Blue Star Enterprises

Shortly after she called out, the voice of the scary security guy, called Alex to the security room. Now that she knew where to look, she did her best to hurry over there. It was a long way to the security station from Alex’s shop though and before she got there, the building shook around her, sending her falling to the ground.

She screamed and tucked her head in her hands, fearing the worst, when she heard footsteps.

"There you are!" a familiar voice called.

Yulia peeked through her arms and saw Markus running towards her.

"You were supposed to go to the shelter, why didn’t you?"

"I- I was looking for Alex. Why didn’t you go?"

The boy sighed and picked her up off the floor. "I had a feeling you weren’t going to follow instructions. When I heard them called to the security room, I came this way to stop you. Do you think he would be happy to know you weren’t heading for safety?"

She shook her head, not meeting the older boy’s gaze.

"Let’s go."

Markus pulled her but she resisted. "What about Alex? I need to find him."

"No," Markus said in annoyance. "He’s busy, and we’re kids. We’ll just get in his way. Now come on, or I’ll drag you."

Yulia didn’t want to be dragged so she hurried behind Markus as fast as she could. Loud booms started to echo through the halls and Markus stopped at an intersection, cursing under his breath as he looked for where to go.

"I don’t know this section, which way to the closest shelter?"

"I only know where my designated shelter is," Yulia admitted in embarrassment. "And that’s near atrium B."

The boy cursed again, and Yulia wanted to tell him to stop or Headmaster Wong would give him a talking-to, but this did feel like a time that cursing might be allowed. "We need to find someplace safe. Someplace the–," Markus’ words trailed off as loud shouting came from down one hallway. The shouting was followed by a series of loud pops that echoed through the halls and a buzzing crack that made her tense up. She remembered that sound from the attack at Alex’s.

"This way, quickly," he whispered as they ran in the other direction.

***

Zade chuckled darkly as one of the shuttles impacted the landing pad faster than it should have and exploded. "More for us!" he yelled to the cheers of his crew.

He would have preferred that shuttle to have been Arkonis’ that way he could have taken over the crew but it wasn’t. That was unfortunate, but there was still a chance the man would get himself killed down here. The old bastard was going on forty-five. He was a relic and should have done everyone a favor and gone down in a raid a long time ago. Arkonis was also a coward who liked to run raids from the rear instead of getting his hands dirty. The pampered little prince might as well move into STO space and live there if he wanted safety. This place was too big for him to hide behind his other teams this time though. Other than skeleton crews left to monitor the ships in orbit, everyone was down here. Maybe he could accidentally fire a grenade in his boss’ direction. It was certainly an option.

The ship flared its thrusters hard and Zade grunted under the pressure. He didn’t black out though. If he did, someone on his team probably would have shot him in the back at the first opportunity and took his place as the leader of his crew. As it should be. The weak should be culled and the strong should rule.

Even with the extreme deceleration, their landing was a hard one. This planet’s atmosphere was so thin that he was pushing his luck with a ship this large. But he had the biggest crew besides the boss’, and he would be damned if he wasn’t taking everything he could from this miserable rock.

It better be worth it too, because the cost of that nuke had come out of everyone’s share.

He checked his armor. Unlike the grunts, his was the best money could buy off the black market. It had military-grade armor plating and even had minor augmentation making it nearly as good as the mech suits the STO used. He smiled and lifted the heavy grenade launcher. Since he liked to lead from the front, he got to breach the doors, and what better way than with a big boom!

The ramp lowered and his crew hollered in glee as they followed him off the ship. He almost paused when he saw the turrets, but if they had been active, they would have shot by now. "Maybe that nuke was worth it after all," he smiled wickedly as he let a series of grenades fly toward the entry at the far end of the landing pad.

A satisfying series of explosions rattled the thin air before the tone changed. "Door’s open boys!"

His crew streamed past him, hoping to be the first to claim a kill or something good. Zade just stuck the launcher on his back where it magnetically attached before he drew his minigun. He spun it up, smiling widely at the sound before he joined his people who were already forcing their way inside and firing on whoever was dumb enough to resist.

The only thing he heard was the buzzing crack of pulse rifles. He shoved the broken door aside and his people hit the deck as the defenders all turned to look his way. The bullets from his minigun tore through them before they even had a chance to fire more than a few blasts his way.

One man held a strange weapon and fired it at him, but the flechette ricocheted harmlessly off his armor. In annoyance more than anger, Zade hosed the man down and kept the trigger pulled as he stomped forward, turning the man into a red paste on the ground before he finally ran out of ammo.

He tsked in annoyance and unlatched the weapon and the ammo cannister, dropping it by the door. He picked up one of the rifles from his dead men, replaced the magazine and his team stalked forward looking for more targets.

***

Alexander felt more than heard the next explosion as something came down just outside the door he was at. At first, he thought maybe the turrets came back on, but when no further explosions happened, he realized that wasn’t the case.

Then he heard muted gunfire and booms. This was followed by a long series of shots from some fully automatic weapon. The people in Eden’s End had nothing comparable to that and he knew that things were going to get much worse if he couldn’t come up with a solution.

He made for his workshop as fast as he could go. There were parts in there, maybe he could put together something to help.

Alexander crossed an intersection when someone shouted from down the hall and a hail of bullets came his way. But he was moving so quickly that they missed or slammed into the walls behind him.

[WARNING HOSTILE FIRE DETECTED!]

Alexander wanted to roll his eyes at the stupid message. Of course, he knew ’hostile fire’ was detected. He tried to will away the message, but it stayed front and center for a bit before it seemed to go away on its own. ’What? No defensive mode, or ultimate badass mode?’ The mind space didn’t reply, it never did. And he saw no changes to the other readouts, most of which he still didn’t understand.

He took the next turn, ensuring the people who were now chasing him couldn’t get a clear shot. He still wasn’t convinced this body was bulletproof. And from the sounds of it, the pirates had much heavier weapons. He had spotted one of them was wearing an augment suit with something large strapped to its back. That single pirate could take on this entire facility without issue.

His workshop came into sight and he ducked inside and shut the door before locking it by placing a piece of scrap barstock in the track to jam it closed.

Alexander quickly looked around for something he could use to fight back with. The workshop had accumulated quite a series of failed tests and components ever since the smelter had been moved into orbit. But one thing caught his eye.

It was the railgun from his very first tests. He dragged it out from the pile of scraps. The cables were still connected to it, but it had no power source. Since it was offline during the EMP, it should be functional. But how was he going to power it?

Alexander scanned the room for any batteries or power banks, but there were none. Then he looked at the flashing warning light for the station alarm. "Power is power," he muttered as he dragged the weapon over to the wall just as someone started pounding on his door.

He worked as fast as he could to modify the internal capacitor of the gun so it would only discharge when he was ready. It wouldn’t be a very high-power shot, but with any luck, it would work. Alexander just needed time.

***

"Doors wedged shut," one of his people stated.

Zade didn’t have time for this shit. And a closed door meant there was likely something valuable behind it. "Move!" he yelled as he backed away from the door and pulled the launcher off his back again.

Each explosive cost a hundred credits, which is why he mainly used it for breaching but he had a good feeling about this door. The first blast rocked the hallway, sending dust and debris flying, but the door was stronger than it looked. The explosion had dented it quite heavily though, so one or two more would get them in.

The third time was the charm as he heard the metal shriek in protest before it blew inward. He hoped it didn’t kill anyone inside, he wanted to do that personally for making him waste his time and money.

Zade stepped through the blasted opening and saw a treasure trove of high-end electronics and manufacturing equipment. But his eyes focused on the robot at the far side of the room. The one they had been chasing. Arkonis had told them to be on the lookout for it as it had something to do with the person they were here to capture. That didn’t mean he couldn’t disable it though. He smiled as the thing wasn’t even facing him. He flicked the selector to burst fire and fired off three grenades.

They screamed across the room… and stopped.

***

Alexander would have blinked if he had eyes. He heard the attempts to get into his shop, he knew it was only a matter of time until they would. Once the door blew open, he watched them with a part of his focus as he put the finishing touches on the railgun he was hiding from view.

He hadn’t expected the man to fire three grenades his way as soon as he entered, or the message that popped up when they flew his way.

[WARNING THREAT DETECTED!]

[COUNTERMEASURES DEPLOYED]

[DEFENSE FIELD ACTIVATED]

The messages popped up so fast, that he couldn’t even react. A static hum built around him in the time it took the grenades to cross the room. The three grenades slammed into the field and simply stopped about a foot in front of him. Alexander was shocked by this, he expected them to maybe be deflected by this strange defense field. This was not the simple static field that ships used to deflect space debris, this was bordering on a fricking forcefield. A stray thought entered his mind. If his body had something like this, how the hell had it been damaged in the first place?

It seemed everyone was just as shocked to see this as he was because the pirates stopped and stared. It was a good thing Alexander’s mind worked much faster to process this new situation. He plucked the three explosives out of the air and chucked them back toward the pirates.

Unfortunately, there must have been some sort of timer or proximity awareness fuse on the weapons because they detonated far short of his target, tearing up the room. The explosion had the additional effect of knocking the pirates out of their shock. As they recovered, they quickly opened fire at him.

The strange field stopped every bullet, but he saw the man with the augment suit was getting ready to fire again after having adjusted something on his weapon.

Not willing to risk a second round of explosives, Alexander stepped aside, exposing the railgun.

It was already loaded with a spare round he found in the same pile he dug it out from. The man with the grenade launcher had just enough time to realize what was facing him before Alexander touched the exposed wire to the firing mechanism.

The crack of the hypersonic round was deafening inside the workshop and the blast of its passing kicked up dust and sent loose parts scattering around the room. But it found its mark and passed effortlessly into the man’s armored front.

Alexander was worried about the round going through the facility walls. Turned out he needn’t have worried, much like his early tests, the round failed to penetrate the back side of the armor. Unlike those early tests, there was a squishy human between those plates. The energy had to go somewhere. The man exploded like a water balloon as shards of tungsten flew out the sides hitting three more pirates who were standing next to him.

The sonic boom and resultant human explosion had done a significant amount of damage to the pirates as well, leaving the few survivors groaning on the ground.

Disconnecting the gun, Alexander hurried over to make sure they didn’t get back up. He took no comfort in picking up one of their rifles and dispatching them, but it had to be done.

He grabbed a small rolling cart that had been knocked over during the fight and loaded the pirates’ weapons onto them. Even the grenade launcher was loaded onto the cart. Once everything was piled on top, he pushed it out through the opening and toward the next entry point.

He didn’t know if this new defense field would stay active forever, so he needed to make it count while it was.