Vanguard Word Update

2489 words

***

“Door’s opening,” Kurtis added from behind. “Three… two… one!”

The inner airlock parted, revealing a metal corridor beyond, fluorescent strips placed at intervals illuminating the interior. The doors clunked into their sockets, sound returning to normal as the pressurisation completed, Cadell hearing the Balokarid’s heavy footfalls as they stalked forward on their long, avian legs, shields at the ready.

Samiha cleared the left passageway, Kazlu the right, the three humans aiming up along the centre. The airlock was placed in the heart of a T-intersection, just as deadly an ambush spot as Cadell had predicted, and yet they hadn’t been shot at. Their ship must not have been detected on its way in.

Cadell lowered to a crouch, tucking himself up against one wall as he checked his map. Each squad had been given a copy of the shipyard’s layout, and he pulled it up on his display, double checking their path. The bridge module where the Confederate leaders were supposedly hole up was a couple minutes’ walk ahead of them, the path all twisting corridors and short hallways, a nightmare of tight corners. If anyone was waiting for them, firefights wouldn’t be much further than a few meters at the best of times.

“Bayonet’s, everyone,” Cadell said, reaching into his vest. They’d all been issued two combat knives, one of which with a wire loop on one end that could fit over a mount on the coilgun’s muzzle. Bayonet charges were downright archaic in modern armies, but in these close quarters it was better to be safe than sorry.

He placed his combat knife on his coilgun, waiting for the others to do the same. When they were ready, he led the way forward, his heart hammering in his chest as they neared the end of the hallway, which ended at a blind corner. This place wasn’t nearly as luxurious as the Hub, access panels were everywhere, clashing with the grey hull, pipes and wires exposed to the elements where the designers had clearly preferred function over form.

He snapped around the corner, just as he trained, his team following behind. The hallway was clear, a door leading off on one side before the way continued ahead. The sign above it said it was a storage closet, but Cadell had them clear it anyway, just to be certain.

Samiha’s blue shield drove back the darkness as she moved in first, sweeping her gun around the limited space. Once she’d given the all clear, they continued on, the team proceeding through another corner, this one going left. Cadell felt like they were navigating a giant maze of Tetris blocks, no two corners the exact length of direction, the only commonality being they weren’t any longer than ten meters long.

There was a sudden crackle of sound filtering through his suit’s receivers, a burst of automatic fire echoing off the metal walls. Cadell tensed, more gunfire following through from a direction he couldn’t pinpoint. Their squad wasn’t the only Alliance team infiltrating the station, Cadell able to pick out the telltale, electronic quality of another coilgun.

“That’s team nine, has to be,” Hunter muttered, able to speak freely thanks to their sealed helmets and encrypted radios. “Their entry point was closest to us.”

“Shouldn’t we assist?” Samiha asked, turning to glance at Cadell.

“They’ve got their target, we’ve got ours,” Cadell replied. “Can’t waste time gettin’ bogged down in a firefight now. Let’s keep movin’.”

They continued down one tight turn after the other, the gunfire never really sounding further or closer away. Despite his standpoint to let team nine do their own thing, the sound of battle and the lack of Confederates was making him antsy. That wasn’t to say he was itching for a fight, but he’d fully expected to be fired upon the moment they’d breached the airlock, but it had been nearly five minutes and not a single Confederate had intercepted them. It was making him nervous.

As they rounded another corner, he heard footsteps pounding on the floor ahead of them. He raised his fist, signalling for the team to scatter towards the walls, tucking up against them as much as they could. Cadell found himself between Samiha and Kurtis, with Kazlu and Hunter on the other side of the hallway.

His nerves went cold when the sound grew louder, and a pressure door up ahead opened. Four soldiers marched out into the hallway, Cadell peeking around Samiha’s shoulder to get a look at them. Just like he was, they were each wearing reinforced pressure suits, sealed to helmets with mirrored visors. They were carrying automatic weapons, not coilguns, although that didn’t make them any less dangerous, the red armbands on their biceps contrasting with their dark combat armour.

Cadell prepared to give the order to fire, but hesitated, the Confederates turning in the opposite direction, moving down the hallway with their backs turned to them. He guessed they’d been deployed to help with the nearby firefight, their guards lowered just enough to be taken advantage of. They were moments away from turning down the far corner and disappearing from sight.

“Now, shoot now!” Cadell yelled, turning out in a kneel, so that Hunter could fire without obstruction. The rest of the team followed suit, bringing coilguns to bear.

Their five weapons kicked, electronic gunfire that would have been deafening filtered by his helmet. Cadell watched as one of his shots caught a man in the shoulder, the soldier skidding the ground. The three other soldiers turned, bracing their weapons into shoulders, one of them sending a return burst before a hail of coilgun pierced his armoured vest, sending the man toppling back, his limbs jerking unnaturally.

The other two scattered to the sides, seeking what limited cover the sides of the hallway provided. The one Cadell had shot flipped onto his front, reaching for his sidearm that was strapped to his leg, as he’d dropped his rifle. Hunter put a bullet in his visor, and the Confederate didn’t get up again.

The two remaining Confederates opened up on them, bullets clashing against the walls and floor, sparks like slag from a welder flying out from the points of impact. Some of them ricocheted, Cadell feeling something smack off the side of his helmet, his fear amplifying as he realised this was no simulation, this was the real thing.

Samiha motioned him back, bringing her shield forward and bracing it, keeping its tapered end a few inches off the deck. He used her as mobile cover, stepping out into the hallway to give Hunter space, Kazlu copying her counterpart from the opposing side.

Despite the opaque visors, Cadell could see the surprise in the Confederates body language, one of them waving the other back to sign a retreat. They had the advantage of the shields, any return fire slagging away as they made contact with the shields, Samiha not even flinching as a burst of gunfire made the energy before her face warble.

The one trying to fall back caught a shot to the chest, Kazlu finishing him off with a shot from her submachine gun. The last one didn’t even try to surrender, holding his ground as he emptied his gun into the pair of shields. The five of them cut him down, the Confederate’s gun shooting off the last of its ammo as his death grip squeezed the trigger.

The last vestiges of gunfire caried off down the hallways, Cadell breathing hard into his helmet. As quickly as it had come, the gunfight was over, Cadell fishing out a fresh magazine from his vest.

“Everyone okay?” he asked when there was a brief pause. “Anyone hit?”

“Just our shields,” Kazlu breathed, pressing a mechanism on her sleeve. The shield retracted, Cadell knowing it would recharge when not in use. She checked the display below her wing. “Twenty percent depleted. You?” she asked, turning to Samiha.

“Fifteen. Better than what we had in the sim.”

“We shouldn’t stick around,” Kurtis added. “They’ll know we’ll be coming now.”

“Right,” Cadell said. “Reload and fall in, everyone, check your heat sinks, too.”

They moved up towards the dead soldiers, Cadell pausing by the pressure door they’d come out of, as it was the way towards the bridge. He spared a look at one of the corpses, a sickness stirring in his chest. Up until a moment ago he’d only ever fought against holograms, and the first thing he did during the fight was shoot a man in the back. The Alliance advertised itself as liberators of the Outer Reaches, paragons that fought against Confederate oppression, but Cadell didn’t feel so heroic about this.

Samiha stacked up on his side of the pressure door, nudging him on the shoulder. “Cadell,” she said. “Focus. We must press forward.”

She must have noted that he was staring at the body, Cadell shaking his head to clear it. It was a little embarrassing that she could see his reservations clear as day, but at least it was her and not one of the others.

He nodded, sparing the bodies one last glance. At his signal they pulled through the door, sweeping the next corridor clear. An occasional side door needed securing, but they encountered no more Confederate patrols, although the sounds of distant firefights suggested they were getting off luckier than the other teams.

His commincator alerted him to an incoming transmission, Cadell tapping at his wrist-display and opening a channel.

“Corporal,” Vonstock said, his voice crackling under a layer of static. “Status.”

“We’re comin’ up on the module now,” Cadell replied.

“Good. As soon as you secure the area, call it in. We’re detecting power fluctuations from the shipyard’s power grid. The Confederates are diverting power away from non-critical systems and I want to know why.”

“Yes, Sir,” Cadell said, closing the channel. They came up on yet another pressure door,  although this one was built from thicker plates, and did not open automatically at their approach. His map told him that beyond this was the bridge module, the team taking up their usual breaching positions.

Kurtis plugged in his override tablet to a socket on the wall, running the program that would disable the security. As soon as the sliding doors parted, a torrent of gunfire ripped through the gap, sparks flying off the doors as bullets grazed the metal. Kazlu and Samiha pulled back as what seemed like a dozen automatic weapons tore into the corridor.

Cadell picked his moment to lean out from behind Samiha, hoping to supress the shooters and take a look at the bridge. Its layout was far more spacious than what he’d seen of the shipyard so far, the box-shaped room maybe fifteen meters wide and just as long. Filling up most of the floorspace in evenly spaces rows were computer terminal about a meter long each,  display screens projecting readouts and sensory data. An empty aisle travelled up between these grids of terminals, ending at a pair of stairways leading towards an upper section that spanned the far wall. Cadell could see a glass canopy up there, as well as more terminals. Those were probably where the shipyard supervisor’s controls were located.

Between them and it, however, were perhaps twenty Confederate troopers, set up behind the consoles for cover. They carried automatic weapons, the caseless variants they’d seen earlier, but set up in the main aisle was a mounted gun, set up on a set of metal legs, a ballistic screen shielding the operator as he cocked back a giant sliding bolt on the side.

“Machine gun!” Cadell shouted, ducking away as the weapon spewed a chain of rounds through the air he’d just been standing in. The bullets hit the wall behind his squad, Cadell watching holes the size of his fist shred through the hull. The Confederates must be wearing pressure suits if they were willing to risk breaching the hull with heavy weapons.

“Can your shields can hold against that?” Hunter asked, flinching as sparks lanced from the floor near his feet.

“One way to find out,” Samiha replied. “Follow my lead, Kaz.”

The two aliens turned out into the line of fire, the shields from their sleeves blooming open. They stood shoulder to shoulder, advancing like riot police through the threshold. The Confederate on the heavy gun gripped the two vertical handles, swerving the massive muzzle across Kazlu’s tall frame, the weapon rocking back on its housing in hard but even jumps. Cadell had seen the shields ripple under strain, but Kazlu’s barrier actually began to flicker, like a channel on a TV slowly losing its signal.

The aliens split up, Kazlu skidding to a halt behind the console on the left, Samiha fucking behind the one closest to the right. Cadell, Hunter and Kurtis were right behind them, Cadell taking Kurtis by the arm and pulling him behind the console beside him.

“Spead out, spread out!” Cadell shouted. “Get to the sides, flank that gun!”

He leaned out to return fire, Kurtis following his lead. They coordinated fire, suppressing the Confederates and forcing them down, allowing Hunter and the aliens to reposition to the next column of terminals. Cadell took a shot at the man on the mounted gun, but it skimmed the ballistic shield on the front, and he didn’t have time for a follow-up shot before a hail of gunfire forced him to duck away.

Kazlu and Hunter pushed up from the left, the giant alien vaulting over the console while the human skirted around. A Confederate was taking cover behind the next terminal, and as soon as he peeked, Kazlu shot him, his faceplate splitting apart under the subsonic round, his cry cutting off as he slumped over the display.

Cadell jumped over the terminal he was using as cover, supressing one of the Confederates as the team began to push up, one layer of terminals at a time. They gave the mounted gun a wide berth, forcing the operator to turn in wider arcs, machine gun fire hosing down everything caught in its path. Machinery was torn apart, Cadell hearing electrical currents fizzle as cables were torn apart, display screens flickering out.

“Shoot the alien!” he heard one of the Confederates shout, the statement no doubt directed to the man on the gun. The mount swerved to the right, Samiha tucking her large frame behind a console as it opened up on her position.

“Someone kill him!” Samiha yelled into the radio. “I cannot move!”

“I’ve got him,” Hunter replied, Cadell searching the room. He was a little further back then the others, the design of his coilgun suited for longer ranges, the man flipping up the magnified sights. He took his moment, firing off a single shot, one that flew straight through the groove on the ballistic shield’s top, the gunner falling on his back with a hole in his helmet.