I pulled up a tactical map and overlaid it on top of the ship’s schematic to get an idea of where we were heading. My tactical map didn’t show me any real-time threats via my suit sensors or our makeshift comms network that was linked from suit to suit, but the schematic I had showed me dozens of potential crossfires, chokepoints and other dangerous features that could pose a threat to us.
“Mind your sectors and don’t fall behind.” I ordered as I lead the way at a fast trot, my rifle ready to snap to a target and fire a burst of armor-piercing ammunition. I hadn’t memorised the whole ship’s layout yet, but I’d been going off the schematic and tactical map so far to get us close to Engineering.
As the tactical map updated, reaching out all over the ship to Marine combat suits everywhere, it updated itself with various markers and squad designators, providing a delayed but acceptable picture of the battlefield. The situation became clear to me after a few seconds. A full two-thirds of the ship were tinged red in various places and there were a lot fewer friendly blue chevrons running around than I’d expected. That concerned me. We had two full companies onboard, nearly two hundred Marines, but I only saw a fraction of those numbers. It could’ve been that they weren’t reachable and so they weren’t picked up by my tactical map, but I had no way to confirm my fears at the moment. A lot of the tactical map was incomplete, with sections of the ship unreachable
“Somebody stop to think about how they got heavy weapons onboard our own ship? Anybody? No?” Carver shook his head in mock disappointment, as though he was a professor in a lecture hall listening to a student give a dim-witted answer.
“Doesn’t matter how they got them, they could’ve taken them from our own armouries for all we know. The heavy guns they're manning can punch clean through your suit like tissue paper, so don't get hit. I don't want to have to find a replacement for you, got it?” My eyes darted between well-lit corridors and junctions, searching for threats even as I spied other Marines or a Navy vacsuit running around.
“Wow. Don’t get shot; a real nugget of wisdom there, Riley.” Carver said dryly.
I shot him an annoyed look, glancing behind me. “Carver.”
"Yes?" He replied.
"Shut up."
Larsen cleared her throat, interrupting our verbal sparring before it could really begin. “You packing any surprises for these guys, Chen?”
“Maybe not as surprising as a mounted gun, but yeah. Don’t worry, Vic, they’ll be surprised alright.”
“Yeah, just don’t surprise them too much. We don’t want you blowing up a couple of city blocks.” Larsen said.
“One time! That was one time and I’ve never heard the end of it!”
“What do you think, Larsen? Maybe this time he’ll take out the whole ship!” Carver cackled.
“I think that we better take these fuckers out before they tear the ship out from under us." Larsen said as I pulled open a hatch and climbed into an access shaft, leading the way down a ladder.
“Agreed. Now cut the chatter.” I barked.
Carver said nothing, but I’d hazard a guess he wasn’t happy about being told to shut up twice in rapid succession. He was touchy about that sort of thing. I let my team do what they wanted most of the time, but I didn’t want a distraction getting any of us killed, least of all me.
As we descended, one after another, I spoke up, addressing the team again.
“Use your suit sensors to map their positions, but don’t count on that to be accurate. They have suits at least as good as ours. We also want prisoners, but not casualties. If they don’t look like they'll surrender or they present a threat, take them out. Got me?”
Various affirmations came over our team-channel while I pulled up a familiar menu and selected a few different options. “Alright, I’m linking you all into Alpha's net.”
“Fireteam Alpha, what’s the situation?” I asked after connecting to the squad-wide comms channel.
The leader of Fireteam Alpha, my counterpart, did not sound pleased. “Bravo, Alpha Actual here, this whole thing just went FUBAR a couple minutes ago. We lost Engineering, Charlie didn't make it to us. Delta’s off the grid. I think we're the last of the squad, Riley. These guys, whoever the fuck they are, pushed us out a couple minutes ago and closed all the blast doors. We’re having a tough time of it."
I frowned. “I didn’t hear anything about that over comms.”
“They've got really good ECM gear. Localised jammers as far as we can tell. We found one, but there are more somewhere down here and probably everywhere else too. As if that wasn't bad enough, they’re using our gear.”
Things had gone from bad to worse, so much worse than I’d expected. Some kind of crazy paramilitary organisation with spies, that I think I’d honestly have preferred. The fact they had our gear told me they had a scary level of access and training. I had no idea what someone with such resources or access to information could want with our ship, but I didn't really give a shit about that right now. I just wanted them to stop shooting us and the fastest way I knew how to accomplsih that was to shoot back.
"Call it in, if you haven’t already, and run a comm cable outside the jamming field.” I told him, pushing my way to the end of yet another featureless corridor.
“Already done, how do you think we’re talking? Form up on us. We're outside Corridor B.”
“Roger that.."
Without Engineering, the enemy could scuttle the ship, jump it, or tell it to fly like a bird if they wanted, I hoped that Engineering wouldn't be too tough a nut to crack, because if it was, we'd lose the ship. I perused my tactical map again for a moment. The bridge entrance was still secure, but I didn’t know if it would stay that way for long.
"Larsen, Chen, regroup on my location, we're headed to Corridor B.”
"Wilco, roger." Larsen replied.
Thus far, the fight had been more of a PT exercise than a proper battle, but I knew that we were likely to encounter hostile forces now that we were closing in on a vital area of the ship. To prepare for such an inevitability, I ran a quick diagnostic on my rifle and then my suit. Both reported they were green across the board so I looked over the rest of the squad's equipment too, finding it was much the same. We quickly reached Juarez and his team, our quick pace eating up the distance between us. I inserted myself into the formation with my teammates and gave Juarez a nod. He and his team had been holding the corridors leading into Engineering from the forward areas of the ship. All of us split into two-man elements and arrayed ourselves into a staggered column. We each hugged the walls of the corridor and did our best to provide a minimal target profile. I was familiar with this area of the ship, enough at least to know we had to go through a few blast doors to get to the main compartment. As I approached the first one, I removed a block of plastic explosive from my armour and pressed it into the center of the blast door obstructing our path.
I paired up with Juarez and we led the way forward.
“What are you doing?” Juarez asked me, as if I was stupid.
“What does it look like? I’m setting charges.” I replied as I pressed a block of plastic explosive into the blast door in front of me.
“Well, it’s a blast door. Use more than one.”
I shrugged, he had a point. I set the second one just below the first, putting a wireless receiver into both of them.
We all retreated around the nearest corner, taking cover. It wasn't strictly necessary in armour, but while a flying piece of debris wouldn't kill us, being knocked on our ass by a flying piece of steel would leave us exposed to enemy fire.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Blowing the door in three.” I announced. “Two. One, fire in the hole!”
The door blew inwards, shards of jagged and uneven metal ringing the new opening. Thankfully, no one was waiting to greet us, this time. We repeated the process twice more, and encountered moderate resistance, but low numbers overall. The heavy guns were tricky but three frags per gun turned out to be just the right amount, though it wrecked the corridor they were set up in.
Together with the help of our counterpart Fireteam Alpha, my team and I managed to fight our way past a total of three blast doors and two autonomous heavy machine guns, to regain control of Engineering. We leapfrogged from cover to cover, what little we could find and initiated our first fight with flashbangs, but when that quickly proved ineffective, we resorted to frags. Engineering was a sensitive area, but as best we could tell this compartment only held consoles and not the sensitive equipment itself so we decided to chance it.
We rushed into the main compartment as the last grenade detonated, taking advantage of the infamous ‘shock and awe’ tactic. Usually, such a rush would’ve been used in conjunction with a rolling artillery barrage or fire support of some kind. Onboard a ship in close quarters that wasn’t really an option though, so we did the best we could. Return fire from those defending Engineering was surprisingly sparse which left me wondering why that was the case. They’d had autonomous heavy machine guns and a handful of other men in the last two parts of the corridor.
To my surprise, there were very few enemy combatants actually holding it. The area we were trying to breach was the main compartment in which all Engineering functions were controlled and coordinated. Whoever held it had control of Engineering. Yet after a cursory inspection I found we’d only taken out six enemy combatants. The battle was brief as these things went, but that didn’t mean it was free of fatalities. Unfortunately, two of the men under Juarez’ command were pronounced killed in action despite our two man advantage.
“Shit, Casey! You good?” Juarez screamed over our proximity channel as the final shot faded. I silently thanked the designers of our suit software for automatic volume control. A quick glance at Casey’s chest armour told me he wasn’t getting up again. He was as lifeless as a stone. My thoughts threatened to stray then, but I managed to keep myself focused.
Our respective fireteams stepped warily into the compartment and we kept the muzzles of our guns in a high ready position. I didn’t see anyone though, so after a moment I relaxed marginally when nothing exploded and no one took a shot at me. Soon after, I walked over to Juarez.
“What the hell? Six guys? And they pushed you out?” I scoffed. I noticed an acrid smell in the air, like burnt meat. I sealed my suit to keep the smell out and waved Carver over to me, trying to keep my focus squarely on the present.
“And the three back in the corridor. There were a lot more of them before!” He insisted.
I looked around, but I only saw six armoured corpses. “So they took the bodies?”
“Must have.” Juarez affirmed, his voice grim, but also uncertain.
I looked at the bodies arrayed in a macabre collection on the deck. Most of them I recognised when I pinged them for their implanted identification but there were two that didn’t return an ID.
It almost would've been better if I couldn't have identified any of them.
"Poor bastards." I muttered, the names of my friends and comrades popping up. It tore at my heart even more when I noticed one of the deceased Marines was the Marine who'd welcomed me to the ship. We'd played card a few times since. My mind threatened to spiral because of that. He'd tried to kill me. Why? What could turn brother against brother? I pushed the thoughts away with a conscious effort, shelving it for a later time.
I turned to Carver who was trying to connect to a torn up Engineering console.
“See if you can get something out of these two. I can’t ID them.” I pointed at each of the armoured corpses in turn.
“ID? I’m surprised I can even recognise their armour. What the hell happened to them? They’re burnt to a crisp inside. ” Carver stepped back a bit, clearly disgusted.
“I don’t know and I don’t care. Just try, okay?” My eyes lingered on the broken faceplate of one of the fallen. I would’ve liked to call it a man, but there could’ve been a woman or a dancing monkey in there for all I knew, such was the extent of the damage.
“There were definitely more than six hostiles.” Juarez insisted, smoldering eyes flicking between me and the gaping hole in one of his men. Casey, I assumed.
“So, let me guess, seven?” Carver asked with a sarcastic bite as he knelt down and popped open his portable computer. He dragged the body unceremoniously over to a battered looking ship console. I was about to ask him what the hell he was doing, but figured I’d just get an earful of technobabble if I did.
Carver ripped a damaged panel off one of the consoles as he crouched down next to it, before giving the rest of the room around him an appraising look. Numerous waist-high workstations and armour plated walls were scorched, wrecked or twisted into debris. That there was even one console left intact and usable was a surprise to me, but it didn't surprise me that Carver had been able to find it in three seconds flat.
“Here’s an idea,” Carver said over his shoulder, “maybe we should stop the bad guys from taking over our most important areas. That would be really smart.” Carver shook his head in disgust and plugged in a data cable to the console in front of him, bitching about something under his breath.
Juarez’ eyes narrowed as he took an angry step towards the oblivious technician. I didn’t even see her move, but in an instant Larsen was in front of Juarez, one arm barring his path to Carver.
“Leave it. This is not the time.” A notable edge to Larsen’s voice gave Juarez pause and I could see one of her hands had strayed to her belt where a very sharp knife was sheathed. The thought made me smile. Carver might be an annoying asshole sometimes, no, the king of annoying assholes, but my team was willing to back him up.
“Fine.” Juarez got out. I watched as he stalked away to check on his surviving team members then began flicking through damage reports, environmental readouts and logs to find out what the hell had happened down here. I wasn’t a tech, but I could read a log file and use a computer.
“Larsen, Chen, perimeter.”
They nodded and I knelt down across from Carver by a destroyed console as he worked.
“Jammers for Engineering are down. It was easy to space the compartments they were in and then disable them remotely.” Carver boasted.
“Space them?” I asked, shooting him an outraged look, which of course was entirely lost on him because of our armour. “Did you just vent the compartments to space? What if they had people in them? Did you even check?”
“Uh, yes?” Carver turned his head to me, pausing from his poking around in the console’s innards. I couldn’t see his face, but reading a man in armour was a skill that most soldiers picked up after a while. “They weren’t occupied. I checked.” He said, sounding slightly offended.
I shook my head. I don’t know if I’d have reported him after the current crisis or finally given in to the urge to shoot him, but since he hadn’t spaced anyone, I was spared that weighty decision for now.
“Good. I’d hate to explain how you spaced a dozen friendlies during my report just to take out a few jammers. Keep working.” I walked off to join the perimeter defense, which really just amounted to holding a few hatchways and making sure no one came through them.
Carver was about to respond, his name lit up on my HUD, but a priority message stopped us dead in our tracks and the edges of my visor morphed into a thin collection of red and white diagonal stripes.
An automated message spooled out along the top of my visor. It was something I hadn’t seen since training or my review of a field manual months ago. The words that wrote themselves into existence chilled me to my core.
Flash traffic. Radiological threat detected. Location unknown, yield unknown, suspected dirty bomb aboard. All units are to hereby exit the ship immediately.
I didn’t hear much more after that as I hunkered down behind a ruined console, thinking hard about our next move.
After a tense few seconds in which I desperately wracked my brain for options, I snapped back to reality with a simple but effective plan. “We’re leaving. Right now! Carver, don’t worry about that, get us an escape pod!”
I put my focus on the hatch we’d come through. Nestling my rifle on top of some uneven debris, the chunks of ripped and scored metal provided an imperfect mount for my weapon. If we’d received that message, there was a good chance the enemy had too.
“What the fuck? Does that mean what I think it does? There’s a bomb onboard?” Chen began cursing in what I assumed was Korean, but I quickly tuned him out as he turned to mount his weapon on a console beside me.
“Sure does, big guy. I’ll help prep the pod. Watch our six.” Larsen gave him a quick pat on the shoulder, before bolting for an escape pod’s hexagonal hatchway. I looked around and realised Carver was already inside the pod.
You wouldn’t think it would take more than a few seconds to launch an escape pod and normally you’d be right, but I didn’t trust the things as far as I could throw them. Software updates, mechanical maintenance, these sorts of things just weren’t a priority when a ship had over a thousand crew and only a fraction of them were qualified engineers. The Mars shipyards in orbit back home did do an inspection before the Spear’s maiden voyage as per regulation, but that didn’t reassure me one bit. It wouldn’t be the first time improperly done maintenance got someone killed. That was all assuming the people we’d just filled full of holes hadn’t tampered with the pods, too. If we’d climbed into a pod and launched only to find out it had some kind of major defect, well, it would be a shitty way to die. Those were all points that had me directing Carver to check the pod’s systems and tear into it to find out if it was going to kill us because of a faulty launch thruster or something.
I sought out Juarez, silently watching him for a moment with one eye on possible points of enemy entry. “Are you good?” I asked.
Juarez was the angry type when he suffered losses, it seemed, not that most people weren’t angry when those under their command were killed, it just seemed Juarez took it harder than most. I hadn’t seen that side of him on the way out here, but we hadn’t had anyone taking out Marines until now. I noticed the tight grip on his rifle, the grip on his rifle was slightly deformed as he struggled to keep a lid on it. I’d keep an eye on him, just in case. An out of control Marine was something I didn't need right now.