“Watch your step, our cloaksuits can't cover up that much noise or interference with our surroundings,” Jason reminded him, looking at the slight disturbance Minh had left behind.
The toys in the booth just to their right all turned their heads and stared at the disturbance. “Could that be creepier?” Minh muttered. “This virus has gotten into everything.”
“Yeah, but toys don't turn themselves on. Something activated them,” Ayan said quietly. “They might be sending something this way to check it out right now.”
“This doesn't add up. If those toys are active that means that someone or something is taking advantage of them, using them as lookouts, maybe even sentries but the scanners in this section should have run a few hundred passes over the whole place,” Jason said, looking around as he reviewed his own sensor data.
“You're right. Ports like this have aggressive scanning tech everywhere, especially right behind the front door but there's no active electromagnetic activity here except for the lighting and a bunch of trinkets. Something or someone shut the security down from inside,” Ayan agreed.
“Way inside. That kind of control can only be assumed from primary security sections and if I designed this station I would have put it much deeper inside the structure. Anyone who tried to fight their way in from the outside would be committing suicide.”
“What about people in cloaksuits?” Minh asked as they continued through the cavernous pedestrian reception lobby. “Or people coming in from the subways?” He continued, nodding at a ramp leading down towards a tram, it was strange seeing such an entry way empty, silent.
“Our cloaking systems have a good chance at working against those kinds of scanners, but they're not perfect. If this port has anything that can measure micro gravity, then those sentry guns would have started firing the moment we got to the top of the stairs,” Ayan said.
“Ah, guess it's good you didn't let me in on that detail before we strolled inside. I'm still going to blame you if I start turning grey before my time.” Minh replied quietly.
They approached the main interior observation window and stopped to look inside. The low lit yawning pit was several kilometres across and beneath them were retractable landing platforms, heavy grappler arms and wide docking bay doorways for as far as they could see. Two storeys above their level were dozens of collapsible lift tubes, made to extend to the smaller starliners and other public transit vessels as they stopped above to take on or drop off passengers. There were many observation areas as well, thick transparesteel windows that overlooked the normally bustling innards of the space port. As they looked on it was like seeing it frozen in time. Some ships were half docked, still in the grip of heavy grapplers, while others were still linked to boarding tunnels. One hung precariously over the side of a landing platform, held up by nothing but umbilical cables. Several of the vessels had been broken into or out of, their passengers either killed or free to roam the massive interior of the spaceport.
“Wow, I've never seen anything like it,” Minh said.
“Pretty cramped design up top.” Ayan commented. “I'd hate to direct traffic for this place.”
“I'm assuming only high priority transports get to use the upper linkage points, there's no way that could service all the starliners that come through the system,” Jason said as he closely watched the landing platforms for any movement at all. “If there are any resistance fighters they're hiding as well as we are.”
“I see three dropships down there on a southern platform, three levels down,” Oz pointed.
“Looks like someone put the boots on them. They're locked down,” Minh added. “Maybe the resistance actually got control of the port control systems?”
“That would be encouraging, but if that's the case why didn't they manage to get to the transmission bunker we just busted?” Oz asked.
“Movement!” Ayan interrupted. She highlighted it on the secondary display shared on their visors.
They all looked on at the aftermath of a small explosion and saw over twenty fully armoured Regent Galactic soldiers pull back, pressed onto a large, half extended landing platform with an older forty meter long, boxy general purpose starship. They hid behind the landing struts and several large crates as one of their number was picked apart by several blue bolts of weapon fire. At the same time over thirty Regent Galactic soldiers came into view through a transparesteel window, they were moving down a hallway towards the ramp leading to the platform, obviously coming to the rescue of their comrades.
“Quick, map the easiest way down there. If we hit them from behind it'll give whoever's firing on those soldiers a better chance,” Ayan said as she unslung her rifle.
“On it, this way,” Jason replied as he started running to the left.
They kept the same pace as they did when they were outside, though it seemed they were moving much more swiftly as the lightly gilded walls and hard granite floor passed by. Jason led them down two broad ramps and through several heavy bulkhead doors, the last of which was jammed half closed.
The firefight was in full swing as the first of the enemy came into view. From the cover of desks and counters, upturned heavy work tables and tool chests four squads of Regent Galactic soldiers, all marked with a green tree with three branches on their shoulders tried their best to keep whoever was just around the bend in the broad main corridor at bay.
“Position behind, looks like their armour is sealed so we won't have any luck with stun weaponry,” Oz said as the four of them spread out several meters behind the soldiers. It was easy to pick out the commander, he was at the rear with two other officers who were feverishly working at a terminal built into the wall with the assistance of a computing unit they had wired in through a busted panel.
“You're right. Looks like we'll have to use lethal force here, don't use your rifles unless you have to. Jason, what do you think they're trying to do here?” Ayan asked as she stopped to stand three meters behind the commanding officer, pointing her rifle at him and activating her black nanoblade with her free hand.
“Looks like there's some kind of software creating encryption layers as they break through. I can't see how they'll ever hack in.”
“Does the Holocaust Virus do that?”
“Not that I've seen. It's only as smart as the artificial intelligences that it corrupts, so who knows. Maybe the virus got lucky and infected something with an encryption speciality.” Jason stood at the ready behind two soldiers who had ducked behind a thick desk.
As the firefight continued Oz and Minh crept into the group of soldiers so they were standing behind troops closer to the center of the large reception area. As they crouched low to avoid being shot, Minh raised his hand and looked through the digital eye built into the middle knuckle, a feature he hadn't used since the All-Con War. “What the hell?” he exclaimed in a whisper. “Did you see that Oz?”
“Yup, that was an andie, stepped right out, took a shot to the shoulder but managed to gun down two Regent soldiers before it stepped back behind cover. Something's got that thing working on the right side.”
“Are you sure? We don't want to kill these soldiers without being sure they're not somehow working to free this world,” Ayan questioned emphatically.
“Do we really want to wait? These soldiers are marked with Regent Galactic emblems and the tree marking on their shoulder, that's West Watch. There's no question, these soldiers aren't on our side,” Oz replied.
Minh kept watching and after several moments saw an unarmoured human face, she looked nothing like the android police force that had, until then, been seen in control of the the virus infected machines they'd encountered on the planet. “I'm with Oz, I think I just saw a real resistance fighter.”
“Jason?” Ayan asked.
“I'll go with your call on this but my gut is telling me we should cut the Regent boys down.”
Ayan watched the lead officer carefully. She couldn't hear what he was saying, they were speaking over a private encrypted channel. His armour, with it's thickened under layer and dark grey plating was exactly what she'd seen of Regent Galactic while looking over recordings of fighting on Mount Elbrus. His gear was top notch, high end military equipment and from the looks of his soldiers they had had at least a few weeks training. She nodded to herself; “Go for the neck, it's the thinnest part of their armour. On three. One, two, three.” With a swing of her arm and a flick of her wrist the blade passed over his armour, cutting his neck half through, leaving a microscopic army of nanobots to finish the cut and leap back to her nanoblade.
She moved on to the nearest officer, cutting below his neck, into his shoulder instead. Her quarry spun on her heel, one hand going up to cover the growing wound as she looked for her invisible assailant.
Ayan's blade moved on to the last of the trio she stood behind, using her shortened blade to cut his head cleanly from his shoulders. She looked to where Oz, Minh and Jason were at their own grisly work in time to see Minh running towards her as Oz felled a fourth target. “Drop a grenade on your way out!” he told Oz as he took up
