Chapter 31

By Cliff

Beta and Clean up: Not done

Reviewed by Hotpoint and Cannonshop

1 Mar 3048 Dragonstar battle

Xanthe III on the way to Lopez.

David was trying to line up on the targets, when they broke apart like a flower in the wind. Each of the four small craft was putting distance between each of themselves in what had to be an often-practiced maneuver. It was a risky move by their commander. Now each of the small craft was out of mutually supporting position, of their sisters. It also meant that the two fighters could only take out one craft at a time, as the rest of them closed in on the White Rabbit. David had finally been able to get a shot at the wildly moving small craft, but the pilot of the small craft was doing his level best not to give him a clear shot.

He had been able to score hits on the 150ton craft, but for the longest time. He could not convert any of the strikes to solid hits, which would stop the craft. The damage he was causing was all over the place, and not concentrated. He had hit it a few times on the aft, the right side and left side. He had even hit the nose of the craft, when the pilot had flipped the craft and unloaded the nose bays on him, when he got to close.

He had been able to reply to that attack with four large lasers and a larger number of long ranged missiles. David was quickly getting frustrated with the situation. He was about to risk another alfa strike and try to finish off the target. When his systems told him, that the last of the enemy fighters had been taken out by the White Rabbit and the rest of the Ironsides. This information made him smile. With the aero fighters gone, it was going to take longer for the assault craft to catch up to the fleeing dropship.

With a thin smile on his face. He fired his last ammunition for his LRM 20 and his wing mounted lasers. David had not aimed directly at the small craft. He thought that the pilot was going to do something, so he had aimed just off to one side of the enemy small craft. Just as David pulled the triggers, the small craft shifted course and flew right into the incoming fire from the Sled. This time the hits showed immediate results. Massive slabs of armor and other structure parts came flying off the target wherever the weapons manage to hit.

The engines on the Dragonstar went to maximum power, and then some. The engines were eating themselves in a spat of mechanical rage. Soon the thrust was not uniform, and the craft started spinning faster and faster along its main axis. Right in front of David's eyes. The 150ton craft quickly was spinning at a rate that was well over 5 Gs. And still it was spinning faster and faster, each passing second. David knew in his gut, that the crewmembers and passengers of the small craft were already dead. David now was free to look for his second target. His heart stopped. Two of the small craft had already attached themselves to the side of the ship, which was carrying the Convoy commander. He had been so focused on taking out the second craft of today's battle, that he had lost his situational awareness.

Dede was a very angry pilot. She and her wing man had targeted the second Transgressor. The reason for the anger? That was that not only had she not been able to take out the heavy fighter, but it had been able to hit her craft…..hard. She had been ordered to hang back and go after the larger and slower small craft class assault ships. She felt that the small craft were not "real" targets, like the other fighters were.

Still she had done as she had been ordered, even if she really didn't want to. The damage to her engine was not that bad. But she had a line of damage that went from just forward of the wing, and it went all the way down that right side of her Ironsides going into the underside to almost to the engine exhaust. She was faster than the Sled, but she was a lot slower than the rest of her wingmen. She was still having to mother her engine, to keep it functional. First going faster and then slowing down to keep her engine from going nova on her. It was not the best way to be in a firefight in the deep of space, and between a planet and a jump point.

The pilot of the craft she was targeting was just as good, as the one that David was trying to kill, and Dede was thinking that they might be facing some elite level crews. The Dragonstar's pilot was able to keep her from getting close enough to launch the avalanche of short-range weapons she carried to find and exploit the holes that her twin PPC's had been trying to make. She was getting good hits with her paired PPCs, but it was taking a long time to work through the thick armor the larger craft was wrapped in.

Dede was now so focused on her target. That she did not notice that another Ironsides had joined her in targeting the same damaged small craft. She only stopped firing when she saw the life pods start launching from the sides of the craft between weapons runs. She might have stopped firing, but the other Ironsides had not. In a blink of an eye it was an expanding ball of flames and flying metal, and she had a very front row seat to the fireball. When she rolled away and the flash blindness had started to abate. She could see the two other small craft as they attached to the side of the command ship.

Igarashi Miya was reading the incoming data of the battle going on above his head. He was getting the information from the two mercenary units involved. The Sundogs were not just some group of "pirates". They were an Elite level Aero Fighter unit, which also were devout followers of Blake's Word and from the world of Jardine. The Sundogs were working with the White Hand. They were an Elite level unit of small craft operators supported by their modified liner. The ground unit supporting him on this mission were only little better than pirates with Regular Star League grade military equipment, and only had a hand full of people that were veterans. Now the group in space? They were a different type of animal all together.

The White Hand were the best at boarding action outside of the atmosphere. They tended to go through boarding troops and targeted crews quickly. Even the command crews of their small craft were top shelf. Still Igarashi did not like what he was seeing on the screens of his command ship. He had not been that upset when the Sundogs lost their first fighter. The Sundogs were very good, but like 99.95 percent of the rest of the Inner Sphere units. It was not using any upgraded weapons on their six fighters.

ComStar had planned around the idea that this was going to change, in the near future. Soon they would be armed better than any house unit larger than a Battalion. There was only so much that the Factories could do, in such a short time. There was an upper limit to what ComStar had in storage and the rebuilding and slowly de-mothballing factories could make. Other units that were closer to the public side, had to have the right dressing for many reasons.

As Igarashi watched the line schematics on each of the fighters. He could see the mounting damage, and he bet that it was going to happen faster as there were fewer fighters to spread the damage around. As more and more reports came, and the damage kept rising, until the last of the Sundog's fighters were shot down. All that Igarashi could do was frown at the six red outlined fighter shapes on a 1.5m wide screen.

Igarashi was worried that even with the reputation of the Sundogs and the White Hands that they would pull back from the battle. He almost smiles when he sees that the carrier dropship had kept going towards the fleeing Blockade Runner. When the last two surviving Dragonstars attached themselves to the target dropship, he was now finally happy. Copeland's people had lost one fighter completely, and the others were showing signs of varying degrees of damage. ComStar had picked up on that Captain Copeland took the Trojan when they stopped at smaller planets some time ago. They still had the odd reports that the overall commander, would also take the Mule class dropship called the Lisbon Maru randomly when they made planet fall.

Igarashi wanted this Captain Copeland. He had a few people who like causing pain, which wanted to see him for some personal time. That thought made him smile more as time went on, and this distracted him. That distraction made him miss when the modified Monarch flipped and started to slow down. The Sundog's crewed Leopard was still burning towards the other Leopard class ship. The Sundog ship was going to provide cover, so that the boarding crew could do their job of taking over the dropship from its merchant crews.

"Why has the liner started slowing down?" The Head of ROM spoke aloud to the room filled with other ComStar people. Something was wrong. After so much had gone wrong, he was worried about the plan going sideways.

A very low-level systems operator manning the radio waited a few seconds, before speaking. "Sir? They are reporting that they are under attack."

Igarashi's head came up in a flash to look closer at the data. He voiced what his mind was trying to work out. "That's impossible!"

He had to look harder at the screens and count the green dots on it. One was missing and by the codes, it was the Stuka. "How did that happen?" The way it should have worked, is that all of Copeland's fighters should have attacked the enemy fighter carrier. That was what the books said about how it should be done.

Igarashi was not a large-scale military commander, but he had been to a ComStar school to tell him how it was done. He just was better at the spying, intimidation, and the manipulation business. He still remembered his old school lessens. He also had another skill. He could tell when it looked like things were going too far sideways to win, or for that matter live threw the event. That little voice was screaming in the back of his mind.

"Alert all ground teams. They are to leave the "right" evidence and start pulling back. We will need to be ready to lift off in a few hours." His own brain was surprised at the words as they fell out of his mouth. He still thought that he could "get" the ship called White Rabbit. He was thinking that he was NOT going to be able to get the Styx or the other ships that belonged to his company.

David was trying to close on the blips on his screen. The enemy Leopard was going to be his target. His six large bores would be able to work through the armor. The problem was that the 1,900ton ship was faster than his Stuka. Then the Captain of the Styx gave him a different target, while he was doing his best to get a line onto the other enemy carrier. David did some math, and let an evil smile cross his face.

"This was going to be perfect! It's not a real military dropship, but it did launch all of those assault craft. That makes you a carrier in my logbook, buddy." He quickly flipped his craft and fired his engines for three full minutes at full power, and then he shut them off. He gave a thanks to the Colonials gods that his engines had not gone nova. Soon he became just another moving rock in this part of space. He was letting his target come towards him as he hides in space using only passive systems and receiving transmitted data coming from the larger ships.

David watched the target come towards him, on his passive systems. He was comparing what he was "seeing" to the data that was coming threw his systems. The target was 169 meters long and massed around 5,000 tons. It looked like a flat arrow or leaf pointed spear head. It could make only about half the thrust of what the lighter Leopard could do until its fuel tanks ran dry. It just had not been designed as a warship. It had started out as something that should stay far from the warfront as it could get. David was thinking that maybe the craft's captain should have remembered what the craft had been first designed for, and a carrier was not it.

David had no idea where this one had been built, but sometime in his past life it had undergone a radical change. It had been modified, a lot and by people who had some skill in making those modifications to the spaceframe. The Monarch design was a space going passenger liner, but now this one had been modified with what looked like six small craft bays. The six bays were split evenly down both sides of the thicker spine of the dropships with exits over the leaf shaped wings. David could not tell much more, if any other modifications had been done to the old girl.

As the ranged dropped. David had to fire his engines, or he was going to miss the dropship all together. Having a massive fusion flame fire off, were one had not been before? Now that was a little attention grabbing, even if you were not looking for it. The White Hand had been taking over dropships and jumpships for a few decades now. They knew the odds, and they knew when it was time to run. Having a 100ton fighter "show" up almost in weapons range of there civilian skinned liner. Might have been on the top of that list of odds changing events.

They started screaming for help and flipped the liner, so that it could start slowing down. They were to have done a high-speed burn to the jump point. The Stuka changed those plans. They knew that they had landed two small craft on the target, and now a full platoon would soon be capturing the dropship. They would take the bridge and start moving the newly captured dropship toward their jumpship, and the massive payday they had been promised. Without her assault craft, she had little to nothing to add to this fight. The liner could not add anything to help with capture, so it seemed like this was a good time to put some space between it and any firefight.

David came charging in from above the dropship. This had the advantage of giving him a huge target to hit with his weapons. The downside? It was that it gave him a lot of area for his firepower to be split across. The Monarch had an armor layout not much different than the 60 tons Stingray class fighter. That was not going to stand up long against a 100ton fighter, much less one that had just been under the upgrade scalpel. What would buy them some time? It was that David's big hitter and the one weapon, that was his longest ranged weapon was out of ammunition.

David fired all of his forward mounted lasers and he was able to hit with them all. At this range his weapons fire was spread over the broad flat top of the craft, instead of hitting as one fist of angry energy waves. The larger bore lasers hit the nose, left and right wings. The most telling hit was the last one of the six pack. The single hit blasted almost all the way into the massive exhaust bell of the aft mounted engine. He was below the craft coasting away on a cold engine and glowing on any infrared detector that was looking his way, a few eye blinks later. David did not want to give any enemy gunners a nicer brighter target, and he waited for a few seconds before firing off his powerful GM 300 power plant.

No weapons fire followed David, as he pulled away from his attack run on the small craft carrier. He was watching and when no weapons fire followed him. He gave an evil smile, some people might not like attacking a defenseless liner. Not David. They had launched an attack on the ship that was carrying the Convoy commander. They had done it from this very ship. You should not fight a battle if you did not have a way to defend yourself with, after you launched your attack.

David flipped his craft and slowed down, and then started to chase the liner down for another gun run. As soon as the small craft carrier was in anything like real weapons range. David would start firing his large lasers. He was over thrusting his engines as often has he dared. He did not want to overheat, so he was for now "only" firing two or three of his nose mounted weapons and riding the heat bubble. Most of his laser bolts missed, but as the minutes wore on more and more strikes were made all over the converted passenger liner. When the range was lower? He would add one or two more weapons to his trigger pulls.

20,000 miles from the Invader class jumpship. The White Hand started to shed life pods and lifeboats. It did not take long for all 30 of the emergency craft, to be blasted away from the stricken vessel. This is the point that separated David and the Star League in Exile, from the run of the mill pirates or even some house units. He did not fire into the unarmored and unarmed life preserving craft as they came off of the helpless ship. They would slowly make their way to the nearest jump point, their dumb computers working out that it was the best place for the pods to be recovered. He was betting that all thirty of those craft did not have personnel on it, or if they did? There were very few heartbeats on each one.

David would not make an attack run against the over 500meter long jumpship. That was because setting only about 100km's from the interstellar craft, was a massive Overlord class dropship. It was just sitting in a covering position, which was just perfect for blocking any attack against the jumpship. David flipped his craft around and slowed until he was standing still, relative to the jumpship and over watching the 9,000ton war craft. It did not take long for David to start to wonder, what was going on back on the White Rabbit. They had been off the air, with all orders coming from the Styx. So far, they had not been doing a lot of chatting on different topics.

On the White Rabbit. The bridge crew was tracking everything going on around them. They were getting closer and closer to the help offered by the on-rushing Hobgoblin. As each of the enemy craft was destroyed or taken out of play. And now the two small craft that David and Dede had pulled out of the main area of the battle space, the crew started to have hope. Robert was watching the two closing assault ships, when they were committed. Robert put the hat on of the Commander of the convoy.

"Captain, I think it's time to cut the thrust and let our people get ready for some unwanted guest." Cutting the thrust would cut the time down on when the enemy craft could close the distance, but by now that was a moot point.

The Captain of the dropship thought about it for a long second. He was thinking that it would be better to keep pushing as hard as they could to the jump point. After a second, he could do the math in his head. He could keep running, and then the attacking craft would still be able to attach to his ship before they reached the jump point. Then his crews would only have what they now had at hand to defend themselves and the ship with. Or he could cut power now. That would give his people a chance to blunt the attack and be more ready for combat.

The dropship captain chose to cut his engine power. He knew it was the better move, even if he still thought they should just keep running. The Captain gave the order and thrust went from 2.5g to "only" 1.22. Everyone was warned when this was going to happen, and why. As soon as the power was cut down. Everyone went around getting weapons, additional power packs, loaded magazines, and putting body armor on. They had 15 minutes before the two trailing craft were close.

That was when the Captain of the dropship flipped his ship and cut the power all the way off. The heavy weapons in the nose of the craft started firing as fast as they could reload or recharge. It was not much, but between it and a few attack runs by the fighters. It was a pair of now very damaged Dragonstars, that were able to attach to the dropship's sides. The crews on those small craft would have to take this ship, or they were not going to be going anywhere.

The two Dragonstars were on different sides of the ship. This was done to spread out any target's crewmembers that might resist this soon to start incursion. It was felt that the White Hands had been short boarding crews. ComStar, or more to the point ROM had added two Level IIs of Tornado PA(L)s to the mission. That was why these two craft were the one's "chosen" to continue the attack, and the other two had drawn away the attacking fighters. They still had a full load of combat troops, but they did not have any "big guns". That left the last 3 squads of marines on the White Hand, when it had come apart.

The first six people threw the hatch from each of the small craft would be those suits of high-tech protection. Each ship should have been able to force almost 60 troopers threw the two hatches they breached into the dropship. Battle damage had cut that number down, to some degree. Even when every person who could carry a weapon was marked to assault into the White Rabbit. Still they had fewer than that optimal number. The only attacking units at full strength. They were the two six men teams in armor that had protected them from combat damage, that had leaked threw the assault crafts armored skin.

The ROM teams were very happy to get out of the tin cans of the Dragonstars. At least now, they can have some effect on the world instead of just sitting and taking it on the head like they had been doing. It felt like they had been abused for days now. They had some mad to take out, so it was with relish that they were going to be the first ones onto the enemy ship. Facing them were only two full time squads of defenders. They were very large people, who also were very angry. And they were waiting for the attackers over gun sights.

Jenifer was one of the tallest women that most Inner Sphere people had seen in person. She was not just tall. She was also called "door wide" and she had the normal temperament of a bear with a tooth ache. That was on her best days. Today was not even close to her calling it a good day, for her. She was also very sore as she took up a defensive position. She had over done it during a combat training event, just before they had entered this system and she had not fully recovered.

With the heavy thrusting of the dropship? She had been restricted to her bed, by doctors' orders when word was passed that they were going to 1.5g of thrust. That was more like handcuffing a lion to a hospital bed, than a crewman. Being forced to be in bed while she watched the rest of the crew slowly moving around had not been a salve for her ego. Seeing smaller and less muscular crewmembers not seeming to be bothered by the heavy G loading they were under, made her feel useless. Every time one of them walked by her bed, she would just fume more and more.

Now she was up and moving around the ship again. She had that strong feeling that she not only wanted to break something. She needed to break somethings, and the sooner the better for her people or anyone else around her. Some of it must have shown on her face, because none of the "normal" ship's crew came within sight much less arms reach of the large, wide and very angry woman packing enough weapons to start a war.

She was set up in a defense position looking right at the hatch, which the small craft had locked onto about 90 seconds ago. She had on a smile that a shark would have loved to have been able to emulate. The hatch wheel started to spin, and the hatch started to open. Unlike the last attack. They did not rush into the narrow metal access ways. It would seem that someone might have read about the last people who had made that play against this ship.

Jenifer "call me Jen and I will break your knees" eyes went wide. It was not a person in body armor looking out of the connecting hatch. Jenifer had to fight to keep her voice level and soft. The head was looking around seemingly to make sure the coast was clear. "Okay people Hatch 5J is opening. They are scouting this time and not bum rushing, but the first person is wearing something that kind of looks like a Nighthawk suit. I am arming the traps, including the EMP. Everyone keep a heads up when it blows!"

She let go of the transmit button, then turned off all her non-hardened electronic equipment with a few simple finger movements that were very well practiced. "Well you wanted to break something, and you were worried that they would not put up a real fight after attaching to the hull. Looks like you do not have to worry about that now."

As Jenifer watched from her hiding spot off to one side of the corridor. The Nighthawk like suit called a Tornado suit, stepped fully into the ships access way. The Tornado suit, just like the Nighthawk it was based on, did not have a built-in weapon system. It was fitted with armored gloves, which allowed the wearer to carry heavier weapons for a longer amount of time than a nonsuited trooper could. It also would protect the trooper wearing it from most rifle sized rounds, but not heavy weapons fire and a few other hazards that they might bump into. The first suit entered the access way, and then took three steps towards Jenifer. It was followed by two more suited personnel that looked to be planning on taking the other two access ways from the hatch.

On an external pick-up mic. Jenifer could hear voices yelling at the suits to move faster. It seemed that those voices were coming from deeper within the airlock. The rest of the team seemed to think that faster was better.

Jenifer was still smiling as the suit took another step towards her. The metal foot stepped forward, but the suit operator did not notice a little mechanical switch that the foot depressed as the deck took his weight. The simple switch opened up a power line overhead. At the speed of light, a bolt of raw power, which could fry a Cylon Centurion, found the shortest route to ground. The energy bolt "jumped" from the open port overhead, to the box like head. Then it went through the machine and out the right foot of the 400 kg Krupp made suit. The end point was a catch plate, which took the energy bolt and feeds it back into the ships power grid. One thing that a dropship had, was an abundance of high voltage.

The intruder shook as the power went through the suit and the organics that controlled it. Circuit breakers built into the suit popped to protect the sensitive electronics, but that didn't help the human heart or brain incased in the conductive metal. By the time the power surge had stopped. The human brain was only so much cooked meat, and it was dead as any hamburger coming off a grill in your local greasy spoon.

The sound and flash of the blast of electricity stopped everyone in their path. There were now four suits in the access way, but one was now falling face forward to the metal deck, like a stone statue. Before the suit had completely fallen to the dropship's deck. A second modification built into the Blockade Runner activated. This time the modification was triggered by Jennifer in her hide site. It was a very focused EMP mine and it detonated.

The EMP was an area limited mine, which would only affect the area in the access ways on this deck. The other edge of the zone of effect was from Jenifer's location going all the way to the open hatch. Now all four enemy battle suits were out of commission. The Star League in Exile had worked with and trained against the Nighthawk suits for a few centuries, and now they had a lot of experience fighting the Cylons. So, they knew how to fight against things like power armor. They had more than a few tricks in their playbook to counter battle armor. They knew that the Clan used even heavier combat suits, and the weapons and tactics had been first worked out to counter them.

When the EMP mine went off, it did not give a flash or blast of noise to announce what had just happened. It was just a hidden attack, and then an effect on the battlefield. When the invisible wave of energy swept over the targeted area. It was picked up on the systems of the people still on the other side of the hatch, it was a very energetic event. As soon as the energy wave passed, and it was "only" moving at the speed of light. The rest of the team still on the small craft rushed into the metal access ways like a human tidal wave. The last two suits were faster of the bunch.

Jennifer had dropped prone on the deck after hitting the button for the mine, and she pulled the Blazer rifle closer into her armored covered shoulder. The two small craft had spread out all of the defenders, but the "hidden" two squads were going to take a lot of the attackers by surprise. Jennifer pulled the trigger and put a full power blast into the Nighthawk like armor dead center in the chest. It fell to the ground, before it could get up to anything like full speed.

The falling PA(L) suit tripped up and delayed the follow on and final armored suit in this group. This gave Jennifer time to be able to fire a second full power shot into the attackers. The second suit was her target and it took the twin laser blasts at the groin level of the two-legged weapons system. It was now out of the fight.

The rushing people behind the heavy body armor surged forward. Jennifer knew that the Blazer was not going to recharge in time to fire again, so she did not even try. She reached forward to the waiting Colonial automatic battle rifle. That was when she was struck by the first three rounds. They had come from a Federal Rifle and hit her on the left shoulder pad armor like a hammer.

The heavy cored round punched through the armored pad and into Jennifer's body, only stopping after breaking the shoulder blade to blead off the last of the energy. Jennifer was still able to fire a full magazine down the narrow access way. It did not stop the human wave attack. She would end up shot four times, in the back. She was even stabbed with a vibro bayonet in her center back. It would just miss her spine. There was so much blood on the deck, that the follow-on enemy borders just left her unmoving body in its firing position.

The man with no name slowly made his way down the access way. The deck plans downloaded into his Tornado suit said this way was to the main cargo bay. He was, as far as he knew the last of the ROM team, which had been seconded to the White Hands to add some firepower to their attack. He knew why this ship had been attacked. He had seen a lot of the reports on this target. He had paid close attention to the report about the failed light infantry assault of almost a platoon sized unit of criminals.

When he and his team had first exited their Dragonstar. They had walked right into the same trap that had taken out the other team of battle armor, just without the EMP mine. The only reason he was still alive? It was that he had been the last person out of the hatch, and that the point man had been farther ahead of the rest of the team when they rushed the defenders. Only a dozen of his team had made it past the sole defensive point near the hatch.

As his people advanced, he could hear weapons fire behind them. He had never stopped to look, but he felt that the numbers of "his" people were dropping due to fire from this demon mad crew. That should not have been happening. The members of his team had been falling one after the other, and they were still on the same deck that the transport had attached to. Even then, he had not been able to make it this far without heavy damage to his armor. The front and back of his suit looked like someone had fired shotgun blast after massive shotgun blast into it from five meters.

None of his suit's pick-ups told him anything, but that he was alone. Well that and that the hatch in front of him, should lead him to an access way to the bridge and control center of the vessel. He was determined by Blake's beard. That he was going to reach that target and kill anyone there, or anyone that got in his way to get to that location. When he reached the hatch, he had to spin the wheel to get the hatch to unlock on manual and give it a hard push to start it to swing open.

As the hatch moves away from him. He stuck his back to the side of the access way, so that any incoming fire would sail down the corridor without hitting him. Not doing this? It had cost him his last wing man, when what must have been a dozen laser blast had come their way after opening a closed hatch way. A mini grenade had been an effective reply to those laser burst, and they had taken the room. When this hatch was fully opened, and no weapons fire had come his way. He slowly entered the half empty cargo bay. He had not reached the ripe old age of 27 in ROM without being a little careful, when he needed to be.

Mike was sitting in his Power Loader mech. He was a tech and a fully qualified mech warrior, not some grunt. He knew that he would have been less than useless in the battle of the access ways of the ship. He had reported to the cargo bay as soon as the engines had reduced power. The Bridge knew where he was going and that he would be powering up his Fuel Cell engine power loader. It had no weapons and almost nothing for armor, but it was a weapon that he knew how to use very well.

He closed and dogged all of the hatches to the cargo bay, just as the engines fired up to over 1G of thrust. He contacted the bridge with what he had done, and what he was planning on. He was not told, not to do it. He took it as it was okay, to stick with his "plan". He moved his Power Loader to one side of the large open area, which was the cargo bay. The hatch that was the nearest to him, was the most likely way that the attackers would try to access this area. All he could do was wait to find out if he was right or not.

Mike pulled out a sheet of paper and made notes, as information came over the radio on the possible location of the enemy. He put the pen and paper away, when he saw the hatch wheel start to slowly spin. Mike almost moved when the hatch started to open, but something stopped him, before he let his muscles move more than a few millimeters. The hatch was opening very slowly under manual control, and without making any noise. Whoever was on the other side, was not going to rush into him. Mike waited, and when he saw a shadow start to move, he was ready. The super quiet fuel cell powered mech's arm shifted a little in one dimension. Mike was making sure that he moved as slowly as he could, but still not be jerky.

The ComStar made suit cleared the hatch, and the operator started scanning the area around him. He could see items and equipment all over the area, but he did not pick up on the sound coming from above his head. The suits external microphone had been damaged in the battle already, and he did not know that it had finally decided that it did not want to work anymore. It was an oversite, which he would not live to understand. Or maybe he would? It can take a long time to die. When you were screaming? It makes it seem like time has stopped, as you scream yourself horse.

A few meters over the hatch lip, a forked ended and off yellow mech arm started falling toward the deck floor. The Mech's arm from shoulder to the end of the lifting forks massed just under ten tons, without carrying anything. The White Rabbit was still under power and trying to make it to the "safety" of the jumpship at the jump point. The almost nine tons of metal was falling faster under the 1.2Gs that the massive dropship engines were pushing. The falling arm hit the newer built knockoff Nighthawk suit, just behind the "head". The falling arm pushed the top half of the heavy suit slightly forward as it came down. If the ROM agent had been half a step farther into the cargo bay? He might have "only" gotten off with more damage to his suit, and a very bad headache. It would have been doubtful that the suit would have been operational, but it would have been better for the ROM agent inside the metal can of a suit.

That was not the case now. The hips and legs of the man and suit could not be pushed out of the way fast enough. The massive weight started crushing the expensive suit. When the heavy lifting arm stopped moving, it was almost touching the metal ship's deck. What was stopping the arm from reaching the deck, was a lot thinner set of metal covered legs. The suit was not moving, and a growing area of red liquid was spreading out away from the site of the collision.

Mike looked out of his covered and thinly armored cockpit, at the mess below him. What he could not see, was that the falling mass had crushed the human pelvis and all the bones below it into jelly. The suit's pilot was screaming as loud as he could, but no one could hear him or care if they did. In three minutes, he would be dead due to the open veins and arteries below his belt line. The crew would spend weeks cleaning up the mess. Every time the ship would go to zero g, a few flakes of dried blood would be found floating in this cargo bay.

Mike had time to get back in position, when bullets and laser blast started coming out of the hatch. The suit had only thought he was alone. The last of the boarders on this level had only been delayed, by the last ambush. They had not seen what had happened to the PA(L) that had been running point for them. They could only see it lying on the deck in the open hatch way. Their responses to the image, was to fire out the hatch to push anyone back that had attacked one of them.

When the three people in medium body armor, and riot shields exited the hatch? They were greeted with a hip high leg stomp delivered by Mike and his loadermech. More blood was now on the deck. Soon it would be covering the whole deck from hatch to hatch and metal wall to metal wall and everywhere in between. It would be a painful and tedious procedure to clean it all up to the satisfaction of the Cargo Master and the senior ship's enlisted member. He would not be very happy with the one time failed out mech warrior. The word crunchy was semiofficially band in the ships mess hall for that time forward.

It would take about another ten minutes for it to be worked out that the boarding action was done, and it had failed. The Cargo Master looked up from his screens. He was too old and not trained for this type of fighting to be of any use. If they had breached the bridge? He would have been able to put his sidearm to good use, but he had other duties that better fit his skills. Like watching all of the new security cameras and microphones

"Sir! Internal security is not picking up any more weapons fire. Do we want to start trying to sweep towards the compromised hatches?" This had been directed to the Dropships captain, and not the convoy commander sitting to his right side.

The Captain of the White Rabbit was looking at the displays, and he agreed with his cargo master. "Yes. Please contact all teams. Have them start sweeping. Make sure they know not to shoot our own people, or I will make them regret it." Blue on Blue was not uncommon, and it was more than just an embarrassment when it happened under your command.

It was slow going and there were many close calls, but there were not any reported cases of Blue on Blue, once the clearing of the dropship had started. The counter clearing started in the Cargo bay right at Mikes Power Loaders mechs feet. The battle armor suit was the center of attention, and it took some effort to get everyone focus on the upcoming task. It took some foot to ass, to get into some of them that this was not over yet.

The clearing team was a mix of what was left of the two infantry squads, and secondary security personnel. They even were augmented with barely weapons trained crewmembers of the dropship to help. They had to go foot by foot, down all of the access ways of the dropship. They would find wounded, both theirs and the enemies every few meters of corridor that they cleared. They also found dead bodies from both sides of the battle. They cleared all the way to the small craft attached to the outer hull. They were both completely empty, all the crews had joined in on the assault and had chosen their own fates.

Robert was still seated in his command chair taking in all of the information as it was coming in, but he was not hovering over people on the bridge. That was not his job or place. Still it was killing him being on the side lines, but he was not going to get in the way of the Dropship's Captain. When he felt the time was right, he enters the picture.

"Okay Captain, what have we got? Would it give us an advantage, if we had the Lisbon Maru start coming out this way?"

The Captain of the Blockade Runner was thinking about what was going on, and what the Convoy commander had asked him. With a nod more to himself than to anyone on the bridge. He was ready to address the Commander.

"Sir, we have six dead, a dozen hurt or wounded to a number of different degrees. We will need some help soon, or we are going to lose some of them. We have captured eight pirates, all of them are wounded, but alive for now. The attached Dragonstars are empty, and I want to cut them off my hull. They are reported to be pretty badly shot up, with many dead bodies on board. It would seem that our fighters took a bigger bite out of them, than we first thought."

There was a slight tone of disbelief in his words about the effectiveness of the fighters. He had expected Navy trained pilots to have cleaned the skies of enemy and pirate craft with little problem. He had been deeply shaken that his people had not done so against only the technology that they had seen on those space craft.

The Captain looked at a few different screens, as he checked a few more details. "We are space worthy and my crew can do their jobs. We will need some downtime to fix all the damage caused by the weapons fire, but nothing looks that bad from up here. If we don't get some of it taken care of quickly? That could change amazingly fast. We can make the jump point, if the Hobgoblin can take care of that other Leo or at least keep it off of us the rest of the way. I don't think that the Overlord is interested in coming for us. But as of right now? I don't know if we could even handle the six pack they can carry. Even if they were all kits in light fighters." The Captain was referring to the six aero fighters an Overlord class dropship could carry as designed.

Notes:

ComStar crew skills in the battles so far. The Dragonstars, fighters, and marines were all Elite. All of Copeland crews are Vet rated.