Chapter 12
“Once that door opens I want them dead and gone,” Paige ordered her marines. “Mathias, how are things looking on your end?”
“We’re about to move into the cruiser on our end,” Mathias reported with a chuckle evident in his voice. “We’ve got a flamer set up and I’m just waiting for them to try boarding.”
“Copy that,” Paige responded. “We’re set for when they board, and the Manassas and her escorts are about to use their PPCs to shut down their power, and they’re sending over some more of my Marines to make some new entry holes if we need the reinforcements.”
“Copy that ma’am,” Mathias replied. “I’ll handle this side.”
“Oorah marine!” Paige said as she shouldered her infantry scale gauss rifle.
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The airlock in front of Mathias opened and a trio of Vorcha bolted through the door before being cut down by the two fireteams that were holding the choke point the few rounds that connected bouncing off the Mithril clad Marines as they prepared for counter-boarding actions.
“Flamer is ready for action,” Mathias said as he stood up with the 150 kg flamer on his back.
“Set,” a trio of Marines stacked up on the airlock doors and unleashed a hellish crossfire into the Krogan and Vorcha that were still trying to breach and get into the Marine’s own ship.
“Moving,” Mathias stepped forward and out of cover as one Krogan tanked a rifle round and began charging the marine. A stream of fire then left the flamer and the Krogan screamed as he dropped to the ground and tried to roll and put it out. The airlock then took on a hellish glow as Mathias and his two fireteams began moving past the flaming corpses and pushed into the enemy cruiser. “I want Fireteam Charlie to head to the engine room and keep it secure,” Mathias ordered as he stripped the flamer off of his back now that it was out of fuel. “I’ll take fireteam Bravo and take the bridge.”
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“I should have taken the flamer,” Paige muttered to herself as she hosed down a Krogan with her rifle and watched as some of the holes began sealing up before she blew his brains out. “We need to start moving up,” Paige told her two fireteams.
“You will not stand in my way!” a much larger Krogan than the other ones they had been killing burst through and threw two of Paige’s Marines into the bulkhead before turning and facing the Marine CO. “Where is the female?!” the Krogan roared as he charged Paige, taking rounds from her rifle without flinching. Trusting his enhanced regeneration to keep him alive while he tried to kill the foes standing before him.
“What do they feed you?” Paige asked as she slapped a new magazine into her rifle and continued firing, her rifle kicking back into her shoulder as she backpedaled before ducking out of the way as the Krogan tried to lunge and tackle her.
Spinning around, Paige threw her shoulder into the back of the massive Krogan before shooting out his kneecaps at the same time, temporarily crippling him before kicking him into the bulkhead and watching as he turned around while trying to stand, only to be faced by the barrel of Paige’s rifle pointed at his head.
“Regenerate this,” Paige muttered as she fired her entire magazine into the massive Krogan’s head before turning and looking at her two fireteams who were finishing off the rest of the enemy boarders. “We secure?”
“Aye ma’am,” one of the two marines that the large Krogan had thrown into the bulkhead replied. “I’m gonna have to stay here though, I think I’ve got a concussion.”
“Doc!” Paige called for their corpsman. “Pick two people to stay and cover you while you treat these two,” she indicated the two that had been physically thrown into the bulkheads. “The rest of us are pushing through and taking the enemy ship.”
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Mathias turned and drilled a Vorcha in the chest with a burst from his rifle as his fireteam turned and shredded the rest of the Vorcha’s teammates.
“This is Manassas actual, we have boarding craft inbound with reinforcements,” came over the encrypted comms channels that they were on. “Signal with your beacons and we’ll direct them your way.”
“This is Colonel Paige,” came the Colonel’s response. “I’ve got two wounded, and a bunch of pissed off Krogan and Vorcha trying to prevent us from taking this ship,” a burst of gunfire was heard over the comms. “We’ve secured engineering, but we don’t have the personnel to take the bridge from here.”
“Copy that Colonel,” the voice of Major Jenkins responded. “We’re bringing the heat in.”
“We’ve got our engineering area locked down,” Mathias reported to his XO and CO. “We’re pushing the bridge now. I think this was a secondary ship because we’re not encountering the same level of resistance that the Colonel is.”
“We’re diverting a couple of fireteams to you anyway,” Major Jenkins responded. “The frigates were fairly easy to take over and we’d rather not take any major losses.”
“Copy that sir,” Mathias replied. “I’m sending a pair of my people to the secondary airlock with a beacon while we move to take the bridge.”
Mathias turned and gestured to two of his fireteam members and sent them down the hallway to the secondary airlock.
“Watch your corners,” Mathias muttered to himself and his teammates as he took the remaining three members of his fireteam and began scanning for hostiles on his way to the bridge. “The power is starting to come back on and while the Krogan might charge us, the Vorcha are more likely to be hiding in the corner for an ambush.”
“Wilco,” came the reply as they moved at a decent pace to the locked bridge door. “Chris, get up here and breach this door,” Mathias ordered. “Then prep flashbangs.”
The named breacher came and planted his shaped charges at the weak points on the door and stood clear with a detonator in his hand. “Fire in the hole!” Chris yelled as he detonated the charges while Mathias and the other three marines tossed flashbangs into the room before moving in and killing the Vorcha and Krogan will they were still blind and deaf.
“Clear!” Mathias said as he checked his sector and turned to watch the bridge door as the rest of his team declared the space clear as well.
“Alright people, I want those bodies policed and then let’s get the power back on. Our reinforcements can take care of mopping up what’s left of the enemy here.”
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“Fuck!” Paige yelled as she dropped back behind one of the barricades that they had taken from the enemy. “They’re using grenades to try and breach into engineering now that we own it!”
Shrapnel pinged off of her armor as the grenade exploded, the armor of one of the dead Krogan and Vorcha bodies turning into ceramic shards as the grenades kept coming in.
“Colonel,” Major Jenkin’s voice said calmly over the comms “You might want to take cover.”
“Get ready!”Paige ordered the two fireteams with her. “And watch your fire! We got blue incoming!”
The sound of handheld gauss weaponry instead of the propellant based weapons began to echo in the corridor outside of the engineering hallway as the enemies that had pinned Paige and her fireteams began to turn so they could engage the reinforcements that had just arrived.
“Alright, let’s push!” Paige ordered as she led her teams into the corridor, the remaining crew members of the Blood Pack cruiser fighting ferociously as they went down, but eventually falling to the volume of fire that the armored marines brought to bear.
“I had a fireteam secure the bridge while we came to bail you out,” Jenkins reported to his CO. “Intel from the few captured on the ground by Carter puts the leader of this op on the cruiser that you picked to board.”
“It was probably that big motherfucker who refused to go down until I emptied my mag into his head,” Paige said as she took a moment to breathe. “Let’s get this finished.”
“Aye ma’am,” Jenkins responded. “Cleanup should be all that’s left.”
“And we have two new cruisers and some frigates that are in,” Paige trailed off as she looked at the damage left behind. “Somewhat better shape then the one we took from the pirates.”
“We’ll have the engineers and people on the Argo take a look at it,” Jenkins said with a chuckle. “I’m sure we’ll have them up and running fairly soon.”
“The big problem is going to be crewing everything,” Paige muttered to her XO as she made her way to the bridge. “We’re going to have to get the pet projects finished down there on Korlus and start recruitment soon. Otherwise we’re going to be stuck without a full defense force up here.”
“That’s a problem for Hull to figure out, Ma’am,” Jenkins told his CO as she sat in the captain’s chair. “We just have to get it moving to where we can work on it.”
“I need a vacation,” Paige said as she unsealed her helmet and took in the smell of violence that littered the cruiser. “This entire ordeal has been a pain in the ass.”
“I’ll hold down the fort if you put in for one, ma’am,” Jenkins replied. “We all know how to do our jobs.”
“You’re marines,” Paige gave her XO a Look™. “If I leave you alone for more than five minutes you’re going to try and either eat it or blow it up.”
“I haven’t blown anything up in a while,” one marine within earshot protested. “It’s been at least five years.”
Then one of the panels on the bridge started smoking as a marine was using it before sparking and dying.
“Oops,” the Marine said sheepishly as he looked anywhere but his CO. “Turns out they had a lot of porn on this terminal, and not all of it was of aliens either.”
“Like they’d have porn made off of a human,” one marine scoffed at his teammate.
“I swear!” The marine replied. “She was hot too! Her legs went on for days and her rack wasn’t bad either.”
“Heads out of the gutter,” Paige slapped her marines on the back of their helmeted heads. “We’ve still got work to do.”