Captive Galaxy 1: The Bellerophon: Ambush

by J. W. Kurtz

  The corridor was wide enough that the two heavy battlesuits were able to walk shoulder to shoulder, but because of his now compromised imaging and targeting systems, he allowed Petrov to lead by a step or so. Laaken would then fire through the fog of smoke and gas they lay, or any defensive screen employed by the defenders for that matter, at targets engaged by Petrov. He knew his fire would be woefully inaccurate, compared to what the system was capable of when operation, but at least it would be shooting in the proper direction.

  Petrov, a couple steps in the lead, took the corner of the corridor first and stepped into the vortices and eddies of fog and gas caused by the struggling environmental systems screaming fans. Several light plasma bolts almost immediately impacted his glacis doing no harm to the heavy ferro-ceramic armor mounted by the battlesuit. Return fire was swift as it was unleashed from his arm mounted and shoulder mounted weapon systems. His targeting was not the least bit hampered by the smoke and fog as his systems were undamaged by the recently triggered explosive device that hampered the effectiveness of Laaken. His functional short wave infrared targeting sensors seeing through the fog as if it was nothing. He could see at least six targets down the corridor, hunkering behind a weak barricade. There were two teams of three on either side of the wide corridor blasting away at him with no discernable effect even with several of the incoming shots being quite well aimed despite the thick swirling smoke strobing from the energy weapon bolts flashing through the clouds.

  It was obvious that this team of defenders not only included experienced shooters, but enhanced suits of their own with quality targeting sensors. He again took consecutive shots to the helmet temporarily scattering his targeting solution and visuals displayed on the inside of his thick visor. Petrov, assisted by the rapid recovery of his targeting system, concentrated his fire on the trio on the right. Quickly he dispatched one of the defenders with a heavy plasma blast to the face. He marched steadily forward as his fire was joined by Laaken who finally took the corner and took up position behind and to the right of him.

  Laaken, hampered by only being able to target with his mark-1 eyeballs, loosed a salvo of energy bolts in the vicinity of the far better aimed shots of his partner. Together they put a withering fusillade of fire into the barricade blocking their path and the soft targets using it as cover. The sound of the chaos was deafening to naked ears, but through the heavy armor of the battlesuit it was no more than muffled whizzes, pings, and pops.

  Plasma bolts were exchanged between the two groups in frantic ferocity. When a plasma bolt struck flesh there was a shower of blood and bone and vaporized organic material. When a bolt slammed into ferro-ceramic armor only a singe mark or glowing pitting was left behind. Sparks flew and fist sized holes were melted in the steel of the bulkheads, deck, and overhead by the misses.

  A second target on the right, who had foolishly stood up firing his plasma carbine fast enough that the muzzle was white hot and clearly visible through the smoke like a beacon, spun down the corridor as a bolt from Laaken found him square in the shoulder. The smoldering form landed in a heap 10-meters from where he'd been hit, now at the base of the bulkhead at the end of the corridor L-junction. The two mercs began to press their attack as they moved toward the barricade.

  Bachman knew his team wouldn't last but more than a few seconds longer before they broke and were all inevitably cut down by the attackers on their heels. The fire by his team, though fairly accurate, was absolutely ineffective against their opponents advanced heavy armor. It was time to withdraw and regroup before there was nothing left to regroup with.

  Up until now he had not used the attached grenade launcher on his enhanced carbine for several reasons. First, he doubted the effectiveness of the grenades in the first place. Warheads generally had no armor piercing capability. Second, there was a good chance that the heavy explosive would cause too great of collateral damage in the confined space. And finally...the armory where they rallied just minutes before didn't have any HE grenades in stock in the first place.

  All they had on hand were gas, smoke, and scrambler rounds. All were non-lethal warheads, which were more commonly used by his team in boarding actions because the goal in their line of work was to take a prize..not to destroy it and risk yourself while doing so. Bachman decided it was now or never to let loose his grenade. He couldn't warn his team about what they were about to experience, but he knew Van Vorst, the lone defender standing of the three on his left after Jason and the engineer Fiero had taken gone down, would recognize what was happening and act accordingly.

  With a heavy "cuff" sound, loud enough to be heard through sealed helmets and over the zipping and whizzing of plasma bolts, the 20mm warhead plunged downrange and into the duo of oncoming hostiles.

  Bachman clenched his eyes closed just as the flash-scrambler impacted smartly and bounced off the glacis of the closest Ogre, to then land on the deck just before the advancing pair. The detonation that followed was blinding. Blue and white arcs of lightning made the corridor into a tunnel of sparks as electricity danced across every bit of metal within a dozen meters of the scrambler.

  Normally, the helmet visor of just about any battlesuit, and even most standard vacsuits, would auto-darken upon the sudden brightness such as that created by a flash-scrambler, but the special purpose warhead by design disabled all but the most heavily shielded electronic components. It was the hope of Bachman that the Ogre's they were facing were not immune to the effects of desperate action.

  When he reopened his eyes, his enhanced imaging and the heads-up display of his visor were absent, the scrambler having shut down all electronics in the corridor save for a few hardened and, somewhat surprisingly still functional, red emergency lights. The red light cast an eerie glow through the drifting smoke, the now all too close Ogre battlesuits were a mere 10-meters away from the barricade, their dark forms silhouettes in the dull red emergency light.

  Instead of assaulting the still foes, Bachman dropped his carbine, to have it hang from the single point sling attached to the shoulder of his suit, and grabbed the drag handles on the back of the vacsuits of the cook, Takashi and the assault skiff pilot, Darius. Bachman then proceeded to drag the two temporarily blinded and disoriented teammates to their feet and back down the final 10-meters of the corridor toward the safety of the L-junction and away from the line of fire.

  Reaching the L-junction, Bachman shoved the his two recovering team members around the corner to the protection it offered. He glanced over his shoulder, expecting Van Vorst to be on his six covering the withdrawal, but instead the she was nowhere near where he expected. The petite silhouette of Van Vorst could be seen through the lazily dissipating smoke climbing atop the nearest still frozen Ogre. He was sure she was attaching whatever explosives she had remaining in her kit to the temporarily disabled boarder. He only hoped she had enough time...suddenly Bachman's heads-up displayed flickered to life, the two forms of the Ogres highlighted in red and the friendly Van Vorst highlighted in blue. If the systems of Bachman's suit were now resuming function from the scrambler then the Ogres would not be far behind if at all.

  Laaken roared with rage while blindly and impotently frozen in his lifeless armor. The burning stims coursing through his veins only helping in the magnification of his anger and fury. The flash-scrambler had temporarily halted the assault by he and Petrov, their suits breakers and systems overloaded and requiring an emergency reset. The process of resetting his suit only took seconds but during an engagement those seconds trickled by painfully slow. He had quickly regained his vision from the intense flash, albeit with spots that would take some time to permanently clear, and he could now see in the low red light, the lithe form of a female saboteur affixing what could only be limpet mines or some other explosive onto the armored frame of the also frozen Petrov. Powered servos began to hum and the air ventilation of his suit abruptly kicked back on to supply him with fresh air and clear the condensation fog already beginning to coat the inside of his vis
or. A shudder went through the frame of his suit as full power was restored.

  Everything that happened next, occurred in the blink-of-an-eye. Laaken took a step forward, and with the gauntlet of his left arm, backhand batted the small form crawling on the back of Petrov into the nearby bulkhead. The unconscious, but most likely dead, body rebounded off the steel bulkhead to land in a crumpled ragdoll pile several meters behind the once again functional heavy exoskeletons. Petrov, with power also restored to all systems, began to release plasma bolts from his shoulder mounted cannons at a target at the end of the corridor.

  The smoke and poor lighting obscured the target from Laaken, but Petrov had no trouble locking his reticule on the form of one of the defenders scrambling to retrieve one of their own. The motionless body, who'd been hit earlier in the firefight and propelled to the end of the corridor to land near the L-junction, had nearly been dragged around the corner and safe from direct fire when a vicious bolt hit the brave...or foolish...rescuer heavily in the left thigh. The energy from the impact of the bolt propelled the would be rescuer around the corner and out of sight.

  Upon scoring the hit Petrov began moving forward once more, but after taking only his first step, he unknowingly triggered the motion sensitive limpet mines newly attached to the base of his pair of shoulder weapons systems. Had the shape charged explosives been spun 180 degrees horizontally when applied, the effect of the detonation very well could have ruined Petrov's day with a sudden and very unexpected decapitation. Petrov, lucky in that the depositor of the limpet mines was acting under extreme duress while the explosives were set, still suffered significant damage. Both shoulder mounted cannons were sheared from the heavily armored frame. The heavy jammer unit carried on his back was also trashed by the violence, the heavily armored conduits running to attachment points on his shoulder not being heavily armored enough. Further, the unexpected detonation, coinciding with his stride forward, knocked him off-balance causing him to topple forward and slam face first to the deck in a calamitous collision with the steel grating.

  Laaken was not to escape unscathed. Though the setting of the shape charged mines had been limited to Petrov alone, the suddenness of the detonation, then followed by the chaotic reverberation of the heavy face-to-deck crash by Petrov, all the while in a poorly lit environment of the smoke filled corridor, was disorientating to say the least. Laaken, by instinct took a back, and despite all the powered servos, magnetic boots, and gyro stabilizers of his hi-tech armor, he still somehow managed to lose his footing and trip to fall flat on his back. The second half-ton crash in less than a second was resounding.

  A bystander might have thought this scene rather comical if not for the high stakes being played.

  Both Ogre suits lay there for a moment, still, their occupants stunned by both the shock of collision with the deck and the unexpected turn of events. They were down however but far from being out of the game. Quickly they recovered, rising to their feet as servos and gears were forced to comply despite their mechanical whines of protest. The two mercenaries swayed momentarily as the gyros took control and balanced each half-ton suit of man joined with armor.

  Out of impulsiveness coupled with a ferocious wrath, Petrov loosed the one weapon he had yet employed, and now one of the few that remained operational. He crouched to one knee to brace himself for the coming explosion, an explosion initiated on his terms this time. A single 35mm grenade, of the armor piercing high-explosive variety, not especially suited for close-quarter combat, especially in confined spaces of a ship, was loosed from the launcher mounted on his right forearm, to scream the short distance down the corridor to the L-junction. The resulting explosion violently rattled the bones of the ship. The bulkhead had easily been pierced by the warhead which then detonated and tore the steel like paper. The deck above buckled from the sudden lack of support below, and steel decking and components came crashing down to completely block the end of the corridor and the path of the mercs.

  Laaken, who knew the temper and recklessness of Petrov expected something from the man but not the foolishness currently on display. When he saw Petrov take a knee and brace himself, Laaken did the same for he knew what was coming, he knew there was no way to avert the action of his partner. After surviving the terrible explosion, Laaken considered blasting Petrov himself, but he needed him despite his obviously diminished capacity and now heavily damaged suit.

  A quiet descended upon the ravaged deck. Surprising the space was now empty of smoke. The acrid cloud going from an area of high concentration to low concentration on jets of super heated air from the plasma fire and explosives. Somewhere on this ship there was now a high concentration of smoke, residual tear gas, and vaporized steel. The environmental system forced to work overtime. Soon Laaken hoped to vent the ship of all that, contaminated air and breathable atmosphere alike. If he controlled the environmental system he would control the ship and thus a ride home. Petrov and Laaken retreated down the path they had come, to reassess, contact their partner working aft toward the engineering spaces, and plan a different route to their goal with the primary one being of course now impassable.

  *****

  Approximately 14-Minutes Earlier

  Dr. Paolo Skansi was most assuredly a man of few words. Very few words. His preferred method of communication was a detailed report sent electronically through the ethereal network. When required to communicate face-to-face he usually only pointed and grunted. While directing the cleanup of the medical bay, after the short ship-to-ship engagement, the Doctor with his trademark lit cigarette in hand, waved, pointed, and grunted to the crew assigned to his space as an action station. The crew following the direction of the Doctor were all business as they went about their labors and prep for the casualties that were certain were soon to trickle in. And sure enough a body, dripping with two types of gel, acceleration couch anti-compression gel and nanite infused burn treatment gel, was carried into the compartment in short order. The injured crewmember hefted between two men who were breathing heavily and sweating from their exertions.

  The collision immediately after being pulled out of transit space had caused numerous havocs throughout the ship. Among them was a pretty severe power surge which had caught the now unidentifiable crewman. Dr. Skansi immediately tended to the grievously injured man, said to be an engineer specialist. According to the two who had brought him to medical, he'd had been unlucky enough to be near a primary breaker nestled between power couplings in the engineering section when the initial collision occurred. All sorts of things could go wrong in the spaces occupied by power generators, energy couplings, and propulsion related machinery, even when everything was going right. The two who brought the engineer to medical had extinguished their aflame co-worker, slapped nanite medi-gel on him, threw him in the acceleration couch, and then carried him as quickly as they could to the Doctor when released after ship-to-ship combat. Unfortunately their actions were all for naught.

  Dr. Skansi had just pulled a sheet over the charred remains of the poor deceased engineer when his personal communicator chirped. In fact everyone's personal communicator in the compartment chirped as a half-dozen plus one chirps echoed near simultaneously. He glanced at the screen and saw that it was a general action message from the Captain. Why the Captain wasn't using the 1MC was beyond him. The 1MC was used just a short time ago proving itself to be functional. Dr. Skansi put his on the loud speaker setting so that everyone in the room didn't need to put their communicator up to their ear.

  "Stand by for an emergency action message. Stand by one," the voice of Captain Wray sounded through the speaker. Several quiet seconds passed with everyone assembled wondering the same thing...what the hell was going on now? "Prepare to repel boarders. I Repeat, prepare to repel boarders!" Looks of shock and silent determination were split between the crew in medical. It was no surprise that half were experienced fighters, the determined, and the others not so very much, the shocked. Dr. Skansi, as always, remained pretty much unreadable
to all in the cabin. The Captain continued on, "This is not a wide 1MC announcement because I don't want to let the boarders know we're in on their secret. We've got a tick dug into our side people, port amidships, just forward of primary medical. There can be anywhere from three to six in light to heavy armor. Info is still incoming. Priority areas for defense are engineering, environmental, and the bridge. Everyone is to don vacsuits in case we lose hull integrity, they use gas, or we're outright vented if they're able to take the environmental station. In case we lose wireless, checkin via the hardlines with the bridge. I'll be coordinating from here. Captain, out," and the communicator went very ominously quiet.

  Technically Dr. Skansi made the largest share out of the seven able bodied crew currently in the cabin. He was happy, but of course didn't show it, to find a senior member of the Belle's boarding teams amongst the small crowd. The Doctor gave a slight bow and swept his cigarette clutching hand wide to encompass the half-dozen crew to a unknowingly lucky Ayad Ibn Sula ,who had narrowly missed death by exiting the fast-pipe on his way to the hangar and the captive Osprey shuttle, when the Belle' was pulled from transit space to then collide with the Vulture class frigate. Had Ayad been in the fast-pipe during the collision with the frigate he could have been injured or killed. But had he been in the fast-pipe when the boarding arrow struck, he would have been outright killed because it was the fast-pipe he had ridden that had been taken out by the breeching of the boarding missile.