Ashley brought the engines up to full power gradually, adjusting their mass profile to accommodate for the five unwelcome guests attached to their hull.
The bridge medic was at Alice's side before she could even think about doing anything else and as he drew her hand away from her face his professionalism held, but barely. “The EMP from the nuke must have burned the cybernetics out, I'm sorry Captain.”
“Do what you can,” she said, trying not to cringe as her fears were confirmed. The eye would have to come out.
Uninvited Guests
Stephanie was already on her way to the gunnery deck with fifty six armoured counter-incursion team members. They stood behind her holding their heavy assault rifles across their chests, dispositions ranging from hardened and cool to jittery and nervous. The large express car stopped and the doors opened to a sight that she couldn't believe.
A drone was finishing cutting a hole in the inner layer of the Triton's hull and through its transparent surface she could see the inhuman, featureless metal face and forward arms of whatever kind of machine hid inside its outer armour. Its angled surface looked eager somehow, as though anxiously awaiting its opportunity to get inside and wreak havoc.
You're giving an object personal traits, psyching yourself out, stop it. She mentally chided herself. Stephanie tuned in to the gunnery deck's command channel while leading her people out of the car.
“Armour! Make a circle round these bastards and pound 'em inta the deck before they know what hit 'em. I'll take down the first one, watch how it's done!” Frost ordered. “All unarmoured units clear the deck, we don't want ta be steppin' on ye!”
“Frost! Keep your people back! We don't know what kind of weaponry they have and your loader suits are unarmed,” she argued.
“Keep back lass, we've got this. Go get the one tryin' ta break into the hallway in section nine. It'll hit a main corridor and lord knows what else!” Frost argued as his black and red armoured suit crouched, waiting for the invader to break through the hull.
“There are six teams on that incursion, we can take care of the gunnery deck!”
“This is my deck lass, watch how it's done.”
Stephanie shook her head in irritation as her men and woman took formation all around her, spreading out one meter apart at the shoulder to maximise their firepower. “Alpha, beta teams, take the other end of the deck. Watch out for falling loader suits,” she ordered.
“Theta and delta teams, with me, we're taking the next incursion point, let Frost play with his new friend,” she ordered as she broke into a dead run across the deck towards the hole forming over thirty meters away from Frost. She couldn't help but bring up a secondary display on her visor and focusing in on the scene behind her.
The three quarter meter wide plate cut from the inside of the hull fell to the deck with a violent crash, it would have been a colossal sound if there were an atmosphere to hear it through, and long metal arms stretched out from the drone pod as the machination inside pulled itself inside. Frost picked up a full flak magazine and his armoured suit leapt up, swatting the intruder so hard that one of its arms was awkwardly bent out of shape.
As Frost's heavily armoured feet touched the deck the rest of the intruding machine fell out of its small hole. It poured out like a silver stream of struts and oval segments, landing and turning towards Frost. The edges of several plates across its front glowed blue and violet as though the insect like machine was just coming to life, and as its arms began to unfurl as though in preparation for a grand melee plasma blades across its arms and body lit up, jagged fingers clicked and scraped together.
Frost turned around, grabbed it by the middle and picked it up off the deck, bringing it back down hard enough to dent and scrape the hardened metal floor. The machine took little visible damage, and as it was raised up to be smashed again all six of its long limbs wrapped around Frost's loading suit, crushing, cutting, trying to burst the armoured suit and kill whatever was inside.
Stephanie stopped dead, spun around, raised her rifle and tried to take aim. Frost was struggling with the machine, pulling at its silvered, oval segments, staggering as the invader cut the main sensor array on the top of the suit cleanly in half. “Dammit Frost! I can't get a shot!”
“Things all arms! Can't get my grip back! My armour's as good as done!”
It began to saw into one of the armour's arms to great effect, she could see the metal beginning to part as the plasma blade sent sparks flying in all directions. Frost's armour lurched forward suddenly, hitting the deck face first and pinning the invader as it cut straight through the knee of his suit. Everyone on the deck heard Frost cry out before he could stifle his scream.
The back hatch of the suit blew off and he hurriedly fell as much as climbed out.
Stephanie set her automatic rifle to full power and opened up on the invader trying to scurry out from under the heavy armoured munitions loading suit. Half its efforts were spent on getting out from under it while its many tools cut it apart in a dozen places just to get free. The heavy metal of the automation heated under her steady stream of gunfire. In an attempt to move the machine ripped the softened metal casing of its body open and Stephanie continued her attack. The squads with her joined in, and in the space of three seconds Frost's armoured suit and the invader trapped beneath it was completely destroyed. The lights of its many sensors and tools faded out slowly.
The deck beneath her feet rumbled and she turned around just in time to see an armoured suit flying through the air towards him, thrown by a pair of invaders working together. “Move!” she called out only too late as the armoured loader suit crashed into them. Her vacsuit took the impact of the suit's thigh, protecting her as she was thrown fifteen meters across the deck.
Two of her squad members weren't so lucky and were seriously injured as the torso of the armour crushed into them and rolled on. It narrowly missed Frost as well, passing just over his head as he crawled as quickly as he could. He had lost his foot above the ankle and crawling for the nearest secure hatch to get out of the way.
“Let the marines do their jobs, lads! Stay clear and if ye get caught by one o' those things, abandon yer armour! Anyone not in a loader get ta the emergency arms lockers an' get a rifle so you can lay down supportin' fire!”
Stephanie got to her feet, dropped her empty particle rifle cartridge, replaced it with a fresh one and took sight on the pair of intruders. They had intertwined with each other, becoming a slowly moving object that reached out with deadly speed using any one of its dozen arms. Her visor informed her that it had erected an energy shield around itself. “Fire on my target, full intensity! Hurry before the other two get through the hull!” She activated the secondary barrel and emptied her cartridge of heavy explosive rounds, hoping the explosions against the invader's shields would bring the barrier down faster.
As two of the machines arms got around another armoured suit and threw it effortlessly at the squad opposite them who reacted perfectly, dodging to the side and resuming fire the second they were out of immediate jeopardy a pair of oval pods separated from the machine, scurrying towards her men and women with blurring speed.
She opened fire on the nearest, scoring one hit before it exploded, shaking the deck and instantly incinerating two of her team members. Stephanie picked herself up off the deck and resumed fire. “Those things have some kind of automated grenades or mines, aim for them while they're still attached!”
The sprawling automation flew to pieces under the devastating firepower of thirty nine soldiers, and when the other two broke through the hull, they were ready.
Stephanie tossed three hammer grenades at the ceiling right after the nearest invader broke through the hull and they affixed right beside the new aperture. The arms hesitated to extend out into the open air beneath the second before the grenades went off and she opened fire before the smoke cleared.
The scene at the other incursion point was similar, only the grenades were ready and counting down on the deck as the invader made its appearance, trying to bend away from the explosion as it went off. They had just enough firepower left to take them out before they could injure or kill anyone else, and with no doctor aboard, no one had great expectations for the severely injured if they couldn't be treated with nanotechnology or placed in
