“Confirmed. Executing.”
We slowed, and came around to a reverse course a lot slower than we normally would. The ships behind us kept coming after us. The three at the station remained where they were.
“Someone feed the drop rift the locations for all three engineering sections,” said Peck. “Once we go through, the pilots from the same ships go to the bridge of the same Rawtenuga ship.”
“Done,” said Tamsin. “Local ship AI will coordinate.”
“On board our Boulders, stand by for deployment on my command.”
The squadron leaders were all now listening in, as they all acknowledged. A screen popped up showing an outlined area on Judge’s cargo deck, with a dozen combat suits arranged back to back, so all directions were covered. Half of them had arms raised with stunners ready to fire, and the other half had pulse rifles ready.
“Deploy,” ordered Peck, and the dozen combat suits simply vanished.
The next squadron practically jumped into the same formation, and they too vanished. The third and fourth squadrons followed them.
Screens popped up showing squadron leader and platoon leader feeds. A lot of rapid pulses hit a lot of dinosaurs at the same time, and none of them dropped.
“Stunners failed,” said BA. “Go to pulse rifles.”
These did better, but it was taking several hits to slow a dino down. I watched BA change weapons again, and this time her meson blast blew a large round hole in the center mass of a dino coming right at her. It went down and stayed there.
“Go to mesons if you can,” she ordered.
By now we had the feeds from everyone, and in many places combat suits now had teeth trying to crush them. Several had drawn swords for close range, and were actively lopping off arms, tails, and sometimes heads.
All the battles across ships and the station became a melee of close range fighting. Those able were now firing heavy pulses of whatever they had to hand, trying to relieve those fighting too close to get a rifle aimed properly.
I saw BA smash a dinosaur face in with her fist, and the damned thing just bounced back, shook its head, and came at her again, mouth opened wide and showing long razor sharp teeth. Someone else blew it away with a meson pulse. BA picked up her dropped gun, and started firing again.
“They’re turning,” said Leanne, bringing me back to what I should have been concentrating on.
And so they were. Obviously their troops on the station and ships were calling for help. I waited until they were heading directly towards the station again, before nodding to Tamsin.
Nine of us jumped behind a ship for just a second, and all of us jumped again to a wall formation above the station and pointing down at it. I put a rift in front of the mess we’d created, and eight severely truncated ships, and one complete set of debris, vanished through to the system I was now considering the dinosaur graveyard.
I turned my attention back to the main fights. Some of the dinos were now firing their own version of heavy weapons, and hand to hand fights had mainly stopped for now. None of them had any sort of armour though.
“Captain Bud,” said Peck. “I hate to admit it, but we’re pinned down in here. Can you offer some assistance?”
“Would some unexpectedly opened airlocks help?”
“Definitely. At the least we’ll find out how good their emergency systems are.”
“Stand by for vacuum.”
I shifted my attention to the ship the colonel was on, and located her people in the engine spaces, and the pilots holding the bridge. Both were under constant assault with weapons which they were obviously taking seriously. There appeared to be a considerable amount of damage done in there already.
The nearest airlock to the engine spaces was not far away, and with a thought, I removed both inner and outer doors at the same time. Bulkheads crashed shut across the ship, trapping dinos and our people where they were. I kept going, around the outside of the ship, ripping out airlock doors wherever I saw them.
“Gitte, put holes in all the airlocks for BA’s ship. Haynes, you do Brown’s.”
“Then?” asked Gitte.
“Work your way through your ship removing the pressure doors.”
“On it,” said Haynes.
I did the same thing myself, using my magic sight to move through the ship, and removing any shut doors I found, starting with the door into where the colonel was. Dinos began rushing for breathing gear. The marines emerged from where they’d been pinned down, and started cutting down those not ready for an airless fight.
I noticed they left a downed combat suit behind them, and I moved it to my cargo deck. Cargo droids rushed over to it, and ripped the back open, pulling out the marine. She picked herself up, screamed an order to be directed to our armoury, and started sprinting towards where her HUD arrow pointed.
I stopped doing doors.
“Show me any disabled or badly damaged combat suits,” I said to Tamsin.
A new screen popped up, showing me combat suits in the same colouring as for fighters. I moved three red ones straight away, and then four more orange ones. A yellow was limping badly, and I moved that one as well.
A pilot pulled himself out of his badly mangled combat suit, and stood looking down at it.
“I didn’t sign up to be a marine.”
He continued looking down for a moment, and then looked at the others who were also now out of their suits and looking at him.
“Where do I get a new combat suit?” he demanded, showing his first comment to have just been mouthing off, and the lot of them took off after the marine.
Of course, we only had four spares. They’d have to decide who got them. It was just as well I wasn’t personally attached to mine.
“New arrival,” said Leanne.
“Who?”
“General Custer. Assault frigate, Lieutenant General Smith in command.”
The face of an older looking woman popped up on the console.
“Captain Bud, status please?”
“All three ships require more troops to take them. I quite frankly don’t know how to report on the station. We have a lot of pilots there, but some of them are obviously pinned down. Sir, I’m out of my depth here.”
“Continue to offer whatever magical aid you can. We’ve a battalion with us, and there’s another one coming.”
I saw that white dot appear.
“More magic, aye, sir.”
Her face vanished.
Seven
Marines relieved pilots.
Another assault frigate turned up, as well as a support cruiser carrying a load of replacement combat suits, to which I sent anyone wanting to resume the battle after being trashed already, and I gave in and let the rest of the squadron and their AIs suit up and join the fight.
Only Serena and I refrained from fighting, citing not having combat suits to use, but everyone knowing it was just an excuse. Besides, someone needed to yank people out of fights before they got killed. While no-one was injured, several were down to their last belt suit before I could get them out of there.
I’d had to warn Gitte and Haynes not to use magic unless absolutely necessary. The Trixone knew we used something they didn’t understand, but there was no reason for demonstrating it to them. And I wanted it kept from the Rawtenuga as long as possible. But having to pull so many out probably negated this, although it’s possible they thought we had the same tech in our suits as we did in our ships for appearing and disappearing.