(Main Bridge, BSN Shinokage, Tsk’neth System, Free Worlds Alliance)
“Master, Tangos 1 through 24 have been eliminated. Orgrim’s Hammer has disabled Tango 25, and preparing to send boarders to capture the ship.”
“Excellent work, Captain. My compliments to the gun crews and the fleet. Order Ebon Blade squadron to return to base, the Crows can take on patrol duties. Have the Atlanta and Artemis see if they can tractor any of the larger pieces of debris from the enemy fleet into stable orbits of the planet. When the relief fleet gets here, I’m sure they will appreciate having some readily available raw materials to start recycling into building the shipyard.”
“At once, Master.”
I turned back to look at the screens. The battle had gone just as predicted. Battle. Hell, it was more like a scrimmage between professional athletes and a high school junior varsity team.
Honestly, the Yathru forces put up a decent enough fight, considering that they were usually going up against pirates and maybe some corporate raiders. They might even have been good at their jobs. Unfortunately for them, I hadn’t been boasting when I said that my ships and crews were far superior to theirs.
The whole battle was only twenty minutes from start to finish, and the only reason it took that long was because of the distances involved when the fight started. The corporate fleet’s shields had been tuned to defend against energy weapons. Understandable, since most pirates didn’t use torpedoes, favoring energy weapons and their lack of physical ammunition. However, that meant that a single torpedo could cripple the lighter ships, if not destroy them outright. And the quickly rebalanced shields were not strong enough to save the larger ships (the destroyers and the second of the two battlecruisers) when my ships brought their main guns to bear.
Meanwhile, the Yathru ships’ weapons were powerful, but all my ships had shields fit for warships larger than their weight class. Their beams were better than most civilian ships, and they definitely dealt damage, but it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t nearly enough. Frankly, the ships died too quickly for them to get enough time on target on my better shielded and nimbler ships.
“All ships, damage report.”
“Atlanta has taken minor damage. Captain Veleth reports that the last broadside from one of the destroyers disabled their hyperdrive and shorted out the capacitor for the anchor drive. A few minor casualties, but no deaths. All other ships report a few minor injuries due to high-speed maneuvers, as the inertial dampeners struggled to keep up, but no lasting damage.”
I nodded. “Excellent. Captain Inatumal, what is the status of Orgrim’s Hammer and the enemy flagship?”
“The Hammer’s shields are down to 12%, and port forward maneuvering thrusters are offline. Tango 25 hit them hard as they were closing, but it appears that their armor was not enough to save them from the Dragonbreath torpedoes. The Hammer targeted the engines specifically, leaving the battlecruiser dead in space. Ion weapons were then able to disable major functions.”
“Very well. Prepare a shuttle. I will be going over to the Hammer as soon as the ship is secure to help oversee the interrogations of the corporate officers on board.”
“As you wish, Master.”
(YCSF Dynasty Builder, Tsk’neth System, Free Worlds Alliance)
First Blade Th’zak Lakan was a lucky Ihm. As a hatchling, he had been selected for corporate security training instead of going to the mines to work the resource extraction machines. As a youngling, he had been promoted to Second Claw, the youngest to achieve that rank in fifty years.
Since then, he had constantly fought to prove his worth, and rise up through the ranks of the Yathru Corporate Security Service. Eventually, at the age of twenty, he managed to qualify for the elite Ship Security Division, the proud males, females, and others that made up the protective detail of Yathru’s corporate fleet. Their mission was to provide security aboard ship, conduct boarding operations against vessels, either to seize them as pirates or searching them for contraband, and as mobile reinforcements to Yathru security officers based on stations or planets.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
The SSD were the elite, and they were equipped like the elite. They sported the strongest armor out of any corporate force in the Alliance. Even the Alliance Planetary Defense Forces bought their armor from Yathru. Void, even the annoying Kul’tirans bought armor from the corporation for their elite troops.
Their weapons, too, were the best that Yathru had to offer. Each grunt and officer of the SSD was armed with a Class IV Neural Whip, a Kat’har Kinetic Energy Carbine, and a J-BAR Combat Knife using a modified Imperial design to carry a self-sharpening monomolecular edge that would cut through anything, in time. Officers also carried their Mark 3 Microwave Pain Inducers, as well, allowing them to incapacitate rebellious ground troops and bring them to compliance without wasting the resources that the YCSS put into their training and maintenance.
As First Blade, Th’zak Lakan was the leader of his squad of twenty security guards. Unlike other Blades, he did not simply choose from his own race to make up his squad. There was some wisdom to be had in the simplicity that came with not needing to balance a squad’s needs for different races, but Th’zak had grown up in the hives of Tsk’neth III. He knew that there was a strength in having minions with different abilities than he did.
Take Sekil, for instance. The little Gendar was smaller than the rest of his squad, but because of that the little ratlike alien was the perfect scout, and was able to slip through areas too small for a hulking ihm like Th’zak to get through. Having him on the squad meant that they could seek out and spoil ambushes when attacking pirate ships, or search hidden compartments too narrow for an ihm to fit inside when examining a smuggler.
Fully half of his squad were non-Ihm. That kind of thinking made him unusual amongst his other Blades, but his results spoke for themselves. Because of that, he had been promoted to serve on the company’s enforcement fleet flagship, the Dynasty Builder, and he brought his squad with him. One of six blades stationed on the flagship, his squad was the best trained, and the highest rated, second only to the Admiral’s personal guard.
Th’zak read the information relayed to him from the bridge on the HUD in his helmet. Turning to face his squad, who had gathered in the dim emergency lighting, he said, “All right, troops. I’m not going to lie to you. The ship is hurt bad. These Black Stars have disabled the Builder, and according to what information I can get from the ship net, the rest of the fleet is not going to be coming to our rescue any time soon.
“The enemy vessel is a modified Imperial Marine Transport. That means it comes with drop ships and boarding pods, enough to send over an entire company of Imperial Marines in full armor. Fortunately for us, it seems the creditpinchers in Black Star are as active as ours are, because we are not dealing with a full set of twelve boarding pods. Instead, we are dealing with only three, enough for three squads of corporate security officers, to our six squads!
“The incoming pods are targeting sections 3, 5, and 7. Squad Two will intercept in section 3. Squad Three will intercept in section 7. Our squad will take section 5, as it is closest to the bridge. Squads Four, Five, and Six will cover Engineering, the Bridge, and the main computer core, just in case any of them slip by us in stealth armor. Our mission is to kill or capture any Black Stars we can, to use as leverage until reinforcements get here.”
He looked each of them in the faceplate of their opaque helmets. “We are the elites of the Corporate Security Service! We are the ones that all the other troops look up to, and wish they were. We are the ones that get all the prime mates, while they get our seconds and left-overs!” That got a laugh and a cheer from his troops, as he knew it would.
“Now, some of you are wondering why, if we are guarding against an attack in this section, we are a corridor away from the hull, instead of getting ready to meet them. After all, we could be setting up a fire position as we speak, right? The answer to that is simple. If they are using Imperial boarding pods, then they will be using a short burn, high intensity laser drill combined with kinetic impact to force their way through the hull.
“Understand this. Those lasers that cut through a ship’s hull will still be quite active when they break through. You do NOT want to be on the other side of the hull when those things cut through. It WILL significantly reduce your prospects, both in mating and your careers, if you find yourself rendered into several tiny little pieces.”
Once he was sure that his troops weren’t getting any stupid ideas about waiting just on the other side of the impact site, ready to spray kinetic blasts into the breach, Th’zak nodded. He didn’t allow stupid troopers to remain in his squad, but it was always best to make sure no one was getting too caught up in the corporate spirit. With a gesture, he sent a ship schematic to his team’s HUDs, with a blinking light highlighting one area of the ship near them.
“Now, sensors indicate that our pod will be impacting the hull here, in crew quarters. The crew are at their stations, so these quarters are assumed empty. The laser drill has an effective range of one meter, but the impact and temperature differential will cause shrapnel to spray throughout the section. room it impacts into, so we want to keep our distance for the initial strike.
“We will set up two firing positions. Here, and here.” He highlighted the positions on the schematic. “Uvan, take Teams Two and Four, and set up to the side. Teams One and Three on me. We will set up on the route to the Bridge. We will have them in a crossfire, with no cover. Easy shooting. Everyone clear on your assignments?”
There were no questions, as expected. It was a standard formation, one they trained for, in case they were under attack. The plans originally were designed to compensate for X’thari raiders, but they worked fine against other corporate forces.
Teams One and Three formed up on him as they moved to the corridor in section 5 that the enemy was expected to break through. With practiced motions, they set up the movable security barriers. The armored barrier would stop all ‘ship-safe’ weapons cold, and was even rated effective for some ballistic weapons. Like everything the SSD had, it was top quality, the best that any corporate security force had.
He watched on his HUD as Uvan, the avian Vrok, took position with teams Two and Four. Nice, quick, and professional. Just as he expected of his men. If this were a drill, they would have all passed with top marks.
His HUD flashed to get his attention. Boarder impact in three. Two. One. Now. He felt the impact as the ship shook, harder than he was expecting. The inertial dampeners must be offline, along with the engines, he thought. To his crew, he sent a simple message. “Be ready.”
The door to the crew berth where the boarding pod struck flew outward, and the bulkhead visibly dented from some of the shrapnel thrown about. There was a fraction of a second of air whistling by, before the pod deployed sealing agents to prevent decompression. Smoke fumed out of the doorway, as whatever the laser drill ignited burned.
Th’zak focused on the audio feed from his armor. There. That was the sound of the boarding pod’s hatch opening. He waited half a second, and then sent to his squad, “FIRE!”
Thwump. Thwump. Thwump.
Kinetic blasts crossed in the air, even as an armored figure appeared in the shattered doorway.
BANG.
First Blade Th’zak Lakan was a lucky Ihm. As an adult, he became the first enemy to die to the Black Star Primaris Marines, and their upgraded weapons.