by M. D. Cooper
The blasts nearly tore Reg’s body from Rika’s grasp, but she held on, then got her feet up and kicked the major’s body over her head, watching as it sailed through the air and into one of the attackers.
Or at least she assumed it hit one of the invisible enemies, since the body collided with something unseen and fell to the ground.
Rika spared a moment to wonder if Reg was still alive before firing on the empty space where his body had stopped.
The rounds ricocheted off the empty air, making small black marks appear where the enemy’s stealth armor had been damaged by the shots.
Rika fired another trio of rounds to the left, tagging another enemy, then grinned as a series of pulse rounds fired next to the invisible figures, one of them flickering into view as she collided with the bulkhead.
Knowing that Kelly had those enemies under control, Rika reloaded her pistol and turned her attention to Keli, who was firing her KZA rifle with wild abandon down the corridor as she moved to cover.
Rika thought she’d make it, until the enemy returned pulse fire, and the concussive waves knocked Keli off her feet.
Without asking what for, Rika fired on the wide plas tube. It cracked after the first shot, then burst open after another, dumping brownish fluid over the enemy.
Rika snatched it out of the air and deployed a strand of nano into the weapon, silently thanking the ISF for the ability to hack a Nietzschean biolock in seconds.
She didn’t waste any time opening fire on the shit-covered Nietzscheans, and with Kelly’s shots added to the mix, two went down, and another trio fell back.
Keli was fighting a new group of stealthed enemies that was advancing down the passage on their right, and Rika ordered her to fall back while sending Kelly to keep the enemy pinned down.
Half a minute later, both Keli and Rika had disappeared and were slipping past the closest enemy.
Rika watched as Kelly attached a grenade to her rifle before throwing it down the corridor at the approaching Niets. Then she turned and ran toward Keli and Rika, dodging around the probable locations of the stealthed enemies that were marked on the combat net.
As if prophesied, a second later, Kelly collided with a stealthed Nietzschean, but recovered and ducked to the side just as her grenade went off, the corridor behind them filling with flames.
The three women used the distraction to take off at top speed down the passage and duck around another corner, where they slid down a ladder to the deck below.
Niki added.
TIME TO FIGHT
STELLAR DATE: 09.19.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Fury Lance
REGION: Ursa Station, Sepe System (Independent)
“Confirm the Republic and Undaunted got the message!” Heather ordered the moment she saw Niki’s post on the job board.
“Good,” Heather replied as she rose and approached the holotank.
Alice was standing next to it, glaring at the view of Chase’s team as they drew to within two hundred meters of the approaching frigate.
“They’re moving slower,” Alice muttered. “Just four meters per second, but when they hit that ship’s hull…”
Heather nodded. For all her handwringing over Chase’s predicament, the woman wasn’t wrong about that impact. Frigates were not large ships. When the squad of four-hundred-kilogram mechs collided with its hull, the sound would resonate through the entire vessel.
“He’s not so stupid that he’ll slam into it at top speed,” Heather replied, hoping she was right.
“Captain,” Ona turned to address Heather. “We have a squad of Niets at the airlock demanding entrance. They’re saying that we’re under suspicion of mutiny.”
Heather considered her options. Though Rika’s dust-up would have alerted the Niets to something being amiss, it would take a bit to realize the scope of what they were dealing with. If she blew the docking clamps and pulled away from Ursa Station, all the other ships would go on high alert, and the breach teams would face more resistance.
The clock on the main display read four minutes and thirty-two seconds before all teams would be in position. But that countdown didn’t include the fact that Chase’s team had to get around the frigate, or the fact that Leslie’s would hit their target almost a minute early.
“Stars, this stuff never manages to line up right,” she muttered.
“Captain Heather,” Alice said, turning to face her. “We need to blow the clamps and pull away. This ship is too easy to breach right now. Other than the backup teams in the assault shuttles, we’re the only ones aboard.”
Heather gritted her teeth. Though the Lieutenant Colonel hadn’t worded her statement as an order, it wasn’t something Heather could just dismiss, either. “Ma’am, if they breach us, we can redirect one of the assault shuttles to the enemy’s point of ingress. The ship is also not without internal defenses. We just need to wait another four minutes.”
“Captain,” Alice began, but seemed to pause as she saw the steely look in Heather’s eyes.
Don’t say it, Heather all but prayed. Don’t give me an order that I might disobey. Neither of us will like where that goes.
“Potter?” Alice looked toward the central holodisplay. “Are they at the ship’s airlock, or the station-side one?”
It was common practice on civilian docks for the station-side airlock to become ‘ship’s territory’ when a vessel was docked. Because the Fury Lance was docked on the civilian side of Ursa Station, that may have held true for their berth. Heather mentally berated herself for not reviewing that.
Alice looked back at Heather. “Then we have another minute or two. But the second they get into that airlock, we blow clamps and push off.
“Understood,” Heather replied, breathing a mental sigh of relief.
“Aw, shit,” Heather swore.
* * * * *
Chase was amazed at how Alison’s voice managed to sound chipper an
d upbeat even now. Maybe that was why her squad liked her so much. She never gave anything other than the appearance that she had complete faith in her team’s abilities.
He just hoped her confidence wasn’t misplaced.
And that the ISF stealth systems would keep them hidden from the frigate’s defense turrets as they ran across its surface.
The counter on his HUD ticked down, and below him, the hull of the frigate grew until it completely obscured the dreadnought beyond.
Then the counter hit zero, and Chase kicked on the thrusters attached to his calves, trusting his armor’s gyros to keep him balanced as he slowed from just over four meters per second to a hair under two.
He landed on the frigate’s hull right next to an auto turret, activated his maglocks, then tossed a sticky charge on the turret. It hadn’t come online, but better to be prepared than be shot in the back.
The three-sixty view his helmet’s optics fed into his brain was still taking some getting used to, and Chase almost stumbled as he tried to watch where he was going while keeping an eye—so to speak—on the turret behind him.
Though the invisible mechs of Second Platoon’s first squad were all around him, it felt to Chase as though he was alone in his race across the frigate’s hull. He triggered his HUD to show full outlines for the mechs, and felt some comfort as their forms ghosted alongside him.
He had just reached the dorsal fin when the turret behind them came online, turning toward the squad.
Chase triggered the sticky bomb and smiled with satisfaction as the turret exploded. With any luck, the reverberations through the ship’s hull would mask their final movements.
The mechs zig-zagged across the final few meters of hull, and then they were pushing off the dorsal ridge, each fireteam angling toward their breach point on the hull of the dreadnought before them.
Chase shook his head at the name emblazoned on the side of the massive ship: Peerless.
We’ll see about that, he thought, anticipating the fight ahead. We’ll see.
* * * * *
She looked at the countdown, which now read just one minute and thirty-nine seconds.
C’mon, you stupid squishie. Just hold on for ninety-nine more seconds.
Heather wondered how many times a scared squishie like Alice had made the wrong life-or-death choice during the war. There was probably a reason why the woman had been flying a desk back at Marauder HQ.
Heather tilted her head to the side as she drew in a quick breath. “No,” she said aloud, while sending a message to Travis and Ferris.
“Captain Heather,” Alice growled. “I’m giving you an order.”
“Eighty seconds,” Heather spat back. “Dammit, Lieutenant Colonel, hold your shit together for eighty more seconds. Right now, all the other ships docked around this station have no reason to think anything is going on other than a security issue with a docked vessel. The moment we blow clamps, the alert goes out, and we become everyone’s problem. If those ships out there raise shields before our teams hit hull, mechs are gonna die for no damn reason.”
Heather took a step toward Alice as she spoke, and the woman visibly shrank before her, swallowing three times before mouthing, “OK.”
“Good,” Heather stepped back.
Alice was visibly fuming as she stared at Heather, her lips pressed together so tightly that they were almost invisible.
“Stay the course,” Heather instructed, watching the timer count down past forty-five seconds.
“I’ve got an explosion on the hull of that frigate in Chase’s way,” Ona called out. “Point defense beams are firing.”
“Any hits?” Heather asked.
“Impossible to say,” Ona replied, giving Heather a worried look. “I don’t see anything, but they’re two klicks away, and the mechs are on the far side.”
“Doesn’t that ruin your timeline?” Alice sneered.
Heather glanced at the Lieutenant Colonel, glad the woman was finally showing her true colors. “It’ll take them a few seconds to get a firing solution and shunt the coil charge. Or didn’t you study the specs on the Nietzschean destroyers?”
Alice’s jaw snapped shut, and it took every bit of Heather’s willpower not to backhand the squishie across the bridge. No one spoke further as the timer cycled down to zero. The moment it did, Heather sent out the order.
The Republic and Undaunted sent acknowledgement, and Ona released the Fury Lance’s docking clamps, pushing off the station with targeted grav beams, tearing free from the station-side clamps.
“Shit,” Garth muttered. “We crumpled the station’s hull something fierce.”
“Unavoidable,” Heather replied. “Ona, stasis shields.”
“Activated,” the chief replied, then she scowled at her display. “Aw, shit. One of the Niets’ assault shuttles is inside the shields.”
“Well done, Captain,” Alice grunted.
Heather imagined smashing the lieutenant colonel’s skull before calling down to the first backup shuttle. “Yig, get your fireteam to Bay 22. Prepare to repel boarders.”
Drawing in a steadying breath, Heather watched as the ships docked around Ursa Station began to activate shields and initiate emergency undocking procedures.
Most importantly, she checked on the Peerless.
The tactical NSAI estimated that Chase’s team was still fifty meters from the ship.
“Almost there,” Heather whispered.
Then the Peerless’s shields came online, and the ship’s point defense turrets lit up.
“Fuck!” Heather swore.
* * * * *
Rika fired her pilfered KZA rifle behind her, barely taking care to aim as she ran down the corridor, following after Kelly and Keli.
Keli was already on the next deck, ranging ahead.
Kelly landed on the deck beside Rika. At least, that’s what the marker on her HUD indicated.
Rika wanted to tell Kelly that splitting up was a stupid idea, but she was right. It was their best play.
Rika turned left at the next intersection, moving slowly and quietly, while Kelly fired a salvo at the ladder they’d come down and took off in the opposite direction, Keli on her tail.
Niki chuckled, and Rika got the impression that the AI was shaking her head—which was weird, given Niki’s lack of a body.
Rika didn’t reply as she sent out a passel of drones to scout ahead, something that was much more effective now that she was moving slower.
The drones ranged ahead and rounded a corner, where they found a squad of Nietzscheans filling the corridor.
