Graham Paul: The battle of Devastation reef

“Command, sensors. Target vector confirmed nominal for transit of Setianto Reef en route to Surajaya system.”

“Command, roger. All stations, target confirmed. Immediate execute Golf One. I say again, immediate execute Golf One. Assault Leader acknowledge.”

Yasuhiko’s response was instantaneous, his voice a model of calm, controlled confidence. “Assault Leader acknowledge. Executing Golf One. Closing Galaxy Queen.”

Lieutenant Yasuhiko hung twenty meters off the Galaxy Queen , the mership’s hull flaring a brilliant white under the assault lander’s high-intensity arc lights. Despite the best efforts of his suit’s environmental control unit, he sweated heavily inside his bulky ceramic armor while he waited for the clock to run down. He always did before combat. In front of him, the marines of Team One under the command of Sergeant Kambon hung clustered around the main passenger air lock, black shapes crisp against the ship’s hull.

With five seconds to go, Yasuhiko took a deep breath and gave the order. “All teams, Assault Leader. Stand by on three … go, go, go!”

Utterly focused, Yasuhiko scrolled through the holocam feeds from his assault team commanders’ helmets as his marines exploded into carefully choreographed action. He nodded, satisfied the operation had gotten off to a good start. He turned his attention back to the team he would follow into Galaxy Queen .

Sergeant Kambon had things well in hand. He fired the high-energy photonic cutting charges fastset to the hull. A brilliant white flash punched a large hole around the air lock, and the hatch in its titanium frame tumbled into space, driven out by the pressure of air inside the ship. A plasfiber igloo air lock was fastset around the gaping hole in Galaxy Queen ’s hull. Yasuhiko followed the assault team in; he sealed the igloo’s hatch onto its plasteel ring behind him and pulled a large red handle, the scream of high-pressure air dumped to repressurize the air lock lobby audible even through his armored helmet.

Sergeant Kambon waved two marines-the smallest members of the team for obvious reasons-into the gaping hole in Galaxy Queen’s hull to place the next set of photonic charges.

No sooner had they gone in then the two marines were back. Behind them, the inner air lock hatch blew out with another flash, the igloo creaking when the back blast hit. Air from the overpressured air lock blew the door out into the access lobby, its titanium frame skidding along the deck.

A hail of indiscriminate low-velocity fire greeted the door’s arrival, rounds ricocheting off the air lock walls and out into space, passing through the plasfiber igloo with a soft popping pfffft before self-sealant stopped up the holes. One lucky shot punched a marine right in the center of his ceramfiber chest armor, the impact of the round leaving him winded but otherwise unhurt.

“Damn,” Yasuhiko grumbled to himself. Ever the optimist, he hoped that they would get in unopposed. Hard vacuum and bullets-even low-velocity ones-were a combination he did not enjoy.

Sergeant Kambon was wasting no time. “Flashbangs,” he said before the shattered air lock door even came to rest. Together, the marines pitched small gray cylinders into the ship, where they bounced and skittered off bulkheads and decks before exploding with an eye-watering flash and a splintering crack that hurt even inside an armored assault suit.

When the flashbangs went off, the marines followed up with smoke and knockdown gas grenades, the entire access lobby turning into a murky scene from hell as the assault team erupted from the air lock, a tidal wave of black armor charging unstoppable through the smog. With the Galaxy Queen ’s defenders lying semicomatose on the deck, it was all over in seconds. When the air cleared, Yasuhiko examined the neat row of plasticuffed bodies laid out on the lobby floor with some satisfaction, the corridors leading off the air lock lobby secured by black-suited marines while behind him a hand-operated inner air lock was fastset into place.

Sergeant Kambon’s report was a formality. “Assault Leader, Team One. Air lock Papa-1 and access lobby secure.” Kambon sounded a touch smug. Fair enough, Yasuhiko thought. Kambon’s team had been first into the ship and by a good ten seconds; already backup teams cycled through the makeshift air lock to take up their positions for the final assault, black combat space suits dumped in favor of lightweight assault armor, the discarded suits looking uncomfortably like dead bodies strewn with careless abandon across the field of battle.

One by one, the rest of the assault teams reported in, and Yasuhiko gave the word.

Hammer marines erupted in ten different directions at once. To a casual observer, their movements would appear random; in fact, Yasuhiko coordinated the attack with great care to keep the Galaxy Queen ’s crew off balance, pinned down, and, if unreasonably stubborn, attacked from behind, above, or below, but never head on unless there was no other way.

Not that it was easy. Taking a mership in deepspace never was, and even an inexperienced commercial spacer could inflict serious damage on an assault-suited marine if he kept his head and aimed for the weak spots in the marine’s body armor. The only real problem faced by Yasuhiko’s marines was the personal security detail assigned to protect the VIP. Not that he had any real concerns; a handful of well-trained but lightly armed men-but these were Feds, so Professor Saadak’s security detail would include women, too, no matter how dumb it was trusting women in such an important job-might be professionals, but they only could delay the inevitable.

Galaxy Queen had been designed to work the minor trade routes, of which humanspace had thousands connecting lesser planets and orbital habitats to the major systems. She carried no more than two hundred passengers-this trip, fewer than fifty-so her living spaces were compact and easily contained. In the end, the ship was too small, the Hammers too numerous, and Yasuhiko’s control of the operation too good for the outcome to be in any doubt. Despite the desperate efforts of the Galaxy Queen’s crew and the target’s security detail, the operation was over and Yasuhiko’s marines had their VIP in custody barely twenty minutes after the first air lock door blew out of the hull. Success came at a cost, though-the marine assault teams had suffered two dead and eight wounded-but in the wider scheme of things, that was acceptable. Things were much worse for the Feds. Their futile attempts to keep Yasuhiko’s marines at bay had cost the lives of Saadak’s security detail-every last one of them-along with five of Galaxy Queen’s crew. So be it; Yasuhiko did not care. They were only Feds, after all.

While the assault teams rigged demolition charges, Yasuhiko stood back to watch his men struggle with the plasticuffed VIP his marines had come to abduct. Professor Saadak, a tall, stylishly dressed woman with the foulest mouth Kaya had ever come across-that was saying something; he had been a Hammer marine for more than ten years-protested every step of the way as she was dragged to the air lock, the air ripe with abuse and threats of revenge, her objections silenced only when she was manhandled forcibly into a body bag for transfer back to the Penhaligon .

Lieutenant Commander Kaya watched dispassionately as demolition charges ripped the Galaxy Queen apart, the explosive release of energy when her main fusion plant lost containment vaporizing the mership’s massive bulk. A microsecond later the mership had disappeared, a cloud of ionized gas all that remained to mark the Galaxy Queen ’s passing, fast breaking up into writhing skeins of white-hot matter twisting uselessly away into space. By the time the next mership dropped into normalspace to transit Setianto Reef, the gas would have expanded and cooled beyond detection, all evidence the Galaxy Queen had ever been anywhere near Setianto Reef vanished.