“Bring them in as soon as possible,” Stacy ordered, tightly. “And then prepare to engage the enemy.”
Jeremy nodded. The red icons on the display – the battleships protecting Jackson’s Folly – were already moving into a defensive formation. He was privately impressed by their determination – he would have considered jumping out and waging a hit-and-run war against the Empire rather than standing in defence of their homeworld – but it wouldn't matter. They couldn't stand against his superdreadnaughts, even with Stacy in command.
The thought was bitter, yet it had to be faced. Another world was about to be ground under and brought to heel...and there was nothing he could do, but watch.
***
“The shuttles are away, sir.”
Colin nodded, watching as the icons accelerated towards their target ships. Preparing the holographic message had been a gamble, even though they’d discovered Commodore Roosevelt’s secret orders to Captain-Commodore Howell. If she’d insisted on the shuttles all going to one superdreadnaught, the Marines would have to have used the emergency plan and if that had failed...they would have died, followed rapidly by the Observation Squadron itself. He wished, desperately, that he was flying with the Marines. It was the first time he had sent men into danger, where some or all of them might be killed, without being with them.
He sat back and tried to remain calm. It was tempting to spin up the drives, just so they could flicker out and escape if everything went to hell, but that would risk alerting the enemy ships. If they realised that the Observation Squadron wasn't behaving normally, what would they think? Would they think that Howell was just being careful, or would they realise that something was very wrong? No; they had to sit still, knowing that if the raiders were detected ahead of time, they were committed to a missile duel with nine superdreadnaughts. It was a battle that would only have one outcome.
“Good,” he said. There wouldn't even be any live feed from the shuttles. “Hold our position and stand by.”
There was nothing else he could do, but wait.
***
The great advantage of the Marine Goblin-class assault shuttle, as far as Colonel Neil Frandsen was concerned, was that it could pass for a Cloud-class heavy transport shuttle, even at close range. Its weapons were mounted on recessed platforms, allowing them to be concealed from suspicious eyes until it was far too late, while it could carry thirty armoured Marines into the heart of the enemy position. In this case, Neil knew, three shuttles were going to land on the General Montgomery.
He studied his HUD as he ran through the final checks of his armour and weapons. Commander – no, Captain now – Walker had been keen to avoid heavy casualties if possible, but Neil knew that it was quite possible that they would lose the entire team along with the superdreadnaught. It didn't matter so much to him. After he’d been effectively cashiered for refusing orders to slaughter helpless captives, his life had been meaningless. Colin Walker had offered him a chance for redemption, both for himself and the Marine Corps. It said a great deal about how dissatisfaction that spread through the ranks that only a handful of his regiment had refused to join the rebellion.
“Ten seconds, sir,” the pilot said. The looming bulk of the superdreadnaught was growing rapidly through the forward portal. Neil activated his implant and linked into the shuttle’s sensors, checking out their target shuttlebay. There would be a welcoming committee for the high-value prisoners they were supposed to be carrying, but they would be lightly armed and properly unarmoured. The prisoners were supposed to be helpless, after all. “Nine...eight...seven...”
Neil felt a combat trance falling over him as the shuttle entered the shuttlebay, passing through the forcefield that kept the air within the bay. The shuttle’s sensors revealed a small group of armed men wearing the crimson colours of the Roosevelt Family, marking them out as Household Troops. His smile widened. Household Troops were good at looking pretty, but few of them had any real experience of actual fighting on the battlefield. They would be no match for his men.
“Weapons ready, sir,” the pilot said.
Neil nodded. The other advantage of the Goblin’s design was that all of the Marines could be ejected swiftly from the ship, making it impossible for the enemy to bottle them up inside and trap them – or eject the shuttle back into space.
“Fire,” he ordered.
Chapter Five
Lieutenant Wagner watched as the three shuttles slowly lowered themselves onto the deck, their sleek forms obscured by the shimmering drive fields propelling them through space. He was rather surprised that the pilots had chosen to fly right into the shuttlebay, rather than use the starship’s tractor beams to land slowly and precisely, but Lady Roosevelt had ordered that they land as quickly as possible. Wagner had served the Roosevelt Family long enough to know that what Lady Roosevelt wanted, Lady Roosevelt got, at least as long as her subordinates wanted to keep their cushy jobs. The Household Troops knew better than to object. They could always be transferred to the Imperial Army and sent to serve on some godforsaken muddy ball at the edge of the Empire, where the only recreation was banging inbred girls and shooting pigeons.
The drive fields shimmered away to almost nothing and Wagner blinked in surprise. The shuttle seemed to be opening its hatches...no, it was opening shields protecting heavy weapons! For a second, he was frozen in place as the weapons revealed themselves, and then training took over and his hand raced towards the emergency button. It was too late. The heavy plasma cannons mounted on the Marine shuttle opened fire and Wagner’s body was vaporised, along with the men under his command. The Marines had taken the shuttlebay in the first second of the boarding mission.
***
Neil braced himself as he was catapulted out of the shuttle, his armour automatically compensating for the motion and bringing him down towards the deck. His HUD updated rapidly as the suit’s sensors started to monitor the ship’s internal status, noting the by-products of heavy plasma weapons being fired and the sudden dearth of any armed resistance. The charred bodies that were all that remained of the Household Troops could be safely ignored, so Neil led the first platoon in a charge towards the shuttlebay control compartment, where a uniformed crewman was staring at the Marines as if they were demons from hell. Even if he had reacted at once, it was already too late to seal the ship and vent the shuttlebay into space; the deployed Marines were already flowing into the ship. The plasma fire had disabled the inner hatches.
He crashed through the window and came down inside the control compartment. The crewman was still stunned, but Neil shot him anyway, using the stunner to render him unconscious. The man would be out of it for an hour, by which time the boarding action would have succeeded – or failed. He checked the updates from the other Marines as they flowed into the nearby compartments, stunning everyone they encountered. The great beauty of the stunners, at least in his opinion, was that they could – quite literally – shoot first and ask questions later. He triggered a specific command in his suit and extended a data line into the computers, accessing the shuttlebay’s primary monitoring system. If the superdreadnaught’s security team was on the ball, they should already be trying to lock the Marines out, seal off the entire section and trap the Marines until they could assemble the force to take them out. The feedback started at once, confirming his fears.
“Deal with it,” he ordered. One of the Marines – a communications tech – squatted down beside him and used her own suit to access the systems, overriding the main security codes and isolating the shuttlebay’s control systems. Neil had wondered if they would be able to take control of the entire datanet from the shuttlebay, but – not entirely to his surprise – the system was hard-isolated from the datanet. The Empire was understandably paranoid about computer security. “See if you can get me a live feed from the cameras.”
“The main system has been secured,” the tech said, slowly. Her voice was thoughtful. Like every Marine, she was a combatant first and a tech second, bu
t she tended to resent her position. No Marine was expendable, yet she was less expendable than most, purely because of her advanced training. “The ship’s security system isn't linked into this system.”
Neil nodded. It had been worth a try, even though he hadn't expected success. “12th Platoon stays here and guards the shuttles,” he ordered. They’d planned the mission out in advance, but there was always room for improvising – after all, no battle plan survived contact with the enemy. “The rest of us will move to our assigned targets.”
He led the fire team out of the shuttlebay and headed down towards the hatch connecting the shuttlebay compartment to the rest of the ship. It would be easy to get lost inside the massive superdreadnaught, but his HUD constantly projected a map in front of his eyes. The hatch itself was computer-locked, yet – for safety reasons – it was actually quite easy to open it unless the inner system had been fused. It wouldn't have mattered even if they had fused the inner systems; Neil would have brought up one of the heavy plasma cannons and blasted his way through the hatch. No one, not even the most paranoid designer, would put warship-grade armour on the inside of a starship.
The hatch chugged open and he smiled as he saw the assembled security team on the other side. The Blackshirts were clearly unprepared to come face-to-face with armed Marines; at a guess, they’d been scattered through the ship when the Marines had landed inside their shuttlebay and their commander was still trying to coordinate a response. The Blackshirts had no time to react before the Marines scythed them down and kept moving. The massive superdreadnaught might have an equally massive crew, but few of them would be armed. The Marines could, he hoped, secure the vital compartments...and then the crew would have the choice between surrendering or dying when the air was pumped out of their quarters.
***
On the bridge, Jeremy was watching helplessly as disaster started to unfold. The first warning they’d had was when the security sensors lit up when the plasma cannons fired, by which time it was too late to fire on the shuttles and destroy them. The armoured intruders – they were wearing Marine armour, although that didn't prove that they were Marines – were already spreading through the ship and taking out the security sensors as they moved. Three entire compartments were already completely black, with no way of knowing what was happening inside. The handful of security personnel they’d encountered had simply been brushed aside.
He looked up at Stacy, who was staring at the screen. “Do something,” she ordered, hysterically. Jeremy could almost sympathise with her position. It had been her orders that had allowed the intruders to board all nine superdreadnaughts, her orders that had exposed the entire squadron to boarding missions. Even if they rallied and defeated the intruders, it would still look very bad on her record, although he was sure she would find a way to pass the blame to someone else. “Do something!”
Jeremy considered and then started to redeploy the security teams towards the intruders. There had been no warning, so there had been no internal security alert and the counter-boarding parties had to make their way to the armoury first, just to arm themselves. The intruders, who clearly knew their way around a superdreadnaught, would also be heading to the armoury, where they could cut off all hope of a successful defence. Even the dreaded security troops – the Blackshirts – were not permitted weapons onboard, unless they were on duty. He glanced down at the link to the transports, wondering if it would be wise to order them to start unloading their troops from the stasis units and prepare to transfer them to the superdreadnaughts. It was against regulations, but he couldn't think of any other way to resist.
“Yes, Commodore,” he said. Keying his console, he started to contact the various transports. At least the Observation Squadron hadn't opened fire on them, although he suspected that that would just a matter of time. The transports might have been larger than superdreadnaughts, but they didn't have the defences or weapons protecting the most powerful weapons in the Empire’s arsenal. “I will redeploy troops from the transports and have them brought over here.”
He glanced down at the internal security monitors. Several more compartments had gone black, with brief reports of weapons fire and intruders before they went silent. The intruders were definitely heading towards the most vital parts of the ship, including the armoury, engineering...and the flag bridge. It was funny how the best-protected sections were also, in some ways, the most vulnerable. He caught himself glancing over towards the hatch sealing the bridge off from the rest of the ship. How long would it last against fire from a heavy plasma cannon?
Another compartment went black and he swore. “I think we also need to evacuate this compartment,” he added. He’d sealed the compartments, but the intruders weren't slowing down at all. “We may be at risk.”
“Impossible,” Stacy said, flatly. Her eyes were wide with panic and stubborn determination, unwilling to abandon her bridge. He swallowed several words that came to mind. There was a point when one just had to abandon an untenable position and move elsewhere, or die in place, for nothing. They had reached that point, but Stacy – used to seeing the universe bend to her will – hadn't realised it. “We must not abandon the bridge.”
***
The ambush had been hastily organised, but that hadn’t stopped it taking out two Marines and seriously injuring a third. Neil ordered a quick fallback to safer positions, where the Marines threw grenades into the compartment to destroy the plasma cannon the Blackshirts had used to ambush them. The resulting explosion shattered the compartment – superheated plasma burned through almost everything it touched – and left the Blackshirts in no position to fire. The only survivor ran screaming towards the Marines, his entire body ablaze. He was clearly beyond help, so Neil punched him in the face and shattered his skull. It was the only thing he could do for the dying man. The Marines advanced more carefully, pressing through the compartments one by one, watching for a second ambush. They were approaching the armoury.
Neil stood aside as they opened the final hatch, one heavy enough to resist even plasma fire for several minutes. The Blackshirts were desperately trying to distribute weapons and armour, but it was too late. The Marines cut through the unarmoured Blackshirts with stunners, saving the heavier weapons for the armoured enemy soldiers, who either tried to fight or surrender. Neil was unimpressed by their conduct. The Blackshirts were used to being nothing more than a cudgel, used by their masters to crush resistance with the liberal application of heavy weapons; the Marines were a precision force. They were unused to heavy resistance, let alone something attacking them in the heart of a starship. It was beyond him why Commodore Roosevelt had chosen to use them as an internal security force, unless she felt that the Marines could not be trusted.
His lips twitched as he detailed a platoon to secure the armoury and ensure that no newcomers could claim weapons and use them against his team. It was quite possible that most of the crew would join the rebels once they realised what had happened, but for the moment he had to be careful. If there had been no less than seventy intelligence agents on the Observation Squadron, there could be far more on the superdreadnaughts, ships the Empire didn't dare lose. He checked with the communications tech, who was using the main security terminal in the armoury to access the main system and smiled. Suddenly, the Marines had access to their enemy’s security sensors.
He detailed several platoons to seal all the approaches and then checked in on the platoon approaching engineering. The heavy armour surrounding the starship’s flicker drive was impeding their advance, but they’d be in the main compartment within twenty minutes at the most, unless the enemy had prepared a nasty surprise for them inside. He checked their own sensors and allowed himself a nasty grin. The engineering crew were clearly unable to put up a defence, leaving it solely in the hands of the Blackshirts. Once they were gone, there would be nothing stopping the Marines from taking engineering – and, with it, control of the ship.
“With me,” he ordered, and led the final plato
ons towards the bridge. There were no internal monitors in the bridge itself, but he checked all around the bridge and saw only a handful of Blackshirts, preparing to give their lives in defence of their superior. He wondered, briefly, if Commodore Roosevelt would have the nerve to hit the self-destruct and destroy the ship, before putting the thought out of his mind. There was nothing he could do about it.
The faces of the hostages from the asteroid he’d invaded, the ones he had refused to kill, drifted in front of his mind. Whatever happened, perhaps he was now on the road to redemption.
***
“Commodore,” Jeremy said, “they have secured control of the internal security systems.”
Stacy barely looked at him. She had been throwing a tantrum for the last few minutes, one that the bridge crew had been trying to ignore, even though she was cursing them all as incompetents and fools who had allowed her ship to be boarded. Her slight form was shaking with rage; she’d already threatened to have the entire crew transferred to a penal world, hardly something to fill their minds with confidence and determination. If the bridge crew had been armed, he wouldn't have been surprised if one of them had shot her in the head. He wasn’t sure that he would have blamed the murderer either.
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