Evan Currie - Heirs of Empire

By dumping all their speed in the last climb, Mira had essentially reduced their vertical velocity to a few miles per hour, but they still had thirty or forty miles an hour in horizontal velocity to absorb as they landed. The armor projectors helped, but in the end it was up to the crew themselves to stick the landing.

They did better than Mira had expected, for the most part, the majority landing in a feetfirst skid that almost looked intentional. About half of them even managed to lase the deck with wild, unaimed fire that would keep any sane man’s head down.

Despite being guided by Mira’s control of their systems, not everyone landed right. The armor prevented major injuries, but from the sprawls she could see, Mira had little doubt that they’d lost at least two to mission-ending injuries.

“Hold the deck!” she called to those who literally couldn’t stand any longer. “We need to secure the entry hatches before they’re bolted down!”

Together they charged across the deck, still experiencing effectively no opposition. The Caleb ’s crew hadn’t even mustered more than a few watch guards on deck, none of whom had anything other than lase blasters in their hands. Against Cadre armor—even ill-fitting and nonlinked Cadre armor—they were completely ineffective weapons.

In a few moments the deck was theirs, and the entrance to the lower decks of the cruiser was controlled by the injured members of Mira’s team.

“Hold here,” Mira told them. “No one in, no one out, except us.”

“You got it, skipper.”

She looked to the others. “All right, let’s go.”

Once inside, Mira split her team, sending half to the engine room while taking the rest toward the internal command deck.

“Intruders on decks three and five.”

Jessup growled, severely annoyed that they’d dared set foot on her ship. “Get armsmen moving to those locations. I want them dealt with.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Jessup was starting to worry. No one had ever really considered the idea of the Caleb Bar being boarded, not seriously at least. No one boarded an Imperial military vessel, particularly in flight. It just wasn’t done.

She’d heard about the Cadre doing it in some of the outlying kingdoms, usually to plant explosives and destroy the ship in question, but an entire team ?

Never.

On the displays she tracked the fighting as the boarding team continued to move, splitting their forces and heading for command and engine rooms, as best she could tell. Her armsmen were only now getting their weapons from the armory, other than the few who were on watch and equipped with wholly inadequate lase blasters.

As she watched, however, the first of the armsmen with gamma carbines started to arrive and take cover as they waited for the approaching enemy.

Mira ducked back as a sharp crack and whine of a gamma carbine echoed through the hall, the dark-purple plasma trace splattering across the bulkhead just beside her. She held up her hand, fist balled up, and the men behind her froze.

The halls of the big ship were practically custom tailored for defenders, though she knew it wasn’t intentional. The bulkheads were solid, with sealed doors that jutted out enough to take cover behind, just like the armsman she was looking at now. Barely the muzzle of his weapon and a sliver of his face and body were exposed, but her team would have to walk right through a door in his plain sight to engage him.

“Hold one,” she ordered, holstering her blaster.

“Holding,” the team responded behind her, turning to cover the rear as she pulled the Armati Elan from the small of her back.

She shifted it to her left hand and flicked the grip just slightly, the Armati responding to her motion and command and extending in both directions, arcing in a recurve shape as she considered her shot. Mira’s fingers brushed the invisible line drawn between the curved tips, and a flare of energy blossomed under them, growing brighter as she drew her arm back and considered the shot carefully.

The photon bolt loosed almost of its own will and raced down the corridor, casting a blue-white light in all directions. It struck the far wall, glanced off, and exploded into shards just before it reached the armsmen.

“Go! Go! Go!” Mira hissed as she drew back another bolt from the Armati, loosing it just ahead of her men’s rush, and then rose to charge down the hall herself.

A vicious firefight erupted. The shock of the Armati’s assault had stunned the defenders, but they weren’t totally stupefied. Those still able fired back, but most of their shots were wild, since the photon bolt had dazzled their eyes. Still, two of Mira’s men went down hard, with black burns right through their projected armor, before the fighting was over and her crew secured the corridor.

Mira stood over her fallen people, her link to their armor telling her all she needed to know.

“They’re gone,” she said softly, hand on the shoulder of a man who’d knelt by the side of his stricken teammate. “The damn carbines …”

Another bone she would have had to pick with the former emperor, were he still breathing.

Gamma carbines were basically built to kill Cadre and little else. Oh, certainly they could kill just about anything else, but so could lase blasters. Only Cadre wore armor that could deflect a lase cartridge, however, so why in the burning skies the emperor had the gamma carbines developed and deployed, she would dearly love to know.

Probably scared of Corian and what that bastard had managed. Mira sighed as she walked to the edge of the corridor and surreptitiously looked around the corner. Finding no one waiting for her there, she nodded to the lens seated in the corner, near the ceiling.

“Say hello to the watchers,” she told her men. “They’re waiting for us now.”

“Let’s not disappoint them, then, skipper.”

“Barricade the doors!” Jessup ordered, drawing a lase blaster from a wall bracket. “Hold the bridge at all costs!”

The response to the boarding had been fractured from the start, her armsmen caught unawares by the sheer gall of the assault. While Jessup knew she still held most of the ship and boasted superior numbers, key areas were already held by the enemy. The invading crew was now just moments from assaulting the bridge itself.

“Send an emergency hail to any ships capable of responding,” she ordered. “We must not lose the Caleb Bar !”

“Aye, ma’am!”

Corian stomped into the tactical situation room of the palace, glaring all around him. “What in the burning skies is going on?”

“Sire, a strike team has boarded the Caleb Bar and currently has the bridge under siege.”

Corian practically choked.

Of all the possible things he thought he’d hear, that wasn’t among them.

“What? No, never mind, I heard you,” he said, cutting the other man off as he began to repeat the information. “What sort of strike team?”

“We believe it to be at least two dozen Cadre members, due to reports from the Caleb Bar and analysis of the insertion method, sire.”

“Two doz … ,” Corian sputtered. “Preposterous. Cadre never deploys more than a two-man team. Two dozen would trip over themselves! If a situation needed that many Cadre, the empire would send in the legions. It’s cheaper that way.”

“Sire, I’m just reporting what the analysis group and the watch crew of the Caleb reported.”

Corian bared his teeth. “Put me on with the Caleb Bar .”