Star Force: Mettle (SF9) Read online

  “No, just dead bodies. Hopefully there are some more below.”

  “Tram secured,” Megan’s voice sounded in all their helmets.

  “Dan, you still up top?” Jason asked.

  “Level 6, chasing a rogue.”

  “Let me know when you get him.”

  “Will do.”

  Jason adjusted the frequency of his comm unit to standard security bands, selecting the one for command. “Archon 025 to control, acknowledge.”

  There was a long pause, as if the person in the control room wasn’t expecting radio contact.

  “Control room here.”

  “Is your security Chief handy?”

  “Uh, yeah. Just a second…”

  “Chief Porter here. I’m assuming you’re the ones that just arrived at the station,” he asked, a bit peeved at them not checking in.

  “We are. We’ve secured the tram terminal, but we’re going to need help sweeping and securing the starport. I need all the men you can spare to lock down each section as we clear them, starting with 6. We’ve also got more prisoners to be hauled out, bodies to be recovered, and a number of civilian survivors to be dealt with. Keep the elevators locked down until further notice, we don’t want any of the enemy sneaking past our lines.”

  “You said there were survivors? How many?”

  “Group of 20 to 30, bound up in a room on level 6. Do you have a holding area for the prisoners yet?”

  “We’re working on it.”

  “Work faster. We have other facilities to clear, and I don’t want to leave you here without proper containment.”

  “Nor do I. I’ll take care of it. Just send them up when you bag them.”

  “Have your men rendezvous at the stairwell down to level 6. We’ll coordinate from there.”

  “Yes, sir,” Porter said, a mixture of relief and fatigue.

  “How many civilians and staff are missing?”

  “Over a thousand.”

  “Do you have medics?”

  “A handful up here, the rest were caught below when the attack came. Our med facilities are on the lower levels.”

  “Get them ready, some of the captives looked pretty banged up. And check in with your sector satellite facilities, make sure none of the Chinese slipped through. We can’t chance them having a foothold in our rear areas when we move forward.”

  “I don’t see how they could have got through, but I’ll make the inquiries.”

  “And pull as many personnel as you can back into the spaceport, security or not. We’ll look for more survivors below, but don’t count on there being any.”

  “Understood,” Porter said grimly.

  “Contact me on this frequency if you have any updates, otherwise let us work our way through this. We’ll call if we require anything else.”

  “Yes, sir…and thank you.”

  “Sorry we couldn’t get here sooner,” Jason said, ending the conversation and toggling his comm system to pipe through this frequency on a regular basis.

  “They’ve got supply crates,” Megan said, appearing with Brian as they came back from the tram station. “I think we can assume they’re making regular trips.”

  “Stay here and keep the hole plugged,” Jason said as the six of them met in an intersection. “The rest of us will start clearing level 6 with security holding our turf. If another car comes through let us know and we’ll double time it back here.”

  “Will do,” Brian said, tagging Megan on the shoulder as he headed back to the terminal. She followed a step behind, leaving Paul and Jason with Jack and Randy.

  “Room by room?” Jack asked.

  “Only way to make sure we don’t miss anyone,” Paul noted.

  Randy glanced right, then left. “Wish this place wasn’t so big.”

  “I hear you,” Jason said, feeling the same.

  Paul leaned over and picked up one of the unconscious men and swung his limp body up over his shoulder so he could carry him back upstairs. “Let’s get going before they try and send more through.”

  5

  “You hear that?” Brian asked.

  Megan strained her hearing until a muted thunk and the whine of mechanical lifts made it obvious that the tram terminal had been activated.

  “Incoming car,” she guessed, backing up to the security doors…or what was left of them. One side of the heavy metallic sliding doors had been blown off its track and peeled back inside the spaceport along the bottom, while the other one was mostly intact but missing several chunks where the explosives had been placed. It was currently half retracted into the wall, giving her some decent cover.

  Brian positioned himself behind the curl of the other door, with both of their weapons poking out of the narrow gap in between and trained on the egress doors, which were still shut, but the sounds of the lift system were growing even louder, meaning it wouldn’t be much longer until the enemy reinforcements started spilling out.

  “Tram incoming,” Megan reported for the benefit of the others as they searched the lower levels of the spaceport. Listening in to their comms, she knew they’d been racking up a considerable amount of prisoners, seemingly spread out randomly across almost every level, doing what she didn’t know, but it had started to irk her that she and Brian had to wait and play guards while the others got all the action…but it seemed they were about to get a reversal of fortune.

  Brian reached back over his left shoulder and unclasped a latch on the top of his equipment pack and fished his hand inside, pulling out a stinger grenade and tossing it to Megan, who deftly caught it mid air. He pulled out a second for himself and resecured the clasp, then waited in throwing position, with his thumb hovering over the charge button.

  A loud shimmy was felt through the floor a moment before the doors leading to the tram parted, revealing a second pair of clear ones underneath that were part of the car itself. They pulled back a split second later, getting only a meter apart before two green balls passed through and bounced around…one hitting the far side of the tram and the other bouncing off of one man’s head.

  A moment later the paint bombs blew apart, covering the inside of the tram with green splatters that carried the stun energy pumped into them by the trigger charging mechanisms. Several of the men went down, with more than half of the rest getting hit by small pieces, with those parts of their body numbing as a result.

  Before they could react stinger rounds started coming in through the doorway, targeting all those who were still standing and dropping them to the floor in a heap…but the rest were out of range down the length of the bus-like tram, so a brief pause in the combat ensued that let the Chinese survivors regroup and reorient themselves.

  Megan and Brian waited patiently. The enemy had nowhere to go save for turning the tram around and heading back the way they had come. The tracks leading out to nearby spaceports were physically separate from this line and had been locked down by the control room early on, meaning that in order for the Chinese to continue their advance they’d have to make their way up to level 1 and release the security doors…something that wasn’t going to happen now that the 2s had arrived.

  Retreat or attack…those were their only two options, because the Archons weren’t going to come to them. A long minute later the enemy chose the second option and mass rushed into view and out of the tram, firing bullets wildly down the hallway as they met with a hail of green stingers.

  When the leading edge of the group went down those behind took up their firing positions as the entire group continued to run forward, stepping on or over their downed comrades. Half of the thirty or so remaining Chinese went down before they reached the explosive-torn doors, whereupon they had to pass through 1 or 2 at a time.

  Brian had moved back a few steps along the hallway’s wall, keeping the twisted door between him and the rest of the gun-toting Chinese, peppering those trying to make their way through the breach with paint and dropping them in the gap, making it all the more difficult for the rest to
come through, but come they did, staggering like a hoard of zombies and firing a slew of bullets whenever they got the chance in a berserker-like rush designed to intimidate their opponents into retreat or hesitation, both of which would give the Chinese the advantage in a less than opportune situation…at the cost of many men.

  One of the Chinese soldiers fell to his knees, his chest covered in paint and his finger still pulling the trigger, hitting one of his own men in the head and killing him instantly, but before the unconscious man’s finger fell off the trigger the assault rifle tipped towards the wall and fired a round that hit a meter in front of Brian, then deflected off and hit him square in the faceplate.

  His head jerked backwards from the force of the impact and he stumbled a few steps, unable to return fire. The men coming through the gap tried to take advantage of the lack of return fire when they were suddenly hit from their left flank by several point blank shots from Megan, who had hidden behind the half-open door while Brian played bait.

  Those inside the door line went down instantly, and the next man through caught the butt of Megan’s rifle in the face, knocking him backwards with a bloody and broken nose into the men behind him…then Megan’s red armored form pushed her way through the doors and mowed down the rest of the soldiers, using their man as cover as he struggled to keep his balance. She finished him off last with a kick to the gut that knocked him backwards onto the floor, then added a green splatter approximately where her foot had landed.

  “Brian?” she asked, firing a couple extra shots into wriggling men on the floor.

  “Here,” he said, firing off a shot of his own on the other side then walking through the gap…with a huge cracked glass-like crater in his faceplate where the ricochet had hit.

  “Damn,” Megan commented, turning her attention to the tram, rifle held at the ready as she approached, not expecting anyone conscious to still be inside but checking none the less. “That’s a nasty hit.”

  “My vision is obscured, but I don’t want to lose the helmet just yet,” he said, following her inside. Aside from the men down at the door, the car was empty of other people, but it had several equipment crates stashed in the back stacked two high. Judging from the size of the car and the number of men, which she guessed was around fifty, they’d crammed about all they could inside, making her wonder just how many troops they had in play.”

  “Tram secure,” she reported. “We’ve got a lot of prisoners down here, plus some Christmas gifts they brought for us.”

  “Such as?” Jason’s voice responded.

  Megan walked over and popped the lid of one of the crates. “Ammo, explosives,” she said, glancing over at the one Brian pried open, “and foodstuffs for starters. Looks like they were planning on camping out for a while.”

  “We’ve found more of the same down here,” Emily chimed in. “They even commandeered the galley and started reorganizing the storage shelves with their own supplies added in.”

  “You think they’ve been stashing this stuff away the past few months, little by little with each cargo shipment?” Megan asked.

  “Security is supposed to inspect all shipments into lease zones,” Paul pointed out over the comm. “Sorry, we’re going to have to postpone the analysis. I think we found another holdout.”

  “I’ve requested security send some men down to pick up your prisoners, Megan,” Jason said, whispering as he and Paul snuck up on their targets. “Sit on them until they arrive.”

  “Copy that,” she acknowledged, not wanting to distract them further.

  “Wow,” Brian said, pulling open another crate to reveal a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher with extra rounds. “No wonder they’ve been getting through the security doors.”

  “Let’s clean this stuff out and get the errant weapons picked up before anyone wakes up. I don’t want it within easy grab range.”

  “Them first,” Brian said, clipping his rifle onto the hook on the back of his armor and walking over to the tram car’s door and the wad of bodies on the floor. He picked up several assault rifles and stacked them on top of one of the unopened crates, then pulled off the ammo pouches, knife sheaths, grenades, and other odds and ends that some of the soldiers were carrying as Megan began dragging the processed ones out of the car and stacking them up against the walls of the small terminal area this side of the broken security doors.

  When they finished with them Megan went through to the other side and began the same process, with Brian hovering around both groups alert for trouble. By the time the first security guards arrived they had all the weapons retrieved and stacked within the tram, with Brian keeping himself between the prisoners and the weapons.

  “Do you have restraints?” Megan asked the first man to arrive.

  He turned to the woman behind him, who held up a bundle of the plastic ‘instacuffs’ for her to see.

  “Good, but we’ll need more than that,” she said, motioning for her to toss them her way.

  “How many you got?” the man said as his team of five came down the hall.

  “Sixty two,” she said, kneeling down and starting to bind the prisoners’ hands behind their backs.

  One of the guards whistled.

  “That’s a lot to carry,” another one said, rubbing his already sore shoulder.

  “One at a time, fellas,” Megan prompted. “Where’s the containment area located?”

  “Empty residential wing on level 3. Chief has the techs rewiring the door locks so we can seal them from the outside.”

  “Alright then, drag these guys to the nearest elevator and pile them there. The rest of our team should have the lower levels cleared by the time you get done.”

  “Thank you,” one of the guards emphasized as he moved towards the first prisoner Megan had restrained.

  “Just keep one of you on station as a babysitter…don’t let these guys out of your sights, no matter how unconscious they appear to be.”

  “Believe me, we’re not taking any chances,” the woman said, reaching down to pick another one up over her shoulders in a fireman carry. Soon the five security officers were gone, and their stash of captives was down to 57.

  Brian saw one of the men on his side of the doorway begin to stir and reached for his rifle…then thought better of it and instead detached the pack on his back. It wasn’t much of a burden to carry in the low gravity, but he’d been wearing it ever since they’d arrived and his shoulders let out a tiny sigh of relief when the weight came off. He set the pack leaning against the side of the tram and pulled out a stun stick and flipped the on button…then walked over and jabbed the man in the ribs, reversing his trek back to consciousness.

  “How are you on ammo?” he asked.

  “Decent,” she said, glancing at the counter on the side of her rifle, then slinging it onto the hook on her back, “but there’s no way of knowing how many more firefights we’re going to get into before this campaign is over.”

  “If we have to, we can use their weapons,” Brian noted, reaching down to jab another man starting to show movement.

  “That rocket launcher is tempting, but I’d prefer we stick with the stingers.”

  “Same here,” he agreed, “but I think we need to call for more supplies and security, I have a feeling we’re taking too many prisoners for them to handle.”

  Megan glanced around at all the enemy combatants cluttering the hall. “I know.”

  Two hours later, after a nasty little firefight on the bottom level, the sweep of the spaceport was complete, along with a casualty count of 1,286. Only a few dozen people had survived on the lower levels, managing to hide out in areas the Chinese couldn’t quickly find them, one of which was a child who had hid under her bed while her parents were gunned down in the same room. Similar acts of carnage were widespread throughout the spaceport’s lower levels, leaving a bloody mess of bodies virtually around every corner.

  Chief Porter had assembled a small retrieval team to start recovering the corpses and a cleaning
crew to follow, but he had nowhere to store the bodies so he reluctantly began stacking them in a temporary shelter outside the spaceport…an unpressurized ‘tent’ that would keep the corpses from rotting, though subsequent depressurization damage mangled them even more.

  The surviving techs were dispersed throughout the facility to get the security feeds back online, which required a lot of patch work on the control lines, but once they got the tram station connection reestablished they were able to monitor approaching traffic from kilometers away via the control station on level 1, allowing the Archons to be relieved from their guard duty and be replaced by a small contingent of security looking after the mechanics disassembling the damaged security doors.

  Megan and Brian met up with the rest of the 2s in the control room, along with Chief Porter and a handful of other security personnel and one station Administrator that had survived.

  Jason pulled off his helmet, taking his first breath of unprocessed air in more than twelve hours and ran his gloved fingers through his short hair, shaking off beads of sweat. Behind him Paul and the others did likewise, save for Dan who elected to keep his helmet on.

  “I need a comm line to Atlantis and Lunar Security Headquarters,” Jason said impatiently, setting his helmet down on a nearby table.

  “Already got the latter,” one of the staffers said, directing him to a side monitor with the image of an empty chair showing.

  “Commander Sheridan?” Jason asked.

  A moment passed then a man appeared standing behind the chair. “Hold on a moment,” he said, raising a pause finger. “Let’s make this a conference call, shall we.”

  Suddenly the screen split in three, with Greg and Sara’s faces appearing.

  “Here,” the staffer said, shuffling the auxiliary feeds to different screens off to the side. “Camera on the center monitor.”

  “Jason, what’s your status?” Greg asked.

  “Spaceport is secure, but we have a lot of prisoners and even more dead bodies. The Chinese shot just about everyone they came in contact with. We lost about 80% of the inhabitants.”