Gata battleship, Berge system
‘You’ve done well,’ said Desulet. ‘Ten out of ten for initiative. I can see why you’re the President’s blue-eyed boy. Only thing is, you didn’t realise these new experimental shielded suits are a project I initiated.’ He held up his tablet. ‘Which also means I have the full schematics and the access codes to the two prototypes. Which to be honest, I thought I’d lost. That’s until you so kindly brought them to me.’
‘Why didn’t you shut down the suit earlier?’ Bache said, having to raise his voice to be heard now the suit was dead.
‘You cleverly shut down the cameras. We had no idea what or who was attacking us and I’m the only one with the codes for the suits,’ he said, grinning.
‘Why so happy? If you don’t mind me asking,’ said Bache. ‘Your plans are in tatters, along with the fleet you spent years building.’
‘It’s a big deal for my boss, but not so much for me,’ he said. ‘Whatever the outcome, I’ve made sure I come out of it smelling of corallin blooms.’
‘Your boss?’ Bache questioned. ‘This hasn’t been your operation then?’
Desulet grinned again and nodded at his men. They dragged Bache in his dead suit through the ship and out to a hangar on the starboard side. Desulet had been conversing with someone on his tablet and as they arrived, a sleek black private yacht swept into the hangar at speed. It slowed, turned and settled with barely a jolt. Bache raised his eyebrows at the skill of the pilot and thought whoever it was should give Clunk a few landing lessons.
A side airlock hissed and sank inwards before sweeping upwards, revealing an elderly lady wearing a gold lamé dress and leaning on an intricate silver walking stick. Bache had a sudden and uncontrolled sharp intake of breath as he recognised who it was.
‘Oh, you’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,’ he moaned, as Ystolion Flast stepped carefully down from the airlock, the gold thread in her dress shimmering in the bright hangar lights.
‘Good morning, Mr Loftt,’ she mocked, in a cold and mirthless tone. ‘I’ve looked forward to this day for some time.’
‘So, this has been you all along then?’ he said.
‘Well, originally it was my husband’s project,’ she said, curling her top lip. ‘You remember my husband? The one you helped murder, along with my darling son?’
They all staggered as the ship shook again. Flast turned and glared at Desulet.
‘You’re supposed to be disposing of that fucking GDA ship and make sure there’s no survivors.’
‘You’re actually going to obey that order are you?’ Bache’s muted voice called from inside the dead suit.
‘You see, young man, I have to remain in my position until the operation has come to fruition,’ said Desulet, as he turned to leave.
‘Forty-seven thousand crew,’ shouted Bache. ‘What about their fruition?’
‘Stop moaning, Loftt,’ growled Flast. ‘The mining rights for two systems outweigh a few casualties.’
Bache realised he had to try and do something. He gritted his teeth and surged forward in the suit as Desulet walked past. It toppled over, taking the two soldiers holding him down too. They all clattered into Desulet, who also fell, his tablet crashing onto the deck heavily, the screen breaking and going dark.
Icons suddenly lit up inside Bache’s helmet, he felt a surge of adrenaline as the suit began to power up again. The moment he found he had movement, he rolled over and smashed the tablet to pieces with his fist.
‘Shoot him,’ Desulet screamed, pushing himself away and glaring at his destroyed tablet.
Bache hadn’t wasted a second of his newfound agility and had his shield up as a first priority. The timing was optimal, because as the soldiers’ laser rifles pulsed, the bolts dissipated around the suit in a spectacular lightning display, catching the two soldiers who’d fallen with him and rendering them unconscious.
Flast shook her head and scowled at Desulet, all the while backing slowly towards her ship. Bache on the other hand was able to stand again and using his arm-mounted laser weapon, he downed the remaining soldiers.
Desulet, meanwhile, had stood and sprinted for the hangar airlock. Bache turned and got one shot off towards him before his shield was hit by a cannon bolt that knocked him off his feet again. Desulet hurled himself through the airlock door and disappeared as it closed behind him.
Bache swore, turned back and fired a volley of shots at Flast. She by this time was inside her ship’s shields and the bolts dissipated up and around the hull. He cursed again as she too vanished behind an airlock door.
Bache had only just got himself off the floor once again when Flast’s ship jumped from inside the hangar, the vacuum snap sending him sprawling in the other direction this time.
He didn’t need the suit’s guidance to find his way back to the aft confluence node as he’d memorised it. He also didn’t walk there, as he guessed Desulet would have that guarded again and this time with a lot more personnel. He grinned as he drove a heavy loader at its maximum speed, sliding around on the corridor floors. He hit the walls at nearly every junction. The machine was only designed to operate on the rough-textured hangar floors and its composite wheels had barely any traction along the super-smooth passageways.
Reaching what he knew to be the last corner before the node, he gunned the machine, ducked down and threw it at the bend. Wall panels crashed around him as he all but removed the apex of the corner and slewed sideways into the outside wall. Peering through the loading forks he could see around twenty personnel surrounding the hatch and all training their weapons on him.
The blaze of fire came a split second later and lumps of loader and corridor panelling rained down and around his shield. His speed didn’t falter though, if anything he was able to squeeze a little more from the electric loader now he was travelling in a straight line.
Realising they weren’t able to stop the thing, the soldiers began slowly backing up, then running in the opposite direction as he closed on them. Three of them were in armoured suits and unable to get out of the way. They continued firing while clumping backwards until the loader ploughed into them at thirty kilometres per hour.
Bache kept his head down, punched the brakes and swerved into the wall as he reached the hatch, ripping it off its hinges. Two of the armoured suits weren’t moving, but one of them, the one that had been at the rear, was trying to get up. He dived off the loader, grabbed one of their dropped laser cannons and with his back to the opposite wall, fired into the node four times.
He lowered his head and closed his eyes as the inevitable explosion blew out a whole section of the wall right in front of him. The shield took the brunt of it, but he still felt some of the force against his chest, knocking the wind out of him. Now the loader had stopped, the soldiers had about-faced and begun to get brave again, sending random fire back towards him. Bache pulled himself together and as he began to return fire, he suddenly found himself on the float and a whirring noise all around as emergency hand holds motored out from the walls and ceiling. The hit on the node must have disrupted the artificial gravity generator.
He had a dilemma, as he needed both hands to hold the big cannon and also to move around. The loader floated over and he was able to kick against it to push himself back the way he had come. When he was in the right position, he fired the cannon several times at the loader. This did two things that benefitted him. Firstly, the recoil pushed him off down the corridor in the direction he wanted to go and secondly, the loader was sent spiralling in the opposite direction and towards the enemy.
A warning alarm sounded that he was sure he hadn’t heard before and checking the readout in his peripheral vision, he realised why not. ‘Hull breach’ flashed in red and checking his surroundings, he realised with horror he was accelerating. Wherever the breach was, he was going there at an ever-increasing rate and in a short space of time, he would be outside the ship and in considerable trouble.