Noah Grisham
Location: Cobalt Station, System 1776, United Commonwealth of Colonies
The last thing the pirate captain expected sitting in the bowels of Cobalt Station’s engineering and ore processing center was his PAD to vibrate with an incoming call. At first he just looked at it with confusion. Able was the only other person in the room who had a PAD, and he was busy spinning his laser pistol around his right index finger. He looked like a gunslinger from half a millennia ago. He obviously wasn’t the person calling.
The only other person in the room was his mark, Lieutenant Commander money-pants. The mark’s face was starting to bruise from where Able had smacked him around. Blood was dripping from a split lip onto his lap. His head was lolled forward in the way only an unconscious man’s could. There was no way the gunboat’s captain was making a call to his captor.
Noah’s mind churned and he wondered if this was the hostage negotiator call. That would be bad for a number of reasons. Most of all, it meant they knew where he was. Noah and Able were hiding their captive in the belly of the station for a very good reason. They didn’t want anyone to know where they were. That was so a squad of Collie marines couldn’t shoot them full of holes and blow their guts all over the walls. It was in his mortality’s best interest not to engage with any negotiator.
Curiosity got the best of the captain. If they already knew he was down here then there was no reason not to answer the call.
Because it was a clusterfuck. They’d been able to grab the mark, but the head of security managed to get killed in the process. Since the guy didn’t trust the pirates – for good reason – he hadn’t given them any of the codes. The station’s defenses were offline. The people who hadn’t mutinied had locked themselves behind blast doors with the master controls, so even if Noah wanted to get in and hack the systems he couldn’t.
In the meantime, those rebellious miners who’d joined the mutiny for a small sum of cash and the promise of freedom were doing their best seventh century rendition of Vikings pillaging and plundering. They were eating, drinking, and fucking like there was no tomorrow; which was what today was going to be if Noah didn’t find a way off this tub of bolts.
All of this led him to hit the accept button on his PAD. “Hello.” He answered sounding like everything was going as planned.
“Mr. Grisham.” The voice was digitally altered and unrecognizable, but that didn’t stop a chill from going up Noah’s spine. He’d gone to considerable lengths to hide his true persona under a shit ton of fake data. If this guy had gotten through all of that then Noah’s pirating days might just be over.
“You have me at a disadvantage, Mr…?”
“You can just call me Sir.”
Noah bit his lip as the condescension made it through the filtering application. “What can I do for you, Sir?”
“You can listen. I hired you for a reason, and you have done your best to screw up the best laid plans.”
“I didn’t screw up shit.” Noah instantly went on the defensive. “A control-freak asshat jumped the gun and got himself blown to bits. I then improvised this grand little mutiny, and got a whole station of people to turn on their corporate overlords. I not only got the mark, but have been able to keep a military vessel off my ass for the last day. If you ask me, that’s doing a pretty good job all things considered.”
“Considering you hired the aforementioned captain of the Full Moon the only impression I have of you is a poor taste in choosing your associates. That is not something to brag about and certainly not something to be rewarded.”
Noah felt his face heating, and he had the sudden violent urge to kill someone. Unfortunately, he couldn’t take any action with the other two people in the room.
“You seem to know everything.” Noah finally shot back. “What is your grand plan to get Mr. Gold off this god-forsaken station?”
“Storage locker Alpha 711. Go there now, gather the supplies, and prepare yourself. You have less than an hour before a Commonwealth destroyer full of marines attempts to retake the station.”
That was news to Noah, and despite this rich asshole’s critique, Noah gladly took any information that kept him breathing.
“Able, storage locker A-711. Grab everything and bring it back here.”
In typical Able style he just grunted in the affirmative.
“Any other words of wisdom?” Noah turned his attention back to the mysterious caller.
“Don’t die, and bring me Lieutenant Commander Gold alive.” With that said the line disconnected. Noah still didn’t even know how he got the call in the first place.
A minute later Able returned and showed Noah what was in the large storage locker.
“Fuck me.” Noah stared wide-eyed as a smile curled his lips. Get these to the miners upstairs and tell them we’re about to have company. We might just get through this after all.”
Mark “Coop” Cooper
Location: System 1776, New Lancashire, United Commonwealth of Colonies
Coop was ready. He wasn’t just ready, he was fucking pumped.
This wasn’t some welfare riot by a bunch of Rats throwing flaming bottles and firing centuries-old guns that couldn’t even scratch his paint job. This was the real deal. Pirates had taken control of a mining station and kidnapped a Commonwealth officer. The captain’s ship was keeping the situation contained, but they couldn’t retake the station themselves. They needed a group of asskickers to do that job for them.
And Coop was the biggest and baddest asskicker along for the ride.
“Cooper, get your head out of your ass.” The LT in charge of the mission snapped.
“Yes, sir. Sorry, Sir. Just prepared to lodge my foot up some ungrateful miner’s ass, Sir.” The marines around him laughed. They were a good group of guys.
“Save that fire for the enemy, Cooper.” The reprimand was mild, and the officer turned back to the holo-display in the destroyer’s only conference room. It was more than a tight fit for the thirty marines in full battle rattle.
“We have three teams. I will lead Team One. Team One will ingress here. This is where they tried to blow up the Argo. We will drop from the Spyder, attach to the hull, and blow the panels here, here, and here.” A 3-D display shone red where the panels are and simulated them blowing away from the station’s blueprints. “We will be charged with clearing this section.”
“Team Two will be led by the Staff Sergeant. Team Two will ingress along the hull behind where the pirates and miners are expected to be. Intelligence has them gathering in the central mall and berthing areas of the station. You can guess what they’re doing.”
He’d known a few Rats that had been miners before. It was one of those professions where you ended up in a PHA if you weren’t born there. It was a pretty shitty existence. You go out with a small crew to some god-forsaken asteroid and either man the computers for twelve hours shifts or you’re down on the surface using portable lasers to saw off big chunks of valuable shit. You didn’t get to keep any of it. All of it goes toward the company’s bottom line, and the suits watched everyone like a hawk. They basically strip searched everyone when they got back to the stations. You got paid shit, and you blew what little you had on rent, food, and maybe a little female companionship. Women miners were a rare breed, and they were often as dirty as the shit they were mining.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
“Team three. Cooper this is your team, even though the corporal is going to lead it. You will ingress at the most likely point of entry: the main hangar. This is where they will be expecting an attack. You ten are going to be the sword that distracts the enemy while Teams One and Two are the daggers that cut their hamstring and stab them from behind.” The officer looked very confident in his briefing.
“We don’t know much about the enemy. We’ve got overall numbers for the station, but we don’t know how many mutinied. There could be twenty or two hundred bad guys waiting for us. It doesn’t matter either way. We will follow our SOPs, clear everything like we were trained, and be back in New Lancashire for PT tomorrow. Understood?”
“Yes, Sir!”
“Good. Team leaders, report final checks when completed. We’re a go in fifteen.”
“Team Three!” The gung-ho CPL came over their team net.
“Weapons check!”
“Green.” Coop had done his diagnostics. He didn’t need to do one every ten minutes.
“Armor check!”
“Green.”
“Commo check!”
Coop toggled through the variety of responses including pings on TACCOM and STRATNET. CWS Breckinridge was their node for the mission, so as long as the destroyer was sailing they’d be good to go on all of their networks.
While the CPL radioed in their final status update, Coop scrolled through his own options. His environmentally friendly load eliminated his traditional role as the units HI support. He wasn’t going to be firing any artillery rounds inside the station, but he needed to be ready to provide support in a large space like a hangar bay.
The rules of engagement were to only fire when fired upon, and to not break too many things. The company was certainly insured, but with the defense contract the government might be liable for some of the damages, especially if those damages were avoidable. That meant it came out of the sector budget, which would lead to a pissing contest between the Ministry of War and the sector government.
Coop didn’t give a shit about any of that. He’d put a mine right on the most expensive thing in the whole station if it kept him and the other marines from taking a headshot. They didn’t have any intel about the enemy’s weapons capabilities, but they had killed a marine already. That meant shit was serious.
“Everyone on the Spyder!” The thirty marines followed the OIC’s orders and trotted toward the destroyer’s single bird.
The small warship didn’t have a dedicated flight deck like the assault carrier, or even a separate section for the assault shuttle. The fifty-ton war machine was nestled into a section just inside the hull. The hull could retract on command and birth the little shuttle into space. Since destroyers really weren’t meant to carry lots of marines or be a transport it was an acceptable design. It didn’t really work out so much when you were strapped for ships and needed to make lemonade with some really tiny lemons.
“Ok, marines, let’s crack this nut.” That got some boots pounding on the deck while Coop made sure his Buss was on the grenade setting. He was going to need some shock and awe to get this thing rolling.
“Three minutes!”
Coop didn’t even realize they’d dropped out of the destroyer’s belly, but they were racing toward the station. He had no external links to the shuttle so he couldn’t see what was going. There were no sudden course changes and jolts, so no one was shooting at them. It was a shame. It felt too easy.
“Everyone better be buttoned up like a tick’s ass.” The SSG yelled as O2 levels began to drop. The troop compartment was being slowly depressurized so nothing exploded when Team One needed to exfil to their ingress point.
Dropping off Teams One and Two was pretty uneventful. They just hopped out of the Spyder’s ass end, engaged their magnified boots and hauled ass toward wherever they were going to get into the station. They might be protected from the cold bitch that was space in their Dragonscales and combat-ready CMUs, but it got uncomfortable after about fifteen minutes in the void. Coop had no such limitations, even in a V1.
“Hangar bay is open.” The CPL announced as Coop felt a slight increase in the shuttle’s acceleration. “We’re going in hot, so be ready to haul ass.”
Coop unhooked himself from the charger. He was at 100% and ready to kick ass. He felt a slight pull in his navel as the shuttle did a hairpin turn within the hangar bay. He felt the ground shudder beneath him as the Spyder’s autocannon opened fire.
“GO! GO! GO!” the CPL yelled as the rear ramp clanged onto the ground.
Coop was the first out the door. His HUD automatically updated with the Spyder’s targeting data. There were a lot of red icons in a space several football fields long and wide, so he picked the biggest collection, aimed his Buss, and pulled the trigger. A soft thump reverberated through his armor as the 40mm anti-personnel grenade launched from his Buss, over a ton of cargo containers, honed in on the STRATNET data for the enemy, and dropped down into the middle of their shitty formation. Coop felt the rumble of the explosion in his boots as five tangos dropped off STRATNET.
“Man down!” The call came over STRATNET, and sent a cold shiver down Coop’s spine.
The ten-man assault force had spread out when their boots hit the ground. Coop was going up the center while the lighter-armored marines took the hopefully less defended flanks. Coop checked STRATNET and saw a PVT who’d gone from green to red. As ten percent of their fighting force, even one loss was big.
“SHIT!” Another marine went from green to yellow.
“Ballboy, lay down some smoke so we can regroup and figure out what the fuck is going on!” The CPL sounded stressed, but that was unavoidable when you had a fifth of your force get hit in the first minute.
Coop did more than shoot. He launched the smoke grenades to give the dispersing marines some cover, but he also went to his weapon’s menu and selected his new options. His LACS sensors cut through the smoke, and the 3-D mapping of the hangar bay was already complete; so the computer was able to select several advantageous positions to place mines.
Coop’s armor shuddered as the mines launched, magnetically locked to the containers, and went active with friend-or-foe identifiers. Anyone with a STRATNET beacon could pass through just fine. Anyone else would be taking the escalator straight to hell.
“I can tell you what the fuck is going on.” Another PFC spoke up while Coop was covering them. “These fuckers have modern weaponry that’s what’s going on.”
“How the fuck…?”
Internal alarms started blaring in Coop’s LACS. MISSILE LOCK flashed across his screen. Thankfully, his neural networks worked faster than he did. His railgun swiveled toward the threat and burped out a defensive salvo. Coop would have to look at the data after the fight to see how many missiles were fired, but they were of the hypervelocity variety.
The hangar bay was suddenly filled with explosions and shrapnel as the railgun rounds met the missiles in a flurry of destruction. The rest of the marines hunkered down behind cover, but that didn’t stop a third grunt’s medical status from declining to yellow.
“We need to…” Coop’s yell got interrupted by a high-pitched whine.
The smoke was still gathering in front of the marines, but he had a clear view of what was going on behind them. The Spyder was listing dangerously to the left and smoke was pouring out of one of the engines. The pilot looked like they were fighting to keep it airborne, but it looked like they’d taken a bad hit. The only reason it hadn’t been destroyed outright was because the hypervelocity missiles hadn’t had time to gather speed. Still, the Spyder had been wounded.
“Make a hole!” The pilot sounded calm and collected despite fifty tons of death about to eat the cold steel of the hangar bay deck.
Coop turned his attention back to the front where the missiles had come from. The LACS and the Dragonscale armor had zeroed in on the origination point of the attack.
“Covering fire!”
Coop didn’t have to be told twice. He let loose with his Buss on full auto even as the ground shuddered beneath his feet from the Spyder’s emergency landing. The already damaged armorplast between the marines and the missile team disintegrated under the squads combined fire. It took a little while longer with the less effective rounds, but they got the job done. After a mad minute, the CPL had them cease fire, and reestablish sectors of fire to deal with the remaining tangos in the bay.
They wouldn’t be dealing with anymore missiles today…hopefully, but that didn’t erase the fact that they were down three men with one seriously injured, and had a broken Spyder.
The CPL detailed someone to stay back with the PVT reading red, but the two yellow codes were able to keep moving. The CPL assigned them rear security. “Push forward!”
Coop did just that, and started blasting away the remaining miners and pirates in the hangar bay as the marines leapfrogged forward in three to five second rushes. When he reached the first body he noticed a familiar weapon in the dead man’s disintegrated hands.
“Corporal, they’ve got M3s. Where the hell did they get M3s?”
“Beats me, Ballboy. Quit talking and keep killing. We aren’t out of the frying pan yet.”
That became abundantly clear when a 1mm round clipped Coop’s faceplate. It didn’t penetrate, and that unlucky SOB who fired it would never see another sunrise, but it still rattled Coop. It would rattle anyone who just got shot in the face.