Starship Engineer

Chapter 100 Surprise, Bitch!

The anticipation as we left the safety of the station was overwhelming. I was excited as I felt our preparation was thorough. Our detailed scans of the enemy ship gave us a complete inventory of their crew and their combat suits. As we started on our vector to our transition point, the enemy ship fell in just as Edmund had predicted. The Brotherhood operating doctrine is in effect.

They kept inching closer, and my marines waited inside their armor for the appointed hour. One of the keys to our plan was when they grappled our ship Julie would go on the offensive and blind the enemy ship sensors. If she could not do that, she was to confuse the opposing AI enough to incapacitate it.

Three hours out looked like the first window for them. Tirani patrol ships were over 90 minutes out from responding, not that we planned to send a distress call. The Brotherhood ship waited.

Julie sent me a viable option to escape from her compounded scans from Elvis and compiled data. The Void Phoenix, without its shell and the mass underneath, was slightly faster than the pursuing ship. It was an option, but we had stuffed fuel under the shell for our long voyage, and I was not quite ready to give up our costume. Even though the Brotherhood had found us, I was certain many others were still barking up the wrong tree.

We were getting close to a safe transition distance, and I began to doubt they were going to board. Then alerts on the bridge started coming. They were moving in for a leech maneuver. They probably thought we could not see them, but we just played ignorant. They grappled with their leech cutters onto the deck 1 cargo bay door. I would have gone for the top deck as it was closer to the bridge, but I am sure the enemy ship had its reasons. Their subspace disruptors went off seconds before the grapple. Elias swore.

I turned to him in my captain’s chair. The subspace disrupter had bombarded our alien sensors with data, and he was turning to conventional scans now. My mind pieced some things together. Subspace disruptors created faux gravity signatures that prevented ships from being able to enter subspace safely. I told the new AI in charge of sensors to map the gravimetric fluctuations from the disruption and see if he could plot a potential subspace transition in the mess. We were not going to attempt it, but if it was possible, we might be able to escape these traps in the future. Maybe we could even transition further in-system safely.

The enemy ship was still cutting through the cargo bay doors. The alien hull was an excellent barrier. And the cargo bay doors were not even as thick as the rest of the hull. We had two force shields that could be overlayed with the cargo bay door, but we’re not going to activate them. Instead, we flooded the cargo bay with an argon gas mixture that should greatly dampen their sensors. One of the bridge stations noted the doors were breached, and Julie immediately attacked the ship’s AI. Two of my large exterior maintenance bots flowed off our hull, followed by a stream of marines in stealth armor.

Gabby was at a station on the bridge, ready to control her three spider bots. I had multiple screens up in front of me. It was slightly annoying not having real-time footage of enemy movements. I was spoiled with the power of our new sensors in the few weeks we had them functioning. Fortunately, our sensor AI slowly filtered out the noise and improved the images with Elias’ help.

I watched as the Venom bots spooled the power cable from their abdomen. It looked freaky, and I was glad not to be in there. The enemy marines noticed them, and the firefight erupted. It happened fast. The adversaries were well-trained and were quickly cycling through their weapons until they found concentrated explosives blasts were the most effective. I could see in my mind why. I hadn’t hardened the internals of the bots against such attacks. Their armor was holding, but their functionality was falling fast from internal damage.

I switched to the view of my own assault on the enemy ship. My bots had little trouble cutting into their ship. My best guess was either the stealth tech prevented them from using the advanced armored hull or that it was too expensive to cover an entire ship in the material. My marines flowed inside and used their HUD maps to secure the ship. When I turned back to the venom bots were all destroyed. It looked like they had killed two invaders. An excellent ratio. They could have ended the boarding threat immediately if I had a dozen bots.

Julie popped up in her hologram form, wearing a suit of our new armor. She said she got into the other ship’s systems but was not able to take it over. The opposing AI went into lockdown, a safety measure. Someone said they were rushing to the elevator. Confused, I noticed they were still going to try taking my ship.

Eve was waiting, and I gave her the command to override her do no harm directive. She blurred on my screen, pulled one of the enemies down, and drove a plasma dagger under his chin in less than a heartbeat before regaining her cover. She had a maintenance corridor to circle around the attackers and soon pulled another one into Death’s embrace. The loss of two more companions had them fleeing back to their ship. I couldn’t blame them. I would have been scared shitless going against Eve, unrestrained as she was is an advanced combat suit.

Our image was getting clearer as the AI remapped things out, and the disrupter effect slowly faded. The Marines had a shoot-to-kill order on the takeover of the other ship. Any sign of resistance was met with lethal force. Engineering would be secured shortly, and the door to the bridge had charges being laid on the hinges. I would only take prisoners if they completely surrendered. The enemies were trying to take engineering back. The few soldiers they had left were taking on my own soldiers in stealth suits. My suits were proving superior. They could take a substantial amount of damage...except the concussion attacks. One marine was incapacitated from a headshot from a micro concussion grenade, and three other suits were showing lots of yellow and red indicators on functionality displays.

I would have to redesign the suits. Whatever those micro concussive bullets they were using would be a new weapon to equip my marines with in the future…after we incorporated defensive measures against them on the suits. All the enemy combat suits were now down. I finally took a tally on my side. Two unconscious marines with strong life signs. One marine was being rushed back to our infirmary...induced heart failure from the concussive effect. Doc was prepped and assured me he would make it before he even arrived.

Haily drew my attention to the screens. One of the enemy combat suits had diverted and was unaccounted for. Why couldn’t my sensors be up and running? We had seven crew missing on the other ship from our initial scans. And now I was being told a combat-suited combatant as well. I ordered exterior scans and visual scans on the hull to proceed in haste. If it was me, I would try to spacewalk to the enemy’s bridge as a last-ditch effort to win the day.

Nothing. Minutes passed, and the enemy crew was accounted for one by one. A marine shut off the AIs lockdown manually, and immediately Julie popped onto my bridge as she gained control of the other ship’s internal sensors. The ship’s captain in combat armor was in a storage room on deck 3. Julie’s internal video feed showed he was powering two Armogedden bots.

I spun to Elias as he explained the original scans missed the Armageddon bots because they were in coffins flooded with synthetic, high-density fluids. On the scans, they had looked just like fuel canisters. I groaned as the fight was far from over.

Abby heard the news and had all the heavy weapons crew move to our cargo bay to set up overlapping fields of fire on the breach site. If the Armageddon bots tried to board our ship, they would be met with a hail of fire that should end them--hopefully. I wanted to disengage from their ship and break away, but my men were already on their bridge and in engineering. They wouldn’t be able to get out safely. I was planning to tell them to do a hull walk, but Eve interrupted my comm. Eve was moving to engage.

I hoped the opposing captain was activating the bots as a negotiating tactic, but they immediately started rushing to retake his bridge. I grinned as he left himself alone. I looked at the map overlays and sent it to Abby. She sent the closest three Marines to neutralize the captain.

My focus was on the death bots moving to retake their bridge. My marines staggered themselves in the corridor as the armageddon bots raced into the corridor. The explosions obscured our vision as the bots, and my men unleashed weapons meant for planetary battles.

I watched the suit indicators as the visual feed was slowly filtering the action...the bots were using mini radiation-laced bullets. That was causing video problems on top of everything else. A quick suit sensor feedback told me the radiation would not be harmful to the men and women in the suits as it couldn’t penetrate the suit’s armor. A suit arm started flashing red, and my mind caught up. The death bots had given up on the ineffectual long-range attacks and moved into melee. My suits were not weak, but the speed and adaptability of the slayer bots were scary. Two marines were wrestling the arms of one of the bots as a third marine was repeatedly firing into the bot’s torso. The bot threw one of the marines away with ease...the other marine was now alone and quickly pinned as the deadly bot tore plates off the battle suit—reaching flesh.

A few flashes as other marines tried to save their comrade. Then a flash and the vid showed a fast-moving, suited marine tackling the deadly bot off the marine. No, not a marine, Eve had arrived. Her speed outclassed the Armageddon bot, and she was quickly behind hit and seeking its internals after dislodging a series of armor plates on its back. The bridge was cheering, but before Eve could destroy enough internals, the second bot crashed into her, and they all tumbled into a lift door. The door caved in, and they all went down the shaft. I lost my vid feed from the marine suits and didn’t know Eve’s fate.

Abby ordered all marines to retreat. I countered her order. We were not leaving Eve. They should have fallen straight down to the flight deck. I looked at my holo model and had Abby begin to order the seven marines close enough to go and support Eve. I would sacrifice them if it gave me a chance to save Eve. I anxiously watched the first marine enter the cargo bay.

The first clear thing was one of the killer bots was down. Eve had succeeded in getting to the internals. The marine moved around a shuttle confidently since he knew he had only one opponent and two marines at his back. They found Eve.

Her arm was missing, but she held the other battle bot’s main sensors module in her other hand. The bot was circling without being able to see. The marines got a firing line as Eve moved away and opened fire. It took 49 seconds of sustained fire from all seven before they felt confident the bot was disabled. One marine moved in for a closer look at the bot that Even had disabled. It looked nothing like the models publicly shown on vids. It must be the newest and latest from the machine labs of the Brotherhood.

The Marines moved in, confirmed both bots were down, and removed all three power systems to be safe. I looked at the bigger picture zooming out and checking notifications. We had five captured crew and their captain. The captain had tried to set the self-destruct the ship but was foiled by Julie, and then he attempted to reach the shuttle bay to escape but hadn’t made it since we could clearly see his movements with our sensors. With Julie in control of the stealth corvette, I needed to decide what to do with it. We could strip the ship in the next few hours of anything valuable, leave it attached and start making preparations to enter subspace with it still attached, or just detach the ship and set it adrift. For the last option, maybe the Tirani might pay for the salvage, but I really didn’t want to wait on them.

The nearest Tirani ship was still 142 minutes away. They hadn’t even responded to the battle yet. Well, the whole event took only eleven minutes. I made my choice. I ordered the entire crew to secure the corvette to the Void Phoneix. I was taking the entire ship with us. I was curious about the military tech and the stealth tech in particular. I ordered all prisoners to be brought to Doc. My experience with Jane Doe told me they needed to be purged of all tech. Then I rushed off to see how Eve was doing.