The Advanced Encounter suit. It was something he'd seen in a movie called Breaking the Belt when he was a boy about the last time a government tried to make a claim on the outer edge of the Sol solar system. According to the film the Sol Defence Fleet believed in countering an attack with force that outweighed the offense by multiples in the hundreds. In that instance the Sol Fleet led the counter strike with Uriel fighters just like the ones he saw launch when they were about to take the Triton. In the movie, the fighters loaded with two of those Encounter Suits each. They dropped them on the hulls of destroyers, of carriers, of the munitions and supply ships and they tore into their hulls like savages. When they were finished with the hulls, they clawed and burned their way into their ships. There was no mercy, no hesitation, and no humanity. They were shock troops with more firepower per man than anyone had ever seen, and more armour.
When he saw one in a museum as a boy, it looked like a brown and black demon. Its thin, hard black hands were like talons, ready to rip anything in its way apart. The pulse guns on its arms were the same size as some he'd seen in the space flight museum, on full blown starfighters. He recalled the statistics on the machine. Able to heft seven thousand tons, with armour that could withstand a one thousand kilometre orbit with a standard yellow star, armed with a high powered particle beam cannon on one arm and an energizing shard cannon on the other. It was fuelled by a pair of shielded cold micro fusion generators, had an energy shield and focused fusion ion propulsion. He remembered looking up at the captured relic in the Soner Museum as a boy and how small he felt.
That feeling, along with a deep fear threatened to completely unman him as he watched the four machines stand tall and begin a long charge up the deck from the rear. The four he was seeing looked more advanced, newer, slimmer, and far more dangerous. "I need my unit to fall back to the cargo lift. We're going to survive this."
"Major! I'll have your commission for this!"
"I'll defect before I put my men into combat against this bunch! This fight is already theirs."
The four Encounter suits opened fire with their particle shard weapons first, and what he saw in that old movie paled in comparison to what they did to the soldiers in reality. Thin shards of slow moving, excited particles moved across the broad deck and sliced through the Colonel’s heavily armoured units as though they were wearing tissue paper.
Major Cumberland waited for his retreating soldiers impatiently; "Move! Move! Move!" he shouted, though he didn't have to. Several of the Colonel’s men followed; a few of them in heavy armour. Those were the ones who would be left behind; there was no way Cumberland would hold the lift long enough for their slow bulks.
The Encounter suits stopped firing at the soldiers on the deck and turned their attention to the Battlecruiser above. The loader suits charged. They were so agile, so quick; it was like watching several lines of runners break from the starting line. Behind them rose one hundred fifty or more men and women with personal shields and heavy particle rifles. They all fired on full automatic, lighting the deck with tens of thousands of rounds. Half of Colonel Ratner's forces were gunned down in seconds. Major Cumberland saw the last of his men steps away from the lift car and hit the close button. "Command, I’m in retreat with some of the Colonel’s men. Deck twenty one is a complete loss and you have heavy armour mounting a counter incursion on your vessel. Please acknowledge."
"Acknowledged. Do you have any chance of preventing the incursion?”
“I could try harsh language.”
“Pardon?”
“Not a chance in hell. What about Ratner? Doesn’t he have access to anything heavier?”
“The Colonel is dead, Major," came the reply. They had gotten away, but Major Cumberland was left with a difficult choice and a dozen men and women whose morale was nearly shattered.
"Major Cumberland. This is Command." It was a different voice that time, one he’d never heard before.
"I'm receiving you."
"Can you verify what we're seeing? It looks like all our people were just gunned down on the upper deck during a comms blackout."
"That's the correct assessment. They have Sol Defence Encounter Armour. You should pick them up on Battlecruiser 1109's hull any second now."
"What?"
"Look for cutters. There's a counter incursion going on right now. I was just telling your subordinate the same thing."
"Your new orders are to proceed to the command deck to assist. Fighting has broken out on the bridge."
"Yes sir. I thought they’d already taken the bridge, sir."
“That’s need to know only, Major.”
“Bullshit, you’re going to tell me what we’re getting into, now.”
“They let us take the bridge twice, both times were a trap. We’re taking it for good.”
“Acknowledged. Keep me in the loop Command, this operation is too out of joint for this need to know crap.”
“Secure that attitude and get on mission. Command out.”
Major Cumberland hesitated a moment before changing the express car's heading. It felt like his stomach had flipped upside down, he hadn't been so nervous, so gun shy since he picked up a rifle for the first time on the range.
"Where are we headed Major?" Asked one of his men from behind, he was still catching his breath.
Cumberland selected the command deck on the control panel. "The bridge. We're going to wrap this up before it gets any worse."
Chapter 23
"It's a shanty port," said the cab driver as he banked around a tall docking pad. Beneath were several other, disused pads fanning out around a central pillar down its full length. Landing on one of the middle platforms would be a nightmare, and Ayan didn't trust the looks of them at all, or the other pilots.
She couldn't help but look over the grizzled nafalli's shoulder as he piloted the beaten people carrier in a round about way over hundreds of landed ships and towers dedicated to nothing more than housing vessels. The cab was originally built to pilot itself, but someone had come along and torn out the main computer systems, replacing them with crude pilot's controls and computer displays. The navnet was projected by a flickering hologram that used a thin mist as a medium, creating a humid environment in the cabin. The mess of small people carriers and ships of all sizes made for a pilot's worst nightmare. The computer was constantly suggesting new paths to the pilot, who seemed to be flying as much by instinct and eye as he was by the navnet's suggestions.
"Why do they call it a shanty port?" Asked Laura, her voice so high pitched it was near a squeak. She was watching the surrounding streams of air cars and small ships as they wove between them. A sight Ayan was trying not to concentrate on.
"Look down there, see that strip of buildings right in the middle of the slips? That's why. People build up cities, sometimes right proper buildings, and make whatever they can trading with the ships nearby. Whole other jungle down there, like a city where maybe a handful of people stick around. Gangs too, most of 'em smugglers and privateers. Hard bunch."
"What's that?" Jenny asked, pointing at a number of slips that had been walled off like a compound. There was a hangar in the centre, all around it were ships roughly the size of the Samson.
"Oram's place. Keeps his whole place buttoned down tight, uses his own people for security. One of the best privateers out here. He's so big that he hires other ships for some of his hops."
"Ah, so he takes on big targets."
"Yup, has a destroyer all his own in orbit too."
"Who does he go after?"
"Don't know, none of my business. What are you folk going here for anyhow? Looks like you're a well sorted bunch, dressed like space station sort, don't know why you need to talk to anyone at this end."