“Oh shit,” she muttered. “It is breaking apart.”
“Musta hit something good,” Garth said. “Look, the third one is pulling away.”
The news was only half good. The three heavy cruisers had launched so many dropships and pods that the tracking systems were having trouble following them all. Estimates were fluctuating, but there were at least two hundred dropships and over a thousand escape pods—all headed toward the Marauders’ Lance.
Potter said.
Heather pursed her lips. The Niets had built the Lance to be the ‘main gun’ of a fleet, something heavily protected by dozens of destroyers and cruisers. She’d become so accustomed to having stasis shields that flying into the face of overwhelming odds with a ship that could barely maneuver on the best of days—and was sorely lacking in close-range defense beams—had seemed like a good plan.
Note to self: next time, jump in at least half a light minute from the enemy.
She shook her head, slowing her rapid breathing.
she called down to the chief engineer.
she pressed.
“They made it through!” Garth said a moment later, and Heather felt a wave of panic until she realized that he meant the Undaunted and the Fearsome.
Scan showed that the station would be able to fire past the Lance’s shields in eleven minutes.
“They’d better hurry up,” she muttered. “We wouldn’t want the Niets to kill us before the other Niets can kill us.”
Karen snorted a laugh. “Best I can see, they’re only going to get a few thousand troops onto the Lance. That’s not nearly enough.”
“They only have to take out the forward stasis shield generator,” Heather reminded the captain.
“CJ’s got it covered,” Tex added. “Going to take a lot more than a few thousand Niets to get past her squad.”
The mech’s words were punctuated by a shudder that ran through the deckplate, followed by a hollow thud echoing down the passageways outside the bridge.
“What—” the colonel began, only to be interrupted by Ona.
“Four dropships made it through. They hit just a hundred meters aft of us.”
“Did they breach?” Karen asked, grabbing her GNR’s barrel off her back and slotting it into place.
Ona nodded. “Bays A1 and A4.”
Potter added.
* * * * *
Crunch cried out as the Undaunted tore through Berra Station’s shields. The ship fired its lateral port-side engines and spun to face the station broadside, the starboard maneuvering burners kicking on a second later.
Ferris called down from the bridge just as a-grav cut and Crunch’s squad sailed out of the bay, their own thruster packs burning hard.
Sixteen mechs—down three from full strength, with Kelly’s team still back on Belgium—hurled through space toward a docking bay protected by nothing more than a grav shield.
Crunch ordered Corporal Al, and fireteam one/one opened up with beams and kinetics, their weapons cutting into the bulkhead to the left of the bay’s entrance, tearing through plas and steel until they hit the grav emitters.
A section of the shield died a second before the mechs reached it, and they blasted through the decompressing air to land on the deck.
Maglocks activated, and mechs unleashed hell on the bay’s automated defenses and a pair of station security who thought that their pulse rifles stood a chance against the heavy assault team.
Ten seconds after Crunch had given the orders to Whispers’ team, the mechs had secured the bay, and the emergency shield had snapped into place.
Motion to his right caught the sergeant’s attention, and he saw a group of ship technicians huddled under a cradle’s arms.
“Take it easy,” he called out. “You don’t shoot us, we won’t shoot you.”
The three fireteams flowed across the bay, checking corners and blind spots, making it to the interior doors in a minute. Once there, they formed up, with one/one stacked on either side of the door, and one/three and one/four covering them from a dozen meters back.
Crunch dropped a hackIt on the door control, and a few seconds later, it slid open to reveal four station security guards in light armor, holding multifunction rifles.
One raised his gun to fire, while the other three flung their weapons to the ground.
“Drop it!” Crunch thundered, and a fourth rifle hit the deck a second later. he said over the combat net.
“Ree-kah!” the mechs bellowed.
Ten seconds later, the four security guards were standing alone in the corridor, the smashed ruins of their rifles laying on the deck in front of them.
Crunch joined in with Kerry’s fireteam as they raced through the station, headed to the fire control center for three of the rails. They needed to go the one-kilometer distance across the station’s superstructure, and then six decks down.
They encountered light resistance at first, but as they drew near the FCC, they rounded a corner to see temporary barriers and grav shields blocking the passage.
Kerry ordered as a stream of weapons fire filled the corridor.
Crunch coughed a laugh as the deck and overhead began to melt in the intersection.
Curtis glanced back over his shoulder, and the RR-4 banged a fist against the bulkhead.
Carla replied.
The RR-4 nodded.
