"So you wanna know about Barge Brawls, eh? Nasty business.
Concept's simple, sure. Sounds clean on paper. Drop shields, pacify defences; neutralise crew.
Get cargo. Get paid. But the doin'?
Well, that's where it gets messy."
- Olan Stren, on frontier skirmishes
The airships steamed toward each other, the gap between ever dwindling.
Compared with its sister ship, the bridge of the Forward Transaction was an altogether more Corpus affair. Good clean lines; the epitome of order. They had served under Bravic's instruction, had done so with distinction, but Captain Leonid Sobil ran a tight ship, comparatively free of the mongrel perversions Bravic so often enjoyed.
Sobil was a tall man; reed thin with a pencil moustache; and a practiced patience that served him well on the frontier. He preferred cold logic to impetuous risk. There was a pattern to barge fighting. A rigorous rulebook to be studied and employed. He knew it well.
"Repeat our warning. They are to stand down, power down their weapons and submit their cargo for processing without further complaint."
His coms officer did so. Then he looked up; met Sobil's eye, shaking his head.
"Sir, no response."
Sobil nodded coolly, voice dispassionate as he settled back in his chair.
He licked his lips, his voice clear and smooth as he gave the order.
"Ready weapons. Prepare to fire."
Aboard the Severance, Engineering was a chaotic mess of snaking tubes and spilling cable; dominated by a single power core that formed the centrepiece of the sweltering chamber. The crew here sweated visibly from the residual heat; dressed in grease stained overalls and tattered vests mired with grease.
Despite their rowdy appearance, these were technically minded people; well versed in the hybrid Corpus-Grineer tech that had been cannibalised, repurposed and meshed together over the Severance's long service life.
Kael followed Spendric as he showed him around. For all his diminutive stature and timidity, the sanitation tech knew more about the ship than one would assume at first glance. Kael understood all too well: the man was at the very lowest tier of the crew's hierarchy. He got to see how it all functioned, from the bottom up.
The Tenno listened to Spendric closely; asking the occasional question or pressing on a technical detail.
"Shield genny is the main issue." Spendric was saying, indicating the cylindrical column mounted just beside the central core.
"He's not wrong." said an approaching tech; wiping her hands with a do-rag as she stepped forward, pointing. She was a muscular woman; with shoulders that put most of the crew to shame. She seemed more fascinated by the Warframe; coveting it as a child might an expensive toy.
"Lorna. Chief Engineer." She offered a hand.
The Warframe's hand enveloped it.
"Kael."
Lorna walked them through it, circling the core and pointing out structural stresses and venting pipes here and there.
"System went down one time too many. Got her back workin' now, but can't get past thirty percent capacity. Fusion rods are blown. Gonna need a full refit."
Kael-as-Volt nodded, looking at the shield core in particular.
"Show me."
"Gear up! Masks on!" Lorna barked. A klaxon sounded.
Overalls were zipped up. Hoods were thrown up; sealed with environment masks. Spendric for his part stood and gawked, until Lorna snarled and pushed a spare set into his hands. She saw the look the Tenno's Warframe gave her.
"What?" she replied with a shrug, voice tinny behind her shielding mask. "Health and Safety, innit?"
The core's shielding rose up, exposing a wild combination of Corpus and Grineer fuel rods. Most of them were blown; rendered little more than blackened slag. They could hear the frustrated sigh behind Lorna's mask.
"So yeah, there it is. Unless you got a spare genny in your cloak, she's not doing more than she is."
Volt said nothing, studying the shield core with great interest.
"Everybody out."
"Sixty seconds!" Teico announced, voice tight.
"Shields forward." Telin ordered, the calmness of his voice entirely at odds with the electric tension running up his spine. "Ready weapons."
"Weapons primed!" Stren crowed.
"A count down timer, please." Telin asked. Teico obliged, projecting it in the air above his station with a tap of his finger. The estimates were devised by the crew during their heated planning session. They would live or die based on their accuracy.
Pohld sweated at the helm; nursing the ship through one micro-correction after another. Telin sat forward in the command throne, fingers steepled; tapping his nose nervously. His stomach churned like a squirm of eels as the two barges grew large in the monitor; every bit as monstrous and scabbed as the Severance.
This was it. Pohld looked at Telin, expectantly.
Telin Voss' hands stopped fidgeting; became utterly still.
The scavenger's eyes narrowed.
"Now."
In engineering, safely hidden behind blast screens, Spendric and Lorna watched as the Tenno stepped toward the core. The entire engineering team held their breath; fascinated.
Volt placed a hand in two recesses within the shield core. Steadied himself.
There was a blinding flash. The Tenno's cloak rippled and snapped as a tremendous wave of power ripped forth from the Frame itself; arcing across its skin and surging through the core. It was so blinding they had to look away.
In the core, Kael roared; unleashing the howling fury of the Void itself.
"Sir, they're accelerating."
Captain Sobil stood up from his chair, his face a mask of confusion. The Severance was bruised, outnumbered; sorely outgunned. This defied all common sense, all logical reason. Every rule he ever studied steadily began to unravel.
His helmsman, twisted about in his chair; panicking.
"Intercept course! They mean to ram us!"
Sobil mashed his fist down.
"Open fire! Open fire damn you!"
The Severance Package surged forward; full burn.
The opening salvos lanced in like a hail storm; a blistering array of bolts flashing out from the Forward Transaction and the Short Position; primarily plasma fire, interspersed with the heavier tracer fire of repurposed Grineer cannon. They splashed across the front of the Severance; sparking and bursting across the bow; mere inches from the hull. The viewport ahead automatically dimmed, such was the startling intensity of the fusillade.
The Severance held fire; all power to engines.
Its shields held; frazzling, flashing; thoroughly abused, but holding. Teico watched his instrumentation in amazement. Privately, he wondered if it was a technical fault.
Even diverted fully in a single direction, the shields should have given out by now.
Instead they surged. Power levels hit maximum thresholds… and then exceeded them. Incoming fire washed over them like water. The Severance charged forward, heedless of the fury being thrown at it.
Telin's eyes never left the Forward Transaction.
"Make ready, Pohld."
Pohld gripped his hand on the throttle, taking a deep breath.
"All hands! Brace!"
The Severance screamed toward its opponents; shields alight.
A hellish sight, it filled the viewport of the Forward Transaction. Impervious, invulnerable; a frenzied bull, set ablaze and charging straight for them.
"They're not stopping!" shrilled the helmsman.
"Madmen!" Captain Sobil swore; panic rising as he all but spat "Break; break damn you! Move!"
Pohld watched the hostile barge begin to shift; his grin all but a grimace as the seconds on the timer hit zero.
"Now!" Telin roared.
Pohld wrenched the throttle back; hauling on a separate lever with his other hand.
The engines cut out. The ship lurched; propelled in a slewing side-spin as emergency propulsion jets flared with a frenzied hiss. The Severance missed the Transaction by merest inches as it swung below; turning on its axis. Presenting the full compliment of its starboard ordnance.
"Now Stren!" Telin yelled. "Fire!"
The starboard batteries opened up. A single salvo; a savage hammer blow of rail shot, plasma batteries and anti-material cannon. Everything they had; point blank. It hit the Transaction's shields with a resounding slap that issued like a thunderclap across the colony.
Nose to nose with an incoming ship, The Transaction's shields had been logically shifted to cover their bow. The side shields were comparatively weakened; had not been anticipating the extreme angle of the attack, nor the proximity.
They collapsed in an instant.
Ordinarily in a barge-fight, there is a reticence to go full tilt on an enemy barge. To do so meant risking precious cargo. The Severance had no such limitations here.
The flak cannons and Vruush turrets lining the Severance's spine cycled to life with a keening whine; tendrils of fire blazing forth from their barrels. Hull plating ripped apart in a deluge of shrapnel as hard rounds chewed deep into the Transaction's tender flank.
The Transaction's crew were no rank amateurs. Sobil did the only thing he could. He swung his ship about, absorbing the deluge on the sturdier plating around the Transaction's armoured prow. This threw the Transaction out of formation entirely.
And entirely blocked the Short Position from an effective firing solution.
"Phase two, go." Telin nodded, watching as the two enemy barges drifted into view before them. They were beneath them now.
Pohld flared the drives to life once more. The Severance came about, angling up between the two hostile barges; pushing between them. Batteries on both sides flared to life; weapons free; raking their opponents with wild abandon. The return fire was hesitant, sporadic; the two barges were at risk of hitting one another. The Severance blazed away, free of such concerns.
The ships flanking them began to close the gap; to try and grant their crews an easier mark. They hemmed the Severance in; crowding the viewports on either side.
Something hit the Severance. Hard. The bridge crew cried out in alarm as they were thrown from their chairs. The entire bridge shook; lost power for the most heart stopping of moments. A pipe burst, venting boiling steam. Somebody shrieked.
"What the hell was that?!" Telin gasped, clawing his way back into his chair.
"Gravitron hit!" Teico reported. "Shields down!"
"We're still here!" Telin panted.
"Just about!"
The Short Position, as impetuous as its larger cousin, had thrown caution to the wind; dumping an energy slug into the Severance at a range far below the accepted minimum safe distance. Those on the ground watching the brawl were all but blinded outright. The resulting EMP managed to kill several aerial drones across the city. Several Solaris workers fell over, choking and gasping until their prosthetics surged back life, and they were pulled to safety by their wholly organic comrades.
To those aboard the Severance, they were picked up and thrown about like rag dolls.
Even Kael, still linked to the shield core, was blown clean across the room; his Frame's shields failing as he slammed against the far wall; denting it.
All three barges lost shield power, such was the fallout.
This meant only one thing. The fight was about to move to its second, bloodier phase.
Stren pushed himself to his feet; marching towards the exit. Kelpo intercepted him.
"Where're you going?" Kelpo asked.
Stren's eyes were frenzied; pumped with adrenaline.
"Boarding deck. Not much else I can do here. We're in a pit fight now son."
Stren noticed the flamethrower in Kelpo's hands. He slapped Kelpo on the shoulder with a meaty hand.
"Bring that with you. It's about to get real ugly."
Javelins and spear launchers lined the Boarding Deck. Large Grineer Basilisk-Pattern Harpak Launchers; intended for ship to ship combat, and smaller Gravity Tethers; electronic darts that resembled silvered missiles. Loading crews sweated as they furiously prepped weapons; bundling spare javelins up the loading bay; banging down boxes of spare ammo with resounding clangs that reverberated throughout the hold.
Stren marched onto scene; barking orders the moment he arrived. He had a crude eye-scope in his hands. A polished, ornamental thing; it was difficult to tell whether it was a Grineer device gilded with Corpus tech, or the other way round.
There were no less than fifteen firing systems on the starboard side; each with their own peculiarities and particular kinks. He knew each of them like the back of his hand.
If there was one thing Olan Stren knew, it was Barge Brawling.
"Come on you dogs: ready spears! Move your arses!"
There was a scramble as men slammed harpoons into launchers; wheeled antique cranks; pre-sighting on predetermined weak-points along the Forward Transaction's port side. Rail launchers were locked and loaded; magnets humming as their operators knelt at their stations, awaiting the order. Sights were checked and rechecked.
Kelpo watched it all unfold in amazement. The crew were brawny killers; savages far more ruthless than a humble junk-scavver like him. Yet he watched them perform like a military unit; tightly drilled, disciplined. This was the fight of their lives. They would not be found wanting.
The scope was to Stren's eye now. The tendons in his neck bulged as he barked instructions.
"Elevation Sixty-Six. Range 350. Adjust and confirm!"
"350 aye!" came the echoing return.
"Steady lads. Hold." Stren crowed, watching. Waiting. "Hold!"
The enemy hull swam up before them. Nobody dared breath.
"Release!" Stren roared.
There was a series of resounding bangs as the Harpaks launched in unison.
Three of them struck true and clear; blasting through deck plating and snapping taut. The fourth and fifth failed to connect; one deflecting from a section of reinforced hull and spinning away; another ripping clean through, but failing to find purchase as it ripped its way back out again, spilling men screaming in its wake.
Stren swore.
"Again! Line and sight! Line and sight!"
Another resounding clang as more harpoons whickered out; slamming home. Stren nodded.
Better, much better.
"Status!" he bellowed.
"Line secure!" the bow teams shouted.
"Line secure!" echoed the men in the mid-section and stern.
Stren nodded, then roared.
"Winch! Bring 'er in boys!"
The motorised winches whirred to life; a metallic, churning clanking sound. The hull groaned under the strain.
"Gravity tethers!" Stren ordered next.
The Corpus tethers were auto-sighted. They spat out; slicing into the hull of the Forward Transaction with metallic smacks. Energy projectors thrummed to life; pulling the enemy barge ever closer. There was a pulse from the enemy ship. Localised EMP-shocks. The tethers failed; fizzling out. Stren shrugged.
A one-use defence; predictable. Repeated shocks risked damaging internal ship systems beyond repair.
"Again! Hit 'em again!"
More tethers slapped out. Twice as many this time. They festooned the enemy hull; a wall of searing white energy springing to life. The men cheered as the Transaction began to list ever so slightly; all but overwhelmed by the sheer strain being exerted on its already mangled hull, as its engines struggled to cope.
The spotters on his crew began to holler and point.
Counter-boarding parties, sighted on the enemy hull. Jump-packs and boarding weapons, scrambling to assault positions. Kelpo rushed to the window; caught a glimpse. Then he lost sight of them for the briefest of moments. Then he heard the resounding hollow clang of steel boots across the outer hull.
"Prepare to receive boarders!" Stren bawled. "Ready yourselves!"
The men grabbed whatever they could within snatching distance. There was the repeated click-whine of Detron sidearms being powered up. They grabbed bill hooks and spare javelins; plasma torches and wicked knives. Kelpo heard the chunk-click of more than one shotgun being readied. The crew pulled on respirators and raced toward the ladders leading to the outer hatches; roaring challenges, psyching themselves.
Kelpo shook his head, stunned by the audacity of the Severance's plan.
It defied all logic. To attempt a boarding when surrounded by superior numbers was considered suicide, nine times out of ten. Today, the rulebook was being rewritten.
The ink would be no less red.
Telin looked at the lines straining as they winched the Transaction closer and closer.
Both ships lurched and groaned; the Transaction, doing its best to slip the snare; the Severance, trying to close the gap and match its speed and trajectory. The Short Position drifted closer, angling its own harpoons to bear. It was still out of range, but the gap vanished steadily with each passing moment. All the while, the weapons of the Severance locked onto the smaller incoming ship, punishing it as best it could. Weapons glowed red hot, falling silent. The Short Position bore down on them; bloodied but savagely determined.
Man for man, the Severance could take the Transaction, assuming the crew were as ruthless as their reputation said.
But beset on both sides, they ran the risk of being completely overwhelmed.
Telin blinked. An idea came to him. He snapped his fingers aloud.
"They want the Tenno."
Telin pressed the com stud on the side of his chair, opening a channel to Engineering.
"Kael, you reading me, kid?"
As Telin waited for a response, Teico looked at him.
"What's the plan?"
Telin flashed the comms officer a dangerous grin.
"Give the people what they want."