does the system say about containment breaches?”
“The pressure drop that’ll happen when someone busts out will force the nearest emergency door to close. They’ll have to bust through one compartment after another.”
“Good, nothing to worry about behind us then.”
Frost turned away from the makeshift access panel and ordered his people forward. He was keenly aware of the absence of sound coming from the next room.
It took them minutes to catch up to Jason and the rest of the invasion force. Jason was back in his encounter suit, and the third surviving suit stood beside him in front of a thick bulkhead door. “They know we’re comin’,” Frost stated.
“Open fire whenever you like, Gunnery Chief,” Jason said as Triton crew members rushed around in front of the heavily armoured encounter suits, placing directional charges two metres away from the bulkhead door.
“Aye, time to pick a fight,” he growled as he fired all the available weapons on the suit. The armoured door in front of them immediately began to degrade as a hail of particle weapons fire assaulted the metal. Triton soldiers took cover behind portable energy shields set several meters behind the suits. After a few seconds the air around them read over two hundred degrees, not enough to stress anyone’s vacsuit. Frost couldn’t help but smile a little as he heard the encounter suit’s environmental systems kick in. “At least it’s a dry heat.”
Several chuckles came in reply to his wise crack. The door surface had turned white right to the endges and Jason asked; “Think we’re ready?”
“Just a little more. It’s still loosening up on the other side.”
The sounds of warping deck plates and creaking metal added to the relentless auditory pounding of their suit’s weaponry until Frost finally saw the temperature he wanted at the door surface and he stopped. The other two encounter suits stopped as well. “Check energy shields,” Frost ordered. With a glance he could see all three suits were at over ninety percent. It was still best for each pilot to report in regardless.
“Ninety one percent, good,” Jason said.
“Ninety three point five,” reported the third pilot, Mark Hunsler.
“Blow it!” The directional charges exploded, sending most of the white hot bulkhead door down the hallway ahead of them in thousands of white hot chunks. “Cover fire!” Frost shouted, relishing the feeling of engaging in a straight firefight instead of resorting to hacks and work arounds. While soldiers fired between the encounter suits, Frost, Jason and Mark led the way, marching forward with most of their generated power ready to recharge their energy shields. They were taking a fortified position that the enemy had hours to prepare.
As they expected, there were explosive charges in the walls ahead, and the hail of weapons fire didn’t disable all of them. All the suits were rocked hard as the main hallway erupted. Jason’s suit reported a full depth pressure break, indicating that his suit couldn’t seal properly. “Fall back, lad! You won’t survive another blast.”
“There’s no way they’ll risk the structural integrity of the ship with another blast.”
“Fall back you git! I’m not going to tell your wife you got slagged because you were too stubborn to fall back.”
Jason didn’t argue, he simply took several steps back and turned his suit away from the advancing group.
Frost watched his shields charge back up from twenty percent and wished his tactical scanners would calibrate faster. The burst of hot metal and following explosions had blinded everyone. Particle scoops mounted on the shoulders of the encounter suits kicked in, dragging all the smoke filled air into the compression systems so they could be dumped into the dematerialization systems and converted into energy or redirected towards the nanobot resivour to be used to repair the suit’s ablative armour layer. The air cleared and the wreck of the hall ahead became visible. “These grunts are smarter than I thought. We’ve got six metres of no man’s land.” Frost griped. The deck plating was so badly damaged that even his command and control unit chirped with an environmental warning and painted it red on his head’s up display.
“Yup. We’re going to have to be careful. No loader or encounter suits either,” Jason said.
Frost looked at it for a moment longer and chuckled. “I’ve got it. Might not be able to run one of these big encounter suits across, but I know how we can get loaders across.” He didn’t wait to discuss it with anyone, but stepped up to the edge of the severely damaged section, turned and let the suit fall backwards.
“Frost, don’t you dare!” Jason shouted, uncharacteristically angry.
He let the suit fall back and extended his arms over his head. It collided with the weakened deck plating below, forcing much of it down into the room beneath, but the hands of the suit caught the edge of a structural beam. He adjusted his grip and checked the integrity of the metal. With a nod he said; “There ya go lad, a really expensive bridge.”
“You could have hovered over it, you moron,” Jason shot back.
“Aye, but then what would everyone not lucky enough to be in a suit do? Most vacsuit armour doesn’t come with thrusters, in case you dinna notice.”
“But the loader suits-“
“Right about a meter too short with their arms up. Stop your belly acheing and get ready to cross.” Frost double checked the seal on his vacsuit and opened the chest cavity door. “Going to miss this rig though.”
“I could let you pilot mine, sir,” offered Mark Hunsler. “Why, that’s awful kind of you, lad, I think I’ll take you up-“ Frost ducked as he heard weapons’ fire and ran for the line of Triton soldiers. His vacsuit reported a hit right in the middle of his back as he limped for dear life over the thick legs of the encounter suit.
His allies opened fire with a vengeace, and the air was alive with bright, deadly rounds as he finally made it to the safety of a mobile energy shield. He’d forgotten to activate his vacsuit energy shielding, and the back of his lightly armoured uniform was so badly damaged he may as well as have been wearing a bed sheet. He turned with his sidearm in both hands and felt something strike the tip of his sidearm. Frost followed it in the air and he realized it was a grenade just as it went off outside of lethal range. The energy shield in front of them absorbed most of the blast, and the front of his vacsuit protected the rest. “Damn that’s gotta be the luckiest thing I’ve ever seen,” he said as he fired several particle rounds down the hall.
“I didn’t even see it until you batted it back, epic reflexes sir!” laughed one of the soldiers beside him.
“No reflexes there, lass. You’re just fightin’ beside an Irishman on a good day!” Frost laughed back as the air cleared, revealing a retreating group of soldiers. The scanner in his vacsuit mapped the way ahead, indicating that there was a broad elevator column. “I’d wager your trunk line’s right there, Jason.”
“Yup. Move up! First fire team get across the… bridge!”
When most of the troops had crossed and they set up several portable energy shields as cover Frost took Mark’s place in the last remaining encounter suit. “Kind of ya, lad. Don’t get yourself killed out there,” Frost said as the chest piece closed and he watched the Lieutennant, who was one of the night commanders of the Gunnery Deck normally, take a spare rifle from one of the rear soldiers. Frost knew that most of the people in the unit were painfully aware that he was the slowest among them. In the suit he was fine, and he was one of the best power suit pilots there, but outside of a loader or encounter suit, he’d hold them all back.
After he hovered across the gap he took the lead, and it was no surprise to him when several grenades came bouncing into the mouth of the hallway. He was well ahead of the rest of the unit, so he let the energy shielding take the hit. When they had all gone off the shielding was down to forty two percent. “Nothin’. These grunts just aren’t ready,” he said as he marched ahead. As soon as he came to the end of the hall he sighted several soldiers and opened fire. They had erected emergency barriers that gave them waist high cover, but none of it lasted long against the saw blade like shots from his main particle weapon.
“Teams one and two! Move up!” Jason called from the rear.
Frosts eyes went wide as he caught sight of several soldiers brandishing a weapon he hadn’t seen since his own time in the military. Expensive, dangerous, and difficult to handle, arc cannons were a brutal, last ditch infantry weapon. They required an exoskeleton to carry, an extreme environment protection suit to fire, and to anyone looking from a great distance it looked like the soldier was firing a thick lightening bolt, but a good arc cannon could strike its target with a thirty thousand degree focused shot.
“Back off!” Frost shouted as he opened fire at the armoured units coming out from the left hand hallway, forcing them back. He was just about to open fire on the right hand hallway when his suit alerted him to being struck with an electrical charge. It was the precursor to being struck with a plasma jet, and every alarm went off in the next moment. His shields were down to three percent, the ablaitive armour on his right hand side was gone, and one of his secondary particle guns had been destroyed. It was like being struck by lightening, and the only
