Chapter Forty-One

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

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

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

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.

“Team One,” he ordered. “You are cleared to advance.”

* * *

Molly McGhee felt herself shivering as the billowing cloud of white fire started to fade away. She hadn’t understood why their Marine instructors had insisted on setting up their positions some distance from the cannons, not until one of the cannons had exploded, setting off the other two. If the Marines and their trainees had been any closer, they would have been caught and fried in the blast, allowing the enemy to advance without opposition. She took a firmer grip on her rifle and started to pray under her breath. It was the first time she had been in a real fight and despite herself she felt nothing, but terror. The enemy was closing in.

Years ago, back when she had been a girl of seven years old, her parents had owned a starship and worked as independent traders. That had ended when the Empire-backed shipping lines had extended their reach into their home sector, using a mixture of legal and illegal tricks to force the independent shippers out of business. After a pirate attack had narrowly been averted by her father’s quick thinking, the family had taken their ship and migrated into the Beyond, hoping to find a safer life. It hadn’t worked out as well as they had hoped and, after her parents were killed by the Imperial Navy, Molly had gravitated to one of the many rebel organisations within the Beyond. They had fought the Empire — or claimed to have done; Molly had never been part of any offensive operation — and yet they had no real hope, not until Admiral Walker had arrived with a fleet of superdreadnaughts and started pulling the various rebel groups together. Molly admired Hester Hyman and her efforts, but she looked up to Admiral Walker. He’d given the rebellion real hope. She would have died for him.

A black shape appeared through the smog, a man wearing powered combat armour. Her own armour informed her that he wasn’t broadcasting a friendly IFF, which meant nothing when she wasn’t broadcasting either. She had been surprised when their instructors had told them not to use them without permission, but she’d understood when he’d explained that they might as well draw a targeting circle on their suits and invite the enemy to open fire. The fact that the newcomer was transmitting an IFF signal was a sure sign that he was an enemy soldier. Molly felt hatred rising within his breast as she took aim. They had been told not to fire without specific orders, but there was no reason she couldn’t prepare as another black figure joined the first, followed by a third and a fourth. The Marines had assured her that they should be almost impossible to detect, even with the naked eye, hidden as they were, yet she knew better than to trust such assurances completely.

“Stand by,” her commander ordered, quietly. The defenders had used light cables to link themselves together, a neat low-tech solution to the problem of avoiding calling in enemy fire on their position. The Marine-issue armoured suits included transmitters that were effectively undetectable, but the same couldn’t said of the more basic suits issued to the new recruits. “On my command, open fire.”

Molly found herself thinking, suddenly, of her parents. Her mother and father had never been anything less than loving, even when her older brother had nearly deactivated the life support and come far too close to killing them all. She missed them dreadfully. She missed her first boyfriend, who had gone out on a mission and never returned, and even her second boyfriend, who had cheated on her with another man. The bastard had been a good kisser, but he just couldn’t keep it in his pants. Being cheated on with another man had put her off men for a few years, before she had picked up a third boyfriend from among the Marines. He was off with Admiral Walker, probably speeding back to the rescue right now — at least, she hoped he was. It would be just like him to come riding over the horizon when all hope was lost.

She pinched herself and focused on the black shapes. The Blackshirts were advancing carefully, one group moving up the corridor, another heading down it. There seemed to be no limit to their numbers; they just kept flowing in, at least twenty by her count. They were deploying sensor bugs as well, according to her suit, but the Marine countermeasures were keeping them under control. It was just as well. If they spotted the ambush before it was too late… she noted, suddenly, that they were keeping an eye on the ceiling and wondered why. There were no hidden passages above them in the rock. The whole idea had been to limit the number of connections between the spaceport and the remainder of Sanctuary.

“Take aim,” her commander ordered. They had to aim manually. Any targeting aid, such as a ranging laser, would be detected when it touched the enemy suits. “Open fire!”

Molly pulled the trigger and her rifle spat a stream of plasma pulses down towards the Blackshirts who staggered under the sheer weight of fire. A handful fell, their suits burned through by the incoming fire, but others hit the deck under their own power, bringing up their own weapons and returning fire. Plasma bolts began to sizzle through the air towards them, striking the armour plating the defenders had put into place to give them some cover, a handful finding their targets and burning through their suits. Molly heard one of her oldest friends cry out seconds before her icon vanished from the HUD. A plasma bolt had struck her in the throat.

“Fall back,” her commander snapped. Molly took a final shot and then turned, keeping her head down as she had been ordered. Others were crawling rapidly towards the next strongpoint, briefly triggering their IFF signals to ensure that they weren’t fired upon by the automated defences. An explosion shook the deck behind her as the enemy resorted to more grenades and heavier weapons to clear their path, leaving her scurrying as fast as she could. Her commander kept ordering them to move faster, even though they were all moving quickly. The sound of firing was growing louder. “Get into the next position and prepare to continue firing!”

Molly nodded as she grasped her rifle and sat up, climbing back into firing position. There were only a limited number of strongpoints before the invaders broke through into the asteroid proper, allowing them to spread out and secure the vital infrastructure. They had to stop them before then, or the asteroid was doomed. There were plans to carry on fighting, even when the invaders got inside, yet… somehow, she was sure that they wouldn’t work.

“Come on, Bobby,” she muttered, as she fired on a Blackshirt and had the satisfaction of seeing him collapse under her fire. Her current boyfriend had to come to their rescue, right? It couldn’t end like this. “We need you…”

The Blackshirt advance continued, undeterred by the resistance. Molly fell back again, and again, knowing that it was growing increasingly futile. Soon, far too soon, they would run out of places to fall back to.

And then they would die.

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