Several loader suits stood against one wall and were scattered around the expansive space, dormant and limp like three meter tall standing corpses. The chamber was filled with the high screech of metal scraping against metal as the main mooring door closed from the inside. Two meters of armour separated them from the destroyer above,
"Planned?" asked Major Cumberland.
Colonel Ratner ignored his question as he tried to get Command on comms. "Can't raise Command, someone's scrambling us. It's local, from this deck."
"They cleared this deck, didn't they?"
"No one was reported in this or any compartment adjacent to the upper hull," Colonel Ratner answered.
Hatches began to open overhead, pulling the air out of the massive compartment in a rush that sounded like a mournful, undulating howl.
"Seal up! Affix your soles!" Major Cumberland ordered. His men were the first to react, and were ready, rifles in hand, secured to the deck with their suits sealed up and vacuum ready before half of Colonel Ratner's were.
Three of the heavy armour units weren’t quick enough to affix their boots to the hull and were sucked right off the deck and out of the largest of the hatches. Most of the soldiers on the embarkation ramp were swept out into open space one after another, as though they were roped together. Cumberland just shook his head. Heavy armour units were always vacuum sealed, so they would survive, but they would be out of action for minutes or longer while they used their tiny emergency thrusters to return to the ship and get back on the deck. The rest, the regular soldiers, would have to be retrieved if they sealed their armour in time. The dark dust cloud they were in would make it difficult, many would be lost.
"What's going on Major?" asked the Colonel’s second in command. "You've been here for hours, what do you think they're doing?"
"I can't say; this is new." Major Cumberland signalled his unit to spread out to his right and left using hand signals, and they reacted as though they were marionettes tied to his fingers.
"Right! Spread out! Find cover where you can!" ordered Colonel Ratner.
Major Cumberland knelt and looked down his rifle sight, scanning the way ahead. No one else seemed to notice that the transparent emergency bulkheads separating the deck into sections were being drawn aside and down. The whole deck would be open in seconds, something was happening.
"What should we be expecting, Major? What are we looking for?" asked Ratner.
"I have no idea. Just keep your eyes peeled and get ready to call targets for your heavy armour."
"Don't tell me how to command my Unit."
"I won't tell you how to do your job if you stop asking me stupid questions and start using your scanning teams," Major Cumberland griped back.
"Sergeant! I'll have you-"
"Shut it!" He shot back as a power source appeared on his reticule only fifty meters away. It was one of the power suits several of the light infantry that had just arrived with the Colonel were hiding behind. "Get your people away from that loader suit!"
It was too late. The three meter tall machine snatched an empty ammunition cartridge the size of a coffin and swung it with impossible speed at the four infantrymen using him as cover, striking three hard enough to dislodge them from the deck. They were flung across the span at great speed while the armoured suit pounded its other claw hand into the fourth infantryman's chest so brutally that he flat lined the second he was struck.
"Fire! Open fire!" Colonel Ratner ordered.
It was too late. The thing had some kind of impact shielding that easily deflected their small arms fire. Even the heavy suits barely dented its thick armour.
"Those things are made to survive ship to ship guns! We'll never penetrate without explosives. Use 'em or lose 'em!" Major Cumberland ordered. One of his men tossed his last grenade set to a manual trigger and blew it as it came into contact with the chest plate of the armoured suit. To everyone's surprise and dismay it barely scratched it. "Don't let that thing get to you!" Cumberland warned as he carefully fired at the round sensor cap atop its shoulders. If the pilot inside noticed, he didn’t let on.
"Should we fire rockets, Colonel?" asked one of the heavy armour units.
The loading suit snatched one of the heavily armoured soldiers who wasn't wary or fast enough to keep away and hurled him at the rest of his unit. They were still too tightly grouped to use their weapons or to keep from getting hit by whatever the armoured suit decided to toss.
"Fire everything! Bring it down! Bring it down!" Colonel Ratner shouted as he fell back behind the armoured units for cover.
Major Cumberland had other ideas. He turned and ran for the express elevator.
"Get your ass back here Major!" shouted Ratner, furious.
He let his boots lose traction on the deck so he could drift at speed towards the elevator. When he hit the back of the large cargo car he re-affixed them and turned towards a wide eyed soldier just outside the lift who was breathing so hard he was fogging up his visor. “I need you and your hand scanner, get in here,” Cumberland ordered, gripping the collar of his breast plate and drawing him inside.
The soldier didn’t have to be told twice, and moved as quickly as his boots would allow, handing his scanner over on the way. In a few key strokes Cumberland adjusted the focus and began inspecting the deck behind the railgun loader suit who was charging the heavy armour. The first line of the unit fired their rockets, four of them missed, exploding against the upper hull. The other two were right on target.
The loader suit took damage and hesitated, faltering with a backwards step. It rocked forward onto its right foot and broke into a dead run, closing the distance between it and the heavily armoured soldiers at an alarming rate. The second line fired their rockets, and by the time three of them impacted, the loader suit was so close that the heavy armoured units took peripheral heat damage.
The suit was in their midst then. It picked up a heavily armoured soldier in each hand and used them as cudgels, breaking both men and armour. When the improvised cudgels missed the scattering heavily armoured soldiers, the loader suit slammed the soldiers in its grip against the solid deck, cracking protective plating wide open. A burst of air told everyone who witnessed it that the man inside would die of exposure in seconds if he hadn’t already been crushed.
The several swings connected with the nearby armoured units, knocking them all off balance. Then one of them fired a rocket, missing the loader suit and striking one of the heavy armoured units dead on.
As Colonel Ratner shouted, "Cease fire! Cease fire!" and ran in the other direction, reinforcements began drifting between the battlecruiser above and entering through the many apertures that had opened to decompress the massive compartment.
Major Cumberland's heart sank as his scanner picked up openings in the deck. Bursts of air escaping from the dozens of deck storage and access compartments were the first warning. The second warning was the size of most of the compartments. "Colonel! We're standing on the storage compartments for those loader suits! There are more coming!"
"We have reinforcements en-route, Major. This'll be over in no time."
Major Cumberland swept the scanner from left to right and counted as quickly as he could while reading the results. With great ease and agility thirty loaders suits came up from their storage compartments along with four other three and a half meter tall suits he recognized immediately.
He targeted one of the brown and black camouflaged suits again and ran a concentrated scan. He broke into a cold sweat the moment it completed. "Colonel! They have Sol Defence Advanced Encounter suits! Order the Battlecruiser to fire directly on the four targets I'm marking!"
"Negative, Major! Our orders are to take this ship in one piece! I'm not going to call in a strike at point blank!"