Chapter 13

Sepia star system, inner system.

Capital city of Landing, Governor's Palace.

"Major. We haven't had any contact for 5 minutes. Should we sally out?"

"Negative lieutenant." Simply said the major as he sat, his back to the barricade as he drank from his canteen. Technically he was as comfortable upright as sitting in his armor, and the integrated life support system could hydrate him through direct transfusion or extend a tube for him to drink, but human psychology was the one thing no one had managed to modify without creating absolute abominations, and thus he felt better rested just sitting down and drinking from a good old canteen. Besides, appearing nonchalant was essential for his troops' morale.

They were, after all, facing people who had rolled over one of their heavily armed perimeter teams in mere seconds.

"We let them come to us." He continued. "Our goal here isn't to eradicate them, it's to buy the general the time he needs." He looked up as he capped his canteen and returned it to the pouched festooned webbing covering his torso, the one piece of gear that seemed to have survived mankind's long history more or less intact. "So we're not sallying. If they retreat, good, if they don't, we'll hold the line. Understood lieutenant?"

"Yes sir!" Said the young pup -to the major's eyes at least-, before frowning as he looked over the barricade. "Here they c-"

An Alterian Marine Corps Standard Pulse Rifle, Mark 96, wasn't necessarily the most advanced or the most powerful of weapons. But it still fired a 1 cubic centimeter slug of tungsten, roughly 20 grams, at over 10 times the speed of sound, giving it over twice the muzzle energy a 20mm chemically propelled cannon round possessed. And the pulser fired over a hundred times per second.

The lieutenant's head didn't explode, it disintegrated. His full visor, heavily armored helmet could have stopped a single round. Maybe 3. The dozen that hit him as Hector and his corporals walked their fire along the barricade shredded it.

The major had slammed his helmet back into place and was rising, his gauss rifle in hand before he'd even fully processed what was happening.

He was still catching up when he began firing at the four figures standing in the hallway, who were deployed two ranks deep to allow them to engage simultaneously. Yet his brain noted that no matter how much fire his troops were throwing down the hallway, the figures weren't even twitching, just aiming and firing. Then his brain fully caught up with his eyes, and he frowned as he saw the telltale ripple of a shield. That...wasn't possible. He knew the SLF had a few personal shields generator for high ranking officials, but they couldn't take that kind of punishment! Besides, those were mercenaries, how could they-

His train of thought vanished as the fourth figure finally opened fire, and one of his laser cannons just...exploded. The gunshield, a gigantic slab of metal alloys that had withstood the pulser fire, just exploded alongside the weapon when an impossibly strong energy beam slammed into it.

Then the lead figures in the enemy formation pulled back. But they were too late. The air wavered, and with a peal of thunder, their shields fell, and a nearly animalistic howl rose from the SLF line as their foe's armor began to spark from laser and gauss weapon hits. But they still managed to stumble back behind their comrades, whose shields were fresh.

Then the hallway vanished in a series of flashes as the handful of one use plasma guns they had left fired. Normally they should have only been used on the major's orders, but...the SLF was a trained terrorist force, not a military unit. Besides, he had ordered his NCOs to use their best judgement for their most powerful weapons.

Once again, their enemy's shields flickered...and suddenly they flattened themselves against the walls on the side of the hallway.

The major had a split second to realize there was a massive weapon at the end of the hallway, hidden behind his enemies and their shields before a hundred million degree hot ball of fusing plasma ended his train of thought forever.

*****

Sarah whistled softly as she contemplated the carnage. She'd seen some fusion gun fire up close, but never one this big. The room looked like...Well it looked like someone had fired a gun who most considered to be a pocket nuclear weapon into it. The center of the room was gone, reduced to a crated of molten lava with the melted remains ceiling slowly falling onto it. The rest of the room...wasn't much better.

She wasn't even sure she could have found a single identifiable body in there. Hell, she wasn't sure she could have found a body at all.

"Everyone alright?" She asked over the com.

"Yeah. We shielded the newbie. She's a bit scorched around the edges, but she's fine." Answered one of the marines.

Sarah nodded as she contemplated the carnage. The counterpart of unleashing this kind of insanely powerful weapon in a closed environment was that the superheated air had to go somewhere, and that meant the surface, thus through them. And while even her marine's heavy assault power armor was up to the task, the combat armor they'd stuffed Sepia into it was not. Not without help at any rate.

"That's good." Then she paused as she finally thought abut the whole sentence. Did they just call the armorer newbie?

"Ma'am." Said Larry, interrupting her train of thought. "I'm getting com chatter. I think our friends here had some form of jammer, couldn't affect our stuff, but it seemed to have been masking other frequencies. Some of them are on the secure frequencies the Sepian government use. If we're getting them..."

"We're probably close to the frontline." Sarah put the newbie thought aside as she considered the situation. "Alright, pack up the cannon and let's get moving. Hopefully we'll catch them between the hammer and the anvil. Let's go people!"

*****

"General Razor, sir. We've....we've lost contact with major Song. Some of our support teams have also stopped responding."

The general sighed as the lieutenant made his report, and nodded.

"Alright. Pull everyone to the front. Throw everything we have at the gubernatorial guard, and set up a sensor net to alert us when those bastards arrive behind us." He looked up into the lieutenant's surprised gaze. "If those...mercenaries, have gotten through Song that easily, we can't win this fight...we can only try to take out the governor before they reach us. And if we fail, we can at least take some of those hired gun fucks with us." Razor grabbed his helmet, and donned it, before looking around at his field command post, meeting the gaze of each and every one of his aides and officers. "That means us as well people. What do you say, ready for one last fight?"

The roar he got in response was all the answer he needed, and he grabbed his weapon as his staff prepared themselves, before turning towards the lieutenant.

"Lead the way son. We're right behind you."

*****

"Well this is...creepy."

Sarah nodded at Seria's comment as they walked through the inferno that had once been the governor's personal quarters. The thermal backwash from the fusion gun hadn't just been to the surface of course, but Sarah hadn't expected it to be this severe. Everything that could have caught fire in the adjacent hallways had. The fire suppression system had triggered of course, but even the bodies had been burnt beyond recognition by the time the fire fighting foam had taken effect. Whichever side they'd fought on -or even if they'd been dead before the flames took them- erased by the fire.

"Ma'am. We're getting close. And the com chatter just intensified, I-"

Larry didn't need to finish his sentence. Even where they stood they could hear the cascade of explosions and gunfire as the fight errupted out of the background noise.

"They're launching a 'do or die' attack. Sergeant! I think it's time to throw caution to the wind."

"Right. Larry, you have the highest shield recharge, you'll take point." Sarah opened her mouth to protest, even she could tell her armor was the one with the best recharged shield out of the whole team, but a simple look by Hector made her mouth snap closed. The man didn't even need to take off his helmet for his 'don't try it skipper' stare to come through. "I'll go next, then Sally. Captain, you're behind her. Stephen, you get rear guard duty, the rest, gauss firsts and fusions after, understood?"

"Sir yes sir!"

"Alright, then move out!"

They charged through the corridors, straight at the sound of gunfire. Sarah pulled out her scanners as they did, she knew they were mostly useless -they were designed for the open-ish environment of a blasted urban center, not underground bunkers with scanner confusing materials in every damned wall-, but she was a starship captain, some habits were hard to break.

She spotted the energy spike half a second too late. Then the world went black.

*****

Seria stared in horror as Sarah, the captain of the starship that had saved her and her family, flew into the wall, and crumpled to the ground. Even at this distance, the impact made her shake. Then the hallway dissolved into chaos as the wall by their side disintegrated under the sheer weight of fire. Whatever sensor net the SLF had in place had allowed them to set up what would have seemed like a perfect ambush...if there had been more firepower on the terrorist's side. As it was, their weapons took precious seconds to pierce through the thick, reinforced wall. Seconds the SLF could ill afford.

The marines all around her staggered, but rallied quickly, diving for cover when they could and returning fire. Yet, as SLF soldiers came down left and right, one figure stayed up. Pulser fire and gauss rounds just seem to....bounce off. Then Seria spotted the shimmer of the shield around him, as it struggled to protect it's wearer from harm...and the massive gun the figure was wielding. The gun it had pointed at Sarah.

Seria didn't think, she acted. Before she knew it, she was sprinting through the battle field, and dived to the captain's crumpled form. She grabbed Sarah's energy rifle, aimed....and pulled the trigger.

Normally, Near Verge weapons were highly secured devices, made to ensure they could not be turned upon their wielders or allies. But Sarah's men were mercenaries, and those protocols had been relaxed. Not enough to prevent some random enemy from grabbing the weapon and firing it, but enough that the IFF beacon Seria's suit was emitting was considered all the authentication the gun needed.

The rifle fired, and general Maldor Oakenveil, codename 'Razor', died in an explosion of armor plating and the flash of collapsing shields.

Then a detonation occurred...on the other side of the SLF line. A split second later, a howl sounded through the room, and figures clad in the mismatched armors of the gubernatorial guard and various elite forces of the Sepian military surged into the room.

To their credit, the SLF didn't break. But they were caught between both sides, and what the sepians lacked in advanced weapons they more than made up for in sheer determination and desperation. Less than a minute after Sarah fell, silence descended upon the governor's palace at long last.

For a few seconds, sepians and mercenaries just...stood there, still scanning the SLF fighter's crumpled forms for any sign of life, before a soldier in one of patterned armor of the planet's special forces stepped forward. Whatever rank signs he had were long gone due to the beating his armor had taken, if he had any visible to begin with. After all, wearing an officer's insigna on the battlefield was the equivalent of painting a nice, shiny target on your back.

"Greetings! I...I do not recognize your uniforms. You are?"

The man sounded exhausted, but his voice was still firm. Hector, who was kneeling over Sarah's body, didn't even bother to look up as he extracted a wire from his wrist and jacked into his captain's suit of power armor.

"Hector Naclar. Eternal Seeker mercenary company." He sighed in relief as he leaned back slightly. "Skipper's alive people. She'll bitch about it, but she'll live."

"What...what the hell happened?" Asked Seria, before smiling sheepishly as she subconsciously waved the energy rifle around, making the mercenaries around her twitch, and carefully set it down on the ground. "She just...flew backwards and dropped. Her shields didn't even flash."

Hector gestured at the wall, and Sarah followed the gesture...at the hole in the wall. She bent over it...and saw the next room over.

And the next one.

And the one after that.

"What...the fuck?"

"Hypervelocity rifle." Answered the mercenary sergeant as one of his men knelt next to the fallen captain, and pulled out a compact medikit. "Slow firing, insanely expensive." He looked up at Seria. "Near Verge tech, at least. Not that we'll ever know." There was an edge of regret to his voice as he looked at what little remained of the power armored enemy. "I doubt there will be much to identify."

Seria shifted, and the sergeant shook his head.

"Don't worry, you did the right thing. The skipper's gun was the only thing that could take out that asshole in time. We should have brought some plasma guns, we were expecting lots of assholes in combat armor, not people in power armor with guns to rival our own."

"I've...heard of hypervelocity rifles." One of the dubious advantages of having gone to an academy about weapons technology was that you got very familiar with all the shiny things the more advanced nations could build, but you could barely dream of. "Fractional lightspeed micro projectiles, correct?"

"Yep. They're big, slow firing, clunky as hell, and more expensive than a stars damned battle tank, but they're made to punch through shields like they weren't even there."

Seria nodded. Shields had one key weakness: if you put enough energy on a single point of the shield, it just...created a hole for a fraction of a second. That was why ships of the wall like heavy cruisers looked like giant bricks and mounted their weapons in concentrated broadsides instead of being built into armor efficient spheres. It was all about just hammering the enemy with enough firepower to get past their shields and destroy them without having to engage into a long slugging match. That much everyone knew.

"How are we still alive? I mean, shouldn't there have been a mega sonic boom?"

The sergeant chuckled.

"No, there's a point at which energy just doesn't transfer fast enough. Hell, the projectile went so fast it usually instantly turns into plasma upon leaving the barrel. Probably the only reason the skipper is still alive as well." He looked up at the sepian officer, who seemed to have decided that if the mercenaries were so busy with their internal conversation, he might as well take some time to organize a formal, categorical check of the SLF's soldiers, making sure none of them were still breathing, as well as securing their gear. "So, officer...?"

"Commander Elran Cordor, Sepian special intervention unit 6." Said the soldier as he turned back around. "What can I do for you sergeant?"

Hector chuckled.

"Usually it's considered to be the other way around."

"You just went through an enemy that almost annihilated my command like they were made out paper, with, what, less than 5% of my forces? I think that warrants some respect. So does saving my charge and my men from this death trap."

"Fair enough. Speaking of which, the governor, is she okay?"

"The governor is alive and well. Shaken, I think, but...alive. So are most of her ministers, fortunately she was having a private reunion with them ahead of the official opening, and most of the ministerial council made it to the secure bunker before our defenses completely fell apart." The commander looked around, before stepping a bit closer and lowering his voice. "Did you...find any survivors on your way there?"

Hector silently shook his head, and the commander let out a vicious string of curses.

"Alright. Stars damn it all, there was over ten thousand fucking civvies in the building. We saved barely 50. Surface status?"

"Secure, as far as I know. Our coms couldn't penetrate whatever you coated the damned underground tunnels in." Neither could their scanners, not beyond the first few levels anyway, but that wasn't information the sergeant wanted them to have. "We have our ship hovering over the palace to secure it's airspace."

The commander winced.

"They came with grav APCs and probably some grav tanks sergeant, if they kept some in reserve..."

Hector laughed out loud.

"Son, the Eternal Seeker just ate 9 30 megaton thermonuclear warheads. I believe they're not going to have anything capable of threatening us." Not without wiping out the capital city, and as maniacal as these 'freedom fighters' had proven, he didn't believe they'd be ready to embrace genocide to achieve their goal. The Dominion Navy had it's hands tied by the Protectorate charter to limit it's interventions in the systems under its protection, but mass murder on that scale basically guaranteed intervention. And started gathering attention from...more powerful actors throughout the Known Universe, which no one wanted.

The sepian visibly gulped.

"Fair...Fair enough sergeant. Very well then. I'm about to send a team to make contact with the surface, and ask for reinforcements to help secure the governor. If you would be so kind as to keep some of your forces here to help with that until more substantial forces are in place, I would be in your debt." He looked at the crumpled, and now covered in various diagnostic instruments and medikit appliances form of Sarah's armor. "Of course, getting your captain to your medbay is also a priority."

"Indeed." The sergeant looked around and shrugged. "If you have some truly severe cases, the kind that...you would have to triage, hand them over. Our medbay can't take many people, but it is much better than your hospitals, trust me."

The commander nodded.

"Thank you sergeant, I gladly accept. Whatever happens next, me and my men will never forget what you did today, I can guarantee that."