by Aer-ki Jyr
Shell shocked, the soldier didn’t realize what was going on…then felt something hard hit him in the gut and he fell to the floor, his head spinning as Jason flashed past and up around the corner. The pair ran as fast as they could up through the levels and succeeded in reaching level 1 without any security doors closing on them, with Paul hesitating at the top long enough for Jason to come up beside him.
“So far, so good,” Paul commented as he scanned the small, empty room they were in. The was one large table with a host of brochures and trinkets spread across the top, as well as advertisement posters hanging on the walls in between display booths…apparently this room was part of the spaceport’s tourist reception area and had yet to be disturbed by the combat, which hopefully meant the area was of little interest to the enemy.
Jason nodded and took the lead, with Paul dropping in behind him as they moved around the displays towards two other entrances. Jason checked the nearer, then signaled for Paul to cross into view and head to the other, with him following again in a leapfrogging motion that had become second nature to the pair, so much so that they rarely needed to communicate or plan the details. Jason only signaled to indicate that the side exit was clear, with Paul doing likewise, only this time raising a stop-hand, indicating that there was trouble.
“Control room is three rooms over, right?” Paul asked.
“Should be, what’s up?”
“You remember that scene from Star Wars when Solo is running around the Death Star, turns a corner, and there’s a whole mess of storm troopers?”
“That many?” Jason asked.
“More. Let’s take the detour.”
“What do you mean more?” Jason said, taking Paul’s place as he headed back. He peeked around the corner and his eyes went wide when he saw the long room filled with dozens of men sorting and servicing racks of weapons, grenades, explosives, and even another mini tank. The Chinese had turned the tourism center into their own personal armory.
“Hmmn…yeah, let’s take the detour.”
“Told you so,” Paul said, not waiting for him and disappearing into the next room.
It took them a long time to work their way around the armory, bypassing several other clusters of soldiers until they were one room away…one room filled with makeshift barricades, a pair of machine gun turrets, and 8 guards.
“I got left,” Jason said, waiting beside the doorway into the room.
“Make it quick,” Paul said, pulling out a stinger grenade. “They’ve got a lot of friends.”
“Go,” Jason said, jumping around the corner and running sideways, shooting the closest of the guards before sliding in behind the cover of one of the barricades. As he did so and drew the guards’ attention, Paul waited a few heartbeats then casually walked into view and slipped off to the right, priming and chucking the grenade towards the right turret, then likewise diving towards cover as a hail of bullets impacted the wall behind him, chewing off the paint like sandpaper.
The grenade fell just below the gunner’s feet and exploded upward, rendering him unconscious but not affecting the gun at all. One of the other guards leapt into action and reclaimed the gun, just as Paul popped up and shot the other turret’s gunner before ducking back down again.
Like clockwork Jason appeared and downed two more guards before diving behind a different barricade, this one closer to the control room. The one live turret fired into the metallic crates, denting then cracking the material as the bullet stream pushed the heavy box backward half a meter.
Paul popped up again, this time into a run, and shot one of the other guards in the arm, then took out the gunner as the others took aim with their assault rifles and peppered the area with shots, but Paul ducked back around the edge of an outcropping in the wall adjacent to the control room, essentially putting him behind the blockade.
With half the guards turned towards Paul, Jason jumped up and over the broken barricade and shot the guard trying to reclaim the machine gun, then fired on two more, one of whom had his back to him as he was still firing on Paul’s position, trying to pin him in place while the others circled around to line up a shot.
Paul held ready for an opening, but suddenly all gunfire stopped.
“Clear,” Jason reported, with Paul immediately jumping into view and heading toward the control room. There was a single shot of what sounded like a pistol, then no more noise at all as Jason took out the occupants and sat down at one of the stations, prying his gloves off.
Paul stormed in behind him and grabbed one of the three unconscious bodies and threw it outside with the others, then came back and repeated the process for the other two just in time before reinforcements arrived. Paul took up position just back of the doorway, so that the short walkway into the control room cut down the attack angles against him and created a small bottleneck. He had five seconds of peace then started firing as the first troops came into view.
Jason raced through the interface, finding the security door controls and locking down level 1 as fast as he could, then he jumped out of his seat, pulled his gloves back on, and grabbed his rifle.
“Coming through,” he said, jumping over Paul and running out into the open, firing at anything he saw as he darted across the room and back the way they had come in.
Paul knew he had to hold the control room and make use of the bottleneck…as well as deny the enemy from reclaiming their machine gun turrets, but with Jason now outside and loose they had a shark in the water that wouldn’t let them set up a coordinated assault. If Paul could hold position long enough, he knew Jason would thin their numbers and cause as much confusion and chaos as possible, lessening their available resources to assault and retake the control room. If they could keep them guessing and off balance for a few more minutes, then they should own them.
Three more men came into view, firing at Paul with all but one of the bullets missing over his head as he took them down with single shots from a crouching position tucked up against the wall. The single shot that did hit him deflected off the side of his helmet, ringing his bell from the concussion, but not enough to disorient him for more than a heartbeat. More men came into view, which Paul shot down quickly and professionally, creating a pile of bodies at the entrance that ironically worked as a blockade to slow the advance of the soldiers, who had to step on or over them to get to the doorway.
The flow of Chinese troops didn’t diminish, and after several minutes of fighting Paul knew he was going to have to reload, which was going to bring a moment of vulnerability. When it finally happened he ducked back inside and around the corner and reached back over his shoulder into his pack, drawing out another clip of the stinger ammunition and placing it on top of a nearby console as he reached to the butt of his rifle, flipped the release switch, and yanked out the nearly depleted cartridge.
When he grabbed the full one and brought it in towards the rifle a soldier appeared in the room less than a meter away, with Paul shooting him at point blank range. Even without the new cartridge, 5 rounds should still have been held within the priming chambers, and he blew two of them into the man as more of the Chinese poured in behind him.
Paul fired off the remaining three, then dropped his rifle on the ground, unable to take the time required to insert the new cartridge. He punched at the nearest two, then bodily rammed a third back into the walkway, knocking down three men behind him in domino fashion before yanking the assault rifle out of the hands of the first man he punched.
The second man managed to fire off a shot into Paul’s gut before he was pulled off his feet and thrown on top of the others, then the Archon found the trigger on the Chinese weapon and fired a slew of bullets into the pile of soldiers, wounding some and killing the others. He didn’t wait to count casualties and threw the assault rifle aside, scrambling back into the control room and searching for his own weapon and spare cartridge, thoughtful enough to reach over his shoulder and into his pack as he did so and pull out his stun stick.
He fo
und the cartridge first, but before he spotted the rifle more reinforcements stomped their way over their wounded and ran inside, firing wildly as they came, damaging many of the control boards on the far wall. Paul was partially around the corner and out of sight of the first round of shots, but as the enemy rifle barrels came into view he was forced to jump towards them and physically pushed the weapons out of alignment, flipping the charge switch on the stun stick as he did so, bringing it down on another man’s gun arm in a flash.
It knocked his weapon askew, but didn’t stun the man for lack of charge. The next whack did, however, and soon Paul was a blur of slashes and jabs, piling up the men as they came in. The Chinese weren’t being smart about the attack, nor were they coordinated, they were simply trying to overwhelm Paul with numbers, recklessly sending more through hoping that no matter how many men went down, some would eventually get to him.
Those barbarian tactics angered Paul, and made him fight just a little bit harder, not to mention the ache in his gut from the rifle shot. It hadn’t penetrated his armor, but he was sure he’d have a bruise across his abdomen by the end of the day, assuming he lived that long.
A dozen more thrusts of his stun stick and his arm suddenly went numb…not so much that he dropped his weapon, but enough to keep him from jabbing again. The soldier closest to him nailed him in the faceplate with the butt of his rifle, pushing him back a step, then the man fell to the ground with a green paint splat on his back.
A moment later Jason hopped into the room over the bodies and Paul noticed that his arm also had green on it.
“Nice shooting,” he said, wasting no time and finding his rifle on the floor to his left, just off the edge of the body pile. He retrieved the bulky cartridge and lined it up with the access port as Jason fired several more shots back out through the doorway as Paul felt the numbness begin to bleed off as his armor soaked up the stun energy, much as the Black Knight’s armor had been designed to do, only less so given that the Archons’ armor was primarily designed for ballistics defense.
“Sorry, didn’t think you had time for me to aim.”
“They ran me out of ammo,” Paul said, clicking in the cartridge and hitting the power button. The first few rounds were pulled into and charged with energy, then those in the cartridge also began receiving charge, one at a time down the rows, until all of the stingers were prepped several minutes later.
“I’ve got half a clip left. Looks like you’ve been busier than me.”
“How many did you get?” Paul asked, taking up position and firing as more tried to come in. He adjusted his aim down and shot one of the men on the floor as his rifle began to lift.
“A lot. Unless this level was their favorite, I don’t even want to guess how many are below us.”
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Paul said, shooting two more. “They’re going to pin us down with bodies.”
“I hear you,” Jason said, readjusting his aim to the wounded inside the room and covering them with a hail of stingers just to make sure. He didn’t want them getting up and unlocking the security doors. “Let’s go.”
Paul, with his rifle now full of ammo, climbed up on top of the row of arms, legs, heads and other assorted body parts covering the short walkway and ran across the top, getting tripped up several times but managing to stay on his feet until he got outside. He took another bullet, this one in the chest, before downing three more soldiers just outside the mound of wounded at the entrance.
Paul slid down the heap, firing at everyone in sight, with Jason emerging a step behind him. Once in the clear, Paul was able to move around and avoid most of the enemy’s weapons fire, and within fifteen seconds they had the room cleared.
A quick hand signal from Jason had the two split up, running into adjacent rooms and mowing down anyone they came across. They spent several minutes tracking down enemies, finding several more clusters of troops moving towards the control room and dealing with them in turn, but before long there weren’t very many conscious Chinese troops left on the top level, so they both went back and resecured the control room, insured that the security doors were in fact still closed, and started policing the bodies, adding more stun charge where needed and dragging them out of the way.
They didn’t have enough binders for them all, so they didn’t bother with any, opting instead to haul them over to another section of level one which they then sealed off with additional security doors, making an impromptu prison out of a piece of the level.
Half an hour later they had level 1 secured and cleaned up…fortunately without any of the Chinese below blowing a hole through the security doors to get at them. Once they had the time to use the security cameras they spotted some soldiers milling about on level 2 near the security doors, but overall it seemed like the rest of the enemy didn’t realize what had happened, and were still camping out wherever they’d been prior to Paul and Jason’s secretive arrival.
“Lock the rest down,” Jason said as Paul manned the controls. “Play around with it a bit and see if you can get us a route down to the secondary tram station without too many guests.”
“Will do,” Paul said, triggering every security door below level 1 to close, cutting off the bulk of the Chinese troops from the level 1 doors. Even if those on level 2 had enough explosives to break through, now they wouldn’t have the numbers to overwhelm the pair of Archons…meaning the spaceport was essentially theirs, albeit with a lot of cleanup work to do.
Jason slid over to the communications terminal, luckily it had not seen any bullet damage, and contacted the auxiliary sites within the sector, eventually finding their teammates in the site 13 control room.
“How’s your progress?” Jason asked when he saw Jack’s face.
“We’re two thirds done with our sweep…where are you?”
“Spaceport control room,” he said nonchalantly.
Jack frowned. “Are you serious?”
“Totally,” Jason said, pulling off his helmet. “Told you we’d get in.”
“Are you secure?”
“We’ve got the facility locked down and we’re in the process of arranging to clear out the tram stations for you guys, so get your asses off the playground and over here. There’s a lot more troops in play than we thought.”
“Same out here,” Jack pointed out. “But we can finish this later. How soon do you think you can clear our entry?”
“Get moving now and it’ll be done by the time you arrive,” Jason promised.
“Haha, I’ve got to see this for myself. We’re on our way,” Jack said, smiling as he cut the transmission.
“Call for the newbs too,” Paul added. “We can use their help for this, now that the hard part is over.”
“Is it? Even assuming the other teams recaptured the lease zones, we aren’t stopping there. I don’t care what Davis has to say about it, after what the Chinese did, we’re kicking them off Luna permanently, which means we have to take their territorial sectors.”
“I meant for this mission. But yes, we’re kicking their asses off the moon and taking out everything military that they have above the atmosphere. I’ve already given the fleet orders to intercept, capture, and destroy all Chinese warships…and I don’t think Davis will give us grief over it. Not after all the people they’ve killed. We can’t let them have a second chance to do it all over again.”
“Why not kick them all the way back to the surface?”
“The civilian angle is Davis’s turf, and he may very well do that, but for now we focus on taking out their military and denying them a foothold on Luna. It may take weeks, or even months to fully accomplish that, but when all is said and done, the Chinese are going to be totally disarmed. I won’t settle for anything else.”
“Same here,” Jason agreed, contacting sector 001. “Commander Sheridan?”
“Just a moment,” the officer at the comm station said as he flagged down the head of Lunar security.
“What do you need?” the man asked
as soon as he came into screen, his tone all business.
“We’ve secured sector 508’s spaceport control room and will have the tram entrances cleared soon. We need at least two Archon teams sent over to assist with containment and capture of the troops we’ve got pinned down between security doors.”
Sheridan nodded. “I’ll relay the order.”
“Any word from the others?”
“Team 7 took sector 109 a little over an hour ago, no word yet from the others.”
Jason nodded. “In addition, send over whatever security and support personnel you can, I doubt there’ll be any survivors found here to take over for us.”
“We’re spread thin, but I’ll at least get a skeleton crew over to you,” Sheridan promised. “And good work, sir.”
“Thanks,” Jason said, cutting the comm and looking over at Paul. “Greg beat us again.”
“He had a head start,” Paul pointed out, his eyes on the camera feeds. “If you’re done here, head on out and I’ll play door king for you.”
“Happy to,” Jason said, pulling his helmet back on and retrieving his rifle. “Watch your back,” he said, leaving the room.
Paul watched his progress remotely, taking heed to his advice. No Chinese troops should have been running around this part of level 1, but he didn’t want to be caught off guard if they missed any…or if a team broke through from below.
“Open sesame,” Jason requested over the comm when he got to the first security door. With a few keystrokes Paul opened it and his teammate headed down to the next level, with Paul closing the door behind him once he was safely through and uncontested. Jason moved off to engage the few troops trapped in that section of the level, with Paul feeding him information about what was up ahead as he gradually worked his way down to the tram terminals to clear them out for their incoming reinforcements.
The tough part of this mission may have been over, but the cleanup was going to take a long time. As Paul followed Jason he also searched around the rest of the spaceport, taking a crude head count and coming up with more than 1000, and those were just the ones in camera range.
