“Ivanka, we have to do this now!” When we called Katie O’Connell she not only gave me a sonic algorithm to see traditionally camouflaged enemies. She gave us an algorithm to use seismic disturbances to sense bodies in a building. But our first sonic burst showed that we have a lot of opposition surrounding us and they’re ready to pounce.
“Kursk command, drop them.” She commanded. Two sets of clicks over comms let us know that ballistic ordinance is on its on its way. Less than a minute later, a whole company of advanced weaponry begins firing on the camouflaged cats in the field as the percussion of the blasts echo through the terrain, telling us their locations. A mixture of kinetic and energy rounds mow down the fifty ambushers on the outside. Kursk command sends the final bomb with a click to confirm that no other lurkers remain.
When Ivanka is confident that there’s no more danger outside, she signals for the sappers to cut holes in the building and toss in their white phosphorous, aluminum, rust, and corn starch grenade. I hate that she advocates for the smokier mixture, but for creating an environment after an explosion that is hazardous and incapacitating, incompletely burning particulates is the way to go. Even if you drown the grenade, the trigger can create hydrogen and explode again for “funzies”. Vents within 200m pop out of the ground and issue light grey smoke. I eye Smolensk squad leaders and signal them to advance toward the main doors while Ivanka motions for Kursk and Voronezh to advance on the wall and rooftop breaches respectively.
Two squads line up on either side of the door while two more provide support from 20m, ready to file in after the other two squads. As soon as a modified t-2 shotgun blasts out the lock, the cats come out in a sloppy flurry. Swords akimbo, and blood streaming out of their ears and nose, they managed to club a few of ours to the ground before our support squads opened fire with rifles as the close-in squads used their breaching saws to devastating effect.
The doorway became the legendary funnel of death for minutes before the cats caught on to the unmanageable pile of bodies. As they retreated back into the building, our riflemen used the bunker of bodies for support as they launched light, lead, and grenades down the corridor.
I signal a cease fire and motion for the breach squad to lead while the two fire squads followed with the last close-combat squad in the back. The cats were smart enough to let us get to a barricade before attacking on all sides, but those bastards were still disoriented and we weren’t. We get some wounded and some incapacitated, but I stab them full of sealants and immune and tissue boosters and we move on.
We’ll be lucky to make it through this without leaving a teammate behind to care for the stabilized. If we don’t push forward with our full strength, no one will survive.
***
In a moment of insubordination, I teach one of the supply chiefs how to operate the crane-operated mini-gun and slink through the portal with the security team. I left Alaris’ chassis in the loading bay harness my chassis was in, but now I guess it’s just my body.
The ‘upgrade’ that Andromeda insisted on was expansive, but only in little ways. What was previously Magitech, is now Aether Biotech. I don’t fully understand the difference, but the body, the connections feel as though they are irrevocably me. None of my systems are simply plug and play any more, but the interfaces are now more efficient. My body sends and processes signals better than it ever had before and I suspect the distinction of Biotech means that a part of me can be a conduit for aether. Andromeda and Penny, I love you both.
“Time to be like Penny and make a menace of myself.” While I haven’t started with any kind of martial or weapons skills, I have hours and hours of assisting Penny in her sword and pistol skills, so I hope that the system ports me the skills once I start to use them. For that, I go with a penny special from the warehouse: pulse pistol and plasma saber. From what I’ve been seeing, the Herrat are confident with their martial weapons as energy weapons are mostly negated by their shields. Discussing it with one of Penny’s parallel minds, it seems that the personal combatants have similar shield quality to their ships. That reminds me, I strap on a rifle capable of I longer charge after I transfer it from the warehouse.
It hits me as one of the crewmembers I work with regularly watches the rifle delivery appear. I’ve never been able to do this on my own before, I always had to use one of Penny’s parallel minds to deliver it to me. I suddenly think I’ll likely be able to fight if something so practiced feels second nature.
“Is it okay for you to be off Alaris?” Petty Officer Jones asks.
“You’re looking at the newest Astorian Citizen, Jones. I’m a real person now.” I punch him I the shoulder.
“Wait, really? AI’s can become users? That’s so cool!”
“You are a massive geek.” He’s about to say something about me being the same or something, “Lets go gank some noobs.”
He smiles at that, checks his rifle and side-arm and nods.
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The Security Chief from Alaris walks over to me as he motions for his squads to wait. “You want to take over Titania’s security response Commander?”
“No thanks Chief, Commodore tasked you with it, it’s yours. I’m here to patch together some things that will work better on their ships and shields.”
He nods at me. “We’re only planning on putting two lookouts in these bays, as it contains many anti-personnel turrets. If you could keep me in the loop and act as a third lookout, I’d appreciate it.”
“I plan on interfacing with Titania’s encoded feed, so I should be able to keep us up to date, but no visual. I’ll be piping it to Rear Admiral McClintock as well.” He nods again before walking toward his squad leaders and barking orders.
I walk to a workbench similar to mine on Alaris and pay to transfer some tools and buy some gear from arms manufacturers in the matrix. I get told that I don’t have any personal funds, but that I do have access to the Imperial Treasury? Okay then. Company money it is. I find a “small” mini-gun for sale from a personal assault supplier and take the last few rifles from the warehouse and start de-constructing them.
Mid construction flow-state, I see a priority alert in my vision saying that plasma cutters are more than half-way through the shuttle bay doors. The inner shields on Titania that maintain atmosphere are still in tact, and I still need more time.
“Chief, as soon as you see the first cat come through that hole deactivate the environment shield on the shuttle bay. I need 5 more minutes.” I say and text at the same time, in case he’s focused on something else.
“Copy that ma’am.” He turns to his team. “You hear that folks? Visors down, Shields up and mag boots engaged!”
A minute later, a hammering force buckles the cut-out into the bay, causing a tonne of enchanted steel to clang to the deck and slide a meter inward. The Cameras I’m looking through while I finish show one of their impact breachers having rammed the cutout and wedged their ship into the hole. Shit, if it’s wedged in there hard enough, the bay won’t depressurize fast enough to eject anyone.
I chide myself for not realizing that Titania would have extra boarding vessels as I hadn’t shot them up like I had for Alaris. Damnit. I’ll just hope that the Chief can remain fluid and knows enough that my original plan won’t work. I send a text but I’m too focused for much of anything else.
I hear gunfire and, to my surprise, grenades in the space behind me, passively recording the camera footage to review it later. Somehow, they give me the time to finish the pulse integration to this mini-gun. It’s not pretty, and I’m certain it will overheat, but I think I can keep it running for maybe twenty minutes? It’s nice to have goals.
I turn to find our bay door a mess with the nose of their boarding ship not faring much better. Meters away from the previous breach, a new hole is being cut in the door and it seams that the cats are waiting for the other breach to be made. Lets make them wait forever.
I slip a shoulder strap over my left and clip it into this massive kludged-together abomination of metal and violence. I turn and begin to walk forward as the barrels come up to speed. Normally, a weapon that can fire dozens of rounds a second is terrifying enough, but this behemoth has a firing chamber at the top and the bottom of the round. A near-constant stream of light issues from the weapon, interrupted by a kinetic bullet once a rotation—still multiple times a second. The combination quickly cuts through the shields on the fore-end of the boarding ship, allowing the security team to lob grenades into the ship’s debarkation hatch.
The damage to the area wedged into the door is significant, but unfortunately, grenades have an expanding effect, and that ship isn’t going anywhere. Unless I raise the door. When I realize that the thought in my head is genuine, Penny-grade lunacy I can’t help but chuckle.
“Chief, keep doing what you’re doing. I’m going to raise the bay door as far as it will go and attempt to be a menace.”
“Commander, as long as you’re not throwing my team members away needlessly, I’m all for shennanigains.”
“Alright, two people with fast rate of fire weapons, come with me.” Chief taps a large man with what looks like a futuristic SAW that he holds like an assault rifle and a sturdy woman with what looks like a multi-pack of wrapping paper covered in sleek extruded plastic.
I walk to the bay door, back up and start walking up the door backward with my mag boots up the door to where I can bend over at the waist and shoot below it. I deactivate the gravity plates within two paces of the door to make it easier on my new team mates. They pick up my idea quickly.
“The idea is to use light and ballistics to overload the shield, and then use energy weapons to ablate important parts of the hull. Which should be flat parts two to three meters back from the nose.”
“Copy commander. Squads, re-position to pie the much larger door. Decker and Roth, you’re just pieing the door from above. Never thought I’d say that.” He chuckles at the last bit. He’s right though, this is zero G or assassin territory.
I pull my knees in close to prep for door motion and wait to release the habitat shields until Chief’s teams get into position. The mechanisms of the ship creak and strain as the dented bay door rises into the ship, stopping where the breaching ship impacted, leaving slightly less than half of the door open. I want to order some smoke grenades and vent it into space as a distraction, but the particulates would diffuse our light weapons, making them horrendously ineffective.
“cover fire.” I say through comms and I get a click for my efforts as a controlled burst of fire issues from the sides of the bay. I spin up my barrel and lean slowly over the edge of the door. As soon as I see ship I start firing.
This thing shreds shields like a rotary cheese grater. Combined with the plasma cannon the woman on the door with me is firing, the ship that was cutting into the door is breached within a few seconds, and demolished by explosive shells a few minutes later. By then, the door team and I start firing at the aft section of the ship stuck in the door until we are glad to use the steel at our feet as a shield when their engines explode. Debris is blown back into the shuttle area, but none of the security team remains in the area of effect.
I search the outside cameras for other approaches and see two vessels approaching: a cutting vessel and one of those ballistic breachers. I’m amazed that they’d risk us running across the bay and doing the same thing. Maybe they hatched the plan at the same time? Maybe they are full of hubris ala Humanity and think the other operators as incompetent? For whatever the reason, I am thankful for the extra time.