// Posting with permission from Boss, as I will be taking command of the Reliant until he returns.
Captain Joseph Brooks shook his head. Mason was a friend of his; he was sad to see that things had to happen this way.
What made him even more sad was his new assignment. He was to take command of the LNS Reliant effective immediately. He looked down at his feet and thought to himself silently. Why? Why did it have to pan out like this? He inhaled deeply and sighed. His new executive officer walked up to him in the passenger hold of their shuttle.
"Lieutenant Commander Eric Mathers, sir," said the officer, saluting. "I've been assigned as your new XO. As much as I'm glad to be serving under you, sir, it's going to be... something else without Mason..."
"I understand, commander," Brooks said. "It's hard for all of us."
Eric nodded and pulled out a datapad for his commanding officer. "I'll need you to fill in the information here, sir. It's for our records."
Brooks took the pad and began filling out the form:
Mason sat on the cot in his cell and counted the number of tally marks on the wall for the thousandth time. There were still four. No more, no fewer. He sighed. The day of his execution was two days away.
"...I just sort of shrugged my shoulders, you know? No point in fighting the inevitable. I mean, hell, I was going to be dead in a few short days. There isn't a whole lot to do, physically, anyways, in one of those cells. I had some time to think. Pacing got old fast, and so did rehashing that scenario over and over, and over. I did what I had to. It doesn't make what I did right though.
"I don't think I slept at all those four days."
*******************
"Mathers, hurry up! If we can't get it all loaded, leave it! We don't have time to spare; everything has to be in place soon, and I mean soon!" Johnson hefted a steel case onto a hovering platform and stacked it with about a dozen others just like it. Mathers placed several large spools of cord and a smaller box on top, then waved to the Marines guarding the door. "Let's roll this out. Boxes one through seven go on the power conduits at these junction boxes. Eight through twelve go on the consoles here, here, here, and here. One for turrets, one for cameras, one for doors, and one for the shields. Oh, and this one" he tapped the smaller box, "Goes on the backup reactor console here. Sergeant Hollis, is your team ready?"
The leader of the Marines nodded grimly. "It's treason, sir, but Captain Mason did nothing wrong. We're in this for the whole ride." The rest of the Marines glared fiercely, weapons at port arms, before giving present arms as one with a roar. Johnson nodded. "Good. Let's load the shuttle."
The shuttle touched down in the hangar safely. Fairbanks was made to keep people in, not out. Several of the Marines were dressed in stealth kit, others in body armor, and a handful in loadmaster's coveralls. These last quickly started unloading the boxes as the stealthed marines made their way to the hangar control room. Once there, they patched the security cameras in a repeating loop to hide the shuttle as it disgorged a small army or fully kitted Marines.
"Lieutenant Johnson? We've secured the control room. Squads to sites Delta and Foxtrot are on their way. The rest are holding for distraction teams to site November. Shouldn't be long. We've got the football here, and I'll take it to its destination myself."
"Good. We don't have a lot of time before someone notices our being here. Let's get this done fast, gentlemen."
****************
"...That's the last one. Four and nine could have gone better, but no use dwelling on that now." They would have time to reflect on the cooling bodies later. "Non-critical personnel fall back to the shuttle and keep it nice and tidy."
Mathers, Stevens, and the stealthed Marines headed for the detention block.
"Block 320, cell 439. Get it open, get him out, and get the hell out of Dodge." A team of four Marines broke off, carrying the small box with them, and sprinted down a corridor as the remainder of the team kept going towards the control center. Another team of four prepared to breach the door as the other eight barricaded all but one of the doors to the security team barracks. In front of the last one, they assembled an autoturret and several specialized Claymore-type antipersonnel mines.
"GO, GO, GO!" There was a shattering bang as the control room door was breached, followed by a flashbang, a smoke grenade, and four Marines. Ten seconds later, all of the controllers were facedown on the floor with growing lumps on their heads. Another ten seconds, and the recently deceased door was shuttered by blast doors. "Control room squad, this is Hollis. Someone better be ready to answer that comm. Calvin, you get on it."
A moment later the comm array came alive with the voice of Juneau Shipyard. "Fairbanks, this is Juneau. What's going on?"
"Uh...had a slight weapons malfunction. But, uh,
everything's perfectly all right now. We're fine. We're all fine here,
now, thank you. How are you?"
"Fairbanks, what the hell? We're sending a ship over."
"Uh, uh, negative. We had a reactor leak here now. Give us a few
minutes to lock it down. Large leak...very dangerous."
"Who is this? What's your operating number?"
Calvin glared at the comm array, brought up his rifle, and blew it into slag. "Boring conversation anyway. Sergeant Hollis, we're gonna have company!"
"Damn." Mason's cell was in the highest-security section on-station, constructed out of steel plating that would put a cruiser to shame. Cutting in was out of the question for the tools they had brought, and the console was isolated from any network on-station. It was designed to open one way, and one way only: By a complete biometrics scan of the individual responsible for the cell block. At that moment, the station's computer realized that something was amiss and sounded the alarm. Seconds later came a deafening explosion as the Claymores shredded anyone in the way, punctuated by a deeper thud...thud...thud of the autoturret by the barracks door.
"Son of a... I hope..." Gonzalez checked the console "...Jason Martin wasn't near the door." His wingman nodded. They needed at least his head and thumb intact to get the force field down and get Mason out.
"Barracks team, please tell me Jason Martin is still more or less intact. We need him over here to get Mason out. It's either that or get one of those power siphons for the shield, and we do not need the defensive guns back on."
*************
"You, in the barracks who're still alive. If you want to stay that way, you will obey my every word to the letter. Where is Jason Martin?" Corporal Harris strode past the now-silent turret that still tracked the lead man in the room, rifle pointed at the same man's head. The smoke from the detonation curled around behind her, lending an almost surreal aspect to the devastation wrought. She grabbed the man's throat with one hand and let the armor's servos take the weight of lifting him off the ground. With each word, her hand clamped down just a little tighter. "Where. Is. Jason. Martin?"
*ulk* "Bunk...five!" His hands scrabbled around her fingers, trying vainly to relieve the pressure to both carotid arteries. Harris squeezed harder, and he went limp. Pivoting at the waist, she hurled him into the wall, hearing a snap as his left leg bent awkwardly under. Two of the other Marines in the corridor stepped in and headed for bunk five, directly across from the doorway. It had taken the full brunt of the shrapnel and collapsed. Blood pooled under the wreckage.
Harris took a step back and leaned on one leg as she raised her wrist com to her face and triggered the connection. "Gonzalez, this is Harris. Uh, yeah...that might be a small problem. I'll see how much of him is intact, but there was a small incident with a Claymore..." Gonzalez swore.
As it turned out, there wasn't a whole lot left of the man. Harris and the team's medic carefully extracted one thumb and part of the head. One eye was mostly intact, though with massive hemorrhaging throughout. Harris and the medic just looked at each other. "There's no fecking way that'll work. Commander Mathers...things got tricky. The man to get our man out is now Kibble and we don't have the gear to take down the shield safely."
"Do it unsafely then. We don't have time. The vessel from Juneau is about fifteen minutes out. Looks like a gunboat with fighter escort. Need I say more?" Mathers cut the link. "Johnson, any luck on those defensive guns?"
"Nah. I'm COMSCAN, not COMSEC. I could get through the security, but not in the next five minutes. Uh, hey, what about the corridor turrets for riot suppression and escape deterrence? Those don't pack lethals. Shouldn't be as strongly firewalled as the base guns." Mathers nodded. It wouldn't be very useful to slow down boarding forces, but it could confuse them long enough for the recovery teams to get back aboard and maybe even lift off...
"Do it fast.' Johnson grunted and settled in to hack through to the turret controls. A few moments later "I'm in. Reacti...damnit. Those siphons on the conduits are sucking the turrets dry."
Mathers thought a second and then fingered his headset again. "Hollis, I may have your solution. Pull as many siphons off of the weapons conduits as you need. We'll need the guns to slow down our company, and you should be able to take down the shield with them."
As soon as the siphons were pulled, the turrets started their bootup routine. Mathers knew from experience that it would take about five to seven minutes to go fully on-line. They had about that much time to get Mason onto the shuttle. "Johnson, set those turrets to fire on any movement, otherwise our company will probably not be engaged. It's risky, but right now I don't see any other options. Do you?"
Johnson shook his head. "No, sir, you're right. Hollis, you have five minutes. Get Mason, get out."
"Copy that. Siphons'll be working in about thirty seconds."
4:47
Stevens glanced at the scan readout and turned pale. "Uh, sir, that gunboat's gone from scopes. I think they're docking." A check of the bay status board confirmed this. So much for five minutes. Mathers thought, and slammed the breach alarm. A pleasant female alto began informing all personnel that boarders were present on-station and defensive measures were just a few minutes away from being ready.
****************
The power status console registered red lights on Mason's cell; the siphons were working. Hollis checked the time readout on his wrist: 2:17 "Shield's mostly disseminated...but this might sting still. Hold on, sir." With that, he thrust one armored hand through the field and grabbed Mason's shirt. Sparks danced across the surface of his armor, and Mason sighed. "Okay, okay, this might sting a lot." Hollis yanked, and Mason sailed through the field, clothing charred slightly and every hair on his body on end. He grimaced, uneager to try that again any time soon.
2:05
Two of Hollis' Marines picked Mason up by the armpits and started sprinting in the direction of the bay while the rest, along with Hollis, moved to intercept Juneau's team. "Control Room, we have Mason. Let's get the hell out of Dodge while we still can."
"We turned a corner and saw decimation. There were blast marks, holes, carbon scoring on all the walls. Blood too, near the holes. That's when the base AI let us know that the turrets were coming online ahead of schedule. The outermost ring of defenses was working and clearly lethal. The problem was, we had to move to get out."
"Captain Mason, I need you to run towards the hangar as fast as you possibly can. Don't think, don't look back, and whatever you do, don't stop running! Whatever you might...hear...don't stop." I gave him a shove and he took off like a bat out of hell. We were right behind him.
*************** Private 1st Class Jones
"I didn't look back either. We all knew the risks. We all knew the chance of us getting killed was pretty high. It's what we signed up for. We didn't sign up expecting to get shot in the back by a remorseless AI that we told to kill anything that moves.
"But we went anyways. We did it to get Mason out alive. And we got him out. Me, Hollis, Commander Mathers, and Lieutenant Johnson. Everyone else was cut down either by the turrets or by the Marines on that gunboat. Those who died kept their creed: Semper Fidelis - Always Faithful."
Gunnery Sergeant Hollis
"We hurtled through the corridors, capping turrets as quick as we could. Most of them had to swivel all the way around to draw a bead on us, thank God, but a few... I had to watch as my best friend's faceplate buckled and shattered under a hail of armor-piercing bullets. Had to watch as men I'd known for years, who I'd come to trust as explicitly as my own arms hit the ground, cracked and holed armor oozing brown oil mixed with red blood. I didn't have time to dwell on it.
"Corporal Marshall took a KILJOY to the chest--a KInetic Lance, Jacketed, Othenium-Yttrium. It's pretty much a high-tech speargun that can pin a starfighter to a wall without really trying. Against the relatively soft power armor Marshall was wearing... The lance went right through without stopping. Those things fire fast. Around 2,200 meters a second fast. It literally turned Marshall inside out as the vacuum behind the lance inhaled. It's not pretty to watch, especially when you realize it's also decapitated the private behind him.
"I must have tripped something as I stepped into the hangar again, because there was a roar, a tornado of flash-heated air, and I was lying on the far side, staring up into an oncoming rain of twisted metal. So much for the shuttle. I tried to stand, but the left leg actuators weren't working. I reached down and forced the leg into a semblance of a standing pose and hobbled my way towards the last remaining undamaged ship in the hangar. A Liberty gunboat, lately of Juneau, now about to be our way off this hellhole. I yelled at Jones to charge the plasma cutter and shoved Mason behind some crates that were mostly undamaged. The officers, Mathers and Johnson, stood ready to give covering fire as Jones sliced his way into the airlock. I looked at the nameplate on her bow: LNS Redemption. I smiled at the irony."
"We broke into the gunboat and I told Johnson, well, asked, rather to please close the blast doors near where we broke in. Simple things like not evacuating the ship when we lifted and burned jets out. I made my clumsy way down a corridor that was entirely too small to the engineering bay to strip off my armor, which had decided to start shutting down systems in response to draining power and hydraulic oil. Systems I needed if I was going to keep wearing the monkey suit. I pulled the helmet off and set it on the bench, then got to work on the rest. Jones was securing the ship while Mathers took the bridge. Johnson took Mason to the med bay and stuck him in an autodoc, then took over comm.
"I'd just started on my left ankle when there was a rustle behind me. Very soft, but there. I quickly ducked and was rewarded with a shot that grazed the side of my head, hit the hull plating in front of me, and gave a small whumph with shrapnel. I swung my left arm around behind me, trying to swat whoever it was. I do remember wishing for the 360 vision and protection against just this sort of thing afforded by the helmet on the bench beside me. My wild swing, ineffective though it was, did inform me where my opponent was; about two feet out of my reach, having leaped back after the failed attack. I stood up, turned and groaned inwardly as two hydraulic lines servicing my legs popped out of their sockets. Short of falling over, I was pretty much rooted in place. I reached back with my right and pulled the assault rifle from its magnetized resting place while simultaneously moving my left arm up to block the shots I was sure to follow. Based on the sound, the weapon was a silenced Detroit Arms Enforcer 3 holdout pistol, and certainly containing illegal ammunition based on the furrow along my head and the explosion when it hit the bulkhead behind me."
The next shot punched through his arm plating and broke the radius in three places before detonating.
"My arm hung useless as pain ravaged my brain. I brought down the assault rifle and squeezed the trigger until the handgrip twisted, staccato bursts of rifle fire slamming into my attacker's arm, side, and leg. He stumbled forwards a few paces when my rifle ran dry and I flung it aside. My hand came up and gripped his throat, squeezed. His jaw dislocated, and I barely noticed a slight blue glow from his eyes through the redness in my own. I bore down, and before my suit gave out completely I heard a number of sharp cracks as three of his cervical vertebrae splintered.
"I just stood there. I didn't really have a choice, since just as his neck broke my armor failed entirely. One very expensive paperweight with an extremely damaged human inside. I thought to myself Well, ****. Can someone come down here and get me out of this!?"
