Chapter 24

They wanted to send the entire company. The 'they' in question was Admiral Yashida. Why in the fuck they let a squid decide was beyond me. Probably some technicality in the regulations and I'm sure he was more than a little worried we wouldn't get the ship back. Command would likely shift the blame to him since this was his show until boots hit the dirt.

It delayed things and another batch of lizards got on the disabled ship. The Marines got their way in the end and 1st platoon was going. Amy was leading it and Bandy was coming too. Bandy was taking a squad towards the aft of the ship where twenty Lizards currently were. Amy was taking the rest of us forward after the thirty four.

"Listen up people. I don't need to tell you this is some dangerous shit. Command is very attached to its ships and wants this one back. Whatever the Lizards are doing there our job is to kill them and secure the ship. The gravity is off so watch your Z."

We boarded an Osprey and accelerated at nine Gs towards the ship and would decelerate the rest of the way. An Osprey doesn't have a gravity machine. They don't make sense for them anyway as the machines have a lot of mass and use too much energy. The reactionless drive needed to be too far away from the gravity machine to be practical on such a small ship. Marines and Navy pilots don't need them for anything under 10 Gs unless it is for a prolonged period. A pilot's idea of prolonged and a Marine's were different. Pilots were in an acceleration couch. Marines stood and would get squeezed by the suit as necessary to keep you conscious if things dragged out. It was not a pleasant experience any way, but you were generally pretty miserable when it came time for the armor to intervene. At lease normal maneuvers kept the direction of acceleration along your x and y axis and not z.

Several fighters moved into covering positions as we approached the disabled ship. Since I was watching the fleet tactical I wasn't surprised when our pilot started an evasive pattern. Nobody fell. With your boots on the deck and a hand on the bar above our heads it would take forces strong enough to damage the hull to dislodge us but it sure wasn't pleasant to jerk around. The pilot would get pissed if we moved around during maneuvers as it changed the ship's center of gravity.

The Lizard fighter craft were a long ways off yet and it looked they were escorting two more of the craft that had delivered the Lizards to the disabled Heron. The raiders started to fire on the approaching Lizards. Unless the Lizards put more effort into it they were not getting close to the Heron again. That didn't mean that we were in the clear though. Far from it.

A barrage of plasma rounds came our way. They were a much larger, hotter, faster, and more dangerous version of what Lizards routinely threw at us on a planet. We didn't use plasma like that. We didn't know how. The Lizards had a tiny core that generated the containment field keeping the plasma from dissipating or reacting to the environment. In space there was not much for it to react to but it did disperse to harmless gas unless contained. It was biological in nature. They worked well enough and moved at enough velocity in space to make them dangerous when fired in such large quantities. Where we fired small volleys from ion cannons or rivers of slugs from MLAs at tremendous velocities with high accuracy, Lizards just played the numbers.

The plasma was dangerous to all ships. Larger ships were much harder to destroy that way. The hulls were thick and tough enough to resist the plasma itself unless the Lizards got lucky and hit the same spot multiple times with large enough rounds. The heat they transferred was more dangerous. It's difficult to bleed off heat in space.

Small ships like Ospreys had thinner hulls and could absorb less heat. So when the first bolt hit us it was bad. The second was worse and the third was critical.

The pilot signaled evac, engaged the emergency brakes, and punched out. Their cockpit was a life capsule. They would abandon that if needed and rely on their flight suit. They had a week or so of conscious time, 'Rip Van Winkle' you had years. But their pods had excellent maneuvering thrusters and could land on a planet.

Our life capsules were Class V Mark 3 Assault Armor or Amy's Class VI Mark 2 Assault Armor. We could survive in one 'Rip Van Winkle' in space for years assuming you were healthy when you went to sleep. Minimal environmental was maintained and the radiation shield was almost self-sustaining at nominal background levels. Conscious you were only limited by how long it took you to starve to death. The power usage to just float along was so minimal that even emergency supply would outlast your hunger. If you didn't get picked up a motivated Marine could make it to a planet's surface if you were lucky and knew what you were doing even if you didn't have an EMU.

I'd rather be in the armor.

"You heard her let's go Marines!" Amy said.

The doors to the Osprey are supposed to open when the pilot ejects, but didn't this time. I was the first at the door and hit the emergency button. It was protected behind a cage that only somebody in armor could smash and trigger the explosive charges that removed the doors from the hull. They didn't open. They were violently removed from the Osprey.

At this time the Osprey was spinning on all axes. Soon as the doors were gone though nobody wasted any time getting out. I was in the way so there was no way to ensure Amy got out so I grabbed the hull and swung out. I kept my focus on the Osprey though as the wild movement was disorienting to look anywhere else.

Just like old timers parachuting out of an airplane first platoon rushed out. As Amy passed me I shoved off. The battlecomp quickly stopped the wild spinning we got from the Osprey. I had to tell mine to stop me as that's a function of the governor.

The Osprey was in bad shape. It wouldn't be repaired but it would be recycled.

"First platoon rally on me. We have an operation to complete," Amy ordered everybody. She had gotten word from Santiago that the operation was still a go.

"Fuck I hate this," came Gregs' voice over the proximity band.

"It's just like swimming," Sanchez said.

"Give me terra firma and a horde hot on my heels any day."

The rest of the platoon was strangely silent, including Timms.

Everybody was accounted for and when formed up we stared out. The jump assisters were more than adequate to move us around and the battlecomp could do all the work. Our velocity was high though and everybody had Extravehicular Mobility Units which would be able to slow us so we didn't turn into pink jelly when we hit the hull. The EMUs were firing as soon as we got stabilized as there was a lot of velocity to burn up. The emergency braking thrust helped but was brief due to the condition of the ship, we had about 20 Gs for seven tics. Just let battlecomp know where you wanted to go and it got you there. The governor once again did that part for you.

"Do you use the governor for this?" Amy asked me on our private channel.

"Yeah. Easier than doing it the hard way."

I watched the fleet tactical. There was nothing I could do if anything was coming out way but old habits die hard. We were putting some serious pressure on the Lizards by now. Our pilot was about to be retrieved. The Heron was so close that by the time an Osprey reached us we would be on the hull of the Heron. When we got to it we hurried over to an airlock and left our EMUs behind. With the main power down we had to use the manual crank with the battlecomp keying the code to unlock the access hatch.

I got volunteered to do the honors. It wasn't difficult but I was the only one to have ever done any of this before outside of simulations.

The hulls of most ships this size were over a meter thick with layers of different alloys. The airlock was actually three different hatches. As soon as you cranked one open it started on the next. The crank took somebody in armor to operate or a powered wrench. The hatches slid on tracks and opened outward onto the hull. It wasn't practical but it was never meant to be used except in emergencies and from the outside.

As with most military ships it was fully compartmentalized. The hull was breached by the Lizards but only in that area did it lose atmosphere. Opening a ship manually like this generally involves a lot of stuff getting sucked out. Small bits of trash, all the way up to people, but military ships are on the whole clean so very little rushed out.

The ship's computer was offline so I sent my sneak in to look around. Seeing nothing I moved in. Amy could not launch a drone as they were for atmospheres only. It didn't have to be a breathable one, but one that the little wings could take advantage of.

It was just a passageway, small by armor standards. Just enough room to clear my shoulders. This was why anything more than a platoon was stupid. A squad would have been enough. The main passageway would be a little bigger but not near as big as a Raider's.

"They'll all be narrow. Anybody get claustrophobic?" Amy asked moving in behind me.

The Lizards had moved down the main passageway so I was careful when I got there. The battlecomp gave the all clear so I moved towards the bridge. Amy followed me and Gregs went aft towards engineering. We split.

Bandy took Gregs and a squad and we got a squad. Amy had one wait there in reserve.

"Okay people. Watch the fuck out for traps. Hit them fast and hard. I could use a promotion so let's give the ship back in the same condition we found it in."

"What's in it for us Cap?" Somebody asked.

"Yeah. What's in it for us?" Morale was still good so they were giving Amy shit as usual.

"That's easy. I don't tell Sweeney to cycle you out of the nearest airlock."

"Okay, what's in it for him?"

"I don't tell you all to cycle him out of the same air lock. Sometimes it's good to be the king or Captain."

"You know what's better than a bunch of officers on a one way trip to the nearest solar body?"

"All of them!" was the response from pretty much everybody, including Amy and Lt. Bandy.

There was some more insults thrown around after that but Amy was done cheering everybody up.

"Okay enough fucking around let's get to work," GySgt. Gregs barked at us.

It would have been faster to float down the hall but not as tactically sound. With boots on the deck or any other surface we had leverage. Firing our coilguns wouldn't send us flying. We could stand some of Einstein's stuff on its head, but Newton's Third Law was still inviolate.