Chapter 12: Counter Operations

The Thermopylae left superlight, Boyd slowly regaining consciousness to see a technicolor gas cloud spreading around the ship through the bridge windows. Beyond the tapering nose of the carrier was an arid horizon ringed by a thin sliver of blue – the deserts of Hades occupying their entire field of view, the curvature of the planet only just perceptible at this distance. They had emerged in high orbit, the ship’s railguns and CIWS turrets popping out of the ocean-grey hull, swiveling to track any potential threats. The bridge crew were slowly coming to their senses in their chairs, cradling their heads as they fought to regain their faculties, turning bleary eyes to their displays. Stavros was standing in front of his chair, his hands clasped behind his back, his hat still perched neatly on his head. The man was a beast – it didn’t even look like he’d flinched. How many jumps did it take to build up that kind of resistance?

Boyd heard a muffled growl of complaint, turning to see Lorza opening her eyes beside him, straightening her posture groggily. They were occupying a couple of fold-out chairs near the back of the bridge. Borealans were a fairly common sight on carriers, so they had seating that could accommodate her – just about.

An officer sitting at the pilot’s console cleared his throat, examining his instrument panel unsteadily.

“The superlight jump was successful, Captain. We’ve emerged in high orbit above Hades.”

“Radar sweep shows no ships in the immediate vicinity,” another of the crew members added.

“Red alert,” Stavros announced sternly. “All hands to battle stations.”

The bridge was bathed in red, the faint sound of a blaring alarm leaking in through the nearby door, making Boyd feel a pang of pity for all the poor crewmen who were still nursing migraines after the jump. He rose from his seat, helping Lorza up, and the two of them walked over to join Stavros in front of the viewport.

“That was a rather close jump,” Boyd muttered as he gazed down at the planet’s surface.

“We couldn’t exactly land at the edge of the system and slowboat in,” Stavros replied. “We need to maintain the element of surprise.”

“Fine by me,” Boyd added. “I’m just relieved that we didn’t come out halfway inside the planet’s mantle.”

“Hail from the ground, Captain,” a woman manning the communications console said. “Audio only.”

“That was fast,” Stavros mused. “Pipe it through the intercom – let’s hear what they have to say for themselves.”

The comms officer swiped at her touch display, and a voice came through on speakers situated all around the bridge. It was a man’s voice, a little distorted by interference but clear enough to be understood.

“You are trespassing in sovereign territory,” the voice chided. “Hades and the outlying system are under the authority of the Syndicate now, in accordance with the will of its people. The UNN has no authority here – turn back.”

Stavros turned to his comms officer and gestured for her to stop transmitting from their end of the connection.

“You think he’s beaming this conversation to the people on Hades?” the captain asked.

“Certainly,” Boyd replied. “It’s an easy PR win – he’s trying to legitimize the seizure of the planet by making it look like some kind of popular uprising rather than a cash grab.”

“That means they can hear you, too,” Lorza added softly. “Speak to the people directly.”

“Alright,” Stavros said, straightening up. “Start transmitting.” The officer swiped at her display, and the captain began his reply.

“Attention criminal organizations currently in control of Hades – this is the captain of the UNN Thermopylae. I have a fully-crewed jump carrier with a contingent of five thousand Marines aboard in orbit around your planet. You have broken interstellar law and are presently illegally occupying territory that does not belong to you. Under the United Nations declaration of frontier law, section eighteen, paragraph twenty-six, Naval forces are permitted to use necessary force to restore order. As the legal process to secede from the union has not been initiated by any recognized party, you are considered to be in open rebellion, which forces us to intervene. Surrender immediately and turn yourselves in.”

The man on the other end of the line seemed to hesitate for a moment, perhaps pausing to consult someone else. It was unlikely that he was making the decisions on his own.

“UNN Thermopylae, the so-called United Nations have no authority here, nor do the corporate investors who have exploited the people of Hades for profit. This is now a sovereign colony, beholden to no one, least of all to those who intrude on our territory and levy threats of violence against us for exercising our God-given right to self-determination.”

With another gesture from Stavros, the comms officer muted the feed again.

“Gotta admit, this is well-rehearsed,” Boyd began. “They’ve had a lot of time to prepare this spiel and get their story straight. We might know that these assholes are blowing hot air and that they care more about mineral rights than the revolutionary spirit, but it’s going to be harder to convince the Hadeans of that fact. They’ve been abused by the corp, then by the mob, and this is the first time half of them will have ever seen a Navy ship. At this point, the Syndicate is the devil they know.”

“All the more reason to show them a better path,” Lorza insisted. “We have the truth on our side.”

“I speak now directly to those of you listening in on this broadcast,” Stavros continued after gesturing for the transmission to resume. “Citizens of Hades – heed my words. Intelligence that was recently gathered by an undercover UNNI operative posing as a miner on your colony has provided evidence that the takeover of the planet was not undertaken for the purpose of liberating the population, but to seize control of ExoCorp’s mineral rights and redirect that lucrative revenue stream into the bank accounts of criminals. These people are not your saviors. They intend to bleed this colony for every credit it’s worth. By siding with them, you are only ensuring that they will line their pockets at your expense. Hades is a UN colony, and we have a duty to protect it from any enemies, be they alien or domestic. We will not allow terrorists and criminals to flaunt the rule of law – not while you remain under our protection. Stay in your homes and do not participate in hostilities. Anyone who surrenders will be treated fairly in accordance with UN conventions, but make no mistake – Hades will not remain under Syndicate control for a moment longer.”

“Your threats of violence ring hollow, Captain,” the Syndicate spokesman sneered. “Our interim government possesses a number of surface-to-air planetary defense weapons that will bring down any dropships that violate our airspace. If you attempt to take the colony by force, you will be throwing away the lives of your men by the hundreds. Here is our ultimatum to you. Leave this system and never return. Strike it from your star charts and leave us to decide our own future.”

“I will not abandon the rule of law,” Stavros replied adamantly. “It’s the only thing that holds our colonies together, and without it, we are all defenseless and alone. You can plainly see that the UNN has not abandoned Hades as has been claimed. That we are here at all is ample proof of the organization’s commitment to order and security across human space, in this system as much as in any other.”

The mouthpiece on the other end of the line had no answer to that and cut the feed. Stavros sighed as he took a moment to compose himself, the bridge crew looking to him for further instructions.

“Looks like diplomacy has failed,” Boyd said, glancing at the captain expectantly.

“It was too much to hope that they might roll over and give up,” Stavros replied, reaching up to straighten his cap. “Give the order to start launching the dropships.”

One of the bridge officers relayed his command, Boyd tilting his head in a gesture for Lorza to follow him, the pair walking across the expansive bridge to look out of the windows on the starboard side. The bridge was mounted atop the hangar section, giving them a view of the dropships as they began to filter out into space in pairs, lit from behind by the blue glow of the force field. They turned their noses towards Hades, then started to burn, racing along the carrier’s length. Before long, a dozen of them were shooting off into the distance, the flames from their main engines picking them out against the planet’s arid surface.

The main bridge window in front of the captain began to grow foggy, as though it was being covered in frost. It doubled as a display, showing camera views that were arranged like the feed from a surveillance system. There were feeds from outside the hull, magnifying to track the swarm of dropships, others showing feeds from external cameras mounted on the craft themselves. They were burning in a tight formation, starting to spread out now as they neared low orbit. The tether station was visible from some of the perspectives, its elevator as small as a length of twine from this range, the colony sprawling out from beneath its footprint.

“Dropships hitting atmosphere, Captain,” one of the officers announced. Boyd watched as the rounded noses of the craft began to glow, the air resistance growing the further they fell, friction creating flames that danced across their hulls. When they reached the appropriate altitude, they turned belly-down, the thermal tiles that lined their undersides absorbing the intense heat. Their mounted cameras shook violently as the stresses of reentry tore at the vessels, their stubby wings and dual tail fins wavering as the flames licked at them. From the magnified view, they looked like a meteor shower now, leaving dark streaks as they plummeted towards the ground.

“Dropships reporting missile locks, Captain,” another of the bridge crew warned as he leaned over his console.

“Standard evasive maneuvers,” Stavros replied, his voice calm enough that he could have been watching a movie play out.

The dropships began to scatter, some of them reaching low enough altitudes that they could start to maneuver. They banked away, some of them popping streams of flares that formed glowing wing patterns behind them, the G-forces wrenching at their airframes.

There was a bright flash as one of the dropships was hit, the missile streaking up into view from out of frame, rising on a plume of smoke. Immediately, the vessel’s engines flickered off, its navigation systems shutting down. It lurched into an uncontrolled dive, nose-down to the ground, one of its tail fins shearing off. More of them were being taken out, the mosaic of views on the main display flashing one by one as the EMPs found them, the shuttles immediately losing engine power. They listed and tumbled, losing computer flight control, their systems going haywire as they plummeted towards the planet below.

The ships impacted the ground at terminal velocity, many of them breaking apart before they even reached the surface, flaming wreckage raining down beyond the outskirts of the colony. Boyd watched one of them crater into the desert, carving a deep furrow and leaving a trail of burning debris in its wake. The bridge was deathly silent, everyone looking on with wide eyes, Boyd feeling Lorza place a protective hand on his shoulder as her ears flattened against her head. Even for Navy personnel, that was a lot of destruction to bear witness to.

“All dropships are ... down, Captain,” one of the officers announced.

“How many?” Stavros asked nonchalantly.

“Twelve, Captain.”

“Very good,” Stavros continued, unfazed. “I expect that we’ll be hearing from our friend again shortly.”

The comms officer soon announced another incoming hail, the gloating voice of the Syndicate’s mouthpiece echoing through the bridge.

“As we warned, your landing force has been decimated in a single salvo. How many brave Marines just died for your hubris? Go back where you came from – your attack has failed. Send more dropships, and we will shoot those down too.”

Boyd could hear cheering and revelry in the background – they were having a damned party down there. This was a big moment for them.

“A well-coordinated attack,” Stavros admitted, the man on the radio going silent as he listened. “You shot down every one of our landing craft, attacking from positions that were well-concealed. This is exactly the way that your PDF soldiers were taught to sabotage a potential enemy invasion force. It’s nice to see that their training has stuck. I’ll say this one more time – this is your last chance to surrender. Have your men lay down their weapons and turn yourselves over to our security forces.”

“Perhaps you didn’t hear me clearly,” the man on the other end sneered. “Your invasion force is now nothing but burning craters in the desert! The indomitable will of the Hadean people cannot be so easily-”

Stavros waved for his comms officer to cut the feed, the voice going silent.

“You think we should have told him that they just wasted all of that ordnance on unmanned dropships?” Boyd chuckled. “I kind of wanted to hear his reaction.”

“That should be enough of a show to divert their attention,” Stavros said, permitting himself a satisfied smile. “Let them have their moment – if they think they’ve already won, they’ll let their guard down.”

“This is certainly a confidence booster for them,” Boyd said as he played his eyes across the burning wrecks. “Those missile launchers worked exactly as advertised – and they certainly have more ammunition than we have landers.”

“Comms officer – patch me through to Sergeant Korza,” the captain ordered.

The views on the feed changed, some of them showing unsteady perspectives from the helmet cams of Marines riding inside shadowy troop bays, others blowing up magnified views of the disk-shaped tether station. It looked like a giant hubcap floating in space, the long, thin elevator that connected it to the anchor on the planet far below trailing off into the distance. There were still a few ships docked to the skeletal berths that surrounded its rim. Boyd could make out the profile of a giant jump freighter, its narrow midsection almost stripped of colorful cargo containers, making him doubly glad that he had warned Connors and his crew to stay clear.

Half a dozen UNN dropships were coasting towards the structure, their engines dark, running silent with their sensory equipment shut off. If the Syndicate wasn’t looking for them, they’d have very little chance of being spotted – not unless someone looked out of a window at an inopportune time.

“How’s your progress, Korza?” the captain asked.

“Approaching the station now, Captain,” a gruff voice replied. Boyd searched the helmet cam feeds for a moment, finding that one of the dropships was packed with Borealans. They were Equatorials, their body plan similar to Lorza’s, but they were leaner and meaner. Shock Troopers were eight feet of muscle and claws, clad in a variant of the armor worn by UNN Marines, their kevlar-lined pressure suits covered over with black ceramic plating. The little ear covers on their helmets might be reminiscent of teddy bears, but there was nothing cuddly about them.

They were strapped into their seats, six of them taking up almost as much space as a dozen humans, short-barreled XMRs configured for close-quarters fighting stowed beside their crash couches. They looked like giant, Borealan-sized submachine guns. Their muzzle devices resembled suppressors, but Boyd knew that they were intended not to redirect gasses, but to prevent dangerous arc flashes when their weapons ionized the air around the barrel.

“Good,” Stavros replied. “Remember – minimize civilian casualties. It’s going to be hard to tell combatants from non-combatants, but don’t fire unless you’re fired upon, and give the enemy an opportunity to surrender where possible. We don’t expect them to put up much resistance once they realize the jig is up. I want your voltages set to subsonic, too. We don’t need to be poking holes in that station.”

“Understood, Captain,” Korza growled as he reached down to adjust a value on his wrist-mounted display. It was probably synced with his weapon wirelessly.

“Seize control of the station, then take the tether to the ground and secure the port,” Stavros continued. “Lock down the area and make sure that no vessels get airborne. If the Syndicate’s higher-ups try to flee Hades, they’ll have to launch from there. I’d prefer a sedition conviction to a slug to the head, so try to take them alive if possible.”

Boyd watched as the dropships began to maneuver, gentle puffs of flame from the thrusters mounted around their hulls changing their course, the ships spreading out. They were heading for different airlocks and berths, drifting along only scant meters above the station’s hull, casting shadows on the uneven panels and jutting comms equipment. One of them coasted to a stop above an emergency airlock on the domed roof, depressurizing its troop bay before the ramp began to open, exposing it to the vacuum of space.

Moving as though they were walking underwater, the squad of a dozen Marines piled out, pushing off the hull to send themselves coasting slowly towards the artificial landscape beneath them. The station was by no means enormous, but at about a kilometer across, it was large enough to feel like solid ground to a person. As they neared, the electromagnets in their boots locked them down, and they began to march across the hull with a halting gait.

“How will they get inside?” Lorza asked, watching intently as one of the men hooked a cable into the outer door’s control panel.

“This is a civilian station,” Boyd explained. “Engaging the overrides will be pretty easy. Hell – I did it myself on my way inside.”

More of the shuttles were sliding into position, Boyd watching from helmet cams as more of the Marines began to board. Korza and his pack followed suit, making for one of the empty berths at the station’s rim, using their tails to grip the exposed structural beams of the cradles like oversized monkeys. Having a fifth point of contact made them remarkably agile in microgravity.

“Unusual choice to have a Borealan leading the operation,” Boyd began.

“Sergeant Korza has proven himself on many occasions,” Stavros replied. “He has a cooler head than many of my Marines, despite his people’s reputation.”

One of the squads made it past the outer door and into the airlock, a Marine kneeling to hook up another cable as he began his work on the next door, three members of his team aiming their weapons over his head at the room beyond. This was when they were most vulnerable, but it was unlikely that any conventional weapon would make it through those thick, reinforced pressure doors. There had been surplus XMRs stolen during the raid on the freighter, however, so their caution was not unwarranted.

The inner door slid open, and they piled into the station, fanning out into a space that resembled a terminal. This area of the station wasn’t too different from what Boyd had seen inside the tether’s anchor, with a carpeted floor and upscale duty-free stores occupying the otherwise open-plan area. This pie-shaped cross-section of the station looked like it was reserved for tourism and civilian traffic, the corp raking in tax-free credits from booze and souvenirs made from precious stones while the miners below languished.

The Marines began to move in with practiced speed, sweeping the area with their weapons, covering one another as they dipped into stores to search for hostiles. The area wasn’t very populated – even before the Syndicate’s takeover of the planet, Hades wouldn’t have seen many visitors. The occasional civilian who was browsing the shelves and the store attendants manning the desks threw themselves to the ground in alarm, the Marines yelling commands through their helmet speakers, their HUDs tagging the startled people with green markers in an attempt to track them.

The same was happening on the other feeds, more squads ingressing through airlocks and docking bays all around the station. Some were moving through more industrial areas of the facility where the large cargo containers were transferred to and from the freighters, marching past berths filled with little loading shuttles that used grappling arms situated beneath their bellies to manipulate the containers. They encountered confused engineers wearing yellow pressure suits who raised their hands in alarm, dropping tools and lowering themselves to the deck as the troopers barked orders.

Korza and his pack were heading straight for their objective – the elevator control room at the station’s core. From there, they could take control of both the passenger and cargo crawlers that ran up and down the long tether, simultaneously cutting off the Syndicate from the station and giving themselves a straight line to the anchor.

They jogged through another civilian area, their intimidating presence sending the occasional traveler or staff member darting behind shelves and ducking beneath desks. The pack was rapidly approaching the center of the disk-shaped station, and the point of their pizza slice, where a curving wall separated the secure areas of the facility from the terminal beyond. As they came within a couple of hundred meters, one of the sliding doors opened up, a hail of gunfire spewing through the aperture. Bullets sparked off the walls of nearby stores, punching holes in the transparent polymers that served as their windows, snacks and bottles of alcohol that lined the shelves exploding into showers of amber liquid and potato chips.

Korza threw himself into the cover of a nearby concession stand, a few stray rounds deflecting off his ceramic chest piece, his pack scattering to get clear. The shooters took the opportunity to pile out of the doorway, Boyd recognizing them as PDF troopers, the gear that they were carrying similar to those that he had encountered during his gunfight in the warehouse. They were wielding caseless weapons – what looked like SMGs and short-barreled rifles – which explained why Korza wasn’t full of railgun holes right now.

“Contact!” Korza snarled, his voice coming through distorted as his mic struggled to dampen the sound of gunfire. The PDF troopers had spread out into the terminal now and were exchanging sporadic bursts of fire with the pack, popping in and out of cover from behind kiosks and stores, the muzzle flashes from their weapons reflected in their opaque visors. That surplus Marine armor might stop small arms and plasma, but there was no wearable armor that could stop an XMR slug.

“Those guys aren’t going to give up,” Boyd mused, watching one of the militiamen lean out from behind a structural pillar to suppress Korza. “They’ve probably replaced the corporate security who were managing the station before the Syndicate took over.”

“That place is full of people!” Lorza gasped. “If even one bullet...”

“No choice but to take them out,” Stavros added sternly. “Korza knows what to do.”

The armored Borealan reached up to tap at the side of his helmet, opening an in-picture view on his HUD that showed a feed from his weapon’s scope, then leaned it over the counter that he was crouched behind. The militiamen had already been tagged with red markers, the squad sharing information over their local network, keeping track of hostiles even when they were outside their direct line of sight. Korza fired from cover, targeting one of the red outlines with a short burst of slugs. The electromagnetic coils beneath the barrel shroud glowed red, the tungsten projectiles leaving molten trails through the air, drawing glowing lines toward his target. They tore through the store that the trooper was hiding behind, punching through shelves and metal like they weren’t even there, the impact tossing him to the carpet like he had been hit with a sledgehammer.

Korza barked orders in his native language of hisses and yowls, his pack following suit, loosing a barrage of coordinated XMR fire that dropped a good number of their assailants. They began to push up together, suppressing the remaining troopers, sweeping through bars and souvenir shops. Boyd saw another of the militiamen fall, a trio of molten holes smoldering on his surplus chest piece, another trooper’s face plate shattering as one of the Borealans put a slug through his helmet.

Korza came up on a structural pillar that was thick enough to stop his slugs, the man who was hiding behind it leaning out as he heard the Borealan’s heavy footfalls, frantically aiming an SMG from the hip. He swung the weapon around, but Korza was ready for him, closing his massive hand around the barrel and wrenching it out of his hands. He tossed the weapon aside like a toy, then delivered a kick to the trooper’s chest, lifting him clear off the deck. The man was thrown back, slamming into the curving central wall before crumpling to the carpet in a listless heap.

Only two of the maybe fifteen men remained now, tossing their weapons to the deck, emerging from cover with their hands raised in surrender. The Borealans rounded them up, growling orders as they kept their XMRs trained on them. Two of the squad members stepped forwards, forcing the pair of militiamen to the floor, securing their hands behind their backs with zip ties that were looped around their belts.

More Marines were moving to support them now, the firefight having only lasted a few scant minutes, some securing the civilians while others moved into the doorway from which the troopers had launched their attack. The same was happening in several other areas of the station, Boyd’s eyes wandering between the camera feeds as he watched the squads surround the central hub area.

Korza and his pack took point once the entrance was clear, moving through passageways that were cramped but not so small as to make it a chore for the eight-foot aliens to navigate. It was all exposed metal and colorful carpets, a strangely ordinary stage for such a bizarre performance.

Boyd watched through the Sergeant’s feed, the muzzle device on the end of his gun bobbing at the bottom of the frame. He gestured to his pack with hand signals, two of them moving up to clear a T-junction. There was a scuffle as one of them pulled a man in civilian clothes from behind the left corner, two more shock troopers training their rifles on the stranger as he was pushed to the ground and his hands were bound, ignoring his protests. He might be some random employee, but such details would be determined only after the battle was won.

There was gunfire from another of the teams, Boyd switching his attention to the helmet cam of a Marine who was clearing corridors from another approach. He was exchanging fire with two more PDF soldiers who were holding down a hallway, muzzle flashes overpowering the harsh light strips for brief moments. One of the Marines reached for his belt, priming a stun grenade and leaning out of cover to toss it down the hall like a softball. It exploded with a flash, the blast rustling decorative plants and making the light fixtures above sway.

If the PDF troopers were wearing surplus helmets, the noise and flash wouldn’t get through, but the attack seemed to scare them enough that they threw their weapons into the hallway and emerged with raised hands. The Marines tackled them to the ground and hogtied them, one of them kicking the weapons further away.

“This is about the performance that I expected from the PDF,” Boyd said with a smirk. “There will be more on the ground, though. I’m concerned by how many might be garrisoned inside the city.”

“Numbers will embolden them,” Stavros confirmed with a nod. “It is imperative that we isolate and capture Syndicate leadership before this devolves into running street battles. Still, we need to take all necessary precautions. Once Korza secures the anchor at the bottom of the tether, we’ll have a way to get more reinforcements into the city. I won’t risk landing more dropships – not until we can disable the launchers from the ground.”

“Are we certain that five thousand Marines will be enough, Captain?” Boyd asked. “As poorly as they might perform, the PDF outnumber us by a wide margin, and that’s not counting any miners who choose the wrong side. Our ability to deploy troops quickly is somewhat lacking, too.”

“Once we take control of the tether, we can build up our forces inside the anchor and move out into the surrounding city,” Stavros replied. “We’ll give them every opportunity to surrender, but anyone who raises a weapon against our security forces will be considered an enemy combatant and dealt with accordingly. Thanks to the shipping manifest from the freighter they hit, we know exactly how many launchers they took, and they just gave away their positions when they fired on the decoys. We’ll prioritize capturing those launch sites so we can deploy more troops via dropship.”

“The perception of strength can be just as effective as the real thing,” Lorza said. “They may panic if they overestimate your capabilities.”

“She has a point,” Boyd said, giving her an appreciative glance. “Maybe we can add a little counter-intel flavor to the party. Captain – can you have some of your people get on PDF channels and broadcast fake distress calls and radio chatter?”