Again, Bubba took the lead and headed toward the rifle range. He didn’t get very far, stopped by a wall of metal girders. He turned back to see Collin and the group approaching. Looking discouraged, Bubba shrugged at them. Collin looked up; overhead, he got a glimpse right into Level 2 of the station, some forty feet up.
Bubba grabbed the end of one of the girders in both hands and pulled. The sound of metal against metal made a high-pitched screeching sound, but the girder was at least moving.
Collin said, “Okay … we’ll pile up the debris down the corridor.” Bubba passed back the first twelve-foot-long by two-foot-wide girder. Collin took it in both hands and was surprised at how light it felt. He passed it back to DiMaggio, who passed it back to Lydia, and so on. Like a bucket brigade, they moved the fallen debris away, one piece at a time, eventually stacking it all off to the side, behind them. What had amassed to metric tons of weight they’d dislodged and moved with their bare hands, and with more efficiency than a forklift would achieve back on Earth.
With the blockade removed, they moved forward, Collin again in the lead. He found the double hatchway into the rifle range, which, as he’d expected, was closed.
“Let me!” Collin and Bubba turned to see Tink making her way to the front of the group. She didn’t even hesitate before placing both small hands on one of the heavy metal hatch doors. She planted her feet wide apart and shoved with all her strength; the hatch broke away from its hinges and fell forward, into the compartment beyond. Tink slapped her hands together in the gesture of wiping dust from her palms.
“Good work, Tink,” Collin said as he stepped into the rifle range. Flashes and motion to his left caused Collin to reach for his Glock. He went down on one knee and aimed, his finger poised over the trigger. Three battle suit-clad combatants ran forward several steps and fired bright bursts from their energy weapons. It took Collin a second to realize they were caught in some kind of virtual, holographic loop as the three repeated the same action over and over again.
Standing up, he watched as the rest of the Lone Stars entered the rifle range. Each ducked for cover at the sight of the three virtual combatants. Like the rest of Level 1, this compartment had undergone a tremendous amount of damage. There was more debris falling down from above amid lingering black smoke. As Collin made his way toward the armory at the back, he covered his nose and mouth with his arm. Relieved when he got there, he saw the racks were still fully stocked with Ponge 412s and Larrik 5 Doublers.
No one needed any prompting to grab up weapons. Collin hadn’t noticed it before, but there was a second interior hatch between the racks of 412s and Doublers. DiMaggio spotted Collin’s interest and together they moved to the opening and peered inside.
“Come to Mama,” DiMaggio said with a smile. Inside were several rows of black, upright, protective battle suits.
* * *
It took a full twenty minutes for Collin to figure out how to open the damn things. In his mind, the Kardon Guard was on the verge of storming their position any second, their guns blazing. In the end the most obvious thing worked. The suits opened with little effort by pulling down on a protruding cowling that ran along the back shoulders of each suit. From that point on, everything became self-evident—from stepping first into the back of the suit, then triggering the suit’s back portion to automatically self-close securely, and then self-adjusting it to snugly fit one’s anatomy.
By the time Collin had on his battle suit and was moving about the compartment with a level of proficiency, the rest of the Lone Stars had selected their own suits and were inserting their bodies into them.
“Can you help me? I can’t get it to close,” Lydia asked Collin, not fully inside her still-open suit.
Collin saw the problem. Her Brotherhood uniform had bunched up high around her torso, exposing the naked skin of her waist and hips. The suit had somehow detected the obstruction. Collin pulled the fabric down and said, “Try it now.”
She triggered the mechanism and the suit quickly closed around her. Collin passed her the helmet and she placed it over her head. “Cool. A display thingy came alive.”
“That’s the heads-up display, called HUD,” Collin said.
Bubba, Royce and Tink had problems getting their suits to properly fit. Tink was the one who soon found a way to contract and/or expand the battle suit’s various jointed sections to fit virtually anyone. It was another fifteen minutes before Collin figured out the basics of his HUD enough so that the battle suits would even be usable. Undoubtedly, there were many features and functions he was still unaware of, but at least he’d figured out the means to basic communication between individuals on closed channels, as well as open channels to the group. He also figured out how to monitor such things as a battle suit’s integrity and its basic physiological aspects, such as heart rate, respiration, blood pressure levels, and so forth.
“Crap! I must have done something wrong,” Lydia said, now walking somewhat awkwardly toward Collin. “I’m getting all these little red icons moving around on my HUD.”
“Let me help you.” Collin had just figured out how to mirror another suit’s HUD view in a thumbnail portion on his own HUD. It was a cool feature and something any team leader would surely find useful. He’d already allocated each Lone Star a numerical designation. Lydia was number nine. He brought up her HUD’s thumbnail feed and was instantly on guard. Those little icons Lydia was talking about were small representations of enemy, Kardon Guard, forces—forces that were quickly moving into the rifle range.
Chapter 35
Collin chided himself.
Damn!
Even the lamest of commanders would have thought to leave a lookout. Looking around the confined space of the armory, his heart sank.
It’ll be like shooting
fish in a barrel. It’ll be a massacre
.
“How did you get those icons to appear on your HUD, Lydia?”
She showed him what she’d done. Since all options and menus were selected via eye movements, it took a few seconds for her to convey the steps. What Lydia had inadvertently done was to initialize combat mode—which brought up a whole slew of other readouts and options. Using the open channel, Collin informed the others how to initialize the same combat mode on their HUDs as well.
Distant energy weapons fire erupted from outside the compartment. That would be the Kardon Guard forces being surprised by the virtual combatants. For the tenth time, Collin looked around the bulkheads. Nothing. He returned to the area holding the now-empty gun racks and scanned the compartment. Then he looked up. Like much of the first level, the ceiling on this compartment was a mess of pipes and cables. But the support girders above him, unlike those in the corridors, looked to be well secured.
He spoke into the open channel again: “Grab your weapons, ensure they are set on setting six, and follow my lead. Hurry!” Collin looked up again, found where he wanted to go, and leaped. He used a bit more force than was necessary and plowed head first into the top bulkhead. His fingers found purchase on the nearest crossbeam and he held on with his free hand, his right hand still holding his Doubler. He looked down, seeing nineteen upturned, smiling faces.
One by one the other Lone Stars followed Collin’s example. Several jumped too hard and also slammed into the top bulkhead; others didn’t jump high enough and needed to wait until they dropped back to the deck before trying a second time.
The last to successfully jump was Royce White. He was still in the air, halfway to the top, when the first of the Kardon Guard combatants entered the armory. Their dark-gray battle suits looked slightly different from the black Brotherhood suits. Each held a Ponge 412 at his side and carried an energy rifle.
Collin spoke softly into the open channel: “Don’t fire … let more of them enter the compartment.” He wondered how many that would be. His HUD indicated there were twenty guards total—five were just outside, in the rifle range, while fifteen were here in the armory. He figured they also had the same enemy-icon representations displaying on their HUDs. His high school math prowess was kicking in. These HUDs provided the Cartesian coordinate system that specifies each X and Y point separately on a plane, via a pair of numerical coordinates. Below, the guards didn’t use a three point, X, Y, and Z, three-dimensional Cartesian coordinate system that would have also given them their enemy’s elevation level.
Fifteen soldiers entered. Collin saw they were being hyper-alert and several were waving their arms, or their rifles, in front of them.
“They think we’re down there … that we’re invisible or something,” DiMaggio said.
Collin caught sight of Royce White starting to squirm around. He opened a private channel to him, “What are you doing, Royce? You need to stay still for a few more seconds.”
“My fingers are tired.”
Before Collin could tell him to just hold on a few more seconds, the big teenager was already falling toward the deck. Collin yelled, “Fire! Don’t hit Royce.”
Collin let loose with his own barrage of plasma fire at three combatants directly below him. As they fell to the deck, their red icons disappeared from Collin’s HUD.
Now who’s the fish in the barrel?
Collin thought.
Bright energy bursts rained down all at once. Collin soon found that the enemy wasn’t going down as quickly as they should have—it took at least five plasma pulses, sometimes several more than that, before those Lone Stars who had never received firearm training got their aim close enough to be effective. It didn’t take long for the Kardon Guard forces to figure out where their fire was coming from, and they were now shooting back with superior marksmanship. Collin saw several Lone Stars fall down to the deck. The ten still-standing combatants were returning fire as those on the outside rifle range began moving into the armory.
“Time to drop, everyone,” Collin said. He let go of the crossbeam, still firing toward the open armory hatch. He nailed two more and wounded another.
“I’m hit … oh God … I’m hit!”
It was Tink. Collin spotted her on the other side of the armory, holding her side. He heard several more screams but didn’t know who else was shot. Right then, all he could do was keep firing. To Collin’s own surprise, he was a natural. His aim was true and the enemy fell, one after another. Bubba and DiMaggio were apparently managing on their own too: They’d each taken down a Kardon Guard soldier and were looking around for others. Darren and Humphrey were moving into the rifle range in pursuit of the last three Kardon Guards who were trying to escape. Collin watched as the last of the red icons disappeared from his HUD.
Bodies lay motionless everywhere, and not all were wearing gray battle suits. To Collin’s right lay the quiet cheerleader, Karen Muller. He looked down at her—into her visor. Her eyes were open but fixed—not moving.
“Oh no … Doug … Doug Summerfield’s dead,” Lydia said. She then spotted Karen’s body lying at Collin’s feet and ran to her side. “No! Not Karen.” She sat down, her hands resting on the front of Karen’s battle suit. “What are we doing here? We’re not soldiers.” The defeat in Lydia’s voice surprised Collin.
“Yeah, well tell the thirty-five dead Kardon Guard guys that, Lydia,” Clifford Bosh said. “Do you have any doubt that they would have killed every last one of us?” Bosh then pointed an outstretched finger at Collin. “You! That was f-ing genius. The whole thing: hanging-from-the
-
rafters-idea. Genius!”
Lydia was still kneeling by her dead friend. Eventually she stood up and looked at Collin. “He’s right … we’re all alive because of what you did. I’m just … I can’t believe I killed someone today … I killed two of them; saw them fall to the deck and die.”
Tink staggered over and leaned against Collin. Lydia, pulled from her inner conflict, took a look at the scorched patch on the right side of Tina’s battle suit.
“It doesn’t look like it penetrated your suit. I think you just got a little burned.”
“Well, it feels like I got hit by a bolt of lightning. I think I’ll live, though.” Tina gave Collin a weary smile. “That was something … I can’t believe what we just did.” Then her eyes leveled on Karen’s corpse and quickly filled with tears. “Not Karen …”
Darren and Humphrey reentered the armory. Humphrey’s visor had a scorch mark on it, where he’d apparently taken a direct head shot.
“Rifle range is secure,” Darren said.
“We also found this,” Humphrey said, holding up a big weapon. Twice the size of a Doubler, the energy weapon was thick and bulbous at the middle and there were five barrels converging into one. “I’m calling it the Cinco de Mayo.”
“Does it work?” Collin asked, already wishing it was anyone but Humphrey who’d found the thing.
“Oh, it works all right. It takes the head or arm or leg off someone with one shot. Tried it on a few of the dead Kardon guys.”
Collin slowly nodded. The weapon certainly could be a useful addition to their team. “My only suggestion … don’t point it at any of the outside bulkheads … or any of us.”
Humphrey grinned.
Collin took stock of who was left. They were down to twenty-one. He couldn’t expect them to have such continuing good fortune going up against the hundreds, if not thousands, of Kardon Guard forces now occupying Nero Station. They needed a plan.
There was an annoying blinking light showing in the top right corner of his HUD. He needed to figure out how to disable it or he’d end up going crazy. He stared at the blink for several long seconds, which caused a drop-down menu to appear just below it. There were three selection choices:
-- Join Open Command Channel
-- Join Direct Command Channel
-- Disregard
Collin selected the -- Join Direct Command Channel option.
“Frost!”
Collin recognized Captain Primo’s voice immediately. “Captain Primo?”
“Yes. I see you’ve gotten yourselves into some battle suits. Good work. I also see you’ve defeated a Kardon Guard platoon. Not sure how you accomplished that but … thank you.”