Jethro 8 Snippet 1

 Okay, a little late, but here we go:

Chapter 1

 

Sigma Sector

 

Warrant Officer 1 John Draco tightened his hands into fists and then slowly relaxed them. It was the only movement he allowed for. He was trapped in a coffin going who knows how fast as it crossed the void.

His team had used boosters to boost up to speed on course for the objective. There was a concern about the thermal flare so they had to cut the boost phase well outside of long range sensors and then take the rest of the ride in stealth. Once the boosters flame out they are jettisoned. Travel the rest of the course on ballistic.

They’d spent a long 3 days in space getting to their target. He’d slept some, sucked on the tube of suit food, and ran the plan through his mind over and over. It was a cruiser, a new design but they had the detailed blueprints and specs on file. So far no surprises.

The biggest thing was not to spook the target. If they got even a whisper of a naval vessel in the star system they would have jumped into hyperspace and ran for it. Hence his team’s present occupation and mission. He was prayerful that the enemy wouldn’t get wise. He’d hate to bounce off their shields or see them jump away. It was a long damn walk home.

Some of the team had a whisker laser party going up until the last 18 hour stretch. He’d cut them off with a curt order. He didn’t want to chance the lasers being spotted. Besides, the griping about the suit chow and lack of bathroom privileges had gotten old anyway.

For the past 6 hours he’d watched the target grow larger and larger on his HUD. He was pointed directly at it head down, so everything was fed into his HUD. Data scrolled, but the main things he picked out because his AI Angie highlighted them for him. The ship class and fingerprint were a match. The interior map was overlaid over the hull. Objectives were highlighted.

One minute before burn the AI transmitted that in a whisker laser burst to each suit. He then braced himself as the AI handled the final maneuvers.

The ship didn’t see them coming. She didn’t have her sensors on high alert since supposedly nothing was in the star system to object to its presence.

The squad of suits endured a hard braking burn just as they came up on final acquisition, the flare of IR making it suddenly obvious something was up. They passed through the layers of defensive protection in rapid order though, and he felt a sense of relief as the inertial dampeners eased up. A lot of their power had just been sucked up by that maneuver, but it was worth it. No other suit came close to being able to do what they did. It was why they had the suits.

The team reoriented to feet down and made a hard land onto the hull. Those with claws dug in, two bounced off the hull, one heavy suit dented it. Harpoons helped to get the wayward suits back on track and on the hull.

Radar and lidar on the ship opened up, searching the heavens for the sudden flares of thermal energy. It was too late however. Draco unshouldered his rifle and checked the safety by muscle memory, barely aware of the action. The suits moved and silently took out cameras as they moved to the designated airlocks. The warrant boarded the ship at the lock and then cycled anxiously through it.

This was the time when he most worried about something going wrong. It was a choke point, totally in the control of the crew.

>>*<<

The skeleton crew on graveyard watch heard the odd sounds of bangs through the hull. A few looked up and around in confusion and growing alarm. They began to question what was going on. Some however just shrugged it off.

>>*<<

Each suit went through an airlock. Some doubled up, some had their own airlock. They all had their objectives and knew the mission, the floor plan of the ship was uploaded in their computers and their AI would keep track of their position and the position of the others. Once on board, they ejected their flight packs, pulled out their weapons, split up into pairs, and began the process to take the ship intact.

They had no robots with them. Their flight packs had been on the ragged edge of performing the mission without the additional mass. They would make do without them.

Each boarder had stunners and blunderbuss with rubber bullets and shredder hollow point rounds. They could select the round as needed from 2 magazines. The whole point of the limited weapon mix was to limit the damage to the ship and crew. Rounds that could pass through flesh into the thin interior bulkheads could do potentially disastrous things. That was strenuously avoided as much as possible.

Each boarder had a selection of stun grenades and micro cameras in their kit. They had a very narrow window to get in and get as much done as possible before they were detected. That was their golden time, precious beyond measure.

At every major computer terminal a device was plugged in to hack the network. The AI linked through the remote WIFI link and got to work while also managing the host’s suit, the tactical updates, and secondary weapons. They quickly set up their own network to coordinate the movement of the Cadre team and direct resources against opposition forces.

The AI had their own objectives. They dedicated less than 30% of their processing power and attention to their principles for the initial boarding action. Some of their mission objectives were critically time sensitive if they were going to survive. They were in the golden hour of a boarding action. Every minute that passed without the enemy becoming aware was a precious thing beyond value.

Like any predator it was critical to take the prey and minimize any opposition to protect yourself and certain objectives. Once the prey was aware they would invariably thrash and panic. They had to prevent the worst of that.

The squad’s AI hacked into the ship’s computer and communication network within a second. Multiple Cadre AI quickly overwhelmed the ship’s AI. “Their AI is getting better,” Angie observed as the Horathian AI was cornered behind a series of firewalls around its core and then went down.

“Did you secure the priority target?” her host demanded.

“Negative.” The AI paused and noted activity in the primary and backup navigational suite. The suite power went offline abruptly and with a sense of defiance and finality to it. “And it doesn’t look like we will. There was a secondary AI embedded in the navigational suite. It just triggered a self-destruct.”

“Damn.”

“Agreed.”

“Switch up. Secondary objective is command and navigational personnel. Tertiary is helmsman and engineering teams.” Klaxons went off and lights flared but it was a life support alarm. The AI were following the script and locking the ship down and evacuating the air in select compartments. That would prevent crew who were not suited up from using those paths.

Within seconds the crew were chopped up into isolated pockets of resistance. Some were trapped in their barracks without weapons wondering what the hell was going on. The pounded on airlocks only to find a vacuum on the other side.

The Cadre were fully suited however, so a little vacuum wouldn’t bother them.

“Agreed. Hopefully they don’t have their own self-destruct packages in their implants.”

“No doubt they do.”

“Well, either way we still have a ship to capture.”

>>*<<