He looked up as the hatch opened and Hester entered, followed by two of her bodyguards. “Get that piece of shit out of here,” she said, pointing one finger at the sleeping operator. The bodyguards nodded and obeyed. “How does it look, Major?”
Neil blinked in surprise. Hester was wearing a suit of body armour and carrying a helmet in one hand. It wasn’t cheap equipment either. It might not have been quite up to the standards of Marine combat armour, but it would be more than sufficient against most threats. A sniper could probably have taken off her head before she put the helmet on, yet… somehow, he was sure that no sniper would ever get so close to her. Her bodyguards didn’t look incompetent.
“It looks good,” he said, reluctantly. He had always hated giving briefings to political leaders, yet Hester was something special. “We should be able to stall them long enough for Admiral Walker to get back.”
Hester nodded, her eyes elsewhere. “And if we can’t?”
“We die,” Neil said, flatly. If the Empire was prepared to expend enough troops, they could take the asteroid, even if the rebels retreated into the inner core and fought hard to hold on to the core regions. Sanctuary didn’t even have a united datanet or shared infrastructure. Given time, and sufficient imagination, the Empire could make life very uncomfortable… and that was if they didn’t decide to cut their losses and blow up the asteroid. “There are no other alternatives.”
Hester nodded, hefting her rifle. “I understand,” she said. “It’s time to fight or die.”
The asteroid shuddered suddenly. “They’re opening fire with penetrator missiles,” one of the techs said. “They’re knocking out our weapons, one by one.”
“As I expected,” Neil said. He felt the old thrill rising up within him, even though he knew that they were all going to die soon. Unless Admiral Walker got back; no, even if he did, the Empire would still be able to blow up the asteroid and run. “And then will come the assault.”
Angelika watched dispassionately as the last of the rebel weapons platforms were blown into vapour, clearing the way for her assault troops. She had wondered if the rebels would blow up their asteroid or dare her to hit them with heavier weapons, but the assault plan was going perfectly. Without their weapons, there would be nothing to stop her troops from landing on the asteroid.
“All ships, this is the Commodore,” she said. “Dispatch the landing force!”
Chapter Forty
“You are clear to launch,” the voice said in his earpiece. It was a sultry female voice, promising much to the heroes when they returned — if they returned. “Good luck.”
Captain Thomas Wilson took a breath as the launch tubes opened and the assault pods were blasted out towards the asteroid, accompanied by a hail of decoys and sensor jammers intended to prevent any surviving rebel weaponry from locking onto them and blowing them into the next world, even though the squadron claimed to have destroyed all such weapons. Thomas had enough experience with such claims to know that they were often over-optimistic and, as the commander of the assault, he wasn’t going to take any chances with his men and their lives.
He could hear the beating of his own heart and feel the sweat on the palm of his hands as the pods fell towards the asteroid. It grew in his vision, changing from just another rock to something that dominated the entire horizon. At some point, up twisted and became down and he started to fall towards the rocky ground, cursing as enemy weapons started to light up, their plasma bursts picking off a handful of pods. The starship crews hadn’t got them all! The tiny automated missiles escorting them dived forwards and attempted to destroy the weapons, but not before seven of his men and ten decoys were picked off and killed. An eighth man was so badly injured that his suit had to put him into suspension and scream for immediate recovery.
Thomas braced himself as the pod touched down and split open, allowing him to step out onto the surface of Sanctuary. They had landed below the massive crater that seemed to serve as a rebel spaceport, yet as his teams formed up it became evident that the rebels had taken the precaution of hiding additional defences in the ground. The Blackshirts picked them off, advancing towards the lip of the crater and over it, staring down into the spaceport. The gravity was doing odd things as they passed through varying gravity fields — the rebels, instead of spinning the asteroid to produce gravity, had chosen to install a gravity generator instead — and he cursed under his breath. He had trained his men hard, rather than trusted to the drugs and indoctrination most Blackshirt units used, yet they hadn’t been trained to work in such an environment. It was a tribute to their training — and their superior officers, who had wanted a dedicated unit for operating in space — that they were doing as well as they were.
The rebels had divided the spaceport into two sections. One, dominated by starships clinging like limpets to the asteroid, was visible to his eyes. The other, with starships passing through a massive hatch to rest inside the asteroid, was clearly closed off. The hatch would require high explosives to blast it open, yet there was an easier way into the asteroid. He led his platoon towards the first freighter, ordering the other teams to spread out and target the other ships. Not entirely to his surprise, the first freighter rose up into space as his team approached, spinning around and preparing to flicker out. The missile that slammed into the ship and blew it cart-wheeling away from the asteroid, launched by one of the battlecruisers, cast an eerie light over the scene. Thomas allowed himself a moment of relief. If the freighter had attempted to engage his team, the results would not have been pleasant.
“Down here,” he ordered, as he led his team towards where the freighter had been docked. There was a hatch there set within the rock that resisted him when he tried to open it with an armoured hand. He chuckled as his lips quirked in wry amusement. That was against Imperial Law and carried a mandatory sentence of twenty years in prison. The rebels were guilty of yet another offence, one more serious than most. It hardly mattered. One of his team carried a set of explosive charges and used one of them to blow their way into the airlock. Somewhat to his surprise, no hail of fire greeted them as they forced their way into the asteroid.
“Deploy sensor bugs,” he ordered, as he followed the first four into the asteroid. It was rather disappointing to his eyes. For all that the Security Officer had talked about the asteroid, warning them of the many dangers and temptations they would face once they forced their way into the rebel stronghold, it was depressingly normal. The inner airlock had an emergency forcefield to prevent the air from leaking out, although no one dared take off their helmets. Selective depressurising of compartments was a neat way to get rid of unwanted guests. “Contact the ships and tell them to send the second wave down to join us.”
He smiled as the images of the interior of the asteroid started to build up in his HUD. The sensor bugs could move far faster than any human and were completely invisible to the naked eye, although the rebels had access to Marine-issue systems that could probably pick them up without trouble. Sanctuary — and that, he considered, was a rather inappropriate name — was starting to take shape and form, plotting out the various passageways and compartments. As his team expanded and started to advance into the unknown, he found himself waiting patiently for the hammer to fall. The rebels wouldn’t tamely accept their violation of their base, not when they’d had their chance to surrender and had refused it.