head straight back.
Jessica screamed in pain as her head was pulled backward, partially lifting her up from her position on top of the soldier. She swung her right arm under his left, stabbing wildly at his chest plate. Suddenly, one of her thrusts caused the knife to deflect slightly towards her opponents chin, and the knife tip slid up the chest plate and found the gap between the chest plate and the lower edge of his helmet’s face plate. As she felt the slight advancement of her blade, she twisted her body to her right to add downward force to the blade, and it slid into her opponent’s throat, bringing forth a sickening gurgling sound as his blood rushed into his trachea.
Her attacker immediately released his grip on her hair as he choked on his own blood, trying desperately to breathe. She fell forward, continuing her thrust with all her weight now behind her knife, as it chipped his cervical vertebra, sliding between them and severing his spinal cord.
His body went limp, and the gurgling subsided. She sat upright, straddling her now dead opponent. She reached for the wound on her left hip, wincing in pain at her own touch. “You shot me!” she exclaimed, as she punched his face plate with her right hand. “And you pulled my hair, too!” She punched his face again. Wincing in pain, she checked her wound again. “That better not leave a scar, asshole.” She withdrew her knife from his neck and had an idea.
On the port catwalk of the hangar bay, three crewmen began firing down into the group of enemy soldiers. Most of their rounds were deflected by the enemy’s black armor, however, the continuous barrage of fire eventually proved to be too much for them as they began falling one by one. The soldiers scrambled for cover, but were met on either side by Weatherly to forward and Mendez to aft.
Less than a minute later, the few surviving members of the boarding party surrendered, dropping their weapons and raising up their hands. Mendez immediately rushed forward, barking at the enemy to drop to their knees as several more armed crewmen rushed in from different hatches.
“Commander!” Kaylah called from the sensor station. “There’s another ship trying to land.”
“Where?”
“On our flight deck, sir!”
“What? Where the hell did it come from?”
“I don’t know, sir. It came out of nowhere.”
Outside the Aurora, an unmarked ship came in low over the drive section of the ship as it approached the flight deck.
“Open the outer door!” Josh, the harvester pilot called out over the comm channel! “I’ll cut him off!”
Cameron nearly jumped to the tactical display, just in time to see the track of the harvester as it came speeding toward the Aurora from the starboard side of her stern, on a collision course with the unknown approaching ship. Cameron quickly activated the transfer airlock’s outer door.
The little harvester slid in under the unmarked ship, positioning himself between it and the Aurora, forcing the unmarked ship to pull up sharply at the last moment. The unmarked ship was unable to pull up enough, and it slammed into the hull just above the bay opening to the flight deck as the harvester entered the outer bay just below the unmarked ship’s point of impact. The unmarked ship crumpled and flipped as its momentum caused it to slide up the hull before it spilled out over the top, chunks of it flying away as it continued to tumble out of control and break apart.
“Whoo-hoo!” Josh cried out. “I never flinch!”
“Oh my God. He’ll never stop in time,” Cameron declared as she watched him approach on the flight deck monitoring display. He was coming in nearly four times the normal landing speed, and he had all his thrusters burning at maximum to try and slow down before he traversed the transfer bay and slammed into the inner bay door. Cameron watched, grimacing even more intensely as she watched the harvester hurtle toward the inner doors. Suddenly he killed his thrusters and spun his little ship around, firing his main engines at full power. The harvester finally came to a stop less than a meter from the inner door, as he killed his engines.
“Oh my God, you did it!” Cameron shouted, unaware that her mic was open.
“Of course I did it, love!” he answered as he spun his ship back around, dropped his gear and settled onto the deck. “Sorry I scorched your doors, though.” Cameron quickly keyed off her mic, slightly embarrassed at her outburst. “You gonna let me in or what?”
“Commander, Hangar Bay reports all secure,” the comm officer reported.
Cameron took a deep breath and sighed. “Tell me that guy doesn’t remind you of someone,” she said as she started closing the outer bay door.
“Commander,” Kaylah said. “That contact is back. It just came out from behind the gas giant.”
Cameron had another sinking feeling. “Let me guess.” Cameron muttered.
“Transferring track to tactical.”
Cameron looked at the tactical display, watching the ship ID display as it searched for a match. Within seconds, the ID system displayed the specs for a Ta’Akar cruiser, just like the one they had faced on their way out of the asteroid field a few days ago. “Tell Mendez to get his ass up here,” she ordered as she left the tactical station and made her way to the helm, “I need him at tactical. Call all hands to battle stations,” she added. “We’re leaving the rings.”
The sniper peered into his electronic sighting system, studying the little screen that showed a close up view of the distant greenhouse. Suddenly, the helmeted head and armored shoulders of one of his comrades made his way through the greenhouse back the way he had come a few minutes earlier, in a standard tactical crouch so as to maintain a low target profile. It was an unnecessary effort that the older, more experienced sniper found amusing, attributing the extra caution to the inexperience of many of the newer members of the assault team. Satisfied that his teammate had dealt with the threat in that vicinity, the sniper continued his search for targets of opportunity.
After entering the reactor shack, Jessica removed the helmet she had taken from the soldier she had killed minutes earlier. “Jesus! Do these guys ever clean their gear?” she cursed as she tossed the helmet aside and removed the shoulder armor.
She looked around the dimly lit room until she located the target of her search-the shield control panel. There were four rows of toggle switches, about a dozen or so in each row. At one side there was a rocker switch and a lever. Unfortunately, they were all marked in a language that she did not understand.
“When in doubt, turn them all on.” She quickly flipped all the toggle switches up and depressed the rocker switch. All of the little green lights above each toggle switch lit up. “So far so good,” she said as she grabbed the lever and moved it all the way over. One of the large metal boxes in the room began to hum loudly, sending shivers up her spine. “Whoa. I hope it’s supposed to do that.” A moment later, the red light above the lever turned green, and she heard a strange whistling hum coming from outside. She moved over to the outside door of the shack and peeked out. Above the sinkhole, there was a shimmering glow of slightly opaque white with little specks dancing about. “So that’s what a shield looks like, huh?” She looked over at the main farm house, not more than ten meters away. She could see soldiers about to enter the back of the house, obviously hoping to get the drop on Tug and his wife who were still firing on the troops near Tobin’s ship. To her right, she could see Tobin through his cockpit windows, a nervous grin on his gaunt face as he watched the assault from the safety of his ship. “I knew we couldn’t trust that skinny little fucker,” she mumbled to herself, as she turned her comm-set back on.
“They’re coming around to your side!” Ranni warned.
Tug looked out the broken window in front of him and saw two black and gray soldiers running for cover. He opened up on them, managing to kill the second one but missing the first when his battery pack gave out.
“Mine is dead!” he hollered.
“Take mine!” Ranni ordered, tossing her weapon to him as she turned to run towards the kitchen. “I’ve got another one in the kitchen!”
Suddenly, the kitchen door swung open and two red bolts of energy burst forth, striking Ranni in the chest, knocking her backwards and killing her instantly.
“RANNI!” Tug screamed as he ran to her. He dropped to his knees at her side, clutching her still smoldering and lifeless body as two soldiers stormed into the room from the kitchen door and grabbed him, wrestling away his weapon and holding him face down to the floor. They were followed by their squad leader, who strode confidently in, full of swagger. “Pick him up,” he ordered.
