Green light filled the hold. The tether at his shoulder released and the main ramp dropped open so fast he could feel the vibration of the door clashing against the deck through his feet.
Alaka moved out first, leading with the fighter class beam weapon. “Deploy and get clear. Captain wants the Clever Dream back aboard Triton as soon as possible,” he ordered.
It was so much like the dozens of simulations Victor had participated in over the past seven days that he caught himself having one of the problems that Chief Vega had warned him and the newcomers about. For just a moment he expected it to be a safe environment, where he only had to take his simulation node off to return to the comfort of the bunks or observation deck.
That wasn't the case, not this time. There was no simulation node to take off his temple or older sim goggles to pull off. The deck he was walking on was real, the inertial dampener and other compensator systems built into his boarding suit were really straining against twelve times normal gravity. The colossal, weathered, darkened hangar was a real place. He couldn't help but look outside at the field of wrecked debris and meteors drifting by outside. The stars and asteroid field were blurred by the obscuring field in the distance and there were really starfighters engaging raiders just kilometres away. At any moment one of those enemy ships could turn and fire into the open landing bay.
His encounter sensors came online and offered a map of the installation. He selected it by staring at the activation icon and thinking about it. The intelligence they'd gotten was right. An active firefight was underway nearby. One of the last squad members fell face first to the deck. Victor heard the air rush out of his lungs.
Alaka turned and regarded the fallen boarder. “I told you, if you don't know what you're doing opt out. Your grav compensators should be set to auto adjust, there's no need to do it manually.”
The soldier stood, catching his breath and getting to his feet. “I'm sorry sir, I saw the gravity rating on the briefing and thought I could do better setting it myself.”
“Next time you think you know better assume you're wrong and check with me first. Let's move,” Alaka replied firmly, turning and leading the group at a run towards a broad service door that had been blown wide open. The forensic analysis suite flashed results in Victor's lower left field of view, informing him that an explosion had taken place several days before, had injured four people and was perpetrated from the outside. Further evidence of much more recent small arms fire told the rest of the story as they ran down the wide cargo hall.
In his rear view he could see the Clever Dream lift off, turn nimbly and blast away from the station, shaking the structure under foot. The Cold Reaver remained behind so they could have transportation back to Triton or to another part of the station. The two squadrons, led by Lieutenant Commander Radics, were already running at a fantastic pace towards another pair of loading doors.
The deck plating underfoot was uneven where a pair of wide treads had run over it countless times. Walls to either side showed signs of serious damage, mostly from small arms fire, but there was evidence of grenade usage. The installation structure could take that kind of abuse but fine wiring and tubing secured along the walls were another story. Liquid had frozen solid ahead, slicking the hall and one wall for several metres. There was no atmosphere, no life support at all thanks to the damage done there and deeper inside the station.
“Start scanning for active comm channels,” Alaka ordered mildly in Victor's new subdermal comm. He was still getting used to hearing everyone's private communications like they were talking straight into his ear, but he always wanted a hidden communicator, so when he found out they were being offered to security team members he jumped at the chance.
Keeping pace with the front of the squadron right behind Alaka as he ran down the broad hallways he brought up the communications interface and set it to scan. “Search and select any conversations using combat terminology,” he ordered the system.
The emergency lights spaced along the sides of the hallway seemed to whip by as the two squads made a hasty rush towards the heat signatures ahead. Thanks to the armour Alaka's squads wore they wouldn't give off any thermal readings. The only sign the raiders would have that someone was coming was the landing of the Cold Reaver and Clever Dream.
“One channel found,” his suit informed him as it highlighted a weak proximity radio signal.
“Select and enhance.”
Though faint, he could hear the raiders speaking. They thought they couldn't be overheard because their proximity radios were set to short range, but there was no way they could foresee the level of sophistication and organization that made serving on Triton such a pleasure. Using the receivers in the entire squad's armoured suits Victor enhanced the proximity radio transmissions to perfect clarity and forwarded the channel to Alaka. “We're linked in.”
“Nice job Victor,” Alaka congratulated.
He knew it was, they shouldn't be able to hear anything for another four hundred meters, but there it was, the sound of one of the raiders asking; “-would anyone land and just take off? What are they doing putting two gunships on the deck then pulling one back?”
“I don't care, watch the cargo doors behind and keep cutting. I want to see the core of this installation by the end of the day,” replied a firm female voice.
“Why don't we just seal up the cargo doors? Nothing to worry about if they can't get at us.”
“We need all our gear to cut into Main Operations, besides it would take hours to secure the doors,”
Alaka held up a hand and a visual order for everyone to halt was broadcast across their heads up displays. “They don't know who or how many people are coming, let's take advantage.” He crept towards the corner and poked the very tip of his beam weapon out into the open, using the barrel's sight to see what was down the hall ahead. The data spread to the rest of the squadron, mapping the two hundred seventeen meters of hallway and the large equipment storage area beyond.
There were forty two people in various styles of sealed vacsuits. Their equipment was piled beside one of the main armoured doors leading deeper into the installation and several of them were working to cut through while the others stood guard. The weapons they held were compared against a list of known arms and identified in seconds. Victor remembered a tip from one of the tutorials he'd run when he first started working on his qualifications; Don't get bogged down with details. Scan through the offered information, take in what you need and examine the more pertinent data as you notice it.
He scrolled through the list of arms and nodded to himself. They had one stationary slug thrower that would be useless in the heavy gravity, several plasma rifles that suffered from the same issue and they were piled up with the rest of the equipment. Most of the raiders walked around with energy weapons that would work in the heavy gravity but wouldn't be as effective against their armour and personal shielding.
“Stealth up. We're going to surround them before I offer the Captain's terms,” Alaka ordered.
That was Victor's favourite part. The stealth systems developed by Freeground. He could stand right in front of someone and they couldn't tell he was there unless they bumped into him. Before his eyes the entire squadron, even Alaka, as massive as he was, disappeared. His heads up display marked everyone's location, so they wouldn't trip over each other, but to anyone else they were just gone.
“Move in, touch nothing. Let nothing touch you.”
The squads had practised the manoeuvre and ran in spaced out double file, watching their step with the assistance of the stealth system, which highlighted small objects and hot spots where they could give themselves away. The stealth systems were worthless if you weren't careful. Bumping into a loose bulkhead or kicking a broken bracket on the deck could alert others to your presence.
They ran right between the raiders standing watch with rifles at the ready beside the doors leading into the warehousing section. Victor's heads up display offered more forensic data but he knew what it was as he took a position behind a trio of armed raiders in bulky, discoloured vacuum suits. The firefight they had detected on their way in was over for the time being. The defenders had retreated behind the heavy interior doors the raiders worked to cut through after several of them had been killed. The corpses were piled in a corner, all wearing Caran Enterprises sealed work suits.
The north eastern quadrant of his tactical display came to life, marking the other two squadrons. It was no surprise that Alaka and Radics had been coordinating all along, and the other squads were rushing in the large warehouse space in stealth mode. They fell into place as quickly and smoothly as Alaka's squadrons had and in moments the raiders were unknowingly surrounded by twenty eight heavily armed Triton soldiers.
“Nice having the upper hand for a change, isn't it Vic?” chuckled Marc Burgess, one of the few people who had made it to Triton with him from Pandem.
