Jake didn't waste any more time, but ran for the open door facing the stern and straight on to the nearest lift. Using the authorization code he had been given he was able to unlock it. He activated his cloaking systems and waited for the car to arrive. He was well past the vapour barrier and the gravity plating. The deck layout information he had made it clear that the only areas guarded by those security measures were command and security hubs.
He stepped to the side as the lift doors began to open. Several canisters were thrown into the hallway intersection and Jake immediately turned and ran for a side passage. It was too late. The canisters exploded with loud successive pops and his sensor suite told him that his headpiece, long coat, boots and gloves had been coated with acid. The coating on his vacsuit quickly neutralized it, but not before half of his cloaking systems were either too badly damaged to be useful or destroyed altogether.
The elevator doors finished opening and eight soldiers moved into the hallway with quick, easy efficiency. These weren't normal security guards, they were heavily armoured and carried rifles that fired explosive rounds.
He spun around and dropped a shield puck on the deck, it affixed itself and started projecting a blue green barrier of energy two meters high and one and a half meters across. It was a piece of technology Laura and Ayan had pressed into service through the Special Projects Division after it was captured from a Vindyne soldier.
The first shots were stopped completely by the energy shield, and the enemy soldiers took cover around the corner. Jake pulled a belt of four stolen grenades from his inside coat pocket, armed them, tossed the bunch and dove around the corner. The three second fuse counted down and nothing happened.
How the hell did they deactivate the whole belt of grenades? He managed to ask himself as he watched the whole belt sail over the top of the energy barrier. Jake scurried to his feet and made a mad dash for the side corridor.
He barely made the next corner before they exploded. The concussive force knocked him off his feet, but he managed to avoid the brunt of the blast. Jake was on his feet and running again, and as he took the next corner his thermal and movement detection sensors picked up four soldiers ahead. They were the same grade of plated combat armour, carrying the same heavy assault rifles, and they were flanking the next hallway.
“God dammit!” he cursed to himself. He made sure his sidearm was set to full intensity and full automatic as he drew it out of its holster and pulled one of his own grenades from its secure pocket. He activated his personal energy shield, noting that it was down to seventy three percent and stopped dead in his tracks. Instead of rolling his fragmentation grenade along the floor he set the fuse to detonate on impact and tossed it hard towards the wall up ahead.
Jake crouched down to the ground, turned and covered himself with his long coat. The hot air and debris from the blast washed over his energy shield and long coat without harming him. His visor display informed him that the shield he had erected around the corner had depleted and was destroyed. The soldiers he had left behind were coming.
He rose and ran towards the hall that had just been filled with shrapnel and fire. The life signs of the soldiers there were fading fast.
Stepping around them gingerly, he headed down the hall in a dead run, straight back to the lift doors. They were jammed open with a wedge, he could see it, and the soldiers who had come up were still coming after him the long way. Part of my cloaking systems must be working, otherwise they'd see me coming around on thermal or motion sensors. Jake thought to himself.
The group had left one soldier inside the elevator car, a smart gambit he almost didn't see in time. His motion detection systems weren't as keen as they should have been, most likely because of either the acid or explosions he'd been almost too close to, and the outline a soldier waiting at the rear of the express car appeared on his visor at the last instant.
Jake panicked and let loose with his handgun on full automatic, peppering the soldier and the walls around him with rounds. The trooper slumped to the ground. Jake cursed under his breath at emptying half a clip into the man, the job could have been done with four or five shots. He kicked the wedge out of the doors and requested a level far beneath. With some satisfaction Jake watched the squad double back at speed towards the lift he'd stolen, they almost reached the doors in time to get a clear shot and he could hear their heavy rounds pierce the doors above as the lift car accelerated down to the hangar deck.
Without a second to spare he picked up the body of the fallen trooper and held it up in front of him, it was heavy, the man and armour together must have weighed over a hundred fifty kilos. He pushed through the strain on his arm and focused, levelling his sidearm at the doors where he could see thermal traces of more lightly armoured soldiers outside waiting.
He took aim at the guard with the clearest shot and fired before the lift car finished coming to a slow stop. The round made it through, and the thermal image burst in colours of yellow, red and blue telling him that the soldier leading that charge was dead or dying.
The group of five soldiers arranged in a semicircle around the lift doors opened fire and Jake managed to kill two before he took a round straight on in the shin. His armoured vacsuit took most of the impact but the bone behind his armour shattered and he fell in a howling heap on the floor of the lift car.
He fired at the last visible guard while the other one sought cover just beside the lift doors and caught him in the left shoulder. His framework body went to work, regenerating the bone and tissue of his shin. A little late with the nerve blocking! Jake thought to himself as pain coursed up his leg. There was no numbing of the pain that time, and he barely heard the clink of a grenade through the agony.
His vision went black, the other sensors built into his vacsuit flared then began to reset and his hearing was completely blocked. It took him a moment to realize what had happened. They used a flashbang grenade! They're afraid of damaging the elevator! He couldn't help but chuckle to himself as the pain from his shin began to subside, and his visor's light reactive shielding cleared just in time for him to see one soldier break cover.
His mind's eye watched through his gun sight camera as his arm came up and lined up a shot that hit the young woman full on in the face. The guards on the forward hangar deck weren't wearing helmets, just the protective gel that seemed to be a favourite with the crew of the Diplomat. She was dead the instant the round hit her.
“Surrender now!” Jake cried out as he got to his feet and rolled out of the elevator car. He came up on his knees with a perfect shot lined up at a wounded soldier who had taken refuge beside the lift doors. He dropped his rifle, nodding with clenched teeth. Jake could hear the thermite still burning in the man's shoulder. He was lucky, a few centimetres to the right or down and it would have burned straight through his lung. The wounded soldier tried to flinch away as Jake leaned forward and injected him in the neck with a cocktail of emergency pain killers using his command and control unit. The look of surprise on the soldier's face faded as he passed out and Jake couldn't help but look at the others who weren't as lucky. The thermite in some of their wounds was still flaring, sending out shocks of smoke and colour. I'm starting to think I should have taken my chances in an escape shuttle. These people would still be marching around guarding a quiet storage hangar if I didn't take the long way.
The sub-hangar deck had been cleared of all non-critical personnel and as he scanned the large area he could see the thermal outlines of two squads making their way to the main hold through a maze of ladders, loading platforms, and elevation pads. Funny, two months ago I wouldn't even wonder if there was something I could say to stop this firefight from breaking out and now that I've got the conscience I'm at a loss for words. A better man would give up and let himself be put in a cell, but I've been there and I'm not going back. At long last he spotted his ship. It was just behind a small, streamlined high priority courier ship that hid all but the nose of the Uriel fighter. “Good to see the directions that security officer gave me were spot on, I was starting to wonder,” he said to himself as he dove into an access trench, the closest squad of soldiers were taking up positions just on the other side of one of the main hangar doors. He checked his command unit to see if there was any link to his fighter.