Spinward Fringe Broadcast 5: Fracture

by Randolph Lalonde

  The other boarders were wearing the new plated vacsuits made for heavy fighting and deep space support. Victor looked around at the Triton soldiers standing all around him. They were all tethered in place for safety, just in case the ride got rough. Each of them had a heavy rifle, a survival package built into the back of their armour, a helmet with the Triton skull imprinted on the face in crimson, rank insignia on their shoulders, a heavy sidearm and a set of speciality gear.

  He couldn't believe where he was, what he was doing. Pandem felt like it was years away and if the gear he'd qualified on in the absolutely life like simulation programs wasn't so easy to use he would call it alien. The vacsuit was the most comfortable garment he'd ever worn, the armour practically put itself on and the sensor, targeting, communications and intelligence systems that were built into the whole outfit were so amazing that he'd only ever seen the like in science fiction movies. He knew he'd qualified fast and Alaka had pulled strings to get him into his squad. He didn't intend to disappoint. Many of the security officers aboard Triton wanted a set of the boarding armour, but they could only manufacture so much at a time. In a way he was lucky to be assigned to one of the advance boarding squads. At the same time Victor was keenly aware that he and the rest of the squad were given the armour because the Security Chief expected they'd need it.

  Green light filled the hold. The tether at his shoulder released and the main ramp dropped open so fast he could feel the vibration of the door clashing against the deck through his feet.

  Alaka moved out first, leading with the fighter class beam weapon. “Deploy and get clear. Captain wants the Clever Dream back aboard Triton as soon as possible,” he ordered.

  It was so much like the dozens of simulations Victor had participated in over the past seven days that he caught himself having one of the problems that Chief Vega had warned him and the newcomers about. For just a moment he expected it to be a safe environment, where he only had to take his simulation node off to return to the comfort of the bunks or observation deck.

  That wasn't the case, not this time. There was no simulation node to take off his temple or older sim goggles to pull off. The deck he was walking on was real, the inertial dampener and other compensator systems built into his boarding suit were really straining against twelve times normal gravity. The colossal, weathered, darkened hangar was a real place. He couldn't help but look outside at the field of wrecked debris and meteors drifting by outside. The stars and asteroid field were blurred by the obscuring field in the distance and there were really starfighters engaging raiders just kilometres away. At any moment one of those enemy ships could turn and fire into the open landing bay.

  His encounter sensors came online and offered a map of the installation. He selected it by staring at the activation icon and thinking about it. The intelligence they'd gotten was right. An active firefight was underway nearby. One of the last squad members fell face first to the deck. Victor heard the air rush out of his lungs.

  Alaka turned and regarded the fallen boarder. “I told you, if you don't know what you're doing opt out. Your grav compensators should be set to auto adjust, there's no need to do it manually.”

  The soldier stood, catching his breath and getting to his feet. “I'm sorry sir, I saw the gravity rating on the briefing and thought I could do better setting it myself.”

  “Next time you think you know better assume you're wrong and check with me first. Let's move,” Alaka replied firmly, turning and leading the group at a run towards a broad service door that had been blown wide open. The forensic analysis suite flashed results in Victor's lower left field of view, informing him that an explosion had taken place several days before, had injured four people and was perpetrated from the outside. Further evidence of much more recent small arms fire told the rest of the story as they ran down the wide cargo hall.

  In his rear view he could see the Clever Dream lift off, turn nimbly and blast away from the station, shaking the structure under foot. The Cold Reaver remained behind so they could have transportation back to Triton or to another part of the station. The two squadrons, led by Lieutenant Commander Radics, were already running at a fantastic pace towards another pair of loading doors.

  The deck plating underfoot was uneven where a pair of wide treads had run over it countless times. Walls to either side showed signs of serious damage, mostly from small arms fire, but there was evidence of grenade usage. The installation structure could take that kind of abuse but fine wiring and tubing secured along the walls were another story. Liquid had frozen solid ahead, slicking the hall and one wall for several metres. There was no atmosphere, no life support at all thanks to the damage done there and deeper inside the station.

  “Start scanning for active comm channels,” Alaka ordered mildly in Victor's new subdermal comm. He was still getting used to hearing everyone's private communications like they were talking straight into his ear, but he always wanted a hidden communicator, so when he found out they were being offered to security team members he jumped at the chance.

  Keeping pace with the front of the squadron right behind Alaka as he ran down the broad hallways he brought up the communications interface and set it to scan. “Search and select any conversations using combat terminology,” he ordered the system.

  The emergency lights spaced along the sides of the hallway seemed to whip by as the two squads made a hasty rush towards the heat signatures ahead. Thanks to the armour Alaka's squads wore they wouldn't give off any thermal readings. The only sign the raiders would have that someone was coming was the landing of the Cold Reaver and Clever Dream.

  “One channel found,” his suit informed him as it highlighted a weak proximity radio signal.

  “Select and enhance.”

  Though faint, he could hear the raiders speaking. They thought they couldn't be overheard because their proximity radios were set to short range, but there was no way they could foresee the level of sophistication and organization that made serving on Triton such a pleasure. Using the receivers in the entire squad's armoured suits Victor enhanced the proximity radio transmissions to perfect clarity and forwarded the channel to Alaka. “We're linked in.”

  “Nice job Victor,” Alaka congratulated.

  He knew it was, they shouldn't be able to hear anything for another four hundred meters, but there it was, the sound of one of the raiders asking; “-would anyone land and just take off? What are they doing putting two gunships on the deck then pulling one back?”

  “I don't care, watch the cargo doors behind and keep cutting. I want to see the core of this installation by the end of the day,” replied a firm female voice.

  “Why don't we just seal up the cargo doors? Nothing to worry about if they can't get at us.”

  “We need all our gear to cut into Main Operations, besides it would take hours to secure the doors,”

  Alaka held up a hand and a visual order for everyone to halt was broadcast across their heads up displays. “They don't know who or how many people are coming, let's take advantage.” He crept towards the corner and poked the very tip of his beam weapon out into the open, using the barrel's sight to see what was down the hall ahead. The data spread to the rest of the squadron, mapping the two hundred seventeen meters of hallway and the large equipment storage area beyond.

  There were forty two people in various styles of sealed vacsuits. Their equipment was piled beside one of the main armoured doors leading deeper into the installation and several of them were working to cut through while the others stood guard. The weapons they held were compared against a list of known arms and identified in seconds. Victor remembered a tip from one of the tutorials he'd run when he first started working on his qualifications; Don't get bogged down with details. Scan through the offered information, take in what you need and examine the more pertinent data as you notice it.

  He scrolled through the list of arms and nodded to himself. They had one stationary slug thrower that would be useless in the heavy gravity,
several plasma rifles that suffered from the same issue and they were piled up with the rest of the equipment. Most of the raiders walked around with energy weapons that would work in the heavy gravity but wouldn't be as effective against their armour and personal shielding.

  “Stealth up. We're going to surround them before I offer the Captain's terms,” Alaka ordered.

  That was Victor's favourite part. The stealth systems developed by Freeground. He could stand right in front of someone and they couldn't tell he was there unless they bumped into him. Before his eyes the entire squadron, even Alaka, as massive as he was, disappeared. His heads up display marked everyone's location, so they wouldn't trip over each other, but to anyone else they were just gone.

  “Move in, touch nothing. Let nothing touch you.”

  The squads had practised the manoeuvre and ran in spaced out double file, watching their step with the assistance of the stealth system, which highlighted small objects and hot spots where they could give themselves away. The stealth systems were worthless if you weren't careful. Bumping into a loose bulkhead or kicking a broken bracket on the deck could alert others to your presence.

  They ran right between the raiders standing watch with rifles at the ready beside the doors leading into the warehousing section. Victor's heads up display offered more forensic data but he knew what it was as he took a position behind a trio of armed raiders in bulky, discoloured vacuum suits. The firefight they had detected on their way in was over for the time being. The defenders had retreated behind the heavy interior doors the raiders worked to cut through after several of them had been killed. The corpses were piled in a corner, all wearing Caran Enterprises sealed work suits.

  The north eastern quadrant of his tactical display came to life, marking the other two squadrons. It was no surprise that Alaka and Radics had been coordinating all along, and the other squads were rushing in the large warehouse space in stealth mode. They fell into place as quickly and smoothly as Alaka's squadrons had and in moments the raiders were unknowingly surrounded by twenty eight heavily armed Triton soldiers.

  “Nice having the upper hand for a change, isn't it Vic?” chuckled Marc Burgess, one of the few people who had made it to Triton with him from Pandem.

  “I'm not betting on that just yet. These raiders hit this installation hard, didn't care much for keeping it in any kind of usable shape either.”

  “Commander Radics and I agree. Here's what's going to happen. I'm going to offer Captain Valance's terms once. His orders are to offer terms, disarm and detain if they accept. If they resist we kill them all. There could be other raiders in the installation, we have to make an example.”

  “Harsh,” whispered one of the soldiers beside him.

  “Realistic. He doesn't want us to risk our lives just so a prisoner can turn on us later,” Commander Radics reinforced. His habit of pronouncing every word he spoke with clinical diction grated on some people, but he couldn't help it. As a shape changing issyrian he had learned to speak the most common galactic languages in college and he spoke it as he learned it; clinically. “You have the honours Alaka.”

  Alaka addressed the raiders on their own proximity radio frequency. “This is Commander Alaka Murlen of the Free Ship Triton. We are offering you one chance to cease your boarding operations and surrender arms. Our forces have you completely surrounded.”

  Everything stopped, raiders looked around in alarm. “I don't see anyone!” announced one alarmed marauder.

  “There's no way, I don't see anything,” said another after he looked in all directions.

  “This is a bluff. It's the workers trying to scare us off,” said the female voice, silencing all others. “It's must be why they stopped jamming us. Get back to work.”

  Alaka fired a quick burst from his beam cannon at the raiders trying to cut through the heavy interior doors and took several quick steps to the side. The stream of bright blue light startled the raiders and the cutters scurried away from the door. The warning shot had left a perfectly round four centimetre wide scorch on the doorway, not enough to weaken the metal but enough to prove a presence.

  Three raiders opened fire in Alaka's general direction. One shot struck his shoulder, leaving a red hot mark visible to everyone before the massive nafalli managed to dive behind a stack of heavy crates.

  “They've got some kind of cloaks! Fire at the open air and watch for hits!” shouted the female raider as she sprayed an arc of blue hot energy rounds between her comrades.

  Victor dropped onto his belly and returned fire from the prone position. She was almost behind cover when he and a few other Triton soldiers scored flaring, scorching hits that broke through the skin of her old vacsuit.

  “Jarisca's down! What do we do?” asked one panicked raider.

  “Keep firing you idiot! Like we have any other choice!”

  “If you lay down arms we will allow you to surrender peacefully,” Lieutenant Commander Radics announced over the proximity radio in response.

  The air was filled with bright yellow, red, and blue energetic bursts as the Triton troops took cover and returned fire precisely, taking their time, each man or woman disabling or killing only the threat nearest them. “What do we do Commander?” asked one of Alaka's group as he ducked between two tall crates. He'd been shot twice. The first hit had done no damage, the second had heated his armour and vacsuit severely enough to leave third degree burns. Victor's screen marked him as being under the influence of localized pain killers and partially disabled.

  “Shoot to kill,” Radics replied before Alaka had a chance.

  “Shoot to kill.” Alaka agreed. The nafalli had crept behind several crates, taking him out of the direct line of fire.

  Victor had ducked down nearby and couldn't help but wonder what would possess a group of people, especially raiders, to stand their ground and fight when they couldn't detect their attackers. He lined up his first shot, a marauder who was firing from bended knee, concentrating on firing into the open air at waist level. It was futile. Only five Triton soldiers had been noticeably hit, the injuries were minor, and they had all taken cover. With a quick burst from his high energy pulse rifle Victor riddled the raider with rounds from chest to helmet. He crumpled to the deck as atmosphere escaped from his suit in a rush. Mechanically he lined up three more such targets and with trained, cold precision he squeezed the trigger, struck each target with lethal energy blasts in turn and watched as they each fell.

  Alaka only opened fire after lining up more than one target. As Victor went about his butcher's work he could see the stream of deadly light erupt from the nafalli Commander's beam weapon in bursts. Each burst resulted in the burning, cutting death of an enemy raider.

  The entire incident lasted one minute and nineteen seconds according to Victor's vacsuit heads up display but it felt so much longer. By the time the last three raiders finally dropped their rifles and put their hands up the large storage and sorting area was filled with bodies. He followed Alaka's lead as he moved in to lower a restraint ring around the nearest surrendering raider. The ring was a thin circular strip that expanded around a captive's torso and squeezed around their forearms or wrists to pin them to their backs or sides. It was an Earth designed device, very easy to use and impossible to escape.

  “No! Stay back!” the raider shouted frantically.

  “Shut the fuck up Arien!” one of his comrades cursed.

  Across the clearing Victor watched as one of the surrendering raiders leapt onto a Triton boarder and held tightly. “Get off!” the squad member, Lizelle, screamed.

  Victor's heads up display flashed red and marked the raider atop her as an explosive hazard an instant before he and Lizelle were obliterated by a blinding explosion. He lost his footing and toppled to the deck. His suit showed no damage but the squad status screen alerted him to the death of eight members and injury of fourteen. Alaka had been knocked out and Lieutenant Commander Radics had been placed in stasis after his suit re-sealed and severed w
hat was left of his ruined hand at the wrist.

  At a glance it appeared that all the raiders, dead and alive, had exploded with the force of at least three grenades apiece. The Triton crew's vacsuits provided field triage, administering localized anaesthetics, putting the dead and dying into stasis and resealing breaches. He and a handful of others were left with minor armour damage. It was as though time had frozen as he looked around at the charred and broken storage area.

  Crates made for heavy gravity environments had busted open, small craters marked dozens of places where the raider's bodies had detonated and the squads picked themselves up off the deck. He couldn't help but cock his head as he watched one of his squad mates lower himself from a scattered pile of crates. He had been hurled up to the top of the three meter pile but somehow his armour had completely protected him. The black surface of the plating was still dented, scratched and cracked, but according to Victor's visor Junior Sergeant Mills was in perfect health.

  “What's the word Vic? What do we do?” asked Jenny Machad. He realized then that he was the ranking officer.

  “Clever Dream, Cold Reaver. This is Sergeant Victor Davis declaring an emergency.” His own voice surprised him, he didn't expect to sound panicked. He made a conscious effort to calm down before he continued. “We've put down the raiders but they were carrying some kind of bomb we couldn't detect until the last minute. We've got a lot of people down. Forwarding my squad status screen to you.”