by Andrew Beery
Mike started to raise his rifle. Cat had seen the man practice and she had no doubt the marine could take both of the guards down before the shell casing from the first round hit the ground. That said, she was not in a hurry to kill anybody that she didn’t need to. She reached a hand out and pushed the barrel of his rifle down.
He looked at her with a raised eyebrow.
She shook her head slightly and put a finger to her lips.
He nodded.
Cat then launched herself forward, using every ounce of her Heshe enhanced strength and speed. She covered the three hundred feet in an astonishing five seconds. The Hedgemites, for their part didn’t even notice her approaching until she was less than twenty feet way. By then it was too late.
One of the reasons Cat was able to run as fast as she did was that the nanites in her boots provided a gecko-like traction. She used this feature to run not just on the cement surface of the road but also on the side of the surrounding buildings. The Hedgemites were undoubtedly confused by the sight of what was approaching them.
One tried to raise his weapon. He was fast and if Cat had been a normal human, or even one of the Infinity Brigade, there was a good chance he would have been able to line-up a shot. As it was, Cat was faster. She reached the weapon before he could fire and pulled it out of his startled paws. At the same time, she grabbed his fur by the shoulder and sent a debilitating electrical shock through his body. He made an odd chirping sound and collapsed to the ground.
Cat was already moving on to the second squirrel. He struck her with the butt of his weapon on the side of her head. The weapon’s kinetic energy was reflected towards the startled Hedgemite guard by the hyperfield emitters built into her Heshe armor.
Again, she sent an electrical charge through her fingers and the Hedgemite guard collapsed.
“If I had known you could do a Vulcan nerve pinch I wouldn’t have bothered to bring my rifle,” Mike mumbled in astonishment.
“Even Captain Kirk carried a phaser so don’t you worry,” Cat answered with a smile as she disabled the weapons the Nester guards had been carrying. “Let’s see if we can’t make some noise. You did remember the flash-bangs yes?”
“Damn! I knew I forgot something,” the big marine said with his own grin as he fished the requested items from his small backpack.
The two of them quickly placed ten of the devices high on the walls of the surrounding buildings. They were set to go off randomly within about two minutes of each other. With any luck, the series of explosions would draw off at least a portion of the depot guard force. At very least, it would concentrate their attention in a direction opposite where the primary attack was actually coming from.
“OK, time to move on to phase two,” Cat said as she planted the last device.
“Roger that, Admiral,” Mike answered. “As much as it pains my sense of manhood, I think it would be best if you took point.”
Cat smiled. It was decidedly an unusual sight given her silvered complexion. The two made their way around a number of side streets in route to the secondary meeting point.
They were about a kilometer from where they had setup their diversion when the first of the flash-bangs went off. Nevel Potter, the chemist who had constructed the devices had rigged them to make lots of noise, light and smoke. Small pieces of magnesium foil coated in caramelized sugar enhanced the visual display and generated prodigious amounts of white smoke. Between the concussive sound, light display and billowing smoke… the pyrotechnics display was visible from anywhere within the small town.
“If that doesn’t get their attention, noth’n will,” Cat’s companion grunted with satisfaction.
She nodded in agreement. “We better pick up the pace. I suspect Sam and Sarah are about to kick off their piece of the plan and it things go south for them I want to be in position to lend a hand.”
Sure enough, in the distance, Cat could hear the sound of automatic weapons fire. The plan had been to subdue the small cadre of guards at the depot’s main gate, quietly, and then make their way into the weapons storage facility. What she and her companion were hearing was anything but quiet.
***
Sam Wise was not a happy camper. The idea was to slip in and slip out. That fool hot-headed Nera McConnell had other ideas. Sam didn’t know if it was because she was a teenager, a ginger or Irish but whatever the case she had created quite a problem.
Sarah had approached the gate as per the plan. A couple of three squirrels came out to meet her. She asked for directions to a local pub. The squirrels shared a passion with humans for fermented beverages and so it was a good bet they would know the location of the aforementioned establishment.
While the four were engaged in a conversation Nera was to slip through a small cut in the fence and trank the sole remaining guard in the shack. What none of them could know was that squirrels had scheduled a training exercise for this evening.
When the diversionary explosions began, a full company of Hedgemite soldiers, who had been ready to deploy in what they assumed to be a mock battle, erupted from their barracks.
Sarah adapted and played her part perfectly. She acted startled and afraid when the flash-bangs began. The plan was to release a small amount of nitrous oxide from a cylinder in her handbag. The gas, often referred to as laughing gas had a minimal impact on humans. For squirrels, whose metabolism was quite a bit faster, it rendered them comatose for the better part of an hour.
When the unexpected soldiers appeared, she knew the original plan was a bust and that their best move would be to abort and engage in a strategic retreat. Sadly, Nera didn’t get the memo. All she needed to do was to squat in place behind something and wait for the soldiers to pass. Instead she raised her rifle and began taking shots at the Hedgemites. It didn’t take the squirrels long to figure out this was no exercise and that somebody was firing real kinetic rounds at them.
One of the officers barked a chirping command and, as one, the soldiers dropped their practice rounds and reloaded their weapons with live ammunition. Nera didn’t stand a chance. Hundreds of rounds headed her direction. The barrel she was behind might as well have been made of paper.
Eric McConnell was part of the group waiting to rush the gate once it had been secured. As his daughter fell, something in the man snapped. He bellowed in rage and thus drew the attention of the Hedgemite soldiers to the mass of men hiding in the doorway of a building half a block down the street. The direction of fire shifted and soon was returned by the resistance fighters.
It was all Sam could do not to rush to Sarah’s aid. He would have only endangered her and himself. Right now, she could pretend to be nothing more than an innocent bystander. That wouldn’t last once they searched her handbag.
***
“What in the hell do you mean it’s not Nebi Prime?” Ken Kirkland barked.
“Stellar Cartography confirms our current location does not match the star pattern reported by Admiral Kimbridge. Wherever she is… it is not here,” Yorky reported.
Ken looked around the bridge. The repair crews had done a good job… especially considering most of the Engineering staff had been killed and were still in their bio-generators getting new bodies built.”
“Get me Commander Stone online.”
Immediately the Marine answered the captain’s hail from the cockpit of his scorpion fighter.
“Commander Stone here, Yorktown. How are you guys doing over there?”
“AG, this is Yorktown actual. We are pretty banged up but truth be known… it could have been a lot worse. AG, I may need another favor. I need you to board and take control of that battleship. I need their computer cores. We are not in the right place and unless we can get some more intel we may be hard pressed to find the Admiral.”
“Acknowledged Yorktown. I have three combat shuttles loaded and ready to go. Lieutenant Commander Hiller will lead the assault team. He distinguished himself in the battle for the Gator homeworld. He will get the job done without brea
king too many eggs in the process.”
“Excellent AG. One of those eggs may be the key to getting the Admiral back so tell him to be gentle.”
“Roger that Yorktown, eggs over easy. Stone out.”
Chapter 11: Glory Bound…
Lieutenant Commander Bradly “Hill” Hiller was as big as a man ever got. At seven-foot-six-inches, he was tall. Add to that, his un-augmented strength allowed him to bench well-in-excess of five hundred pounds. As an augment, the bio-generation chambers had greatly enhanced his physical abilities. His strongest attribute, however, remained his keen intellect.
“AG, we are en route to you now. Is that big boy still sleeping?”
“Negative, Hill. We are seeing signs of repair operations underway. Their fusion reactors are still down but electro-magnetic emissions would seem to indication another power source is in play… perhaps batteries. There is no question but that there are survivors… so be careful. They are unlikely to be friendly given we just whipped their butts.”
“Roger that, Sir. We are going to do a soft dock at one of the holes you guys opened near the rear thrusters. We’ll install a smart foam patch and airlock and then make our way forward in the ship.”
***
Left Captain Hero clacked a claw in frustration. The Nester was missing half the fur on his carapace. The fur had fallen victim to an exploding plasma conduit that had overloaded in engineering where he had been stationed. He had been on his way to the medical bay when the alien’s weapons had finally penetrated the NE Glory’s protective armor. In her sixteen years of operation, the Nestor Confederation’s oldest battleship had never been bested in battle… much less disabled like a dung bug caught on its back.
Had Hero remained in engineering he would have been as dead as his clutch-mates. Their demise was not a serious concern for him. As Left Captain, he was higher on the caste hierarchy and so their lives meant little in terms of his advancement. He was far more interested in the fate of his life-mate. She-Who-Would-Sing was of the royal caste and her loss would seriously jeopardize his social standing. Besides, as much as a Nester could love another… he loved She-Who-Would-Sing. His life would be the poorer were she truly gone… and not just from his position in the hierarchy.
His trip to the medical bay would have to wait. He made his way to a secondary control station and inserted his claw for biometric identification. The main lighting was down so his eight low-light eyestalks were fully extended. The screen acknowledged his command authority.
A quick check of critical systems confirmed his worst fears. The bridge crew was trapped in a section of the ship without power or life support. He could not tell from data available if they had even survived the attack.
If they were lost, Hero thought to himself, they might just be the lucky ones.
The Glory was dead in space. Main power systems were offline and if he could believe the data being provided by the computer system… it would take the naval shipyards at Nebi Prime to change that situation.
The redundant power supplies and batteries would keep the environmental systems going for a few days but this far out from the Bascara sun there was little hope of deploying a solar array that could help in any meaningful way. The good news was they would not starve to death… the bad news was they were fated to choke on their own breath gases and freeze in the bitter cold of space. It was, at best, an ignoble death.
“ALERT ALERT ALERT”
Hero scrolled through the various status messages that were flooding his screen to see what the cause of this new alarm was. A lower caste Trog was making its way down the corridor. It was obviously wounded as it was leaving a trail of red-green blood on the deck plating. Like him, it had probably been making its way to the medical bay when the final death blow was struck against the ship. The creature looked in bad shape but Left Captain Hero needed answers… the Trog could die on its own time.
“You there,” Hero barked, “fetch a team to deck one and see if the Prime Captain still lives.”
“As you command, Left Captain.”
There! Hero had barely given the creature a second thought. His eyestalks continued to scan the status messages flowing across the screen in front of him. The computer had detected an incursion. A hull breach in engineering had been sealed and atmosphere reintroduced. It would be good news except that the creatures doing the repairs were not chipped crew members.
They appeared to be a race that called themselves humans. A tribe of humans had been conquered many years ago but this seemed to be a new tribe.
Was it possible the Glory had been attacked by the very adversary they had set out to subjugate? That would mean the new humans had traveled the ring-gate!
This was not good news. It meant their adversary might actually be in a position to subjugate them. This was not good news at all.
***
“Odds forward, evens cover,” Hill barked to his men. They were wearing modified Mark-12 battle armor commonly called Stark suits. The Mark-12 Stark was a formidable weapon system with a built-in AI, fusion power-pack and active shielding that would stop anything reasonable thrown at it as well as most things unreasonable. Armaments included both energy weapons and kinetics. A marine wearing a Mark-12 Stark was considerably stronger, faster and better protected than any marine in the history of the corps.
The modifications in these starks came down to enhancements to the embedded AIs. They were now capable of being linked to every other AI and provided a comprehensive sensor net that fed a combined and cumulative view of the field of engagement.
The section of the ship they had entered was, sadly, devoid of life. The engineering team had died at their posts attempting to safely scram their fusion reactor. The hull breach ended their efforts prematurely. The resulting unattended shutdown had ruptured several plasma conduits and caused considerable damage in what appeared to be main engineering.
Judging from the body parts scattered about the reactor room, the crew seemed to be a mix of races. There was a large number of nondescript fleshy tubes scattered about the engineering deck. Whatever creature they came from… it was obvious that they did not tolerate vacuums well as there was not a single intact specimen. The explosive decompression of the engineering bay had ruptured each and every one of them.
The predominate species, however, seemed to be what Hiller could only think of as hairy crabs. They were almost the size of humans and seemed to have a massive number of eyes on flexible stalks.
Having seen them, he now understood the design of the robots they had battled on the Yorktown. Those units had been controlled by humans remotely but Hiller would bet his bottom dollar that there were versions of that armor that could be piloted directly by these crab-like critters.
They reached the inter bulkhead without any opposition. Hill didn’t expect their luck to last. He was tempted to move closer to the front but Commander Stone had already made it clear that Lieutenant Commanders did not lead from the front. The fact that Commander Stone regularly broke his own rule did not have a bearing on the discussion… even when Hiller pointed out the inconsistency… something about Rank Hath Its Privileges.
“OK, McGill set the charge and get your behind… behind something.”
“Aw… can’t I watch it blow? It’s not like anything is going to hurt me in my stark.”
“My order stands… we don’t know what is behind that door and it very well might be able to take out your stark.”
“I never get to have any fun,” McGill grumbled as he set the charge.
“Write your momma about it if you need to… but get your butt behind something harder than your head.”
“Charge is set… Sir”
Hiller smiled at the petulant sound of Sergeant McGill’s voice. Like most Marines, he had a special enthusiasm for things that went bang… especially when he was the one making them go bang. Sadly, with the advent of the bio-generation chambers, little niceties like common sense and a healthy respect for the aforementioned
things that go bang fell by the wayside.
“Blow it when you are ready,” Commander Hiller whispered over his comms. “Evens head through the opening and secure the immediate area. Odds ready to follow as soon as Evens give the all-clear.”
Sealed as they were in their Stark suits, whispering and yelling made little difference. The suits active stealth capabilities effectively dampened and eliminated any sound they produced. That same stealth suite could provide active camouflage which could make the Marines all but invisible… at least to species known to the Galactic Coalition. That said, Hiller had ordered his Marines to disable the active camo for this exercise.
First, they had no idea what the capabilities of the Nesters and their servant races were… so the camo might have been a waste of resources better utilized for offensive measures. Second, Hiller wanted his adversaries to see him coming. Marines in battle armor were a fearsome sight and if that sight prompted a quick surrender… so much the better.
The men and women under his command were professionals. They had been running close combat exercises since the first days of Boot Camp. They knew their business. As soon as the hinges on the hatch blew, Sergeant McGill and his squad pulled the hatch out of its frame and used it as a shield to enter the still inhabited sections of the Nester battleship.
Almost immediately they ran into opposition. Larger versions of the spider-bots… Hiller thought perhaps they should rename them crab-bots… were waiting near the hatch the Marines had just blown. It was obvious the Nesters had been monitoring the Marine’s advance through the wreckage of their engineering compartment.
McGill was hit by four plasma beams far more powerful than they had witnessed on Yorktown. His active shielding handled it but his shield emitters red-lined in the process. Five of the beams would have overloaded them and the Infinity Brigade would have had their first casualty of the engagement.
McGill threw the hatch he was holding like it was a ninja throwing star. It embedded itself in the chest of a crab-bot. The bot went down. At the same time, McGill did a shoulder roll and came up on one knee… firing his own plasma rifle. He was joined by three of his fellow Marines.
