Earth had come a long way since the old days fighting in war-torn hellholes of sand and mud. Our battles had long since shifted away from being entirely planetary and often involved ship to ship combat, boarding actions and fighting in different star systems. For these arduous tasks, we sent in the Marine Corps. A hundred and twelve years ago, about two years after a string of terrorist attacks crippled Martian infrastructure, the politicians in charge decided to do something to save their sorry careers instead of bickering about it as they usually might. Thus, the Martian-Terran Defense Treaty of 2107 was born. Originally developed to provide a more unified front against criminal fleets and terrorism, it quickly evolved from a defense treaty into the Solar Commonwealth, or SOLCOM for short.

Since those days nearly a century prior, I’d been born, enlisted into the SOLCOM Marines, gone through a slew of training schools and had a mostly successful career spanning almost seven years. A few months ago I got orders to report to a new posting and I soon ended up on what was the ninth ship of my career; A heavy cruiser by the name of The Spear of Midnight. The ship was one-point-four kilometres long and about four hundred metres wide, wrapped in layers of armour and sophisticated technology. Weighing in at nearly eighty-thousand tons of steel, polymers and a variety of other engineered materials, it was designed to shrug off direct hits from nuclear missiles in addition to treating over a quarter of its' crew in casualties, all at once. Being the first of her class, only time would tell whether or not the ship's capabilities were up to the task. I wasn't an expert on larger ships, my specialty was more dropships, shuttles and fighters, but to me the Spear was an impressive vessel.

Contrary to my expectations, being seventy light-years from Earth had resulted in nothing going wrong, not yet, anyway. If you didn’t count the boredom as a threat, it was one of the most relaxing deployments I’d been on in my long career, especially for patrol duty. The most exciting thing that had happened in weeks was the box kickers in charge of supplies losing a dozen crates of rations and a few replacement parts for an IFV. We hadn’t seen a single pirate, smuggler, or had any serious problems with our newly built ship. The ship was quiet as a grave, but wrapped so deeply in sleep I didn’t notice one way or another. One moment there was silence, the next, the abrupt shrieking of an alarm ripped away my comfort as alert lighting painted the corridors from end to end with an unsettling red hue.

“Code nine, code nine! This is not a drill! I repeat, not a drill! Intruders in section delta seven, deck three!” A woman’s voice boomed over the ship’s speakers.

The unmistakable sound of the alarm knifed its way to the marrow of my bones, filling my body with tension and adrenaline. While the voice overhead yelling an alert might not have roused me from my sleep completely, the alarm certainly did.

The three others in my shared quarters awoke moments later, throwing themselves into action. In the dim emergency lighting the grey metal bulkheads turned red. My eyes raked around the room and settled on one of my three teammates. My second in command, a Lance Corporal Victoria Larsen, grimaced at the loud noise that blanketed the room as she opened her eyes.

“You alright, Vic?” I asked.

Larsen wordlessly kicked off the covers and rolled from her bunk. She was one of the few women in our entire platoon, but that didn't mean anyone should mistake her for being soft. She began stripping almost immediately, but the rest of us were no different. It might seem strange that we wanted to be naked when possible combat was around the corner, but we wouldn't be for long. Wearing clothes and trying to interface properly with powered combat armour at the same time was a nightmare.

“Turn that off.” Larsen said, grimacing up at the overhead speaker. “If I lost rack time because of some overeager butter bar on the Bridge calling a false alarm I’m going to slap the shit out of them.”

I doubted she meant that, but it wasn't the first time I'd wanted to slap an officer for being a dumbass.

Of the other three on my team Victoria Larsen was the only person I’d known before my current posting, Chen and Carver being new additions when I boarded the Spear to take command of the fireteam. Larsen had become my right hand the day I'd met her on my last shipboard posting and I felt blessed that I had. She often seemed to know what I was thinking almost before I did.

The first of my team to pull up a situation report was Daniel Carver, our resident technology wizard and one of two riflemen in our team. While a genius without a doubt, most that worked with him would rather demote him to Chief Latrine Digger than ever work with him again. Swiping through menus and pulling information from his implanted computer, I could see the moment that Carver’s curiosity tipped over a knife’s edge and became full-blown anxiety.

“The good news is that the ship itself is okay, if you count this mess of an operating system as ‘okay’.” He said to me, talking fast and furious as he worked his implants like a pro. His eyes glowed softly as they fed him information. I looked away, squaring myself away as quick as I could.

“And the bad news?" I asked. "And don't give me your usual crap, stick to the facts.” I listened intently while pulling my armour's hard case out from underneath my rack.

“I’m getting reports of enemy contact all throughout the ship." Carver frowned, almost looking like he was going to be sick. "A lot of enemy contact.”

I didn’t blame him. Fighting inside a ship wasn’t unheard of, but it was a pain compared to a more traditional land-based battle which was something of an art form that had been refined over hundreds of years. We were still relatively new at fighting inside ships in space, but we'd quickly learned it sucked when you couldn't get fire support, blow through walls or use explosives freely.

“Shit. This is no drill, then. Expedite, I want to be out the door in two minutes.” I ordered. "And how many is 'a lot'? Ten? Twenty? Thirty?"

"Tacmap says estimated thirty-four plus hostiles across the ship, but the count keeps fluctuating." Carver shrugged as he began suiting up.

I took a proper look at my armour case then, fingers no longer quite on autopilot and operating on muscle memory alone. The case was worn from use, but still serviceable. I wrenched the final locking mechanism open and was greeted with the familiar contoured metal of my powered combat armour. I quickly reached in and pulled my armour upright.

Even unsealed, the crimson metal of the sleek but solidly built suit seemed to hold a particularly vicious shine to it, as though it knew it was going into combat again and relished the opportunity. That made one of us. Stepping into the open cavity on the armour's 'back' I twisted and pulled myself into the suit through the open back panel. I shifted slightly, making sure everything fit snugly. I felt the cool sensation of the armour’s inner skin as it pressed against me as I shifted inside it slightly. The inner skin was designed to absorb blunt force trauma and insulate the wearer against the environment but it was always cold before the suit had a chance to warm up.

I commanded the back panel of my armour to close and lock. I bent down and retrieved my helmet from my gear case before placing it on my head and sealing myself in. I reveled in the satisfying click as the last piece of armour joined with the others. A long, long moment of silence enveloped me as the outside world failed to penetrate the mass of metal and composite materials encasing me. After a few moments, a small console projected itself onto my vision and began scrolling at lightning speed. I watched the familiar code sequence of my implants as they rebooted and synced with my armour. Soon my vision was tinged green with enhanced low-light vision and the uneven light in the room became bright and uniform. I found my hearing restored too as the suit filtered external audio and fed it into my brain.

The third member of my fireteam was a mountain of a man that went by the name of Kwan Chen. Korean, but with impeccable English, people often underestimated his intelligence, focusing only on his physical stature. Chen rolled his eyes at the alert, snickering at the overhead speaker in our quarters as it prattled on about contacting our direct superior to get more info on the situation and mount a defense. I could understand his amusement. If anyone needed to be told that then they shouldn't have passed basic, let alone been assigned to a ship of the line.

“What do they think this is, a network outage? Navy Pukes probably thought we were just sitting around sipping tea and biscuits when the alert sounded.” Chen said wryly, his voice coming through my implants now, rather than through my ears.

"It's probably an automated message, ignore it. Carver, is the ship damaged?" I asked.

I ran a simple low-level diagnostic on my armour and checked over my team's vitals and armour readout, waiting with restrained impatience for it to finish.

Carver's voice was clearly confused as he read something from his ocular implants. “No hull breaches, intruders on multiple decks and we have limited control of primary and secondary ship systems.”

I considered that. “Could be worse. There’s no one out here except the Marines and Navy. I don’t know who’d pick a fight with us in the middle of nowhere but at least they haven't broken anything important yet.” I frowned beneath my helmet, bewildered as to who could be behind this attack.

My armour's processor spit back a satisfactory answer to my diagnostic a moment later. My suit had full integrity, no red or amber status reports, everything was green and good to go. I'd taken the liberty of doing the same for my three teammates remotely, too. Their armour gave me the same answer which wasn't too surprising to me. Our suits were a lot tougher than our rifles. They had to be to endure hard vacuum and the often rigorous demands of infantry combat.

“Think about that. Nobody’s here, except us.” Larsen replied to my earlier statement. An uncomfortable silence was left behind by her suit sealing and implants rebooting, further communications with her cut off for a few moments.

There was an implication behind Larsen's idea that hung in the air. It tasted wrong. Nobody wanted to entertain the idea of a traitor hidden among our ranks, or a spy. Either option was distasteful, to say the least. It wasn't out of the question, either. Not everyone was happy with the way SOLCOM ran things. I was an infantry grunt through and through. I shot traitors and I abhorred spies, well, I liked to think I did. In reality I detained them and handed them over to MP's.

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"Are you saying what I think you're saying?" I asked her, grimacing.

"It's a possibility." She said, defensively.

“I don’t like this.” Carver interrupted us, sounding quite perturbed. “Ship’s comms are too quiet, no Bridge crew, nothing from Engineering either.” He pulled out a small portable computer from his gear case and began typing on it. I resisted the urge to tell him to stow it, if we had to move, he’d probably have it secured before I could say anything.

In peacetime, decades ago, we’d once kept our gear in secure armouries down the hall from where we slept, but on today's battlefield that was no longer an option. We had to have weapons and armour within easy reach while we were in the field, which was only compounded by the realisation that we were always, always in the field. What if there was decompression or a fire in the corridors leading to the armoury? What if the doors wouldn't open or power was lost? These were challenges that we sidestepped by ensuring what we needed to fight was never too far away.

“God damn it. This just couldn't be easy, could it?” I exhaled sharply, walking over to a wall panel with hazard lines that outlined a square. “I’ll patch in and ask the SL for a sit-rep.” We were part of Demon Company, First Platoon, First Squad. We had limited information from just our tactical maps and automated systems but my squad leader would know the score.

I pulled the manual override lever for the wall panel in front of me and a section of the wall recessed slightly before sliding out of sight. Behind it, a steel gun rack slid out and into the room, holding four standard issue battle rifles aligned in neat rows at a forty-five degree angle. We each grabbed one, tethering them to our armour and checking to make sure there wasn't any damage or obstruction that could render them inoperable.

I tried to link into my squad's encrypted tactical network, rather than the local fireteam network, but my suit returned an angry red error message, stating there was no connection.

"Fucking typical." I spat. "Carver, see if you can get us linked into squad comms. My suit's says there's no connection."

"Roger. I'll take a look." Carver responded.

“So you think someone got flipped?” I asked turning slightly to shoot Larsen a questioning glance.

“I wouldn’t rule it out, but it could always be insurgents, pirates maybe.” Larsen responded. Her faceplate, identical to mine, was flat and red, giving no hint of its wearer’s emotions or identity. Visors were a needless design flaw with how compact we could get cameras and accounting for implants that could feed visuals directly to our brains. No matter how tough you made a transparent material, it would almost never be as tough as something opaque.

“Well, personally, I think it’s fuckin’ aliens!” Chen grunted as he hefted his primary weapon onto his mattress from his own gear case. Unlike the rest of us, he carried a much larger firearm. It wasn't a battle rifle, but a squad automatic weapon and it took longer to check over and prepare. I could see he was already attaching bulky block-shaped magazines to his armour's tether points which took the form of small metal rings. The rest of us had already done so with our own slimmer magazines while we'd been talking.

“It could be a bunch of rabbits chewing on the power conduits. It doesn’t make much of a difference, does it?” Carver asked sourly.

“Oh, it makes a difference.” I countered, commanding the concealed gun rack to retract and seal itself behind the wall.

"An enemy combatant I’ll just shoot, but if they’re a traitor, I’ll find a way to shoot them slowly.” I got a few chuckles at that. “Everyone good?” I asked, stepping back towards the corner of the room so I could get a good visual of everyone.

"Good to go."

"Green."

"Ready to kick ass."

Four green lights pulsed on my HUD under each of my team’s surnames which were all listed down the left side of my HUD. I checked the time since the alert. One minute and forty-seven seconds. Not too shabby.

I nodded back, exaggerating the motion inside my armour so they could see it more easily. “Good, stay on my six. Don't shoot anyone unless they're out of uniform and rush us, or they raise a weapon. I want to avoid paperwork, okay? You all know the drill.” I shouldered my rifle and checked my ammunition status. My suit computer automatically displayed the current capacity of my magazine, the reserve ammunition available to me and the fire mode I had selected. I toggled the rifle over to a four round burst and chambered a round.

“Great, another one of these missions.” Chen groaned.

“Hey, I don’t make the rules, I just follow them.” I told him loftily.

As the most senior Marine present and our team's leader, I took point and commanded the door leading into the ship's corridors to open. We double-timed it down the gunmetal grey corridors. I passed Navy crewmen in dark blue fatigues scurrying around and saw similarly armoured Marines thundering through the halls as their metallic footfalls echoed around me. Everyone was in a state of controlled chaos, doggedly seeking information on the situation and acting on it. The end of the passageway came into sight quickly after only a few dozen metres, the ship having been built like a bunker with lots of ninety-degree turns, blast doors and kill-boxes. When I reached the first sealed door I slowed briefly as it opened on my signal and then I ran right into the next compartment, barely slowing my stride.

I neared a corner and crashed into a supply officer. He went sprawling, dropping a bunch of honest-to-god pen and paper clipboards. I was pretty sure we didn't have those issued to anyone or stocked anywhere on board. I didn't have time to wonder about it though.

“Watch it!" I yelled as I ran past him. I didn’t have time to hold his hand and sing him a bedtime story. I had a battle to fight.

“Fucking POGs.” Chen chuckled over the radio.

"My thoughts exactly." I replied.

"Riley, comms are back up. At least within the squad.

I followed the route overlaid on my HUD and figured that with the comms network at least partially operating, now would be a good time to ask someone what the hell was going on.

I toggled into the squad-channel, finally. “Demon 1-2 Actual, this is Bravo Actual, we’re Oscar Mike. Interrogative.” I paused briefly. “What’s this alert for, and why couldn't we reach you before?”

Staff Sergeant Hoffman’s voice came over the radio loud and clear, which was a relief since Carver’s earlier attempts to hook into comms had been fruitless. The Sergeant was my direct superior and in charge of four fireteams, two of which had duty stations at Engineering, including my own.

“Bravo Team, Demon 1-2 Actual. Swap to frequency rotation Gamma-Five and confirm secure." Sergeant Hoffman said, after a long delay. He sounded grim.

"Uh…" We normally didn’t bother changing our comm frequency rotations, our suit computers handled that laborious task with far greater efficiency, swapping between rotations thousands of times a second with practiced synchronicity. A manual change was only done under certain circumstances, like a breach in security or something that made the current frequency rotation unsuitable, like jamming.

"Gamma-Five, confirm secure." Hoffman repeated, rather sternly.

“The rest of you copy?” I asked my team.

“Affirmative.” Larsen said in clipped tones, followed shortly by Chen and then Carver.

I nodded and made the necessary adjustments.

To my surprise, an additional screen popped up as I led my team through metal corridors. My suit was scanning my biometrics, fingerprint, handprint, retina, even voiceprint. The sharp pinprick in my upper arm told me they’d taken a blood and DNA sample, too. That was surprise to me. Usually we didn't need any of that just to access our communications. Solid comms discipline was never a bad idea, but a full biometric scan, blood sample included, just for secure comms seemed a bit excessive to me.

Carver hissed in pain, tensing up in his armour. I grinned, eyes flicking to the top of my HUD, a small wireless strength signal with a “G-5” next to it confirming that my comms were secure. I knew that Carver hadn’t been shot, or anything of the sort. It merely was the integrated syringe that allowed for wounded soldiers to receive medical injections without removing their suit. Of course, it did a lot more than that, too, allowing for the drawing and analysis of the occupant's blood. The pinprick of the needles in our armour was nothing compared to getting shot or stabbed, but Carver just liked to complain.

Still, I could see where he was coming from. It was just a dick move to force someone’s armour to stab them without permission.

I frowned. "I guess someone higher is feeling awfully paranoid. I can’t really blame them, what with the ship being under attack in a place that's supposedly impossible to find someone in."

I checked my HUD for warnings, then my ammo and then the vitals of Carver, Chen and Larsen, in a methodical order for what must have been the fourth time in as many minutes.

“Riley, online. Comms check everyone.” I spoke.

“Larsen, online.”

“Chen, online.” Chen said.

Another moment passed.

Carver’s irate voice came over the channel loud and clear. “Demon 1-2 Actual, what the fuck was that for? I mean seriously, do you want to make sure it’s my brain in here too and not a fucking lamb chop?”

That was one way to confirm comms were working. I stamped down on the impulse to smack him, though.

"Belay that shit." I ordered, before asking the question that was on my mind. "Sarge, what's the deal? Who are we fighting?"

The rest of us had been jabbed by our suit’s built-in internal needles the same as Carver, but somehow his winning personality meant he couldn’t shut up about it.

It was still a bit of a mystery to me how Carver had passed Basic; we’d had to suffer through dozens and dozens of different shots before we even began our training as well as regular blood samples to screen for toxins and drugs during the lengthy period.

“We’re having security issues, suck it up, Carver.” Hoffman answered. ”And, I don't know yet, Riley. Situation. We've got an unknown number of bogeys onboard. They've got partial control of our systems and have hooked into the hardlines. Ship’s comm systems are compromised so we're operating on a peer to peer suit net right now.” The Sergeant paused for a moment. “The enemy is pressing us hard everywhere and they’ve got heavy gun emplacements set up at key locations. They’re well-trained and have battle armour so watch yourselves. Link up with the rest of the squad at Engineering and hold it before these guys dig in and take it."

“Understood. Have we lost anything yet?”

“Reports are spotty at best, but I think we're holding. Last I heard, the flight bay’s locked down, infirmary is under siege, but that won't last long if we don't get backup to them soon. Take your team to Engineering and defend it until you hear otherwise. Demon 1-2 Actual Out.” The audio cut out abruptly after that, the channel closing.

“You heard him." I told my three Marines. "Time to earn your pay. We’re reinforcing Engineering. I’ve never heard of an ambush on a ship underway so I’ll be dipped in shit if these were just a couple of skilled amateurs, expect pros.”

Chen grunted, clearly unhappy with the news. “I suppose it would be too much to ask for clueless amateurs to fight.”

Privately, I agreed with Chen. I’d much rather fight an under-equipped and untrained force short on brains and high on fanaticism. At least fanatics could be handicapped by their blind fervor even if they did sometimes view death as a victory condition. A well-trained and well-equipped enemy was always a challenge at the best of times, assuming you didn’t outnumber them fifty to one. Even then, that wasn’t always a guarantee.