The first team's mission was to blow a precision hole in the station's hull to get inside and defend that position while the second team fitted a portable docking collar that would allow our shuttles to connect and offload my people, so we could take the place deck by deck.
The SEALs worked quickly and confidently, and within five minutes they'd set their charges and pulled back to what the computers insisted (but I doubted) was a safe location on the hull. Thirty seconds later the Bearclaw's computer triggered the series of charges, ripping a neat, nearly circular four meter hole in the station's hull. A few seconds later the SEALs were climbing over the lip and disappearing inside.
The second team was approaching the station, almost in position. Six of them had hold of the docking collar, and they skillfully guided it into position around the gash in the hull. Setting the collar took a little more time than placing the charges, and it was about fifteen minutes before our shuttles got the go-ahead to begin the approach.
The SEALs inside didn't run into any resistance at first. The area beyond the insertion hole was now vacuum, so any security personnel on the station would have to suit up before they could try to respond. By the time they got organized and attacked the foothold, our first shuttle was inbound, and the SEALs only had to hold out for ten minutes or so.
Although outnumbered, the team was well-trained and equipped, and they were able to beat back two assaults with relative ease and minor losses. Before the third attack came my people were swarming aboard and launching our own assault that wiped out the entire security force threatening the landing area.
My first shuttle had landed in vacuum conditions, but after we'd secured the area we took the time to pressurize the now-sealed off section. The second group came aboard in a much more orderly manner, and I organized my sections to move out and begin to secure the station.
The area we were in was a storage facility, large and connected to what we believed to be several main arteries through the station. We'd entered through the "top" of the station, and we were close to the axis, where there was low gravity. Our intel was far from complete, and battleops had given me discretion on how to proceed. I sent one section through what I believed to be a maintenance conduit with instructions to find and take control of the main power plant. They had our best guess as to where it was, and I sent my most experienced junior officer, Lieutenant Frost, to command. Frost had been in Achilles too, and afterward he fought at Sandoval, which wasn't the bloodbath Columbia had been but was no walk in the park either.
The SEALs were too heavily armored to move quickly through the station, so I ordered them to stay and defend the landing area and act as a mobile reserve. They didn't like staying behind, or they didn't like taking orders from me. Or maybe both. But they were pros, and they were under my command, so they followed orders.
I took the rest of the company up through was appeared to be the main transport tube to the surface areas. The entrance to the tube was 60 meters above our position, but in this gravity all we had to do was jump and be careful not to smash too hard into the ceiling. It took about ten minutes to get everyone through the hatch. We had a couple of people jump too enthusiastically and inflict some light damage to their suits, but no major problems.
There was a single large tube, which lift cars normally traversed, flanked by two smaller passageways with metal ladders. I figured they'd have shut down the lifts, so we split into two groups and started to climb up the ladder. Every fifty meters or so we'd get to a landing with hatches leading to other storage and work areas. We ran into a few maintenance bots and a couple station workers, but no organized resistance.
As we got higher, the climbing got a bit tougher, though of course it was not really very difficult in armor. The gravity increased the closer we got to the surface, and now you could really fall if you lost your grip, and maybe take out a bunch of your comrades as you did. I reminded everyone three times - or maybe four - to be careful. The decks got much closer together as well, and now there were landings every ten meters. When we got to the level we thought housed the main data center we got into our first real firefight.
The landing here was fairly large, with four doorways leading out. There were security personnel at each of these, firing at us as we emerged from the transport tubes. The security officers had light energy weapons, very effective at short range against lightly armored targets, but it took a direct hit at very close range to do any significant damage to an armored marine. We were close. In fact this was knife-fighting range for us, and since we were at a big positional disadvantage, instead of conducting a lengthy exchange of fire I ordered a charge against all four entryways.
"Charge and take the enemy positions as you emerge. Tube one, alternate. Odds take the north portal, evens the east. Tube two, odds to the south, evens to the west. Now!" North, south, east, and west were pure constructs, of course, familiar reference points assigned to directions by our battle computers.
I was about halfway down the transport tube in the middle of our formation where my training told me I was supposed to be. My gut told me otherwise, and I couldn't wait to get off this ladder and into the fight. Hector projected a schematic of the battle inside my visor. I could see my people, a series of blue dots, moving quickly from the platform into the corridors beyond the hatches. I could see red dots - the enemy - falling back slowly.
The fight was over quickly. This was the first time in all my assaults I'd seen true hand-to-hand fighting. We didn't often get this close to the enemy, but these confined spaces were very different from the usual battlefield. The station security troops wore body armor, but it was no match for our powered suits. My troops were also armed with close quarter blasters - our mag-rifles would have torn the station structure apart, and we wanted to capture the place, not turn it into rubble. The pulse laser blasters were powerful weapons, but their intensity dropped off quickly in atmosphere, making them at best good for short-range work.
Our weapons were far more effective against their unpowered armor than theirs were against our powered suits, so we were able to charge into their fire, taking only a few casualties. Once in hand-to-hand range we finished the job with our molecular blades. The blades were a sort of bayonet that retracted into the arm of the fighting suit when not in use. About 30 centimeters long when deployed, the blade was honed down to an edge just one molecule thick, which could cut through virtually anything, especially with the enhanced strength of our suits behind it. In a few cases the troops didn't even bother with the blades. A nuclear powered fist was enough to take out a lightly armored defender, and there were a few crushed skulls among the casualties.
By the time I got up to the platform it was all over. We had three casualties, two minor wounds with some suit damage, and one KIA, hit by a lucky shot that burned through the armpit of his suit. Our armor was tough everywhere, but it was weakest at the joints, where mobility required some concessions from protection.
I walked over to the northern corridor to check things out, and I found a blood-soaked slaughterhouse. There were a few charred bodies, the victims of our blaster fire as we came in, but most of the work here was done with the blades, and that worked was effectively done. There were severed limbs, bodies sliced in half, or nearly so, and bloody, unidentifiable bits of flesh everywhere. The walls were literally dripping with blood, small rivers of droplets slowly sliding down the smooth plasti-steel. Further down the hallway there were at least half a dozen bodies, victims of blaster fire as they tried to run. The other corridors were similar, and the south was worst of all, with the body parts piled so high we had to drag them out onto the platform so we could get past and head down the corridor.