No Middle Ground (Spineward Sectors: Middleton's Pride) Page 23

  “Four for four,” Sarkozi said savagely, confirming the Tracto-an’s impressive manual targeting skills, “explosive decompressions showing all along the Wrath’s forward hull; her power grid is fluctuating and the stern shields are nearly down!”

  “Send one up her skirts, Ensign!” Middleton flared, immediately turning red-faced and reprimanding himself for such a callous metaphor.

  “With pleasure, Captain,” she replied eagerly, apparently taking no offense as the forward battery of the Pride of Prometheus fired for what he sincerely hoped would be the last time during this particular engagement.

  The shields of the Cardinal’s Wrath flared briefly, before a series of explosions registered along its stern and the vessel began to list out of control.

  “Enemy vessel’s engines are off-line,” Sarkozi reported with gusto. “Their power grid has collapsed; estimate at least twenty minutes before they can re-raise their shields, Captain.”

  “Sergeant Joneson,” Middleton activated his com-link, “estimated launch in fourteen minutes.”

  “Larry that, Captain,” Joneson replied, presumably from inside the boarding shuttle with the rest of his team.

  “I want that ship, Sergeant,” Middleton said seriously, “but more than the ship, I want Captain Rodriguez—alive.”

  “Orders received,” Joneson said in his usual, smooth voice, “we’ll teach those Marines a thing or two.”

  The com-link cut off and Middleton sat back in his chair, knowing that the rest of this battle was now out of his hands.

  “Listen up,” Sergeant Walter Joneson barked, as thirty four power-armored Lancers sat in their grav-harnesses aboard the armored shuttle still moored in the shuttle bay, “we launch in thirteen minutes. That means eighteen minutes from now, every pair of boots on this shuttle will be on the hull of the Cardinal’s Wrath.”

  Lu Bu felt a thrill of excitement like nothing she had ever experienced. She squeezed the grip of her blaster rifle tightly and took deep, calming breaths with the visor of her helmet up, knowing that when the shuttle lifted off she would depend absolutely on her armored suit’s life-support systems.

  “Look to your right,” Joneson continued, and Lu Bu did so, finding only a bare duralloy wall since she was seated near the cockpit, “now look to your left.”

  She did so and saw the same man whose leg she had broken during the training altercation, and she felt a wave of anger as the words he and her other countrymen had said replayed in her head.

  “You’ve all come from different places,” Joneson said, and Lu Bu actually felt his eyes on her briefly, “but none of that matters now. As of this moment, you’re Confederation Lancers and nothing else—check the rest of that rot in this hangar. Do you get me?”

  “We get you, sir!” Lu Bu shouted, in unison with the rest of the warriors aboard the cramped shuttle.

  “Some of you have seen action,” Walter Joneson continued as he paced up and down the deck, “and for some of you this will be your first taste of live fire. I’ve read each of your files, and aside from these six,” he gestured to the only Lancers to bear Corporal-rank insignia, “none of you has faced armored opponents. This is an at-will organization, and what we’re about to get into will be rougher than anything you’ve experienced, so anyone who wants to sit it out had better get off my shuttle.”

  Lu Bu was actually offended the Sergeant would suggest any of his Lancers would balk at the opportunity for combat, but she knew she had been waiting for this moment for years. She ground her teeth quietly and looked down the shuttle for any cowards who might want to run in the face of battle.

  But none of the Lancers took the Sergeant up on his offer, so he nodded curtly. “Good,” he growled as his gaze swept the entire shuttle. “The Incumbent class’s standard complement is two dozen Marines,” he said, turning to one of the Corporals. He was a large, dark-skinned man with powerful cheekbones and a nose that had been broken so often that, to Lu Bu, it seemed to be a piece of art—and Joneson pointedly added, “that’s ‘twenty four,’ Gnuko.”

  The Corporal hung his head as though in shame, and the men to either side of him mockingly consoled him as a round of chuckles filled the shuttle. Even Walter Joneson smirked as the wave of nervous energy crackled among the Lancers like electricity dancing over their metal armor.

  “But these pirates,” Joneson continued just before the wave had subsided, “aren’t likely to play by the rules. Expect twice that number—and expect them to be dug in and waiting with a welcoming party for us.” Corporal Gnuko raised his hand and Joneson sighed as though in exasperation. “What is it, Lancer?”

  “What’s the play, Sergeant?” the man asked seriously. “Are we looking at a cut-and-run, or a take-and-hold?”

  Lu Bu recognized the terms from Sergeant Joneson’s personal short-hand; a cut-and-run referred to a mission whose primary objective was to cause damage to critical systems in an attempt to disable an enemy vessel’s combat capability. A take-and-hold was much harder, requiring pacification of the enemy crew and the functional seizure of the vessel’s critical areas including Main Engineering, the bridge, Environmental and the armory.

  “Neither,” Joneson replied direly, causing eyebrows to rise all across the shuttle, “this is a capture-the-flag.”

  Gnuko whistled and the visages of the men around him hardened, while those of the new recruits changed more slowly as realization dawned. A capture-the-flag was a mission whose primary objective was to secure the commanding officer prisoner—and it required that he be alive. It was one of the most difficult mission types, with the highest expected casualty rate, owing to the fact that it required an assault on the enemy’s strongest point while all but abandoning any attempts at deception or subtlety.

  “Like I said,” Joneson cut into the deafening silence as he pointed to the still-open hatch, “anyone wants off the shuttle, there’s the door. The book says this is a suicide trip, so I can’t fault any of you for stepping out.” When yet again, no one took him up on the offer, he nodded and continued, “Good…because I have no intention of playing this one by the book.”

  He lightly kicked a trio of stacked devices which Lu Bu recognized as boarding tubes. The devices were ring-shaped and housed two distinct apparatuses: the first being a series of cutting torches and other devices which could, with enough time, crack through even the toughest duralloy plating. The second device was a thin, membranous material which would preserve the integrity of the pressurized atmosphere on the other side of the hull which the tube cut through while allowing the Lancers to enter the pressurized environment from the outer hull.

  With everyone’s complete attention on him, Sergeant Joneson reached down and began to tear the pressure-membrane’s housing from the boarding tubes. He then discarded them, one by one, out the door of the shuttle. He turned to face the Lancers, who wore looks of varying confusion and added belatedly, “We won’t be needing those.”

  He then pressed the button beside the door, causing it to fold up and seal against the hull of the shuttle.

  “Touchdown in ten seconds,” the pilot called over the shuttle’s intercom. They had received fire from the Destroyer’s light, point-defense weaponry, but thankfully none of the ship’s larger weapons had come to bear on the incoming shuttle.

  Still, the PD weaponry had rocked the little shuttle and nearly knocked it off-course several times as they had adjusted attitude and bearing to stay as far from the primary weapons as possible on approach. Lu Bu found herself strangely calm during all of this, since she knew that there was nothing she could do to help the pilot accomplish his part of the mission.

  The shuttle shook and the door opened immediately thereafter, causing the grav-harnesses to deactivate and release the Lancers from their seats. Walter Joneson was the first out the door, followed quickly be those Lancers nearest the door, then by those senior members of the team—who carried the boarding tubes—and then lastly by Lu Bu and those seated nearest her.

 
She had been given the task of covering the shuttle during the first minutes of touching down, and as her armored boots clomped onto the hull of the vessel—apparently named the Cardinal’s Wrath—the magnetic plates built into them activated and she felt the strange sensation of being attached to the vessel’s hull.

  Pushing such distractions from her mind, Lu Bu swept the nearby quadrants for motion or other activity. She noted that they had put down beside a point defense turret, and that it was sweeping side-to-side in search of a new target. Her blaster rifle was not rated to take down the target, so she continued her sweep until her quadrant of coverage was clear.

  When she checked on Sergeant Joneson’s position, she saw that he and two other senior Lancers were just stepping back from the boarding tube’s cutting apparatus. The device was throwing sparks beneath itself, and after several seconds of activity Joneson called over the com-link, “Lancers: lock mag-boots.”

  Lu Bu did as she was instructed, and her boots clamped down onto the hull implacably as the rest of the Lancers did likewise. A few seconds later, the boarding tube’s cutting ring exploded, and a shower of metal debris went flying out away from the hull as the tube itself was destroyed by the explosive decompression issuing from within the ship’s hull.

  The gases vented for a surprisingly short period of time before Sergeant Joneson ordered, “Disengage mag-locks and prepare to engage. First squad, you’re with me,” he ordered, and a half dozen Lancers followed as Walter Joneson leapt into the newly-formed hole, which was barely large enough for a Lancer’s power-armored bulk to fit through.

  Corporal Gnuko led his team in next, followed by Corporals Thomas and Sherman, which left only Corporal Unger and his squad, of which Lu Bu was a part.

  “Move in, Lancers,” Unger ordered as he too dove into the breach. Lu Bu was to be the last through the hole, as she had been given the less-than-prestigious, but wholly important position of rearguard to her squad. The other members of her smaller squad, comprised of only four members including Corporal Unger, went through the breach before she followed. She had to tuck her arms in as she held onto her blaster rifle, and landed solidly onto the deck-plates of an apparently uninhabited corridor.

  “Gnuko, take point,” Joneson ordered, gesturing down one direction of the hall. Corporal Gnuko and his Lancers quickly made their way down the hallway to the nearest corridor, and Joneson continued, “Unger, cover the rear. The rest of you are with me.”

  The team advanced as one down the corridor, with Lu Bu flanking Corporal Unger as they provided cover. Her eyes snapped back and forth, scanning for any signs of movement as they hurried to make their way to Sergeant Joneson’s intended destination.

  “Here,” Joneson ordered, “Sherman, deploy the second cracker. Gnuko, secure that junction,” he pointed to a nearby intersection.

  “Larry that, sir,” Gnuko replied as he led his men down the corridor. They had just taken up positions providing omnidirectional cover before the Corporal yelled, “Contact!”

  His men began firing, and Lu Bu risked a glance over her shoulder to see which direction the enemy was coming from. She saw that Gnuko and his men appeared to be firing down both the left and right corridors, but thankfully the corridor facing the rest of the Lancers was bereft of enemy troops—for now.

  “Crack that thing open, Sherm,” Joneson growled before signaling toward the junction. “Thomas, support Gnuko.”

  “On it, Sarge,” he replied evenly as he and his Lancers went to provide additional support.

  “Eyes forward, Lu,” Unger snapped, and Lu Bu had to return her focus to the task at hand. She cursed herself silently for allowing the excitement of the moment to break her focus on the task assigned to her squad, and she took up a kneeling position in front of her Corporal as the Lancer to her left did likewise. Her blaster was set up for a left-handed operator, so it was tactically advantageous for her to line up on the rightward wall.

  A flicker of motion caught her eye, and without even thinking she snapped off a short burst of shots at the tiny, incoming object. Before the third shot had left her barrel, the corridor before her was filled with a roaring cloud of plasma as her second shot found home. The force of the explosion was lessened by the lack of an atmosphere to compress into a pressure wave, but the heat was almost palpable through her visor as the blue fireball roared across her armor and down the corridor.

  Unger and the other members of her squad began firing down the corridor, and Lu Bu realized she must have hit the grenade in mid-air as she saw another blip of motion at the same intersection.

  She took careful aim—which, for her highly-tuned reflexes, required just a fraction of a second—and snapped a single shot off at the second grenade, causing this one to explode closer to the intersection than to her squad, and when the fireball roared past them this time it was markedly less powerful.

  “Nice shot, Lu,” Joneson quipped as a volley of blaster bolts came from his position at the center of the Lancers’ position. A pair of Marines, wearing darker, sleeker-looking armor than her own bulky casement, tried to cross the intersection, but they were peppered by a dozen blaster rifles in rapid succession.

  The first fell to the deck in the middle of the corridor with his gorget slagged by a few well-placed shots from her squad-mates, and his armored body fell motionless to the floor. The second managed to dive across the intersection, but his legs were ravaged by repeated blaster impacts which saw his armor blackened as he hastily dragged himself clear of the junction.

  Blaster rifles poked around the junction’s corner, and the Marines began to return sporadic, poorly-aimed fire. Lu Bu took careful aim at one of the rifles and squeezed a shot, but missed. “Blast,” she cursed in Confederation Standard without thinking.

  The next time a rifle’s barrel came around the corner, she narrowed her focus and sent a round right through the trigger guard, nearly knocking the weapon from its wielder’s hands before he managed to recover it. However, the Marine made the fatal mistake of letting too much of his arm into view, and Joneson’s squad riddled it with repeated impacts which staggered his body and sent him down to one knee as he fell into view in the middle of the junction.

  A trio of shots from Unger and Lu Bu’s squad-mates impacted on the man’s helmet, and he fell to the ground—where Joneson’s squad finished the job and left the Marine’s puny armor a wrecked, smoking tomb.

  “Ready, Sergeant,” Sherman’s voice came over the link.

  “Lancers,” Joneson snapped, “lock mag-boots!”

  Lu Bu did as she was ordered, and less than a second after the boots had engaged, the corridor was filled with a violet rush of gas as shrapnel ricocheted off the walls of the corridor and the Lancers within it. Gnuko’s and Thomas’ units were still firing at the enemy throughout, but as soon as the shrapnel had fallen to the deck, Joneson bellowed, “Sherman, Unger: secure the deck! Thomas, you’re next.”

  The three Corporals acknowledged Joneson’s command, and Lu Bu felt a tap on her shoulder signaling she was to fall back from her position. She did so, and after Sherman’s team had gone through the newly-made hole on the deck-plates—a hole which was nearly two meters across, unlike the first entry made on the outer hull.

  Lu Bu had no idea why this particular hole was so much larger, but she was glad for the extra room as she leapt down to the deck below. Her Corporal had taken up position to the left, so she fell into the same formation as before as she knelt in front of her squad commander.

  This corridor was much like the previous one, except it appeared to extend slightly further. She felt the arrival of more Lancers through reverberations in the deck-plates, but she kept her eyes forward this time, mindful of a potential ambush.

  Several seconds passed as more and more boots landed on the decking behind her, until she heard Sergeant Joneson’s voice over the link. “All squads give me a count.”

  “Plus four, minus one,” Gnuko reported promptly.

  “Plus three, minus two
,” Thomas followed.

  “Plus two, minus zero,” Unger reported snappily.

  “Zero-zero, Sergeant,” Sherman added.

  “Plus one, minus one,” Sergeant Joneson added finally, “total count: ten dead pirates, four downed Lancers. Good job, everyone,” he said gruffly, “advance to the next insertion point; Gnuko and Sherman take point. Thomas has the ball, Unger and Joneson manning the line.”

  “Sir!” the squad leaders replied in unison as the formation began to wind its way down the corridor.

  As they did so, Lu Bu got the distinct impression that this was not so unlike playing smashball. They had formed a team with a clear goal and distinct roles, and they followed specific actions, or plays, called by their team leader—in this case, the venerable and surprisingly sagacious Sergeant Walter Joneson.

  “Contact,” she heard Gnuko call out just before the flashes of blaster rifles could be seen reflected off the corridor’s walls. But Lu Bu refused to be distracted this time, and she kept her eyes focused on her zone of coverage down the corridor.

  She saw a flicker of motion from the corner of her eye, and before she knew it she was temporarily knocked off-balance as a blast of air came roaring out of a nearby door. But she kept her eyes on her assigned zone, as she knew that Corporal Unger was assigned to the wall where the blast had originated. Her diligence paid off, as she kept the barrel of her blaster rifle aimed down the corridor and she unthinkingly snapped off a pair of shots as a power-armored figure came into view attempting to cross the corridor.

  The Marine returned fire with an undisciplined spray of bolts, two of which impacted on her breastplate and threatened to relieve her of her precarious balance. But her own shots proved more accurate, as she put two rounds into his left leg. The knee of that leg seized up temporarily and caused the Marine to stagger.