The first shots were fired at the security station on Level 3, East District, at 1427 hours local time.
Officer Orhan Asik was on guard duty at the loading bay, leaning against a section of wall between the big red blast doors and watching people go by about their business. Truth be told, he wasn’t really paying attention to them; it was a rare day when anything more serious than pickpocketing or shoplifting happened around here. Sure, there was the occasional armed robbery, but no-one in their right mind would commit it next to the police station, would they? Instead he let his mind wander to other things, like what to get for his son’s birthday next week.
He did take note of the four men that came down the street together, each of them wearing a jacket or a longcoat. Such a number of people together was atypical, as was their clothing… but they walked past without anything in particular happening, so he didn’t think too much of it.
Until they reached the edge of his patrol position and wheeled around, and he only had a second to glimpse the rail-carbines they’d produced before his torso was perforated by a hail of metal.
Another officer came bursting out the door, alarmed by the sound, and was rewarded for his troubles with a pair of three-millimeter capsules blowing out his carotid and part of a vertebra. Two of the attackers ran forward under the cover of their fellows’ guns, one of them already pulling out a pair of grenades. A single frag went flying through the doorway into the walkway adjoining the cargo-filled bay, and two more cops who had been running towards the scene of the crime were swiftly blown into unrecognizable chunks of gore. The gas grenade that followed was almost anticlimatic, but it did serve to keep anyone else from doing further reckless charges.
While this was going on, the other man was producing a small box-shaped object from his bag. It took a few button presses to activate the device and set the timer, and he hurled it through the door as well before all four of them scattered.
The fuel-air explosion that followed fifteen seconds later killed thirteen people and destroyed three police hoverbikes, four crateloads of various spare parts, two repair bots and an entire armory of equipment. Yet by then it was already becoming a footnote to the chaos unfolding elsewhere on Port Ikonia.
Even all the way here in Private Docking Bay 02, Supakorn Ngamsan could hear - and feel - the explosions thundering in the west commercial district. It was an old, familiar sound, one that the broad-torsoed man with the close-cropped grey hair had heard many times before in the service of the Hegemony Marine Corps. But that was cycles ago, before the reports of brutality concerning his battalion had came to the attention of the JAG. Only his distinguished combat record had kept the repercussions from being more severe than a dishonorable discharge, but his career was over all the same.
So be it. He’d found a much more lucrative avenue for his talents.
He flexed his neck muscles, then walked out the Buffalo’s cargo hold as the loading ramp unfolded before him. Only one of the vac-suited technicians in the bay noticed him; the others were still staring in the direction of the bombings. The woman was gaping at him - hard to blame her, really, nobody had mentioned anything about the freighter being filled with heavily armed men in coal-black power armor accompanied by mobile gun platforms.
“Hey-”
He levelled his infantry tribarrel and sawed her in half with a burst of armor-piercing darts. Rifle fire did for the other workers, all of them dead before they could even think of warning those outside.
“Get the other bays locked down now,” Supakorn said firmly to the other mercs and pirates following him. “We’re proceeding straight to the command center.”
“Trojan reports the operation has commenced,” Matty’s dispassionate voice came over the comm. “Estimate 95% probability he will have disabled or seized the station’s defences within 23.74 minutes.”
“So it begins,” Diata Mukendi murmured. Her thoughts were only peripherally on the chaos surely unfolding on Port Ikonia now; at present, her eyes were on the tactical display, showing the understrength patrol that had come out to inspect her fleet. “Think they’ll abort and run back, or figure they can’t do anything about whatever’s going on back there and proceed with the inspection?”
“Insufficient data. But irrelevant. They cannot avoid action given the current geometry.”
“Mm.” She watched steadily as the Catal ships continued approaching for their scan - they were now scarcely six thousand kilometers away. Just a little closer, and…
Now!The icons seemed to freeze on her plot as the inhibitor kicked in, tearing the patrol’s vessels out of the spacetime bubbles that let them cross interplanetary distances within days. It couldn’t have been entirely unexpected; the reason they were attempting to perform the inspection in the first place was because such a large combat fleet in this relatively undeveloped subsector was naturally suspicious, after all. But what they had been expecting didn’t matter, not against such an imbalance of firepower.
Mattock Squadron’s two Thunder wings swept over the patrol frigates as they tried to flee, disabling their engines long before they could escape the trap. The Shepherd’s drones swarmed over its attackers, slicing at them with mining lasers, and one fighter was destroyed outright and another forced to limp away with half its avionics turned to slag. But in their distraction, they failed to notice the true threat - not that they could have stopped it even if they had. An Afflictor unphased beneath the drone tender, and two antimatter bolts blew the latter into oblivion.
The
Razor’s Edge pursued the Hammerhead, closing the distance with sharp flashes of its phase skimmer. Finding itself cornered, the prey raised its shield and turned to face its foe, unwilling to go down without a fight. But such a decrepit warship, with its fractured armor and defective flux grid, was no match for a fully functional Medusa. Light autocannons chewed away at the older vessel’s shields before it could bring its front-facing weapons to bear, and Giulio Pizzati’s eyes blazed with evil glee as a blast from two mining blasters sent his target into overload.
From there, it was simply a matter of pounding away at the defenseless ship. By the time it recovered, two Brawlers had come up to add their medium guns to the funeral pyre, and the explosion that consumed the ship seven seconds later spat out a lifeless wreck in its place. Moments later the last patrol ship died, the Vigilance’s thin hull gutted by a pair of Harpoon missiles, those internal circuits that had not been melted in the explosions now fused and burnt out by ion cannon fire.
“Well executed, everyone,” Mukendi said simply, quietly. “All units, reform on me and advance.”
“What have we got?” Archer’s voice was tense as she leaned on the conference table, sky blue irises gazing at the render of Port Ikonia’s whorled spindle form in the center.
“Main force of unknown size advancing south from the private bays, headed for the central area,” Koniecpolski said, highlighting the route on the schematic with a crimson line. “There was a Buffalo in that one bay and a Tarsus in the other, which suggests an outsized company or so. Call it maybe two fifty to three hundred hostiles. Based on the surveillance feed we got before it was shot out, about a quarter of them will be armored, and they have at least one MWP, likely more.”
He looked grimly at the other Marines who’d joined him, the Captain, and Commander Jaitley around the table - Lieutenant Park, First Sergeant Mokhtar, and all four of his squad leaders. All of them could do the math; all of them knew they were outnumbered five-to-one - at least - and caught badly out of position at that. Some of them probably wouldn’t be coming back tonight.
“We can assume they intend to secure the space elevator and Central Security,” Commissioner Teveto?lu said, her worried face displayed on the wallscreen to the side. “This will keep us from moving reinforcements through there, and give them control of Ikonia’s guns. And with that fleet closing in…”
“I assume you have a Plan B,” one of the NCOs muttered.
“We’ve got a pair of Valkyries with Marines prepping for liftoff now; ETA twenty-five minutes. If they can unload, the invaders will be completely outmatched and will have no choice but to surrender. But if the fleet or the station’s guns gets to them…”
Archer traced a pattern on her console, and the station map scaled down to make room for a display of the space around the planet. “So in space, we’re looking at one Medusa, two Brawlers, one Afflictor, and one Gemini with at least two fighter wings embarked. And to oppose them, we have one Enforcer (D) and two Monitors.” She frowned. “Can your forces hold Ikonia’s defense controls, Commissioner?”
“I’m afraid not, Captain. We should be able to put the system in lockdown for a while, but…”
“I see.” Her face was hard. “In that case, Major, I want your platoon disembarked immediately. Once they’re all off, the
Valiant will perform an emergency undocking and move out to meet the enemy outside the range of Ikonia’s guns, stopping just long enough to destroy their docked freighters.” The planet view disappeared, and the station schematic returned to its full size. “What’s your plan for dealing with the ground threat?”
“If they’re headed for the centre of the station, then that’s where we’re going as well.” Koniecpolski highlighted a fresh path on the schematic. “The platoon will move straight towards Security Central till we reach the east spindle access, then squads three and four will peel off to seize the elevator. The rest of us will continue on to the previous objective.”
“They’ve got a head start, but without power armor the bulk of their force will be slower than ours. They’ll probably still get to the elevator before we do, but we should be able to relieve Security Central before it’s overrun. It’s overlooking the inner boulevard and can fire on them as they approach; we’ll have to hope that gives the defenders the edge they need. What kind of defenses can your people muster at Central, Commissioner?”
“A few security bots, and some automated gun emplacements. You have to understand, Major, that we’re not a military force. We never expected to stand off something like this.”
“Can’t be helped now. What about your special response teams?”
She shook her head. “Most of them were dispatched to the terror attacks around the station before we realised what was going on. We’re recalling the ones that aren’t engaged right now, but…”
“If they get there, they get there.” He looked around at the table again. “Alright, time’s short. If anyone has anything to say, do it now.”
Sergeant Mokhtar raised a hand. “If we use heavy weapons inside the high-density areas, we’ll cause a lot of damage. Rules of engagement?”
The major thought for a while, then grunted. “If you encounter armored units, go ahead and turn them into kielbasa. Else, don’t fire any plasma cannons or missiles until I tell you to. Clear?”
“Clear.”
“Alright, then. We’ve all got places to be, so let’s get suited and get this ball rolling.”
As Archer left the conference room, a corner of her mind remembered to be grateful that Sybitz had turned down her offer of detaching a squad as backup for the Krešimirovi? raid.
“Putting your armored heavies anywhere on the planet, much less having them follow me around, is at the very least going to make everyone suspicious once the witnesses start circulating. They could even blow my cover outright.” She grimaced.
“As it is, half the subsector probably knows I’m a turncoat. I don’t think I’ll be able to ply my trade ‘round these parts after this.”Well, thank goodness, Archer had carefully avoided muttering.
“Anyway, thanks for the offer, but we need subtlety for this, not firepower. Don’t worry, I’ve got this.” Adela smiled.
“If all goes well, we’ll get your info and nobody will realise anything even happened.”Which was how they’d successfully uncovered the Quasar plot, and she now had four whole squads of Marines to deal with this crisis instead of three.
Thank god for little silver linings.Now it only remained to be seen if they would live to make anything out of it.
“All units disembarked,” Mokhtar’s voice came in through the armor’s comm system. “A minute to assemble and we’ll be on our way.”
“Good,” Koniecpolski said. “Report when we’re ready and Captain Archer can take her ship out of here.”
He looked at the Marines in their mottled green armor forming up in neat ranks, the four-legged Mobile Weapons Platforms coming up behind with a whirr. Hardly parade-perfect, but parade-perfect was pretty much at the bottom of the list of things they needed right now.
Great. I’m a “major” in charge of a single platoon, about to lead them against five-to-one odds, with the knowledge that if we fail a whole planetary government is getting overthrown. Even with our superior training and equipment - thank goodness cruiser-embarked platoons come with a full set of power armor - this is going to be one hell of a fight. The recruiter sure as hell didn’t say anything about this.“Man, if this works,” one of the privates said, tapping his plate shield, “I’m proposing to Commander Bracket right away. Don’t care if she’s a Navy puke.”
“Me too,” a female - and definitely heterosexual - corporal chimed in.
Koniecpolski suppressed a smile, examining his own shield. It was a simple sheet of multilayered composite armor for a starship, shaped into an elongated hexagon in the
Valiant’s machine shop and attached with a clamp to the off-shoulder of his power armor. With it, he could be assured of protection from small arms kinetics and even (theoretically) light anti-armor single warheads across up to ninety degrees, and still fire his rifle two-handed. It might just save a few lives when First and Second Squads came charging down the boulevard with nary any cover.
“Well, in that case,” he said, “we’ll just have to make sure we all live to make it to the wedding, don’t we?”