Good training trumps superior equipment any day, despite what the Serco would have you believe to the contrary. Now, my opinion of UPK basic boot camp isn't exactly glowing with praise, but the special-forces training is actually pretty good. Has to be really. There are few enough UPK recruits as-is; fewer still are qualified for SpecOps work. A good officer is hard to come by, and represents a significant investment of time and credits. Not exactly traits that breed disposability.

By far the most important things a SpecOps officer has to train for, though, are how to stay calm under pressure and, when faced with a superior opponent, to cheat. You'd be surprised how often folks rely on their guns or augmentations to the detriment of 'common sense' rules like the above. Guns and augmentations are nice, but you should never ever rely on them to carry the day. Reliance breeds weakness, and at the end of the day, the only thing a UPK officer can ever truly count on is his or her wits.

((Looking good, Whytee. Loving the action scenes. Only complaint would be the sparsity of the paragraph breaks; parts of this one were a bit of a marathon to read.

Anyway, keep 'em comin'. This sort of thing lets me pretend that my crazy UIT-nationalist roleplaying actually matters worth a damn, in spite of my extended absence from the actual game :^p))

Sorry for not posting last week. A bout of massive hang-overs kinda kept me from writing so this one is slightly longer than normal. As usual, enjoy.

Chapter 38

With no little satisfaction, Mercy located the right roid and pinged it, marking it to the others. Illuvia and ts started their attack runs, off-loading four full loads of Swarms into the asteroid with as much precision as could be expected from the cluster ammunition of the Swarms. The sheer damage potential was, however, more than enough to offset the lack of accuracy. The bomblets smashed into the dirty ice and tore it apart, creating an impact crater that was around sixteen metres deep and more than wide enough for two ships to enter safely. Mercy and Morphix turned their ships over and gently eased them down to the bottom of the crater. Above them, Ironstar and Surbius eased the frontal docking mount to mate up with Mercy's and Morphix' and started to increase thrust in tandem with the "digging" ships. The dirty ice evaporated before the fusion flames and re-froze around the crater in single molecule thickness sheets, creating a surreal ghostly landscape. Illuvia and ts turned around and started boosting for the 3k mark, with Ecka, Shna and Lambin flying security in a loose pattern around 1500 metres out. The two bombers jumped out and left the TGFT rescue squad in sole command of the system. After a minute, several bursts of exotic energy flared and died, leaving hard radar echoes of cargo ships instead. The IFFs were blaring standard UIT recognition codes and the computer quickly acknowledged them as friendlies. Two of the escort fighters had a different IFF however, and one of them hailed Ecka upon stabilising on course.

"Viper pilot Cat on duty. This is a Viper escorted convoy; any interference will be met with maximum force. Stand-off range is 1500 metres."

Ecka grinned, the Viper had just sent him a standard hail, obviously not taking into consideration, who it was she had hailed. Another message came through almost as fast, from the other ship.

"Greeting TGFT pilots. Do you require any assistance?"

Now, that was more like it. Ecka found his own voice comms and keyed it.

"Greetin' tae ye tay Viper. Nae cheers, we hae th' situation under control. We appreciate th' offer thocht, an' extend uir ain offer if ye need it."

"Ehm, right. Thanks I think."

"Hink naethin' ay it. Jist gie us a holler if needed. Ecka it."

The convoy formed up and started moving towards the Latos-Sedina wormhole, the three Behemoth class vessels in an arrow formation with escort ships above and below and a single Warthog that raced ahead to scout the wormhole terminus. Ecka watched them pick up speed ever so slowly when a general call alerted him once more, the voice of Mercy.

"I think we are at the hull now. Shift over to the side Morph and start clearing the bottom thrusters, I'll take the top and around the cockpit. Hopefully he is still alive in there."

Klicks of acknowledgement followed like small metallic sighs of relief. He was actually there and they could actually get him out.

The tradeships were about 2k out when the sector was once more bathed in the strange particles, that was the result of inter-system jumps. Seven fighters spewed forth, with an eighth that shed its camouflage coating and started boosting from a depression in a particular large ferric roid, it had been hiding in. Ecka knew an ambush when he saw one and this was precisely what it looked like.

###

Time slowed to almost stand-still, the movements of the beast seemed as fluent as if they had been performed in semi-frozen tar, his thoughts were replaced by snapshots that appeared, were replaced and in some cases re-appeared in a collage of random images with one common theme; Rose.

He moved sideways to allow space for Gramp's bullet to cross from the muzzle of his large-calibre slugthrower to the bulk of the beast and continued the move to take advantage of the impact, positioning himself underneath the reach of the beast's fear-full fangs.
He raised his right arm to block the half-metre knife-like claw on the beast's hand, grabbed the limb with both his hands and twisted his entire body to the side, catching the beast off-balance. Inside half a second of accelerated time, the beast impacted hard on his hip and was thrown against the bulkhead. It twisted as it landed, found its footing, stretched its arms wide and bellowed a massive roar.

John re-gained his balance, stretched his left hand out, palm up and kept the right hand close to his body in the Itani combat stance. Time slowed again as the beast charged, arms wide for a deadly embrace. John kept his stance and waited until the beast was precisely There and struck.
He twisted his left hand inwards around and down, forcing the beast's claw away from his body, leaned forward and smashed his right fist into the chest of the beast where Gramps had hit it prior, kept his momentum forward and hit the beast in the upper thigh with his hip while narrowly avoiding the other hand's claw. Time once more accelerated and he noted, more than saw, the beast fly somersaulting into the bulkhead again, where it landed hard on its head. Two shots more rang out as Gramps pulled the trigger franticly, both shots impacting on the beast�s left shoulder.

With a small side-step, he was once more in perfect balance and ready for the beast. Time once more slowed and he noticed with no little curiosity that the beast was bleeding purple liquid from the wound it had just received in the shoulder. Once more the beast, confused but still angry, readied for a charge.
John lifted his left foot slightly off the floor and when the beast came in reach, he scissored his right leg forward and kicked with all his might up under the jaw of the beast's massive head, impacting his steel-toed boot precisely on the side of the beast�s jaw. A horrible crack came from the impact but it didn't stop the momentum of the beast at all and it managed to grapple John in its massive arms, pinning his right arm to his flank. The stinking mouth closed on his face and buried ten-inch long fangs in his throat and... and stopped. The lower jaw hung limp and the teeth in the upper mouth merely scratched John's scalp. With absolute calm, John gathered his left hand in a fist and smashed it with all his might into the pharynx of the beast with bone-crushing force. The beast dropped him immediately and staggered backwards, trying to cough up its own broken pharyngeal bone but suffocating itself in the process. John returned to his Itani combat stance as if nothing had happened.

Time returned to normal as Gramps walked over to the twitching beast that was lying on the deck-plates, small bubbles of purple blood around its broken snout and small trickles of blood running from the wound in its shoulder. He extended his left hand with the handgun to the beast�s full-black eye and squeezed the trigger repeatedly until the skull exploded outwards and ended the beast's misery. Gramps turned around to John who was still standing in the combat stance.

"You can relax now John, it ain't gonna move again."

John relaxed slightly and then realised what he had just done. Vomit started rising in his throat and he desperately looked around for a place to throw up. Instead, he sensed a fast-moving object in his right-side peripheral vision and regained his former calm, twisting to take action if it proved to be a threat. A bundle of rags and wildly flailing hair impacted on him and he found himself hugged. Rose.

"That was pretty effin impressive John. I must say, I thought that the JE books were just fantasy, and exaggerated at that. I stand corrected."

Gramps' voice was low and deep but full of respect. John looked over to his blood-spattered friend and grinned, moved one arm around the waist of Rose and leaned her back.

"You know, at times I was kinda wondering myself."

He turned his attention to the prettiest sight in the room and did his Hero� thing.

###

Neagoth sat, leaned against the bulkhead, his lasrifle across his knees presenting an open slot where the ammunition would normally go. Or the powercell really, no reason to call it ammunition. He realised he didn't know why the hell it was called ammunition, accessed the station's library database and started giggling when the information manifested itself in his head. Right. He took the powercell and slammed the ammunition into the rifle, pressed the primer and locked the safety. Across him, on the deck, two corpsmen were busy administering first-aid to the single UPK officer that had survived; he didn't really count himself among that supposedly elite bunch. He let his gaze flow across the mayhem and stopped on the UPK First Lieutenant that had arrived on the scene with ten soldiers as a response on Neagoth's call for assistance. Not that the situation had changed at all since he made that call and gauging from the mask of complete confusion that was painted on the FL's face, nothing was about to change anytime soon.

With a sigh of despair, one of the corpsmen tossed his medical supplies on the deck and leaned back. Neagoth scratched the young officer they had tried to save from the survivor�s list and nodded slowly. Using his lasrifle as a crutch, he rose slowly and approached the FL.

"'Scuse me. Are we going to go after the fuckers that did this?"

The First Lieutenant looked at Neagoth with slight confusion before he managed to put his face in the most friendly folds he knew how to and said in a patronising voice.

"Sir, we thank you for your assistance in calling for back-up. Now, if you could please stay back and let the professionals take over, then I am sure the problem will be solved in no time and you can go back to what it was you were doing."

He turned away from Neagoth and continued to talk into his perscom. Neagoth looked around him and realised that there was nothing he could do here, nothing that was going to matter anyway. He put his arm through the strap on his rifle and with a nod of his head, he moved away from the UPK guards and down towards the HQ. At least he could get a cup of Koffee there. Ignoring the different sounds of alert on the way, he arrived at the HQ with no further incidents. At the entrance he had expected to see the usual guards, not the trashed and bomb-scarred remains of yet another terror attack. To the right of the entrance he spotted Nikan with a fairly large white bandage on his head and moved over to greet him.

"What up Nice?"

"Suicide bomber. They lost. What about you? You don't look too hot yourself 'Goth?"

He waved his hand and sat down hard next to Nikan.

"Meh, some terrorists that decided to use my patrol as targeting practice down in Charlie launch. They lost too."

Nikan reached over and grabbed a cup, sloshed half of the black contents into a used food container and handed Neagoth the cup.

"Koffee? Sorry about the taste of it, it was hot once."

Neagoth accepted the cup and took a sip, grimacing at the oily and bitter taste before taking another sip. Koffee was Koffee after all.

"Fuck me."

Neagoth looked over at Nikan with a raised eyebrow. Nikan indicated his earpiece where he apparently had just received a message.

"We have a situation in Azek, pretty bad. So far the station security have bungled the job completely and have almost 80% casualties."

He rose on unsteady legs and looked around for his kit. He sighed at the look of his smashed lasrifle and hefted it anyway.

"Need some help with that Nice?"

"Would be appreciated man. I just need to find a new rifle and then we can be off. Do you have a ship?"

"Yeah, 'hog II. I'll go start her up. Bay Delta-17-Lima-2. "

"Nice place, must be good to be with TGFT. I sure as hell can't afford docking rights on Delta."

Neagoth grinned as he once more use his lasrifle as a crutch to get up.

"There are some advantages to not being a public servant Nice. You should consider it."

"Yeah. But you know, how could I say no to the sexy uniform, the status among my fellow citizens, the company perks, the sweet pay check or the cuisine of the cantina?"

They both laughed and left to prepare.

###

Miexon looked down at the unconscious woman that lay on the hospital bed. A small forest of tubes and wires connected several machines, undoubtedly important all of them, to her. Two medtechs were attending the minor bruises and burn wounds on the face and arms but that was not where the real damage was. The real damage was inside her head, inside the brain-enhancing computer that had locked her mind up inside herself. Miexon followed the cable that was connected to the gossamer-thin web that was placed around her naked scalp like a protective silvery net. The trawl was supposed to pick up any activity and display it on the computer that Miexon's eyes ended upon. Still only a steady pulse of nonetivity that showed that she was alive, not braindead, but not responsive either.
The door to the sickbay opened and NP walked in with a small black tablet, worry obvious on his face.

"Boss. We have a situation."

"I am aware of that."

He indicated the computer with his head.

"Not that boss. I can fix that. We have a situation in Azek. One of our pilots on a routine flight from Latos to Dau, was apparently blasted apart by the border turrets. And the wormhole sector is full of debris, indicating several cases of the same."

"Who did it?"

"The obvious choice is some deranged under-paid UIT employee but I think it is deeper than that."

"Right, at least I can do something about that. You take over here. Make sure she recovers and let me know as soon as she wakes up. No matter where I am, no matter what circumstances."

"Will do boss. Safe flight."

Miexon nodded and left Chi in the capable hands of PA's spymaster. After all, she was one of his people.

Yep. Takes a special kind of crazy to be a career UPK officer, especially in light of the fact that we could be paid far more (with benefits) for doing essentially the same job elsewhere. Perhaps a mix of misplaced patriotism and insane stubbornness. At any rate, there are few recruits, and of those who don't wash out few last as long as to reach the rank of Lieutenant-Commander.

Well, at least I have Neagoth to lend a sympathetic ear. Seems like things are heating up in Azek; time for he and I to go kick some serious ass. 80% casualties? Yeah, thats pretty FUBAR. However, given the darwinian approach command seems to have to officer advancement, the remaining 20% are almost certainly tough-as-nails... unless the 'survivors' are just the recruits trapped in the locker rooms again.

Regardless of the carnage, I think I'll try stealing some naptime in 'goth's Hog en route to Azek. After pulling so many double-shifts, I'm gonna need to be rested for this.

((Sorry I haven't commented all week, Whytee. Been busy. Good stuff, as usual.))

Chapter 39

The hard exotic radiation swamped her ship's detectors, flashing all of her warning lights into deep red for a brief moment before most of them returned to green or at the very least amber. Except for one of the screens that remained too red by far; the threat warning display. The seven pirate ships had jumped into the middle of the convoy with a precision that bordered on the ridiculous and had used no time at all in jump lag. Flares had hammered into the front Behemoth before either she or Atice could call out a warning, smashing it about like a rag-doll in a pit-bull terrier's mouth and tearing the heavy armour plates off like tin foil.

"Break right. Engage bogey 6. I'll call back-up."

Atice's voice came through in small squirts, betraying the heavy G he was pulling as he tore his ship around and into the pirates. Cat's fingers danced around the sticks and the target identified as bogey 6 came into view. A Ragnarok heavy bomber, matte black with a giant skull 'n crossbones painted on the top of it, weapons easily identified by the continuous stream of flares and swarm missiles that spewed out of its weapons racks. Her brainpal calculated the trajectories of the weapons and correlated them with the movements of the tradeships. Damn, they were going to lose a moth to that barrage for sure unless...

Instead of engaging the Ragnarok, she hit full turbo after the flares and started shooting at the metre-long rockets with everything she had. The blue bolts of her positron guns slashed around the flare and she adjusted slightly. One positron beam glanced the rocket and the weapon detonated, safely away from the tradeship. She adjusted fire again, seeking out the next flare and ignored the annoying weapons lock receiver she had beeping in her left ear. She twisted slightly right and fired the ventral thrusters while she kept firing, letting the stack of swarm missiles pass harmlessly beneath her and thunder on towards the right for a large turn back towards her. Again, one positron hit a flare and the rocket detonated harmlessly. The remaining weapons were too close now, she would have to rely on the skills of the Behemoth's own gunners for the remainder. Carefully avoiding the swarms, she turned again towards the Ragnarok and gained a targeting solution on it. 1732 metres away; damn, too far for effective fire.

She hit the turbo and was pushed back in the seat as the Warthog's engines poured everything into producing thrust. From her lower right, a Warthog IV came right at her like a bat outa hell, firing gatling bolts at her at full power. The stream of energy punched into her ship with small jolts of force and she twisted lazily around the ship's axis to ensure minimum chance of a burn-through. She passed through the storm and watched as the distance to the Ragnarok diminished rapidly until it hit 800 metres. She depressed both triggers at the same time and kept them depressed, firing bolts of accelerated positrons and flares into the ugly flat ovoid ship, registering the hits as potential further targeting locations before she passed the bomber. It had been reduced to around 30% armour with several non-essential systems ripped apart, fluids and atmosphere leaking from several places. Where the fluids and oxygen mixed, spontaneous combustions erupted, masking the bomber in yellow and white flames.

"Help's on the way. Status."

Cat queried her brainpal and sent the result directly via secure datalink. She had only sustained minor damage from the gatling bolts, evenly spread out on the right side of her ship. She twisted to re-engage the Ragnarok but instead of seeing the fat black bomber, she only saw the twin glares of its engines with two incoming enemies heading directly for her.

"Atice, two bogeys on me. The Rag is running. Disengaging and forming up on you."

Two clicks on her comms for acknowledgement and she pushed full dorsal, front left and rear right thrusters at the same time, corkscrewing herself in space and coming in on a new heading away from the two hostile ships. One of them continued on after her, the Warthog IV from earlier, the other turned and flew towards the Rag for protection she reckoned. Atice was heavily engaged with two bogeys himself, one of the pirates, a Valkyrie X-1, heavily damaged, the other, a CorVult, only slightly damaged. A set of flares from the X-1 caught Atice's ship and tumbled him to the side, directly into the string of neutrons that the almost undamaged fighter poured towards him. Several small dust-eruptions from Atice's wings indicated neutron hits, with at least one of the blasts tearing a power conduit apart. His Valkyrie was bleeding fluids from the left side at a prodigious rate, instantly solidifying on the outer hull like a white-ish cape. Cat targeted the damaged X-1 and loosed off a string of positrons, scoring a single hit on the left engine. The pilot instantly dodged and the remaining shots passed behind and below it.

Another flood of radiation swamped her sensors as a ship exploded to her rear; a quick look at the screen indicating a tradeship. This was never going to work. Even if they could kill the three pirates they were engaging now, the remaining five were ample firepower to kill off the traders. They had to try at least. Not like last time.

"Vipers, dae ye need assistance wi' those rats? We can probably spaur a ship or fower, ye ken?"

"Roger that TGFT One. Please focus on the fighters that are attacking the convoy at least until the Viper QRF arrives."

"Nae problem son. We'll keep th' line until yer cavalry arri'es. Ecka it"

Out of the roidfield, a much-battered hunter-green Centaur III came with about as much speed as could be teased out of the engines, with two likewise painted Valkyrie X-1's behind it. They might just salvage this if they could hold on until the QRF arrived.

###

Asteroth frowned and looked up from the paperwork he had been pushing around while listening to Pinhead's report.

"Say that again?"

"Like hell I will. Listen Ast, that is the last fucking time you send me on an undercover job in UIT space. I was lucky to get out of it alive."

"Yeah, okay. But take it from the top again, will ya? And the long version this time Pin."

"Fuck. Okay. I infiltrated SUIT as you asked me, set up the idents for smuggling and everything was pushing along nicely. I had all the routes lined, ready for the taking man. So three hours ago, I leave the nexus for a piss and when I come back, the entire command annex is a battleground. Several SUIT personnel had been liquidated just outside of the entrance, so I naturally ditched the uniform and tried to walk over to see what had happened. So, this SUIT guy comes along and I follow him until he is stopped at the entrance by two punks. They see me too and call me over. Between the assault rifles they had and the unhealthy interest they had in the SUIT guy, I just swaggered the best I had learned in Sedina, tried to look as un-SUIT as possible. One of them looks at my T and grins, gives me a thumbs-up and waves me closer. I look down and realise I have the "All Itani should fucking hang" logo emblazoned across my chest in gory letters, which it turns out, saved my precious bacon. One of the punks gets the SUIT guy to kneel and that allows me to look inside the entrance. Complete fucking mayhem, everyone smashed. Reminds me of the old Divinia raid, remember?"

Asteroth grunted acknowledgement.

"Anyway, one of them decides that he wants to enlist me or what-the-fuck-ever and pulls me over to the SUIT guy. Hands me his rifle and indicates that I should execute the poor son of a bitch. So I did, better him than me eh? The two punks start slapping my back and cheer me for the deed, the little fuckers. I use the time to look inside and see more of the mayhem; only one station is active with a thin kid in front, some Nyrian whore by his side. I ask the guys who that is and they answer with Asahel."

"Never heard of him Pin, any of your kin?"

"Nah, pimpled UIT scuz, never seen him before. However, he was controlling all the turrets from his own station. And the punks said that he had broken the quantum-lock on the blastdoors. Anyway, I decided that they were probably going to notice me SUIT pants at some time, so I shot them both and moved off towards the launch bay."

"Right, and then you came here."

"Not yet Ast. When I tried to move into grey, the friggin turrets fired at me. And that is with a fake ID that was good enough to cheat SUIT! I just managed to avoid becoming plasma. Which brings me to my point: We need to secure that kid Ast, he is fucking out there!"

"Right. And what makes you think that the UIT security forces haven't killed him yet?"

Pinhead laughed out loud.

"Before I left the station, I went to the security main station where the guards were gathering to mount an assault. I had no problems in getting in with my SUIT clearance and all; they even helped me carry that large crate marked as "Auntie Ed's cookies" I was dragging along. I bet they didn't expect it to be a bomb."

"You really are a nasty piece of shit Pin."

"Thanks boss. But you probably need to hurry, I'll bet my soon-to-be-arriving-huge-ass-bonus that the PUPK are rushing to re-take the station."

"Yeah. The PUPK are fortunately only a minor worry. Thanks Pin, I'll get back to you. Ast out."

Asteroth typed up a message and sent it. It was a long shot, but worth a try anyway.

###

"Mwsnt sweep."

"Yeah, sure. But you need to wake up buddy, almost there now."

Nikan opened his left eye half way and saw the crimson light of an active fighter all around him. Slightly confused, he scanned the surroundings and decided that he was probably here of his own doing.

"We'll be docking in a couple of minutes, I expect you to take it from there?"

Right, they were in Azek, he was with Neagoth and they were going to do something soon.

"I wasn't sleeping."

Neagoth pointed to the fairly large stain on Nikan's right shoulder and grinned. Nikan wiped his mouth; he hated when he drooled in his sleep. Which happened when he was exhausted so this time was within parameters.

"Okay, how long time was I out?"

"Six minutes. I hope it was good. The reports from the station are pretty nasty, so I took the liberty of calling a friend who was in the neighbourhood?"

"Sure, no problem. Right, I am ready."

He didn't feel ready; he felt as if he had been the ball in a ten-hour game of pinball. The docking clamps grabbed the ship and twisted it around to the station's gravitation level before the inner doors opened. Cordite, soot, barbecue, sulphur and iron. Yep, the air smelled of combat for sure and pretty recent too or the air scrubbers would have cleaned the smells away. In front of the access ramp was a junior and very nervous looking UPK officer with a slightly too-new lasrifle across his chest. Next to their bay was a fairly battered Behemoth with its pilot, or so Nikan assumed it was, outside the right-side engine access hatch, hammering away at the delicate engine with a hammer. He walked down the ramp and threw a sloppy salute that was answered by a textbook salute in return. Damn, raw recruits.

"Welcome to the station Sir I am lieutenant junior grade Bilkonen and I am ordered to assist you in any way. Sir."

It was pretty obvious that the junior Lt had practised this line for a bit and even more obvious that he was nervous enough for the entire station.

"Relax son. Say, is that a new lasrifle?" The young man nodded. "If you'll hand it over to me instead of this smashed one, I'd say you have done well so far. And get me a couple of Koffees, will ya?"

Bilkonen handed Nikan the lasrifle and moved as fast as he could, without running, towards the Koffee dispenser. Nikan grinned and turned to Neagoth, who had followed him down the ramp.

"So, 'Goth, where is your buddy?"

Neagoth nodded towards the guy with the hammer.

"Nice, meet Ato. Ato, this is Captain Nikan Hardrive, also known as Nice."

The guy with the hammer stopped smashing away at his engine and straightened his back. Nikan looked up and up at the hulking Serco, only now noticing that the hammer in the man’s hand was a twenty pound sledgehammer.

"Pleased to meet you Nice. I hear you need an extra hand?"

Nikan grinned; for close combat it was always nice to have a Serco on your side.

"You bet your behind."

He turned towards the junior Lt and shouted, "make that three Koffees Bilko."

Chapter 40

William frowned at the message from Asteroth; shrugged and pointed his ship towards Azek and jumped. The fake IFF he had “acquired” in Corvus two weeks ago should still be good for a couple of runs more before the lame-ass rent-a-cops figured out that the smashed remains of a human person, discretely squashed into the small space behind the F deck launch bay's air-recycling system, couldn't be flying around in UIT space.
But for now it worked miraculously, the border turrets had pointed at some other poor sod and fired plasma bolts and missiles after his sorry Itani ass. William re-emerged in real space with a fairly large station looming in front of him, hostile territory at best. William trusted his fake IFF and manoeuvred towards the docking bay that was allocated to him, ignoring the defence turrets completely. A couple of messages ticked into his computer, addressed to his fake ID and he deleted them as fast as they arrived. He might be a remorseless killer, a psychopath of enormous dimensions, a schizoid delusionist, but he wasn't a creepy snoop!
The clamps secured his ship and he let the controls go limp, grabbed his work kit and popped the hatch. The station smelled of chaos, of fear and violence. He smiled; it was going to make his job easier by far. A quick scan of the dock area gave him his bearings and after donning his hat, he walked confidently over to the station access booth.

"Welcome to Azek Developments Sir. Papers please."

William shoved his fake ID at the freckled kid with his left hand, the right hand doing something entirely different in his pocket. The kid grabbed the papers and opened them, scanned them quickly and looked up, confusion in his face.

"Sir, these papers cannot be yours."

William slashed the straight razor across the side of the kid's neck and sliced clean through the larynx. With his left hand, he retrieved the papers before the blood that gushed forth from the open wound, could mess up the papers. He looked down in the papers and had to agree with the stunning analysis the kid had just gone through. No, William wasn't a 1.64 m red haired female Aeolus pilot. The gurgling from the kid stopped after a minute or so and William stuck his head into the booth to check on the, by now, blood spattered corpse. Keys and access card could come in handy. William pocketed them before he pushed the button that opened the inner hatch. Soundlessly, he moved into the station, a predator on the prowl.

###

The call for assistance arrived in the Viper headquarters and the officer on duty checked the code pattern against the pilots on duty as per regulations. The signal came up as verified and he activated the QRF immediately and alerted the secondary security force. In less than two minutes, Strat and Niut'Likatisin were in their fighters, ready for launch. Until now, everything had gone according to regulations, according to standards. It stopped when Strat engaged the switch for launch. His station comms crackled to life.

"No can do. This station is not authorised to launch Viper ships."

Strat frowned and hit the emergency override with same result.

"Niut, are you locked in as well?"

"Yeah, damned system tells me I stink?"

"Let me try something here."

Strat keyed in the Viper security override codes and grasped his controls again. Where the launch sequence should have started on his main display screen, a bare bottom with a badly drawn tattoo on the left cheek appeared instead. It read in childish handwriting, UR FACE.

"Something has cracked the mainframe Niut. We need to fix that before we can launch."

"Working on it Strat. Let me just get out of the sh.."

The comms broke off as Niut's canopy slid off and he got out of the cockpit, standard issue handgun drawn and face grimly set. Strat looked down again and called the headquarters instead. They would have to tell the active flight that help was going to be slightly longer in coming.

###

The ambush had gone well so far with the two Vipers being separated from the cargo ships within seconds. A barrage of flares had smashed most of the armour from the centre moth and tossed it around, effectively stopping it from getting away. The Vipers had fought cleverly but ultimately in vain. With eight pirates to cut the traders up, two coppers weren't going to make that much of a difference, especially not if they were flying light fighters. Chaakin gave himself a mental pad on the back as the first moth exploded in a harsh glare of ruptured fuel tanks and detonating ammunition.
A quick scan of the system showed both of the cop fighters as fairly heavily damaged, three of his own ships with damage themselves but nothing major. Soon the snakes would discover that the distress call to their headquarters wasn't going to result in more snakes and then they would probably withdraw. Or be vapour, their choice really.
Further into the roids were some mining ships with TGFT IFF's. Stupid miners, they would probably run away before long, like they had done last time. Or be smashed up once the trade vessels had been boomed. Again, their choice really, he didn’t particularly care. He hadn't counted on the mining vessels being here but disregarded them as irrelevant. He twisted his ship around and was rewarded with the satisfying glare from yet another exploded tradeship, the ship and its innards flying apart but leaving the valuable cargo inside almost undamaged. Or at least the contents of the cargo crates, the singed blackened sides of the cargo crates leaving no one in doubt as to how they were off-loaded.

"Rave, incoming bogeys, wormhole pos 98 degrees, up 13 degrees. Three total."

Chaakin cursed softly and felt disappointment well up in him. So Peytros had failed after all. He turned his main targeting radar across the three bogeys and came up with two Valkyrie X-1's and a Centaur III, all coming from the mining action. What the fuck? A set of rockets thundered away from the Centaur and impacted around the CHRN Warthog IV that was engaging the snakes. The IFF blinked off and was replaced by a tumbling ejection pod. This was going to hell fast.

"Alfa two and Bravo four, finish the tradeships. Alfa one, three and four, join the remainders of Bravo team. Main focus on the snakes, secondary on the Cent. Beware, it is rocket loaded. Weapons on the two Valks are unknown."

The well-oiled machine he had created, worked as it should and Alfa one, three and four, better known as Azrael, Rin and Ardenus, turned away from the traders and flew in on his tail en-route for the snakes. Just to be sure, he called the station and requested another flight of pirates as back-up, heavy rocket and missile ships. Never assume victory before the enemy had been ground into the dirt, the loot had been sold and the first round of beers were on the table.

###

"Nice shot boss."

"Shows th' creeps. Th' eldest rams hae th' biggest haurns! Mebbe we'll shaw th' wee shits hoo tae rin properly fur a chynge, eh?"

"Engaging the Vult, cover me Lambin?"

"Willco Shna. Beware of the three rats that are disengaging from the traders."

"Dornt ye fash yerse abit those. I'll pit doon a defensife fire aroond them. Probably hauld them aff fur tois minutes ur sae."

"Plenty, here we go."

Shna twisted slightly and fired a single flare away towards the rat Valkyrie, aiming for it to hit about 80 metres below the opposing fighter. He then fired a string of accelerated positrons slightly high and pulled the weapon downwards. Twin hits on the top of the enemy fighter made the pilot react with a short burn from his ventral thrusters, forcing the fighter down, precisely into the path of the flare. The rocket detonated and spun the ship off course, directly into the fire path of Lambin's X-1. Neutrons and positrons hammered into the Valkyrie and alternatively tore armour plates into shreds or gouged holes out of it. The pirate pilot reacted with the experience of countless flight hours and boosted for half a second before he twitched, rolled slightly and went ass over head to present a minimum profile to the two TGFT fighters. His own guns lashed out at Shna and forced him to dodge wildly, losing his track.

"Up two, roll left four, left full thrust two, twist plus 90, execute now."

Shna fired his dorsal thrusters, rolled along his axis, fired his left thrusters with full power for two seconds and then twisted his ship and then turned 90 degrees to his right and fired positrons and a flare. The wildly dodging Vulture appeared directly in his fire path and took both of the positrons on the right side of the cockpit, confusing the pilot enough for Lambin to land another set of his own neutrons and positrons. The Vulture had several burn-throughs and dodged even wilder to get away from the melee. Free of the immediate fire, it fired the turbo boosters and went full power away from the Vipers and TGFT fighters.

"Stop dodging you little shits."

Shna grinned beneath the helmet; Ecka had forgotten his burr. The three oncoming pirate fighters had dodged around his three sets of rockets and were now close enough for the gatling turret to come into play. Bullets of energy staccatoed towards the pirates, especially around the Atlas X, evaporating small crater shaped holes in the heavy armour of the multi-role ship. Unfortunately, the pirates were in weapons range as well and Ecka's Centaur was illuminated in explosions from flares and energy weapon impacts all over the front. A fighter would have been vapour by now but the heavily armoured Centaur merely shuddered slightly.

"Boss, disengage. We have the rats off here and are coming to you now."

"Roger. Jist a wee present fur them an' than I'll roll af."

Another set of rockets thundered away from the Centaur before it twisted away from the three oncoming fighters. The Atlas X took the rockets almost head on and were tossed away with serious damage to it left side, fluids and atmosphere bursting from it and combining in flaming jets. The Atlas broke off and turned for the tradeships instead and Shna almost whooped with joy. They were down to three rats against him and Lambin with the two Vipers and Ecka in support. This fight was going to be won by the good guys! Behind the pirates, the last tradeship met a fiery death as another full string of swarm cluster missiles smashed into it. Well, maybe the good guys wouldn't win, but neither would the rats!

TGFT to the rescue!

How I wish we could have furballs involving 13 players. >_>

Chapter 41

The Koffee provided the amount of caffeine that was needed for sentient thought at this moment and Nikan was almost sorry to see the bottom of his cup appear. No more koffee, no more break for them. He tossed the Styrofoam cup into the waste chute and turned to the junior lieutenant, grasped the newly issued lasrifle and took a deep breath.

"Right Bilko, lay it out for us please."

"Sir, right now we have the main access gate to the control chamber covered by a squad of elite UPK Anti-Terror Troops with the secondary access port covered by three squads of regular UPK officers and a semi-portable lascanon. Another squad of elite anti-terror troops are standing by for your lead to regain the command facility. I am to take you, and your associates, straight to the forming up point as soon as possible Sir."

"Right-e-o. And what is your role in all this Bilko?"

"I am the commander of the ATT assault squad, Sir."

Great, yet another group of fumbling newbies with a name that was supposed to sound cool but in reality was a cover for mediocre training, outdated equipment and scraping-the-bottom-of-the-barrel recruits. He only hoped they would be competent enough to stay out of his way, when they assaulted the command facility. He looked over at Neagoth and Ato and couldn't help grinning. The two men had a quite large bundle of money lying in front of them and were whispering quietly with the mechanic that had appeared while they drank their koffee.

"Any problems guys?"

Neagoth waved a hand at him and turned back to the money. He handed about half of it to the mechanic and turned back to Nikan.

"Just making sure about a shipment of drugs, ahem, legal pharmaceuticals naturally, I need in a couple of days. So, are we doing this or what?"

Nikan was in no doubt that the drugs were legal. On a Corvus station maybe. If he had bribed the guards enough that week. But right now it was no business of his, he had more important stuff to fix.

"Yeah, grab your kit guys, we'll follow the Lieut here, he is in charge of the assault."

Nikan rolled his eyes at Neagoth who grinned back, before Nikan turned to the young man.

"Lead the way Bilko."

###

Chaakin called both squads away from the roids for a re-group. The unexpected attack from the thrice-damned miners had cost his pilots dearly and only two ships had any armour worth talking off, remaining. He considered his options. They were here to smash the tradeships to bits and loot whatever highly valuable item the Valent cap-ship had off loaded in Dau. So far they had managed to smash the ships and somewhere within the big rapidly cooling cloud of melted metal, shredded plastic, ruptured chainglass, human debris and the odd bit of surviving ship's parts, was the loot they had come to get. As far as he was concerned, the miners, the escape pods and the annoying Vipers could just sod off and do whatever they had been doing. Well, not the Vipers, they had after all been protecting the cargo. The status right now was that the miners protected the roids pretty fiercely with the Centaur and the cargo and lifepods with the two Vipers and the two Valkyries, making it impossible for his group to locate and scoop the crates. He sent out a group call.

"Anyone seen what is in the roids?"

Ardenus answered for his squad.

"Nope. They are defending it rather aggressively Rave."

"Right Ard. Listen, I want you to swing in close by the roids and find out. I'll pull the defenders off as much as I can. Alfa one and three, Bravo squad, follow me. Target the damned Vipers."

He received twin clicks of acknowledgements and turned his ship towards the cargo ships' remains. As soon as he boosted towards the remains, the two Viper ships and the Valkyries came in to intercept. Ardenus' Warthog used the noise to sneak into the far edge of the roidfield and used a particularly large ferric roid to hide behind, cloaking his radar echo. Chaakin stopped looking for Ard and instead concentrated on the opposing fighters that neared with great speed, targeting the Viper Vulture.
Slight taps on the triggers filled space around the Vulture with green beams in neutrons that interacted with the thinning atmosphere of tradeships but no beams hit the wildly dodging Viper. A single flare from Azrael's Atlas thundered towards the Viper ship and detonated with devastating force, tearing holes through the flimsy wings of the fighter and shredded armour on the fuselage as well. The damage didn't throw the aim of the Viper at all, and bolts of positrons tore holes in the Ragnarok that was targeted, soon, too damned soon, finding the power coupling or some other damned weak link, that reacted in a very explosive manner to the tenth of a gramme of heavily accelerated positrons that interacted with it.
Chaakin dodged almost casually around the exploding pieces of Ragnarok and noted the correctly functioning emergency beacon turn on as the distress pod rocketed away from the wreckage. He had an opportunity to fire at one of the Valkyries that was dodging Rin's strings of neutrons wildly while passing and depressed the triggers so hard his fingers cracked. His efforts were rewarded by six new fist-sized holes in the heavy fighter and then he was past and through the melee. He flipped his fighter over and swept the combatants with his forward radar while proceeding backwards at 220m/s. By the Lady’s tits!, he had lost three ships and they had only destroyed one of the Valkyries, apparently the one he had fired upon. Only his own ship survived of Bravo squad and all of the Alfa squad ships were heavily damaged. At least Ardenus had survived the scouting mission into the roids and was now boosting to meet them at the former position.

"The damned miners fired rockets after me but I managed to get a good look. You are not gonna believe this Rave. It looks like they are digging for something in the roid, a ship or the like. Four of their ships are stationary in a hole in the roid, only the fucking Centaur is defending them."

Two jump-rings appeared, both carrying CHRN IFF's; the heavy bombers he had sent for earlier. An idea formed in Chaakin's head, an idea that could close this debacle with his group in firm possession of the Valent crate and hopefully some smashed miners as well to teach them a lesson.

"Charlie one and two, form up on my position. Right, this is what we are going to do."

###

In real space, nothing showed for the immense amounts of data that torrented to and from the black fat oblong shape that rested in the docking cradle. In virtual space, the representation of the datasphere that could be accessed and overlaid if you had the right implants, a fat cable of data glistened with power like a leech that was fastened to a particularly blood-filled prey and stretched out towards the station's interior.
Most of the data was part of the battle Peytros was waging against the station's interior defences, parts of it was merely feeds from the security cameras he had taken over. And a tiny portion was a download he was running from the VPR mainframe. He accessed the cameras that showed the Viper launch bay and swerved them around to see what the two pilots were doing.
One of the pilots remained in his ship and the other had climbed out of the cockpit, hand-weapon drawn but held at his side. Peytros watched as the standing pilot received a signal from somewhere, he guessed Viper HQ, and then looked directly into the camera.

"Clever, very clever," Peytros muttered to himself.

The pilot raised his weapon and fired, destroying the camera and removed Peytros' snooping. Peytros grinned, someone was aware that he was controlling parts of the station and was slowly realising how much Peytros had taken over. A couple of sensing programmes probed the firewall he had set up and Peytros fired off a particularly nasty attack virus in retaliation, grinning as the probes wilted before the onslaught. Something caught his attention and he accessed the firewall. He grinned again and observed as the camouflaged probe, that was the actual attack on him, snaked through the firewall and latched onto his data stream, drinking the data like a leech on his own leech. He unleashed a counter programme against the probe and saw it squashed, much as if he had crushed it between his thumb and index fingers.

"Nice move fucker, not good enough," he said aloud to his unknown opponent.

He was enjoying himself.

###

"Just give me what you have now."

Niut's voice came through the speaker completely flat and toneless, an artefact of the encryption all Viper pilots had on their personal comms. Phaserlight checked his data and set up another attack; the previous one had been almost eradicated. If he didn't attack again, his third trap-probe would be spotted as well and then he would be blind again.

"Okay, the intruder seems to be located somewhere in the civilian launch-bay. It is either a pretty good team or an awesome programmer with a lot of hardware. The intruder has access to most of the cameras but I'll warn you in advance if he looks in your direction so you can take measures to avoid detection. Stand by."

Phaser noticed an outbound traffic from the Viper mainframe and accessed the files that were about to be shared. Personnel files, combat rigs, monetary details, codes, standard operating procedures and safe routes. He diverted the traffic and turned the request over to another set of files instead, files of an entirely different nature. He removed the sensitive files from the mainframe and moved them to a secure cache, locking them with his personal encryption.
Another heavy attack assailed his defences and his fingers danced inside the input field to find blockade programmes and place them to stop the attackers from infiltrating too deeply. He allowed one of the attack programmes to come through the firewall, cut it off and ensnared it in a logic trap. He allocated a programme to tear the attack-programme apart so he could learn who the attacker was and let it do its business. He turned back to the screens and almost yelped.

"Niut, the corridor in front of you is watched. I have a better bearing; launch bay D-3 on the civilian parts. There are six berths, one of them has the assailant."

"Right, thanks. I'll bypass through level six."

Another voice, Strat.

"What is the status on the launch sequence?"

"Working on it. Expecting it to crack any time soon, maybe a couple of minutes but I can't use all resources on it. The mainframe is under attack too."

"I know you are doing all you can Phaser; in your own time."

"Yes Sir. I'll open the doors as soon as I can."

Phaser turned back to the battle at hand, just in time for another violent assault on the Viper defences. This one was many-layered, multi-headed and of a complexity that was above anything he had ever seen or even heard of. Strat was going to have to wait some more, maybe a whole lot more.

Tarenty, maybe we should start a RP re-enactment guild:) That way we can pretend to have real players do real things^^

Sorry for the hiccups in posting, life has been... life I guess. I'll try to get back on track.

Chapter 42

"Mercy, Ah need tae ken hoo much time mair ye need. Ah reckon 'at th' rats ur gonnae figure it 'at we ur fixed onytime suin an' 'en come runnin'."

Surbius answered for Mercy.

"Estimated two more minutes Sir. Then the main thrusters of Hortan's ship should be free and he should be able to dig himself out the hole."

"Ah see. We'll jist hauld th' rats awa' fur th' time ye need 'en. Shna, move further it t'wards th' sides an' cowre those approaches. Ah hae centre. Come an' gie it ye bastids."

As if the rats had heard the old miner, the group of pirate ships surged forward towards the roid where Hortan was trapped. The two Viper pilots moved to intercept while still keeping their fighters between the rats and the cargo. Ecka leaned back in his seat, poured a single Phylactis Delicht into his battered pewter cup, put the bottle away in its safe padded storage and brought the cup to his lips.

"Brin' th' pain ye wee shaits," he muttered and sipped the fiery liquid. The radar display showed the pirates fend off the two Vipers with a pair of their own fighters, as well as cover their heavy ships from Shna's Valkyrie, with the remainder coming onto the digging site like a force of nature. Ecka checked the gatling turret as well as the rocket tubes and throttled his Centaur forward to engage head-on, initially targeting the Corvus Marauder. His radar-warning receiver flooded with incoming fire as the two Ragnaroks unloaded swarms of cluster and Gemini missiles towards him. He took evasive actions immediately and quickly came out of the threat cone of the missiles; their targeting radar stopped pinging on his hull. Strange, the missiles would normally... The small hairs on his arms rose as he realised what the real target of the missiles was.

"Surbius, abandon th' dig immediately. Incomin missiles oan yer position."

"Not possible Sir. We can temporarily stop digging but there is no chance of us getting out in time. We'll buckle in and hope for the best Sir."

Ecka looked at the threat display and counted the incoming missiles. 480 canister-swarms of cluster munitions along with around 40 Gemini warheads as well, enough to smash clean through the shields of a Teradon and definitely enough to reduce the four TGFT pilots in the dig to a smear on the surface of the roid. He flicked his comms switch.

"Hear thes aw free traders. Surb will be in commain fur th' next bit until Ah am ready again. Ah am expectin' ts and Illuvia tae come back haur onytime suin, but probably nae suin enaw. Gie Hortan it ay thaur, help th' Vipers if ye can. Ecka it."

He grabbed the small much-battered pewter cup and tossed it into the front door airlock, ejected the air along with the cup and watched the cup tumble away, spinning slightly. He put it from his mind and focused again on the task at hand. A series of quick thrusts brought his ship in line with the incoming missiles and with grim determination, he engaged the turbo. He was going to ram into the missiles and detonate them safely away from the mining crew.

###

The police were crouched behind everything that remotely resembled cover, rapt attention on the exit from the control chamber. Scorch marks and impact craters marred the bulkheads surrounding the hastily improved barricades, evidence of the vicious firefight that had been going on for some time previously. Now the two groups had reached a stalemate, with the insurgents inside only occasionally shooting something explosive out into the corridor outside, and the cops outside, only now and again attempting to lob a grenade or the like inside. A grey haze of tear/psych-gas lay in small banks of fog where the station air-replenishment system couldn't scrub it out of the atmosphere. Nikan crouched with Ato and Neagoth behind the armoured plasteel moveable wall, along with the UPK Anti-terror troops, serious young, very young, men with too shiny body-armour, too shiny weapons and too little trepidation in face of the task at hand. Bilko was sitting against the bulkhead, features contorted in concentration as he was receiving instructions through his earpiece.

"How many of the UPK’s finest do you think will be alive after the assault Nice?"

Nikan made a quick calculation in his head and frowned slightly.

"Probably none 'Goth. What do you say, wanna save the kids from themselves?"

"Sounds sensible, heroic even."

"Left and right, smoke grenade in front and something nasty into the doorway?"

"I have just the thing. Just a minute."

Nikan turned again to the lieutenant.

"Hey Bilko, are you planning on taking any prisoners?"

The lieutenant looked over at him, not understanding what Nikan had asked him. Nikan repeated the question and Bilko shook his head before returning to his communication unit.

"No prisoners 'Goth. When you're ready."

Neagoth nodded and gave a thumbs-up sign to indicate that he was, indeed, ready. Nikan got up and shuffled towards the left, keeping an eye on Neagoth, who ran to the right, katana out and held at the ready. Ato popped his head over the plasteel cover and lobbed a large canister into the entrance to the control room with the complete lack of effort only truly strong people could. Nikan saw the giant Serco grin maniacally before he ducked back into cover. He took the hint and threw himself again the wall. His caution was rewarded. The canister exploded in a roaring tsunami of flames that sucked all air into the burning liquid and belched it forth again as a deep black cloud of smoke that occluded the entrance completely. Nikan touched his burned face and brushed the remains of his torched eyebrows away from his forehead, ignoring the smell of burnt hair and plastic. Guess the smoke and the nasty in the doorway was covered, now for him and 'Goth.

Nikan clicked the safety to burst fire, put the stock of the lasrifle into the small of his shoulder and peeked around the corner through the red dot sight. Two burning and flailing persons ran around screaming inside the corridor and Nikan put a series of laser bolts in the chest of each of them, mercifully ending their pains.

"Clear, moving in."

Neagoth heard him, rushed past with his sword held high at the ready. A young male insurgent was fumbling for his assault rifle but a precise swipe from the katana neatly severed his arm before Neagoth moved on. The room had a raised section around ten metres inside where the insurgents had gathered behind whatever they could find. Barrels poked out from behind it and Neagoth only just managed to throw himself to the side before the space where he had been standing, was criss-crossed by tracer rounds and laser bolts. Nikan ducked behind the nearest cover and squeezed off a couple of shots against the barricade but didn't hit anyone. Something appeared behind him and when he turned to look, Ato had appeared with a giant spiked and bulky tube of some sort, the sheer look of it scary in several ways. A Serco tank crusher. Nikan had heard of these guns before but had never ever thought he'd see one in real life. The weapon had been designed to take out a Rhino class heavy gravitation tank from up to nine kilometres distance with a nano-sized anti-matter warhead and wasn’t really meant to be used inside a spacestation. At least not a station you expected to function afterwards. Ato grinned as he had done before he tossed the firebomb, aimed along the weapon’s sighting mechanism and depressed the trigger. Nikan instantly ducked his head and folded his arms in front of his face while tightening all muscles in his face.

The world exploded around him.

Whew, I've finally caught up with the present. Good stuff man, despite the story's lack of non-imaginary gauss cannon. Though I do need to get me one of them "large-calibre heavy-duty triple-shot Corvus-make customised gauss handcanon" that fantasy-John has.

I like Ato's style. Hope CNH brought his popcorn to enjoy with the fireworks.

This wouldn't be the first time I've singed my eyebrows, although it never gets any less irritating, and usually I only have myself to blame (thermobarics are a relatively low-cost crowd-favorite among UPK SpecOps).

Ato obviously isn't very big on the idea of measured response. Like many Serco, it would seem he also forgets that not everyone is quite as durable as he is, or that those of us without implants can't simply turn the pain 'off'. For that matter, he might not realize that collateral damage actually means something in the Territories, since not every random civilian can afford to use the cloning bank (personally, I try to avoid using it when I can myself--I'd rather spend a long week in an escape pod, and have in the past).

I'll have to remember to stay behind him from now on, and wear full EVA gear when he's around too, so long as he insists on carrying anti-tank weaponry rated to breach a station's thick XiRite hull.

Anyway, I think singed facial hair might be the least of my worries at the moment.

Hahah I so wanna be in this :)
-estrian :p

Chapter 43

The flat roaring thunder of rocket engines reverberated through his Ragnarok as the twin swarm missile launcher emptied itself of its deadly cargo. 16 missiles each carrying 10 warheads had just blasted past his cockpit and were moving ahead with almost the same speed as his ship, slightly slower than the Gemini warheads he had fired as well. Another roaring thunder blasted through the ship, the ammunition counter ticked to zero and turned red instead of the bile-yellow that normally indicated less than full ammunition. He slammed on full frontal thrusters and instantly slowed, letting the missiles slam past him on their course for someone or something's annihilation. Mr Chaos skilfully dodged the remaining CHRN fighters that came accelerating hard on the tail of his missile salvo and regained a position about 300 metres further back in case his team mates needed his remaining Geminis. The wall of destruction he had launched along with his teammate would surely destroy anything in its path no matter what defences the target had. Well, maybe apart from a hive Leviathan but that particular entity had an almost ridiculously strong shield, nothing that was even remotely practicable for general human design.
As expected, Chaakin was in front in the matte-black Vulture that was his trademark, first into danger, last away from the engagement, about 150 metres away from the wall of missiles and keeping up with the velocity. Out of the blue drive-flames, two twin radar echoes appeared and before Chaakin's system acknowledged the threat, the incoming rockets, a Jackhammer and a Sunflare flying side by side, detonated in an immense fireball that swallowed Chaakin's ship completely.

"Holy fuck," Chaos muttered and took evasive actions from the other sets of rockets, flinching as they detonated around the other Ragnarok, spinning it hard towards the wall of missiles. The other fighters dodged the rockets easily enough and continued on the course, undeterred by Chaakin's explosion. With no warning, the wall of missiles turned into a wall of shrapnel and flames as the entire load of swam cluster munitions as well as the Geminis detonated simultaneously. The flurry of explosions hid the target area but it was obvious that the missiles had detonated before reaching the real target, for some reason that was not immediately apparent, and the plan had gone down the wormhole. A shaky voice came on the comms.

"All pilots, this is Rin. Fall back to previous posit, we'll need to take a tally before we proceed."

Chaos had expected a more senior member of the guild to call in reports but saw that both Chaakin's as well as Ardenus' escape pods were floating away from the wreckage, emergency beacons shining beams of coherent red every tenth of a second. Clicks from the radios, too few for comfort, ticked in as assent from the other members and the fighters broke off from their relevant fights. The group reformed and only the rapidly expanding cloud of debris showed where the massive explosion had been seconds ago. Chaos grunted in displeasure and pointed his radar beam at the previous target. There, sitting in the roid, were four TGFT ships, still pushing into the roid for some obscure miner’s reason. He checked his remaining missiles and grunted in annoyance once more. That was not going to be sufficient for killing even one of them.

"Listen Rin, Chaos here. Lets just get the pods, see if we can get the loot and get the fuck outa here. I am almost out of ammo anyway, the rest of ya looks like you have been smashed over pretty bad."

"Almost agree with you there buddy but I have a feeling that Raven would chew my ass into millions of little pieces if we did."

Twin entry-point radiation rings appeared some 8 k metre out and belched forth two Centaurs. The identifier beacon immediately squeaked TGFT identification codes out and the hunter-green paintjob that was the standard for the guild became apparent as soon as the light from the rings had faded.

"-but I guess we'll just have to do that anyway. Chaos, if you can offload whatever munitions you have left into the stationary group and then chase down our pods, the remainder of us will kill the Vipers and scoop the loot. Fuck the miners, they are gonna get it another day."

Chaos twisted his fighter/bomber towards the roid, acquired the four targets and selected Surbius' ship. Yeah, it was personal. The Gemini missiles acknowledged the information and streaked off towards their designated targets and Chaos ignored them for now. The twin CHRN emergency life pods drifted away from the, by now, cool debris cloud, Rave's tumbling slowly as it floated towards a fairly large ferric roid. Chaos boosted after that pod first and ignored the last scenes of the battle completely.

###

Estrian likewise ignored the hotel suite's communications system completely. It had flashed on/off for at least ten minutes but he really couldn't care less right now. He was lying on his back; head and torso comfortably nestled in a plethora of large, very soft, pillows in red velvet. Swept casually around his waist and covering most of his legs, was a fake leopard skin complete with faux claws and fang adorned skull. He was taking slow pulls from a tube that was connected to a silver and ultramarine hookah with a rather generous lump of smouldering dragonweed on top of it, the mild narcotic that was popular in Itani space, and watched a full-contact fight on the holo-screen with half-closed eyes. One of the three platinum-blonde women in the room, each of them as voluptuous, picture perfect, bleached and well shaped as the best Corvus plastic surgeons could make them, walked into the room from the bathroom dressed in what could, if you were extremely generous, be called a night gown. One of the other girls, the one at his feet, looked towards the comms system with poorly hidden curiosity. Extremely poorly hidden. When she looked up from the pedicure she was giving Estrian, she managed to stab the small scalpel into his big toe and gouged a fair piece of skin off it. He pulled his foot away from her and dropped the hookah-tube.

"For fuck sake woman. What is your problem?"

A sugary voice, a voice inspired by Tinkerbell lathered with litres of oozing sex, probably another product of the good surgeons, asked him gently.

"But, aren't you curious who it is?"

"No you daft cow. I know who it is and I don't care. Listen, I just spent more time on duty the last week than the average pilot does in a month, I deserve my time off. Jeez"

Why was he explaining himself? It was like trying to explain quantum mechanics to a retarded cauliflower at best. Irritated, he tossed the leopard skin aside and got up, looked down at his bleeding toe and shook his head. The mood was definitely gone now, killed, slaughtered and buried. He could just as well take the call. A high-pitched whine of a nasal voice slammed through.

"Prosis, I have tried to contact you for the last five minutes. Are you alone?"

Estrian looked at the comms unit with revulsion; he had known that the call came from ITAN HQ all along but the confirmation didn't make his mood any better.

"Off course I am not alone." He indicated with a toss of his head that the triplets should go out of the room and watched them leave. At least he watched parts of them as they left; he assumed that the remainder of their bodies would follow naturally. Damn. "What the hell do you want? I am off duty."

"Yeah, and now it is in past tense. I need you in your ship ASAP. We have several Itani nationals killed inside UIT space, some of them apparently killed by the defence turrets. We need someone there who we can trust and since he was busy, we thought we'd call you instead."

"Smartarse. Send the info to my ship, I'll get moving. You owe me, big time."

"Write it on the tab son. Eo's peace be with you."

Estrian signed off and sighed. He grabbed the stained flightsuit and donned it, ignoring the stench of stale sweat and unwashed body that reeked from the inside. Two friggin hours and he would have a clean suit instead, not to mention all the nice things he could think of, with the girls next door. He grabbed a cred chit from a pocket and tossed it on the bed. That should be enough to cover his adventure here and make sure he was welcome another time. He made sure to smash the door closed and walked down to launch bay H-03 where his powder-blue Valkyrie was waiting.

###

Niut opened the emergency door to the launch bay and froze in anticipation. Nothing; no alarms, no cameras, no movement on the other side.

"Phaser, I have access to the bay. Where is the bastard?"

The reply was slow in coming and when it arrived, it was sluggish and distorted.

"Probably from inside one of the ships. I am expecting at least four operators with the level of attacks they are capable of, so a large ship is your best bet."

"Right, moving in. Let me know if you get a fix or if you can see I am trespassing on the bastard's security boundaries."

Niut scanned the bay quickly and settled on the battered green and blue Atlas that was docked in bay four. The other ships were fighters or bus-class ships and didn't fit with Phaser's prediction. The Atlas was obviously crewed, with light streaming from the cockpit chainglass but with the main access door closed and, at least that was what Niut expected, locked. He called up a schematic of the Atlas and ran through options with the same methodical thoroughness he did everything else.
There, the aft inspection panel to the turret should give him access to the main power circuitry and if he could cut through that, it would stop anything inside from running. He moved in a semi-crouch to behind a stack of crates with large red tomato labels on them. The crates would shield him from the cockpit at least and Phaser could take care of the cameras. He grabbed one of the iron-grid deck plates, pulled it up and put it aside, exposing the maintenance trench below. He lowered himself into it and crawled over to the bay where the Atlas was berthed, stopping below the revolving grapples to shield himself from the cockpit again. He crawled out of the trench and shuffled up to the Atlas' side, inching slowly towards the inspection panel.

"Niut, problem. You are spotted but I can't se how they could have spotted you."

Niut sub-vocalised connected via his pers-comm, "what do you mean spotted?"

"I see targeting data punching through, I see weapons telemetry starting to come online."

Niut frowned and looked down at the two weapons on the Atlas. No indicators on the weapons at all as was expected. He switched his thermal imager on and looked at the weapons again. Cold. Both of them. Something wasn't right, something was just about to mess up his day. Nervously, he looked away from the Atlas to the other ships in the bay with his thermal scanner activated. The scanner painted the bay in shades of green and black with most things inside the bay the same uniform temperature, heated slightly by bodies and the infrared radiation from the bay's lamps. Niut scanned the ships slowly, methodically until he ran the scanner over the Valkyrie. Twin side-mounted weapons hot and pulsing with heat as they charged. Niut didn't think at all but instead threw himself into the trench milliseconds before twin beams of positrons smashed into the Atlas with about the same impunity as if he had been standing in front of it.

"Fuck me Phaser, it is the Valk in bay one."

Another burst of positrons impacted on the Atlas and Niut felt the radiation from the positron/electron re-combination rip through his armoured flightsuit with about the same difficulty as the beam would have encountered if he had still been standing in front of the Atlas. He needed to get away from there, and now. He scrambled as fast as he could on hands and knees along the trench as yet more positrons smashed into the Atlas with yet more radiation flooding his body. He crawled around the bend, behind the crates of tomatoes and stopped. He could taste blood from radiation wounds in his mouth, he felt nausea waving in and sensed his stomach do stuff he didn't want it to do. He closed his eyes, pulled the hood over his head and let his internal back-up computer take over, thus missing the explosion when the Atlas was torn apart by the onslaught of positrons. Which was probably just as well, since that meant he missed the following explosive decompression and the vacuum that ripped every loose object including him, out of the bay and into space.

Happy Estrian? :)

And that is why you should only stack when necessary - too easy for the whole pile to get wasted when some Orun Collector or TGFT pilot gets in the way.

Though I have to admit, few things can beat the sound of a nice stack of swarms.

thank ye :) lots of love, etc etc all that shit :)

Sorry for the delay. Ehm... shit happened.

Chapter 44

Nikan touched his own face as gently as he could through the heavy combat gloves, searching for flash damages. Mild pain on the left cheekbone but that was it. Even what little remained of his eyebrows had survived the blast, inconceivable as that sounded. He looked over at Neagoth and saw him mirror the movements that Nikan had just done to his own face and body. The surreality of the situation was like a heavy blanket that had been placed on top of reality, slowing time, slowing senses and enabling him to elude the task they were there to do.
A crash and a heavy thudding sound forced him back to the real world, however, and he risked a quick peek above the fire-damaged table he had been hiding behind. Ato was just on the other side of the table, ducking behind the sad remains of an input console. The thudding sounds came from about twenty metres into the room where someone was firing a large calibre weapon at Ato's hiding place, pinning the large Serco to his cover. Almost by reflex, Nikan looked down to the floor and his, by now much battered, lasrifle. He scooped it up, checked the charge on it and brought it up in front of him. A deep breath, half-way exhale, turn and rise weapon over the top of the table, bring weapon to bear, peer through the scope, align sight on person, gently depress trigger. The insurgent's head flash-cooked as the laser beam penetrated through the forehead, exploding he cranium outwards with the force of a litre of liquid that had turned instantly to steam inside a constricted space.

"Clear."

Neagoth reacted and rose from his cover, running up to the improvised and completely smashed barricade, kicking his way through a couple of chairs that were in the way. He jumped down to the other side, out of sight with only the steel of his blade marking his position like a banner. The steel came down in a quick swipe and came back up, this time with black liquid streaming down its sides. Nikan got up from the cover and moved forward, rifle in the shoulder and ready to fire. He scanned to the side that Neagoth hadn't covered, putting his feet down slowly to ensure a steady balance. The warhead Ato had fired, had tossed chairs and tables, humans and consoles all around with the same efficiency and ruthlessness as a tornado.
Neagoth kicked some more rubble away from the broken remains of a person and prodded him with his boot before disregarding him as a threat. Nikan scanned to the left again and spotted a closed pressure seal door. He whistled and caught Ato's eyes, pointed to the door with his left hand. Ato looked up and nodded back to Nikan, grabbed something from his belt and grinned at him. The Serco moved his bulk with almost unnatural litheness over to the door and sprayed something along the seal of the frame. He twisted some of the material into a small cylinder and depressed the cylinder's edges twice before running back behind cover. Nikan looked at him questioningly. Ato grinned back before answering.

"Serco Hellborer, thermal cutting charge. Will make a hole in a Connie."

Nikan just heard Serco, Hole and Connie and immediately dove for cover. Ato looked down at him, shook his head and activated the priming charge, igniting the thermal load. The thermal paste slowly turned red, then yellow and after about five seconds shone with an almost painful white light from the thermal reaction that melted straight through the bulkhead door. Two small rivers of molten xithricite ran down the face of the door and pooled around the doorstep. With the slowness that comes with large bulk, the door slowly leaned forward and crashed onto the floor, the sound of the impact reverberating through the floor as if a giant had hammered upon it with his mattock. A fusillade of streaks and noise erupted from the opening as the insurgents inside the next room fired their automatic rifles at the cover they were sitting behind, tearing pieces of metal and wood off and showering them all over.
Ato grunted something and twisted to the side of the cover before he went up on one knee. The insurgents saw his massive frame and changed aim. Soon bullets started impacting all around him, but the Serco ignored the buzzing projectiles and took careful aim with a spiked grenade of some sort that he threw expertly into the corridor. A trio of shots hit him on the left side of his face and with another grunt, he threw himself down behind cover again. The cheek-bone had been crushed as well as the cranium on his left side of the head. Only the tri-tanium alloy protection he wore underneath his skull had stopped the bullets from penetrating into his brain and probably killing him instantly. He showed Nikan a thumbs-up and leaned back with closed eyes. The grenade exploded and Nikan got his rifle onto the top of the cover they were hiding behind, scanning through the scope. One moving target, squeeze trigger, observe hit and scan on. Soon the corridor was free from movement with only the low moaning of severely injured people indicating life.

"'Goth, I'll cover you, move to the right side and be ready to cover me."

Neagoth nodded and moved gracefully across the broken furniture to the right side of the corridor, taking care to avoid the molten xith. Behind him, Nikan could hear the approach of several persons wearing heavy boots. He looked back and saw the anti-terror squad members move slowly forward with their weapons held smartly in front of them, the kind of movement that works fantastically in the movies but is wildly impracticable in real combat. The cavalry had finally arrived now the major combat had finished. Nikan sighed and turned back to Neagoth.

"'Goth, stand down. We'll let the kids take over from here. I think that was it."

"Probably right Nice. The corridor is empty and the door to the last room has been blown in as well. Sounds empty too. How's Ato?"

Nikan looked over at the Serco and saw him make another thumbs-up, the right side of his mouth twisting up in a lopsided smile.

"He is okay. Koffee?"

Neagoth sheated his weapon and watched the young troopers file past, shaking his head.

"Sure thing Nice. Maybe with a twist of Mists, eh?"

###

Atice watched the swarms cross the distance from the pirate’s ships and towards the roids where the TGFT members were excavating their guild colleague and saw Ecka position his ship to intercept them. Furiously firing rockets through the wall of cluster munitions, Ecka's Centaur flicked over and hit the oncoming rockets engine-first, detonating the warheads in a veritable wall of flames, shrapnel and annihilation.

"No!"

"Clever move."

The voice on the other end of the radio was detached, calm, cold.

"What the hell was clever about that?"

"Look how he managed to take three of the pirates out with his own masked rockets and the explosion envelope. If you observed the Centaur, you would have seen that he flipped over before impacting, giving himself an estimated 9 % chances of surviving, around 8,9% more than if he had impacted head on. Estimated combat co-efficiency is now solidly in our favour with a 80% expectation of a win."

Atice just realised that he liked Cat a lot more last week. He didn't know what had happened her but the coldness was getting to him.

"Is that the only thing you have to say? Ecka just sacrificed himself for us and you talk about percentages?"

"He did not. Look at the emergency beacon; he punched out a second before impact. Engaging the pirates now."

Atice cursed but followed her fighter into the battle, perfectly aware that she was supposed to be on his wing and not the other way around. Her timing was nonetheless perfect he had to admit, with her ship landing solid hits on the matte black Atlas before twisting away from the retaliatory fire. The remaining rats seemed to remember why they were there and started moving into combat positions and forced Atice to break off before truly engaging.

"Cat, come in on my left, low. I am six, up, nine-hundred, moving towards the TG's."

He saw her ship move in the intended direction and waited until she was on his wing before keying his comms again.

"Listen, you need…" was all he managed before he was interrupted by the dual exotic particle rings of entering ships in front of him, two Centaurs. The identifier beacons showed them as TGFT members and the weapons read-outs showed a full load of swarms on both ships. He instantly reconsidered and keyed his comms again.

"Never mind, lets just swat these rats away from the sector. Engaging the Atlas."

He turbo'd towards the rats again, his radar showing that Cat was on his wing, the two Centaurs were thundering in as well. They were going to pull this one off.

###

The memories as well as the deeper cognitive functions were blocked and scrambled in such a way that the person that was the sum of these functions couldn't be discerned in any known way including direct neural read, brain trawl or Akanese deep scan. All of these methods would come up with what best resembled white noise. And all of the methods would come up with a very clear indication that the person was alive but without any form of recognisable communications ability. The wetware that was responsible for the scrambling could only be unlocked by the code that had been set up at its inception, like a one-time code pad. And since the input could be a combination of all of the person's senses, the lock could be very complex indeed. Fortunately, NP had the code memorised although he had hoped he'd never use it.
He had the lights down to very soft so Chi would be as comfortable as possible when she de-scrambled her mind. Her eyes fluttered and she opened and closed her mouth experimentally, the small pink tip of her tongue moistening her lips before she spoke softly, "How long time?"

"Only a week or so."

"How much?"

NP knew what she was asking about, how much damage had she sustained since they had kept her under for the week. He looked down at the cast that was encasing her left leg completely and concealed the blackened and charred stump underneath.

"Pretty bad Chi. Not lying here or anything. Flash burns on around 80% of your body and the left lower leg is a write-off. Burned all the way to the bone that one is. Yeah, some damage to your skull as well from an aborted trawl. But everything should be fixable in the end. How's your head?"

"I'd say 60% functionality. I am afraid to open my eyes right now so I won't if you don't mind."

"In your own time Chi. We have all the time in the verse."

"Wrong. I am afraid that we might even be too late. I need you to connect me to the station's secure AI immediately."

NP brought a connection over and watched the information as it was uploaded to the secure system. He whistled softly.

"That is what I thought as well. Guess you are going to be busy now?"

"You can say that again Chi. I hate leaving you here..."

"Go. Oh, and NP?" She sensed him turn and wait, "I want a transfer to Eo. The Rose Order, contact sister Aeli. I am not going to do this anymore. I want.... peace and no responsibility."

NP softly laid a hand on her right, almost healed hand before leaving, nodded even though he knew she couldn't see him. He owed her this at the very least and started a sub-routine to set it up immediately.

Bump. Waiting for updates!

Happens to like Whytee's RP stuff, so stfu Surb.

Edit: Heh, got it Surb. Sorry about that.

So do I, that's why I posted that image.

I really want moar.