Christopher Nuttall - Democracy's Right

He waited until the spaceport had finished venting and then led his men over to the connecting tube, linking the spaceport to the remainder of the asteroid. Unsurprisingly, it was locked and secured, or the entire asteroid would have vented into space. The early asteroid developers had been paranoid when it came to safety, building in hundreds of cut-outs and automatic airlocks; the rebels, it seemed, had shared their paranoia. They would have to either cut through the hatch and walk right into the ambush he knew had to be there — the rebels would never have a better chance to inflict huge losses on his men — or try to go out onto the surface of the asteroid and burn through somewhere else. If there were Marines out there, he knew, that would be suicide. It could not be risked.

“Start moving up the heavy weapons,” he ordered. If he knew there were an ambush there — the sensor bugs couldn’t seem to get through without disappearing, which was indicative in itself — he could at least spring it early. “Prepare to cut through the hatch.”

He watched as two of his men manoeuvred a heavy laser cannon into position and prepared to fire. The bulky weapon was starship-grade, capable of cutting through even superdreadnaught-class armour if it had enough time to work with, and — unlike plasma cannons — it didn’t explode violently if the enemy hit it. Even so, they lacked the flexibility of plasma cannons and other, more typical weapons, but it was just perfect for raiding an asteroid.

“Fire,” he ordered.

“We’re in position, boss,” Corporal Joe Hughes informed him. “Don’t worry about a thing.”

Neil snorted. The starship’s disappearance had sent shockwaves through the entire asteroid. The status display — what little there was of it, for the rebels had never bothered to install a full internal sensor network — was covered with red lights, warning of damage to the internal systems and possible structural damage. It was a damn good thing, he told himself, that they hadn’t been spinning the asteroid for gravity or the entire habitat would have started to come apart. Even so, the cascade of systems failures and alert messages suggested that it might be a good time to start thinking about evacuating the asteroid — if there was anywhere to go. The looming presence of nine Imperial Navy battlecruisers blocked all hope of escape.

And the cameras in the spaceport, the one place where they’d had near-complete coverage, had been knocked out. He wasn’t sure if the Blackshirts had been shooting them or if the shockwave had disabled them, but it didn’t matter. There was no way to know, now, what was going on inside enemy-held territory. They might be planning to cut through into the main asteroid by now, or they might all be dead. There was little data on what happened to anyone unlucky enough to be caught near a starship flickering out, yet some of the data suggested that they would all be dead. A younger officer might have been tempted to open the hatch and find out, but Neil knew better. They couldn’t be that lucky.

“Good,” he said, knowing that ten Marines in powered combat armour were better than a hundred Blackshirts, even if the Blackshirts were wearing armour too. It helped that the enemy had no choice, but to come directly at his men. The asteroid’s internal structure would see to that, unless they wanted to risk digging elsewhere with rock-cutters. Truthfully, Neil was worried about that possibility, more worried than he cared to admit. The Blackshirts didn’t have to care about the asteroid being depressurised and everyone onboard suffocating to death. “You have tactical command. Make a mess.”

He checked the other sensor and nodded to himself. Almost all of the women and children in the asteroid had been moved to the inner core, wearing spacesuits to protect them against a sudden change in pressure. Part of him questioned the value of such precautions — the only people who could pluck them out of space were the Imperial Navy — but it wasn’t in him to give up. Who knew — if they held out long enough, the superdreadnaughts might return. Or, perhaps, the Imperial Navy had its own superdreadnaughts lucking nearby, just hoping that Admiral Walker would stick his head into the noose.

“Don’t worry,” Hester said, in her whispery voice. Neil was privately impressed. Very few Marines could have gone through everything she’d endured and remained sane. “We will hold out long enough and if we die, we will take them with us. We will die for our cause”

“I’d much rather make them die for our cause,” Neil said, practically. Hester laughed. It was a vaguely unpleasant sound through her damaged face. “I wonder if they have any idea what they’re getting into.”

He scowled. Hester had taken him aside briefly and explained about the demolition charge they’d built into the asteroid. An extremely-powerful nuclear warhead, normally used for cracking asteroids into smaller pieces, had been hidden within Sanctuary. If the asteroid fell, the weapon would be detonated, killing everyone onboard and throwing tons of rocky debris towards the Imperial Navy starships. Neil doubted that it would cause any real damage — the battlecruisers had point defence weapons, designed to handle missiles that moved far faster than the pieces of rock — but it would certainly cheat the Imperials in the moment of their victory.

And yet, it wouldn’t be a real victory, not for him.

He shook his head. It hardly mattered. Either they held out long enough or they didn’t. The rest was in God’s hands.

The hatch was glowing red now, great streams of molten metal flowing off it and pooling on the deck. The laser cannon was being moved now as the operators felt out the weak spots in the hatch, cutting through slowly, but efficiently. The rebels had created a neat hatch, one that couldn’t be simply blown open by explosives, yet it couldn’t stand up to a laser cannon. Thomas made a silent bet with himself — some of his men were making overt bets over the communications channel — as to how long it could stand up to the laser. A hiss answered his question as air started to leak through from the other side. The hatch slowly folded over and started to collapse.

He ducked sharply as a hail of fire blasted through from the other side. The defenders didn’t seem to be bothered by the sudden loss of air pressure in their compartment, although the Blackshirts had rigged up another forcefield to prevent the air from flowing out into vacuum. Even so, the air pressure was going to drop alarmingly until it equalised, a painful experience for anyone not in a suit. Two of his men were struck by plasma bolts and killed outright, a third was badly injured and had to be pulled back to one of the shuttles. At least he, unlike the crippled rebel girl, would have a fair chance of survival. His suit had already sealed the wound and injected sedatives into his bloodstream.

“Load grenades,” he ordered. The sheer volley of fire suggested that the rebels had either placed an entire team of men just past the hatch or that they’d set up a pair of plasma cannons and set them to fire automatically on everything that moved. “Hit them!”

The armoured combat suits carried their own grenade launchers, allowing their users to select and fire one of five kinds of grenade. Thomas selected high explosive — there was no point in playing around with stun grenades when the enemy was certainly armoured too — and fired them through the remains of the hatch. The enemy fire followed his grenades, shooting them before they could detonate, but his men were firing too. It only took one…

He cursed as there was a brilliant flash of white light and the deck shook. There had been a single plasma cannon — or perhaps more — there and, now that its containment had been broken, it had released all of its plasma in a single burst. The results… the results had been unpleasant. Great rivers of white fire seemed to flow everywhere, melting great gashes into the deck and bulkheads, even the ones made of stone. Alerts flickered up in his HUD, warning him that the atmosphere was poisoned and to keep his helmet on at all times. If the enemy had actual men operating the plasma cannons, nothing, not even the most advanced combat armour in the entire Empire, could have saved their lives.