Date Point: 14y1d AV
Farthrow Facility, Lavmuy, Planet Gao
Lieutenant Anthony “Abbott” Costello
“Abbott, Rebar. Activity, East perimeter, possibly…uh, hostile.” Rebar finished calling it in with a slight hitch as Costello joined him with his binoculars already up and searching. “Hello, sir.”
Costello had seen the incoming heat signature via the real-time satellite feed nearly a minute earlier. Deep in the facility, Akiyama was helping Meereo and a pack of implant-free technicians modify the experimental Farthrow wormhole generator into a giant suppressor, and they were making good time. Not fast enough by Abbott’s reckoning, but fast nonetheless.
“FIC says it’s a biodrone mob,” he said, watching movement among the discarded planes and shuttles far away across a sea of coverless concrete. Pretty much the first thing the Defenders and Protectors had done on landing had been to clear out what little cover the spaceport’s apron provided and Farthrow was now an island of protection in an otherwise open field, perfect for mowing down anything that tried to assault them.
The biodrones obviously knew that. It was almost certainly the only reason they weren’t already attacking. Costello didn’t know if the Gaoians or Hierarchy had a historical equivalent of Thermopylae, but only a drooling moron could have failed to see the massive tactical imbalance in his team’s favor.
“So many?” Blaczynski sited down his rifle to survey the foe himself. “Damn. Kinda drives home how big five percent is, huh?”
“This city has a population of nearly seven million,” Faarek told him. The Whitecrests were being even terser than usual today, not that Costello could blame them. If this had been Costello’s native Toronto…
“So that’s…what, about three hunnerd-something thousand biodrones,” Blaczynski finished.
“I believe they call that a target-rich environment,” Costello mused. He reached behind his back and tugged a tablet in its thick reinforced case out from the pocket above his suit’s life support pack. Somewhere high above them was Blaczynski’s pet ‘Flycatcher’ UAV. It was all part of the same intel network, but he wanted to get a closer look to compare with the evidence of his own eyes.
He opened the app, selected the drone and was in the middle of figuring out what he was looking at when God punched him in the head.
It made for a heck of a wake-up call. All four of them immediately got their asses behind something sturdy and the tablet bounced forgotten to the ground.
“Sniper!” Blaczynski declared, late but better than never.
“I figured that part out, thank you,” Costello managed. His ears were ringing and his neck felt like he’d just been used as a punching bag, but EV-MASS was the best body armor ever made by a country mile. The bullet hadn’t penetrated.
“That wasn’t KP, they’ve got real rifles out there somewhere,” Rebar mused, he shifted his weight to aim his own rifle back over the barricade, using the camera scope connection to his visor rather than stick his head out. “Should ‘prolly keep ‘yer head down, LT.”
Costello smirked inside his mask. “Thank you, Master Sergeant. I’ll do that.”
There was the heavy floor-shaking sound of a Protector joining them. Warhorse. “Somebody said sniper?”
“LT got hit in the brain bucket,” Faarek told him.
“Shouldn’t do that, LT.”
“I’m glad you’re all here to tell me these things,” Costello snarked. He gestured at the tablet, and Faarek kicked it over.
“Could be worse,” ‘Horse rumbled as he fetched his pen light and inspected the helmet. “Coulda been punched in the head by Righteous.”
Costello sat back and let him shine a light in his eyes. “Or you,” he pointed out.
“You’d be dead, then,” ‘Horse was obviously grinning behind his mask. “…Good pupil response but take an aspirin and a dose of Crude.”
“You got it, doc.” Painkillers and other sundries were on a dispenser inside the mask. There was a trick to getting at them—he had to toss his head and snatch with his lip just so to grab it—but better that than breaking seal. Even if they weren’t in space, HEAT treated any air that wasn’t supplied by their suit as if it was a deadly nerve agent on the grounds that one day, it might be.
“Where’d he hit you from, LT?” Blaczynski asked, sneaking his weapon back over the barricade.
“I think…” Costello risked a peek over the barricade for just a second. “Somewhere near those baggage-handling vehicles, two o’clock.”
“Okay….”
There was a pause, which Costello used to chase the pill down with a sip of water and give himself a low-dose Crue-D shot with one hand while calling up the drone footage on his tablet with the other, then the heavy slam of a long-barrel GR1-d firing.
“Target down,” Blaczynski relaxed back with the dispassionately satisfied air of a craftsman pleased with his own handiwork.
Costello nodded as he examined the drone feed. “Appreciated. I don’t feel like getting shot in the head a second time today.”
Blaczynski nodded. “Snipin’s almost too easy with these hypervelocity flechettes,” he said, in the conversational tones of a hobbyist discussing his tools. “Almost no delay, hardly have to adjust windage, ballistics are almost totally flat…”
“Save that hardon for the ladies, Starfall,” Rebar reminded him. Blaczynski chuckled, nodded, and kept his aim firmly down-range, hunting for something new to shoot.
“…How’s the field array comin’?” Costello asked, quietly. He didn’t like what he was looking at on his tablet one bit.
“Built, and charging,” Rebar replied.
“Right…” Costello thought for a moment, then hit his radio again. “Stainless, Abbott. I see vehicles approaching from the East, and that crowd of biodrones is growing. Suggest we should receive package MARS first.”
MARS, MERCURY and VENUS were the payloads waiting to come through the big jump array first. Ideally, they’d have preferred to bring through VENUS first—that was a fusion power plant and capacitor bank on the back of a HEMTT, that could power the jump array and cut its charge time by an order of magnitude. It would have made bringing in the other two packages the work of moments. MERCURY, meanwhile, was the recon, communications and sensors package that would be essential to coordinating the operation as they tore down Gao’s own communications infrastructure.
MARS was men, weapons and vehicles.
“Abbott, Stainless.” Powell was keeping whole cupboards’-worth of plates spinning for the moment, and sounded even gruffer than usual. “Copy. Package MARS.”
“Think they’re makin’ a move, LT…” Blaczynski said, shifting his weight.
Costello glanced at him, then turned round and checked over the barricade for himself. He was right, there was plenty of activity going on over among the spaceport buildings and facilities. Gao was a mercifully cool planet, and Lavmuy wasn’t built in a warm climate even by local standards. The air was cold, clear and still, unmarred by heat haze, and he could see what the biodrones were doing fairly well, considering the distance involved.
“I can drop a Rod on ‘em,” Blaczynski suggested.
Authorizing that was above Costello’s grade, but he knew the answer anyway. “No. Can’t risk damage to Farthrow,” he said, and Rebar nodded vigorously. “A broken pipe, a cracked foundation…If we can’t turn that thing on, the whole operation’s a bust.”
“That don’t leave us with a lotta options. That many drones, they’ll eventually just Zerg their way through. We need air support or indirect fire.”
“MARS will have mortars. In any case, they don’t have the numbers to attack us just—” Costello shut up and flinched downwards as a line of bullet holes sewed itself into the concrete wall above him. Unmistakable suppressing fire.
“Think they heard you, LT,” Blaczynski commented, and returned fire.
“Contact!” Costello reported to the net, ignoring him. “Contact, east side.”
Arés grunted and popped his SAW’s bipod to rest it on the barricade in one easy move, with the snappy efficiency that spoke to endless training: no spare movements, no energy wasted. He instantly had it barking death back toward the biodrones in sharp, short, economical bursts.
There was little for Costello to do in terms of decision-making. Their position was fixed and their opportunity to maneuver, nil. Blaczynski was right that they needed fire support, but there was none to call in yet.
He got his own rifle up and weighed in as well.
The biodrones didn’t have much real firepower. A lot of what was coming their way was still kinetic pulse, utterly harmless. HEAT operators in EV-MASS took harder hits just saying good morning to each other every day, and a lot of the enemy force didn’t even have that.
Somewhere, though, a few of them had picked up the real deal. Gaoian mercenaries, the Clanless and some of the Clans had all seen the value in an actual projectile-launching firearm, and it wasn’t like the basic design and chemistry of a rifle was difficult. Human patent law wasn’t worth the ink it was printed in off of Earth and Cimbrean, either: Any asshole with a machine shop could make one, and the Gaoians had much better than machine shops.
The average Gaoian’s abysmal strength didn’t matter for shit, either. An AR-15 was so manageable that a ten-year-old girl could handle one just fine, so an adult male Gaoian’s worst difficulty with them would probably be the shoulders. Tweak a few things here and there, and humanity’s own weapons were easily turned into the enemy’s weapons.
Still. There weren’t many. Just enough to put some actual metal in the air, and the HEAT sent far more back, especially as Firth, Murray, the Whitecrests, Butler, Burgess, Newman and Parata charged in to lend their weight. What had started as a trickle of desultory shots became a crackling torrent that first stalled and then deflected the biodrone charge, forcing the poor doomed Gaoian hosts to sprint sideways around the worst of the firepower.
If there had been mere hundreds, the fight wouldn’t have even deserved the word. If there had been a few thousand more, sheer quantity would have done all the work and the pinnacle of deathworlder and Gaoian biology and training simply wouldn’t have sufficed.
As it was, the biodrones had attacked right at the moment when their victory was possible but by no means certain, and that flew right in the face of basic military sense—Nobody in their right mind picked a fair fight. Costello surrendered his spot on the barricade to Sikes and stepped back to check the intelligence again.
Those vehicles were still coming, and the fact that the biodrones had attacked without waiting for them told him instantly whose side they were on.
The computers and specialists in orbit had been working hard on the question of who the incoming vehicle convoy belonged to, but the analysts hadn’t been able to put a definitive answer either way on it. The sixty-forty split said that the convoy belonged to Clan Stoneback. That probability shot up to near-certainty when the feedback from the Flycatcher, the suits, the gun cams and the orbiting satellites all clearly showed the convoy crash into the horde’s rear without slowing.
In fact, those IFVs weren’t stopping for anything short of a missile and they got through the starport’s perimeter gate by simply ignoring it. Steel wire and galvanized aluminium poles were no obstacle to them whatsoever, nor were the luckless biodrones whose most effective contribution was to make the concrete treacherous and slippery.
The heavy vehicles and their occupants made all the difference. With room to maneuver and agility in the mix, the Fang—whichever one it was—spread out and headed off the flanking biodrones.
No force could possibly stand up to a crossfire that brutal. Burned, crushed and badly depleted, the Hierarchy agent controlling that mob clearly decided to salvage what it could and the flayed remnants of the horde withdrew into the relative safety provided by the spaceport. Clearing that was going to be a priority in the near future, but the important work was done—Farthrow was secure.
The IFVs left crimson tyre tracks behind them as they circled around and pulled up around the Farthrow building, already dropping their rear hatches. Stonebacks piled out, most of them healthy, a few…not.
“Medics!”
Thurrsto was the first over the barricade, with the Protectors on his heels.
One unusually small Stoneback—small, that was, only by Stoneback standards—was propping up an unusually large one, who sagged into Burgess’ arms plainly on the verge of passing out, and was promptly lowered to the concrete for triage. The fur and flesh under his arms looked to Costello like he’d taken a fusion blade right through the ribs, which made it a minor act of God that he’d even lived this far.
He recognized them both, from First Fang training exercises on Cimbrean. The big one was Tyal, Daar’s second and presumably the Champion-in-Stead. The other…Fiin, he recalled after a moment’s thought. A young up-and-comer. The Gaoians had less granularity, procedure and mechanics to their career progression so the young gun had been something equivalent to a sergeant the last Costello saw of him.
Now, it looked like he’d probably just inherited some extra rank the hard way.
Costello hopped the barricade and kept his head down as he dashed to the cover provided by one of the IFVs. “Lieutenant Costello, Spaceborne Operations,” he reintroduced himself. “Think we’ve met before.”
“Fiin, Champion-in-Stead and warleader of First Fang.” The Stoneback thrust out a paw, and Costello gave it a firm shake. Stonebacks could take a little more force than the average Gaoian. “Yes. In better circumstances.”
“Need to skull check you, Fiin.”
The Gaoian duck-nodded and pressed his paws to the vehicle, turning his head awkwardly to watch Burgess work on his much larger brother. Costello’s scan for implants promptly came up green.
“You’re clear. We’re gonna need to check all your Brothers.”
Fiin duck-nodded. “Do it.” He looked around as Costello gestured urgently for the Lads to conduct brain scans, and they split up to bully the newly-arrived Stonebacks into formation and get them cleared. “Are you the senior Brother here?” he asked.
“Second. You’ll meet my CO in a minute…I thought Tyal was Champion-in-Stead?”
Fiin simply gestured toward Burgess’ patient, his expression unreadable.
“…He’s in good hands,” Costello assured him, but Burgess was already standing up.
“…Done all I can for him,” the Protector said. “He ain’t in pain, but…” He gestured at the remaining Stoneback wounded. “I gotta triage, LT.”
Tyal wheezed weakly, and spoke in labored Gaori. [“Is…okay,”] he managed. [“Save my…Brothers.”] Burgess nodded stoically and hurried off to attend the wounded.
Fiin knelt down at Tyal’s side and laid a paw on his head. [“You did well, Brother. Rest.”]
Tyal coughed again. [“No…I failed. I…”] He looked toward one of the vehicles, coughed once more, then relaxed just a little too much. The subtle cues of warmth and motion that told a living man apart from a dead one faded out of him, and he was gone.
Fiin keened quietly to himself and said something in a language that neither the translator nor Costello were familiar with. He closed Tyal’s eyes, gently tidied the body into a dignified posture, then stood up with a resigned, toughened air.
“…We lost good people at the Wi Kao commune,” he said, softly. “The biodroned females broke containment.”
“Turns out the pup was right,” a new voice said. A rangy wendigo of a Gaoian, white from tail to tip, limped up with his arm in a sling and red staining his snowy fur all down his left leg. He had the scars and attitude of a lifelong warrior.
“Now isn’t the time for recrimination, Grandfather,” Fiin replied. “Lieutenant Costello, this is Grandfather Garl of Stoneback.”
“Sir,” Costello shook the venerable hulk’s paw, and offered his head-scanner. The big brute let him press it between his ears without comment, and came up green. “I—”
They were interrupted by the sound of distraught keening from one of the vehicles, and to Costello’s shock the Gaoian responsible, of all people, was Regaari. Ears pricked up and eyes turned his way as the usually unflappable Whitecrest dropped his weapon, knelt on the ramp and scooped up a limp bundle of gray fur in his arms, whining so loud and so high it hurt Costello’s ears. A human would have been wailing his grief—Regaari just buried his nose in the body’s fur and held tight, whimpering and keening.
Warhorse was at his side in a heartbeat.
“What—?” Costello began.
“Mother Ayma. Tyal tried to save her…” Garl spat on the ground. “At least she can be given a proper funeral. Not forgotten in some Biodrone mass grave.”
“…My commander will want to debrief,” Costello managed. He knew of Ayma, of course, and he could see the shock of her death hit Warhorse and Baseball, too. That was going to need careful management, soon. Best to get the two senior ‘Backs handed off to Powell to discuss the big-picture stuff and he could focus on keeping his men mission-ready. “Highland!”
The taciturn Scot peeled off from the barricade and joined them. “Sir?”
“This is Grandfather Garl, Clan Stoneback. You remember Champion-in-Stead Fiin. They’re both green in the head, get ‘em to Stainless.”
“Aye,” Murray nodded, and gestured for the pair to follow him.
Costello turned away and got on the radio to warn Powell they were coming. “Stainless, Abbott. Situation is stable out here, First Fang reinforcements are manning the perimeter, their leaders are headed your way. We can go back to calling in VENUS.”
“Copy that, Abbott,” Powell still sounded distracted. “Do you have enough to sweep and clear the closest buildings?”
“Biodrone forces are depleted, but they’ll recover soon. Now would be the time to seize the initiative,” Costello agreed.
“Do it. We don’t have long before we’re suit-exhausted. Make it count.”
Costello clicked his radio to acknowledge, and took a moment to study the small mourning circle around the transports. The dead Gaoians—and there were more than just Tyal and Ayma—were being respectfully lined up, covered. It wasn’t a good time…but there just wasn’t going to be a good time, and they had a mission.
He took a deep breath and joined them.
“…Lads.”
“…LT.” Arés had a flatness in his voice that Costello had never heard there before. The man was usually so bouncy-cheerful that hearing him sound so desolate was a jolt to the core of the world. But he’d known Ayma personally—Costello could hardly expect him not to be torn up by a friend’s death.
Regaari had recovered some, but even through his suit everything about his body language said ‘inconsolable.’ Costello didn’t need to see his face to see the lost expression there.
“…We need to aggressively sweep and clear the perimeter. I need every man I’ve got if we’re to keep this installation secure before reinforcements get here. Gao needs us, boys. You too, Dexter.”
Regaari’s ears pricked up, not in an alert way but more in the way it did when he was dragging himself through a necessary torment.
“Sir…I…Yes.”
He needed a little more. “Dexter. Buddy. We’re gonna go out there, and we’re gonna murder an army of those fucks for her. And when we’re done, we’ll throw a party that’d knock Keeda on his ass,” Costello told him. “So grab your weapon and get us a driver for one of these vehicles. We go ASAP.”
His reward, after a long and pained second, was that Regaari picked himself up, straightened, duck-nodded and flexed his claws. He still paused for a moment, but when that moment passed he spun away and bounded away four-pawed after the Stonebacks, looking for a driver. It was the first rock that started a landslide—the Lads to a man jumped into action, blitzing off on their individual errands to grab what they needed.
The last to move was Rebar, who caught Costello’s eye and gave him a single, firm nod to acknowledge a job well done.
It made him feel a little better.
Date Point: 14y1d AV
Planet Akyawentuo, Unclaimed Space, Near 3Kpc Arm
The Singer
“…Your ring?”
Singer nodded, and pressed it into Vemik’s hand. That ring was the first steel thing she’d ever made, and there had to be magic in something like that even if it was ‘alien’ magic.
If nothing else, it was precious to her. Giving it was powerful magic.
“I can taste the wind, Sky-Thinker,” she told him. “The Sky-People are tense and the Given-Men are nervous. I think this is the ending of a story, one way or another.”
Vemik stared at the ring for a while, then slipped it onto one of his fingers. “I think so,” he agreed.
“Make it a good story,” Singer told him. “And…look after Jooyun.”
“Jooyun?” Vemik turned around. Jooyun was sat between two Ketta roots, sharpening his steel hatchet and staring at something far away on the other side of the ground.
Singer nodded. “He’s not as strong as he looks, Sky-Thinker. He’s told you about the time he spent alone.”
“Yes…he learned much.”
“And some of what he learned scarred him.” The Singer sighed. “He needs someone to Give him strength.”
“…I know you are right about these things, but…” Vemik glanced up at his ‘Human’ friend again. “He seems well, now.”
“Does he?” The Singer shook her head. “The Songs say to watch out for men who seem well outside, but are hurting within.”
“…What should I do?”
The singer patted his hand sadly. “I can’t see the future, Sky-Thinker. Be at his side, be strong and think fast.”
Vemik nodded, then turned around as Jooyun stood up and marched sharply toward the strange latrine the Humans had made. She saw Vemik see the change in him, now—the lack of an expression, and Human faces were so expressive, so emotional. They always moved in little ways, raising the odd lines of hair above their eyes, twitching their mouths, creasing the skin of their foreheads or shifting their head to look at somebody not-quite-straight in ways that spoke without words. No matter what they were feeling, their faces moved.
Now, Jooyun’s could have been a bark carving.
“…Should I talk to him?” Vemik asked. The Singer could only toss her head lightly to show that she had no idea.
“Not yet. Maybe never. Maybe soon. Think fast and trust your branch.”
“Sky-Thinker!”
Yan was calling. He gestured sharply, beckoning Vemik to come to him. Vemik raised his hand to acknowledge the command, and turned back to the Singer. He took her hand and lowered his head.
“…Look after our son,” he said.
“Come back and help me,” she dared him, and played with the ring on his finger. “You’ll have quite a story to tell him. Come back and tell it.”
Vemik nodded, pressed his forehead against her own for a second and they tasted each other’s scent before he spun and left. The Singer turned away too, and returned to the camp’s edge where the rest of the villagers were ready to move on.
She had the future to plan for, and she believed in her breath that the People still had one.
Date Point: 14y1d AV
Dataspace adjacent to Hunter scout ship, orbiting planet Gao
The Entity, Instance 4
The Entity had a plan.
It was not an ideal plan—It involved a considerable degree of sacrifice. But the Entity had spent the last several hours carrying out a kind of callous accountancy, and the metaphorical books were better than balanced: They promised a considerable profit, for the right investment.
Spend lives, to save lives. Spend resources, to protect civilizations. Wasn’t that the calculus of command anyway? And from its commanding position near the hub of the Swarm’s data-gathering apparatus, the Entity was better placed than anybody to make such judgement calls.
But it wouldn’t have had any humanity in it at all—and it was deeply fond and proud of what humanity it had—if the ruthless pragmatism of its plan hadn’t caused it to hesitate for just a moment.
The key was to goad the Hunters into thinking they had no strategically viable option but to attack immediately. Despite their reputation for madness and their occasionally overconfident slapdash methods, the Hunters were still canny predators who had terrorized the galaxy for generations—The last fourteen years of repeated humiliation at humanity’s hands had only sharpened their caution and their patience.
So long as they were content to bide their time and strike when the moment was perfect, the whole operation here was doomed. Any system defence field the Allied forces deployed would simply be torn apart from the inside, and meanwhile the cloaked scouts could safely relay intelligence on ground movements to the Hierarchy.
All of which necessitated inciting them to decloak and attack…something. Something that would persuade the Hunters to sacrifice their enormous strategic advantage. Something important, something irresistible, something…juicy.
Something like a salvaged Hierarchy multirole combat ship that had been repurposed into a transport vessel and field hospital, wallowing deep in the gravity well in a low, fast trajectory where it could deliver support to the ground forces on short notice. Full of blameless crew, but they had escape pods…and were a couple of thousand human lives worth more than billions of Gaoians?
The trick was persuading the Hunters that it needed destroying, and here the Entity’s long experience at deception, misdirection and guile served it well.
The best lies were always built around the truth.
It watched Caledonia intently, focusing all the tools at its host’s hideous, misshapen fingertips on picking apart an apparent mystery, and advertised the fact too—the Hunter’s overseeing Beta couldn’t help but notice the intense scrutiny being directed at a single ship. Bait, dangling in the water. Irresistible, to a bored Hunter.
<Listless irritation; idle threat> +Strange One. There had better be a good reason why you are devoting so many resources to monitoring a single ship.+
Perfect. The prey was nibbling at the bait. The Entity sequenced the information it wished for its host to convey and metaphorically crossed its fingers for luck. It was trusting on the double filter of an Igraen host infesting a Hunter biodrone to pass on its intent accurately, meaning that the fate of Gao might be hanging on a game of Telephone.
Its hope was rewarded.
<Obsequious deference> +It seems to be especially important to the enemy, Beta.+
The Beta stood up from its command throne and made an elaborate show of not being interested in the affairs of lowly things like the Strange One by stretching and taking its time as it swaggered down into the intel pits. It was comical to watch a being that was so plainly desperate for stimulation fight to keep up appearances, and the Entity had to be very careful not to allow its scorn and amusement filter out through its host.
<Listless interest; Command> +Elaborate.+
The Entity stepped aside and called up its data. It was all true…but here and there among the facts were a few subtle embellishments, molded into the hard truths in the seamless way that only a digital sapient could achieve.
Enough to paint that ship as the linchpin not only of the entire human operation, but of their spaceborne capacity. A lie that was the younger twin of the truth.
It watched the Beta read, think…and bite.
<Dawning glee> +If we were to cripple or destroy that ship…+
The Entity didn’t dare to actually communicate anything beyond the emotional context. An actual thought might have burst the bubble.
<Humble Agreement>
The Beta lurched up from the console and spun away, radiating hungry savagery.
<Delight; Command> +Wake the Alpha!+
Date Point: 14y1d AV
HMS Caledonia, Low orbit over planet Gao
Technical Sergeant Martina Kovač
Suit technicians knew that their job only really started once the Hazardous Environment Assault Team and their suits were in action.
In practical terms, the EV-MASS almost came with a power cable dangling out of its ass. Those suits were massively sophisticated warfare platforms, and like all high-performance equipment they worked best with some fine-tuning and oversight. The Operators mostly didn’t know just how closely their suits were watched while they were in the fire.
Life support, vital signs, temperature regulation, noninvasive blood chemistry monitoring, power management, forcefield control, the helmet cam, the comms and intel package, armor integrity, the Heads-Up Display and more were all mostly handled automatically. Mostly…but with supervision.
So the technicians were far from idle when the HEAT were in action, and It made for tough watching. The helmet cams didn’t flinch at showing what the Lads did, and what the Lads did best was violence.
Marty had come to terms with their ultra-aggressive, limb-ripping savagery long ago, and knew better than to raise it with them. As far as the Lads were concerned, the immense brutality they dished out on an op was their cross to bear, privately and among themselves. Marty made sure all the techs knew and respected that.
But…God. Operation EMPTY BELL had been hardcore enough, and the biodrones involved on that occasion had been human. But after working with the Whitecrests and the Stonebacks for so long, they’d allowed themselves to forget that the gulf between human biology and the next-best thing could be…large.
Humans were Deathworlders, and Gaoians weren’t. Specimens like Daar and other elite Clan aside, the average Gaoian massed about what Kovač did—and Kovač was decidedly petite even if life as Adam’s fiancée inevitably meant being made as strong as she could possibly be—but wasn’t nearly so robust. Watching Newman punch one so hard that he flattened the poor thing’s rib cage and made it literally cough up its own lungs was all the evidence a person could ever need of that.
Watching that feed was brutalizing, an adrenaline rush. It left the body surging with fight-or-flight hormones and stress chemistry even at a distant reserve, which was why the SOR’s techs were the first to react when *Caledonia*’s proximity alarm wailed at them to brace for impact.
Something hit them. Hard. The whole ship rang like a bell then groaned the long, deep, agonizing groan of steel straining, stretching and bending.
Deacon and Hargreaves leapt to check the pressure doors were properly sealed. Matthews, Cowen and Green pounced for the emergency depressurization lockers hidden under the deck and wrenched them open, ready for everybody to pile into at the first hint that their air wasn’t going to stay where it should.
Kovač locked down all the sensitive stuff and hit the weapon rack to start handing out their carbines. They were all armed with pistols anyway, but SOP was to treat any proximity alarm as a possible Hunter ship decloaking to latch on and board. Nobody wanted to face Hunters with just pistols.
She’d just handed one to Doyle when the wisdom of that policy made itself known. A different alarm hooted through the ship, followed by Commander McDaniel’s clipped voice, sounding more stressed than Kovač had ever heard her, even on the day when Cally had literally caught fire and nearly exploded.
“All hands, prepare to repel boarders. Repeat, all hands repel boarders.”
One advantage in the SOR’s toolkit was limited access to Gaoian tech like shieldsticks. Marty promptly grabbed a handful and handed them out while everyone charged their weapons and fanned out to their planned spots all over the deck. In efficient seconds, the whole bay was one big killbox, and not a moment too soon—something else hit them, and Cally groaned like a harpooned whale.
This time, the impact was followed up by a distant heavy grinding rumble. Martina gritted her teeth and fought to keep her hands from trembling too badly. She was already soaked with anxious sweat, except for her throat which had gone completely bone dry.
Every sailor was a firefighter, every marine a rifleman and Marty, like every airman, was trained as a base defender. The HEAT had made sure all their techs knew how to work together and hold the fort if necessary, and anybody who got combat training from the likes of Firth or Vandenberg was probably decently equipped to handle a fight… But that didn’t change the fact she’d never been in a real fight before. Ever. None of them had.
Another impact, this one closer. The lights flickered and there was the unmistakable slamming sound of a compartment decompressing. On a ship as densely packed as Caledonia, that meant people were dead.
She didn’t dare shut her eyes, but she prayed anyway in the second before a real impact hit them, a heavy slam right on the other side of the external pressure doors that covered where the ship’s original masters had relied on only a forcefield to keep the air in. There was an ear-mangling metallic squeal, a seething howl, and a four meter ring of fire bloomed on the external door.
A fusion-cutting Hunter boarding proboscis thrust obscenely through the wounded hull and pushed in a two-tonne coin of the outer hull. The Hunters were only an inch behind it.
Thank fuck for hologram-enhanced training on Firth’s tactical assault course. They were even more disgusting in real life than in the simulation, but rather than being stunned by the repulsively creepy horrors that tried to barge into the room, Marty gritted her teeth and opened fire.
To her supreme satisfaction, her shots tore through the first one through the breech and it collapsed to the deck with its too-many limbs convulsing like a poisoned spider’s. Its nervejam grenade launcher clattered across the floor, unused.
Doyle, Hargreaves, Deacon, Cowen, Green and all the rest poured in their own fire, and the training showed. They weren’t firing wildly or wastefully, they laid down a disciplined volley and the Hunters bogged down on their own fallen, were cut down, and recoiled like burned fingers.
Marty used the break to reload and get on her radio. “Contact, Starboard hangar bay!”
“Copy starboard hangar, marines en route.”
‘En route’ was almost an understatement. Marty barely had time to understand the reply before five Royal Marines bowled in through the inner airlock, geared up in the latest-gen body armor that had borrowed heavily from EV-MASS to provide far more protection per kilogram than older systems. They looked ready and able to stroll casually up to Hell’s front door.
Their squad leader, Corporal Wilde, joined Marty behind her shieldstick barrier. “Nice one,” he commented.
“Thanks. Plan?”
“You lot hold the fort, we go in there an’ clean the bastards out. Wish us luck.”
Holy shit. “Godspeed,” Marty told him, and meant it.
Wilde nodded and sprang to his feet. “Come on, lads!” he roared, “Last one in buys the first round!”
The five of them surged forward with their weapons up, bowled over the dead Hunter boarding party and stormed back up the boarding proboscis. Marty steeled herself and listened to the gunfire, both rattling back down from inside the Hunter ship and from elsewhere on the ship. There was another ringing slam as another Hunter latched on to another part of *Cally*’s hull, and she whispered a desperate prayer under her breath.
They weren’t out of the woods yet. They were barely in.