Chapter 202 – Maelstrom’s Edge (Pt. 2)

USD: Two hours since the traversal wormhole for the 6th Fleet was created.

Location: Meltisar System, MNS Thea’s Hackjob, CIC

‎ Elis tapped into the moonlet’s internal comms to her robotic combat squad. “We’ll funnel them into kill zones and bleed them dry there,” she directed. Her voice was calm and as authoritative as she could make it, despite the fact she was talking to Thea’s combat drones.

The large machines were two meters tall, and a meter wide as they rolled through the corridor on four mobile legs that were capable of multiple transit modes. For now, they were rolling down the hall in front of her position to cut off an Ertan entry team’s breach at one of the rear passageways that led to the primary power plant.

The defensive plan was simple yet brutal—use the moonlet’s narrow internal passageways as choke points while the hefty rock exterior provided cover. Boarding teams would be funneled into the killzones. It would work right up until the Ertan decided to lob a volley of torpedoes and AMCN missiles into the station and crack it like an egg.

Elis let out a deep breath. It reminded her of the battle back around the graveyard. Alex wasn’t with her this time, and instead of A3123Y being on the asteroid, it was herself.

It was going to be up to Thea to make sure they didn’t end up martyrs for the Omega.

It would be her job to buy enough time.

Digital acknowledgements from the drone units came back in waves as they took up positions and confirmed their readiness. She checked their lines of fire, ensuring the crossfire zones were established, and then moved to a central point herself where she could respond quickly.

She might not have been a NAI, but her power armor would allow her to participate in the combat. If needed. This time her role would be mostly relegated to the tactical command, instead of jumping into the fray herself.

Unless things went FUBAR—which, as she looked at the tac monitor showing the incoming small craft, seemed likely given enough time. Elis hit her comms channel open to CIC. “Thea, looks like they have dumped every fucking marine in their entire fleet on us. Depending on what they land with, we might hold an hour, maybe two.”

“Make it two!” Thea snapped back at her, a little too sharp.

“Don’t get your nanites in a wad. You’re doing your best. I’ll see that you get as much time as we are capable,” Elis replied.

There was an audible sigh on the line. “You’re right. Sorry. Things are strained. Keep me updated.”

“Wilco.”

Elis tapped the screen on and found a place to sit. The computronics and the station’s reactor were one hallway away, in opposite directions. The thrum of the station systems was loud, and repair drones meandered around, taking care of whatever they were assigned to do.

She tuned them out and fixated on the tactical screen, showing more small craft pouring into the stream headed for them, while the closest hostile units lined up final approach vectors. They were coming in hot and fast, and an enemy destroyer had pulled out of formation with the rest of the fleet, aiming to buzz by them.

Probably to provide heavy fire support if the boarding units encountered heavy resistance on approach.

They would have if the exterior defense batteries were online, but those would probably get pounded away without getting a chance to fire back now.

The waiting was always bad. Her foot tapped the steel grating in a rhythmic tempo. Her suit actually beeped a bio-warning about stress that she had to squelch. Finally, the enemy began to arrive.

Elis’s eyes narrowed, her gaze transfixed on the tactical HUD as she watched the first units come in for a hard boarding. The moonlet’s external cameras, though few and scattered, fed fragmented images to her screen. The shapes of Ertan shuttles touching down hard on the rocky surface kicked up clouds of regolith that acted as a smokescreen.

That didn’t hide them from the station’s seismic sensors, and red zones began to appear, highlighting each craft’s landing zone. Hostile force estimates ticked up as footfalls were counted and low-band signals were detected.

That wouldn’t do. Elis turned to the station’s EWAR suite and dialed up the jamming. It would degrade all communications locally, but most of the drones had been converted to utilize NAI pathways and were immune to the standard interference.

The tactical HUD pulsed with activity as units finalized their positions and prepared countermeasures as hostile infantry began to move out. Overlays highlighted the enemy’s advance and confirmed they were moving toward the rear and flank bulkhead entry points—just as expected.

“Brace for contact,” she said calmly. It made little difference to her drone units, but saying it out loud felt right.

A red blip and alarm caught her attention—a shuttle daring to break its way into the open hangar. Elis’s finger hovered over a button on her virtual keyboard. The shuttle, sleek and aggressive, came to a halt and began to disgorge its charges out of hatches.

She waited until they were halfway to the ground, and before they had a chance to orient themselves.

Then she pressed the key.

A set of interior defense turrets popped out from within the hangar’s skeletal framework, servos whirring to life. The kinetic revolver cannons belched a storm of 22mm projectiles into the craft and then into the descending figures.

The fireball from the shuttle hid the explosions of gore from the obliterated infantry.

The tactical HUD confirmed the kills, but she allowed herself only a fleeting nod of satisfaction. The turrets quickly hid themselves, but that trick would only work a few times before the defenses were located and recorded and then reduced.

Her mobile units would take up the slack once that happened.

The first breaching teams hit with the violence of a sledgehammer, metal screeching as explosive charges tore the outer metal doors from the moonlet’s hull. The purged atmosphere greeted them with nothing but silence as the dust settled. Elis watched as the first teams cautiously picked their way through the first corridors.

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She’d abandoned the outer meters of the defense, expecting that they would be vulnerable to heavy fire support that the Ertans likely had available. She wanted to bleed the enemy’s troops, not give up her own units to railgun fire that couldn’t be replied to.

The teams were right to be cautious. As they entered the first kill zone, Sentri turrets popped out and began to spit fire in the dark. Dozens of men went down in the first barrage, the teams behind the ambushed racing to counter the turrets with weapons fire of their own.

But the play wasn’t over. Elis tapped her comm. “Drones, advance. Pincer the entry points, then run down the pocket before retreating to fallback position Alpha,” she ordered. The combat units responded with lethal efficiency. Blue blips maneuvered and cut off the string of red that had entered the station before running them down.

A warning alarm spiked, and an external threat indicator lit up much too quickly. “Pull back to secondary positions now.”

It was too late for some drones closest to the moonlet’s skin. A heavy munition slammed into the station’s exterior, punching through and detonating inside the corridor where a half dozen drones and their slaughtered foes lay.

Too many units lost, too soon. The destruction would hinder infiltrating forces slightly as they dealt with the ragged remains of the section, but more teams were already filtering out of the quickly multiplying drop shuttles landing on the rocky exterior.

Elis cursed as she realized she had made a mistake.

The enemy wasn’t deterred in the least by having their recon teams taken out.

She was dealing with fucking fanatics.

A play of intrusion and expulsion raged back and forth in waves. The Ertan forces would make headway, digging a little deeper into the rock before being shoved out by defenders, traps, and turrets. The hangar became a shattered mess as the enemy destroyer found an angle and began to blast into it with zeal, explosive cannons, filling the entire zone with shrapnel.

Several railgun rounds slammed into the MNS Alacrity’s side, and the damaged and disabled cruiser tilted and slammed into the bay’s ground. That seemed enough for the destroyer, which refocused its bombardment on the soft innards it could reach through the open hole.

The CIC was buried deeply, and there were layers of rock between sections, so it was mostly fruitless other than to scour away the defensive emplacements without spending infantry units.

Elis checked the clock. Thirty minutes. It had only been thirty minutes. It felt like it had been hours, each minute of resistance feeling like a dozen. She called Thea, “Progress report?”

“We have figured out a solution to solve the wormhole problem, but we need time to implement it,” Thea said.

There was no point in telling her to hurry; Elis knew she was already doing everything she could, so she thanked her and redirected her focus on keeping the enemy at bay. The hangar was a death-zone as mobile drones popped out to take out incoming shuttles or EVA equipped infantry, only to be obliterated by heavy caliber cannons from the enemy ship.

She pulled the units back deeper, but allowing the Ertan through the first section past the hangar would open up multiple pathways for them to dig into the station.

“Deploy shock mines in sectors four and seven,” she commanded. “Maximum yield.”

There was a yellow warning notice from the drones. It was funny and heart wrenching how they reacted just as a human would. “I’m sorry, we need to plug those areas.”

There was a confirmation beep, and she watched on a camera as two Drones picked up two large round objects almost twice their size. The shock mines were meant for anti-ship duty, and the station only had two on hand, for whatever reason. Probably an ordinance delivery mistake, but regardless, having them now proved fortunate.

Elis poked her comm. “Heavy ordinance deploying to H-Sectors-4-7, Thea. Prepare for internal shock.”

“Fuck. Fine,” came back the muttered response.

Elis directed the defense units from the two areas to focus on the center line of contact. That pushed the Ertan forces to plunge deep into sector four and seven. When they had nearly taken the entire area and were about to begin to spread out, one of the soldiers in section four spotted the drone and its charge.

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‎ Section four’s entire company began to flee, but it was too late. The enemy in section seven didn’t even get that much warning. The entire station shook as the drones self-detonated the ordinance. Alarms and warnings erupted across Elis’s HUD, indicating the internal damage to the area was severe.

The sections were entirely gutted and collapsed. They’d need to dig through them to make any progress, leaving the reinforced central section as a choke point. Combat intensity leveled off as fresh waves of intruders infiltrated their way into the station.

Every time they made it a little deeper, the cost in blood grew with each meter. All for a precious bit of time.

A status update blinked red, highlighting the rear defense force. Elis flicked the tactical monitor to the rear sector, opposite of the station’s hangar. It was the straightest line through the rock to the center, but it was also cramped, and jammed full of defenders.

Except nothing but silence greeted her, the blue lines having completely disappeared from her screen. Red dots were slowly approaching the fusion power plant without opposition.

Her comm channel with Thea opened. “Elis! NAI signal detected. We’ve lost contacts with Zone Nine.”

“I can see that. This is FUBAR,” Elis replied. “Get those drones back online!”

Thea grunted, but on the video channel she shook her head. “I think they are still fighting, but connection has been lost. They’ll be running on auto.”

Elis stood up, drawing a frown from Thea.

“What are you doing?” the NAI asked.

“It’s not been an hour yet. I’m going to go buy more time,” Elis replied.

There was a moment of silence. She checked her suit status and integrity, then locked her pulse rifle into active mode and deactivated the safety.

Thea finally nodded. “Good luck.”

“Just hurry,” Elis replied.

As Elis headed out of the central station point, several heavy combat drones that had been silently assigned to escort her whirred to life, their magnetic footfalls clanking as they filed in front and behind her. Elis frowned, they would have been better off on the front line, but she understood why Thea had assigned them to her without adding them to the unit roster.

Caution was a luxury they could ill afford at this point. Elis’s pace quickened, her armored boots echoing in rhythm with her heavy units. Together, they formed a tide of metal and resolve, crashing through the corridors with a singular purpose: intercept the enemy before the fusion power plant was breached.

Her HUD lit up with the local tactical data, her suit automatically detecting nearby damage, predicting threat vectors, and offering unhelpful tactical advice. She squelched the AI and pushed her spearhead straight into the zone that had lost connection.

As they rounded a corner, evidence of battle came into sight. Drones were torn apart; blood coated the walls and ceiling while slowly filtering down to cover the A-Grav plates underfoot.

A pile of heavy drones was laid out in a pile, a man in green battle armor standing atop of them. A thin green cloud whirled around the parts, melting into their chassis.

Elis didn’t hesitate.

She raised her assault rifle and opened fire.