“Two things. First, I want to see if there is another way into this section that the Russians could use to flank us. Second, we have never seen this section of the ship. It could have weapons that we could use; you just never know.”
They both flipped on their powerful LED spotlights which cut through the darkness. Unlike Deck 12, with thousands of manageable containers, Deck 7 was full of broken space craft and vehicles.
“Shit, look at all these destroyed fighters. I bet we are looking at 100 billion dollars’ worth of junk,” West said.
“More than that,” Snap mumbled.
There was no clear path through the jumbled heap of fighter planes. Snap and West climbed over a pile and found a clearing near the overhead where they could push through to the other side of the pile of destroyed planes. Just past the wrecked planes were three tanks. The tanks had fared better than the planes, probably because they were locked down and had stronger armor.
“I wonder if those tanks work?” West asked.
“We will have to find out,” Snap said as he climbed down off the mountain of twisted metal and reached the deck below.
“Look, we can see all the way to the other side of the ship,” West said.
“Yeah, that’s a route the Russians could take to flank the squad.”
“If we could get these tanks operational, we could use them to defend this side of the ship.”
“Remember, this is alien technology. We may not even be able to operate them. They could have a bio identification ignition system for all we know. Hell, they may be thought controlled and only compatible with an alien brain,” Snap said as he approached the first tank.
All three tanks appeared to be in good shape, but the floor had buckled up around one of them; so, moving them would have been impossible. Snap went to place his gloved hand on the first tank when a figure stepped out of the darkness behind him.
“Drop your weapons, or we will shoot,” the stranger commanded.
Snap froze, then glanced at West to his right. They both knew they had been had. There was no way they could spin around, spot the targets in the dark and fire their weapons before the strangers unloaded a whole magazine of God knows what into them. It was possible their advanced armor would stop most of the bullets, but that would be taking one hell of a chance. For all Snap knew, the stranger could be toting an RPG.
Snap nodded at West, detached his laser rifle from the Micro Modular Fusion Reactor on his back, and lowered the weapon to the deck. West followed suit, and they slowly turned to meet their captors.
Raising his hands, Snap said, “My name is Major Morgan Slade. This is Captain Neal West. We have come here to recover the Element 115 onboard this ship. May I ask who you are?”
Snap vaguely recognized the battle armor of the two men standing atop a demolished shuttle. Both had energy rifles pointed toward him and West. Their armor was clearly not Russian; it seemed like an older version of their own armor. Snap deduced that these were survivors of the Impegi.
The men ignored Snap’s question and said, “Who are you with?”
Snap, understanding the man’s meaning, and believing them to be on the same side, replied, “We are Americans. We have come to remove the cargo and rescue you. But the enemy is here too, and they shot down our plane.”
The man that had been speaking looked over at his partner to see a nod. They both lowered their rifles. The one on the right said, “I’m Catrix and this this Fabris. We were crew aboard this ship. The others have relocated a few miles from here.”
“There are other survivors? How many?” Snap asked, in a surprised tone.
Fabris told him that the rest of the crew had taken supplies and valuable cargo offsite to hide it from the enemy. Snap explained that they had been attacked by local military and were expecting another assault soon.
“So, any of these tanks work?” Snap asked.
Catrix grinned. While technically he was not in their chain of command, it was obvious to both him and Fabris that Snap was the leader in this situation. Catrix answered, “Yes, Sir. We just found a fully functional tank with, what seems like, a clear path through the debris. I even took the liberty of arming it with 20 photon shells, all ready to go.”
Catrix proudly pointed at the newly armed tank.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
The tank was relatively small, only slightly larger than a Humvee. It had been unstrapped from the deck and appeared to be ready to roll. Fabris, using his exoskeleton armor, easily leapt onto the turret and disappeared inside. The other three men joined him.
Fabris slid into the driver’s seat, which closely resembled that of a jet plane and said, “This machine is incredible. It can reach speeds of 125 miles per hour, track dozens of targets at once, and fire 25,000 rounds a minute.”
“That sounds great, but can it target an invisible AG Fighter?” Snap asked.
“Well, not exactly. But, if the fighter slows down enough to target ground forces, we may be able to hit him.”
“What kind of range does this thing have?” Neal asked.
“The laser canon has a range of about 1,200 meters, but the mini photon gun has range of two miles.”
“Photon gun? Holy crap, we are going to vaporize some Ruskies today!” Neal said, slapping his armor-clad hands together.
“Unfortunately, I think this is all going to be close quarters combat. We probably will not be able to capitalize on the two-mile range,” Snap said with a sigh.
“I’ll take the photon gun, anyway,” Neal said as he climbed into the main turret.
“I got the laser cannon,” Snap said, as he climbed to the top of the tank into the semi-protected turret. The laser cannon was similar in size to a large machine gun and was mounted on a turret that allowed for nearly 180-degree maneuverability.
After a few minutes of Catrix explaining the controls, Snap and West felt they were ready for combat. Catrix and Fabris settled into the bowels of the tank from where they would navigate, and the four began to make their way through the wreckage of the once great interstellar craft.
While Snap and West had been familiarizing themselves with the new tank, the rest of Lightning Squad had been setting up perimeters, booby traps, and digging into fortified positions. As the tank was slowly climbing over the last mound of rubble before it reached the frozen tundra three loud explosions were heard.
“What was that?” Fabris asked over the tank’s communication system.
Snap, who had been listening to his team the whole time, said, “That was the first wave of Russian paratroopers making their way down from the top decks.”
Catrix asked, “Any idea of how many?”
“They started out with about 300, minus however many just triggered that explosion,” Snap said with a brief chuckle.
Three more explosions were heard, this time closer.
“Another dozen gone,” West surmised.
For the last several minutes, there had been radio silence from the team. Snap knew this was because they were bracing for the paratroopers to make their way into the kill box.
Johnson and Taylor who were two levels up from the rest of the group, would be the first to see the paratroopers descending the stairwell. In a perfect world, the booby traps would have thinned out the Russian ranks before engaging the two men.
Two more explosions.
“They are one deck above us. Cam three is showing their approach,” Ryan Taylor calmly stated into his COMM so the entire team could hear him.