The needle-like Jump Ship was too far away to be visible. Jeffrey spied more bright flashes of light, way out there. Where they had once blossomed in a line, these were now concentrated in a small radius.
“Hit! We’ve destroyed one of the defending peacekeepers next to the Jump Ship. Its debris did our job for us. The Jump Ship didn’t have any shields to block the shrapnel.”
“No shields?” the Admiral said, frowning. Why wouldn’t they install shields on their most strategically important ship? Was it a potential weakness of whatever technology they were using to ‘jump’?
That was their enemy’s ticket out of this sector, most likely at a speed that surpassed light itself. If he could get that technology in his people’s hands, then any losses they have suffered during this battle will have been worth it.
“Sir,” the communication officer’s voice shook, “the remaining peacekeeper ships just detonated. We had fighters and Guardsmen in range.”
He could feel silence like a physical presence descend on the bridge. He kept his posture straight and his projected nothing to show that he was feeling any grief over the loss of good men. The general exhaled sharply, but that was all.
A mask of composure hid their inner turmoil and despair, but their experience had taught them to cope with loss. It was like an old friend and they would treat it with a drink to the fallen once the day was near its close.
“All the enemy ships?” the Admiral asked.
“No, sir. Some of them appear to be dead in space. Either they’re waiting, or they’re completely disabled.”
“And the Jump Ship?” he asked.
“The same, Admiral.”
“They probably have ways to activate a self-destruct sequence manually,” the General said.
“My next call is up to you, Simran,” the Admiral said quietly, “I won’t order your men to their death if you don’t think it’s worth the risk.”
The General frowned. “It must be done. Can we determine where their engineering bays are? I want to control the ship and sabotage any plans they have for scuttling it before we get our hands on it.”
“Comms, raise engineering,” the Admiral said. He waited a few seconds while the General barked out orders to his men; Maintain distance from disabled ships, keep weapons hot, begin search and rescue. Gather any spaced corpses.
“Engineering,” came his chief’s voice through his radio. There was yelling in the background. The damage to the ship must have caused a lot of chaos.
“Do we have a way to scan for weaker etheric signatures without getting too close to their potential source?” the Admiral asked.
“Weaker signatures? Sure, we’ve got a few mobile scanners meant for the colony, but there’s no way to avoid getting close.”
“How long will it take to get one of those ready?” he asked.
“I’ve got my hand full, Admiral. But give me 15 minutes.”
“Alright, inform General Marko when the scanner is ready to be deployed. It’ll be his show from here on out.”
“Aye, sir.”
----------------------------------------
Guard Captain Syler Hastham leaned over the pilot’s shoulder, monitoring the distance between the shuttle and the Jump Ship.
“Bit closer,” he said.
The pilot tapped the flight control. Syler looked back towards the passenger compartment. Most of the squad he was leading on this operation were checking their gear. A tech fiddled with a large, vertical metal cylinder.
“Catch anything yet?” Syler asked. The tech held up a finger. He was checking something.
“The scanner is picking up a source further astern. That might be the generator.”
“I’ll take it. Squad, ready up!”
A chorus of aye’s sounded.
He tapped the pilot on the shoulder and went to join his people in getting ready.
The Sabletown mayor’s actions weren’t witnessed by him. However, reports from the Relentless bridge indicated he destroyed almost half the peacekeeper fleet. By himself.
With a sword.
Cultivators. Powers. Swordsmen who could cut their way through fleets. They were in the dark, and they were scrambling. If the need to gather intel wasn’t so pressing, Syler was sure that the Admiral would have elected to obliterate the remaining Peacekeeper ships.
He brought his mind back to the moment.
“Alright, before we do this, I have two words for you all. Trigger. Discipline.”
All eyes were on him. Excluding the tech, who was still fiddling with the machine.
“I know that you’ve all lost friends today. Yes, these bastards hit us hard. I’m as mad as you are, but I will have the balls of anyone who fires a shot unprovoked. Understood?”
“So I’m exempt from punishment?” Guardsman Grandview asked. She’d saved his ass enough times to earn a bit of casual insubordination. He would ignore it this time.
“I asked you all a question,” Syler said, letting his frustration colour his tone.
“Understood, sir!”
Unanimous agreement. He nodded in satisfaction. He finished his gear check by inspecting his backpack. It held a small re-breather with a gas canister tucked beneath it. He always liked to pack an extra in case he or one of his squad sprung a leak.
“Suit up!” he ordered.
They adorned and sealed their helmets. Fresh oxygen emitted from small holes in the helmet's base, where it met the rest of the suit. He breathed it in, taking a split second to appreciate the feeling.
The fresh air was cool and invigorated him as it entered his lungs.
“Let’s get on with it,” he said. That was the tech’s queue to enter the cockpit with the pilot and close the door behind him. One of his men opened the door to the shuttle, and they all braced themselves as the cabin depressurized.
They gently pushed off from the shuttle. It was a short, second-long flight towards the jump ship. They magnetized their boots against the ship’s hull. Lieutenant Diego landed across from Syler, removing his own bag from his shoulder. He reached in and pulled out a long, thick wire. With Syler’s help, they unspooled the wire and stuck it against the hull in the shape of a tall vertical rectangle.
When they were done, Syler moved a few meters away from the wire, and Diego planted a small device near it.
“Commencing breach,” Diego said. The rest of the 8-man squad readied themselves. Diego gave an unseen command, and the wire they’d set up was lit with a brilliant display of sparks, melting straight through the enemy’s hull.
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Syler counted the seconds. When he reached 12, detritus explosively exited the ship.
“Depressurizing,” Syler said.
Silence for another second.
“Tossing flash,” Diego said.
They waited for the grenade to illuminate the edge of the entrance they’d melted.
“Let’s move,” Syler said. He took point, rifle raised and finger on the trigger. As soon as he pushed through the opening, he spotted movement.
“Contact!” he yelled, but no action was required on his part.
They’d breached into a corridor with a dozen warriors. They thrashed and grasped their throats. He imagined their screams, but the vacuum of space — created by the room’s total air evacuation — silenced them.
None of them were floating, implying that the ship had some method of creating artificial gravity.
“Hold fire unless they instigate,” Syler said, ignoring the dying warriors and moving towards a door.
His men readied behind him as the last of the Peacekeepers stopped moving. Syler noticed a vast social stratification among them. Some wore expensive-looking robes and held diamond-studded sabers. Others were wearing torn rags, holding what looked to be dirty kitchen knives with nicked blades.
A quick assessment of the door led them to believe that brute force would be enough to open it.
As they prepared to kick it down, the door opened, revealing the shocked face of over a dozen men, women, and other stranger looking beings. The room’s depressurization propelled them past the waiting squad. One of them flew grabbed onto Syler as they flew past, and they both tumbled across the ground.
Before they’d made it more than a few feet, Syler had calculated his advantage. His opponent couldn’t breathe. They would be on a timer as they fought against the agony and exhaustion that would come from having to exert themselves while holding their breath.
Syler followed his own advice, dropping his rifle and letting it hang off his shoulder by its strap. He pulled his knife from its sheath on his thigh. He stabbed at the man’s eye, but he was quicker than Syler. Much stronger, too. He pulled Syler to the ground and punched at his helmet.
The visor was bulletproof. It cracked. The padding on the back of Syler’s helmet cushioned his head when it hit the ground. It still hurt, and he saw stars, but he was alive. Another one of his men knocked his assailant over. Taking advantage of the situation, Syler rushed the man and stabbed him with his knife.
It wasn’t a pleasant way to go, Syler figured, but sometimes it had to be that way.
Someone else bumped into him from behind, and Syler tumbled out of the way just in time to watch as the edge of a blade flashed by his face.
He raised his rifle and fired. A new hole appeared between the alien’s eyes.
“This almost feels like cheating,” said one of his men. Guardsman Storm. It was his second boarding action, the last one having been shortly before they’d left for Skyhold.
“Keep chatter to a minimum,” Syler said, displeased that he needed to remind him. A few chuckles sounded in response. “We all clear? Any injuries?”
“One of them cut through the suit on my arm. I’ve sealed it off,” Guardsman Grandview said. Syler winced and sought her out. She raised her arm to get his attention. Lieutenant Diego was already treating the injury.
“Shallow cut,” Diego said. “Who would have thought these bastards would use swords?”
“We would use swords as well if we thought we could match these guys in a contest of pure strength,” Syler said.
“Right, we like to avoid poking holes in the hull of the ships we’re trying to capture,” Lieutneant Guardsman Diana Ross said. She was already poking her heard through the newly opened door, scanning for more threats.
“These are special circumstances,” Syler said. “We need to gain control of these ships with celerity, and we don’t want to risk losing too many people.”
“Smaller teams, with more effective weaponry. I was wondering why we weren’t flooding the ship with an entire platoon of Guardsman,” Guardsman Grandview said. “All patched up, sir. Ready when you are.”
“Copy. Everyone form up. There should only be one more room between us and the generator.”
Back when he was a fresh, baby-faced recruit, one of his trainers had emphasized the need for him and his cadre to behave like a well-oiled machine. The phrase had stuck with him throughout his career.
It came to mind as he watched his people prepare for the next room. His squad knew their roles and executed his order with precision.
“The room looks clear to me, sir,” Diana said.
“We still dont know much about these people. Better to be safe than sorry. Let’s move,” Syler said. Rifle up and standing a few feet from the doorway, he made a quick scan of the room ahead.
“Hey, Captain. You said celerity earlier.” Diego asked, “Do you mean, like, the vegetable?”
Syler frowned. He could appreciate the lieutenant wanting to ease their tension, but the timing was awkward.
“No, not celery, Lieutenant. Celerity means ‘with swiftness of movement.’”
He’d read it in a novel once. It had been his first time encountering the word, and he’d decided then and there that he would start using it for himself.
It was an incredible series of books. Too bad the author passed away.
“Oh,” Diego said, “Copy that.”
Grandview snorted, but kept her thoughts to herself.
“Ready,” Syler said, and he stepped forward with celerity, sweeping from the left-hand corner, checking both high and low. Half a second after entering, his team had already followed behind him, already having eyes on every corner of the room.
“Clear,” he said. “Anything of interest?”
“I’ve got a whip,” Diego said, some humour in his tone.
“Say again?” Syler said.
“A whip, like the weapon,” Diego said.
“These people are insane. Who keeps whips on ships?” Guardsman Grandview asked.
“Well,” Lieutenant Diana Ross drawled, “sometimes you need to spice things up a bit. In fact, me and Diego’s dad will—”
“Can the chatter,” Syler said, smirking despite his sharp tone, “lock it in.”
“Contact, six-o’clock!” someone yelled.
Syler whipped his gun around, aiming towards the room they just came from.
A man stumbled in, clutching at his throat with one hand and pointing a spear at them with another.
The spear’s tip glowed.
He tapped the trigger once, punching a hole through the spearman’s head. He fell like a puppet with severed strings, but not before the spear tip released its energy. It shot above him, cutting a head-sized hole through the ceiling.
There were more enemies behind the dead-spearman.
His squad’s suits contained the only air in the room, so the sound of gunshots couldn’t travel through the ship. But with each shot came a brief flash of light, which lit their surroundings.
Another beam of energy came through from the other side of the door, and his team took cover where they could, which was difficult to do in such a sparsely furnished room.
The energy beam had been weaker than the last one. A weaker cultivator, perhaps?
How long would it take them to charge the next beam?
Lieutenant Diego took a risk. He threw a flashbang through the door. Another beam of energy punched through the wall separating the rooms.
Diego leaned through the doorway. Diego’s suit was lit by another millisecond-flash of light.
“Bad guy dead,” Diego said. “We’re clear, Captain.”
“Good work. Let’s get this over with as quickly as possible. I don’t want anymore surprises.”
His team formed up around him next to a double-door on the opposite side of the room. They would need to be exercise a bit of caution with this next part.
“Maintain trigger discipline. We don’t want to shoot anything that might blow us up,” Syler said.
“Flashbang ready,” Guardsman Tyler said, forming up on the opposite side of Syler. He’d been mostly silent during this operation, only speaking up when necessary. Syler appreciated that.
Syler readied his own and opened the door closest to him just enough to throw in his flashbang. Guardsman Tyler did the same. They closed the doors before the grenades detonated and opened up as soon as they felt the slight pulse of displaced air that proceeded.
“Go,” Syler said, pushing open the door again, rifle raised. One swordsman was in front of him, blinking away an afterimage. A quick burst from Syler’s rifle and the swordsman expired. More flashes of light, more enemies dropped lifelessly to the ground. A few of them didn’t have weapons.
Collateral damage.
Unfortunate.
He would have loved to bring back some captives. The supposed translation magic that the Sabletowners had introduced would have made gathering intel much easier, but he hadn’t gained accessed to it yet.
He took stock of the room, and cursed when he saw a very tall, and well-built man holding a smaller man with torn clothing and lacerations etched across his skin. Behind the bulking figure, a large circle extruded from the floor. It was only about half a foot tall. From what he could see, there were pulsating lines and what looked to be some language etched into the floor. A sphere of soft light hung in mid-air, about 3 meters above the circle’s centre. Wisp-like trails lead from the small sphere towards glowing metal spheres supported by pillars.
This must be their power generator.
“Anyone have a shot?” he asked.
“I say we shoot through both of them,” Grandview said.
“I’ll have your tags if you do,” Syler said.
“His shins and shoulders are exposed. I’ve hit smaller targets from further away, sir,” Diego said.
Syler could say the same.
As they spoke, the pulses from behind the man grew in intensity. The savage grin on the man’s face, the crazed look in his eyes as he shouted alien epithets towards them, it spoke of a dreadful possibility.
“We don’t have time to negotiate, but we need him alive. I think he’s activated the self destruct sequence.”
“A shot to the shin won’t kill him unless their physiology differs from ours.”
“Is that a slave he’s holding?” Diego asked.
“Might explain the whips,” Grandview said.
Syler agreed. If they could extract with a liberated captive, they may gain a willing source of information about the Peacekeepers.
“I want the hostage alive, and I’d prefer to convince our big friend here to surrender. Diego, Grandview, I want you behind him on either side. If he looks like he’s about to kill the hostage, shoot to disable.”
“Sir,” they said in unison, moving forward at a pace that wouldn’t seem immediately threatening. They strafed the far sides of the room, and the man’s blustering increased.
“The rest of you, retreat to the shuttle. No reason for all of us to die here.”
“Sir—”
“That’s an order. We’ve got this handled, not our first rodeo,” Syler said. A series of affirmations followed and the rest of the squad left, leaving the three Guardsman, the slave, and the hulking man at the centre of the room.