Stars & Empire: 10 Galactic Tales

by Jay Allan

  My first shuttle had landed in vacuum conditions, but after we’d secured the area we took the time to pressurize the now-sealed off section. The second group came aboard in a much more orderly manner, and I organized my sections to move out and begin to secure the station.

  The area we were in was a storage facility, large and connected to what we believed to be several main arteries through the station. We’d entered through the “top” of the station, and we were close to the axis, where there was low gravity. Our intel was far from complete, and battleops had given me discretion on how to proceed. I sent one section through what I believed to be a maintenance conduit with instructions to find and take control of the main power plant. They had our best guess as to where it was, and I sent my most experienced junior officer, Lieutenant Frost, to command. Frost had been in Achilles too, and afterward he fought at Sandoval, which wasn’t the bloodbath Columbia had been but was no walk in the park either.

  The SEALs were too heavily armored to move quickly through the station, so I ordered them to stay and defend the landing area and act as a mobile reserve. They didn’t like staying behind, or they didn’t like taking orders from me. Or maybe both. But they were pros, and they were under my command, so they grudgingly obeyed.

  I took the rest of the company up through was appeared to be the main transport tube to the surface areas. The entrance to the tube was 60 meters above our position, but in this gravity all we had to do was jump and be careful not to smash too hard into the ceiling. It took about ten minutes to get everyone through the hatch. We had a couple of people jump too enthusiastically and inflict some light damage to their suits, but there were no major problems.

  There was a single large tube, which lift cars normally traversed, flanked by two smaller passageways with metal ladders. I figured they’d have shut down the lifts, so we split into two groups and started to climb up the ladder. Every fifty meters or so we’d get to a landing with hatches leading to other storage and work areas. We ran into a few maintenance bots and a couple station workers, but no organized resistance.

  As we got higher, the climbing got a bit tougher, though of course it was not really very difficult in armor. The gravity increased the closer we got to the surface, and now you could really fall if you lost your grip, and maybe take out a bunch of your comrades as you did. I reminded everyone three times—or maybe four—to be careful. The decks got much closer together as well, and now there were landings every ten meters. We got into our first real firefight when we got to the level we thought housed the main data center.

  The landing there was fairly large, with four doorways leading out. There were security personnel at each of these, firing at us as we emerged from the transport tubes. The security officers had light energy weapons, very effective at short range against lightly armored targets, but it took a direct hit at very close range to do any significant damage to an armored Marine. We were certainly close. In fact this was knife-fighting range for us, and since we were at a big positional disadvantage, instead of conducting a lengthy exchange of fire I ordered a charge against all four entryways.

  “Charge and take the enemy positions as you emerge. Tube one, alternate. Odds take the north portal, evens the east. Tube two, odds to the south, evens to the west. Now!” North, south, east, and west were pure constructs, of course, familiar reference points assigned to directions by our battle computers.

  I was about halfway down the transport tube in the middle of our formation where my training told me I was supposed to be. My gut told me otherwise, and I couldn’t wait to get off this ladder and into the fight. Hector projected a schematic of the battle inside my visor. I could see my people, a series of blue dots, moving quickly from the platform into the corridors beyond the hatches. I could see red dots—the enemy—falling back slowly.

  The fight was over quickly. This was the first time in all my assaults I’d seen true hand-to-hand fighting. We didn’t often get this close to the enemy, but these confined spaces were very different from the usual battlefield. The station security troops wore body armor, but it was no match for our powered suits. My troops were also armed with close quarter blasters—our mag-rifles would have torn the station structure apart, and we wanted to capture the place, not turn it into rubble. The pulse laser blasters were powerful weapons, but their intensity dropped off quickly in atmosphere, making them at best good for short-range work.

  Our weapons were far more effective against their unpowered armor than theirs were against our powered suits, so we were able to charge into their fire, taking only a few casualties. Once in hand-to-hand range we finished the job with our molecular blades. The blades were a sort of bayonet that retracted into the arm of the fighting suit when not in use. About 30 centimeters long when deployed, the blade was honed down to an edge just one molecule thick, which could cut through virtually anything, especially with the enhanced strength of our suits behind it. In a few cases the troops didn’t even bother with the blades. A nuclear powered fist was enough to take out a lightly armored defender, and there were a few crushed skulls among the casualties.

  By the time I got up to the platform it was all over. We had three casualties, two minor wounds with some suit damage, and one KIA, hit by a lucky shot that burned through the armpit of his suit. Our armor was tough everywhere, but it was weakest at the joints, where mobility required some concessions from protection.

  I walked over to the northern corridor to check things out, and I found a blood-soaked slaughterhouse. There were a few charred bodies, the victims of our blaster fire as we came in, but most of the work here was done with the blades, and it had been extremely effective. There were severed limbs, bodies sliced in half, or nearly so, and bloody, unidentifiable bits of flesh everywhere. The walls were literally dripping with blood, small rivers of droplets slowly sliding down the smooth plasti-steel. Further down the hallway there were at least half a dozen bodies, victims of blaster fire as they tried to run. The other corridors were similar, and the south was worst of all, with the body parts piled so high we had to drag them out onto the platform so we could get past and head down the corridor.

  It was the south corridor I expected to lead to the data center, and the heavier enemy presence there seemed to confirm my suspicions. Taking the data center was a primary objective on its own, but I had my own tactical plan that also required its capture.

  I left a squad at the platform to protect our rear and took the rest of the command down the south passage. We moved slowly, carefully. This was like urban street fighting, but even tighter. We passed numerous doors, each leading to another room or corridor. Every room had to be checked—I wasn’t about to leave an enemy squad unmolested in our rear.

  We had a canister of small charges that were just powerful enough to blow open the hatches without causing a lot of other damage. The majority of the rooms were empty, but we did run into a few occupants, mostly techs of some sort at work. War is a harsh business, and we didn’t have time to deal with prisoners, so we did what we had to do and moved on.

  Suddenly an arc of electric-blue light ripped into our front rank, practically blowing one of my troopers to pieces. I ordered return fire, but the corridor was just wide enough for three people abreast, so it was hard to bring too much firepower to bear. About ten seconds later another blue bolt hit Corporal Wells, boring a neat 10cm hole through his chest.

  “Open up the rooms, and take cover,” I barked.

  There were six rooms along the stretch of corridor we occupied, and we dispersed into them. I stayed in the corridor and directed everyone near me to the closest room. The blue beam continued to fire about every ten seconds, and it took out another one of my troopers and then just missed my head before I dove into one of the rooms.

  I assigned two troopers to each doorway to return fire from cover. The enemy began to shoot with normal weapons as well, but it was all pretty ineffective. I think we took out two of them, and one of my guys was grazed in the arm.


  This wasn’t going to cut it. We were pinned down. My whole plan was based on speed and now we were sitting here stuck in the mud. I was pretty sure that was a portable particle accelerator out there, probably drawing directly from the station’s power core, and Hector confirmed my analysis. The thing could fire every ten seconds or so. We could rush down the corridor, but we’d take a lot of casualties. The weapon was powerful enough to take out two or three targets each shot at close range.

  “Hector, connect me with Lieutenant Frost.”

  “Frost here, sir.”

  “Lieutenant, give me a report. Have you reached the power core yet?”

  “No sir. I’m pretty sure we’ve located it, but we have heavy resistance. I can expedite, but it will cost.”

  “Negative. Continue your plan for now, but if you aren’t there in fifteen minutes then take it at all costs.”

  “Understood. Frost, out.”

  Ok, so we were bogged down at the power plant too. If I didn’t come up with an alternate plan we were going to end up frontally charging both positions, and a lot of my troopers would never get off this station.

  I thought for a few seconds, and an idea started to form. We had four cutting lasers. The walls between compartments weren’t armored. Maybe, just maybe we could cut through and advance from room to room without exposing ourselves in the corridor.

  I got on the link with my officers and non-coms and explained the plan. Unfortunately, one of the troopers with a cutting laser had been a casualty, and another was with Frost’s group. So we only had two to work with. Private Hemming was with me in the forward-most room, and Private Black was on the same side of the corridor, but one room back. I had Black start cutting his way into our room, while I got Hemming working on the wall between us and the next room. I had four troopers flanking Hemming; we had no idea what was waiting in that next room.

  The cutting lasers were designed to draw on our suits’ power plants, and they were quite strong. They cut through the interior walls of the station easily, but there were pipes and conduits of all sorts, so as we cut we’d sever them, creating showers of sparks, water, and steam. None of it was a threat to us in our suits, but it made quite a mess.

  It took about three minutes to cut a hole large enough for a crouched man to get through. As soon as the cutting was done, the Marine with the torch would back away and one of the troopers on guard would kick the loose section of wall, while another looked through, weapons at the ready. All together it took us maybe five minutes to get from one room to the next.

  Of course, we had troops in rooms on both sides of the corridor, and we were only cutting our way forward on one. My thought was to get far enough ahead to get around the projector and take it out, and then the rest of the company could advance down the corridor. But the rooms were small, which meant more walls between us and our destination. After twenty minutes we’d gotten through three, but unless they got a lot larger we were looking at ten or twelve more. It was taking too long.

  I was just about to bite the bullet and order a charge down the corridor when Frost commed me.

  “Captain, we’re in the power center. We took three casualties, no KIAs.”

  I let out a little sigh of relief. “Excellent, Frost. Good work. Can you cut off power to specific sections of the station from where you are?”

  “Sir, I’m not sure. I am in the main control center now, and I have Jarvis working on the computer, but I don’t know how long it will take him to breach the security.”

  That was all well and good, but we didn’t have time to try hack our way into their control system. “Frost, is there a manual cutoff for the whole thing? I don’t want to shut down the reactor, just cut off the power flow to the grid.”

  “Stand by, Captain”

  He was silent for about ninety seconds, and then he came back on and said, “Yes, there is a main cutoff, but I’m not sure what will happen if the whole station loses power.”

  He was right, of course. We had very incomplete information. I had to assume all the vital systems had some type of backup power, but there was no way to be certain. If I was wrong, we’d lose life support and who knows what else. But I was pretty sure that projector in the hall was connected directly into the station’s power grid. On the battlefield that type of gun would be on a tank or other vehicle with enough energy generation to power it. But the only way they could have rigged it up here is by drawing directly from the station’s reactor. Cutting off power would shut the thing down. At least I hoped it would.

  “Frost, on my command you will cut off power to the entire station.”

  “Yes sir.” He paused for a few seconds and then said, “Captain, we have station security forces attempting to counterattack us here.”

  Shit. “Is your position in danger?”

  There was a short silence, probably Frost evaluating reports from his troopers. “Not presently sir. I have pickets posted at all approaches. We’re exchanging some fire, but I don’t think it’s a serious threat at this time.”

  “Ok. Prepare to execute power shutdown on my command. Duration sixty seconds, and then restore.”

  He acknowledged, then I told Hector to get my officers and non-coms on the line. I explained what I wanted to do. First, we were going to make a run for that projector and take it out before the power came back. Then, by squads, we were going to get down that hall as quickly as possible. I designated one squad to remain in our initial position and a second to follow behind the charge, checking out each of the rooms along the way to make sure we weren’t leaving hostiles behind us. The squad that remained back would support them if they ran into anything they couldn’t handle on their own.

  The initial run down the corridor was the riskiest part. I had no way to be sure that thing was hooked up to the main grid, or even if it could hold a charge for another shot if it was disconnected. Whoever led off down the corridor could easily end up being fried, even if the plan itself worked. If anyone was going to take that chance based on my crazy scheme it was going to be me.

  It was stupid, I knew that. I was the field commander, the first time I’d been in charge of an overall operation, and going out and getting myself killed in the middle of the fight would be an idiotic thing to do. I was about to ignore everything I learned at the Academy too, but I just couldn’t order anyone else down that corridor. Not after Achilles and Columbia. I’d sent too many men and women who trusted me to their deaths, and now it was my turn.

  I laid out my plan and got the expected chorus of protests, but I told them it was decided. I’m sure they all still disagreed vehemently, but they also knew when to stop arguing with their commanding officer. Hector, on the other hand, had no such limitations, and after I’d finished with the briefing he added his commentary. “You do understand that this is a foolish decision based on your misplaced feelings of survivor’s guilt, do you not? You are jeopardizing this mission by actions that have no basis in regulation or tactical expediency.”

  I wondered what it had been like in an age when computers just did math and kept their mouth shut. “Not another word, Hector. We’re done discussing this.” I half expected yet another argument, but for once he shut the hell up.

  I waited until all the units were organized, and I told the squads that would be following me to advance as soon as the power was restored, and after 75 seconds in any event. Then I had Hector connect me with Lieutenant Frost. “Status report?”

  “Enemy is still attempting to retake the power center. We have a low-intensity firefight in two of the approach corridors, but no serious threat at this time. I have two wounded in recent exchanges. Best estimate is approximately 20 enemy casualties.”

  “Very well. Are you ready to execute the power cutoff?”

  There was the slightest hesitation then he answered, slowly and deliberately. “Yes sir. Everything is ready.” I knew he was worried about what unexpected effects the power shutoff might have, but he didn’t say anything about it, and neither d
id I.

  “Have you briefed your troops in the corridors?” I didn’t want any of our people getting surprised in the middle of a fight.

  “Yes sir. My entire command is ready.”

  I moved to the doorway, and activated my mag-rifle. The rest of the troops had only blasters, but the officers and sergeants had assault rifles as well, just in case they were needed. The velocity of the mag-rifle projectiles would wreak havoc on the station interior. But I needed to clear that hallway, so whatever collateral damage was done to the station was unavoidable. Plus, we weren’t near the exterior, so at least I wouldn’t blow a hole in the hull and decompress the entire area. I peered out cautiously into the corridor, and then I ordered Frost to cut the power. There was a delay of 3 or 4 seconds and then the lights went out. An instant later the entire place shook fiercely.

  I held on to the open doorway, but I could hear everyone else slipping and sliding around. The station-quake was brief. I supposed that the station-keeping drives that maintained the rotation and orbit were affected by the power outage, which I later learned was exactly what had happened. If the power stayed out for too long the positional drives would cut out altogether and the rotation of the station would slow. We’d lose the artificial gravity. But I had no intention of leaving the power out for that long.

  I swung around the doorframe and bolted down the corridor. The sooner I got down there the better. Running in a confined space isn’t easy in armor. Your legs are so strong that unless you’re really careful you tend to start jumping. Staying low and moving with speed took a lot of practice, another reason why I was doing this. I don’t think anyone in the company had the hours in a suit I did. I had my infrared scanning suite on full, so I could see there were enemy troops ahead. I must have surprised the hell out of them, because I was halfway down the corridor before they started firing. Most of the shots missed me, but a couple hit my armor, with no significant effect. I opened up with the mag-rifle at the max rate of fire and sprayed the entire area. I could hear screaming and scuffling around, and their fire stopped completely.