by Evan Currie
A quick look at the rest of the team showed that they were all in the same boat, unsurprisingly. The Marine armor Mark IIV wasn’t meant to deal with this sort of prolonged heat. They had additional cooling packs for extreme environments, but no one had thought them necessary for the mission, and they likely would have gotten in the way when traveling through the ship’s corridors.
“Well, the longer we can hold this position, the more time the colonel has to drop her surprise on these pricks,” he said to the others, “but I’m guessing we’ve got maybe ten minutes before the first of us passes out. Probably less. I figure Kensey is out in three.”
“Hey!” he objected amid chuckles from the other three.
“So the question becomes,” Rider continued, “how long do we push this? If we all pass out here, we’ll likely be dead of heatstroke before anyone finds us.”
The Recon Marines looked at each other briefly.
“Fuck it,” Dow said. “I’m in to the end.”
“Ditto,” Ram said simply.
“I ain’t passing out first,” Kensey said, gripping his weapon.
Rider grinned humorlessly under his helm. “Alright. Last person standing gets to drag the rest back to somewhere cooler—and all his drinks are paid for next time we’re home. Deal?”
“Hell yeah,” Dow shouted.
“Recon, oorah!” Ramirez said simply.
“Damn right,” Rider said, taking a breath. “Recon!”
“Oorah!”
► Half Centure Leif fell back as the volume of fire thickened from the forces they’d pinned down. He thought he and his troop were wearing them down, but now it appeared that reinforcements had arrived to solidify the position.
Well, you are welcome to it. We just want off this hulk.
“Keep them pinned in place,” he ordered the men covering the area. “We are almost through to the flight deck.”
“Yes Centure,” the closest acknowledged instantly, firing another burst of energized photons down the range.
He didn’t hit anything, but that wasn’t the point. Once they broke through to the flight deck, they just had to hold the corridor for a few minutes at most, then it would be all over.
A call from the laser crews cutting through the bulkhead shifted his focus, and Leif headed over to survey the progress. As he’d expected, they were practically through, though the integrity of the Oather ceramic bulkheads was an annoyance. They didn’t transfer heat well, and the energy required to vaporize material was obscene.
The Imperial infantry lasers were up to the task, however, but as they weren’t designed to burn continuously, the process took longer than it would have with an industrial cutter. They had to stagger bursts so the material wouldn’t cool down between blasts, taking coordination and time.
Coordination was something they had plenty of. Leif had drilled his team constantly since being put in charge, but time was now of the essence.
“We have opened up the hole, Centure,” the chief in charge of the cutters told him as he approached. “It will take just a little longer to make the aperture large enough to pass.”
“Good work,” Leif praised him. “Hurry them along as you can. We are being pressured from the rear now.”
“Understood, Centure. I will see it done.”
► “Colonel, check this out.”
“What is it, Sergeant?” Conner asked, shifting her focus to his feed.
“Check thermal.”
Conner flipped over to the thermal filters on the feed and whistled softly.
Ceramic was a poor conductor of heat, so for a section of the bulkhead to be that hot meant they were almost through.
“Alright, boys and girls,” she said softly over the team channel, “get ready because here they come. Lieutenant, tell me you’re making progress. You are about to run out of time.”
► Lieutenant Hadrian paused from where he and the rest of his team were working on the security seals on the airlock the Imperials had used to connect to the ship.
“Almost there, Colonel. Keep them off us, and we’ll get this done.”
The colonel’s voice was tense when she responded. “We’ll do what we can.”
Hadrian turned back to the Marines and the Priminae security troop who were working on cracking the airlock. “Better step it up. We’ve got company on the way.”
“We are almost through,” the Priminae security chief said firmly. “Their code is antiquated, but familiar. I’m surprised they’re still using these systems. It’s clearly based on something we consider a historical curiosity.”
“Weak security?” Hadrian asked, a little surprised and more than a little suspicious.
“Oh no. Quite strong,” the chief corrected. “Vicious, even. If you make an error while unlocking, the system is designed to retaliate rather violently. That’s the weak point, however.” The chief hummed lightly. “Aside from moral concerns, using lethal defenses means that you can’t employ more complex security. Otherwise, you’ll kill more of your own people than any possible enemies. I do not know how it is with you Terrans, but I have never met a crewman who could remember his security code the first time he entered it.”
Hadrian tipped his head slightly. “Fair point.”
“That should do it, sir,” the Priminae crewman said as the heavy lock began to turn.
“Everyone back,” the chief ordered, taking a step back himself, just in case someone had made an error.
The lock swung open like nothing more than an old bank vault door as far as Hadrian could determine. Big, heavy metal creaked slowly on an equally big and heavy hinge. He gestured, bringing three Marines forward.
They led with their rifles, clearing through the lock as soon as it opened enough for an armored Marine to pass. The interior was open and clear, and a moment later, the Marines had it secured. The rest followed them in.
“Now is the dangerous part,” the security chief confessed, taking a breath as he looked over the last section. “We’re inside their . . . what do you call it? A kill perimeter?”
“Close enough,” Hadrian said, shivering as he considered the statement.
As a kill box, the airlock was a potentially superb one, to say the least.
“Get it open.” He nodded to the far end. “Try not to set it off.”
“Right.” The Priminae security staff got to work.
They’d already bypassed the security they’d found—pretty standard cameras and microphones, albeit very sophisticated tech versions of those. Less standard were the tremblers, atmospheric scanners, what seemed to be multispectral systems, and a few items that Hadrian didn’t really know the names for.
He was just glad to have the Priminae security people working to bypass all of that, because without them, he was quite certain that his squad would have tripped at least half a dozen systems by this point.
Hell, who am I kidding? We’d have tripped all of them and just gambled on using a breaching charge.
Win or lose, the battle would already have been over if he and his Marines had the lead.
That said, Hadrian could be patient.
He tightened his grip on his weapon, the big rifle oversized for his pilot’s environmental gear. Unlike the light augmentation armor the rest of the Marines had, Hadrian’s kit was designed more for catastrophic loss of pressure while he was strapped to his shuttle. While armored to a degree, the suit was meant to prevent perforations from shrapnel as opposed to enemy fire.
Granted, against the infantry lasers the enemy was intent on firing, that wouldn’t make much difference. Man-portable armor, light or heavy, would vaporize all the same under the hellish heat.
His own infantry weapon, the Marine issued M-45, was designed to be held by augmenting armor, however. The chunky weapon felt like a slab of solid steel in his grip, threatening to pull his arms right off the longer he held it, but Hadrian refused to acknowledge the weight as he stood there and waited for the Priminae to do their part.
“
We’re through,” the security chief whispered, stepping aside.
“Go, go, go!” Hadrian hissed, slapping his team on the shoulder as they rushed passed him, then following as he wrenched his rifle up to his shoulder.
He was a Marine, by God. Infantryman first, pilot distant second.
Oorah.
► “Here they come,” Conner said as the remaining barrier between decks finally turned black, smoking briefly before vanishing in a brief puff of flame.
The first man stepped through almost instantly. The ceramic bulkheads they’d cut through didn’t hold the heat for any length of time to force them to wait.
“Check your fire, clear the lines,” Conner ordered as she watched the scene from multiple views on her HUD, every Marine’s armor feed linked back to her own. “Sergeant, I don’t want any friendly fire incidents. Secure the right flank. They’re looking a little shaky.”
“Roger that, ma’am,” the sergeant said as he shifted slightly and dropped off her command comm line to pass on her orders, likely with more profanity.
The flank tightened up, though, so she didn’t care what he’d said. It worked.
Three Imperials were through the breach then, another two appearing behind them. They were coming through slower than she’d predicted or even hoped, really. Their commander was pushing them less than she’d expected.
“Signal from the breach, Colonel,” the sergeant pointed out, highlighting a separate comm channel.
Conner frowned, but popped it up on her HUD and took a few seconds as she realized that she was looking at the other side of the enemy formation as her recon team engaged them from the rear. They were laying on the fire double thick, and it only took another couple of seconds for her to realize just why.
“Recon team,” she said, “disengage from the enemy. Try to make it look like they forced you back. We’re in position; you did your job. We’ll take it from here.”
“Oorah, ma’am,” Rider responded. “We weren’t sure you’d made it. Disengaging now. You heard the colonel, boys. Start making it look like we’re out of ammo.”
“That won’t be hard,” Dow’s voice replied, echoing over the command channel through Rider’s suit.
Conner could safely say that he wasn’t kidding on that front. The munitions report on the four Recon Marines left her surprised that they were still pushing the fight as they had. In the tight but relatively uncovered terrain of the ship’s corridors, their options were limited once the guns ran dry. She knew her Marines were game, but you’d have to be out of your Goddamn mind to be crazy enough to try to close to melee range against the infantry lasers the other side was fielding, at least if you didn’t have any smokers left.
“Everyone check fire,” she ordered again. “Let them through. I want them in the kill box.”
Her Marines didn’t respond, but they didn’t have to. She knew they’d heard her, and the fact that no one was shooting yet was good enough for her anyway. The volume of fire she was observing, and now hearing, from the other side of the enemy formation slowed and began to peter out in uneven bursts and silences.
In a few moments, the deck of the Priminae ship fell silent as her Marines steadied themselves behind the cover they’d been able to grab on the cluttered flight deck. Boxy Priminae shuttles were now sheltering Marines and Priminae security forces alike as they all waited for the order.
A half dozen Imperials appeared through the breach, then an even dozen.
Conner watched them from the other side via her recon team’s armor scanners, counting off how strong the enemy forces were now.
She was surprised to find that they were closer at this point to a real parity of force, despite her low numbers. Granted, she wasn’t confident that the Priminae security would really balance the scales as well as their numbers might indicate, but even with that caveat, she was starting to think that they had a real chance.
Rider and his team did good.
Twenty of the Imperial troops were on their side of the breach then, and Conner surreptitiously checked the limited data she had from the other side.
It was time.
“Open fire.”
► The fusillade of firepower from the supposedly clear flight deck cut down half a dozen of his men before Leif could blink, the rest scattering for cover to either side as they dived to the ground and rolled or crawled behind whatever they could manage.
They got ahead of us! Damn! The pursuers were just a distraction.
He probably should have been more surprised—or less, he supposed—but it didn’t make much difference. He’d royally fouled up, and how he should feel about it didn’t make the slightest bit of difference.
“Fire team, secure the breach. Cover the people on the other side,” he ordered, striding across the corridor and firing a burst back down the hall in the direction of the team that had pursued his troop, just to keep them from getting any ideas. “Contact the ship. We should be able to punch through any jamming now that we’re this close.”
Getting control of his people before the ambush turned into a rout was the only thing left to do, and he refused to foul that up.
He was surprised that the volume of fire from the rear had dropped off. If he were in charge of that maneuver, he’d push all the harder now.
Why are they not? Leif wondered, confused. He felt like he was missing something, forgetting some important detail, but couldn’t work out what it was, and that was driving him to near distraction.
“I have the landing vessel, Centure,” a field tech said.
“How is the signal?”
“Strong at this range.”
“Good. Check if they are in contact with the squadron.”
“Yes Centure.”
There was more than one way to win a war, even if the battle was going against you.
► The fluorescing afterimages of laser bursts etched themselves onto the retinas of everyone in the bay as beams crossed paths with bullets. Chaos reigned supreme as the mad minute overtook everyone in the way it usually did.
Marine fire teams covering behind alien shuttles laid down interlocking fields of fire, turning the other end of the bay into a kill box while Imperial troops cut those shuttles apart with return fire that slagged through whatever it hit with near impunity.
In sixty seconds of the open firefight, the bay temperature jumped fifteen degrees, and there was no end in sight as more and more energy was poured into the enclosed environment from both sides.
A scream of metal and scratch of fiber caused a Marine fire team to pull back from cover just as the shuttle they were using collapsed on their position. All but two survived the ensuing retreat under fire to the next cover point, but those two were little more than carbon-scorched embers after a direct hit burned their shadows into the deck.
On the other side of the fight, a hail of depleted uranium rounds ruthlessly chopped through alien battle armor with vicious efficacy, tearing up the men and women within and leaving them to fall in heaps on the deck while their armor struggled valiantly to preserve their life functions.
Laser bursts from the Priminae security forces, though less powerful than their Imperial counterparts, cut the other direction and burned holes through cover that the Marines’ weapons couldn’t. In the insanity of the exchange, smoke and retina afterimages obscured everyone’s vision, computer-aided systems or not, and by the end of the first mad minute, there wasn’t a soul on either side who had any idea who was winning or who was losing.
Most of them didn’t care, of course, and those who considered it even in passing fully expected to figure victory out by who was the last group standing.
That was the way of battle at times.
CHAPTER 22
► The navarch glowered as she tried to split her focus between the task ahead of the group and the enemy plaguing their trail. The enemy squadron had closed the range to the point where any slight error on either of their parts would leave an opening for the other to exploit. A m
asterful move on the enemy commander’s part, assuming he was willing to risk heavy damages or total destruction to in turn cripple her forces—and he had made it quite clear that he was not only willing, but apparently intent on doing just that.
Her forces were his only focus, so he could reasonably expect to be safer from any lapse of focus than she could, with her necessarily split attentions. He was inviting her to make a mistake; there was no doubt about it.
Worse, she was about to do just that.
“The enemy vessel’s position is almost upon us, Navarch.”
“I see it,” she rumbled softly to the navigator. “Stand by to initiate capture protocols. I want that ship and those men on board without delay. Am I understood?”
“As you command it, Navarch,” her second pledged instantly before turning and snapping the appropriate orders.
Satisfied, Misrem turned her own focus in the opposite direction. She had no doubt that the commander of the task group now pursuing them would make full use of the moment her ships broke the interlocked warp formation, and when he did, things would become very fast, very deadly, very quickly.
She walked over to her tactical officer. “Watch for the enemy to take advantage of our maneuvering shift. They will move quickly. Do not wait for my orders. Engage the enemy as you can.”
“As you order, Navarch.”
The man looked uneasy with the directive, but she didn’t care. He would have to accept the responsibility. If he couldn’t, she would find someone who could.
“Breaking formation, Navarch,” the navigation officer announced.
Mentally, Misrem started counting down the seconds as the ships under her command began to break and shift to a capture formation.
She was surprised when she barely got a full second over the light-second gap between her vessels and the pursuers when the tactical officer yelped.
“Enemy moving to engage, returning fire!”
They’re good. They knew it was coming and were waiting. Impressive.
