Sean-Michael Argo - Trade War

It was arrogance, really, that led the slavers to pick this clearing, thought Samuel, doing his best to ignore the firefight raging behind him that was likely claiming the lives of more than a few of the village posse.

Had the hostiles been engaging an enemy for which they had more respect, the operatives would have used their dropsuits to simply descend from high atmosphere and slam into the center of town. Once they’d scooped up their targets the ship would break atmosphere and swoop down to retrieve the boxed cargo, then the operatives would use the thrusters on their suits to blast-jump to a more remote spot for their own extraction. However, lightning raids like that involved heavy expenditures of fuel and ammunition, and after sacking Longstride Alpha, no doubt the slavers were of the opinion that a more inexpensive frontal assault would result in a more robust Bottom Line. Why spend the resources on a jump raid when they could just march into town and seize it at gunpoint?

Samuel was determined to use that hubris against them. He sighted in on the slaver’s camp and saw that his estimations of their stratagem were spot on.

The slave ship rested in the clearing, its landing gear fully extended. The engines weren’t even on standby, but completely cold. No mobile defenses had been erected, not even so much as a flak board stood between the treeline and the belly of the ship.

These slavers thought they could just park their ride a few miles outside the village and capture the entire population on the cheap, instead of using up expensive fuel and bullets for a twenty percent haul.

The former marine had picked the spot because that’s where he would have landed troop carriers if he’d planned on a ground assault of the village and his soldier’s instincts had proven right.

While the five or six armored operatives fought it out in the forest with the village posse, it looked to Samuel that seven assorted tech and security staff were scrambling to pack up the camp that had spread out around the ship. The casual confidence and hostile swagger he’d watched them display through his field glasses moments before the ambush was gone.

Jax and Tanya tapped the primitive binary com-beads that Samuel had rigged for the op, and he could see the two surviving members of his assault team crouching just behind the treeline on the other side of the clearing. Samuel tapped the fire order into his own bead and raised his rifle to his shoulders.

Jax was as much of a backwater frontier native as they came, with a thick Longstrider accent and a talent for hunting game, the latter of which he employed with deadly effectiveness as he fired his bolt-action rifle with the kind of speed that only came from a lifetime of use.

Tanya was an expatriate from Praxis Mundi who had fallen in love with Longstride and the small forest planet during her time as a border pilot for the transportation corporation. Though she was a fair shot with the bull-pup assault rifle she’d brought with her from corporate space, it was her former profession that had made her part of Samuel’s team.

While the hunting rifles and shot casters that were common fare among the frontier folk were not particularly effective against the armored dropsuits of the operators, the rounds from Jax’s rifle worked just fine on the lesser protected tech and security staffers.

Boss Kade had pulled some strings when Samuel had mustered out, a parting gift of sorts, and the former marine had been allowed to keep his Reaper kit when he expatriated. Samuels assault rifle was of Grotto design, and the low tech robustness of his former corporation’s technology had turned out to be a boon on this backwater world, as the weapon would fire any ammunition that was the proper caliber, regardless of manufacture patterns or trademark stamp.

Samuel kept his rifle on semi-automatic, and let his breath out slowly and forcefully as he moved his sights from target to target, putting three rounds into each as he moved.

Their combined attack left five dead and dying on the ground before the remaining three slavers had a chance to react. Once they did, it again revealed the quality of the Tasca cartel’s hiring department.

Jax and Tanya attempted to cross a section of open clearing, perhaps thinking that the deadly crossfire had been enough to push the enemy back, only to find themselves in the line of fire as two security staffers counter attacked.

Samuel cursed aloud as he watched Jax get flung backwards by several hard rounds. The well-meaning, but untrained huntsman was dead before his body tumbled to the ground in a bloody heap. Tanya fared somewhat better, thanks to being encased in Samuel’s combat armor, and of the half dozen pistol rounds that struck her only one punched through a joint in the armor and bit into the meat of her hip.

Wasting no time, Samuel flanked the two security staff, hoping that he could dispatch them before the tech staffer thought to arm herself and join the fray. The former marine pounded two shots into the thigh of one security staffer before the weapon clicked dry. Samuel shouted in frustration at his less than honed combat detail awareness, as he would not have made such a mistake just a few years ago.

As the first staffer fell to the ground Samuel hurled his rifle at the second, forcing the man to raise his arms to protect himself, giving Samuel a chance to tackle the man to the ground.

Samuel and the security staffer were a tangle of thrashing limbs as they struggled and when Samuel stood up with his bloody boarding knife in his hands he wasn’t sure when he had drawn it. The wounded staffer had his pistol pointed at Samuel’s chest, but before he pulled the trigger a sustained burst from Tanya’s assault rifle pulped the hostile.

The tech staffer was one step ahead of the two frontier folk, and depressed the hatch closure button just as Samuel had re-armed himself. The former pilot and marine reached the hatch just as it slammed shut, though Samuel had prepared for this eventuality.

“Watch my back, Tanya, this torch is quick, but those dropsuit troopers might survive the crossfire and attempt to return to the ship.” Samuel sparked his Reaper hand torch and started cutting at the seam of the hatch. His torch was another piece of Grotto equipment that was somewhat peerless in corporate space for its ability to run on just about any kind of battery power and could cut through almost anything within in seconds.

Samuel moved quickly, as he was not concerned with keeping the ship space worthy, all he cared about was getting inside. Already the engines were spooling up and the marine knew that one or more crew inside were attempting to make an escape.

After a few more intense seconds the hatch lock burst into slag and Samuel was able to jam his pry bar into the breach so that he could force the door. A less experienced welder, certainly one trying to be more careful, would have taken twice the time. The hatch opened and Samuel rushed in, dragging Tanya by the shoulder as he did, just in time to prevent her from being hit with a barbed net as it slammed into where she’d been standing.

“Looks like the operatives realized they were about to get left behind!” spat Samuel as he sprinted across the airlock and began cutting the interior hatch. “Use the door as cover and don’t worry about conserving ammo, pouring on the fire is the only way you’ll keep them off us!”

Samuel pushed the sound of Tanya’s assault rifle from his mind as he focused on cutting the lock on the interior hatch. Once he got through that the ship’s pilot would be forced to start closing interior doors and cutting off sections of the ship to keep the vessel from de-pressurizing when they broke atmosphere. The pilot, even if a hardened slaver, would have to run a diagnostic on the ship before sealing off compartments, and in those few seconds Samuel knew he would have to reach the pilot’s deck.