Christopher Nuttall - Democracy's Right

She wanted to cry. It was an effort to keep her voice level. “Is there nothing we can do?”

“Nothing,” Cordova said. He sounded calm, yet she could detect his own anger and frustration underlying his voice. “Unless the superdreadnaughts get back in time to intervene, we can do nothing, but watch.”

Neil scowled down at his display as another section vanished, as surely as if the invaders had somehow deleted it completely. The Blackshirts were knocking out sensors as they advanced, flowing out into the innermost core of the asteroid. It was lucky that Sanctuary wasn’t a typical asteroid, but in some ways it hardly mattered. There were fewer fixed defences deeper within the asteroid. The Blackshirts — he hoped — didn’t know it, yet they’d broken through the main defences. It was all down to improvised defences and tactics now.

“Keep updating Captain Cordova,” he ordered. He’d come up with a plan to get Hester, at least, off the asteroid and over to the Random Numbers before it was too late, but she’d refused to abandon Sanctuary. Neil would have argued, yet she’d explained that if she ran — and left the defenders fighting till the last — her reputation would be forever destroyed. The Rim ran more on personal prestige than proper chains of command and no one would ever follow her again. Her second-in-command, who hadn’t been anywhere near Sanctuary, would be undiminished by the disaster and would be able to take over the rebel group and carry on the war. “Pull the defenders back from Sector 45-67; they’re about to be outflanked.”

He shook his head. The invaders were about to burst into the market, where a team of defenders waited for them. It was going to be a very unpleasant encounter.

Thomas watched as another explosion shattered the rebel position, allowing the Blackshirts to move forward to their next target. He’d decided — after the second encounter with a rebel strongpoint — to bring up an HVM launcher and use it against the rebel positions. HVMs were supposed to be reserved for shooting down aircraft and armoured vehicles — it was easy for a person in an armoured combat suit to evade them — but they also made short work of the rebel positions. For the last five minutes, his team had been exchanging shots with a group of Marines, who kept popping up, firing a few bursts and then falling back before they could be engaged. The tactics were the tactics of delay, yet they were working alarmingly well.

He smiled, sourly, as new data popped up inside his HUD. Standard asteroid design — and there was no sign that the rebels disagreed — was to limit the number of connections between the spaceport and the asteroid proper. The expanding map of the asteroid suggested that they’d definitely found their way into the core of the asteroid, where people lived and worked and plotted rebellion. The sensor bugs were still encountering jamming, yet they were starting to overcome it as they penetrated further into the asteroid. There were entire sections that had no jamming at all.

The hatch ahead of them disintegrated, throwing chunks of metal towards his men, who ducked. This time, there was no hail of fire from pre-prepared positions, leaving him to wonder if they’d killed all of the defenders. No, he told himself; that wasn’t likely. The population had to know that they’d be for the chop once the Empire captured them, something that would encourage them to keep fighting. The real question was why had they only faced such limited resistance?

His lips quirked humourlessly as the first team advanced forward, through the hatch. The Blackshirts had lost over ninety armoured soldiers, with another thirty too badly injured to be allowed to remain in the assault. It hadn’t been a light struggle at all, not even slightly. And he was considering it mild!

“Stay alert,” he ordered, as the team advanced into a massive chamber, the largest they had yet seen. The sensor bugs were unable to penetrate far into its vastness. “I want everyone to be very careful.”

Molly wanted to scratch as she crouched behind a clothes stall in the market, hoping that her armoured form was invisible to anyone with bad intentions. A day ago, she would have allowed herself an hour or two to pick her way through the clothes in front of her, perhaps picking a handful to purchase and take back to her sleeping quarters. Now… all she cared about was how much cover they could give her against plasma bursts and the honest answer was not much. She giggled, despite herself, as she caught sight of her teammate. His armour was covered with ladies underwear.

The market had been evacuated along with most of the other public spaces, leaving the deserted chamber with an oddly sinister air. The stallholders had complained loudly about having to leave their wares in place — as if anyone was going to have the time to steal it with the Blackshirts bearing down on them — and had been reluctant to leave, but the Marines hadn’t listened to arguments. The only sound in the chamber was the noise from the pet stall, where a dozen parrots and a handful of dogs were competing to see who could make the most noise. Molly wasn’t sure if the Blackshirts would be frightened by the eerie sounds, but they sure as hell sent a shiver down her spine.

She winced as the hatch exploded outwards, hopefully catching a few of the enemy in the blast. Their demolitions expert had rigged it to explode, noting that it might catch a few of the enemy, but that it would also lure the Blackshirts into entering the market the right way. He’d claimed that they wouldn’t go looking for the other entrances if there was one right in front of them. Molly wasn’t sure if she believed him, but her commander had clearly decided to gamble. He’d ordered him to rig the explosives and then fall back to where he could lay more traps in their path.

Molly looked up as the first Blackshirt entered the chamber, weapon at the ready. A handful of others followed him, clearly nervous and twitchy. The dogs started barking again and the Blackshirts swung around, unleashing a hail of plasma bolts towards the pet stall. The stall exploded, killing most of the animals, although a handful of parrots flew up high and rained down verbal abuse on the Blackshirts. The Blackshirts started to fire on them before their commander, who clearly had a leveller head than most of his men, ordered them to hold fire.

“Fire,” Molly’s commander ordered. If they’d planned the distraction, they could hardly have done better. “Hit the bastards!”

She popped up and opened fire, along with the rest of her team. The Blackshirt position seemed to disintegrate as five of them were gunned down instantly, followed rapidly by two more as they turned and started to run out of the chamber. An HVM was fired into the chamber, but without a solid target it flew over their heads and detonated against the far wall, leaving an unpleasant scorch mark on a mural the asteroid’s children had created, a week after the asteroid had been declared habitable. She flinched back as the first grenade was thrown into the chamber, only to land some distance from their position. The Blackshirts were clearly disorientated, but that wouldn’t last.

Molly flinched back as a hail of fire came back at them from outside the chamber. There were hardly any real defences in the compartment and the stalls either exploded or caught fire quickly. Her own stall caught fire, sending flaming clothes everywhere. She jumped back, firing as she moved, only to be struck by another burst of plasma in the leg. Plain flared through her as she collapsed to the ground, despite the best efforts of her suit. The position was falling apart and no one had time to help her.