The Black Ships

  ~*~

  Down on the hangar deck, Märti sat in the assault shuttle with most of the men of Alpha Company. His small battalion had been split between three of the large assault vessels and he had brought his small staff with him aboard the Malevolence as this craft was named. The men all looked up in unison as dull thuds announced that the ship had started firing. The reaction was purely instinctive as there were no windows for them to see out of.

  A week earlier, they had been shuttled off the Hermann to replace troops dead from the plague and it had been the Malevolence that had brought them to their new home. Now the flight officers in the stern of the small ship touched hands to their helmets as a signal came through. Red lights came on and Märti could feel a grinding vibration as the large docking clamps came loose.

  “Helmets on,” he called out. During the long wait in the shuttle, he had allowed his men to remove their helmets, partly to give them a break but largely because he didn’t want them wasting their breathable gas while still inside the shuttle. Now was the time to put them on. The trip to the enemy ship would be short.

  Very short.

  The shuttle shifted upwards and then to the left, holding there for a moment before suddenly slamming every one forward in their rear facing seats as the liquid fuel rockets kicked in. The shuttles were controlled by operators on board the Ares, reconciling the target assignments with whatever data was available about the enemy ships. Colonel McCutcheon’s team was working frantically, identifying likely soft points in the ship structures as well as priority target zones such as engineering and command centers.

  The two flight officers at the rear were simply backup, ready to take over if the signal from the Ares should be lost. If the Malevolence succeeded in penetrating the enemy hull, they would fight along with the rest of the men. If the shields were down.

  After half a minute of flight, Malevolence’s heavily armored bow slammed into the enemy hull. There was a loud shriek of metal against metal as they passed through the outer structures of the ship, jerking left and right as the armored bow slid past structural elements. The men were pinned against their seats by the deceleration, made survivable only by the hydraulically-dampened sliding of the assault shuttle’s inner hull.

  The motion finally ceased and the flight crew activated the exit panels. Shaped charges along the sides of the Malevolence’s inner hull blew rectangular openings through the outer skin and the men began to pour out into the enemy vessel. Märti stepped out into a windstorm. They had penetrated into a large compartment and the atmosphere was now venting into open space.

  He forced his way against the wind, following First Platoon, and he found that the force against him slowly diminished as he got farther from the new tunnel that now led directly into the void. He stopped on a raised catwalk that ran for several hundred feet, overlooking what had to be a rail gun.

  He activated his communications system, using the channel set aside for this particular boarding mission. “Second Battalion, report in.” At his feet was a dying alien crew member. The small creature looked surprisingly human, despite his obvious differences, and his face showed pure terror as he clutched at his throat. The catwalk across from him presented a similar scene as several members of the enemy crew asphyxiated.

  He felt strange and couldn’t quite put his finger on it until he saw one of his men climbing up onto a higher catwalk. They have gravity on their ships, he thought in amazement. I’ve been walking instead of floating. The two captains began relaying the status of their companies. It was a mess. One of the three shuttles carrying his men had slammed into a water tank and the men were trying to find a way out. The soldiers from the other shuttle had been channeled in various directions as they flowed through a warren of corridors. Nobody had reported any serious resistance yet.

  The bridge is most likely on the central axis so we should move aft,  he decided as he stood up and pressed his locator beacon. His other men would have to fend for themselves. “All troops from the Malevolence, concentrate on me,” he ordered as he moved down the catwalk.

  At the far end, he found hatches on either side of the central axis of the rail gun. By now, he had collected almost a hundred of his men. He split them into two even groups by the simple expedient of chopping his hand to mark an imaginary line through the crowd. “Leuzinger, take your men, open the starboard hatch and start working your way down the length of the ship. “Fischer, same thing on the port side.”

  He paused for a moment as more men came up. “I’ll bring the rest as a reserve. If you can’t open a hatch, blow it open. There must be fifty dead enemy in this compartment alone because they didn’t expect us to get past their shields. We can use that against them. Leave every door open and depressurize the ship as you go.” He stopped again to make sure he was thinking clearly. “Stay on this level for now. If we don’t find the bridge by the time we reach the stern, we’ll go down one deck and work our way back to the bow. Get going and, remember, we want this ship in one piece – more or less.”

  The men split off, heading for the two doors. Both opened easily and a new breeze began to flow but it ended quickly on the port side. The starboard door vented more atmosphere, indicating a larger space, and Märti led his men over to follow Leuzinger’s force as they passed through.

  On the other side, he found himself in a low corridor that stretched off into the distance. More enemy crew were in sight attempting to crawl to the closed doors that lined the long hallway. Silent muzzle flashes glared angrily as the leading soldiers cut them down. Doors were levered open with breaching bars, exposing enemy crewmen as they tried to don their suits. More silent flashes and more dead enemy.

  They don’t have tails, Märti realized. Are they a different species or do they engineer the genes of their clones depending on the job they were grown for? Perhaps combat troops have them for balance…

  Fischer’s voice crackled in Märti’s ear. “We’re meeting heavy resistance,” he reported calmly. “Thirty plus enemy, roughly fifteen meters aft of my position.”

  Märti looked down at the display on his wrist. Fischer was roughly ten meters closer to the bow than he was. “Reserve, on me,” he ran aft another ten meters then turned to the port side of the hall, motioning to the door. Two of the men cleared the room and Märti pointed out two men who were carrying plastic explosives. “Both of you come in here.” They followed him inside the room. He pointed to the wall across from the door. “On the other side are enemy troops holding down Lt. Fischer’s team. I want a door in this wall.”

  The two men rolled their bricks of C-4 into long strips and stuck them on the wall, roughly approximating the shape of a door. Sticking detonator tabs over the strips they moved back out into the hallway, looking at Märti for the order to fire the charge.

  He turned to the men of his reserve, Leuzinger’s team had already moved past them. “Fischer and his team are in trouble behind that wall,” he announced on the battalion wide circuit for the benefit of Fischer’s team. “When that charge goes off, we pour through the hole and hit the enemy hard. Line up.” He turned to the two men by the door as the rest formed into a rough line.

  “Fire it,” he ordered. There was a faint percussive sound, transmitted through the decking and the air in the EVA suits, and a silent flurry of debris flew out through the door. “Go, go, go,” he yelled. The line began to pour through. Märti forced his way into the line and soon found himself in a similar room, except that it contained four dead enemy, their weapons laying on the deck. They must have been firing at Fischer’s men from the cover of the room, never expecting an attack to come through the wall.

  Moving out into the hall, he found that his men had made quick work of the opposing force. Fischer’s team had pulled into cover and ceased fire when Märti had given the order to fire the charge, not wanting to hit friendly troops. The aliens had thought they were getting the upper hand and were pouring out of cover just as the new force appeared behind them.

/>   Märti saw the lower half of an EVA suit protruding from one of the side rooms and walked in to investigate. One of his troopers was still in the suit but he was dead. His helmet had been removed and the visor was heavily cracked. Evidently the enemy wasn’t happy about how many of their crewmates were dying from asphyxiation. It looked like they had indulged in some savage form of revenge.  

  “Bastards!” Märti turned to see Sgt. Dreher standing behind him. “They popped Federer’s helmet off so they could watch him die,” he snarled. Federer was in Dreher’s squad and the big man wasn’t taking the loss very well. “Sooner we kill them all, the better,” he declared vehemently.

  A chorus of agreement came over the net. Everyone in the battalion had heard him.

  The ambush proved to be the high-water mark of enemy resistance. For the next half hour, they pushed their way against light resistance until they reached a circular catwalk surrounding a two-story open space. A large glazed box dominated the center of the room where a couple dozen aliens sat at terminals, glancing nervously out at the humans as they worked.

  More of Märti’s lost soldiers were already there, surrounding the strange room. One was leaning up against the wall, a pressure bandage covering a wound in his leg as well as sealing the hole in his suit. There were men with the British flag on their shoulders as well. One of them walked over and stopped in front of him, using his wrist pad to change his radio to proximity mode. “Major Bohren, I’m glad to see you in one piece.” He grinned. ”It would seem that most of their ground troops are still on the planet. We met only light resistance.”

  “Captain Kennedy,” he nodded. Salutes during combat tended to be discouraged by the more sensible armies of the world, unless, of course, you had an unpopular officer you wanted to point out to enemy snipers. “We met a small group of thirty or so. Probably their security force. What have we got here?”

  A shorter figure shuffled over to join Kennedy, no doubt suffering from a sprain after so many weeks in zero gravity.

  “The bridge, I believe,” Kennedy replied mildly. “The glass appears to be bulletproof, as your young man over there will attest.” he waved towards the soldier with the wounded leg.

  “Probably blast proof as well,” Märti  walked over to one of his corporals who was placing a hastily-shaped charge of C-4 against he glass. “Gschmöcksch de töff?” he waved at the man on the floor. “The glass is too strong, blow the door.”

  “Can he smell the motorbike?” Kennedy had followed Märti over to the glass.

  Märti shrugged as the young soldier peeled the C-4 from the glass. “Old saying,” he explained. “It means can you see the problem?”

  The charge blew the door across the room, narrowly missing one of the aliens, who had put on their EVA suits when they realized what the humans were up to. A mixed team of Swiss and British poured into the enemy CIC, pulling them away from the consoles.

  Kennedy was frowning down at his wrist pad as he joined Märti inside the glassed enclosure. “I seem to have lost the Ares beacon,” he muttered. “How careless of me.”

  Märti looked down at his own display; the indicator was red. “It can’t be destroyed, all the ships’ beacons are missing.” He looked up at Kennedy. “They’ve got the shield back up.” Suddenly, he recalled why Kennedy’s small force of SAS troopers were assigned to this assault. Their main purpose was to ensure the translator made it to the bridge in one piece.

  He looked again at the shuffling figure. “Sir, we need you to convince them to drop their shields and surrender the vessel.”

  The translator looked like he might be over eighty years old, but he was alert and calm. Nodding, he shuffled over to the one alien who’d been stalking back and  forth in front of the others as they worked. Two SAS troopers held the alien firmly and the elderly interpreter headed straight for him. He leaned over to press his helmet, visor to visor, against the enemy officer’s helmet so sound could travel through without having to find a compatible channel.

  The translator’s helmet had been left on proximity mode and everyone in the room could hear the conversation. Though nobody could understand the ancient language, it was clear that the enemy officer was viciously angry.

  The translator straightened up slowly and turned to Märti. “He tells me that his republic and its triumvirs have decided that Earth must be brought into their dominion. He will take no actions that betray his orders and promises that our species risks complete annihilation if we don’t disengage immediately and surrender our ships.”

  “Sheisdreck,” grumbled Sgt. Dreher. “You don’t make fancy speeches when you have a gun to your head; we need to show this little souhund who’s in control!” He walked over to the group of prisoners in the corner. “C’mere you little arschloch.” He pulled one of the prisoners out of the group and, before Märti had any idea of what he planned, ripped off the alien’s helmet before kicking him to the floor in front of the enemy officer.

  “I do hope that isn’t the engineering officer,” Kennedy murmured quietly as the enemy captain struggled against the two humans holding him. “It certainly has made an impression on our little friend.”

  Märti wasn’t sure if he detected a note of censure in Kennedy’s voice. I should care but I’m having a hard time feeling sorry for these invaders. He knew that it was wrong to use prisoners in such a way, but he also knew how that rule had been ignored by every military in history when need arose. The Allied Forces had been known to gun down German prisoners on D-Day because they couldn’t spare the manpower to guard them.

  Not when their toe-hold was still so tenuous.

  The small enemy on the deck finally ceased his thrashing, his disturbingly familiar face had turned an almost blue color. Märti looked at the translator, nodding over at the shocked prisoner that they assumed to be the captain. “Ask him again.”

  With surprising force for such an old man, the translator grasped the throat of the ancient enemy and shoved his head back against the glass wall, pushing his own visor forward to touch. His words carried more force this time and the enemy’s tone showed the first cracks of defeat. They argued back and forth for a few minutes until Dreher pulled another prisoner from the group. That settled matters. The translator turned and held out his hand to Dreher.

  “Stop,” he said softly. “They will surrender the ship.”