Chapter 2

2628 – MU ARAE NAVAL STATION – BARBOSA

The trio of Coursers emerged in high orbit around a gas giant, bands of colorful clouds swirling around its equator, pooling in places like watercolor paint to form giant storms. Some of the agents sitting in the seats to either side of Barbosa cradled their heads and cursed, the effects of the jump leaving them dizzy and nauseated. Barbosa had done so many jumps that he barely felt the effects anymore.

They had landed outside of visual range of the Naval station, the planet hiding their presence, the formation of ships beginning a burn that would bring them closer. Slowly, as they rounded the gas giant, their telescopes picked up the outpost rising above the planet’s horizon. It was a torus-shaped structure that glinted against the dark backdrop of space with its matte-white hull, a series of spokes bridging a central control area, making it look like a bicycle wheel. It wasn’t too different in appearance from Fort Hamilton, albeit being much, much smaller at barely half a kilometer across. This one was more of a waystation, intended mostly for sentry duty and resupplying passing ships.

There was the carrier – docked to the station via several umbilicals that extended from the torus. It was as long as the station was wide, its ocean-grey hull patterned with Navy blue livery, bristling with railguns and CIWS turrets. Unlike the angular stealth look of many UNN vessels, carriers were too large to hide, and they had a more rounded appearance. The carrier was shaped vaguely like a railgun slug, with its hangars and elevated bridge section situated toward the stern, while a slimmer section covered in guns and torpedo tubes extended to the bow. To the port and starboard were the hangar decks, the blue glow of the force fields that covered them easily visible. With a full complement, the vessel could field up to ninety aircraft. He could see the yellow glint of the light that shone through the windows on the raised bridge atop them, and further back were the giant engine cones, currently idle.

Jump carriers were the beating heart of a fleet, using their massive jump drives to drag other ships across the stars. They could carry up to ten thousand personnel, field squadrons of fighters and dropships, and keep their strike group supplied with fuel and oxygen practically indefinitely. Barbosa didn’t have nearly enough people to max out its capacity, nor did he have an abundance of fighter pilots, but even the most stripped-down jump carrier would give him the ability to control a planet. It was a mobile fortress – able to sustain his rebellion potentially for years.

This one was as vulnerable as carriers got. It was on routine patrol without an escort fleet – most of its crew would be taking leave on the station, and they wouldn’t be expecting an attack like this. He had to leverage the element of surprise, and he had to do it quickly.

They drew closer to the station, Barbosa able to spot the small windows that lined its torus, along with a small hangar deck for shuttles and its complement of defensive fighters.

“Jamming their comms,” Song announced.

“We need to be on the hull and outside the firing arcs of their guns before they realize what’s happening,” Barbosa added. “Put the EWAR Courser on the opposite side of the station where they can’t target it, and jump the others away once the salvo has been fired.”

The three Coursers could fit sixty passengers each – albeit uncomfortably – and it was just enough room to transport his army of two hundred agents. They were all loyal to him, sympathetic to the cause, and willing to die for their oaths. Over a decade, Barbosa had cultivated his inner circle, growing it through slow and cautious recruitment. He had identified the malcontents, poring over field reports and personnel files, creating an organization within the organization. Each Courser had towed its own little squadron of five dropships, and with twelve passengers each, they could transport his entire force.

The craft banked away now, forming up as they headed for the docked carrier, Barbosa watching it grow through the pilot’s canopy. That grey hull formed a new horizon, covered in armored plates broken up by the occasional defensive gun or missile hatch, the dropships firing their thrusters as they decelerated to hover a couple of feet above it. They spread out all around the carrier, slowly drifting along, the harsh light from the system’s star sending dark shadows sweeping along beneath them.

Every team knew where they would be inserting – they had gone over the mission plan dozens of times, and they all knew the standardized layout of a jump carrier. There were thirty teams, each with its own task, be it securing areas of the ship or capturing specific systems. The Bullsharks would be split up into two teams tasked with capturing the most crucial and heavily defended sections of the ship – the bridge and the reactor room.

“Check suit seals,” Barbosa ordered over the radio. The SWAR agents sitting in the seats to either side of him began to run through their pressure tests, ensuring that their suits were pressurized and safe for vacuum. Once all thirty team leaders had reported green seals, he broadcast another message over their radio, addressing everyone in his small fleet.

“Weapons free,” he said, his synthetic voice carrying across the network. “Show no mercy. Those of you who are younger – who might not have served during the Expansion – may have misgivings about killing your fellow humans. This is something that our species has done since our earliest ancestor first lifted a rock off the ground, and it’s a part of us – part of you. What we do here today may very well determine the fate of our species, and the blood we spill is the price we pay. And load squash-head slugs – I don’t want any holes in my new flagship. Good hunting.”

“Depressurizing,” the pilot announced, reaching up to hit some switches. Barbosa didn’t feel it from inside his suit, but he could see his atmospheric sensors tracking the pressure drop, the air filtering away. A red light above the troop bay door turned green, then the ramp began to lower, exposing the passengers to open space.

Barbosa walked backwards, releasing the electromagnets that secured his boots to the deck, his heavy suit floating weightlessly as it left the bay. He gently pushed off from the underside of the dropship’s tail, drifting lower, activating the magnets again once he felt cold metal beneath his feet. It was a strange sensation, akin to the simulated neural feedback from prosthetic limbs. Standing on the curving hull now, he looked up as Song’s PCE followed, landing beside him as light as a feather. Next came the SWAR teams, the agents splitting into two teams of six. More dropships were disgorging their passengers nearby, the teams walking across the hull as they sought out their insertion points.

Petrova marched over to join them, one of the massive ballistic shields locked to her suit’s arm.

“Teams are getting into position,” she announced.

“Won’t be long before they figure out something’s up,” Song added, his oversized XMR gripped in his mechanical hands.

“Once all the teams are ready, tell them to fire the missiles,” Barbosa added.

The trio of Bullsharks walked along the hull, their footsteps reverberating through the metal, one of the SWAR teams moving along beside them. Just like the suits, the agents had electromagnets either in their boots or their prosthetics, walking with a slow gait that always kept one foot on the ground. Without an atmosphere, Barbosa could see along the whole length of the ship in perfect clarity, the way that the horizon curved away playing tricks on his brain.

They soon reached an access door close to the bridge, the structure rising up above them almost like a building in its own right. He zoomed in on the large main viewport with his cameras, seeing shapes moving beyond it.

“Fire,” Petrova ordered.

Barbosa glanced up into the inky black, starry sky, seeing one of the Coursers unleash a salvo of missiles from the cylindrical launchers that had been grafted to its spindly midsection. They dropped away, orienting themselves with small flashes of blue flame from their maneuvering thrusters, then they blazed across the dark backdrop on bright engine plumes. He tracked them, watching silent explosions billow as they impacted the umbilicals that secured the carrier to the station. One by one, the flimsy gantries tore apart, crystallized atmosphere spilling from them like glittering blood from a severed artery. The gentle push was enough to send the two massive structures slowly drifting apart. There would be no reinforcements from the station now.

The last missile streaked into the station’s hangar bay, bright flame filling the space, the blue force field flickering for a moment before it failed and let the explosion spill out. Barbosa expected two Beewolf fighters to be docked there, and they wouldn’t pose a threat to the Coursers any longer.

“Go, go, go!” Barbosa ordered.

The carriers used standard access codes for their emergency airlocks, one of the agents opening the outer door with a simple button press. The airlock was only large enough for a few people at a time, so the team went first, the outer door closing again as it pressurized. Once they were through the inner door, the Bullsharks followed one by one, Barbosa leading the way. The chamber within was just large enough for a Krell, so the PCE fit, the inner door opening into a corridor with a hiss.

Barbosa had served on many carriers in his time, and the environs were immediately familiar. The walls were mostly exposed bulkheads and naked metal, water and electrical pipes snaking along the ceiling above his head, the deck mostly made up of removable grates that concealed more utilities. The maze-like, cramped hallways were marked with color-coded lines that ran along the walls, leading people to different sections. He could see the blue line marked with stenciled letters that spelled bridge. The SWAR agents had already secured the corridor, their weapons aimed to cover the corners.

A minute later, and the other Bullsharks were inside, the suits so large that two of them couldn’t quite stand side by side. A klaxon began to blare, red warning lights bathing the hallway, a voice echoing over the intercom.

“This is your Captain speaking. We are being boarded by unknown hostiles. Repeat – we are being boarded. Battle stations. Battle stations.”

“Looks like our cover has been blown,” Song mused.

“Time to go loud,” Barbosa replied, aiming his XMR down the hallway. “Fall in.”

The three Bullsharks began to lumber down the hallway with Petrova leading the way, her shield raised, their heavy footfalls and the grinding of servos and pistons echoing. The team of six agents flanked them in the same formation they might have used while escorting a vehicle, their rifles shouldered.

Based on what Barbosa knew about UNN security protocols, what Marines remained on the ship would be moving to defend the bridge and the reactor, and they’d be scrambling with little notice and spotty intel. They probably still had no idea what was really happening or who was attacking them.

From a junction a few meters ahead, a trio of figures jogged into view. It was three Marines – identifiable by the black body armor they wore over their Navy blue pressure suits, PDW variants of the XMR clutched in their hands. One of them hadn’t even had time to put his helmet on yet.

The helmetless man in question noticed them, spinning around, his eyes wide.

“What the fuck is that?”

He raised his PDW, aiming it at what to him must resemble a giant mass of metal blocking the hallway, his two companions following suit.

“Identify yourselves!” the Marine beside him barked through his helmet speakers.

“What the ... is that SWAR?” another asked, glancing between his friends. “Aren’t they on our side?”

One of the SWAR agents took a knee, dropping the helmetless man with a short burst that caught him in the chest, firing around Petrova’s shield. Even using squash heads at relatively low voltage, the ceramic armor didn’t stand a chance, the slugs perforating it and sparking against the wall behind the target. That prompted the two remaining Marines to return fire, spraying wildly as they tried to retreat into cover. Their slugs slammed against the ballistic shield, pancaking against its tough armor, Petrova moving the slab to cover the operatives.

Barbosa needed no such protection, leaning around her to fire his large-frame XMR down the corridor. His APS wasn’t active with friendly troops so close, as the plasma shield could fry them just as easily as it would a projectile, and he felt his suit shake as one of the rounds deflected off his slanted canopy and buried itself in the mess of pipes above him. The concept of wearable armor that could defeat a handheld railgun was still a novelty.

He fired his weapon from the hip, the data link between his suit and the scope projecting a path on his displays showing exactly where the shots would travel. It was like playing a damned VR game. Barely feeling recoil that would knock a human on their ass, he sent a trio of slugs at the nearest Marine, catching him in the shoulder just as he tried to duck behind a corner. The kinetic energy conveyed by the projectiles tore off his arm and took a chunk out of his torso, spinning him and tossing him against the bulkhead behind him, his blood painting the wall.

The next target was in cover, but Barbosa could track him on the thermal cameras, his glowing silhouette visible on the displays. The Commander turned up the XMR’s voltage setting, then took aim, the next round punching straight through the wall. It left a crater in the metal like someone poking a finger into soft butter, molten slag and shrapnel exploding out from the other side like a grenade, the Marine who was standing behind it thrown to the ground in bloody tatters.

“Push up,” Barbosa ordered, Petrova starting to move again. The operatives rushed ahead to check the corners, clearing the junction, one of them tapping a dead Marine with the skid of his prosthetic leg.

“Got it,” Song announced. “Commander, I’ve tapped into their local IFF system. They shouldn’t surprise us again.”

“Keep your eyes open,” Barbosa added. “They could come from any direction.”

The team advanced, taking the shortest route to the bridge. It was one of the most defensible positions on the ship, and it could be totally isolated from the rest of the decks, but Bug boarding parties didn’t usually have Navy access codes. Barbosa checked the progress of the other teams, pulling up feeds on his displays. He overlaid a rough blueprint of the ship, his troops displayed with small blue dots, slowly spreading through the carrier. The other Bullshark team was still moving aft, not far from engineering now. If they didn’t get the job done, the crew could scram the reactors, or worse – initiate an emergency core dump that would jettison them into space and leave the carrier crippled.