Chapter 6

We awoke with a start to blaring alarms, red warning lights flickered in the dorm. We climbed out of bed, sticky and covered in stale sweat. Raz kissed the back of my neck and I rubbed my eyes.

“What is it? A drill?”

“I don’t think so...” I replied, pulling on a clean shirt.

We got dressed and opened the door to the hall, the other trainees were doing the same, looking through doorways, confused and bleary-eyed. People chattered amongst themselves wondering what was going on. There was a great shuddering in the station, it rocked and reverberated beneath our feet, the whole superstructure of the great Pinwheel shuddering under some massive impact. Vasiliev ran down the hall, half dressed sporting only a dress shirt and his shorts.

“The Pinwheel is under attack, two enemy cruiser class ships have jumped in at extreme close range, they destroyed our jump freighter as it was docking and damaged one of the hangars, so station personnel cannot be evacuated. We have an escort, the UNN Actium, engaging them but they are outclassed, they won’t last long. The station point defense can’t take down ships of that class but it can keep them at range, they’re probably going to attempt to board and capture the fire control center.”

The trainees exchanged alarmed looks, the Krell bristled, and the Borealans who weren’t hospitalized instinctively grouped together.

“We need all hands to repel boarders, we’re expecting Betelgeusian shock troops, I’m going to take you to the armory where you will retrieve your XMR, body armor and enough ammunition to last a while, is that understood?”

The trainees barked affirmation and filed out, those who were not fully dressed retrieved their gear and within a few minutes the whole platoon was outside waiting to be shuttled to quadrant two. I stuck close to Raz, she was surprisingly calm, but my heart was thumping, the idea that we might be seeing combat already terrified me. Personnel ran left and right wherever I looked, vehicles sped up and down the donut, men with tablet computers shouted instructions and security forces spread out in defensive formations wielding XMRs and equipment I didn’t recognize. A fleet of shuttles arrived infront of the barracks and we all piled in, the drive to the armory felt perilously fast compared to the leisurely pace we were used to.

We flooded into the firing range, each trainee retrieving his customized weapon, species specific, black UNN combat armor, and enough ammo to hold out for a while. I picked up my low recoil carbine and Raz hefted her massive bayoneted long rifle, slinging it over her shoulder on a strap. Lumbering Krell grunted to eachother and picked up giant, barrel-magazine machine guns, the Borealans looked uncertain, they surely wanted to retrieve their lauded bolt throwers but the hangar where their shuttle had been docked was likely too damaged now. I hoped they had trained with the XMR and improved as Raz had, but they eyed her spear rifle jealously, making me reconsider.

When everyone was supplied and ready to go, troop transports loaded them up in teams of twenty and shipped them off to defensive positions all over the wheel, me and Raz stuck together like glue, along with some Krell and humans who had recognized us and hopped into our vehicle. They no longer seemed wary of Raz after the incident in the mess hall, her allegiances had been made plain to everyone. Padded seats lined the interior of the armored car, they were human sized, clearly not yet adapted to the mixed units High Command was trying to create, but Raz and the Krell were able to stand between the rows and hang on to handholds dangling from the roof. We were the last transport, the other vehicles had all driven off to support the defensive operation, but the six or seven Borealans who had survived the mess hall brawl unscathed were hanging around looking uncertain and directionless, it seemed they did not want to go with the other species, or those groups had excluded them. Rolling her eyes, Raz barked orders at them in Borealan, and after a moment of hesitation, they piled in with us. Raz had a fire in her eyes, she seemed more confident than I had seen her in days, had she regained her standing within the pack? They hadn’t even wanted to look at her last time they had come face to face in the mess hall, now they seemed almost obedient.

The armored vehicle sped up, the aliens hung on tightly to their handholds and the humans shifted in their seats, checking their XMRs and loading ammo. We had learned about the Betelgeusians in class, they were an insectoid race from beyond Coalition controlled space notorious for their prowess in hand to hand combat and their survivability, famously able to survive decapitation. Intelligence reported that they had recently obtained personal energy shields, a technology that was still too expensive to see widespread deployment within the UNN. Personal shields would block our railgun slugs but we could change our receivers and overload them with plasma bolts, this was the strength of the XMR platform and was what we had trained for. UNN combat armor was rudimentary, black painted ceramic plates on the torso, shoulders and thighs and a shrapnel helmet, it was generally accepted that infantry armor would not stop small arms fire from linear accelerators like railguns because their muzzle velocity and penetration were too high, and plasma would just melt through whatever you tried to put infront of it. Special units had heavier powered armor with shielding but all things considered, the average linemen were pretty vulnerable, “just don’t get hit” being the advice of my instructors back on Earth.

Another impact rocked the station, the armored car veered, then righted itself, alarmed muttering filled the troop bay. I didn’t know where we were being sent, there were dozens of defensive points around the Pinwheel where the enemy might attempt to board, structural weakpoints in the hull and vulnerable hangars that would provide an easier route than the armored hull of the donut.

I glanced at Raz, and she nodded to me, whatever happened now, at least her and I were square, we had made our feelings for eachother known, and expressed them in the most intimate way. I held back a blush as the bite wound on my shoulder twinged under my clothing, bringing back memories of the previous night, Raz noticed my expression and smirked at me knowingly.

There were no windows in the troop bay of the armored transport, so we had no concept of how fast we were moving, but we arrived at our destination shortly, the driver barking at us to unload. We hopped out and he sped off back in the direction we had come, likely to pick up another unit and take them wherever they needed to be.

Weapons of all shapes and sizes were cocked and loaded, magazines were jammed into receivers and railgun slugs were chambered. The cacophony of metallic clicking and snapping drove home the reality of the situation, we were about to join a battle and some of us would likely die today.

Two full fledged marines wielding XMRs with long silencers and wearing full faced helmets jogged over to us.

“Fuck, we got the short straw, these guys are green.” I heard one mutter.

“I like the look of those Krell though, let’s put them at the front.” The other replied.

We stood to attention and the marines directed us to a line of low walls that had extended from recesses in the floor facing a blast door, a massive metal blast shield closed over our side, it looked like it would pass large cargo and vehicles, there must be a hangar on the other side exposed to space. The low walls were surrounded by yellow striped warning patterns and looked like they were designed to extend from their recesses to provide cover for troops in exactly this kind of scenario, there must be all kinds of security systems like this one on the Pinwheel that could be activated in the event of a battle.

“Alright rookies, create a firing line behind these walls, Krell and automatic XMRs at the front, semis and rifles at the back. If anything comes through that door, you shoot it, I don’t want anything reaching the donut from this entry point, is that clear?”

The trainees shouted a chorus of “Yes Sir”s and took up positions, the lumbering Krell with their large bore automatics kneeling behind the walls at the front along with a few of the humans who had elected to build rapid fire weapons, and a few feet behind them me, Raz, most of the humans and the Borealans stood. Anything that tried to come through that door would get hosed by railgun and plasma fire, but the Betelgeusians wouldn’t have come unprepared, they would have a plan and I doubted it would be as easy as simply cutting them down as they breached the door.

Another blow shook the station, followed by what sounded like hailstorms hitting the hull, the sound echoed down through the donut, and one of the marines put his finger to his ear, I heard comms chatter briefly.

“The Actium scuttled herself and rammed one of the cruisers, looks like all hands boated down to the planet, the enemy ship is drifting without power.”

The trainees hooted their approval and the other marine punched the air, laughing.

“That’ll show those fucking cockroaches.”

The marine put his finger to his ear again.

“Alright saddle up, we got some boarding craft that got past the point defense heading to this hangar.”

I aimed my rifle at the door, unblinking, my heart began to beat faster but I felt Raz’s reassuring hand on my good shoulder. I looked up at her and she winked.

“We’ve got this monkey, just like you taught me.”

I heard screeching metal and looked behind me, massive blast shields were descending from the ceiling of the donut on either side of us, splitting painted white clouds and blue sky, they were sealing off this section of the Pinwheel, we were trapped here. I suppressed my panic, and turned my attention back to the door, it wouldn’t matter if this section was sealed, the enemy would not get past our firing line, I turned my gun over in my hands and checked that the safety was off, then swapped out to the plasma receiver, the Betelgeusians would have personal shields.

“Raz, when they come through that door, I’ll overload their shields with plasma, you hit their solar plexus with your railgun, remember, headshots won’t stop them.”

“Alright monkey, just make sure those shields are down.”

She turned and hissed orders in Borealan to the pack who were lined up next to her, one replied, surly, and she whipped the back of its head with a swift blow from her tail, it readjusted its helmet and aimed at the door, snarling unhappily. It seemed as if Raz was indeed back in control of the Borealan pack.

I spread the word down the line and a few of the trainees swapped out to plasma, while others trained their railguns on the blast shield. The air was thick with tension and fear, we waited for what felt like an eternity, and then we heard metallic clunks coming from the other side of the door.

Suddenly it bulged in the center and the fist-sized blob began to glow orange, they were using some kind of torch to burn through the shielding. It bubbled and popped, an alien arm poked through and dropped a small metallic sphere before withdrawing quickly.

“Get down!” Yelled one of the marines, as the sphere bounced on the floor with a metallic ping and exploded into a flash of blinding light. The Borealans, their eyes more sensitive to light, shrieked in pain and surprise, covering their faces with their arms, the humans and Krell were blinded for a moment but recovered quickly. Through a smoky haze there was a massive impact, then a second, then a third, from behind the smoke screen the remains of the blast door fell with a massive crash that shook the floor, they had exploited the structural weakness from the hole to knock it down. Betelgeusians advanced through the opening, seven foot tall insect humanoids with four arms and deep red armor, or was that their carapace? It was hard to tell where their exoskeleton ended and their armor began, they sported horned helmets in styles reminiscent of Earth beetles and scarabs with twin green visors covering their eyes, or maybe those were their eyes?

“OPEN FIRE!”

The firing lines opened up on the boarding party, who brought up wrist mounted energy barriers, they looked like translucent blue riot shields, their many jointed arms poked around the edges firing handheld pistols. The shields flared orange and blue as they absorbed tungsten slugs that melted on impact and dissipated flashes of plasma that spread out over the surface in a mesmerizing pattern.

“Focus plasma fire on the shields! Overload them!” I called down the line, and the Krell sporting rapid fire plasma XMRs used them to hose the advancing bugs, their massive barrels glowing orange and smoking as they discharged heat and energy, the enormous recoil unmanageable to anyone but the bulky lizards. One of the bugs at the front of the advancing line was cut down as the shield it was holding overloaded and flashed off, concentrated plasma fire melted its shell like molten iron and it slowly slid to the floor, screeching an unearthly cry of anguish. Some of the Krell were taking small arms fire, their larger profiles easier to hit over the wall, but it didn’t seem to penetrate their thick hides and armor plated ponchos.

The shields could take a lot of punishment, another went down, and the wielder was knocked off his feet by a heavy blow to the torso, green goop splashing from behind him like a balloon full of colored paint as the exit wound blew his carapace apart. I looked to my left and Raz had recovered from the flash grenade, tears in her eyes, but they hadn’t stopped her from hitting her mark dead center, her extended barrel accelerated the heavy metal slugs to incredible speeds. I fired too, burning plasma bolts sizzling through the air, Raz’s pack followed her lead, focusing fire on her targets, they might be primitive and backward in their tribalism but they worked as a single mind when properly organized, following Raz’s orders unquestioningly.

The bugs were gaining ground, advancing on the first line of Krell, one human took a stray projectile to the shoulder and fell back, slumping to the floor, a neighboring Krell lunged out from behind cover and dragged the human backwards by the collar, firing his improbably large weapon one-handed while roaring angrily at the aliens. More Krell converged to cover his retreat and the forward line slowly moved back, applying covering fire as they went, the more fragile humans peeking out from between them and loosing off shots.