The Captain steepled his hands to his nose. “If either one of those is true…”
“Yes Sir.”
“Tell them they have their audience.”
“Yes, sir, what about the rest of the refugees?”
“We’ll have security meet you when you dock. They’ll escort the refugees to the docked transports. Tadeh Qudas, Intel and I will meet you in the nearest briefing room.”
“What about the injured sir?”
“Have your people get the most critical to medical. Any we can’t treat and release before we undock the transports will just have to go with us.”
“Understood sir.”
Passageway outside Briefing Room 4, UCSBS-Wolfsbane
The handoff of the refugees to the onboard security and marines went off without issue. It wasn’t that Blazer had expected any, but the way that this mission had gone appeared to just be too easy, too textbook. Even now, as he escorted the Governor and his four intelligence officers, he kept expecting something, anything, to go wrong. But what could go wrong? They’d searched all the refugees and had found nothing, no weapons, no transmissible illnesses, no explosives, nothing. Blazer had even had the metallic prosthetics checked out. There was nothing out of the ordinary about any of them. Despite even that, he’d drained their power packs to minimum levels, just to be safe.
He looked back over his shoulder: Zithe and Gokhead brought up the rear of their little party. The Governor walked a pace behind and to Blazer’s left, keeping a respectful, or perhaps fearful, distance. He’d appeared ill at ease ever since transitioned out of the hangar. “Are all Cont..er… Confed ships arranged this way?”
“What way?” Blazer asked.
“When we left the hangar, we turned sideways.”
Blazer eyed the man as he walked. “Yes Governor, we arrange our decks such that the floor is perpendicular to our main thrusters. Only certain facilities, like the larger flight decks are arranged along the ship’s long axis.”
“Seems odd, why?”
“These ships serve their whole lives in space. It makes more sense to arrange the decks that way, and saves power.”
“I see,” the Governor muttered.
Blazer looked back at the intelligence officers. They looked about at the passageway in wide-eyed wonder. They may have seen images of the interiors of Confed ships before, but the chances of ever having been aboard one, and a Tacit Class at that, were zero. Still, that they wouldn’t have informed the Governor seemed odd. As he looked, Zithe stuttered a step.
“Vaughnt,” Captain Sardenon called, as he exited a lift tube at the next bulkhead.
“Sir,” Blazer replied as he spun to face him. “As ordered,” he continued and turned towards the Governor. “I have brought Governor…” The man had begun to sweat profusely, his cheeks flushed and swollen and then, before Blazer could stop him, he lunged towards the Captain.
Blazer reached for the Governor, but it was too late. Only the armor that encased his hand and arm saved them when the Governor exploded.
The next few moments were a blur. Blazer wiped away the muck covering his scorched visor. The feel of the melted flesh that coated it sickened him. That was when he realized that his hand was exposed, the armor having been blasted away and the ablative material beneath filled with holes. The sound of yelling and plaser fire pulled him away from his exposed hand. He rolled over.
A GF shock trooper dominated the passageway, the artificial arm of one of the intel officers in his hand as he exchanged fire with Zithe and Gokhead. Blazer reached for his rifle and found one of the other intel officers grabbing its barrel. Blazer remote fired the weapon with a micomm command. The Geffer dropped to the deck.
Clamoring to the deck, Blazer watched the shock trooper. Studded jet black armor covered his whole body as he stood there just absorbing round after round. Not absorbing, the rounds passed right through him. His torso shimmered, the wall beyond it visible as he pulled cylindrical bottles and magazines from his leg and tossed them to the others. He’s only partially phased, but how? Blazer realized and wondered.
He dropped the artificial arm and hollered in pain.
Blazer brought his rifle around and shot out the back of his knees.
The trooper collapsed to the deck, his head and chest falling through it as Blazer spotted what might have been a power supply on his back. He leapt towards the trooper, slapped his bare hand against the studs on his leg and discharged. Blazer felt his hand begin to fall out of phase, it was numb, yet alive, filled with energy yet dead, and then nothing.
He recoiled and the trooper stopped moving. He was corporeal again, but with his chest and head, with those glowing red eye lenses, still inside the deck. His limbs jerked for a moment, but Blazer had no time to watch as the intelligence officers turned their artificial limbs on the Captain.
Blazer squeezed his trigger and swung his rifle in a sloppy suppressive fire arc. He downed one of the officers, but not before he heard cries of pain behind him. He ignored them and fired a burst at the next officer, Gokhead and Zithe downing the other two.
As the men fell, Blazer remained on the deck for a moment, taking it in. The smell of a liquid chemical accelerant assaulted his nose. Methane? He couldn’t be sure, but his suit confirmed it. He stared at the shock trooper for just an instant, an instant that felt like an eternity.
Men like this had murdered his mother, gunning her down in cold blood aboard the Vaurnel. The Galactic Federation’s worst prisoners were offered the chance to become shock troopers as a means of lessening their sentences. However, few if any ever survived the required number of shipboard assaults necessary to earn a pardon. They either died in combat, or, like this trooper, would suffer phase armor failures that would leave them permanently embedded in their targets.
A moan and Zithe running past him jerked Blazer back into reality. He sprang to his feet and ran up to the Captain, Zithe already by his side. He was in sorry shape, the side of his head burnt black, his duty uniform punctured by at least two mass-driver rounds that smelt of that same accelerant. “Sir,” Zithe called out. “Are you all right?”
The Captain opened one scorched eye and pointed across the passageway. “Bastard took the blast for me.”
Blazer looked; it was Tadeh Qudas. His skull faced helmet was shattered, broken enough to reveal bloody flesh beneath. His lightly-armored combat uniform had been breached in several places, blood spurting freely within. “Shreg me!” Blazer cursed and dove across the passageway towards his unconscious squadron commander.
Blazer keyed in his micomm into the ship-wide comms. “Medical emergency, Captain Sardenon and Tadeh Qudas are down,” Blazer looked around. “Deck fifty-six, corridor Delt Five.”
Zithe patched in next. “All security forces detain the refugees.”
Medical Bay Three
The blast that rocked the entry to her medical bay sent Marda skidding back along the deck into a waiting gurney. All around her, screams of panic echoed from staff. Training took her in an instant, she had no time for such panic. Her hand fell to her hip, and skidded down her leg, nothing there. She looked, her medical gown was bloodied and blackened. I don’t carry in medical, she reminded herself. Her eyes flew to the doors. Arion slumped just inside, unconscious, half his face melted away.
Marda leapt into action. She scrambled across the deck, grabbed Arion by his collar and dragged him in. More screams echoed outside in the passageway along with the reports of plaser fire, and tiny explosions that were followed with the ping o
f slugs against the walls. She slapped her temple.
Her micomm responded and Marda took quick stock of the situation. The refugees on their way to medical, those that hadn’t exploded, had scattered, as had those being escorted. “Frag me!” she bit out and checked their locations as best she could, the Blade Force giving chase.
Medical personnel, of sufficient position, possessed unique authorizations aboard most ships; many of which were usually reserved for the command hierarchy. The ability to order the sheltered core of the ship, the Egg, to lock itself down, was one of the highest level. An impressive feat of engineering, the shell of the Egg was built from five distinct layers. The outermost layers were carbon diamond, and between those two separate allotropes of superdense carbon. In the center was one of the hardest known carbon allotropes, one that remained stable only at high pressure. Kept in a semi-liquid state when inactive, it rested between the low-pressure layers of superdense carbon allotrope. Upon activation, the sandwich of carbons would slam together raising the pressure within the core layer until it activated and hardened. This made the Egg all but impenetrable, but the cost to make the protective shell had proved immense.
The deck reverberated under Marda as she felt the pressure doors into the Egg slam shut in preparation to seal the section off. The emergency air recyclers and power core snapped to life two decks below her, all power, comms and life support hardlines severing. In less than a pulse, they were cut off from the rest of the ship.
Marda looked to Arion. His breaths came in ragged gasps and she motioned to her staff. “Take care of him,” she ordered, and reaching down, picked up his rifle. “He’s a self-healer.”
Weapon in hand, Marda poked her head out into the passageway. Cowering before her, two refugees lay huddled in a nearby alcove. They were injured, blood and gore covering them. Filled with suspicion, Marda looked them over. The nearest to her, a Terran female, had had her legs blown clean off. The Krad behind her held her tight with his tail, the pressure the only thing keeping her from bleeding out.
Never taking her eyes from the pair, Marda called back into the medical bay. “I need two gurneys out here. Get these two into separate isolation cells, immediately.” Keeping her attention focussed, she looked to the pair. “Cross us, and you’ll never have a chance to explode.”
Running feet from up the passageway tore Marda’s attention away. She spun about to find two security officers running her way. “Ma’am, we have them,” the first called, his plaser rifle trained on the pair.
“Stand down, we need them alive,” she ordered. “How many are still in the Egg? Has the school been sealed off?”
“Ma’am, the dependent center is on lockdown with guards at each entrance,” the second guardsman replied as med-techs rushed towards the two injured refugees. “Internal sensors show three contacts moving about slowly without Confed ident tags. We have personnel moving in on them now. Who ordered the lockdown?”
“I did,” Marda replied, watching her med-techs. “Mind the legs, and sedate them both.”
“Ma’am?” her head med-tech, Ralu, asked. “With their blood loss…”
“Until we know what caused those explosions…” Marda wheeled on the guardsman. “I need all security data sent to my terminal immediately!”
“Yes Ma’am!”
Marda strode back into the medical bay and searched the deck. Nothing remained nearby but scorched materials. She looked to Arion, groaning on his medical couch as he attempted to sit up. All across his armored chest were flecks of flesh and blood. “Get me samples of the material on his breastplate.”
“Aye ma’am,” the nurse replied. “But why?”
“A really bad hunch,” Marda replied and ran to her terminal as the first refugee rolled into isolation.
En-Route to Emergency Egg Access Hatch 3
Weapon in hand, Blazer helped the Captain limp down the hallway as Zithe carried Tadeh Qudas across his shoulders towards Medical.
Before Blazer could ask what oddities, the Captain grabbed his breached faceplate. “Vaughnt,” the Captain moaned. “Patch me into your link.”
“Yes Sir,” Blazer replied and activated the external pickup and speaker in his suit, tying it into the ship’s internal comms.
“XO, Actual, what’s our status?”
“Captain Sardenon?! Thank the Cliffs. We thought we’d lost you.”
“Save the damned platitudes! What the Sheol is going on?”
“We don’t know yet sir. We have reports of multiple intrusions across the ship from shock troopers and refugees exploding. I’m not sure how this is possible, but I’ve ordered security forces to engineering and the bridge to secure them. Commandant Dane has teams of marines sweeping the ship.”
“Good,” the Captain huffed.
“Sir, someone locked down the Egg.”
“That was me,” Marda cut in.
“That was the right call, Doctor. We are incoming on,” the Captain looked to Blazer.
“Emergency Hatch 3,” Blazer announced. “We need a medical team waiting for us. The Captain and Tadeh Qudas are injured. HIS helmet’s been breached.”
The whole ship shook under Blazer’s feet a moment later. If it hadn’t been for his ACHES he would have fallen, the jolt was so massive. “What the Sheol just happened?!” the Captain all but screamed.
“Explosion in the dropship hangar, we’re hulled,” Commander Salgou replied. “Someone detonated a warhead rack.”
“Why have you not found the explosives on internal scans?”
“Because they won’t register,” Marda replied. “The refugees didn’t smuggle in any explosives. They are the explosives, or at least the first half, just waiting on its catalyst. Those shock troopers are likely providing that.”
“No time for the explanation,” the Captain wheezed as the hatch came into view. “Do you know what it is?”
“I think so, both on some tissue samples I recovered. Commander I am stitching you the chemicals to scan for. Sweep for both cocktails.”
“If the shock troopers are carrying the catalyst it won’t show on sensors,” Gokhead and Que Dee called. “They have some new form of phase armor. We’re working on a countermeasure and way to… Commander, scan for the following energy signature as well.”
Blazer slammed against the bulkhead and looked to the hatch. It looked like any other, the outer covering identical to any other shipboard hatch. “Sir?”
The Captain looked up at the hatch with an effort, grunting from the exertion. “Command override, Sardenon, Captain Daro. Passcode,
Ezaine Neighslayer.”
Blazer ignored him as the lights around the hatchway went red in response before it began to shimmer. Blazer could only stare as the door started to turn transparent. The lights around it went blue. “Move, it won’t stay open long,” the Captain grunted.
Blazer complied and holding his breath stepped through the phase door. The sensation of a million tiny legs crawling over his body washed over him as he proceeded through into the Egg. Crossing the threshold, he looked back at Zithe and Gokhead as they passed through. It looked like heat shimmer obscuring them. “Never been through a phase wall before…”
“They aren’t common, or cheap. It’ll take us two cycles just to unseal the Egg after this. So get used to them,” the Captain groaned. “Now wait here,” he commanded. “Commander, do you have those sensors aligned?”
“First report coming in now, sir. There are three groups of contacts displaying the phase signature and chemical markers.”
“Where?” the Captain asked before Priest, and Hallet charged into view, a pair of medics following as Arion brought up the rear.
“Group 1 is heading towards Hangar 3, where the transport is docked. It has the largest number of lifeforms. We can’t tell how many have the marker.”
“My boys have that one covered,” Commandant Dane chimed in. “They want some payback.”
“Good, and the other two?”
“A smaller group is headed towards engineering. Security forces can hold them there.”
“My people are in pursuit of that group,” Blazer informed the rest as Priest took the Captain from Blazer’s arms and eased him onto the gurney.
The Captain’s face was a mask of pain. While no blood seeped out of his wounds, Blazer couldn’t be sure if that was because he’d clotted or had run out of blood. Looking down at his armor he could almost believe the latter. “What about the third?” Captain Sardenon asked through gritted teeth as the medics strapped him down.
Hell's Razer Page 44
