He ran to the door he tried to blast open and saw that the top half had been roughly torn through by the concussive force. Jake hurriedly squeezed through the space and began searching through the hundred or so lockers within. They were marked with eight digit numbers and after randomly opening several he noticed that the number 44381-582 was etched into the sleeve of his tattered jumpsuit.
After a moment of searching he found the locker with the corresponding digits. His things were neatly set inside, each article separated into vacuum sealed plastic bags. The bag holding his sidearm had black and yellow markings across it, his vacsuit was folded at the bottom of the locker with his long coat, and his articles were sealed up all separately.
The first thing he did was unwrap a set of four focusable proximity mines. Morons should keep munitions stored separately, every green to the bone security newbie knows that. He took one, ran the few steps to the door, planted it on the outside pointed across the corridor and armed it.
He hurriedly dressed in his new armoured vacsuit, long coat, gun belt, and was half way finished loading up with the equipment and ammunition that had been removed from his long coat and sorted when he heard footsteps outside. He ducked and crouched down low, bringing his headpiece and visor into place just in time for the directionally focused mine to explode into the hallway.
Whoever had stepped in its way or was within its hundred and ten degree blast radius would be obliterated. The force behind the explosion had dented what was left of the metal of the door inward, but he was barely effected by the explosion.
He stood up and hurriedly replaced the rest of the equipment and small tools in the pockets of his long coat then took his favourite sidearm in his right hand and closed his eyes. Jake made a concious effort to connect with the sighting systems built into the scarred and worn weapon and could see through its eye a moment later. It was a higher quality than the weapon provided to the guards, and showed him a much better colour picture that had enough depth to be translated into holographic data if he liked. The sight once displayed an image on his visor, but having a direct connection was so much better.
His concentration turned to the sensors in his vacsuit. Motion, gravity, air density, environmental, thermal, video, audio, and energy field sensor data flooded his mind for a moment. It was all there at once. Like opening his eyes for the first time, learning to see, comprehending new shapes and information it was all too much.
Jake withdrew and tried to focus on the new senses one at a time. It happened much more easily, much faster than he had anticipated. The motion sense came first, a combination of air pressure, sonic and thermal senses, it told him that around the corner there was a fresh squad of six soldiers tentatively moving forward.
The gravity sensors told him their mass indicated they were all humans with no high density implants. The energy fields that surrounded them indicated where they each kept a pair of energy clips, how much ammunition each of their weapons were loaded with and that they were all communicating through a radio signal that looped through the ship's comm systems. It all came with perfect clarity, and when he opened his eyes the new senses weren't just seen or felt, they were a part of his awareness.
He tapped into the ship's communications systems effortlessly, using the open connection he sensed through the unsecured leisure portion of the network. The thought of being captured was still on his mind, the awareness that there were twenty seven decks beneath him and twenty two above and that he was over nine hundred meters of hallway away from the nearest escape vessel enraged him. Jake would have to fight to leave the ship, and even then the nearest craft available was unarmed, useless when trying to depart from the midst of a Battle Group. The ship he was on was called the Diplomat, and it was registered to the High Seat of the Order of Eden, Lister Hampon.
The whole situation made him burn. Jake opened a link between himself and the unsecured channel. “Don't stand between me and my freedom. If you are armed place your weapon on the deck in front of you and step away. If you are in control of a major system and I require access to your station, step back and do not interfere. If you don't follow my instructions you will be killed.” He ended the broadcast and shut down the communications system built into his command and control unit so no one could back hack his system.
One of the squad members was approaching the large hole in the upper half of the door with a grenade in his hand. Jake activated the new, radiation free cloaking systems in his vacsuit and long coat, took three long strides to the door and waited.
The squad leader activated his grenade and tossed it into the doorway. Jake was ready, caught it, leaned outside and tossed it down the hall between the feet of the six soldiers. “I warned you,” he said as he ducked behind what was left of the armoured door.
He set his sidearm to the maximum discharge rate, so it would fire enough explosive thermite to burn through half a meter of hardened hull material in less than two seconds. The weapon would only have thirty five shots per clip, but by his estimation he would miss less, and he had six more clips on him.
The grenade went off and for a few seconds half his new senses were blind. He shook his head and looked into the hallway.
Half the squad were killed by the blast, he could see all the indications of life fading away, their body heat dissipated the slowest of all. Without hesitation he stood, pulled himself out through the upper half of the doorway and strode down the hall to where he assumed the secondary lifts were, ignoring the three guards that were pulling themselves together and checking their fallen comrades.
He held his palm to the controls to the lift and tried to interface with them. As expected he was instantly aware of a security lockout. The entire section he was in was locked down. He wasn't an expert at breaking into digital security systems and that was a problem. After a moment he was able to pull up a general map of the area with emergency safety zones marked clearly. That was the best information he could find, and he spun on his heel and started running towards a security station.
Down several hallways, around several corners he rushed until his sensor package told him that there was a large group of soldiers just around the corner in a security office busied with the task of tracking him down.
To his dismay there was a slight difference in gravity and a vapour barrier conducting a small current just down the hallway. They actually have a system in place that can detect when I cross that threshold while cloaked! I've never seen anything like it, but it's so simple. The vapour leaving the nozzles at the top is measured and if it doesn't match what's being pulled in through the bottom the alarms go off. If I find my way around that, the current being measured all around that water vapour will be off enough to alert them. If I were to find a way around that the gravity plating on the other side would measure a large difference as well. It's like what we accomplished on the Overlord Two with the early version of our cloaksuits made Hampon paranoid. Seriously paranoid! That's unless all Regent Galactic ships have anti-stealth technology surrounding command centers.
He looked down the hallway, watched the security officers checking sensors at the outer perimeter and scrambling between two and three dimensional monitors to find him and tried to figure out a way to get to their systems without noticing. If they have gravity plating that's monitoring pressure in there my cloak suit isn't worth a damn, and I can sense that there are thirty eight of them inside. Big office.
Jake shrugged, drew a nanoblade hilt from its holster at the rear of his belt, set the blade to extend one meter and then drew his sidearm. The black blade appeared, a grisly triumph of nanotechnology. Turned one way it was invisible to the naked eye, comprised of millions of nanobots caught in a turning magnetic field it was only a few molecules thick and would cut through anything softer than itself. The nanobots, aside from being sharper than any cutting surface known, would all work to push through whatever they came in contact with except for Jake's vacsuit. If they came into contact with materials harder than themselves they would cut into them quickly, but there were only so many nanobots in the hilts of the weapons, once they were exhausted, the weapon needed to be reloaded. He had only used one theoretically, in simulations and if the representation of the weapon's effects were at all accurate, it would be a very effective tool of intimidation.