Vanguard Update

2k word update. I'm sorry it isn't much considering the wait I put you through, but I wanted to get this out before Christmas as I my present to you guys! So happy holidays everyone, and thank you for you generous support this year! Have fun, eat some food, and have a wonderful NEW year!

***

“Did you say laser?”

He followed her out of the armoury, the sounds of barking weapons filling the air, Samiha moving over towards the Balokarid recruits gathered by the weapon racks. When she returned, she was carrying a weapon in her hands, holding it out so he could get a good look at it.

It resembled a sniper rifle with the longest barrel Ryan had ever seen, it would probably be taller than Ryan if held longways. It had a very rounded appearance, every edge from the trigger guard to the iron sights rounded down to make whatever alloy it was made of tapered and smooth. This design philosophy came to a halt as the barrel met the stock, the shoulder guard comprised of a bulky mass that almost resembled a metallic rucksack. Trailing cables connected the mass to a pair of sockets above the forward grip, joining to either end of an exposed glass cylinder.

He took the weapon, grimacing as it took most of his strength just to lift the thing. “This thing must weigh a hundred pounds at least!” he complained. “How the hell do you carry it around?”

“That’s the downside of living in such low gravity,” Samiha said, clicking her beak in amusement as she watched him try and peer down the sights. “From what I understand, Balokar and Dur’shala have about twenty and ten percent higher gravity than what humans find comfortable, respectively.”

“Is this thing the battery?” he asked, gesturing at the large stock. It was padded on one side where one could brace it, but the thing still looked like it could push his arm right out of its socket.

“Correct,” Samiha replied. “It has an integrated cooling unit that feeds water through those tubes there, which can be swapped out with a fresh pack once the charge is expended.”

“Let’s test this baby out,” he said, moving over to a free booth. To say it was a struggle bringing the weapon to bear was an understatement, maybe Dominic could use it with both hands, but Ryan was no bodylifter, and he needed to rest the barrel against the countertop just to keep it steady.

Samiha crouched down on the other side of the weapon, demonstrating how to power it on. There was a switch about where one would find the safety on a human gun, and she flicked it on, the glass cylinder filling with green arcs of bubbling energy. It powered on with an electric whir, a touch of uneasiness filling his chest as he prepared to fire. It felt like he was about to shoot an archaic elephant gun, everything from the trigger to the barrel as oversized as the Balokarids themselves.

Ryan braced himself, pulling the massive trigger with some considerable effort. From the lenses making up the muzzle, a bright green light bloomed, the energy forming an aura of illumination before tapering into a lance. There was hardly any sound, just a sort of buzzing noise as the air ionized, a brilliant beam as big as his fist shooting downrange.

The paper target flittered as the laser connected with it, the glare of the energy making it hard to see what happened next. He held the beam in place for a few moments longer, and then the paper outline combusted into flames, a hole in its chest gently spreading until it was thoroughly disintegrated.

Ryan released the trigger, the beam fading away, the lenses going dark. He whistled his approval as he looked over the long rifle, watching a few burnt strips of paper flitter through the air. “Not gonna lie, that was pretty cool,” he said, grinning up at her.

“Now you might better understand why your coilguns took me some getting used to,” Samiha said. “You can see how much it handles differently. You must hold your target under your sights for a few seconds before any damage can be inflicted, and accuracy is not a serious factor unless you’re at extreme ranges.”

“Thought it would have a lot more kick,” he said. “Or I’d come out of this with a broken shoulder. Thing’s bigger than I am.”

“Light does not emit recoil, you fool,” Samiha said, clicking her beak at the last word.

“Oh… right,” he replied, the alien shaking her head at him. She looked annoyed, but there was a slight curve to her mouth that suggested she was more amused than anything. “Pretty impressive on your part. Humans have tried fielding our own energy weapons, but they’ve never gotten off the prototype stage, and we’ve always fallen back on ballistics.”

“I’d say something along the lines of ‘so much for human technological supremacy’, but there is more to it than that,” Samiha said. “Our development on harnessing light into weaponry was a dangerous and difficult process. Lasers could only be ported in factory-sized machines, and even then the effective range was so limited one might as well close into melee. That changed when during our prehistory we found an alien wreckage drifting through the void.”

“Probably a Colossus wreckage,” Ryan mused. “We humans have picked them apart before, using those weird alloys they’re made of on pretty much everything.”

“Colossus is an apt term,” Samiha said. “One could only imagine what kind of devastating firepower they could have brought to bear when they were operational. I’ve seen pictures of their mounted particle beams, those lenses could form lasers as big as buildings.”

“What about your shield tech?” Ryan asked. “Was that borrowed from a wreckage too?”

She stood up a little straighter. “That’s an entirely Balokarid invention, which I’ve heard you humans are taking a keen interest to in other areas outside of the military. Now I actually can say so much for human technological supremacy.”

“Just keep in mind what species built the station you’re currently living on,” he reminded. “You got any other variants?” he continued, dragging the laser rifle off the bench. “Fire modes, attachments maybe? Wouldn’t mind seeing what kinds of firepower Balokar can bring to the table.”

“I think you will be pleasantly surprised by what the recruits brought with them,” she replied, eagerly leading him back over to the alien weapon racks. It was amusing to see the usually prickly alien so enthusiastic, finally able to show off her own people’s tech after months of being surrounded by human equipment.

-xXx-

“Guys!” Brindley shouted, stirring Ryan from his sleep. “Everyone! Wake up!”

He sat up, his training kicking in as his faculties returned. Were they being attacked, was this some sort of late night wake up call? There were no alarms, he realised, no officers standing at their door, just Brindley waving his arms around to get their collective attention.

“Brindley?” Tilu asked from the far corner, rubbing a feathery arm over her face. “What’s wrong?”

“Something’s going down!” he replied, kicking one snoring Dominic in the shoulder. “Everyone’s gathering at the mess, come look!”

“What, are they serving dessert now?” Samiha asked, swinging her long legs out of her bunk. “I swear, if that’s your reason for waking me up…”

“No, dumbass, there was an attack!” Brindley explained, pushing the light switch on, Ryan wincing at the sudden flood of light. “Let’s go right the hell now!”

That got their attention, the team following the Private out into the hallway, Ryan noticing the excitement wasn’t just controlled to their quarters. Soldiers and base staff were rushing down the hallways, all angling towards the mess hall, some of them with expressions just as confused as his.

The team joined the fray, hurrying down the spartan corridors. What few officers they could see around were equally bewildered, shouting vain orders to be calm as the soldiers raced passed.

When they finally emerged into the mess hall, there were hundreds of people lingering inside, crammed shoulder to shoulder as they turned their gazes up towards a monitor mounted on the far wall. Ryan could hear a reporters voice sounding off over the speakers, but he was too far away to make much sense of it.

“Bit busier than five minutes ago,” Brindley muttered, barely audible over all the noise.

“What were you doing in here so late, anyway?” Tilu asked.

“Meeting up with a mate of a mate to… well, I’ll tell you later. Should we try and get around through one of the other doors? Can’t see shit back here.”

“Nonsense,” Samiha replied with a wave of her hand. She walked forward, shouldering aside the first few oblivious observers, leaving a walkable gap in her wake. For once, Ryan was glad of her brashness, following the tall alien through the crowd, the team gradually working their way up the hall.

Samiha brought them to the front ranks of the crowd, Ryan finally able to see what everyone was looking at in earnest. The mounted monitor was usually there for the off-duty soldier’s benefit, usually switched to a entertainment channel or streaming service, but someone had switched it to a camera feed, which was broadcasting live according to the banners running down the bottom of the screen.

The feed was nothing but darkness, but as the camera focused, he saw it was a view of empty space, thousands of stars sparkling in the backdrop. The feed began to zoom, the feed ballooning out until he could make out something out there in the void, the distance hard to judge without any frame of reference, but it seemed very far away. As the patchy image enhanced, he could make out the profile of a ship, its bulky midsection comprised of exposed cargo containers stenciled with various company logos. Skeletal metal frames secured the cargo to the ship in a mesh, but Ryan knew there would be magnetic locks acting as a secondary method of securing the loads.

The aft of the ship was made up of a giant engine, its nozzle the size of a football field, jetting a bright stream of blue hydrogen flame. At the stern was the cockpit, shaped vaguely like an arrowhead, which acted as the only place the crew could move about freely without an environmental suit.

The cargo freighter twisted slowly as it sailed the void, generating its own artificial gravity not unlike how the Hub station did. As the other half of the ship rotated into view, a worried murmur washed over the occupants of the mess hall.

The feed focused in on a scene of destruction. Chunks of the mechanical rings that acted as cargo supports were completely gone, twisted rebar jutting out of the anchoring rebar that connected the two extreme ends of the freighter. Ryan could see vital components exposed to the air, containers ripped straight down the middle, their contents long since spaced into vacuum. A giant plume of smoke trailed out from a breach in the engine unit, the dark fumes blending with the void beyond. It looked like the hand of God had come down and ripped part of the ship, Ryan wouldn’t be surprised if the whole crew had ben spaced, and the ship was running on auto pilot.

There was no audio from the broadcast, leading Ryan to believe the source was coming from another ship. He wasn’t an astrologist, but he recognised some of the starlines in the background. This broken ship would have to be near the Hub system, or else they wouldn’t be receiving a feed that claimed to be live.

Movement from the corner of his eye drew his gaze, Ryan watching as Captain Adamski shouldered his way to the front. He took one short look at the monitor, his expression hard to read beneath his cap, then turned to address the crowd.

“Listen up soldiers!” he shouted, grabbing the attention of the room with his authoritative voice. “I know this is an unsettling sight, but all of you are to return to your quarters at once! Curfew is in progress as of right now.”

“What’s going on, sir?” a man somewhere to the left asked.

“We are gathering intel on the situation as we speak,” Adamski replied. “We are receiving a transmission from that freighter, so we know they’re alive, and the minute I get a picture on the situation, you will all be notified. In the meantime, return to your bunks, and await further instructions. Now!”

“What do you think has happened?” Tilu asked, speaking to no one in particular as the team turned round.

“Either that freighter busted a fuel line or had a reactor meltdown,” Ryan said. “Or…”

“Or what?” Samiha pressed, watching him with those yellow eyes.

“I’ve seen what railguns can do to a ship,” he muttered. “Even a grazing shot can cause massive damage, and if that’s the case, those guys are lucky to be alive.”

“Railgun?” Tilu asked. “Don’t you mean coilgun?”

“The two are similar in a lot of ways,” he explained. “but railguns are much more powerful in terms of stopping power, and require a lot more power to be used. They’re mostly confined to ship-mounted hardpoints.”

“If that damage was the result of a railgun,” Samiha began. “Does that mean war is upon us?”

The team looked to each other, Tilu’s feathers flattening in what might be dread, Dominic and Brindley exchanging a glance. He wanted to assure the team, but Ryan was just as worried as they were. If the UEC had attacked a ship this close to the station, the fight was going to be right on their doorstep any day now.