The teams arrived on the Zhang Qian without incident. Immediately their systems confirmed an agent was in the atmosphere, and their helmet HUDs identified it as sleepers. "They're circulating it into the atmosphere of the ship," noted Tasandi.
Colin felt Gene's mind in his own, and anyone who looked into his eyes would note that the irises were gone, his pupils dilated to saucers as he reached out to feel for other sapient minds. He had a carnifex pistol in his left hand, a rapier sheathed in energy from his omnitool in his right. For all the technology this whole thing is very Royal Navy circa 1815, he remarked to Gene.
What I wouldn't give to see you in a bicorne and epaulettes
Their conversation was interrupted by Wendy. "Coordinator, will the counter-agent work with the sleepers in the atmosphere? Or do we need to get your people a clean air supply?"
"The counter-agent is a cocktail. It does a few things, but a main component is a set of enzymes that break down Sleepers. The reaction is catalytic. It'll keep working for a while." He was on his own canned air supply, thank heavens. The metabolites were not easy on the kidneys, but that was a fixable problem. It would likely hurt to pee. "Might need to increase the dose though, given saturation."
Gene, when we finish up here, we need to hunt down whoever figured out how to aerosolize sleepers and kill them.
Yeah. And not the easy way either. I'm thinking we attach a suicide note and defenestrate them from an upper floor of the Burj Khalifa.
"Do we have a fix on where they're keeping everyone?" Tasandi asked.
One of the security personnel was already consulting an omnitool. But it was Colin who answered first.
"Yeah. They basically locked everyone in the cargo hold. This ship does double duty as a passenger liner and light freighter. They took the cabins for their prize crew." Colin replied, sensing a concentration of dull and listless but terrified minds from the lower deck. "This way." He lead them forward toward the main passage to the lower decks.
"Alright people, just as we trained," Wendy called out, lifting her pulse rifle into ready position. Tasandi did the same; both had Crusader shotguns affixed to a shoulder. Tasandi also had a curved blade with a pointed tip, a turakan, on his hip, a blade from his home nation he was trained in and considered his second back-up for CQB. She led the lead team with Colin while Tasandi oversaw the rearguard.
The team moved through the ship with a flow. The lead team led the way, covering other directions as they went, and another team would take up a defensive position there while the others moved on. The rearguard team would then cover them in moving on. This allowed the team to move swiftly through the ship's corridors and through the downward passage to the lower decks.
Their arrival to the lower decks was where contact was first made. Coserian cybertroopers, covered in combat suits and electronics that obscured their ash-gray, scaled forms, blue and yellow eyes staring dully ahead, and Humans in breathing helmets opened fire at the doorway just as one of Wendy's people, Security Officer Danton, stepped up to sweep. A couple of shots struck his forcefield as he fell back. "Multiple hostiles," he reported. "Human and Coserian."
Colin and Gene worked together to overcome the lack of vision on their enemies, reaching out with their collective consciousness to attack the minds of the human crew. It was an old and familiar attack probe for Colin, one he could almost perform in his sleep. Into the preoptic hypothalamus to force them to sleep, then into the DRG of the medulla where he shut down the neurons responsible for signalling inhalation. Five of them hit the deck and started to asphyxiate while dreaming peacefully.
The non-telepaths from the Maimonides might have had a moment of terror at the realization he could do that, but Colin's attack was quickly ignored in favor of the far greater threat of the Coserians. Their tactical sensors quickly informed them that the Coserians were charging, looking to get into melee range and carve up their non-augmented foes. "Fire!" Wendy called out, and her pulse rifle barked white-blue sparks along with the others just as the first Coserian got to the door. It had no room to maneuver, but its protective field did absorb the first shots, giving it a moment to target Danton. Its targeting program identified him as the preferred target as the one with the weakest shield, and thus the one who would go down the quickest. Thick bolts of blue light slammed into Danton's faltering shield while he fired back.
With the entire vanguard team's guns on one target, the cybertrooper's shields degraded quickly, its own shots wide as Colin's mind grabbed at what it could, redirecting nerve impulses sent to the arms to throw the trooper's aim off. The pulse rifle fire began to blast the creature apart.
But even as it went down, another was coming through, and this one wasn't interested in shooting anything. WIth inhuman speed it vaulted its faltering ally and went for Danton. He cried out in surprise and tried to fall back to the wall, but he simply wasn't fast enough. A memory metal blade formed on the creature's left wrist and shot forward. There was a momentary sound from his combat armor as it tried, and failed, to resist the stab, at which point the blade cut through into his throat. His jugular and carotid were severed instantly and he fell back to the ground.
"Shotguns!" Wendy called out, but Colin beat her and the others to it with his weapon. Its' shields were attuned to energy weapons so he slipped behind it and leveled his carnifex at the back if its head. The hypervelocity round penetrated its armor and fragmented inside it's skull, blowing out a spray of blood and electronic components back out the entrance wound. There was no mindscream from it, only the open-shut sensation of what was left of its original soul leaving its body. From Danton though, there was both. Colin p'heard a high-pitched shriek in his mind as Danton's mind grasped at the last vestiges of existence, and then the door opened and he was pulled kicking and screaming into the Beyond.
Everyone was ready for a third cybertrooper, but none came. Wendy personally went to the door, shotgun raised and ready, and found only Human bodies laid out. For the first time she did feel a little creeped out, as she saw all but a couple had small smiles on their dead faces, as if they'd died happy. "Damn," she said aloud, but nothing more. She felt responsible for Danton. She should have immediately ordered a switch to shotguns. "Forget the rifles," she said over the tac-comm. "These things' shields are attuned for directed energy. We're going on shotguns only until they're all dead."
"Roger," Tasandi said from further back, and up. Bayer and the other team leaders affirmed the order as well.
The limits of telepathy were so nebulous and conceptual, Colin mused; like he did whenever he was struck by his ability to transcend what he was always taught. Right then he could feel the general location of other minds, but couldn't resolve them enough to simply kill every human slaver on the ship. Yet he'd been able to attack without line of sight before at longer ranges. Maybe the materials mattered? Maybe it was because mundanes minds weren't as obvious? He wasn't sure. He didn't feel any guilt for killing them like that; he was going to kill them anyway and compared to how he could have, how he wanted to, he'd been outright merciful. He just thought it interesting that he couldn't extend his reach farther than the next corridor.
"Where to?" Wendy asked Colin.
"Left hand hallway, that'll take us to the hold."
"Right. Everyone, keep moving!" The lead team continued their way down, their compatriots coming up to find the results of the battle, including their deceased comrade.
Emerald bolts filled the space near the Zhang Qian as the vessel's former captor directed its frustrated fury on the Starship Maimonides. The Alliance science vessel was, like any ship with Darglan-tech impulsor drives, nimble for its size, allowing it to evade much of the incoming fire. On the ship's bridge the crew kept to their individual duties in the situation. "Shields are at sixty-three percent," Oparan said.
Nasira acknowledged with a nod. Buying time for the boarding team was one part of their job. Staying alive to extract everyone was the other part. "Evasive Plan Foxtrot, engage… now!"
At that command Latamrilam sent the Maimonides into a sharp "downward" turn, then just as quickly zigged in the other direction to throw off enemy targeting. As he brought the ship to the end of the maneuver, it also put them into a facing position for the slaver ship's exposed bow section.
"Firing!" Rodrigo reported.
While the ship's phasers had been steadily plinking away at the slaver ship's shields, now every available phaser bank and array lit up with amber energy. The shields of the ship flickered ruby red in resistance, a resistance that was clearly failing.
Then the torpedoes fired. They arrived as the phaser barrage brought the weakened bow section's shields to the brink of collapse, and finished the job. The first torpedo did that, and the three following torpedoes smashed into the weakened armor hull of the ship. Explosions flowered over the resulting breaches in the hull, forming plumes of gas and debris claimed by the vacuum of space. Rodrigo poured more phaser fire into those wounds, exacerbating them.
"The enemy vessel's power systems are failing," Treepk stated. "They just lost a shield generator… Captain, the incoming hyperspace signature has accelerated."
That was definitely not what Nasira wanted to hear. "How soon, then?"
"Half an hour, at most."
"Then we will do what we can to finish this foe off before they arrive," she replied, "and trust our boarding teams to accomplish their mission."
The lead team was nearing the hold and Wendy was becoming deeply suspicious. At this point the lack of contact meant one thing to her: the slaver crew was getting sneaky. They were going to throw a heavy attack at some point, and the mission and their lives depended on the attack not being a surprise. Colin was acting like an AWACS, but he couldn't easily sense Cybertroopers, they didn't have much in the way of conscious thought that got projected across space, and on a ship, there was too much interference from all the other electronics to pick up the cybernetics. Instead, he focused on finding the clear minds of people not affected by sleepers.
The ship's mixed layout - passengers and cargo transport - resulted in access to the hold leading through the galley area. The moment Wendy saw it, she didn't like it. Multiple access points meant multiple approaches for an ambush. She checked her omnitool's sensors, but they were giving no returns. Given the earlier battle, their foes were wearing sensor dampening suits of some sort.
"Yeah, they are." Colin replied to the thought. "They're using all the other approaches as kill-zones, this is the only viable path, and the fastest. They're counting on us thinking that the direct path is a trap. I don't think they've pegged to the fact that they have a gestalted pair of P12s on the ship..."
"Then we use that," Wendy suggested. "Pick the direction they're going to hit the hardest, and I'll give you some people to hit back with. You'll be catching them by surprise instead."
"That works for me." Colin grinned and winked "Their regular troops won't even know what hit them."
With Tasandi's team watching where they came from, Wendy picked two to go with Colin, giving him over a dozen shotguns to deal with any cybertroopers. He led them to the accessway leading to the central passageway of the ship. Another team, under Bayer, would be watching the other side. Wendy led the last team forward with her toward the direction they needed to go.
The enemy trap swung into action as expected. From all sides mixed units of Human crew and cybertroopers moved in on the galley… and ran into a barrage of Crusader shotguns and a couple of pulse rifles blazing away.
As expected, the attack was heaviest on Colin's front. There human crew set up a base of fire down the central corridor, there was no cover on either side, no doors. That space was taken up lower-deck cabin space and the central hallway leading to the hold was the back wall of those spaces. They poured pulse gun fire down the space as soon as anything moved.
Okay, this is going to be fun. When we advance out, the cybertroopers will charge us. Colin informed the men and women under his command through a direct telepathic connection. He wasn't bothering to speak because the enemy might overhear. Just think at me. He told them as a follow up, and glyphed them all the layout he was seeing through one of the slaver infantryman's eyes. A dozen of them had a few heavy crates and other objects up as a makeshift breastwork, with lanes so that the Cybertroopers could come in from the sides and charge down the hall as soon as the firefight was joined.
How do you want to approach? Crewman Danforth asked. He was young, he reminded Colin of half the marines in the Corps except for the complete and utter lack of telepathic ability. Similar controlled aggression and internal locus of control. Colin relayed the question to the others. That started a back and forth conversation about how to deal with that fire-base while also dealing with the cybertroopers, happening at the speed of thought as Colin acted as a communications buoy. They caught on fast.
Well for starters, he cut in I reprogram their IFF recognition systems.
"What?" One of them, a non-telepathic Gersalian with lighter skin tones asked. In answer, Colin, with Gene's help, seized control of their panic response and directed it toward their own Cybertroopers. He couldn't precisely direct that many to fire on their own side. It wasn't because he wasn't strong enough; he was, particularly with his husband's assistance. It was just too much information for his brain to process. What he could do was set the conditions to let their brains do the work. Fight or Flight switched to Fight and directed as he willed, not them. All he had to do was maintain control. His pupils dilated to saucers again even as one eye looked through a fiber-optic periscope he produced from his belt to look around the corner. They didn't even know he was there yet.
Stellar Navy security personnel heard terrified screams and the sounds of gunfire as Eubian troopers turned toward their own hired cyborgs in terror, convinced they were under attack, and opened fire with everything they had. The moment they did so, the Cybertroopers recategorized them as threats; when Colin pulled back from their minds the Eubians really were under attack and fighting for their lives. They lost, badly. He felt each of their minds cry out in desperation and go into the hereafter, counting off each one in rapid succession until all were accounted for.
Now we deal with the Cybertroopers. I need fragmentation grenades tossed down the hall.
There weren't many to go around, the Stellar Navy seemed to prefer plasma grenades, but there were a few. Pins were pulled and the palm-sized orbs were thrown around the corner just as the Cybertroopers were massing for a counter-attack, evidently concluding that sudden shift in their allies behavior was caused by enemy action. Three grenades hit close enough to do significant damage blowing an arm off one, and a leg off another. The rest suffered various non-crippling injuries that would slow them down, which was what Colin was going for.
Now we go in Colin said, and stepped around the corner while glyphing everyone the plan he had in mind. Cybertroopers surged forward, or limped in some cases, and were met by a barrage of shotgun fire, keeping them funneled into an arc immediately in front of Colin, reducing the effect of their numbers. Any who tried to flank him found their bodies riddled with shotgun slugs, allowing him to go at them more or less one or two at a time with rapier and carnifex. His own kinetic barrier could deal with both plasma fire and kinetic impacts, giving him an advantage in melee and ranged combat. It could still be overwhelmed, but that was what armor and good swordsmanship were for.
Colin parried with the blade in his right hand, and attacked with the carnifex in his left. Even so, he was forced steadily back; his kinetic barrier was being strained by plasma pulses from the rear cyborgs. He couldn't risk taking powerful hits from flung limbs and vibroblades on it, so he used footwork and a reach advantage to prevent it. Even funneled as they were, he was having difficulty doing enough damage to put the frontmost one down quickly. So instead, he focused on hold them off, and harnessing his and Gene's combined will. Their shared soul reached out and induced an electrical current that coursed through the delicate circuits that actually controlled most of its body. Transistors used to dealing milliamps suddenly had actual amps coursing through them and their logic gates burned out. It was more or less random, he couldn't focus on electronic circuits like he could a biological system, but it was still crippling. Its right arm went dead, hanging limp at its side because the control board that relayed signals to that arm from what passed for a brain was fried. That gave Colin the opening he needed to get inside its reach and run it through the left eye-socket with his rapier, destroying what was left of the brain and critically damaging the cybernetic implants that ultimately controlled it.
While he was doing that, concentrated shotgun fire took out three more, leaving a total of three remaining. Attacks on his own barrier slackened as the remaining cybertroopers down-graded him as a priority target and retasked their pulse rifles to attack the Stellar Navy security personnel behind him, a decision Colin hadn't anticipated and that proved lethal for Crewman Danforth. A fusillade of plasma overwhelmed his shield and tore through his body, sending him broken to the deck. Colin ignored the resulting mind-scream and open-shut sensation and attacked one of the remaining cybertroopers from the flank. The corridor was narrow, but not so narrow that he couldn't get to the side. That left all three open to continuous Crusader rounds that tore through their highly resilient but still vulnerable bodies. At this point he was a distraction, and forced his target to engage him rather than focus fire on one of his allies. A second one also went blind, its ocular implants blown out and destroyed by another induced electrical current through its delicate circuitry.
Colin parried a thrust from a vibroblade by way of the simple expedient of severing the connective tissue and cabling in the cyborgs wrist, and stuck his carnifex under its chin, pulling the trigger and destroying its brain. The blind one and its companion were finished off by gun fire a moment later.
The attackers to the stern of the ship - the direction of the hold, which was a narrow corridor leading to a spare storage area - soon realized the extent of the resistance from the Maimonides security people, and fell back for the crates they were using as cover. They sent their cybertroopers in. One of Wendy's people, Kalikova, tossed a frag grenade into their path. The spray of projectiles tore apart the cyborg drone's leg, laming it, and two shotgun blasts put it down for the moment. The trooper that survived the blast went on just to take a series of shotgun hits from Wendy and her team. In the confined space, it didn't have the room to evade them, and the equipped shields were optimized for directed energy weapons, not solid slug rounds. The mass effect-utilizing shotguns blew through flesh, metal, and electronics. The cybertrooper finally went down two and a half meters ahead of them and went still, too damaged to continue functioning.
Wendy heard a growled command from ahead, and was surprised to see that the enemy was reacting with a charge. The Humans who moved ahead moved with the speed of the suicidally desperate, firing wildly as they did, as if their only hope was taking her people out. "Hejami, Ramirez, Salks, rifles!" With that order three of her people switched back to pulse rifles, and the three rifles filled the corridor with blue-white light. One by one the frantic attackers went down, their return fire never managing to finish penetrating any of her team's shields.
Which, as it turned out, was what the enemy figured would happen. Behind those Humans, three cybertroopers advanced, one of them larger and faster than the others. Ramirez tossed a grenade the moment they appeared in the corridor, but this time the grenade went off before it was close enough to blast through their shields, causing no damage. He and the other two with rifles immediately swapped back to shotguns while the others opened fire with them. The first of the cybertroopers took multiple hits before starting to go down. Wendy pulled one of her own grenades and threw it in. It struck the field protecting the failing lead cybertrooper and went off, blasting the creature to pieces and degrading the shields of the one behind it.
But the range was growing closer, and Wendy remembered what the last ones did to poor Danton. "Fall back!" she ordered, "maintain firing!" The group obeyed, withdrawing in order from the stern hatchway for the galley. A couple found the nearby tables for cover and used them to continue shooting while the others fanned out and backwards, opening up their field of fire.
The second of the cybertroopers came through the door, an inhuman glow in its yellow eyes. Its weapon came up and fired, clipping Salks in her hip as she got to cover. There was a cry before the young woman dropped to her knees, briefly struck by the pain of the shot.
That was it for the second foe, however. A shotgun slug blew its weapon in two, and another smashed its leg. Two more thundering shots blew flesh and electronics from its torso before a final shot pulped its head.
Then the big one came through. There was a malevolent glint to its one intact yellow eye, the other covered by an optical implant, and Wendy realized this one was a full officer model and swallowed. The officer cybertroopers were more independent, had less control programming, and even better implants than the conscripted, mindless drones of the lesser type. These were the ones the Coserians purpose-built to fight the metaphysically-powered Orders of the Dorei and the Gersallian Order of Swenya.
Shotgun fire met more resistance here; this one's shields were more attuned to resisting kinetic fire as well. And when it moved it struck with a speed a cheetah would envy. It's arm whipped up and fired a bolt that crashed into Ramirez's shoulder, sending him down. It fired again and shot Kalikova through the helmet, killing her instantly, all while moving to reduce the hits it took from the incoming fire. Unlike the cybertroopers from the first engagement, who narrowly targeted Danton, this one ignored the wounded Salks and Ramirez while loping over a fallen table. A memory metal blade shot from its wrist and went right though the helmet and forehead of Junior Petty Officer Jataritaya, killing her instantly. It whipped around and shot Crewman Hejami, the bolt blasting through his shield almost like it wasn't there.
Just like trying to fight a damn Panzergrenadier… Memories from Germania came up, and with them the terrors of prior battles.
A desperate plan formed in Wendy's mind. She stood and charged, her shotgun blazing once more. The creature saw her coming and quickly identified her as the unit commander, a priority target. It raised its gun to shoot her, but Wendy was too close and ducked just in time to avoid the shot. Undaunted by that failure, and contemptuous of the shotgun slugs slamming into its powerful protective field, the officer-cybertrooper lunged forward itself, its memory metal blade glinting in the light of the galley.
At the last moment Wendy stepped a little to the right, which is why the blade didn't slide through her heart but her shoulder, which screamed in pain that was only obscured when the cybertrooper, by momentum, slammed her into the galley wall with enough force to whip her head back. Only the helmet saved her from a fatal head injury, and stars still exploded in her vision. It took every iota of willpower she had to bring her right arm up… and with it, her shotgun. Her finger tensed on the trigger by reflex more than intent.
And at this close range, with its shields degraded by the fire it was taking from the others, the cybertrooper was helpless against the result. The slug from the Crusader broke through its shields and smashed into the cyborg's jaw, shattering it completely, continuing on up through its head into the brain. Metal, flesh, brain matter and wiring, all of it failed to resist the slug before it came out the upper rear corner of the Coserian's skull. The cybertrooper fell, lifeless, and she went down too, the blade still stuck through her shoulder.
Despite his own injury, Ramirez rushed to her side. "Medic!" he called out. "Medic, now! The Lieutenant needs a medic!"
Max stepped up with Corpsman Habib and Corpswoman Officer Kurokawa and closed his eyes. Just relax and let the medics work. They'll have morphine or whatever painkillers you use on board shortly, but for now they need you lucid. Just remember, you're not fine. You are hurt. With that, the pain experienced by the wounded - all of them - ceased. He'd shut off the pain centers in their brain entirely.
"I can't keep this up for long..." he croaked through the strain of it.
"We will be done as quickly as possible," Kurokawa assured him, her accent distinctly, but not thickly, Japanese. She went to work on Wendy while Habib treated Henjami first due to his chest wound. To take the strain off Max Kurokawa gave Wendy a dose of painkiller, then went to work on the blade still in her shoulder. She carefully pulled away the blade before slapping medigel patches over both wounds, allowing Sirta Foundation's tailored biogenic compound to do its work in restoring function, numbing pain, and stopping infection.
Habib did much the same with Hejami's wound, but it was clear the wound was still serious, and whatever else, Hejami was out for the duration of the mission. Once Habib had him stabilized, he moved on to Salks.
Wendy focused her eyes on Kurokawa while she patched up Ramirez's shoulder. "How is it?"
"You have a concussion, mild," Kurokawa replied. "You are not incapable, but I would recommend assigning overall tactical command to another for the time being."
Wendy had time to nod in acknowledgement before Colin returned with his teams. She noted ruefully that Crewman Danforth was being carried, and that he was not moving.
"We sprung the trap, only the one casualty… Danforth was a good person, I'm sorry we lost him." Colin said in response to that rueful thought as he switched out the powercell for his kinetic barrier.
"Kalikova and Jataritaya are gone too," she answered, and it was impossible for Colin to not notice her own injuries. "Hejami is…"
"Stable, but badly hurt," Kurokawa said to her. There was compassion in the Japanese woman's blue eyes, but steel as well. She was not going to sugar coat anything but be completely honest, for the good of those under her care.
The math was clear. They hadn't yet arrived at their destination, and already the boarding force had been decimated, with four dead and one wounded and out of action.
"We have movement in the rear," Tasandi said.
"They're going to try and pin us down," Wendy said. She felt light-headed from the effect of the painkillers, the only thing sparing her a splitting headache given Max Cohen's exhaustion. "Coordinator Meier, I'm leaving the tactical command to you."
Colin nodded. He could sense the concussion, even if he couldn't see it given the uneven dilation of her pupils. "Understood. I'll take good care of them. We'll want to set up a defensive position for a rear-guard action I think."
She nodded and started picking herself up from the floor, her shotgun in her hand again. "Tasandi's team will see to that. I'll keep a team to watch your flanks and the wounded. You get the point team and a backup team." With the losses, five teams were now effectively four, with some reserve, including the walking wounded.
"Sounds good to me Lieutenant. Hopefully we won't need to call up the Triarii… We found a good way of dealing with the Cybertroopers so as we go forward we should have fewer casualties." Everyone who wasn't on his original team got a glyph of that funneling tactic. "Do you carry EMP grenades?"
"Usually not. Our intel said the cybertroopers are hardened against EMP, so our loadouts focused on frag and plasma."
"It won't knock them out, but it will damage them. Still, frag grenades work. I haven't tried the plasma."
"They don't work as well, unless they go off right on top of them." Wendy looked past him to Bayer. "Yo, did you bring any EM grenades?"
The German man nodded and held his hand up, all fingers and thumb outward. "Five," he said.
"Always trust Bayer to ignore the intel, just in case," Wendy said, smiling thinly. Her head spun a little, and despite the situation her mind leaked thoughts of their past actions together. She knew how he thought. "Bayer, your team is backing up Coordinator Meier here and the point team. Take care of him."
"Ja, Lieutenant."
"Max, you stay with the rear-guard. I don't think they're bringing cybertroopers up the rear, but you know what to do with mundanes. I would also suggest leaving the EMP grenades with the rear-guard, just in case I'm wrong. I've got my own." Colin tapped his skull.
Bayer immediately pulled off five canister-shaped objects from his armor's bandoleer. They were accepted by a member of Tasandi's team, recognized by Colin as Security Officer Kale, the woman he'd p'heard admiring him their first day on the ship. Afterward he hefted his weapons and approached Colin.
"Danke Chef Bayer." Colin said in his own mother tongue.
"Bitte," the German non-com replied with a nod.
In Main Engineering on the Maimonides, Tagiya was monitoring the repair work more than anything. The field trick, while successful in stopping the slaver cruiser, had also proven successful in blowing out the field generators in the warp nacelles. Replacing those was normally a job for a day, at least half a day, and his team were trying t accomplish it in far less time.
Granted, normal replacement jobs were timed assuming one was in dock, had only assigned a single team to it, and generally had the day in which to accomplish the work. It was surprising what you could do when you doubled the manpower and told them to do whatever was needed to get the system going again.
"Status on the warp drive, Lieutenant?" asked Nasira from the bridge.
"We're still half an hour, at least, before we can manage any warp travel," he answered, judging the data he was getting from the repair teams. "Burnt out connections in the port nacelle are slowing progress."
The ship shuddered under his feet. They'd taken a direct hit. Tagiya glanced toward the Master Systems Display to check the shield strength and see it was down to fifty percent.
"Keep at it. I'd like to withdraw as soon as the boarding teams get back."
"As would I, Captain, as would I."
On the bridge Nasira finished her conversation with Tagiya and turned her attention to Oparan. "Have the jump drive on standby, in case it's our only option."
"Already done," the Dorei man replied, "but I'll remind you that jumping under fire is not advisable. If they hit the jump point enough to destabilize it…"
"I'm well aware of the risks, Commander," Nasira said. "It's still the option of last resort."
"Acknowledged."
On the tactical display between her and Philippe, Nasira observed the maneuvering of the enemy cruiser. It was trying to keep its wrecked bow away from the Maimonides and its phasers, presenting the stronger arcs instead. Latamrilam was just as determined to put the Maimonides in position for Rodrigo to give them a full spread.
Given the two ships were about matched in maneuverability, arranging such a shot wouldn't be easy. But if their respective positions and orientations were just right...
"Asteroids," said Philippe.
She gave the Cameroonian man beside her a sideways glance. "Asteroids?"
"One of our sensor capabilities is structural analysis of asteroids and similar bodies," he said. "A combination of returns on mass and matter composition sensors and computer programs analyzing the results to determine the structural makeup of the asteroid."
"And you think we can apply it to the ship?" Nasira asked.
"I do. Treepk?"
"The relevant sensors are in a fixed location on the pod," replied the Alakin woman. "With our maneuvering needs, it will take some time to complete such an analysis."
"Tell me where the sensors are pointing and I'll do what I can," Latamrilam said.
Treepk did so, and Nasira said nothing, letting her subordinates follow through on Philippe's idea.
The point teams moved on under Colin's direction, now a mere twenty meters from the hold. This time there were side-passages and it made Colin nervous. He didn't perceive anything though. Nothing at all, there weren't any minds and it made no sense. If he were defending this ship he would have withdrawn troops to just inside the hold and hidden people along the sides, drawing hostiles into an partial envelopment. He held up his hand.
"Chef, Ich denke das ist eine Falle."
"Genau." Then Chief Bayer switched to English. "I'd envelope, we have to assume they want to as well. Give ground, draw us in, then hit us with cybertroopers on the sides; naturlich, we have to move forward…"
"We'll have to refuse the flank." Colin replied, and started working on how. He'd need to draw out the flankers and hit them. "Take your team toward the hold, I'll keep mine here and hit them from behind when they engage."
Bayer nodded in agreement and motioned to his people to continue on. Behind them Colin and the remaining team took their positions.
The next hatch opened without difficulty. It was the hatch after that which drew immediate fire, from a squad of Human fighters behind crates at the access hatch for the hold itself. Bayer and his team took momentary cover before four of them began to pour rifle fire at their foes, causing their fire to slacken and allowing Bayer and Junior Petty Officer Duchamp to move onward. The Franco-African man beside Bayer took a couple of hits to his field and fired on the run, forcing the shooter to duck below her crate. Bayer caught one trying to squeeze off a shot and put a pulse shot through his head.
As soon as Bayer and Duchamp were out of the way, two more of their comrades came on, while they crouched down and kept firing, relying on their shields to absorb any shots their opponents made. One managed a shot that depleted Bayer's shield slightly, but did no more. For his part, Bayer considered a frag grenade and opted for a plasma one instead, just in case the hull around the hold was too weak to stop the shrapnel. He tossed it and watched it sail over the crates nearest him. There was a cry of fright and then a loud blast as raw plasma erupted from the device, coating the two shooters. Screams of pain came next.
And then Bayer could hear the footfalls; the enemy was coming in to hit him in the rear. His thoughts rang out in German, inquiring as to if Colin and the others were ready, while Duchamp and Security Officer Kalan moved ahead to deal with the last shooter. That foe didn't make them wait. With defeat obvious, he tried to rise and shoot anyway, just to be gunned down by the two. His team began to fall back behind the crates to take the same defensive position their enemies had enjoyed, but they wouldn't have time to if Colin and his team didn't surprise their ambushers as planned.
Ja, wir sind bereit! Colin and his team were in position. There wasn't any cover for them to use, but as a group of five cybertroopers and eight humans came out from the side passages and turned to engage Bayer's forces, the humans abruptly stopped, frozen in place. Colin realized one had a plasma grenade so he forced the man to pull the pin. He felt all of their panicked and helpless mental screams as they realized what their comrade was doing; p'heard the other man's desperate denial, and pulled out of their minds before it went off. The resulting explosion of ionized nitrogen annihilated the regular troops but didn't damage the cybertroopers, who turned to face the new and unanticipated threat.
Bayer's team took advantage by tossing in a pair of frag grenades. Due to the distance between the enemy troopers the grenades did not completely damage any, but one of the cybertroopers took enough fragmentation shrapnel that its leg stopped working completely, leaving it open for Colin's people to shoot down; which they did with an opportunistic ferocity befitting a pack of wolves. The other cybertroopers seemed uncertain for a moment. They tried to evade shots as best they could while their target assessment programming worked to decide the best route.
Had there been any officers among them, the officer cybertrooper would have decided, and the others responded. But the officer was dead, back in the galley, and the end result was divided effort. Three cybertroopers went for Colin's group, one for Bayer's. It forced its way through the hatch, cold yellow eyes gleaming as its rifle spat plasma at Bayer and his people. The crates absorbed the shots, but their instinctive taking of cover allowed the cybertrooper to close the distance. It focused on Kretulo and Crewwoman Sanchez, who started emptying their shotguns into the creature even as its memory metal wrist blade stabbed forward.
Before the blade could puncture Kretulo's helmet and skull, Bayer's shotgun roared, and the mass effect-accelerated slug smashed into the cybertrooper's projector for the memory metal. The blade was blown away by the impact, as was half of the limb. More of the shotguns roared, repeated thundercracks splitting the air, and slug after slug blew the cybertrooper apart.
"Duchamp, al-Jabbar, watch the door. Everyone else, with me," Bayer ordered. Leaving Duchamp and the Kuwaiti Security Officer to keep the way open, Bayer went to the hold door and hit the panel to open it. When it didn't respond immediately he pulled the emergency release.
"Allow me." Kalan's omnitool went active. The Dorei man's teal eyes focused on the blue hardlight interface. "They've disabled the emergency release because it can be used on both sides. The normal opening protocol is locked down, but I think I can… here."
The hold door suddenly slid open. Bayer lowered his weapon and entered, leading the other three into the hold. Upon seeing the figures sitting or laying listlessly in the room, clad in various jackets and suits but all having gloves and the brass Psi pin on their chests, he felt a little sick. The slavers hadn't left them anything to sleep on, nothing but a bucket in the middle of the room. As if they were nothing but animals to be transported to market.
Dulled eyes turned toward him, full of despair and fear and trembling hope, and in a few, something more like shock. "I am Chief Gunther Bayer of the Alliance Starship Maimonides," he announced, trying to be reassuring. "We're here to help you." He motioned to his people with one hand while pulling out his own injector from his belt. "Start giving them the counter-sleepers," he ordered.
"Yes, Chief" and "Aye, Chief" were the replies, three in all. And together they spread out and approached the captives to provide the injections to end their suffering.
Astrid was out of it when the Alliancers came, she recognized the uniforms under their armor as being Stellar Navy but the significance of it was lost on her brain. She couldn't make the connection between the insignia and imminent rescue, or the hope it brought. She just sat there listlessly quietly dreading what her new life would be, what the Eubians would do, but even that didn't really register. It would have required cognition that the sleepers robbed from her.
Her reaction was particularly bad; another of the telepaths, Indiri Singh, was capable of higher thought, but simply wanted to end it. She could think well enough through her sensory fog to know exactly what her future was and could motivate herself well enough that if there was a gun in the room she would have shot herself in the head. When she saw the Stellar Navy uniforms her eyes brightened. She was expecting Psi Corps marines, but anyone who wasn't aligned with the Eubian Concord was a welcome sight.
"What are you?" one of the telepaths, a Southeast Asian man, slurred, looking up at Kretulo.
There was a brief little chirping sound from Kretulo's beak before he replied, "A friend, mind-reader," the orange-plumed Alakin responded, some of that plumage visible at the edges of his helmet faceplate. A taloned hand pressed the injector against the mind-reader's flesh and shot the agent within into his circulatory system.
Beside him, Kalan did the same to one of the more cognizant telepaths, the Indian woman. He glanced toward Kretulo, but said nothing, knowing his comrade's disdain for psionics.
Kretulo noted the look. "I don't like them in my mind," the Alakin said, his voice a low whistle. "That doesn't mean I want… this."
Indiri stood up. "It's not that we're in your mind, most of the time," she politely corrected him. "It's that your thoughts leak. Like your inner monologue is a second voice we hear with different ears. But thanks! I was trying to find new and better ways to off myself… first Tau Atrea and now this. It's been a month..."
Sanchez faced a young woman in a daze, her chestnut hair in a disheveled state. Her green eyes stared blankly forward and she wasn't moving. Sanchez injected the woman with the counter-sleeper, and took a moment watching her come to before moving on.
For Machteld Albrecht, it was like waking up from sleep paralysis. The sleepers were every bit as horrible as anyone in the Corps had ever told her. She trembled at the thought of what would happen if the Psi Corps lost, and resolved that if that happened the first thing she would do was eat a PPG. Although even that was superior to the fate of being an Eubian provider, and she wondered exactly how she'd go about ending it if that particular fate managed to still happen.
Three other minds flooded into her own filling her with warmth and love, hers rushed to meet them and they all hugged without touching, joining minds again felt like slipping on an old glove and as natural as breathing..
I thought we were done… Sam's identity breathed a sigh of relief. Never thought I'd be so happy to see a bunch of mundanes.
It's not just mundanes, came Fatima's mental voice. They were gestalted together and extremely sensitive, they all looked for it out in the space between minds and saw a familiar mental signature. Two of them, joined like theirs were.
Albert chimed in at that point. Twice those two have saved us from slavery. No idea how we're ever going to pay them back for this. What the hell are the odds? Seriously?
I think Gersalian philosophers might have a thing or two to say on the subject, but that might just be arrogance on my part. From Sam.
I'll just chalk it up to the will of Allah, honestly. Fatima was actually religious, and despite sharing a mind with the other three she hadn't managed to convert any of them. Not that she ever tried.
Bayer was the one to kneel down and apply a shot of the counter-sleeper to Astrid. He watched her eyes seem to gain some focus while he put another dose into the injector, one of the many capsules that every member of the boarding team was carrying.
Sensation flooded back into Astrid's mind as the counter-agent bound to the competitive inhibitors that were in turn bound to most of the receptors of her neurons. Color, texture, sound, minds, it was almost overwhelming and reminded her of the mind-burst she took when she was thirteen and her abilities manifested; or perhaps like walking out into the daylight after being trapped in a cave for a week.
"Thank you." she said, pulling herself off the floor and then cocking her head. "There's a powerful telepath with you? Who is it?"
Bayer was already injecting the telepath beside her. "Coordinator Meier," he replied, using the title he'd heard Wendy use before.
"God damn, that man gets around." Astrid grinned, there was a familiarity in her voice. She obviously knew him well. "I'm combat trained, what can I do to help? I presume we're going to have to fight our way off this heap."
"Right now, help us get your people back on their feet," Bayer replied. "My people outside have injectors as well."
"Right." Astrid and Indiri went and got injectors from Duchamp and al-Jabbar, then got to work getting everyone else dosed. She reached out with her mind, trying to feel for Colin, and Gene apparently, he was there to.
I don't know how you got aboard an Alliance ship or how you intercepted-
A little busy! Gene's mind replied, cutting her off, and she got the distinct impression that both of them were fighting for Colin's life, what with the perception of gunfire and frenzied hand to hand combat that came over the telepathic connection.
Colin stood in front of his men. The reality was he was the only one who stood a chance in close quarters and he knew it. The cybertroopers recognized the greek letter Psi on his armor and prioritized him as a target, attempting to close the distance and engage him from three sides. He backpedaled to buy time, letting his men shoot past him and trusting to his kinetic barrier to absorb any accidental impacts. Kinetic barriers didn't degrade the same way shields did, they were up until catastrophically overwhelmed by a single overpowering force or many small hits in quick succession so the odd impact didn't hurt.
Colin lashed out with his mind, he couldn't target specific components so it was a general attack, inducing the effect of an electromagnetic pulse and letting it find weak points in their electronic hardening. He found such a weakness in the lead cybertrooper; in the circuit that relayed motor control functions to the legs. With a popping sound and the smell of ozone, its legs collapsed out from under it and it went sprawling to the deck.
Then they were on him, and it was all he could do to stay alive. Memory metal blades whipped out at him with an energy driven by cybernetically enhanced limbs and body weight. He couldn't parry force for force, he had to rely on deflection and footwork, which in desperate combat against two was exhausting. One powerful blow shattered his kinetic barrier, another glanced off his armor. What shots he could get in with the carnifex didn't do much damage because he didn't have time to aim properly. Instead, he tried to maneuver them into a good position to be pumped full of hypervelocity slugs. Colin sidestepped, working his way around so that the cybertroopers were between him and his own men.
Janparam, Lyakas, Budai, and Singh opened up with their shotguns, shotgun rounds accelerated not by magnetism but gravity and mass lightening tore through their bodies and sent hydrostatic shock through flesh and electronics alike, shredding them in short order.
Colin's shoulders slumped in exhaustion and he walked over to the last one, still trying to crawl toward them on its arms on non-functioning legs. The rapier, reinforced by hard-light projections from his omnitool went into its skull. At last, it was still.
Sorry about that Astrid. Had a dance with some old friends. Gene said to Astrid once it was safe to devote some attention. Could you let Chief Bayer know that we should be safe to evacuate?
Sure! Astrid replied I can't wait to get the hell off this ship. Also, I don't know if you know this, but The Hive was commanding the ship. They're fine.
Jesus fucking christ I am going to demote the person who didn't give me that information! Gene was angry, those four weren't like his kids necessarily, but he definitely thought of them like they were nieces and nephews.
Sweetheart, I think they didn't for exactly that reason. They'd no longer have a Coordinator, but an uncle who was out of his mind. Let's just get everyone out. Colin said, himself horrified that they'd been through that, but less prone to rage than Gene was.
The rest of the team with Colin assumed protective positions. They didn't have to wait long for the first telepaths to arrive, coming in a steady stream from the hold. Bayer's team took up the rear of the group, weapons in standby positions should an attack come.
The group faced no opposition on their way back to the galley. The rest of the boarding team was present, the wounded patched up as well as they could be. "Did you get them all?" Wendy asked Colin.
"Every one of them. Evidently no one told Gene that the command crew of the ship are some young officers we're close with." Understatement, thy name is Colin, Gene added as an aside and Colin affectionately swatted at him. "So it's doubly good to know that they're okay."
"Cool. Now we can get off this ship." She brought her omnitool up and keyed the comm line to the Maimonides. "Manchester to Maimonides, we've freed the prisoners. Rescue mission is a success. We're ready for beam out."
"We hear you, Lieutenant. We're still under fire at the moment. Standby…"
Whatever the difficulties of the situation, hearing that the captives were freed and no longer suffering under the sleepers was a boost to the morale of the bridge staff. With it came the terrible burden that everything now relied on them. They had to be the ones to extract the boarding teams and the telepaths from the Zhang Qian.
This meant they had to lower shields. Which they could not do with the slaver cruiser still shooting at them. The Maimonides, as a science cruiser, was not built with the kind of self-repairing armor that would allow for the shields to be down.
"Have you completed the structural scan yet?" Nasira asked Treepk.
"It is ninety percent complete," she replied. "I am relaying what we have now to Commander Oparan."
Even as Treepk finished speaking, the ship shuddered again. "Shields are down to thirty-nine percent," Oparan said before checking the scan results so far. "Captain, I think we may have an opening. The scans indicate that the sublight drive housing of the enemy cruiser was completely rebuilt to accommodate their current drives. But they had to extensively alter the ship in the process, and its structural stability is poor around its engine ports. If we can hit them there…"
"It would disable their sublight drives," Nasira finished for Oparan. "Relay the data to tactical."
"Relaying."
"Receiving. If I can get a good series of shots to achieve localized shield disruption… Helm, I need the torpedo launchers brought within this cone of the enemy ship."
"Understood. Undertaking maneuvers."
Still taking fire from the frustrated enemy vessel, the Maimonides turned and spun through space, evading that fire as best as it could, and putting them in position to achieve the shot Rodrigo needed. The enemy ship continued to focus on protecting their savaged bow, oblivious to the new intent of the Maimonides crew.
Rodrigo muttered under his breath, waiting for his optimum firing position and cycling power into the phasers to give the best shots he could manage. He ignored the ship shaking again, and the confirmation that shields were down to thirty-three percent, focused on ensuring the angle was just right… "Firing!"
The Maimonides fired with its two primary hull arrays and the two light phaser banks pointing toward the bow. The shot drained their capacitors completely, but with Rodrigo's aim putting those shots on the position he needed them to be, it was not a concern.
At the same time the phasers fired, so did the forward torpedoes. Six torpedoes raced through space, tracking onto the single point fed into their targeting computers. They slammed into the flickering ruby shields of the Eubian-crewed ship like a series of hammers. Strained and degraded, the shields could not hold back all of the torpedoes, and two crashed into the engine housing.
Said engine died immediately. Moments later explosions flowered along the rear of the slaver cruiser's hull. It's other engines started going out, one by one, as did other systems. The cannons of the ship made one last series of shots, trying to hit the Maimonides again, before falling silent.
"That was… more than I expected," Philippe admitted.
"When we wrecked their engine, we caused some kind of cascade failure," Oparan said. "I'm bringing the shields down."
"Don't!" shrieked Treepk.
Nasira was ready to ask why when the display answered her, by way of displaying the newly-arrived slaver cruiser. This one was even larger than the other. Multiple plasma cannon emplacements, Coserian design, studded the surface. "Evasive Plan Delta, now!" While Latamrilam enacted that maneuver, she keyed the comms and said, "Standby on beamout. We've got company."