that indicated the TFR Sydney’s strike craft, washing over them and narrowly missing their mother ship.
“What the fuck was that? Was it the same thing the Tehran saw in the Hades system?”
Nobody in the operations room seemed to have any answer. There was a split second of silence and then a cacophony of voices began to shout their reports all at once.
“Radar function severely reduced, Captain, recommend switching to long-range thermal targeting instead!”
“Captain, Major Aharoni reports seeing a bright white flash, visible to the naked eye, in the direction of the TFR Sydney!”
“Our electronics are fucked, Captain!”
Liao tried to sort through the jumbled mass of voices. “Lieutenant Jiang, give me an analysis; is it the same energy wave that hit the Tehran in the Hades system?” She jabbed a finger towards Ling. “Ling, do it. Switch to thermals!”
“It matches the description, Captain!” Jiang’s voice sounded horrified. “The Sydney’s strike craft are… gone, Captain! The energy wave got them all!”
Liao swore darkly, furrowing her brow. “Rowe! Rowe!” She tried to get the engineer's attention. “What’s the status on our electronics?”
“They’re fucked, as I said! That energy blast—it’s like the one used in the attack on Earth, except this one’s more powerful! It seems to have some kind of EMP or something!”
“Status on missiles?”
“Impact in twenty seconds, Captain!”
Liao nodded. That was good. They needed to hit them fast. She turned to Commander Iraj as the man called to Lieutenant Jiang.
“What about the strike craft from all allied ships?”
Hsin turned in his seat and faced th
e XO. “The Sydney reports that they are recalling what’s left of their strike craft—apparently one or two survived—and are preparing to close the distance to engage. The Tehran’s craft are still closing, Captain.”
Frowning again, Liao glanced across to Jiang. “Got any good news for me, Lieutenant? What about the surface batteries?”
“The surface missile batteries have commenced firing, Captain; impact in six minutes! Also, for what it’s worth, Major Aharoni reports that he and the rest of the strike craft are engaging the Toralii fighters!”
At the mention of Aharoni, Liao caught sight of Rowe’s expression, a mix of excitement and worry, but there was no time to deal with that now.
Ling spoke up. “Captain! The Tehran’s missiles have impacted the hostile ship. Can’t tell the effect from here; there’s too much interference on our radar! Thermals show detonations, however… dammit!” He paused about two seconds; then, “Minimal effect!”
Liao swore again, smacking her flat palm on the metal of her console. “Engage the gravity mines and lock down the jump point; even this one ship is proving to be a handful, and we don’t want another.”
“Gravity mines enabled, Captain. The point’s locked down.”
Which also cut off their escape route, should they need it. Liao mused over this; judging by the way things were going, they almost certainly would regret that decision.
Lieutenant Dao, who had remained mostly silent for the battle with little to do, finally spoke up. “Captain Liao… the hostile ship is moving!”
Liao furrowed her brow, looking his way. “Moving? To where?”
“Directly towards the Tehran. Distance: ten thousand kilometres.”
Liao picked up her long-range radio, clicking the talk key. “Sydney, Tehran—this is Beijing actual. Report status, over.”
Liao heard the accented voice of the communications officer from the TFR Sydney. “Beijing, Sydney; we are throwing everything we have at maximum sustainable rate of fire. Our rail guns are out of action due to a malfunction, so it’s missiles only for us.”
Another malfunction from the Sydney. Liao didn’t have time to think about the implications of one of their ships missing a major weapons system.
Grégoire’s voice filtered over the communications line. “Beijing actual, this is Tehran actual. Our missiles and rail guns are hot on the target; preparing a third barrage now.”
Rowe couldn’t help but let a tiny smile creep over her features. Despite what was happening, despite the dire situation they’d found themselves in with only one ship on their hands, it was good to hear Grégoire’s voice.
“Very good. Give them hell, Tehran; Beijing out.”
Placing down the headset, Liao looked at the long-range radar screen, observing the battle with her arms folded. The ship shuddered almost imperceptibly as nukes flew from his firing tubes and rail guns threw their ordnance towards the target.
Jiang shouted over the noise of the operations room. “Captain! Captain, I’m detecting another energy surge… the Toralii are going to fire their energy weapon again!”
Liao cursed darkly. “Their target? Is it our strike fighters?”
Jiang shook her head. “Negative, Captain. It looks as though they’re going to hit the Tehran itself!”
James! Liao snatched up the long-range communications headset again, frantically hitting the talk key. “Tehran, this is Beijing actual; evasive manoeuvres! The hostile ship has you targeted!”
Once again Grégoire’s voice called back to her. “We’re well aware of that, Beijing, we are moving to—”
There was an intense burst of loud static, causing her to rip off the headset in pain. She looked at the long-range radar again, seeing another intense wave of energy fly from the Toralii ship, so bright and so powerful that their sensors could barely cope.
The strange Toralii weapon hit the Tehran square on her broadside, causing another burst of static, almost blinding the Beijing’s sensors. Through the interference, Liao could see the wave didn’t even slow down as it passed right through the warship, the energy pulse flying off the edge of her radar screen in seconds.
Stunned silence fell over the operations room. Liao stared at the computer screen, trying to determine the damage that the Tehran had taken. Debris clouded the radar screen. Heat masked their thermal sensors.
She felt the same clench in her heart she had felt when the Tehran didn’t jump back from the Hades system. Was James okay?
Hsin spoke up and ended the brief, shocked silence. “Captain, I’m reading a distress signal from the Tehran. They’re hit pretty bad! They report that there are fires on all decks, massive breaches, almost all of their systems are offline except navigation.”
Liao came back to reality. She was still in a situation and she still had a battle to fight.
“Close with that Toralii ship! Get us within one thousand kilometres! We can’t let them hit us with that energy blast!”
She turned to Saara. “That weapon’s much bigger and more dangerous than you told us it would be!”
Saara shouted across the noise. [“That’s because it’s more powerful than I anticipated and much more accurate! Normally the device can only be used to hit large, stationary targets, but… I suppose the Toralii Alliance must have a more powerful variant than my people do!”]
Liao noted with some trepidation that the Beijing was stationary.
“Evasive manoeuvres, then! Get us close, but make sure they can’t hit us!”
Saara turned to another operations officer. [“Mister Dao, I recommend you don’t get too close, or they will attempt to board us! No more than five hundred kilometres should be safe!”] Liao almost instinctively went to translate, but the man gave her a nod, signalling that he understood.
Liao did not like the way this battle was going. They had enabled the gravity mines, which was a good start since it cut off the possibility of reinforcements, but the lone Toralii ship was displaying remarkable confidence. Further, the Sydney didn’t have operational rail guns, and the Tehran was disabled. Risking another glance at her radar display, Liao could see that the Toralii vessel was moving towards the stricken Tehran with remarkable speed. Although the frictionless void of space meant that “top speed” was—for all objects, not just spaceships—the speed of light, the acceleration of ships was directly related to their weight and thrust. It appeared that the Toralii ship had a much better thrust-to-weight ratio than the Pillars, given they were the same tonnage. Liao wondered how they had conjured such a liberal amount of power from their engines. The Toralii technology really was more advanced.
Perhaps she and her crew had bitten off more than they could chew this time. This was no scout ship; it was a battlecruiser built for war.
“The Toralii are firing, Captain! They’re targeting the Tehran and trying to close with her!”
“Are they using the energy wave again?”
“Negative, Captain, conventional weapons only. I’m reading a lot of excess heat on thermals. They must be cooking over there!”
“Good.” Liao was about to issue another order, but Hsin’s voice reached her ears.
“It’s the Tehran again, Captain. They report that their weapons suites are offline, not that it matters since the hostile ship is accelerating too quickly to be accurately targeted, and their strike craft can’t catch it. They have navigation, and Captain Grégoire is attempting to restart the ship’s propulsion and guidance systems, but that’s all they can do at this time!”
Liao nodded her acknowledgement, an intense wave of relief washing over her as Hsin confirmed for her that Grégoire was okay. Putting her mind back to task—and angrily berating herself for allowing herself to become distracted—she glanced back to the radar screen. “Mister Jiang! The moment the missile tubes have finished reloading, fire them immediately. What’s the status of our rail guns?”
“The rail guns appear to have minimal effect; I don’t understand what’s going on! The rounds are impacting on
the ship, but there’s very little debris at all! It doesn’t make any sense!”
Rowe shouted over the din of alarms and clacking keyboards. “It’s because we’re hitting them from behind as they move towards the Tehran! The difference in velocities is reducing the relative speed of the rail gun slugs by about a quarter, so they’re not getting through the hull plating! Based on what we saw earlier, we’d probably need at least three thousand metres a second to get through!”
Liao nodded, clenching her fists. That was… annoying. “Can we increase speed so we hit them faster?”
“Well yeah, we can do that, but then we’ll overshoot when they stop!”
Liao shook her head. “Just keep trying to punch through then. Status on those missile tubes, Jiang?”
A pause as Jiang finished checking her console. “Reloading complete. Missiles away, Captain! Be advised, the Toralii are firing again… at us this time!”
The ship began to shake and rock as the incoming wave of Toralii fire struck them. Small objects clattered to the floor as, even here in the central heart of the ship, the vessel shook with the impact. The crew of the operations room all exchanged nervous glances, and Liao felt a sinking feeling in her stomach that, she hoped, was not a return of the nausea; a shudder in the operations room would have been a profound shake only a few decks above them, a strong earthquake near the hull, and beyond that… If the impacts had cracked the hull plating, it couldn’t hold a charge, so their defences would be significantly weakened.
She silently prayed that there were no engineering crews doing emergency work in the outer, evacuated regions of the ship and then returned her mind to the present. “Increase evasive manoeuvres, reduce velocity towards the Tehran if you have to. Just make sure they can’t hit us! All weapons, maximum sustainable rate of fire; throw everything you have at them, Mister Jiang!”
“Aye aye, Captain!”
“The Toralii ship is closing!” Ling’s voice called out again. “Distance: two thousand klicks! Captain, we have to decelerate, or we’ll overshoot!”
Liao wanted to get as close to the Toralii as she could to stop right on top of them, if possible, but Liao knew that Ling had a point. “Do it; slow us down!”
The ship began to rotate, slowly flipping one hundred eighty degrees and placing his powerful gravimetric engines in the direction of his travel. The effect of the reverse-thrust was palpable from where she was standing, and she watched the instruments as the ship slowed down.
She glanced at the radar screen. The Tehran continued to get closer and closer as they moved directly towards it, but they were still almost two thousand kilometres away. Far too far away… and possibly still within range of the huge blast-wave generator that the Toralii possessed.
She glanced to her communications officer. “Mister Hsin, where’s the Sydney?”
“They’re moving to assist the Tehran, coming in from the Tehran’s port side. Their missiles are hitting the hostile ship remarkably well, ma’am. Whoever they’ve got running their targeting systems is good at their job.”
Thank heavens for small mercies. Liao was about to issue another command, but Hsin’s console emitted a series of beeping noises, interrupting her chain of thought as she watched him take the transmission.
Then Hsin turned in his chair, glancing towards Liao, his face ashen.
“Captain… the Tehran reports that they have containment breach in their reactors. They are attempting an emergency shutdown procedure, but they’re having trouble with their coolant pumps. They lost almost all their effective heat sinks in the blast, and their ship can’t radiate away its heat fast enough. Internal temperature is almost thirty-five degrees Celsius in there and climbing.”
Thirty-five degrees… hot enough to be extremely uncomfortable for those who were not used to it, and getting worse by the second. Liao bit her lower lip, trying to force the mental image of James and his entire crew roasting alive out of her head, but it was… persistent.
Another barrage of fire struck the Beijing, and this time the shaking was more violent and pronounced; multiple officers nearly lost their seats, and Liao almost fell over.
Gripping her console, she turned to Jiang. “Damage report!”
The report took a second or two to come in. “Major damage to the outer hull, Captain! A number of the heat sinks have been completely destroyed, while most others are showing at least some degree of structural damage! Breaches on decks four, five, six, eight, nine!”
Rowe slammed her boot into the underside of her console. “Fuck! Fuck! The damage to the heat sinks is causing too much temperature buildup; we’ll have to take half our reactors offline just to stop ourselves from melting into slag!”
Liao knew what that meant. With half their reactors down, their weapons would be half as effective, and the charge through the hull plating—for all the good it was doing them—would be significantly reduced. Other, less important systems all over the ship also couldn’t run at maximum power. It was a significant tactical disadvantage.
Then again, they didn’t want to end up cooked in their own shell like the Tehran.
“Turn them off!” she roared, gesturing wildly to Rowe, who immediately began complying. There was no sense, she thought, in melting their ship—or even just the ship’s reactor core—even if it meant reduced capability. “Reactors one through four, make safe!”
Some chance was better than none.
Hsin’s voice cut through the confusion. “Captain! The Sydney reports that they are getting effective weapon impacts on the Toralii vessel, but they will soon be too close to us to fire without risking fratricide from misses!”
Fratricide. Literally, to kill one’s own brother, sometimes euphemistically referred to as “friendly fire.”
Liao did not want to die by her allies' firepower, but so far their combined efforts seemed to have barely put a dent in the Toralii warship, while the Toralii had cut down the Tehran with seemingly little effort at all.
They needed to score some points, or this game would be a short one.
“Tell them to keep firing as long as they can; we’ll just have to dodge anything that comes our way from them, too.” Then, in a low mutter only she could hear, Liao added, “Somehow.”
The order was acknowledged, and Liao turned her attention back to the radar screen on her monitor. The Toralii ship was now so close she had to look at the close-range collision avoidance radar. And, had anyone been near the outer hull, a glance out of a porthole with the naked eye would have revealed a tiny twinkling dot against the black sea of space.
That dot was still racing towards them at alarming speed despite its rapid deceleration. The Toralii ship was now too close for the Beijing’s rail guns to hit and was within the area of effect of their own nukes. The close-range point-defence cannons opened up, spewing bursts of high-explosive rounds at the Toralii vessel, rapid-fire shots coming in waves from the dozens of newly installed autoturrets scattered along the ship’s hull.
The collision avoidance radar showed numerous debris clouds rising from the impact zones, but neither Liao nor anyone else could tell how effective the much smaller cannon rounds were, or if they were even doing anything at all. The Beijing’s strike fighters swarmed in and around the enemy capitol ship, alternating between strafing the short, stubby craft’s underside and engaging the Toralii Alliance strike fighters.
Then the Toralii ship turned. It appeared to give up its pursuit of the Tehran, who had ceased firing back entirely and was now drifting helplessly in space, and turned towards the Beijing. Liao watched the radar screen as it suddenly surged towards them.
Saara’s earlier warning echoed in her ears. She knew what they were doing, now. They’d drawn the two ships in close, so they could be boarded.
They had fallen into a trap.
[“The Toralii are moving into boarding range!”]
Liao glanced around the operations room, a feeling of helpless rage rising inside her churning stomach. She did not
want this ship—her ship—to be boarded by the Toralii Alliance. The aliens were displaying a significant advantage over the human forces up in space, but despite their strength and prowess in that battlefield, they were choosing to close to boarding range; this decision would, presumably, only give them further tactical advantage.
“Options.”
Dao, the navigator, spoke up. “Captain, we could roll the ship. Spin it like a log on the surface of water. They can’t dock with us if we are rotating too fast.”
Liao actually liked that plan. She gave the man a firm nod. “Do it.”
As Dao went to work, Liao glanced around the room, looking for some other alternative. Her eyes met Rowe’s, and the redhead shrugged her shoulders helplessly. “Uh… we could get the point-defence autocannons to attack whatever the Toralii are going to use to get over here inside. Especially if we let them attach it for, say, five seconds, so that if we destroy it, we suck the poor fuckers out into space as they’re climbing through.”
Liao liked that plan too. Already she could feel the ship turning as the navigator punched in the commands. “Let’s hope Dao’s plan works, but stand by to make that our plan B. Saara! What will they do?”
Saara shouted over the multiple conversations taking place in operations, her tail lashing in the air behind her. [“Captain, the Toralii will attach magnetic grapples to the side of the ship and hold it firm. Your manoeuvre will buy you some time, but their engines are powerful—and the auto-cannons will only last so long before the Toralii destroy them. I suggest you prepare an alternative solution.”]
A quick glance around operations revealed that nobody had any suggestions. They could fight and struggle as much as they liked; they could kick and scream like toddlers confined to their bedrooms, but the Toralii were coming.
Reaching out for the internal handset, Liao squeezed the talk key and put it to her lips.
“Captain Liao to all hands. Stand by to repel boarders.”
She lifted her finger and, just as she did, the ship was rocked by a third wave of fire, but this time, the blasts came from point-blank range, only a few metres or so from the Beijing's outermost hull. Liao was thrown off her feet, landing heavily on the metal deck, grunting in pain as she twisted her arm. Ignoring the pain for now, Liao dragged herself back up to her feet. Her eyes met Lieutenant Jiang’s, and the woman shouted over the sound of wailing alarms.
“Captain, we’ve sustained a series of direct hits… significant damage to the port side of the ship, including multiple breaches. We’ve lost the ability to charge the hull in that area, and… I’m not sure, but based on the collision-avoidance radar readings I’m seeing, we’re probably grappled.”
All around them was the low, ominous sound of stressed metal, and Liao felt the ship move to one side as though it were being pulled in the opposite direction to its roll.
[“The Alliance will want to drag your ship in close for boarding,”] said Saara, [“and then they will cut through the hull… are you sure your marines can stop them?”]
The question was legitimate enough, but Liao had faith in Cheung’s ability to hold down their ship. Rather than directly answer the question, Liao turned her head towards Ling.
“Mister Ling! Call the Sydney. If they want to be big damn heroes, now is the time! How far away are they?”
“Close, Captain, one thousand kilometres, but they’re moving too fast. They won’t be able to decelerate in time! They’ll overshoot!”
Liao balled her fists, growling angrily. That damn fool Knight… being too impatient, too eager to prove himself and his ship in battle. Yes, the Beijing was in trouble, but Knight had to slow down, or there would be no point to it all.
More helpless anger surged through her body, and Liao found it harder and harder to fight the upswell of emotions. James was… injured, possibly, and maybe in mortal peril; a swift glance to the thermal monitor showed her that the Tehran was burning on multiple decks, and the reactor cores were leaking. She wondered, if the Tehran hadn't been so badly damaged in the Hades system battle, might it be more functional?
The Tehran slowly turned and moved towards the Beijing, trailing atmosphere and smoke behind it. That made her heart jump and sink at the same time. He was coming to try to save her.
Liao crushed the guilt that thought generated. She knew James would do this kind of thing, rush to help her, and that was okay. They were a couple… a team. They helped each other.
Not that this was helping them now. Liao mused over the revelation that, in light of the situation, their mutual desire to get laid might very well cost them both their lives.
Right at that moment, a low, loud clunk seemed to reverberate throughout the entire ship, shaking even the operations room centre, the armoured core of the Beijing. Liao and the other operations crew exchanged looks. Each knew what that sound meant.
The Toralii ship was right next to their own. They were being boarded.
Jiang put her finger to her earpiece and then turned around and shouted back to Liao. “Marines on deck eleven report that the Toralii are cutting into the hull on that deck, Captain!”
Melissa nodded her head. It was all going exactly as Saara said it would, and there was precious little she could do about it.
“See if you can dislodge them with the auto-cannons,” she ordered, leaving the command console and moving over where Jiang’s tactical console was. Liao watched as the woman pulled up the targeting camera built into a pair of the guns, taking in the scene it projected, a picture of the outside of the ship.
Liao was shocked at just how badly damaged the outer hull of the Beijing appeared. The so-called indestructium hull plating was blackened and charred, with numerous craters and scorch marks, the thick, heavy plates cracked and broken.
The hull more resembled the surface of the moon than the metallic skin of a warship.
More alarming to Liao, however, were the several places where the damage extended beyond the hull, where breaches had dug themselves deep into the softer tissue of the ship, and thick trails of escaping gasses poured from the ship's wounds. The presence of leaking atmosphere meant that the blasts had struck areas of the ship which had not been evacuated and therefore would have been occupied by crew members.
She knew those people were almost certainly dead.
Jiang took control of the cannon, lining up on the dark, thin tendril that was the docking umbilical and firing at its midpoint. Liao watched with some satisfaction as, after three shots, the cable broke, spinning and kicking about in space like an unattended fire hose, pouring gas and debris into the void.
Gas, debris, and Toralii boarding parties. She could see they wore thick, armoured suits made of some kind of red metal, reflective visors covering their faces. Liao presumed them to be sealed space-suits, as one might expect space-based marines to wear. She knew they would have had a small, limited, internal oxygen supply, and as Liao watched them float helplessly away, she knew their hopes of rescue from the dark void of space before it ran out seemed very slim.
A horrid way to die, waiting patiently for one’s oxygen to run out, but pity for the fate of those Toralii was a luxury Liao couldn’t afford. She watched as Jiang took up a firing solution on the next boarding tube, blasting it in half with similar results. She lined up on a third, but the screen suddenly glowed and then became nothing more than static as the turret she was controlling was annihilated by a Toralii weapon. Jiang tried several other turrets, but they were either already destroyed or soon to join their companions.
Four tendrils was the total that had attached to her vessel, and Liao presumed there were four holes being cut into the hull—the flesh and skin of her ship—as she spoke. They were at the wrong angle for rail guns and far too close for nukes. There was nothing else they could do.
“Master-at-arms, distribute sidearms to the operations crew. We can be sure that this section will be one of their targets.”
As though waiting for her order, the master-at-arms swif
tly opened the gun locker in the corner of operations and began distributing pistols.
As he approached Liao, she gestured down to her sidearm.
“I’m quite okay, thank you. I’ll take some extra magazines, though.”
The man handed her two extra magazines, and she stuffed them into her back pocket. Satisfied, she strode over to Jiang’s console, leaning over and inspecting the woman’s readings as Jiang pulled one of the black nylon belts around her hip, checking that the pistol was loaded before slipping it into the plastic holster.
“It looks as though they’re approaching from the top,” Liao remarked, pointing out a swarm of heat signatures pouring into the upper decks of the ship. “Dispatch marines to the grappled sections with instructions to repel boarders with extreme prejudice.”
There was a tense moment as four clumps of thermal signals, the Beijing’s marines, which looked like puffs of white cloud, raced towards the Toralii invaders. Liao focused her eyes on the group containing her marine head, Warrant Officer Yanmei Cheung. The marines responded quicker than she had anticipated; it was heartening to see that at least something was going right for the defenders.
Melissa watched as Cheung’s team of marines made their way through the lower decks, climbing up the hatchways to deck two, making their way through the open and spacious corridors only seconds away from a group of attackers… and then, at a corner near food storage, the two signals merged.
Deck two was depressurized and unpowered, so Liao knew they were fighting in zero gravity. The internal thermal cameras showed the warm glows of humanoid bodies, the bright flashes of gunfire, and the occasional white-hot detonation of a grenade or explosive.
Due to the close nature of the battle and the low quality of the ship’s cameras in that section, assessing the battle was impossible, but from what Liao could see on the bright, flickering screen of Jiang’s console, it seemed as though the invaders were gaining ground.
“Mister Cheung, this is the captain. Report status.”
There was a brief pause then the faint hiss of an activated radio. Cheung’s voice echoed through the tiny speaker, weirdly distorted by the obvious helmet and space suit she wore.
“Dozens of Toralii foot-mobiles in red suits have breached deck two. Fu and Tao are dead; we’re currently engaged, fighting running skirmishes, trying to use the doors for cover. Loading! Watch that one to your right!”
Cheung’s voice was charged, but her tone was even and controlled. Liao couldn’t hear any gunfire or any sounds at all other than Cheung's voice and heavy breathing. The vacuum outside her suit kept the noise of the gun battle to an absolute minimum, and what was being transmitted, the vibrations of the woman’s gun passed through the suit to the microphone, was too faint to be heard.
Liao held the talk key. “Good work. Hold them back in that sector, marine, but if they push, fall back. We can vent the sections they’re in and try to throw them out into space by reversing the gravity.”
“They’ve caught on to that trick, Captain! The first thing we did when we saw them was close the decompression doors and activate the fire suppression protocol—”
There was a sudden silence, filled only with a faint grunt and the hiss of escaping air. Liao’s eyes widened, glancing down to Jiang and then at the radio.
“I’m here; sorry, Captain.” Cheung’s breathing had picked up—pained, gasping breathing. In the background, the faint sss of escaping gas could be heard. “I’m hit. The Toralii are sick of us closing doors on them. As I said, the first thing we did was try to seal them in sections and vent them; we had significant success, but now they’ve magnetized their boots. They… they have the same hand-held energy weapons that Rowe recovered from Saara’s fighter. They can burn through the bulkheads pretty damn quick. Got some melted bulkhead on my arm… it burned right through my suit. Hurts like a motherfucker, ma’am.”
Liao remembered Rowe's accidental demonstration, when a single blast from the pistol she’d found had half-melted a bulkhead. She did not doubt what Cheung was telling them.
“You know the protocol, Warrant Officer; a breached suit means immediate evacuation.”
“Way ahead of you, Captain. I’m already on deck three, and… hold please.” There was a brief pause as, presumably, Cheung received another transmission. Then Liao’s radio crackled again.
“Captain! My men tell me the boarding parties have barricaded themselves inside sector four, deck one. They’re using their weapons to burn through the floor!”
Liao swore silently. She hadn’t expected this kind of manoeuvre. The ship was long and thin, so burning through the decks wouldn’t take much time.
Sector four was about three rooms away from operations, as well.
“Cheung, how long until they’re through the hull? That section is practically right above where I’m standing.”
“Not sure, Captain, I can’t see them. I’m making my way back to the lower decks with several other wounded marines.”
Liao checked her sidearm. She knew that in moments the Toralii could be on top of them. She turned, calling out to the rest of the operations crew.
“Attention! This room is about to be breached by the Toralii. Commander Iraj, verify the seal on the decompression doors. All hands check your sidearms.”
Liao’s pistol slid into her hand, and she gave a firm nod as she watched other crewmen doing the same. She checked once again that it was loaded, glancing around the room.
Rowe had her pen in one hand and pistol in the other. She looked as though she might wet herself, and her hand was shaking so much that Liao considered taking the pistol from her. In contrast, Saara, composed and stoic as ever, merely held her pistol comfortably in both hands.
She met the Toralii woman’s gaze, giving a silent nod, and then looked towards the hatchway to operations.
Jiang moved to her side, putting her hand on Liao’s shoulder. “The Toralii are on this deck, Captain. They’re in the corridor.”
There was a faint hiss, and the outside edges of the sealed decompression door emitted a faint red glow as the Toralii slowly began to burn their way in from the other side.
Chapter XV
The Home Field Advantage
