by Evan Currie
“Report, Corporal.” The colonel’s voice was tense, but steady.
Rider did as ordered, laying out the situation as quickly and cleanly as he could.
“Hold your position as long as you can without being compromised,” Colonel Conner said. “We’re trying to determine what the enemy is looking for. Let them search.”
“Roger that, ma’am,” Rider answered. He didn’t really have much choice, but he wasn’t going to say that. “Holding position, remaining linked in. Will update if anything changes.”
“Good work, Corporal. Copy any intel you can grab over to the network as you can,” Conner ordered. “Everything we can get on them matters now.”
“Yes ma’am.”
► The sergeant led the way as the Marine escort and the captain of the Tetanna strode into the engineering level.
Drey ignored the work going on and headed for the secure library node, where he could not only pull data but also use command-level functions. He quickly put his security level in and called up the data access history.
“They have been inputting specific search terms,” he announced. “It seems they knew what they were coming on board for.”
“What were they looking for?” the Terran sergeant asked, looking over the captain’s shoulder.
“Armor specifications, laser specifications, information on Priminae allies . . .” Drey stoically looked over at the armored face.
“None of that is good, Captain,” the sergeant said.
“On that we are in accord,” Drey said. “These . . . Imperials have noted that while they have a power advantage on our weapons, the modifications we acquired from you still gave us an edge in terms of combat effectiveness. They are clearly seeking to neutralize that, and they are curious as to where we acquired it.”
“What do you have in there about us anyway?”
“Not much, but perhaps too much all the same,” Drey said, skimming the search response as he spoke, just to be sure he wasn’t forgetting anything. “Your admiral requested that we not record your home world and, while I cannot speak to the records on the core worlds, that request was honored by the fleet. I am sure that there are captains who know the location of your world, but they will not pull it from our computers.”
“That’s one thing, I suppose. What is there, though?” the sergeant pressed.
“Basic information, approximate total population, habitable worlds—or world, in this case. General technological information,” Drey said.
“That’s bad enough. I need to speak with the colonel,” the sergeant said, then paused. “What about drive mechanics?”
“Pardon?”
“The transition drive. Did they search for that?”
Drey looked quickly, a cold rush chilling him despite the heat he was still feeling. It only took seconds to determine, however, that the Imperials had not searched for it, and he sighed in relief.
“No, they did not.”
“Good. They may not have noticed us using it yet,” the sergeant said. “Can you shut them down from here?”
“Yes, but that won’t remove the data they’ve already acquired if they’ve been copying it as they searched.”
“Alright, hold tight on that. I need to bring the colonel in on this one.”
► Conner swore softly to herself as she examined the intelligence that was currently flying right into enemy hands.
We’re definitely looking at a load of intel we do not want the enemy to acquire at this time, she thought. Or ever.
She was privy to the commodore’s orders from on high, and just the limited intel about Earth alone was a serious blow to the bluffing strategy they were gambling on. Granted, she didn’t think that strategy would hold for long, but the longer it did, the better for Earth and, by extension, the Priminae.
They were going to have to cut that font of knowledge right off, and quick, she decided. The question was how to deal with what would happen right afterward.
The enemy would begin to evac along with the intelligence they’d already gathered, which was a strict no-no to her mind. Unfortunately, their remaining forces still strongly outnumbered her Marines, and while the locals were willing to fight, the fewer people flinging gigawatts of heat energy around the already sauna-like starship, the better.
A glance at her own armor showed that she was severely taxing the environmental controls, and she hadn’t taken any damage or significant indirect exposure to laser flash. A lot of her Marines were into the redline of their suit’s environmental controls, and as hot as the interior of the ship was already, the suit’s radiators weren’t functioning anywhere near peak.
A prolonged fight would see her lose as many Marines to heatstroke as to enemy fire, to say nothing of what would happen to the unarmored Priminae crewmen still working to keep the Tetanna from collapsing under its own weight.
She took a breath, considering her options, but really, they boiled down to just two.
Assault or ambush.
Ambush it is.
“Sergeant,” she said over the battle network, “have the captain kill their access, then pull your Marines back to . . . Bravo One Niner and prepare to ambush the enemy as they withdraw.”
► Half Centure Leif stood watch, impatiently kicking at the deck with his armored boot while the technical specialists ran their search parameters through the Oather computer, grabbing the details it spat back in response. The closer they got to completing the mission, the more nervous he grew.
Reports from others had ranged from bad to worse, with entire quarter centures going silent off schedule, which didn’t bode well for their survival. The Oathers’ allies were efficient, brutal, and quick. He found that respectable in an enemy, but he would prefer to do his respecting later, perhaps in a history class talking about how well they’d fought before finally succumbing to the Empire.
Unfortunately, that day wasn’t upon them yet, and nothing could be done to speed things along. Grabbing data from a fractal core was, ideally, a dockyard job. Doing it in the field, under fire, was the sort of mission a troop could have nightmares about.
There was simply too much data stored in a core to just grab a copy and run. So he and his troop were holding the area while the searches were completed. They hoped that the enemy would focus their attention on the command and engineering decks rather than the computer core. They’d done similar missions a hundred times in the past, and trained for it a thousand times at least, but now there were too many unknowns.
He wanted to be clear and on his way out of this soon-to-be derelict hulk of a ship.
The technical specialist starting to swear in multiple languages, several of them decidedly non-Imperial in origin, was a bad sign.
“What is it?” Leif yelled, gesturing for one of his men to take his place as he fell out of formation and moved over to the computer interface.
“Someone just cut us off. We are finished here,” the specialist said, already packing up his gear.
“What? How?” Leif demanded.
“It appears to be a command override,” the specialist said, “likely the captain or engineering chief. Either way, this is as far as we can go.”
“Very well. It is time to leave, then!”
► “Shit,” Dow swore as he pulled back from the corner. “Rider, we’ve got an issue. They’re packing up. We’re going to be uncovered here really damn quick.”
“Pull back,” Rider ordered. “Colonel and the Primmy captain cut their intel feed. We’re to keep eyes on until the colonel can get a reaction team to join up with us.”
“Better be some reaction team, boss,” Dow said as he put away his hand scanner. “These boys are packing heavy, and they look like they mean business.”
“So do we, Dow. Drop a couple of disposable scanners and meet at the fallback point.”
“Oorah,” the private said as he slapped a scanner package on the wall just around the corner. Then he joined two other Marines. They cleared the area as quickly a
s they could while remaining relatively silent until they were a fair distance down the hall. They broke into a jog as they headed to meet up with Rider.
They planted scanner packs as they moved, trying to cover as much of the area as possible with each one. The mobile systems weren’t as good as their armor, but the tech’s transceivers served to expand the battle network and increase their battlefield intelligence.
The corporal was waiting for them at the fallback point, as expected, and he joined in the formation as they continued to run.
“We’ve got information on decks that are closed off and places the enemy still controls,” Rider said, sending them copies of the intel. “So we’ve mapped their likely egress point. Colonel wants them stopped dead, literally if necessary. We’re to rejoin third squad and get dug in for a fight.”
“We’re going to need more than third squad to pull that off, Corporal,” Ramirez said as they moved. “They’re packing the equivalent of heavy artillery, and the battleground favors their loadout.”
“Yeah, I know. We’ll figure it out.”
► Colonel Conner skidded to a stop near the portable airlock that connected back to where the Marines had made their entry to the ship. There were people already there, cycling gear in from the cold as quickly as the lock would allow.
“Colonel . . .” One of them turned, wearing light Marine aviator’s armor. “We’ve got everything we could strip off the birds and fit through the lock. The last couple of loads will be through in a minute.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant,” she said. “People will be here to transport it shortly.”
“My LEO and I are volunteering to be part of the effort, ma’am.”
She looked closer at the man and the tag on his chest. “Lieutenant Hadrian, you’re not exactly in field armor, and you’re a pilot.”
“I’m a Marine aviator, ma’am. Rifleman first, pilot a distant second,” he said seriously. “Besides, how much will field armor stand up to one of those infantry lasers?”
Conner grimaced under her armor, knowing that the answer to that was not at all. Even a decent glancing hit would cook a Marine in field armor just as well as a man in BDUs. The lieutenant’s light aviator’s armor would serve as good as anything else short of a field mech.
“Grab a rifle, then, and start hauling crates to the ambush point, Lieutenant,” she said. “We’ve got work to do.”
“Oorah, Colonel!”
Conner watched as the young lieutenant reached for a rifle from the stack against the bulkhead and nudged his LEO. The two men picked up a crate of munitions and started off, leaving her shaking her head.
Too gung ho for his own good.
That wasn’t something unique to the lieutenant, however, and at the moment, she needed every rifle hand she could get.
► Getting everyone ready to move, along with the equipment they’d brought to interface with the Oather computer, had taken longer than Leif would have preferred, as the enemy had clearly worked out what they were up to and where they were likely working. He got his men in order, put the technical specialists in the middle of the pack, and set them moving.
Their path out of the ship was limited largely by the damage incurred when the Oather vessel had tangled with the navarch’s squadron, but also by ominous black spots in their surveillance since the unknown warriors had engaged them. Leif had to assume that those black spots were now in hostile control, and he thus had far fewer paths to pick from.
They’d entered the ship by forcing their way in through the shuttle bays, perpendicular to the majority of the places the enemy forces had been spotted.
They must have come in through one of the hull breaches, he supposed.
That wasn’t an uncommon approach, though he was honestly surprised that they hadn’t tried the shuttle bays themselves. They had probably spotted the Imperial Parasites loitering near them, or perhaps they’d been unable to communicate with the command crew of the ship. In either case, it didn’t matter now.
What did matter was that the enemy lines back to their own ships lay well away from his egress path. With luck, he might be able to silently retreat before they knew what was happening.
Of course, with luck, they’d not have realized what he and his team were doing until it was far too late anyway. Luck was a fickle ally at the best of times and not one to count on in a fight.
“Scouts out front,” he ordered. “Watch for ambushes.”
A small reconnaissance squad nodded and ran up ahead of the group. Running an ambush in the corridors of a ship would be easy to set up but hard to hide. Unless they planned to completely give the game away from the start, they’d not be able to use that smoke in the opening moments either, so Leif was confident that they could probably get one good clean barrage before the battle got clouded.
With luck, that would end the fight before it got started.
Of course, the enemy was well aware of that as well, so he had to expect that they had a plan for just that event.
That sort of plan and counterplan gave Leif a headache. He preferred a straight-up fight. Open power versus open power, and let the victor be the one left standing. Few were the forces that could match an Imperial group in terms of raw power, and of those that could, numbers made up for a lot of weaknesses.
► “Everything is in place, Colonel,” the sergeant said softly as the Marines settled into their positions.
With time to prepare the battlefield, her Marines had torn the panels off the walls to give them room and cover. It would be of limited use against the infantry lasers the Imperials were bringing to the table, but even soft cover was better than hanging bare ass in the open. Conner nodded approvingly as she was carefully situated a short distance from the ambush sight, out of the direct line of fire, by the sergeant.
He’d tried to assign her a pair of Marines for security, but she’d stepped on that in short order. Every hand was needed in the fight, and two guns babysitting her were two guns not firing on the enemy. Her NCO treating her like she was fragile was amusing most of the time, but while she could understand his position, there were limits.
So, instead, she was only tucked into one of the maintenance corridors. The space was cramped and far from ideal, but it was a reasonably secure position from which to observe and direct the fight. Now it was just a matter of time and patience, both of which she suspected they were about to run desperately short of.
They had eyes on the enemy thanks to the recon team and the mobile scanners they’d planted along the likely withdrawal paths. Unfortunately, the Imperials weren’t running along like cocky fools. Their officer had dispatched a recon team of his own that ran well ahead of the main body, which was shortly going to give her a tough decision.
If she didn’t take the recon team out, they were going to run into her Marines in their semifortified positions. If they reported that back, that would be bad. If she did have the team eliminated before they could happen on her people, which was really the only realistic option Conner could see, then even if they didn’t get a message out before they were taken down . . . the main force would almost certainly notice them going black.
Either way, there went the element of surprise.
“Let the recon team get as close as possible,” she ordered. “And then take them out.”
This is going to get ugly.
► The Imperial scout troop made their way through the corridors ahead of the main force, eyes sharp as they looked for any sign of enemy presence.
The scouts were often a punishment assignment in the Imperial forces, given when a troop screwed up enough to warrant severe punishment yet not enough to warrant execution. Generally, it was bad form to ask what a fellow scout had done to get their position, but secrets still got around.
Kel was in the lead, his infantry laser cradled in his arms. He sought anything that looked out of place as they moved. He didn’t like the situation in the least, but it was rare that a scout had any liking for the job. Not the s
ane ones, at least.
“Hold,” he ordered as he noticed something. “We have lost contact with the main contingent.”
“Jamming?” one of his men asked.
“Maybe,” Kel said cautiously. “There is a lot of radiation here, but we caused a fair amount of it, so it is hard to say.”
They paused as he checked his instruments, trying to figure out what was causing the interference while he tried to reconnect for good measure.
“Are these supposed to be here?” a quiet voice asked over the suit comm, causing him to turn to where his second, Tiran, had paused, looking closely at a black boxy shape on the wall.
“Scan it,” he ordered.
“Right.” Tiran lowered his laser and brought up a powerful scanner to examine the object. “Hmm. No power source to speak of, no volatiles of record. Chemical analysis is curious, but it could be a lot of things.”
“Weapon?” Kel asked.
“That would be one of the things,” Tiran confirmed. “Not any composition we are familiar with, but the energy potential is significant, though not exceedingly so.”
Kel looked at the device, then up and down the corridor as he realized that they’d most likely walked into a kill zone.
“Arms up!” he ordered sharply, bringing his laser up quickly.
His team had just started to react when movement at a junction ahead caught his attention. Kel had started to shift his aim when the dark blurs exploded into flashes of fire and smoke, and he felt hammer blows smashing through his armor.
He went down to his knees, his men falling around him as his laser clattered to the deck. Four figures in dark mottled armor approached from the junction as he slumped, and the world began to fade around him.
I detest being a scout.
► Corporal Rider kicked the lasers clear of the bodies he was standing over. “Clear.”
“Good job,” the sergeant said from behind him.
“Recon,” Rider said.
“Oorah,” his team responded as they secured the area.
