“Medium-sized group, proceeding forwards. They’re past the bridge already. Not sure where they’re going.”
It was one of those design decisions that most people had never understood, the bridge remaining outside the Egg. Blazer did understand: in the event that the Egg was sealed it would end up cut off from the rest of the ship. Having the bridge isolated in that manner would leave the ship even more vulnerable. All of the main command and control links would either have to be rerouted to secondary locations or moved to wireless. The former would negate the purpose of sealing the bridge off in the first place and the latter would compromise the security of the links.
“Damn it all,” the Captain replied and grabbed Blazer’s arm. “They’re heading towards forward gunnery or damage control. They get to either and they can kill the whole ship.”
Blazer looked back at his teammates around him. Zithe remained focused on laying Tadeh Qudas on the gurney. He pointed towards his Commander’s damaged helmet as he passed instructions on to the medics there. Gokhead met his eyes, they both knew what the Captain meant. Taking forward damage control could give the raiding party the ability to override a variety of shipboard systems, including life-support, cutting it off or venting whole sections of the ship. Emergency command cut-offs existed to prevent such a thing from happening, but leave even a single pathway open and it could spell disaster.
Forward gunnery presented its own issues. Damage there would kill the ship’s ability to use its forward beam weaponry. Worse still, if they took the space they could force the plasma cannons to emergency vent. They could literally dump all of the ship’s plasma reserve into space, or, if they destabilized the plasma conduits, into the ship.
“Commander,” Blazer chimed in. “How much security do we have in those areas?”
“Not enough,” the Captain barked. “Commander, put everyone we have on damage control, then cool and vent the plasma conduits. Vaughnt, take your people and hunt that group down, we can’t let them take either space.”
“I’ve got marines up near there. They’ll reinforce both positions,” Commandant Dane called in.
“Understood sir,” Blazer replied and looked back towards the shimmering blue hatch. A main E-Tube wasn’t far away, giving them direct access to the whole length of the ship. “Commander, open E-Tube six. All the way. My people and I are moving that way. All Blade Force present, on me. Let’s move.”
As the medics wheeled the Captain and Tadeh Qudas away, a disturbingly soft voice came from the Telshin’s gurney. “Vaughnt. I’ve transferred my command overrides to you. Do what you need to do,” Tadeh Qudas all but whispered, his voice coming through the breach in his helmet. Blazer checked his micomm, sure enough Tadeh Qudas had. Blazer could control virtually every system aboard the ship if he needed to. He doubted even the Captain had such control, and while he wanted to ask why, and how, his Commander had achieved such an unprecedented level of command authority, he was sure it hadn’t been through proper channels.
Blazer nodded to his Commander and turned to the medic. “Doctor Vaughnt is to be the only one present when his helmet is removed. Do you understand?”
“Yes sir. He already told us that,” she said motioning towards Zithe.
“Good, now let’s move people.”
Forward Weapons Control
Blazer’s grandfather, retired Admiral Admir Sadrick, had always told Blazer that command would open doors for him. Blazer had never taken that seriously or literally. At that very moment, however, it was. Every time he approached a sealed hatchway, it would open for him, despite the ongoing running battle aboard the ship. It made the rush towards and up the central shaft that much quicker.
Tapping his micomm into the ship’s internal sensors, he monitored the progress of the shock troopers and their faux refugees. Their path led them towards Weapons Control, the first of the spaces they could reach. The unfettered access to the Wolfsbane’s systems his command authority offered him allowed him to slow the enemy’s progress and herd them in the direction he desired. He sealed passageways as they approached, deadlocking them and sealing off the shorter E-Tubes that ran between levels. Being unfamiliar with the ship, the shock troopers blasted through hatchways that had been sealed ahead of them. It was all a ruse, the hatchways led only to minor ship’s spaces or storage chambers. Despite Blazer’s best efforts however, they eventually found the portside main stairwell. Blazer continued to seal off deck after deck as they proceeded forwards.
Blazer’s hearts thundered in his ears as he watched them continue. He could only slow their progress, not stop their relentless climb forwards. It soon became apparent that one of their party was obviously a weaver with skills that might even rival that of Gokhead. The speed with which they overrode the sealed blast doors left him impressed.
Blazer felt his load lessen for a moment as he and his team rounded the corner into the passageway to forward weapons control. The marines had already set up a perimeter outside the entrance covering the main and side passageways. They had further reinforced it with crates they’d pulled from a nearby storage locker. While unarmored, the crates would still provide some cover in the coming battle; maybe not against a plaser round, but at least against the relatively low-velocity methane slug-throwers. Blazer hoped that they were packed with something nice and dense. He bounded forwards and straight towards the senior NCO. “Report!”
“We’re as ready as we can get sir.”
Blazer checked his display. The enemy was only four decks aft. “They’ll be on us in a few pulses,” he said scanning the passage. “What’s the status of that plasma conduits?”
A voice called from within the weapons control bay. “They’re venting the primary conduit back into the reserves sir, but the secondary conduit that feeds the port beam turret is fighting us.”
“Where is it?”
The marine pointed down the passageway they’d just run down. “Behind that wall, Sir.”
Blazer looked back at the passageway. Now that he knew to look for it, he could almost see the energy pulsing within. The signature of the magnetic containment field was an all too familiar one. “Copy that.” He turned back towards the Weapons Control Bay. “What’s the hold up on venting?”
A young technician, barely of age by the look of him, poked his head out. “I was never trained on how to do this, sir. Engineering is trying to talk me through it, but I’m missing something.”
Blazer bit back a curse and turned back down the passageway.
Blazer felt his stomach knot at that and checked his display again.
It was too simple and an impenetrable defense for any attacking force the size of theirs. Even using the suicide bombers, they’d never get close to the Weapons Control Bay. They’d be gunned down well before they could even get close. It was a fool’s gambit, and Blazer knew that that would always lead to desperation.
Blazer checked his display as he waited. The enemy had left the stairwell on the level below and were coming straight at them. “Croy!”
“Sir?”
“They’re going to come in from below,” he pointed down the passageway. “We need to…”
Before he could finish, the deck ten metra away exploded upwards, twisting the metal plates up int
o a crude defensive barrier. Smoke, shrapnel and viscera clouded his vision, forcing him to turn away for a moment before the familiar chuff of a mass-driver rifle pierced the haze. Screams sprouted from his marines as three of them fell. He let out a curse as a round glanced off his side and he took a knee. “Return fire!”
Everyone fired blindly down the passageway. Blazer switched his optics to thermal, nothing. The hot smoke and singed air made an effective screen against his best vision systems. He switched over to EM and the shock troopers’ phase armor lit up his view. He pumped three rounds into the nearest one’s center of mass. All three sailed through his target as if he weren’t even there. “They’re still out of phase. Shoot for the extremities!” he ordered aloud to keep the marines informed.
He shifted target and fired. Three rounds spat from his rifle and one hit home. The shock trooper’s arm exploded at the elbow and he dropped back behind the twisted deck plates. More mass-driver rounds pierced the air around Blazer and he ducked down behind the crates the marines had set out. A single round pierced the crate to his left. His hearts thundered in his ears when he saw the stuffing that filled the hole, clothes, uniforms. Better than nothing, he thought.
“Weaver, Intel, tell me you’ve figured out some way to neutralize their phase armor!”
“Negative,” Gokhead replied after sending a burst of his own mass-driver rounds down the passageway. “They have the armor on a constant phase rotation, it never stays locked long enough for us to interpolate before it shifts again. We’ve never seen anything like it.
“This is tech is beyond the sophistication of anything we’ve encountered before,” a voice that was almost a perfect merge of Gokhead and Que Dee called. Blazer looked over at Que Dee, and wondered just how complete the integration had become, if they were no longer the two separate entities anymore. “Give us time in a lab to study it, and we can devise a solution, but not here, not now.”
Blazer bit back another curse as three more rounds pierced his cover. He looked back down the passageway as his people and the marines popped up in turns to fire over the shock trooper’s heads. “Wolf, Heavy Arms, I’m open to suggestions.”
Zithe dropped down. “We don’t have anything that can pierce that deck plating. So unless you want to start lobbing overloaded weapons at them in the hopes of using them as grenades…”
“Not much of a choice,” Blazer replied. “And I don’t like the idea of charging at them.” He looked out again. The smoke had begun to dissipate. He patched his full sensor suite in to create as accurate a picture as he could. One look told him enough and he pulled back. The Lead Trooper’s head was a bright spot on thermals, the one behind on EM. “The lead trooper, he’s not wearing a helmet.”
Arion looked to confirm and pulled back his oxygen mask, half his face still covered in patches of red skin over raw muscle. “Yeah, and…?”
“We breach their suits, preferably their helmets.” Blazer patched his link into the ship-wide comm-weave. “All units, shelter in place and prepare to vent. I repeat shelter in place and prepare to vent.”
Blazer looked to Zithe and could tell even through the faceplate of his ACHES that his eyes were as wide as the Wolfsbane’s sensor arrays. “You’re kidding…”
Blazer shook his head. “We don’t have many options.”
Commander Salgou broke in over the link. “All hands, we are sealing all sections around hostiles and preparing to vent.”
“Priest!” Blazer called. He needed his best shot in the group on this one.
“Yes Lead!”
“Take a chunk out of that Trooper’s helmet.” Before Priest could even protest Blazer waved him off and continued. “Not kill him. Just breach his helmet. Let the lack of air do the rest.”
Priest took a calming breath. He dove to the deck, rolling across an open section between the crates and let loose three rounds. A yelp of pain and a groan echoed back in return. Blazer smiled at that. Priest was no Matt, but he was damn close in rifle skills.
The ship’s automated emergency alerts sprang on all around them, displays lighting up with pressure alerts before a calming voice announced. “Section sealed, atmosphere purge in process. Please proceed to the nearest vacuum-proof shelter.” Lights in the wall pointed the way to the nearest safe space, the Weapon’s Control Bay they were defending.
The announcement repeated.
“All sections, have shelters been established?” Blazer asked.
“Confirmed sir,” a voice Blazer didn’t recognize responded. “All sealed sections report free of non-vacsuited personnel. Venting has commenced.”
Holo-vids had lied to them all about the violence of a ship venting its atmosphere. They always painted the image of gale force winds rushing out of passageways into space. His own experience as a child had told him that that was nonsense. Though it had felt like an eternity, the actual outrush of air when the Vaurnel’s hull had breached a few bulkheads away from him lasted little more than a few centipulses, and the worst of that was in the first instant after the breach.
Blazer checked the pressure reading in his helmet. The Commander had chosen to vent the sections slowly, sucking the useful oxygen out of the sections to knock the enemy out.
Marda took a moment to respond.
The shock troopers just stood there, the lead unsteady on his feet as he turned towards his charges. A tiny voice within Blazer almost chuckled at the dual meaning of that word in this moment.
That means there are legitimate refugees among them. Did my order doom innocent people? he asked himself. He shook his head. He couldn’t consider that now. He had to do everything he could to protect the ship and everyone else onboard.
Peering back down the passage, he tied his sensors into the ship’s to give him an incomplete and smudgy picture. He watched the leader shove the one behind and gesture wildly. Standing on the deck below, neither had a clear shot as they continued to shove each other. The leader grabbed one then two of the faux refugees. Blazer couldn’t be sure what was happening. As the second shock trooper grabbed onto a refugee with his remaining arm, it all became clear. “Oh Croy!”
“What?!” Zithe asked.
Blazer jumped up and began to lay down a field of fire. “Everyone, open fire, now.” He turned towards the open hatch into Weapons Control, the uniform of the technician within in its emergency vac-seal configuration. “I don’t care what you have to do. Vent that plasma! Now!”
Blazer turned back to a hail of plasma rounds raining down the passageway. It was too late. One after another, the bloating bodies of the suicide bombers emerged from the breached deck to slam into the wall of the passageway and explode. “Fall back,” he ordered. grabbing Hallet by the arm. He dragged the big Rimdook into the Weapons Control Bay.
His defensive force complied and piled into the bay. Zithe was the last through the hatch and slammed the panel to seal the hatch. The passage beyond was already a-boil with plasma bursting through the breached conduit. Blazer squeezed his eyes shut as the hatch sealed. He reopened them to find the edges where it had closed had blackened, scorched by the heat. The hatch itself radiated heat. Armored as it was against this, it held. Still, no one remained close by.
Blazer breathed a momentary sigh of relief and leaned against a console. “All sections, Blade Force Lead, what’s our status?”
“This is engineering,” Chris replied. “My God. It looks like something out of Sheol down he
re. They detonated the last of their bombers.”
“Fireteam Four here,” Gavit gasped. “Same here, they blew just outside of Hangar Three. It breached the lateral fighter transit shaft. It’s trashed. We’ve got brownouts all over down here.”
“Bridge here. We have reports of a half-dozen other smaller explosions all across the ship, oh Gods…”
“What?” Blazer demanded.
“They’ve detonated at least one bomber just outside the Psi-Comm Operations Bay. That wasn’t even one of the areas we’d considered a target.”
Blazer slumped back against the bulkhead. Up to a dozen Donvarions were stationed in the ship’s long-range communications hub. Their minds remained linked to a near instantaneous, Confederation spanning, telepathic singularity. The resulting connection made even the fastest Tachyon connection seem to crawl by comparison. Without them, the ship had only limited FTL communications capability. Worse still, if the rumors were true, the Admiral spent much of his or her time there, conferring with the Donvarion.
Blazer felt the last of his anima draining away. While the damage had been contained, he’d failed. Worse, he’d walked an enemy force aboard their ship, their home, and they’d all suffered as a result. “Commander, Blade Force Lead, mobilize all Damage Control Parties and auxiliaries. You have command.”
He looked around the space. Almost everyone had removed their helmets. They all appeared dour, from the technicians and marines to his own team. The realization that they’d brought this menace aboard hadn’t escaped any of them either. The hurt in all their faces was plain to see. So too was the certain knowledge that this setback would cost them not only the time to repair their ship, but their ultimate prize. Blazer’s hearts clutched in his chest at the very idea of that: I just cost us the Barker and doomed who knows how many souls.
UCSB Date: 1006.016
Medical Bay 3, Wolfsbane, Drobile System
Hell's Razer Page 45
