Humanity in the Deep

Adrian was looking around at the people in the compartment. They had the best training he could give them in the short time he had. Some of them even fought when the locals invaded the Erikson. He wished he could see their eyes, but the suits prevented it. He could still see fear, and anticipation in the way they carried themselves, though.

They were about to clamp onto the hull of the station and cut their way inside.

More than a few would be dead soon.

With one ear listening to the cockpit frequency, he turned to the rest of the people in armored vac suits. He took a deep breath and tuned his radio to marine local. He then said, “I’m not one for speeches but there are a few things you need to know.

“You’re going to be shot at. You’re going to be scared and that’s okay. Bravery is not the absence of fear—it’s carrying on despite it.

“We are here because our families need us. You are not fighting for yourself; you are fighting for the marine standing next to you and for your families.

“Cutting team, are you ready?”

“Ready.”

“Good to go.”

“Yes, sir.”

They all felt the boat’s improvised mag-clamp seal to the hull of the station and Adrian called out, “go, go, go!”

The cutting team fell in and slid a section of the boat’s hull up and out of the way on some recently built rollers. The station’s hull was exposed, and they went to work. They pulled a large torch from above, so large it had to be on a mechanical assist arm. It made short work of the station’s hull and with a pull, that section of hull was inside their boat and they had a beachhead.

Inside was a large room. It was a storeroom of some kind with large boxes, some of which were slowly moving. Adrian could only hope they were as lax about their security as they were about storage.

“Vision aug on!”

He turned his on and the front of his helmet changed from showing shades of black and gray to a false color composite of inferred, visible light, sonar, lidar, and radar.

“Fog Grenade! Move with your squad leaders!”

He threw two of the fog grenades into the corridor. When they hit the other side, they stuck there and emitted what looked like a white fog. It was opaque to almost all visible light, UV, and inferred.

It also stuck to any and all surfaces, so cameras would be useless, and helmets would be impossible to see through. Unless, of course, they had a coating like his people’s had.

Back on the grid, there were a dozen or so ways around fog. When Adrian had trained, they were told that it would never work against a real military force. While he would sell his soul for a real warship, right then and there, fog might be better.

Their prisoners had said that they had no such tech, but he was unsure how much he trusted them. As his old CO once said, the first rule of war was; ‘Shit goes wrong and you’re never as smart as you think you are.’.

Within seconds, the storeroom and part of the corridor was full of fog and the colors drained from his display. It was relying mostly on radar.

“Alpha, Beta squads on me!”

They rushed into the storeroom just as two local’s turned the corner and stood in plain view of them. They had guns and quickly turned to face the breach.

“Beta, take them out!” he ordered one of his squads.

The council talked long and hard about wanting to take prisoners, but he had finally managed to teach them the difference between a police action and a military one. They would take prisoners when doing so did not put his people in any danger and not otherwise.

His men took the correct stance and fired. Both the targets went down. One of the members of Beta squad launched himself off the deck with the recoil.

“Alpha squad, up front with me. Gamma, you’re guarding the boat. Everyone else, fall in behind Alpha. And for god’s sake, lock your boots when you fire.

“Head out.”

---

“Alpha behind me, Beta to the left, Delta to the right. I will enter, followed by Alpha, then Beta then Delta.” The hatches lock looked broken, and from the inferred, there were at least some people ahead.

After a few seconds, when everyone was ready, Adrian opened the hatch briefly and threw in a fog grenade.

He set his boots in front of the hatch and calmly counted, “Three.”

“Two.

“One.” He pulled open the hatch and went in. He saw a spark from a round hitting the bulkhead and shot the man who held the gun.

The room was twenty-five meters across, and looked like it was used for storage, at least from what Adrian could see. He could see no movement ahead, but there were a lot of places to hide.

He tried to watch everything as his people entered the compartment.

“Spread out, keep a watch above you. Fog isn’t perfect—don’t trust it more then you have to.”

With only a handful still left to enter, he saw some movement ahead, at the far end of the room, and dozens of rounds were shot from that direction.

One of his men, he could not tell which at first glance, had been hit and was floating into the middle of the compartment. As he shouted, “Get behind cover!” he jumped as fast as his legs could take him, grabbed the floating man around the waist, twisted back, and jumped off the bulkhead, getting them behind a crate. As he landed, he felt something impact his shoulder.

Once he was down and he saw everyone else was behind except for one man who looks to have blead out already. “On my command, everyone except Alpha rise up and fire, if you can’t see anyone, just fire in their direction. Alpha, we’re going to ceiling walk. Everyone else, keep your fire level with the ground and angled low.

“Now!”

They all stood up and fired. There was some return fire but after a few moments, they started to take cover and return fire.

“Alpha, with me,” He said evenly as he quickly jumped up, flipped, and engaged his mag boots.

“Keep cover fire up; empty those mags if you have to.”

He and Alpha quickly made it to the other side of the compartment. He stopped them when they were just far enough that they should be still be invisible through the fog and motioned for them to stay put.

He aimed at one that was behind cover, to the rest of his men anyway, and took him out.

He engaged his loudspeaker and translator. “You are surrounded! Surrender, drop your weapons, and we will neither kill nor harm you. You have five seconds to comply.” He then moved just enough that they could not fire on the sound of his voice.

Five minutes later, they were all restrained.

---

The sound took on a dull quality as the last of the air was vented. Adrian smiled and ordered his squads to follow him forward. At least the prisoners were right; the stations were not ready to deal with fog. If they knew how to fight it at all, they would never have bothered to put them in a vacuum.

So far, the assault was almost surreal. Fog had never worked that well, even in training. Nor had they ever been able to cut through locks so easily, even with mil-spec lasers.

He had lost some men and women. Several were back at the beachhead being seen to.

“The next compartment is large. I want Alpha and Beta squads to form an outer ring. Your job is to take care of threats at eye level. Charlie and Delta, you’re on the inside. Take out threats above eye level of the outer ring.

“They think we are going to be trapped in there, well traps can work both ways. We’re going to let them surround us. They don’t know that fog grenades work in vacuum. When they have us surrounded, we use the fog. The other platoons then will enter and we’ll have a crossfire. We can then get them to surrender or take them all down. I’m good either way.

“Cutter team, get ready.”

He watched from the side as the cutting team cut a hole in the door. With a large clang, he could feel in his feet magnets were attached to the hatch and to the deck. The cutting team then hit a button and the cable pulled itself taut, pulling the hatch to the deck with a clang that Adrian could feel through the deck.

Taking one last look at the map, Adrian hoped he was right about the timing, but he had to try something. He was afraid of what the locals would do if they grew desperate enough.

They entered the large compartment, guns at the ready. The compartment was full of shoulder-high tables both on the deck and above him hanging upside down. It was surrounded by a dozen hatches, the vacuum made it feel larger than it really was.

His men entered and spread out into the large double ring formation. He kept his attention on his HUD and thermal overlay.

He saw them on thermals, getting close to a few of the hatches. “Down! Use tables for cover!

“No fog grenades!”

A half dozen hatches opened, and dozens of locals came out firing. Three of his people got taken out quickly. It took everything he had to wait.

Finally, after less than a minute, they were surrounded. He threw out two fog grenades while yelling, “Throw them now!”

Just after Adrian’s HUD switched fully to radar the station creaked. A hatch opened above him, and he almost fell on his ass from the wind.

The air was being sucked out through the hole they had cut into the compartment, creating a massive wind tunnel.

Fuck.

He opened up a com to the leaders of the other two platoons.

“We have a situation. Get here ASAP!”

He took a bead on one of the new arrivals and shot, thankful that at least their weapon and armor advantages were still there.

“On our way, what happened?”

“They’re dumping their entire fucking Atmo through this compartment. Fog is fucking useless and we’re surrounded. Get your asses herenow!”

“Hold out for a few more minutes.” Adrian could hear her yelling at her people as she cut off the line.

---

He saw the locals slowly move to surround them, taking losses as they went. It hardly mattered, they had the people to spare.

Someone went down from a shot to the chest. He put his arm around him and pulled him back to the inner ring. He set them on the deck.

“Inner ring, move inward!” he ordered, and the inner ring which shot threats from above pulled closer to the center of the compartment.

“Outer ring, move inward!” and the outer ring moved inward.

They moved correctly, well mostly. He did have to pull one person inside who was taking too long. He then went up and down the line to make sure everyone stayed even. He was proud of them.

It felt like a couple of hours, but it could not have been more than two minutes. They were almost surrounded by several layers of locals. He’d thought about trying to cut through the deck, but he doubted they had time. Besides taking men away from the rings would just make things worse. Trying to go back the way they came would be just as bad. They would be lucky if one man in ten made it.

The outer ring was dropping fast. He pulled five people into the protected middle of the rings from the outer ring. He was moving to the outer ring to shore it up when he felt a loud crack. He looked down and saw that his left leg was hit. The suit had sealed up he saw a lot of blood. He did his best to ignore it.

That was when he saw the most beautiful thing in the world, a cherry glow from one of the unused hatches. It flew inward and dozens of his people emerged and engaged the locals.

It looked like the locals were totally surprised. Some of them turned to engage, but not enough were fast enough to change anything.

The third platoon emerged from another hatch across the compartment. In less than a minute, all the locals were crouching and raising their hands.

Not thirty seconds later, he heard Commander Smith’s voice. “Colonel, I have a man who says he oversees the station. He is offering his total surrender on the sole condition he is spared and left in charge.”

“Accept! All his men are to lay down their arms!”

Adrian sighed and looked around at the carnage.

Half his people were floating lifelessly.