There, the final command was given, and Naoko enabled the programme. The security forces were in complete disarray and split up, only the blast doors and one or two TGFT members stood between the raiding party and freedom. There was only so much she could do, open the doors when security forces wanted to come through, close them at strategic point or this little trick she was about to do.
###
The index finger was just about to depress the trigger on the gyrock rifle when the lights started blinking on and off, complete darkness and blinding light. At the same time the sprinklers turned on, spreading a non-toxic flame retardant all over the room, and a siren started wailing very loud. All transmitters started spitting out random noise across the spectrum. Cat was blinded, but pressed the trigger nonetheless. Boom-swoosh-Crack, a miss. Blind and deaf, she switched to full auto and sprinkled the area with the rest of the magazine, Boom-swoosh-Crack, Boom-swoosh-Crack, Boom-swoosh-Crack, Boom-swoosh-Crack-fwump-Gung. There, a hit. She had at least hit the person she had been shooting at. She ducked back behind the wall, her back against the false safety and started switching magazine. She disengaged the vision aids and stared at the blinking lights through her visor. Something punched her shoulder and she grabbed after her combat knife on her left boot. The person put his helmet near her own.
"Cat, status."
"I am on half ammo chief, and I think Skull is hurt bad. I got one of the two next door, but I do not know how many they are."
"Cover Mayhem, he will get Skull. I'll take the other side. Chain will open another wall. On my shot, unleash hell."
"Aye aye chief."
She got ready and saw Red move among the rubble of the room and give commands in the blinks of light that allowed her to see. A stream of tracer bullets from the adjacent room told her that the cavalry had arrived on the other side. Time to play. She drew a small thermobaric grenade and readied it for when they would leave this room. No way was she going to run with a group in her rear.
###
Vardonx cursed slowly and methodically while he changed magazine. The soft nosed bullets had been replaced with Teflon coated accelerator projectiles instead, better known as armour piercers. He had heard the softer secondary explosion from the gyrock and knew that Neagoth was dead or dying. No way they were going to walk away from that, no way. He kept up his litany of curses and hatred, waiting for the right moment to ambush the filthy murderers. He saw three guards come running in full combat gear, their movements jerky and twisted in the almost stroboscopic light. He held up his badge and pointed at the prone Fluffy, giving him the thumbs up. Fluffy looked up and nodded, reloading his grenade launcher as they waited.
One of the guards knelt at the door and fired a long burst of tracer fire into the hole, staying erect to change magazine after offloading all of it in one burst. His lack of training was rewarded by a single shot from a sliver gun. Named for its thin wide beam of accelerated aluminium powder, it was extremely lethal against un-armoured targets, cutting right through flesh and bone without slowing. Like the upper face of a guard. The other guards looked in horror at the headless corpse as it slid to the floor and was himself hit by a gyrock. Boom-swoosh-Crack-fwump-Gung, Boom-swoosh-Crack, Boom-swoosh-Crack, Boom-swoosh-Crack-fwump-Gung, a hit directly in the chest of one guard, penetrating the armour and exploding him from the inside spreading him all over the corridor, the other gyrock hitting the guard in the leg almost dismembering him before exploding his hip off. Several new holes joined the rest on the back wall, proof of the extreme lethality these murderers were willing to take in use.
Vardonx cursed even more, this time about the bloody idiots that allowed complete novices to join the station security force. Fluffy shot a group of grenades in retaliation, and the gyrocks stopped. This was great, just great, outnumbered, outgunned, what could be more fun. The chainsaw started again, they were going another way. Vardonx crawled over to Fluffy and looked at the digital map and motioned to Fluffy to follow him. When they were clear of the doorway, they ran towards the next room. Four guards came running, and Vardonx motioned for them to cover the open door and smashed room. Vardonx and Fluffy had a fifty fifty chance of choosing the right room, it depended on whether the chainsaw had burst through the left or right bulkhead. They opened the door and saw the telltale line of the chainsaw track. They took as much cover as they could in the doorway and waited for the wall to collapse inwards. They were not disappointed, and a single person stepped in through, his weapon at the ready. Vardonx aimed and fired at the figure, twin tap. The figure stopped dead in his tracks and collapsed to his knees. Fluffy unleashed the entire content of the grenade launched straight at the chest of the person who disappeared in an immense cloud of gas and debris and light. They both pulled back and grinned at each other when the air was sucked from the room and used for the explosion of the thermobaric charge that Cat had dumped in the room they had just left. Unconsciousness left them, and mercifully so. The pain associated with first negative and then extreme positive pressure on the eyes and lungs was enough to kill an unprotected person.
###
Surbius watched the carnage unfold and did the mental calculations in his head. This would become very bloody, and he was not sure that he would be able to catch them. He sent a query along to Ecka, and received the answer he expected and hoped for. He went out to Naoko and asked her to stop with the countermeasures and give him control of the comms system.
"All security forces pull back and regroup around sectors A-13 to A-19. No offensive action is authorised. We are letting them out."
He nodded at Naoko, and let her unleash electronic hell. He may be letting them out of the station to save the civilians from more deaths, but no way in any of the circle of Hell was he going to let them go. He needed to know who they were and where they were going. He wanted to find the ones responsible for this and submit them to precisely what they had done here.
###
Space around Dau K-10 was empty apart from two ships that bore the marks of KAOS. The ships were pitted with holes, signs of several engagements, but they had come out of it relatively well. It had helped that only one set of fighters had emerged from the station, the rest blocked by the electronic attack, but close space was still full of combat debris. William Cutting hummed tunelessly as he turned his ship in a long slow circle, scanning for incoming ships. Suddenly the lights on the launch bays activated, and it started to disgorge fighters, three vults and two seekers. He smiled, finally something to do. With the lightning mines activating and hammering the light xithricite armour of the ships, he had no problems in killing the survivors with a well placed double flare shot. He signalled to fagious who came in and dumped a new set of mines. This was almost too easy.
