Nesh struggled with his helmet as he approached the Dreeden embassy complex’s exit.
“Let me help you with that sir,” One of his security detail offered, deftly securing Nesh’s helmet the collar of his armor with a click. Baden and Nuryaw followed behind him.
“Thank you.” Nesh nodded the Dreeden who had helped him. “I always hated wearing this stuff.”
“A little tight, Nesh?” Baden poked at the armor plates covering Nesh’s abdomen. “Too many state dinners?” Baden was wearing his typical face-obscuring helmet and encounter suit.
“What I don’t understand,” Nesh ignored the jab. “Is why you’re coming along. My holopad is the only way to communicate with my tactical team on the courier ship, and we need Nuryaw to help us with her crew, but as far as I can tell, you’re just dead weight.”
“We’re going to be violating at least ten different statues of the League charter that prohibit hostile action against another League species, violating Assemblage regulations by bringing potentially lethal weapons in the common areas of the station, and committing an act of war by attacking the embassy of the race with the largest fleet in the known galaxy.” Baden put his hand on Nesh’s shoulder. “I wouldn’t miss it.”
Nesh gave Baden a sad smile. He knew what the Terran ambassador was really doing. If this went badly, Baden would share the blame for Nesh’s plan. “Thanks friend.”
At the compound exit, a platoon of marines in matte gray power assisted combat armor waited along with three squads of Dreeden security forces, also wearing combat armor but in dark green, with large, broad helmets that accommodated their wide-set, compound eyes.
“We’ll proceed from the embassy exit through ring seven to the spoke transit hub, where we’ll board a transit tube car to ring one. At that point, we’ll proceed to the coordinates provided by the Dreeden ambassador, where we will set charges that will allow us to breach a bulkhead that lies between the station proper and a service corridor in the Bonthan embassy.” A marine with captain’s bars painted on the shoulders of his armor addressed the ad-hoc force. “Lethal force is a last resort, this is a smash and grab, not an assault. Any questions?”
Nesh fidgeted. Yes, he had a question. He was an ambassador, yet he had been in a fleet battle three weeks ago, and now he was about to run into battle again. How did he keep getting himself into these messes? He didn’t think that was the kind of question that the marine captain was looking for, however, so he stayed quiet.
“All right, we have 15 minutes to get to the target. Check your comms, we’re moving out.”
The embassy compound’s massive doors slid open revealing a mob of angry protestors, no doubt inflamed by Mokteb’s rhetoric at the last council meeting. Their angry shouts grew louder as the doors opened then faltered as they saw what lay behind them – forty-four humans and twenty four Dreeden in combat armor, followed by a very-pissed-off looking Bonthan.
The marines didn’t hesitate. From their second rank, underslung grenade launchers thumped and canisters of riot gas arced into the crowd, and the group began jogging forward. Then the first row of marines fired, and this time stun grenades exploded directly in front of the protestors.
Nesh’s helmet automatically compensated from the blinding flash of light and deafening sound as each stun grenade went off, but the mob wasn’t so lucky. Scores were down, holding appendages over their various sensory organs. The marines formed a wedge, pushing through the mass of bodies while the crowd was stunned. At their flanks, Dreeden security personnel with stunsticks kept any straggling protesters from the column. Thankfully, most had turned an ran, allowing the group to quickly push through.
“We are so getting sued for this,” Nesh winced as he hopped over another former protester that writhed on the ground in pain.
“Don’t worry, I know a good lawyer.” Baden replied.
“You’re a terrible lawyer Baden.”
“Don’t let Nuryaw know that.”
“Let me know what?” Nuryaw asked.
The station proper was designed to accommodate a variety of species of all sizes, so its corridors were wide enough for the marines and Dreeden security to keep formationation as they rounded a corner toward one of the ring’s transit terminals at a brisk jog.
Cylindrical transit tube cars sat waiting at the station, ready to travel one of the station’s spokes to its inner rings or central hub. At the station, three Queel security personnel looked up in surprise at the heavily armed group quickly approaching their transit security checkpoint. Their mandibles gaped in disbelief, and they started to reach for weapons before thinking better of it, scrambling away from the posts. Before they scattered, however, one slammed a chitinous pincer on the emergency lockdown control.
Metal blast doors clapped shut, sealing the corridor off from the transit hub, and alarms sounded as the Dreeden and human soldiers were stopped short at the blast doors.
“Our charges won’t be enough to get through these security gates,” the marine captain frowned. “We’ll have to cut through, but that will take time.”
“No captain, even if you manage to cut through the doors, the transit loop will still be locked down. I’ve got this.” Nesh tapped at his holo-pad, then touched a stud at the side of his helmet. “Lieutenant Reald? Patch me through to Specialist Teelm.”
Still standing on the hull of the Bonthan courier ship, Teelm’s tentacles danced inside his suit. Their movements were mirrored by delicate waldoes attached to his arms, typing furiously at the super-computer strapped to his chest. Station diagrams flashed over its holo-screen, until Teelm found the one he wanted. Compared to the courier ship, Assemblage security was child’s play to bypass, thanks to the various backdoors that Teelm had been able to insert into the station’s code over the past two years since him and the team had been deployed to the station. He was sure that his superiors would have not been happy knowing that he spent his spare time compromising Assemblage security subroutines, but no one had told him not to either.
In moments, he had gained control of the security doors, the transit tube, and for good measure, all of the security cameras between the rescue party and the Bonthan embassy. “They’re all clear, Lieutenant,” he reported. “And Assemblage security is blind along their route.”
“Good job Specialist. Ambassador, you are clear to proceed.”
Built to accommodate species much larger than human or Dreeden, the transit cylinder fit the entire rescue party with ease, with only Nuryaw having to duck her head entering the capsule.
“The cylinder will take two minutes to reach the inner ring, where the Bonthan embassy complex is located.” The Marine captain punched in their destination on the console of the transit cylinder. “All security cameras are down along our route, but Assemblage security will be on alert. Kaiden and Carlson, I want thermal smoke as soon as these doors open. Bing and Richards, get us eyes.”
Four marines took post at the doors of the transit cylinder, which smoothly accelerated down one of the Assemblage’s spokes toward the inner rings, before slowing and then coming to a stop. As the doors opened, Nesh caught a glimpse of several Curthan station security guards, leveling weapons at the cylinder.
“Smoke out!” Two marines tossed small black canisters out the door. Once they had traveled four meters, both burst, dispersing aerosolized nano-glitter. Clouds of millions of tiny mirrored fragments hung in the air, completely blocking vision in, or out of the transit car. Moments later, two marines tossed ping-pong ball sized spheres out the door. As soon as they cleared the marine’s hands, tiny rotor blades emerged from each one, and they shot up above the thick fog of nano-glitter.
In Nesh’s helmet, suddenly his view screens displayed another view of the battlefield, as the camera drones networked with his suit. The marine’s underslung grenade launchers thumped again, and Nesh could see two more stun grenades burst among the Curthan security team. Baden had told him that the Curthan resembled a creature known as a giant sloth from the earth’s prehistory. Nesh had seen the pictures, but he wasn’t convinced.
Four of the Curthans had been rendered temporarily incapacitated by the flashbangs, but one armored Curthan remained standing, and let loose with the enormous flechette cannon that it carried. Hundreds of tiny projectiles shot toward the transit cylinder. Most impacted on the outside of the transit cylinder, but scores made it through the door, ricocheting harmlessly off armor and the interior walls.
“Carlson, armor piercing rounds, disabling shots!”
One of the marines near the door leaned out, firing a short burst from their heavy-looking rifle. Nesh knew that in the marine’s helmet, a reticle from their weapon would be superimposed on the image from the drones, allowing the marine to aim without ever seeing their target.
Three rounds impacted the Curthan’s shoulder, spinning the huge armored hulk around and dropping him to the floor of the transit terminal.
“First squad, move up! Second squad, secure those guards! I want a medic on the bleeder!”
Marines sprinted from the transit car with inhuman speed, augmented by their powered suits. Thirteen of them slid to a stop at the transit exit, covering the corridor that led to the inner ring proper, while another group moved to restrain the Curthans that had been stunned, while two marines with a red cross painted on the shoulderplates of their armor kneeled in front of the armored Curthan, administering some sort of expanding foam to what remained of the Curthan’s shoulder and upper arm.
“Let’s move!” The marine captain ushered the rest of the squad out of the transit car and through the dense clouds of nano-glitter.
“Hold your breath, Nuryaw,” Woods advised the Bonthan bringing up the rear, “this stuff gets everywhere, but it’s murder on your lungs.”
Nesh jogged along with the marines and Dreeden, before stopping with the rest, hearts pounding in his chest. Even though the flechettes were designed for soft targets and were harmless against armor, he still decided that getting shot at was an experience he could go without repeating. Wait a minute, Nuryaw wasn’t wearing armor… Nesh turned back to the huge Bonthan in alarm. “Medic! We need a medic!”
Nuryaw’s carapace had two flechettes deeply embedded into her exoskeleton. “It’s nothing, Ambassador Nesh,” Nuryaw waved away a marine medic that rushed over, and pulled one of the flechettes out with a grasping hoof. “It will take more than a couple of needles to hurt a Bonthan, and they’ll leave some excellent battle-scars!”
Nesh supposed to a creature four times his height, the ½ centimeter wide spikes may look like a needle, but they looked plenty deadly to him as Nuryaw removed the second spike, tossing it dismissively to the floor. “You’re a lot like Baden you know. You’re both completely crazy.”
Nesh glanced at the countdown on his holo-tablet. “Six minutes captain!”
The marine captain nodded down at him. “First squad, hold the transit terminal. Second squad, move to the Bonthan embassy main entrance and make some noise. Once you meet any serious resistance, fall back to the transit terminal. The rest of you, with me. Double time!”
Nesh was no tactician, but he thought he understood Captain Gupta’s logic. With Nesh’s tactical team controlling the transit tubes, Assemblage reinforcements in the central hub could not reach the inner ring. Meanwhile, if some of the marines could draw the Bonthan embassy’s internal security to the entrance, it would mean less chance of running into them when the main group blew their way into the back of the Bonthan embassy complex.
The group raced down the corridors of the inner hub. Individuals from a myriad of different species screamed and ran when they saw their heavily armed group running toward them, while an Arkone diplomat simply stopped in place and withdrew completely within it’s own shell. Even in Nesh’s powered armor he began to breathe heavily. Nuryaw was having no trouble keeping up, barreling down the hallway on all six hooves.
As the group rounded a corner, a squad of frightened looking security personnel opened fire from the opposite end of the corridor. The lead marines didn’t break stride, launching more flash-bang grenades. Once the security team was down, the marines quickly bound them and the group moved on. “We need to turn left at the next main junction, captain Gupta, and then we can drop down into the maintenance level!” Nesh panted as he did his best to keep up while charting their progress on his holopad.
As they neared the junction, scintillating lances of particle beam fire suddenly peppered their formation, and two marines near the front of their group went down as the rest scrambled for cover, dragging the wounded from the center of the corridor and pressing themselves against the wall of the corridor.
“Smoke and Eyes!” Canisters of nano-glitter burst in the T-junction, while more camera drones flew into the air as marines scrambled to follow captain Gupta’s command. Nesh got a good look at three Curthan security guards standing at a balcony overlooking the junction. All three of them wore armor and carried heavy particle cannons. One pointed directly at a camera drone, then the other, and both drones were shot out of the air, replacing Nesh’s hemet’s screen with static.
“Bing’s hurt sir!” One of the marines bent over a wounded comrade, applying the expanding foam that Nesh had seen earlier, while another injected something through a port in the armor of the wounded marine. “His armor is taking care of most of the trauma, but he’s out of the fight. Kaiden’s been hit too.”
“I’m alright,” Another marine grunted, limping to his feet. “It was a through and through. Got my leg good though.” Nesh noticed a smoking hole in the front of the marine’s thigh, with a matching hole on the other side. Without the powered armor bearing his weight, Nesh doubted that the marine would have been able to stand.
The particle beam fire continued, emerging from the nano-glitter cloud. Nesh winced every time one flashed by, leaving smoking holes in their wake. He pressed himself tighter against the wall.
“Swanepoel, get Kaiden and Bing back to first squad,” Captain Gupta turned to Ambassador Woods. “Sir, they have three Curthan’s in armor and heavy weapons in an elevated position. We can take them out, but I can’t guarantee that we’ll get clean shots.”
“Which means that you can’t guarantee that we won’t kill them.” Woods bit his lip. “We don’t have time to wait. Do your best captain.”
Beur, one of Nesh’s security detail that had been with him since he was stationed on the Assemblage spoke up. “Wait. If we can draw their fire long enough for you to get another camera drone up, can your marine’s make the shot?”
Nesh blanched, but didn’t say anything. He had known Beur long enough to know that his security chief didn’t boast about his abilities or that of his team. If he thought that he could do it, than Nesh believed him. “It’s worth a shot captain.”
“All right. Carlson! You’re up! Suarez, eyes in the air on my mark!” The marine captain turned to Beur and three other Dreeden with him. “When you’re ready.”
Beur and the other three Dreeden lowered themselves in a sprinter’s crouch, then launched themselves down the corridor into the cloud of nano-glitter and beyond.
“Eyes, now!” Gupta yelled, and Saurez launched a camera drone into the air, while Carlson sprinted after the Dreeden into the junction. Tucking herself in a roll, she came up in a kneeling position, heavy rifle at her shoulder.
Nesh held his breath as the view from the camera drone appeared on his screen, showing his security team in their dark green power armor leap out of the nano-glitter across the hallway. A fully grown Dreeden was only one meter tall, making them a much smaller target for the Curthan guards that shifted their fire to the four figures, but that wasn’t the biggest reason they were hard to hit. While Dreeden power armor was proportionately smaller than the armor the human marines wore, compared to the smaller mass of a Dreeden, the gain in strength and speed the armor imparted was much, much higher.
By the time the Curthans saw the Dreeden, they were moving at over 40 miles per hour, propelled by powerful servo-motors in their armor as they zig-zagged across the guard’s field of fire. Particle beam shots flashed around them, leaving smoking holes and bursts of debris as streams of accelerated particles impacted with the bulkheads behind the sprinting Dreeden. Nesh thought for sure that the beams would catch them and started to close his eyes. Just as he thought his security team would be cut down, the bark of Carlson’s rifle could be heard, and three neat holes were punched in the Curthan’s armor. One of the Curthan’s remained standing, but Carlson’s rifle sounded a fourth time as a hypervelocity slug blew it’s way through the Curthan’s reverse-articulated knee.
Nuryaw covered her audio cavities with her grasping hoofs as best she could as the human marines detonated blasting charges on the walls of the maintenance level. She could feel the pressure wave through her exoskeleton, and the hallway was suddenly engulfed in dust and debris as the charges blew through the wall. For not the first time in the past twenty minutes, she wished that she had a helmet with an air filter. At least the dust will cover up some of this glitter. Unlike the humans and Dreeden, whose armor seemed to slough off the clouds of nano-glitter that they used to obscure themselves from visual and IR detection, Nuryaw’s carapace was covered with a fine sheen of glitter, making her sparkle. It was not a good look for her, despite what Ambassador Woods had said.
She watched as a group of Dreeden entered the hole made in the wall, followed by the human marines. The level of coordination they showed with the humans was extraordinary, instantly filling holes in the humans ranks, covering blind spots and moving forward to scout when their smaller size would be an asset. Not only did they work well together, but they were comfortable with the humans.
Ambassador Nesh seemed to notice Nuryaw’s attention on the humans and Dreeden. “They’ve drilled together quite a bit. ” Nesh said, his voice coming through a small speaker they had given her that fit into one of her audio cavities . “And yes, we’ve kept quite a bit of technology back from the council. We could never be sure if the League wouldn’t turn against us once they found out the human’s secret.”
“But if we did, your people would alongside the humans, not the League?” Nuryaw frowned.
Nesh nodded as they approached the jagged opening the charges had blown into the bulkhead. “We would lose, of course. All of our technology and all of the human’s tactics couldn’t stand against the League if they decided that they wanted to exterminate the Terrans. But the League would have to exterminate the Dreeden along with them.” Nesh hopped over a piece of fallen debris, and paused. “There is much you don’t know about the shared history of the Terrans and my people, Nuryaw, and if it does come to war, it won’t be the first one that the Dreeden and fought alongside each other.”
Even after she had confronted Ambassador Woods in the conference room of the Dreeden embassy, Nuryaw wasn’t sure of the relationship that existed between the humans and Dreeden. She had suspected that the Dreeden were just a front for the humans – a convenient tool that they could use to interact with the galaxy at large without tipping their own hand. From Nesh’s comments, and watching them fight together, however, Nuryaw wasn’t so sure. The humans seemed to regard the Dreeden as equals, despite their smaller size and their non-carnivorous diet, and Ambassador Nesh and Ambassador Woods acted like old friends. Is this what it could be like for the the League? Could we learn to not just co-exist with these predators, but to become friends with them as well?
Nuryaw ducked low as she followed the group through the breach into the service levels of the embassy. She knew these corridors – they were close now. She had been stationed at the Assemblage for years, long enough to know her own embassy like the back of her hoof. She grunted in satisfaction. They would save her crew, and that traitor Mokteb would pay for his lies.
The group fell into a run again, eating up the distance down the corridors at a breakneck sprint. Nuryaw easily kept pace in an easy gallop.
Suddenly, Nesh stopped directly in front of her, and Nuryaw scrambled to avoid crushing the tiny ambassador over with her hooves.
“Captain Gupta!” Nesh’s voice sounded strained. “I just heard from my tactical team. Mokteb has managed to extend the docking collar, and it sounds like they’ve received word about our rescue attempt. He’s on his way with his personal guards to the prisoners, and he’s stationed additional guards in the hallways around the storage area where they’re held.”
“Can your team block them?” Captain Gupta asked, “Shut some security doors between them and the prisoners?”
“Not in time, captain,” Nesh said. “The Bonthan embassy’s internal networks are much better protected than the Assemblage security networks. By the time my team had access, it would be too late.”
“Those guards are going to slow us down, ambassador.” The marine captain turned to Ambassador Woods. “We can’t hold back if we’re going to reach the prisoners in time. That means casualties.”
Nuryaw could hear Woods sigh through his comlink. “Understood captain. You’re authorized for lethal force.”
“Wait,” Nuryaw raised a hoof. “I know a different way.”
On Nesh’s holo-pad, the storage areas of the Bonthan embassy complex were lined up in neat rows, accessible from a hallway running parallel to the line of supply rooms. What the holo-pad didn’t show, however, was that each storage area also had a large overhead door that connected them to the adjacent storage room, allowing large pallets of goods to be transported from room to room without using the narrower hallway.
Gaining access to the first storage room was easy enough. The storage rooms weren’t protected by blast doors, so a single charge from one of Gupta’s marines was enough to blow the door. Now the rescue party sprinted toward the overhead door inside the storage hangar. It opened without a security code, and the marines and Dreeden ducked under it as it rose, spilling into the next storage area, weapons raised.
Nesh followed suit, typing at his holo pad as he run. “Ten more rooms, and then we’re there!”
Teelm watched with concern on his holo screen as the rescue party made their way through the storage areas to the prisoners while he wrestled with the Bonthan embassy’s network security in another data window. Gaining access to the camera feeds in the embassy was easy enough – once the docking collar was extended, he was able to simply piggyback on the courier ship’s connection to the station, but Teelm still hadn’t been able to crack into any kind of access in the Bonthan embassy that allowed him to do anything but watch.
“How are they doing, Teelm?” His lieutenant asked, propelling herself to the hole in the courier ship’s hull where Teelm’s computer was currently hardwired to the courier ship.”We’ve got another twenty five minutes before we’re going to be red on oxygen..”
“Not good, lieutenant,” Teelm spun his computer on its extendible chest mount to face Reald. “They’ve managed to bypass several Bonthan security teams by going through adjacent storage rooms rather than the main service hallways, but Mokteb and what looks to be his personal guards are going to make it to the prisoners first.”
“Is there anything you can do?”
Teelm shook his head inside his helmet. “All major security functions are well protected. I may be able to get access to some minor environmental controls, but nothing major.”
“Keep trying.”
“Yes ma’am.” Teelm replied.
Suddenly, a shadow fell over the courier ship and the Dreeden tactical team that was perched on it. Looking up, an enormous mushroom-cap shape ship moved slowly across their field of view, silhouetted by reflected light from the planet below. Teelm typed furiously at his holo-screen, pulling up Assemblage logs. “It’s the Flashing Hooves, lieutenant. It’s been ordered out of the system by Admiral Mokteb.”