Free Fleet Box Set 1

by Michael Chatfield

  “My people are already pulling apart the weapons control panel in the first room; hopefully we’ll be able to cut control before they know what’s going on.”

  “All right, get to it. I’m going to see what it’s like up front.”

  I could already hear fighting; now it didn’t matter for us as we had control of the air locks, and the weapons arrays that were placed to blow away our ships had been dealt with by Henry’s boarders.

  I tagged onto the groups moving into the station now as alarms started going off.

  “Eddie?”

  “Yes, James, I’m uploading the program for the air locks now. Do you have a hard connection? The wireless here is spotty.”

  I could hear something speaking in the background, but I ignored it.

  “Well, uh, working on that,” I said. Well, hell, the plasma cannon worked better than I thought. I jumped in the first room I found with consoles lit up and stuck my jack into it.

  “All right, establishing connection. She says it’ll take a few minutes.”

  “Okay.” Must be referring to Resilient.

  “Bingo was his name-o! All air locks locked and sealed. If they try to flee now, they’ll rip a hole in the side of the ship. Plus, the station’s weapons array will fire on them.”

  “Thank you, Eddie. Keep the Resilient safe till I’m back.”

  “Oh, she’ll do that herself, sir!” he said with pride.

  A Man and His Rocket

  Henry was wondering what the hell he’d gotten himself into as he floated in space.

  Great, just great! Jump out of a perfectly good spaceship, stuck to a chemical rocket without a damned weapon to take a space station with tens more people. You’ll be becoming a Ranger at this rate with these ridiculous ideas. He growled inside his head as he spoke in a tone that seemed to spawn from granite, entirely different from his own thoughts.

  “Watch your velocities and approach vectors. Don’t eyeball it, people.” In space, with the velocities he and the other AMCs were traveling, they’d learned that using your eyeball was the best way to become a dent in something. The best way was to use the sensors and a braking table. For the velocity you were going at, you needed to brake this hard, or a little to stop a few meters off the surface.

  His HUD turned green as James signaled the shields were down.

  Oh yay, at least I’m not going to be crushed like a bug on a windshield. Why did I agree to this?

  “Get a move on, commandos,” Henry said, as if what they were doing was an everyday kind of thing, and pushed his acceleration up as he watched his counter. He sighed briefly as he passed where the shield would’ve turned him into a splotch of armor and man. He couldn’t relax yet as he watched his counter.

  Gently does it. That’s a big ass rock. Check gauges. Nice and slow—nice and slow. Don’t think of the rock the size of America. Fire reverse thrust—nicely does it. Nearly there.

  Henry goosed the rocket in his hands. As he felt the g’s impact his body, everything strained. Now he was thankful for the high gravity training James had subjected everyone to. Then the pressure was gone. Henry felt his boots clamp to the ground as he looked at it with shock.

  Well, fuck me. He looked at the ground and checked as landing dots filled his HUD, the nearest thirty meters away and still braking.

  Henry cut his communications as he rowed the air and kicked his feet out. “Duhh nuh nuh nuh, nuh nuh, nuh nuh can’t touch this! Duhh nuh nuh nuh, nuh nuh, nuh nuh can’t touch this!” He stopped dancing as he looked to the rock.

  “Take that, yah damned frigging rock!” He grinned as he turned on his communications again, seeing the Golden Refuge for the second time as it passed underneath him, headed to its dock. It made something resonate within him, the way a soldier would with a battalion of tanks, or a sailor would within a supercarrier. They just projected military purpose; they were machines for battle, and there was no room for frills or prettiness. Henry just wished he could see her in better shape; the hull of the Golden Refuge looked as pitted as the station he stood on.

  Golden Refuge sounded too damned pretty. He grinned as he checked his commandos’ progress.

  “All right, hurry this up, people! As soon as you’re down, now get to the air locks. We aren’t here to sight-see!” he barked.

  Henry’s eyes caught sight of one of the station’s weapon batteries and his eyes swelled. Where the Golden Refuge’s had been big, these were gargantuan. They looked too big to be weapons, being easily five stories long.

  Finally, all of the AMCs were down and within the shielding as it re-activated. A few had come in too hot, either having to come back around from missing the station or wounding themselves; only three had died. Henry was thankful the number was so low, but it still gnawed at him. He knew that there would be many more deaths today.

  He located the nearest air lock, sitting down as he watched the Golden Refuge’s engines go silent. Umbilical cords of the air lock attached and then became rigid with a good seal between the station and ship.

  Now it was in the hands of those they’d left behind. He waited for what felt an eternity before James opened a channel with him and the rest of the advanced party.

  “All right, advanced parties, make entry,” James said.

  Not a minute too late, Henry grumbled to himself.

  “Make sure they’re on target, Henry.”

  “We are, sir. Just watching you from beside my air lock.”

  “Understood. You are clear to proceed.”

  “Yes, sir. Being out here isn’t as fun as it first sounded though, sir.”

  James laughed lightly. “Why do you think I didn’t volunteer for it?” Salchar cut the channel as Henry jacked into the air lock’s control panel, letting the program Eddie had made open it.

  As soon as it opened, he threw himself inside with others packing in with him so tight it might as well have been rush hour on the Tokyo train. They righted themselves with the artificial gravity as the air locks cycled and they rushed out. There was one guard running away, who turned at the noise of the air lock opening. One of the forward Mechas put their fist through his head as the others swarmed around and into the corridor, clearing it for the others.

  The first Mecha, with their yellow-bloodied hand, stood there.

  “Get moving, Commando! They wouldn’t have hesitated to do it to you!” Henry pulled him out of the air lock as it cycled and some commandos pulled weaponry from the corpse.

  Another pirate came to see what the noise was about, getting a burst to the head for his worries.

  “It’s us or them, Commando!” Henry told the Mecha who shook her head, breathing as she visibly shook and followed Henry, who moved to the next corpse.

  Henry picked through the amazingly exotic and large array of weaponry on the second pirate. He shook his head as he took the heavy rail gun and spread out the various pistols and small machine guns and then two bandoliers of plasma grenades.

  “What the hell did he think he was taking on? Armageddon?” one commando said with a shake of their head at the pirate’s overkill as they grabbed a weapon.

  “Well, his overkill is our win.” Henry checked over the rail gun with a sour face. He could’ve at least invested in more than a few magazines! The lack of discipline with the pirates was not something he was going to let continue on in his corps.

  “God, this thing probably hasn’t been cleaned in years!” he grumbled as he cycled the action and thumbed the rail activator, which whined oddly but still worked. Sighing, he brought it to his shoulder and opened the door in front of him, right into the middle of a confused poker game. The five or so players rushed to put their gear on as Henry walked in the door, getting stunned looks. His finger stroked the trigger, being rewarded with a bloody impression on the wall behind them. Others funneled in the room behind him, engaging anything he hadn’t. He switched targets to the nearest door; his sensors were confirmed by one of the men behind him.

  Damn, that trainin
g was paying off. “Clear!” Henry waited for a team to stack up on him as hypervelocity bolts ripped through the door in front of him. Seemed the pirates knew they were finally here.

  Henry leaned down and grabbed a plasma grenade. I’ll take that and that. He grabbed a wicked plasmid blade from a bloody pulp that had been a pirate before they’d been hit by Henry’s hypervelocity slugs. He cut through the door and tossed in a grenade, as if the whole thing was nothing more than brushing one’s teeth.

  Plasma and fire shot out of the holes in the door as Henry bashed it open with sword raised, slowing his run as soon as he got a few steps inside the room, finding a clearly dead gun team. They’d been drinking some rotgut from the distillery they’d made in the corner, but a plasma grenade—combined with the flammable aspects of high-proof alcohol—had ended their merry time rather spectacularly, leaving a hole through the next wall into someone’s now nonexistent closet.

  “Keep your visors on. It looks like you’d get drunk off the fumes in here.” Henry looked at the melted mangled mess of the huge still.

  Alarms and a weak fire suppression system were going off, but it didn’t reach this section. Henry watched his temperature gauge creep higher as he walked through the closet, finding a selection of weapons and a fired alien. He grabbed a heavy rail gun and some ammo before he exited the living quarter’s door.

  He was happy to see that most of the lead people had some kind of salvaged weapon. Henry broke into a quick trot to the first intersection, where some half-armored pirates and a large amount of non-armored pirates were running toward the intrusion. He thumbed the selector to full auto as he fired at the pirates at head height.

  The armed teams with him joined in with the fire as they moved to cover.

  “Grenade!” one pirate yelled.

  Henry dove back as the hallway shuddered. He picked himself up and turned, looking at what had been the reaction force. In their panic, they’d hit the roof of the hallway and the grenade had bounced back at them.

  “Medic!” he heard on the channel. He looked around, finding someone on the ground who’d caught a rail gun round in the leg. Their other team member checked the tourniquets were applied and slapped the manual Hellfire injector.

  “You fucking sounva...”

  “You’ll thank me in a bit, Wilma.” The man turned off the speakers in the suit so that his team member could swear in peace as she went unnervingly still and then thrashed in pain of the telltale Hellfire. Hopefully it hadn’t gotten an artery, or it would take her awhile to get back in the fight.

  “All right, stay with her. We’re going to move on. Grab any weapons that work. Keep moving straight—that’s where the command center of the station is. Half of you with weapons, split and link up with the people with our weapons and ammo.”

  “Yes, MC.” MC had come to stand for Mecha Commander. James didn’t know much about ranks so he made people commanders of everything platoon and higher, with leaders for everything below and being the second-in-command after commanders, effectively making an officer and NCO core. It was very simplistic, but Henry had to say it worked. He advanced with the lead sections of the advanced teams, jumping forward between any cover they could find.

  “Contact front!” Henry jumped for cover as he let a continuous stream of rounds go into the oncoming forces.

  He grunted as he picked himself up, seeing the rest of the forward squad lay waste to the advancing pirates.

  “Medic!”

  This was going to be a long day. He picked himself up and bounded forward again, people taking the place of the injured and the attending teammate.

  ***

  Captain Welick looked at the screens that showed the hundreds of cameras around the station to either side of a huge hologram which displayed the entire station, showing where everyone was in the station.

  “How?” His twin eye stalks moved wildly among the different screens, unable to understand what was happening.

  “They’ve all come from your fleet,” a gargantuan, brown furred alien said, a thunderous turned thoughtful look on his face.

  “I know but this is not my doing, Jorsht!” Welick’s eye stalks moved wildly in distress.

  “I don’t doubt that as your own crews are dead and it seems they have taken your ship.”

  “What’re we going to do?”

  The furred creature waited, staring at the screens for a few minutes. Welick knew it was unwise to interrupt Jorsht when he was thinking. More than one being had been crushed in a hand swipe by the massive, muscle bound monster.

  “We’re going to wait, Welick. We still have the kill switches.”

  “Yes, let’s activate them now.” He pulled out a remote from his robes.

  “NO!” Jorsht smacked the device from Welick’s hand-fin.

  Welick squealed. The fragile bones broke like toothpicks being hit by a sledgehammer. The noises of pain quickly stopped as Welick realized an enraged Jorsht was staring at him.

  “You idiot! You want to kill them all now when they’re eliminating all of our competition?”

  “What do you mean, Jorsht?” Welick’s eye stalks moved wildly as he cradled his broken hand-fin nervously.

  “There are thirty-five ships docked in this station right now, all of which are locked down. If they move, the weapons systems will fire on them. No pirate will be willing to undock in these conditions, so they’re going to throw themselves at your Mechas. Which, fortunately for us, are quite effective.” He stomped forward to his screens.

  “Let your wild Mechas kill the captains of the ships; then, when it seems that all is lost, we’ll activate their kill switches. We’ll be in charge of thirty-five ships instead of your ten; two of which the Syndicate has kept on Chaleel.”

  “What about the Syndicate? They will hunt us.”

  “We can’t help technical problems. They made the kill switches. If it took some time to activate, it wasn’t our fault.” Jorsht’s eyes darkened with greed.

  Welick’s eyes mimicked Jorsht’s as they grinned darkly together.

  “They’d want to cover that up; they’d kill us if we said the switches were faulty,” Welick proposed, his greed overcoming his fear.

  Jorsht guffawed at his accomplice’s proposed problems. “Yes, I’d like to see that—have them come and take the second most powerful Syndicate base in the known galaxy with its own fleet. It would be a waste of money. If we say we won’t say the kill switches don’t work, but it was because of the station’s high concentrations of heavy metals, they’ll happily let us keep the ships to stay quiet and take their cut of the money we make, as they always do.”

  “Are you sure they won’t try to punish us for this?”

  “Punish the ones who stopped a native force we just started harvesting for troops from taking one of their biggest cash cows? I don’t think so.”

  “What about crews then? Will we have enough?”

  “Yes, just keep the Kuruvians alive, and the Sarenmenti. You’ll notice none of those two are with these humans. Also, the private crews will thank us; we did, after all, save their lives.”

  Jorsht could see Welick’s eye stalks now shining at the thought. “If we don’t activate the internal weaponry, then we wouldn’t damage the station as much for later repairs,” he said, moving past the battle and looking how to make a profit.

  “Could say it was due to the lack of some Kuruvian engineers and space a bunch of the useless ones.”

  “That does have a certain appeal.” Jorsht moved to his seat and settled down.

  “We could have a sale of all private belongings of the deceased. Pirates from all over this sector would come to trade and move past any issues they might have.” Welick’s eye stalks darkened further as he thought of the profit from this mishap.

  “Yes, and we should see about the acquisition of this Earth. These are effective soldiers, if we remove this rebellious trait from them,” Jorsht said with a thin smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

  It
’s Going Too Well

  “I thought we would’ve encountered internal weapon systems by now,” I said to Min Hae over a private channel.

  “The domes in the walls are the internal weapon systems but it does seem that they haven’t activated them for some bizarre reason. Some of them we’ve hacked in to with the wireless transmitters, but it needs a direct connection to the weapon systems. Otherwise, my people have been working on cutting power to them.”

  I turned the corner I was waiting behind, running and firing before throwing myself at another piece of cover. My personal guard fell in with me as I looked over the side, incinerating a pirate for their troubles.

  “Take that, you bastard,” I muttered, changing out magazines.

  “Sorry, sir?”

  “Nothing, Min Hae. So can we make sure they stay dead?”

  “I’d talk to Eddie about that.”

  “Okay, wish me luck. Eddie?”

  “Yes, Commander James Cook, Salchar, Choi Joo Mi,” Eddie said in a jovial tone.

  “Just one of those will do, and can we keep these internal weapon systems offline?”

  Resilient came on the channel. “It’s all controlled by one system. There are different staggered generators. With your wireless hubs, I am taking out the power and re-writing the IFF codes. Though I will need Min Hae and his people to let me have power if the turrets are needed.”

  “Okay, but what if we can’t control them?”

  “Cut the power for the last hundred meters to the command center. The turrets are powered directly from the center; those will need to be cut from the power or destroyed.”

  “How do we destroy one?”

  “An anti-armor penetrator should do.”

  “Damn.” The anti-armor penetrator was designed to go through the reactive and ablative armor of a tank and would leave a ten-centimeter pit against the hull of the Resilient, which was quite an undertaking with her armor.

  “Once in the command center, we will control the station and I can provide assistance.”