This is Not a Drill

[HexyLon]

The concourse had become a furnace. Heat from packed bodies, shouting voices, and the humming voltage of pure panic pressed in on all sides. Natalie crouched behind the barricade with three others, shield up, sweat stinging her eyes.
She recognized none of the people surging toward them now — not the tech crews, not the regulars from loading bays or recyclers. This was the rest of the station: the squeezed-out, the exhausted, the forgotten. And they were boiling over.

A second wrench clanged off the wall beside her.

“They’re scattering west!” shouted one of the deckhands, barely audible over the wall of noise. “Corridor 4-A is gonna jam!”

“No!”Natalie barked, jabbing a finger toward a side shaft. "Divert them through maintenance six! It’s bypassed on the standard pathing — they’ll flow instead of jam. Do it now, or we’ll have crush trauma in under a minute!”

The deckhand blinked, then bolted.
Her earpiece chirped. Stilson’s voice crackled in, rough and loud:

“Vaughn. Dozer’s just hit the concourse. Visual confirmation — Olhauzer’s being dragged toward maintenance sector two. We think they’re gunning for lockout access.”

Natalie grimaced. Sector two... that’s the junction node. If they got Olhauzer into the maintenance core and locked it down, they could reroute half the damn station’s access. And the docks would go dark with it.
Another buzz in her earpiece.

“We can’t chase both. Either we secure the shipyard now or stop them from taking Olhauzer. You’re closest, Vaughn. You call it. But I need you in motion inside thirty seconds.”

Natalie looked toward the riot’s thinning edge. The smarter ones had already peeled off down side corridors — not running, but moving with purpose. This isn’t chaos anymore, she realized. They’re organizing.
She keyed into the local comm net and caught Dozer’s signal — a brief flare of motion near the stairs. Three pulses from her wrist light brought a return flash. She had him.

Then, Stilson's voice again — this time personal, secure channel.

“Vaughn, I want you with Dozer. We go for Olhauzer. I’ll lead the push to secure the yard. If he gets turned or spaced, we lose any shot at system access without calling down the board. And you know what that means.”

She did. DSE would cut the station from orbit if they had to. And she knew what that meant too.

“Copy that, LT,” Natalie replied.Then she flicked over to the open squad band.

“All units near freight concourse, redirect to my beacon. Stilson’s moving for the shipyard — we’re going for Olhauzer.”

She turned to her battered team behind the barricade — bruised, tired, wide-eyed but listening.

“You all know me. You’ve worked with me. We do this smart, no heroics. We flank the corridor through the east breaker alcove and we intercept before they reach the junction. If they get that far, we lose the station.”

One of them — Davison, rail-thin and breathing hard — shook his head. “What if they’re armed?”

“Then we’re not alone,” Natalie said, voice sharpening.“Dozer’s squad is with us — full kit, heavy ordnance. They’ll do the clearing. We just need to hold the flank and block the lockout route.”

She glanced toward the flashing maintenance signage and keyed in the route overlay. Dozer’s team was already moving, his helmet nodding once in acknowledgment. They’d meet at the mid-tier vent bulkhead, sweep through in tandem, and hit the junction from both sides.

It’s a long shot, she thought.

But nothing compared to her past

“Let’s move.”