“I'm not betting on that just yet. These raiders hit this installation hard, didn't care much for keeping it in any kind of usable shape either.”
“Commander Radics and I agree. Here's what's going to happen. I'm going to offer Captain Valance's terms once. His orders are to offer terms, disarm and detain if they accept. If they resist we kill them all. There could be other raiders in the installation, we have to make an example.”
“Harsh,” whispered one of the soldiers beside him.
“Realistic. He doesn't want us to risk our lives just so a prisoner can turn on us later,” Commander Radics reinforced. His habit of pronouncing every word he spoke with clinical diction grated on some people, but he couldn't help it. As a shape changing issyrian he had learned to speak the most common galactic languages in college and he spoke it as he learned it; clinically. “You have the honours Alaka.”
Alaka addressed the raiders on their own proximity radio frequency. “This is Commander Alaka Murlen of the Free Ship Triton. We are offering you one chance to cease your boarding operations and surrender arms. Our forces have you completely surrounded.”
Everything stopped, raiders looked around in alarm. “I don't see anyone!” announced one alarmed marauder.
“There's no way, I don't see anything,” said another after he looked in all directions.
“This is a bluff. It's the workers trying to scare us off,” said the female voice, silencing all others. “It's must be why they stopped jamming us. Get back to work.”
Alaka fired a quick burst from his beam cannon at the raiders trying to cut through the heavy interior doors and took several quick steps to the side. The stream of bright blue light startled the raiders and the cutters scurried away from the door. The warning shot had left a perfectly round four centimetre wide scorch on the doorway, not enough to weaken the metal but enough to prove a presence.
Three raiders opened fire in Alaka's general direction. One shot struck his shoulder, leaving a red hot mark visible to everyone before the massive nafalli managed to dive behind a stack of heavy crates.
“They've got some kind of cloaks! Fire at the open air and watch for hits!” shouted the female raider as she sprayed an arc of blue hot energy rounds between her comrades.
Victor dropped onto his belly and returned fire from the prone position. She was almost behind cover when he and a few other Triton soldiers scored flaring, scorching hits that broke through the skin of her old vacsuit.
“Jarisca's down! What do we do?” asked one panicked raider.
“Keep firing you idiot! Like we have any other choice!”
“If you lay down arms we will allow you to surrender peacefully,” Lieutenant Commander Radics announced over the proximity radio in response.
The air was filled with bright yellow, red, and blue energetic bursts as the Triton troops took cover and returned fire precisely, taking their time, each man or woman disabling or killing only the threat nearest them. “What do we do Commander?” asked one of Alaka's group as he ducked between two tall crates. He'd been shot twice. The first hit had done no damage, the second had heated his armour and vacsuit severely enough to leave third degree burns. Victor's screen marked him as being under the influence of localized pain killers and partially disabled.
“Shoot to kill,” Radics replied before Alaka had a chance.
“Shoot to kill.” Alaka agreed. The nafalli had crept behind several crates, taking him out of the direct line of fire.
Victor had ducked down nearby and couldn't help but wonder what would possess a group of people, especially raiders, to stand their ground and fight when they couldn't detect their attackers. He lined up his first shot, a marauder who was firing from bended knee, concentrating on firing into the open air at waist level. It was futile. Only five Triton soldiers had been noticeably hit, the injuries were minor, and they had all taken cover. With a quick burst from his high energy pulse rifle Victor riddled the raider with rounds from chest to helmet. He crumpled to the deck as atmosphere escaped from his suit in a rush. Mechanically he lined up three more such targets and with trained, cold precision he squeezed the trigger, struck each target with lethal energy blasts in turn and watched as they each fell.
Alaka only opened fire after lining up more than one target. As Victor went about his butcher's work he could see the stream of deadly light erupt from the nafalli Commander's beam weapon in bursts. Each burst resulted in the burning, cutting death of an enemy raider.
The entire incident lasted one minute and nineteen seconds according to Victor's vacsuit heads up display but it felt so much longer. By the time the last three raiders finally dropped their rifles and put their hands up the large storage and sorting area was filled with bodies. He followed Alaka's lead as he moved in to lower a restraint ring around the nearest surrendering raider. The ring was a thin circular strip that expanded around a captive's torso and squeezed around their forearms or wrists to pin them to their backs or sides. It was an Earth designed device, very easy to use and impossible to escape.
“No! Stay back!” the raider shouted frantically.
“Shut the fuck up Arien!” one of his comrades cursed.
Across the clearing Victor watched as one of the surrendering raiders leapt onto a Triton boarder and held tightly. “Get off!” the squad member, Lizelle, screamed.
Victor's heads up display flashed red and marked the raider atop her as an explosive hazard an instant before he and Lizelle were obliterated by a blinding explosion. He lost his footing and toppled to the deck. His suit showed no damage but the squad status screen alerted him to the death of eight members and injury of fourteen. Alaka had been knocked out and Lieutenant Commander Radics had been placed in stasis after his suit re-sealed and severed what was left of his ruined hand at the wrist.
At a glance it appeared that all the raiders, dead and alive, had exploded with the force of at least three grenades apiece. The Triton crew's vacsuits provided field triage, administering localized anaesthetics, putting the dead and dying into stasis and resealing breaches. He and a handful of others were left with minor armour damage. It was as though time had frozen as he looked around at the charred and broken storage area.
Crates made for heavy gravity environments had busted open, small craters marked dozens of places where the raider's bodies had detonated and the squads picked themselves up off the deck. He couldn't help but cock his head as he watched one of his squad mates lower himself from a scattered pile of crates. He had been hurled up to the top of the three meter pile but somehow his armour had completely protected him. The black surface of the plating was still dented, scratched and cracked, but according to Victor's visor Junior Sergeant Mills was in perfect health.
“What's the word Vic? What do we do?” asked Jenny Machad. He realized then that he was the ranking officer.
“Clever Dream, Cold Reaver. This is Sergeant Victor Davis declaring an emergency.” His own voice surprised him, he didn't expect to sound panicked. He made a conscious effort to calm down before he continued. “We've put down the raiders but they were carrying some kind of bomb we couldn't detect until the last minute. We've got a lot of people down. Forwarding my squad status screen to you.”
“This is the Cold Reaver. We see it Sergeant. The Clever Dream is currently engaged in the field and we've come under fire. There was a squad hidden somewhere nearby, we've closed off the ship entrances but can't leave.”
Victor looked at his squad status summary and at the devastated storehouse all around him. It looked like something had come along and bombed the hell out of the place. Whole stacks of crates had been reduced to rubble, the floor was cratered, unidentifiable debris was scattered about and two large hatchways had been completely bowed and twisted. The area couldn't be secured, especially without reinforcements. His squad status screen told him that Alaka had taken a head injury and only seven of his people were mobile.
He looked towards the field medic software installed in all their vacsuits and hesitated for a moment. It was set to treat and preserve. The next urgency level would treat everyone using reconstructive nanobots, taking more risks. If it worked they might be back up to nineteen able boarding troops. With the fighter squadrons busy, the Clever Dream engaged, the Cold Reaver pinned down and the Triton outside of the barrier there was no way to get reinforcements.
An idea struck him. “Have you been able to communicate with the survivors barricaded inside?” He asked the Cold Reaver.
“No, as far as we can tell they've got life support and that's about it. There's also an EMP shield in place,
