Christopher Nuttall - Democracy's Right

She pulled back the hatch and dropped the bag she’d been carrying down on top of the armour suits, before running as fast as she could. The explosion still sent her sprawling to the deck, gasping in pain as she banged her exposed elbows against the metal. There was no way to tell how many she’d killed, or even if she’d killed any of them, but… before she could react, a bolt of blue-white light punched its way through the deck far too close to her for comfort. She was scurrying away when a second pulse slammed into the deck and it weakened, tilting madly as overstressed metal started to give way. Jane realised, as the stench of ionised air reached her nostrils, that the Blackshirts had been firing madly into the overhead section. A final bolt of blue light struck her legs and she screamed in pain — all reserve gone — as she fell through the metal and down in front of them.

The pain was overwhelming, worse than her father trying to beat some sense into her, worse than the pain and humiliation she’d felt when she’d shocked herself while rewiring a module on her second starship. Massive black figures gathered around them, staring down at her, their features invisible behind their black helmets. She wanted to pull herself to her feet and die spitting defiance in their faces, yet she couldn’t feel her legs. There was absolutely no feeling from the lower half of her body. She could barely move her head. It dawned on her, slowly, that she had to have been badly injured, yet surely she could escape?

One of the black figures lifted a rifle, pointed it at her head, and pulled the trigger. There was a flash of blue-white light… and then nothing.

Thomas watched the girl’s head disintegrate, fighting down an urge to be sick. It had been a mercy killing; indeed, he had no idea how the girl had still been alive after a plasma blast had sheared off her legs and left the stumps cauterised. He’d seen many unpleasant sights in his career — one didn’t reach high rank in the Blackshirts without seeing thousands of horrific sights — yet the poor girl had been among the worst. She would have died without the intervention of a proper medical team and even then it would have taken years for her to recover from the shock.

“Pretty girl,” one of his team said. He didn’t sound disappointed or angry, despite losing his first chance at one of the perks of serving in the Blackshirts. Thomas, who liked to think of himself as more civilised than most of the other Blackshirts, would have relieved his feelings by bawling the younger man out. “What do we do now?”

Thomas looked back at the blackened shells that were all that remained of two of his men. Both of them had been caught in the blast the girl had caused, just before she’d been killed. It wasn’t a good exchange rate, even if they were all expendable.

“We keep moving,” he said. He sent a series of commands to the sensor bugs. They would expand their probes into the tunnel network that had been exposed by the girl, allowing them some advance warning of any more solo attacks. The dead girl, he suspected, might have operated on her own, but she’d certainly shown the enemy how to delay them. If they could use the tunnels to outflank them, the rebels could whittle away at his force until nowhere was safe. “There are more enemy fighters waiting for us up ahead.”

He concentrated on splitting up his forces. If the spaceport could be taken relatively intact, his reinforcements could be flown right into the asteroid, allowing him to push out faster and further. He doubted that the rebels would be surprised — they’d have to expect that much — but they’d be unable to react quickly.

“Onwards,” he ordered, and smiled. If he won, and if he survived, the sky would be the limit. “Prepare to attack.”

The starship crews didn’t go down easily. They’d built up a formidable position and backed it up with the weapons mounted on their ships. Neil watched in numb fascination as they threw back three attacks before the fourth one broke through, leaving three ships as flaming wreckage and pushing the defenders back. One of the battlecruisers had moved closer and started to open fire, picking off several of the defenders even through the forcefield covering the entrance to the spaceport. The massive hatch hadn’t stood up to its weapons for more than a few seconds. After that, the defenders were doomed.

“They’re pushing their way into the remaining starships,” one of the operators reported. The Blackshirts had continued to advance, despite their heavy losses. Sheer determination would make up for a lot of tactical flaws. And, for that matter, they definitely seemed more civilised than the ordinary run of Blackshirts. “One of the ships is planning to jump out.”

Neil felt his eyes go wide with horror. “Tell them not to move,” he ordered, knowing that the order would not be heeded. There was no other way for the crews to escape. “Tell them…”

“Too late,” the operator said. “They’re already powering up.”

Thomas cursed as the light freighter rose into the air on an antigravity field, using the positions of the Blackshirts to shield itself from the Vengeance’s fire. The battlecruiser couldn’t shoot without bringing the remains of the freighter down on the Blackshirts. Even so, what else could the ship do? They were unable to bring their weapons to bear on the attackers, for they’d just be shot off without their shields and they couldn’t use their shields in such a confirmed place. Unless…

He saw — too late — a shimmer forming around the prow of the freighter. Space itself seemed to warp and twist around it, the light from the fires suddenly refocused as mighty energies started to claw at the very fabric of space and time. He started to shout a warning as the flicker drive engaged, there was a brilliant flash of golden light and the starship vanished.

An instant later, the shockwave hit and the entire asteroid shook.

Thomas activated his suit’s magnetic grapples as the gravity field twisted, sucking the assault force towards where the starship had been. Cries of horror and terror echoed over the assault band as some of the troopers, not so quick to react, were pulled towards the singularity along with everything in the spaceport that wasn’t secured to the floor. The gravity field snapped off a microsecond later, leaving armoured troops and assorted debris flying through the air and down to the deck. Thomas winced as he saw a soldier crash to the ground and lie still. Even powered combat armour couldn’t prevent its wearer from being stunned after such an impact.

“Sound off,” he ordered. Luckily, the enemy was in as much disarray as his own men, or they could have mounted a counterattack and destroyed his force while they were scattered and stunned. He listened as the numbers counted and allowed himself a moment of relief when he realised that only a handful of his men were either gone or injured. “Form up and…”

The forcefield holding the air inside the asteroid collapsed and vanished, allowing the air in the spaceport to start streaming out into the vacuum. Thomas hadn’t deactivated his grapples, thankfully, and he was able to withstand the sudden pull to the rear. A handful of soldiers were less lucky and were sucked out into space, although their suits would protect them long enough for them to be rescued by the battlecruisers and their shuttles. Thomas watched as a torrent of debris followed them into the vacuum, sweeping the bay clean. He’d once watched as a space habitat was carefully vented to exterminate a particularly nasty form of crawling insect that had somehow passed through the screening and made a home in the habitat and he knew that nothing would survive in the remains of the spaceport, unless it had a suit of its own. The sensor bug network had been disrupted by the starship and then by the sudden transition to vacuum, but it was already reporting that the Blackshirts were largely alone in the spaceport. A handful of rebel fighters had been in the tubes when the compartment depressurised and were apparently dead.