(81.3) …Except that
Amidst a massive operation underway in one of the largest privately owned deep space stations in the SOL system, a group of six saboteurs struggled to crawl through the twisted steel and hanging wires of claustrophobic maintenance tunnels. They all donned deep red military armor resembling space suits; Six green lights on their closed helmets were all that showed these weren’t just robots.
Their mission? Setup the power sink. A device capable of pulling and dissipating the combined load capacity of the entire set of space-grade antimatter initiated fusion reactors powering this station. But this wasn’t a simple job. There were various factors they needed to consider: ‘Could the cabling take the load?’, ‘Was it too easy to find?’, ‘Would it overheat?’ A device like this took a lot of planning to set up and use correctly.
Yet, this wasn’t even their original mission, as one of the saboteurs grumbled over their comm system. [“Fuck! I’m stuck again! How the hell did we end up crawling through this shit! ‘Simple Mission’ My ass! Pass me the wire-cutters Pete!”]
A soldier trailing behind the guy reached for a set of deep black mechanized cutters. The device looked more like a metal claw, yet they needed this power for cutting through the thick cables present in the maintenance tunnels. Trailing this soldier was the power-sink itself, a nondescript metal box about 50 cm tall and wide behind pulled along by a wire wrapped around the soldier’s waist. [“Here, be more careful next time. We can’t take too long or…”]
The other soldier interrupted him. [“Or what? They’ll leave without us? Alpha team is gone. All we can do is hope the Beta team can form up and take back our ship. How did it end up like this?”]
They had just received the news a couple of minutes ago. Alpha team had found their VIPs and tried to capture them, yet they fought back, and worst of all, they won. All that remained now were the fragments of the Beta team hiding through the station, many after failing to complete their primary objectives too. After all, only two bombs out of the ten had detonated.
Another disgruntled squad member said as much. [“Who’s idea was it to send three novice duelists to handle a station full of tournament duelists? We’re getting slaughtered out here!”]
Yet a soldier from their squad shot back, going by her firm tone of voice, the squad leader. [“Settle down! Both of you! We’ll complete our objective and get out of here. We can discuss the merits of attacking a station full of tournament duelists after we’re on debrief or in an interrogation cell, but now we focus on our objective!”]
The soldiers immediately straightened up, replying with a loud. ““YES MA’AM!””
She grunted over the comms. [“Hmm, good! We’re almost at the spot. Don’t let up now!”]
Like she said, the forward-most soldier leading the group hit up against an access hatch. They rapidly grabbed a portable plasma torch and started making quick work of the metal. The gases from the boiling metal flowed back through the tunnel. Yet the soldiers seemed unbothered by it. They had already switched to internal air tanks all the way back before their breaching pods rammed into the station.
*CLANK*
Soon enough, the metal panel fell to the floor below. The maintenance port led to a large room where six gigantic cylindrical energy storage devices hummed. The room featured a small walkway in the middle, surrounded by two sets of three ‘batteries’ on each side and an armored door at the end.
One by one, the six men squad exited the tunnel, trying not to break something in the fall from the maintenance hatch on the wall opposite to the exit.
While three of the men struggled to pull the power sink out, even bringing out the plasma torch again to widen the hole, the squad leader ran her gloved hand along the ridged surface of one of the white energy storage devices. Other than the plain white exterior, these devices featured a panel of lights at the front, showing their status at a glance. Currently, these lights remained green, with a charge percentage showed by a column of LEDs.
[“Why did we have to deploy this here again?”] asked the squad lead.
The soldier, whose suit featured a few yellow strips besides the red, responded. [“We need a place where every power producing subsystem of the station congregates. This backup storage room just happens to be wired to the main reactors and backup solars.”]
[“Couldn’t we just cut the power connections and be done with it? Why do we need this huge fucking box anyway?”] Asked one of the men pulling the aforementioned box.
The engineer among them answered. [“There are 10 rooms like this one on the floors that aren’t arenas, too many for us to disable individually. 70 in total. Even if we cut the main reactors off, it would take days for them to drain naturally, weeks if they cut power usage to a minimum. With the power sink, we can pull the energy out, overwhelming the generation systems and causing an instant black out.”]
The squad lead looked back suspiciously. [“How much heat is that thing going to dissipate? Should we even be in the same room?”]
Yet the engineer shook his head. [“It will get hot, but that’s just the cabling. The power itself will be drained into a fragile visium-doped beryllium crystal at the center of the device.”]
*BANG*
The three soldiers finally managed to pull the box out of the maintenance vent. But it fell to the metal walkway, making a significant bang as it bashed onto the floor.
Everyone turned to the engineer. Even with their covered faces, it was clear they were terrified.
He facepalmed, mumbling. [“Arggg… You fucking idiots…”] He hunched over to the box, pressing something on a touch panel. Right away, a green light shined on his helmet. [Well, at least you numnuts didn’t break it… Now give me some space! I have to hook this thing up to the power lines.”]
The men did as he told them, giving him free rein of the space right below the vent they came out of.
While the engineer went about setting up the power sink, the rest of the squad waited for any news from command. It wasn’t long before a transmission came through.
[“This is command. What’s the status on the power sink Beta-2? Over.”]
The squad lead hurried to respond. [“Beta-2, we arrived at the target. Our engineer is at work setting up.] She switched channels. [“How long?”]
The engineer looked around the room. [“20 Minutes at least.”]
Switching channels again, the squad lead continued. [“ETA 20 minutes for activation, we have encountered no resistance. Over.”]
Silence grew on the comms line, only broken by a sudden outburst from a familiar but unexpected voice. [“Finally, some good news! We’re counting on your team to carry the mission. High-Command Over!”]
As soon as those last two words went over the speakers, the squad-leader could only shudder at the voice that spoke over the channel. [“Was that… Lieutenant-Commander Vanessa?”] She asked over their private channel.
No one on her squad answered the question, yet they all recognized the voice as well.
It made little sense for their commanding officers to be present. They saw them in the briefing, sure, but the ship itself was being used as part of the operation. They assumed their commanders had escaped before the operation began, which would put them completely out of comms range.
The channel went quiet again. Op command was probably verifying if there really was someone with that ID on the net.
[“L-Lieutenant! We didn’t expect your help in this operation! How can we be of assistance?! Over!”]
And there it was, confirmation that their commanding officers really were present in the operational area.
[“Every remaining element of Alpha and Beta team is to make their way to the landing area on the second floor. We will move toward the habitational area from there. Power sink team, stand by for activation orders. Over.”]
—
In yet another section of the station, three individuals gathered. They donned red spacesuits like all the other soldiers, yet they differed in the details.
The shortest one of the three had a few blue stripes on their suit, the rest remaining crimson red. The individual’s helmet retracted into their suit, revealing a feminine face with two brown eyes and a discernible eyebrow piercing.
She turned to the other two, telling. “General… Was this really a wise move? Putting yourself in danger for the sake of the mission might be seen as honorable to the men, but command will just see it as a reckless decision.”
This was when another one of the individuals stepped up, their armor decorated with light golden details besides the blue highlights and red color. They also retracted their helmet, revealing the face of a bald man with blue eyes. “Lieutenant, I have repeated this point since we left the ship and I do not care to keep repeating myself. We will complete this operation as command intended. The manner we go about accomplishing such an impossible task falls onto me.” He took a step forward, leaving the two behind, before looking back. “I have considered every possible outcome for this operation, and concluded that unless we involve ourselves, this will be a bust. Now, follow me.”
With that, the bald man closed his helmet and walked away from the two.
““Yes, Sir!”” The two replied without missing a beat. After all, they were out on the field working right beside one of the most respected generals of the Union army.
The group made their way out of the small maintenance closet they had been holding up in monitoring the situation since the operation started. A few cramped corridors later, and they arrived at a clearing, where it was apparent a fight had taken place.
The scene was grim, downed union soldiers strewn about the entire space in front of a bank of elevators with a pile of weapons close-by.
[“What happened here?”] Asked the other officer, who still hadn’t spoken a word since they arrived at their AO.
[“Weren’t you paying attention?”] Asked the Lieutenant in a non-sarcastic manner. [“This is where the alpha team first had contact with our top VIP target.”]
The General didn’t engage in the petty squabble between the two. Instead, he walked over to the weapon pile, finding a particularly interesting article: A red saucer with the symbol of the Union SV Duelist Core.
He picked the object up, and with a mechanical clank, attached it to his wrist. A red duel blade shot out the front of the disk right away, a message still displayed on the small screen on this disk.
[DUEL LOST! RETREAT!]
But the message changed right after the disk contacted his suit.
[Attempting to authenticate new owner… Authentication Success.]
[Welcome: General Tychon of Union SV Forces.]
After that, he navigated the small interface and verified the most important property of the disk at the moment.
[
Power Management:
Standard Battery: 100% (5 minutes on standard projector load)
Extended Battery: Cell 1: 100% Cell 2: 100% Cell 3: 100% Cell 4: 100% (1 hour on standard projector load)
Remaining Active Time: Infinite (Wireless Power Connection Established from Non-Union transmitter, ID: MDS-SSA)
]
Behind his closed helmet, his lips formed a smile.
The two other officers looked on with apparent confusion, yet they didn’t dare question the General’s actions after his declaration from before. Like always, he had everything under control… Or at least that’s what they told themselves.
—
A little more than half an hour had passed since the last check-in with command. The six person squad in the power junction room stayed unmoving but ready, waiting for the order to finish their mission.
In the middle of the room, various wires, as thick as an adult’s forearm, flowed to a nondescript metal box which even now emitted a faint red glow; the only indicator that this object wasn’t what it seemed at first glance.
Then a message finally came through. [“This is command, activate power sink. Over.”]
The squad-lead peaked at the engineer standing by the device. “You heard it. Go!”
He nodded, finally pressing the glowing red button floating on top of the box.