Chapter 3: Window Scraping

Red light flooded the narrow corridors, a warning klaxon blaring as Evan raced into the nearest armory, his comrades jostling him as they rounded a bend. They had come straight from their barracks, the same warning that had spurred them into action repeating over the intercom.

“All personnel, prepare to repel boarders. Repeat, all personnel, report to your stations. We are being boarded.”

The armories were spaced out around the assault carrier, most of them in easy reach of the crew quarters. Their personal armor was stored there, as well as their XMRs and ammunition. The leader of their group opened the bulkhead with a creak, and they piled into the room. Inside were rows of lockers, closets, and racks that stored all of the equipment. Evan made a beeline for his closet, throwing open the two metal doors to reveal the compartments inside. On the right was his pressure suit, hanging from a rack, and on shelves to its left were the individual pieces of ceramic armor that attached over the top of it. His helmet was sitting in a compartment just above them, its opaque visor open.

He began to tear off his coveralls, stripping down to his underwear and kicking off his shoes. Once that was done, he pulled his pressure suit from the locker, careful to detach the charging cable. It was deceptively light, made of a tough Kevlar weave that did a decent job of protecting the material from shrapnel and ricochets that might puncture it. It also had thermal control elements that ran throughout the suit, letting the wearer adapt to various hostile environmental conditions. At this stage, it looked like he was wearing a giant onesie, his hands and socks exposed.

Next, he pulled his armored boots from their shelf. They were equipped with electromagnets that would allow the wearer to keep operating in a microgravity environment, such as a ship that had lost power to its AG fields. He stepped into them, hearing a hiss as they linked up to his ankle cuffs, creating a seal. The gloves were next, Evan pulling them over his hands, flexing his fingers. The back of the hand and the knuckles were armored, but the fingers were made from a more flexible, tactile material that would allow the wearer to pull a trigger or use a touchpad with ease. There was another hermetic hiss as they were secured to his sleeves.

Starting at his shin pads, he began to attach his leg armor. He fastened the straps tightly, moving up to the knee pads, then to his thigh armor. UNN body armor was designed primarily to dissipate heat from plasma weapons and to protect against explosives. It would stop a conventional bullet, too, but not a railgun slug. There was little that could.

Evan lifted his heavy chest armor, draping it over his shoulders, then securing the belt about his waist. There were heavy ceramic plates on both the front and back, covering up most of his torso, the groin region made up of several smaller plates so as not to limit his range of motion. He shifted its weight for a moment, trying to get it to sit comfortably, then reached for the shoulder pads. The final pieces were the wrist cuffs, the left one sporting a built-in touch panel that handled the suit’s various functions, along with communications and other tools.

After tightening a collar that reached up to his jaw, he reached for the helmet, slotting it over his head. The visor closed as it mated to the rest of his suit, sealing to create a pressurized environment, his HUD flaring to life. He brought up his forearm and checked the system status on his display, seeing that it was reading normal pressure. Good, no leaks, and his battery was fully charged.

“Why the fuck are our suits red now?” Hernandez asked. He paused to look Evan up and down, planting a boot on a nearby bench as he fastened it.

“Huh?” Evan mumbled, glancing down at his armor. “Shit, you’re right. I was in such a hurry that I didn’t even notice.”

The pressure suits were usually a shade of Navy blue, and the armor was commonly charcoal black. Someone had either painted or totally replaced their gear since they had arrived at Valbara some weeks prior. The pressure suit was a rusty red now, and the armor was painted with what looked like woodland camo. Instead of browns and greens, it was shades of red, orange, and yellow. They were autumn colors.

“Red forests, right?” Evan added.

The lieutenant arrived at the door, already wearing his armor, his rapid footsteps alerting the Marines. He leaned into the armory, out of breath, hitting the touchpad on his helmet to open his visor.

“First shift, you guys are on window scraping duty,” he announced, which was answered by a chorus of groans. “Suck it up, Marines! We got critters crawling around on the hulls of the Okinawa and the Dragoon, and they’re trying to cut a way inside. It’s your job to make sure that doesn’t happen here. Grab your shields and get to your designated airlocks.”

The Marines moved to the weapon racks, each stowed rifle labeled with a number so its owner could find it. The XMR was a man-portable railgun, a modular weapon designed to be easily configurable for use by different species. It was made from black polymer, the barrel lined with magnetic coils. The platform fired a 50x6mm tungsten round, which could leave the barrel at two kilometers per second, depending on the voltage level.

Evan slung a carrier over his chest piece, filling it with spare magazines, then stowed his gun on his back. Next, he slotted his XMH into a holster on his thigh, a sidearm variant of the larger rifle. When he was loaded up, he moved over to the far wall, where one of his companions was passing out shields. They were six feet tall and wider than the span of a man’s shoulders, large enough to completely obscure the person carrying them. These were still sporting the black coloration of the original armor. There was a reinforced window at about head height that would let the wielder see through it, little more than a transparent letterbox. Evan hooked his arm through the straps, struggling to lift the thing. It was heavy, but it wasn’t designed to be used in gravity. These shields had electromagnets in the skirt that lined the bottom, which would secure it to the hull of a ship when activated, providing vital cover for the user.

When they were all geared up, they made their way out of the armory, following the winding corridors until they arrived at the nearest airlock. They lined up by the inner door, the sound of Evan’s own heavy breathing filling his helmet.

“Fuck window scrapin’, man,” Hernandez grumbled from behind him. “First shift, worst shift, am I right?”

“First group, into the airlock!” the lieutenant ordered. The queue moved forward a few paces, then stopped, Evan leaning past the Marine ahead of him to get a look. The airlocks were too small for everyone to fit inside at once, so they were going in groups of half a dozen. There were a thousand Marines in the first duty shift, but they’d be spread out around the ship, using various different airlocks. There were about sixty people in Evan’s current group.

The lieutenant waved the next group in, Evan finding himself standing next to the inner door. Through the reinforced window, he could see the group inside, checking the seals on their suits as they prepared to go EVA. A warning light flashed, the outer door slowly sliding open, the air inside rushing out into the void. The six Marines slowly walked out, their gait changing as they transitioned from the ship’s AG field to their magnetic boots. The floor curved away, leveling out with the exterior hull, letting the men walk directly onto it like a ramp.

Evan was next, Hernandez squeezing into the airlock beside him, the deck shaking as he set down his heavy shield.

“We got this,” his friend said, knocking their armored shoulder plates together. “Just don’t fill your helmet with puke like Kim did on his first EVA.”

“Not helping,” Evan complained, hearing the inner door close behind them. He brought up the panel on his wrist to check his pressure, then switched to the local comms network. There was no atmosphere in space and thus no sound.

The warning light bathed the airlock in red, then the outer door opened, Evan hearing a whoosh of air before everything went as silent as the grave. His boots secured him to the floor, the electromagnets rooting him in place. Trying to walk in them was an odd sensation, almost like there were suction cups on his feet, only activating when they were in proximity to the floor. You had to walk kind of like you were wading through ankle-deep mud, lifting each foot higher than felt natural.

Beyond the door was an inky-black starfield, a yawning abyss, Evan fighting his vertigo as he willed himself to march forward. The curve of the floor played tricks on him, his instincts insisting that he was about to walk straight off a cliff, but he pressed on. His stomach lurched as he left the ship’s AG field, only his boots keeping him from floating off into space now. One step at a time, always keep one foot on the floor...

He emerged into a new landscape, the grey, featureless hull of the assault carrier sloping away like a horizon. He was standing on the side of the ship, looking out towards the vessel’s prow, the shimmering blue of the hangar’s force field like a lake in the distance. There was no atmospheric haze here, none of the cues the human brain usually relied upon to judge distance, which had a disorienting effect. The Marines who had already left the airlock were standing around him in a loose circle, guarding the ramp, their shields anchored to the hull. Being out here reinforced how necessary they were. There was no cover – they’d be sitting ducks without them.

When he glanced up, he was met with a vista that made his breath catch in his throat. The sky was full of ships, dozens of them, maybe hundreds. The assault carrier was in the middle of a battle, a close-range slugfest, the fact that he could even see them driving that point home. Engagements like this usually took place well beyond visual range, but some of the craft were so close that he could make out shapes moving beyond their bridge windows. UNN frigates and thin, modular Valbaran ships were coasting across the sky, pouring streams of tracer fire into what looked like a whole fleet of Bug vessels that were descending upon them. Fighters zipped back and forth, strafing the enemy, flashes of green and orange from exploding torpedoes reflecting off his visor. He could see the four jump carriers flying ahead of the assault carrier in a diamond formation, their upright position making it look like four skyscrapers were hanging there in the void.

Beyond the fleet was the gas giant, wreathed in clouds of blue and purple, so large that he couldn’t even process it. Fuck, were they even safe out here with all that radiation? Here’s hoping the goddamned pressure suits could withstand it. Kerguela curved away beneath him, the autumn forests clearly visible, the seas and rivers shimmering in the sunlight. The scale of everything made him feel like an ant – no – a speck of dust. He turned his focus to the hull of the ship, trying to trick his brain into thinking that it was the ground.

Evan anchored his shield, weightless now, feeling a vibration reverberate through it as he activated the magnets. It was nice to have a third point of contact. It made him feel a little more secure. He drew his handgun, keeping his arm hooked through the loops.

After a few minutes, all of the Marines were out on the hull, the lieutenant taking point as he led them up towards the top of the carrier. As they followed the curve of its hull, a new, more terrifying sight came into view. Looming over the formation of assault carriers were half a dozen large Betelgeusian ships. It was hard to tell exactly how big they were, as there was no frame of reference, but they looked at least a couple of hundred meters long. Their innumerable eyes looked down on the carriers as they opened their armored legs, revealing a mass of growths that covered their segmented bellies. They looked like hundreds of sunflower seeds that had been pushed into green putty at random intervals, or maybe maggots in spoiled meat, the sight making Evan shiver.

One of them was targeting the Spratley, extending its crab-like limbs as though intending to land on it. CIWS fire arced up from somewhere behind Evan, the cannons spewing tracer rounds at it, peppering its hull. The assault carriers only had defensive weapons in the form of four point defense guns, and they weren’t powerful enough to do any serious damage to anything larger than a fighter. There was a frigate nearby that was blowing chunks out of its shell with a broadside barrage, but the insect was indifferent, single-minded in its task. Whatever it was doing apparently didn’t require its survival.

The little seeds that were embedded in its belly began to fire out like tiny bullets, leaving holes that resembled wounds in their wake. They raced out towards the carrier, growing larger the closer they came, Evan taking cover behind his shield reflexively as they impacted the hull some distance ahead. He felt the vessel shake beneath his feet, a series of tremors rocking it, as though it had been struck by a giant shotgun blast.

When he looked up again, those same seeds were now embedded in the Spratley’s hull. He could see at least three dozen scattered along its 250-meter length, jutting out at various angles, forming a kind of eerie forest of alien structures. They had looked so tiny, but now that he had something familiar to compare them with, they were at least twenty meters long. They were made from some kind of hard, resin-like substance that looked organic in nature, which was covered over with plates of protective carapace the color of bone. They tapered into a point on one end, which was now embedded in the ship, keeping them anchored. The carrier’s armor plating had cracked and buckled in places, but none of the pods had penetrated very deep, the sealant foam used on all UNN ships pouring out of the breaches now to stop any loss of atmosphere.

From the far side of the Spratley’s hull, Evan could see more of the Marines from the other airlocks walking up over the side of the carrier, their shields in hand. More squads were approaching from his side, too, turning their weapons on the pods. If those things hadn’t exploded yet, it probably meant that they were full of Bugs.

The Marines formed a cordon, creating a defensive line across the hull, the light from the raised bridge some distance behind them casting harsh shadows. Evan secured his shield, reaching for his rifle this time, keeping the sling over his shoulder so that it didn’t float away if he let it go. He paused briefly, checking that its voltage profile was set to vacuum. He had to remember to pace his shots out here, as the weapons weren’t great at dissipating heat with no atmosphere. The last thing he needed was his barrel slagging in the middle of a firefight. He peered through the narrow aperture, watching the strange pods.

After a moment, one of them began to crack open. A shaped piece of plating ejected from the main body of the pod, remaining connected to it by strands of pale meat before they snapped, the chunk of chitin sailing away over the heads of the defenders. It was followed by a cloud of gas that crystallized in the frigid vacuum, turning into a shimmering mist. What remained was a gaping wound, the shadowy interior filled with wet, glistening flesh.

From within emerged a colorful appendage, a long, spindly limb sheathed in red carapace. It gripped the bumpy exterior of the pod, finding purchase as its owner crawled into view. Evan had seen Betelgeusian Drones before – he had even killed a few – but this one was different. He had expected the Bugs here to follow the same basic body plan as the rest, with two legs and four arms. This one was warped, more insect-like in appearance. What would usually have been its legs were bent at the hip like they had been broken, facing in the opposite direction, splayed wide. Its toes were arranged symmetrically around its foot, resembling the claw from an arcade machine. What should have been its secondary pair of arms were grotesquely elongated to give them more reach, and instead of hands, it had those same claws. Its upper body was more recognizable, albeit thinner than usual, some kind of firearm made from orange resin clutched in its arms. It looked like a praying mantis, crawling down the side of the pod with a four-legged gait, surprisingly sure of itself in the microgravity.

When it reached the hull of the ship, it was able to grip it with its toes, pawing at the material as it searched for footholds. It glanced up at the line of shields, a branching horn sprouting from its helmeted head. The two large, compound lenses that Evan was used to were joined by several smaller ones that were arranged around its skull in odd positions, perhaps to give it a wider field of view. It had insect-like antennae, too, jutting up from its head. They were long and straight, covered in fine hairs.

Hernandez leveled his rifle, bracing it against the edge of his shield, then fired. There was no sound in the vacuum, but Evan saw the way the weapon kicked into his shoulder, the magnetic coils emitting a dull glow as they heated up.

The molten slug impacted the Bug in the face, blowing open its head like a melon, sending chunks of chitin and viscera sailing away. More of the pods were opening up now, a whole army of the four-legged aliens crawling their way out, leveling their two-pronged rifles as they surged onto the Spratley’s hull. They had no cover but that which they had brought with them, darting behind their pods when they realized that they had a welcoming committee, leaning out to fire around them. The way they moved was unnerving, kind of like a spider walking across a ceiling. They were adapted for this environment, maybe even bred for the sole purpose of fighting in space.