Chapter 33: Front 17 – Station 9.3

Kolme shuffled around awkwardly in the seat of his Vijaik.
 The cockpit of the mecha was far from his favourite place in the world, packed full of screens, levers, clasps and a claustrophobia inducing numbers of buttons and switches - Like all things in his life he had attempted to make the place a little more comfortable.

Adding in a cup holder and cushions when no one was looking, along with a space for his teapot and a portable kettle in the cupboard underneath his chair (He had little concern for the safety equipment that was meant to be stored there).

'Too soon for another battle damn it. I don't like this - Why did the enemy Captain suddenly decide to speed up? And why the hell are we going towards what's obviously a trap?!
 I wish we had an hour, just an hour and I could find out for sure what Scarlet was so worried about - I shouldn't of let that damn Doctor stop her from telling me - Why are you so stupid Nilas, what did she want to tell--'

"Squad Leader Sir, Are you reading me?" Came the composed voice of the ship's comms operator.
 Kolme scratched at his scalp before flipping the reply switch;
"We read ya' loud and clear - Go ahead lad."

"Good luck out there old-sport!" Said a far more excitable voice interrupting the first.

Kolme rose an eyebrow at this sudden change in tone - "That you Cap'ain?"

"However did you guess? Ha-ha it is indeed! Well I best hand you back, Charlie-boy here is glaring at me something awful for talking his microphone thingy!"

Kolme sighed, "Aye Sir, w'ill keep in touch."

There was a faint shuffling on the other end of the line before the calmer (if now a little agitated) voice of the comms operator returned; "My name isn't Charlie-- Oh nevermind that! Ahem.
 Now then Vijaik-squadron we appreciate you being deployed on quite short notice so allow me to quickly run down the details again."

One of Kolme's monitors flashed up with a diagram as the comms operator began to re-explain the mission - A simplified view of the Tristian fleet surrounding the rectangular shape of a Nation-State;  "Approximately 1 hour and 3 minutes ago the enemy Submarine vessel, 'Curadh' began accelerating dramatically all the way up to what we presume to be its top speed. 30 minutes ago it entered through Nation-State 9.3's southern port.
 Since then we have managed to close the distance, at present the Valliere is positioned to the South-East of Station 9 and the Rinie to the South-West, with all of their 10 Vijaiks positioned in-between to form a full cordon around the Southern, Western and Eastern Entrances.
 We have continued forward to the Northern entrance which we are currently positioned directly in-front of--"

'Damn-it, if I'd known he was gonna spout out all this gibberish, I could of made a quick trip to Scarlet's room 'nd back - And still be in time for the launch!'

"--Since then the Enemy vessel has remained inside the Nation-Satellite and is now blocking all signals from it - Meaning we can neither communicate with the Station's AI in order to find out its current state, nor can we detect their exact positioning.
 As such the members of the Fluchtig's Neo-team will now enter the station from the Northern entrance, establish a reckon position, and if possible mark out the exact deployment of the enemy ship and any armour it has in place around the station's interior."
 The Operator paused his explanation for a few seconds as more images flashed on screen, showing the predicted layout of the Northern port Kolme's team would be entering;

"Once you launch you will only have local communications with each other, any broader signals will give away your position to the enemy - As such refrain from using long range comms unless absolutely necessary.
 Everything understood?"

There was a series of 'Ayes' and 'Rogers' from the members of the team (who being honest Kolme had forgotten were even on this call) and then finally the lights turned green.

 Kolme swapped all monitors to regular operating, the massive central screen displaying the space in-front of his mech. Outside the massive rollers doors of the hanger bay began to fold open.
 Mechanics and engineers ran to & fro, clearing away miscellaneous crates, fuel lines and so on.

Beneath him a heavy, metallic clasping sound alerted Kolme of his Vijaik's feet combining with two long railways-like strips of the ship's ramp.
 The doors now fully open, Kolme looked out at the vast openness of space, with nothing but the sparse array of stars to light it - And there were few enough of those.

A memory trickled unwarranted into his mind, one of his earliest - Of a day in the air, staring up at the moon, and for the first time in his life - Really appreciating its cosmic beauty - Of wanting to fly higher, to touch rather than look...A set of lights in front of him all flashed green, he braced against the force.
 It was a force he had never grown used to, of your machine being propelled along tracks at incredible speeds before being flung out into space with exceptional velocity like some flimsy paper plane.
 His teeth chattered, his bones ached and his mech flew through - Straight out the doors, off the rails and into that endless night's sky.

There's a thrill to flying, no matter whether in a helicopter or a 60 tonne robot - And to his shame, even after all these years, Kolme still couldn't suppress that temporary feeling of absolute freedom - A cheeky maniac grin of excitement.

****

Alongside Kolme, the other three active machines of the group launched - Though there were more differences than simply Scarlet's absence.

Nation-State 9.3, or simply 'Station 9' had been abandoned sure, but only near the end of its construction - Meaning it was entirely possibly the place still had a partially functioning gravity & power generation system in place, if one that would of greatly fallen into disrepair.

 This in mind Sabban and Kolme had been forced to remove most of their mech's customisations - The heavy twin cannon usually fixed to Kolme's machine, or the massive thrusters bolted to the back of Sabban's - Were both considered to be untenable for competent in atmosphere fighting, especially when trying to move fast as a forward scouting party.

 This essentially meaning the team currently consisted of three regular Neo-Vijaiks.
Hoki on the other hand still had most of her modifications, which had originally been designed with ground combat in mind - Minus the high-powered experimental rifle, which was still in tatters after their previous battle against the Casnel.

Instead the team was carrying 4 standard issue, low-powered energy rifles plus one medium range sniper in Hoki's keeping. The four 'nerfed' machines made their way out from the looming, almost Iris shape of the battleship Fluchtig and towards the Station - Kolme only sparing a brief glance to watch the ship's thruster come alive as the vessels spun around to better bombarded the Curadh should it decide to make a break for it.

Kolme always found stations an odd sight to behold - A testament to both the indomitable spirit of humanity, and a momentum to the utter lack of taste man pertains.
 Roughly 400 years ago at the start of the third age, when the decision to colonise more of space then just Abhaile and the Moon had been made - Many a project had come up.
 Ideas of large spheres like miniature planets, or long cylindrical tubes that could generate their own natural gravity by constantly spinning.
 And at heart gravity was what counted most - Sure you can create water from hydrogen and you can, with effort, terraform the barren - But without gravity, well, livestock don't take well to floating around above their pastures, and rivers struggle to flow in free fall. So before any of the other (possibly more sensible) ideas could come to fruition - Another entirely more analogue one had been conceived:

The suppressor field, small panels capable of generating an isolated field of gravity at the cost of massive energy drains, was something used aboard ships like the Fluchtig in places like its canteen or for sleeping in traditional beds in a 0G environment.
 The early pioneers of space had thought the idea of making a gaint suppressor field to be a great one - And so was born the Nation-states;

Massive rectangles in the sky, one side covered entirely in the heaviest duty solar panels, on the back of each a massive upscaled suppressor field and on the opposite face of the rectangle?
Whatever you wanted.
 Cities, farmland, industry - It was as though one took a thin sliver of land from the surface of a planet, encased it in glass - Slapped some solar panels on top and then floated it off into space.
 They could be small and privatised by the most wealthy companies & billionaires - Or the size of large cities, with their own governments and commerce.

They were also, in Kolme's opinion, incredibly ugly.
 One moment you were floating through space, staring out at the infinite beauty of bleak nothingness - The next a massive shining grey rectangle, so large you can't even see its ends - Fills your entire vision.

'Talk about polluting the skies....'

The four green and blue mecha soon made their way to the northern port - Every station had four, one in each of the cardinal directions lining the width of the object. The width of station 9 was easily as tall as 30 stories, implying the city inside had been intended to be a large one - A place plenty big enough for the Curadh to hide inside.
 Along the northern edge ran the many sealed circular doorways of the port, each a large metal and bolt plated surface. The team chose one of the relatively smaller gates, probably intended for minor transport frigates, and quickly activated the magnetic clamps of their Vijaik's legs.

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Sabban in particular rapidly got to work, unsheathing from his mech's back a large buzz-saw looking object. With a quick switch depression, the tool sprang to life emitting a circular arc of plasma-hot energy in much the same way the Arc-Staffs or an actual plasma cutter might - But to a more industrial level.
 The burning hot light being to spark violently against the black metal of the doorway, sizzling through it like some space-age chainsaw through a tree - The other 3 mechs making sure to stand clear of Sabban's beaver-ish efforts.
 After a few minutes of cutting, Kolme broke the silence;
"How long you recon' lad? I don't like how exposed we are out here."

Sabban grunted half-heartedly - "Another while yet. It'd be faster if I made a human size gap, someone could go inside and find the manual override for the door."

"Negative, you keep cuttin' away. No need to start takin' risks before we've even gotten inside eh? "Kolme said back with little hesitation.
 Sabban simply grunted again and returned to cutting open the large door.

After a quarter hour or so, a sizable portion of thick airlock door was pulled free.
 The quartet made their way inside before Sabban replaced the cut portion, partially welding it back in place in four spots.

"That enough? We will lose alot of pressure like this Kolme." He said rather unenthusiastically.

"That's fine Sab-lad, I'd rather we can quickly knock that thing back open if needed. Hoki you're clear on the inner-door?"

"Roger that." Hoki responded, her mech crouched down and outstretched a hand - From its fingertip a smaller claw of human proportions extended, grabbing a large lever against one wall.
 The claw pulled down the lever and the inner-door of the airlock began to unseal. Air gushed as the pressure of the port began to rush out of the gaps in Sabban's ad-hoc entrance.
 Warning lights flashed across Kolme's screens as his mech's systems warned of the rapidly decreasing pressure inside the airlock. A few aged looking crates and even loose metal panels began to strip away from their resting places inside the port and fly aggressively towards the gaps in the airlock the squad was standing in.

Quickly the group made their way in through the door avoiding any newly airborne obstacles and sealing the door again from the far side - Finally allowing things to settle.
 With some brief orders on Kolme's part, the team began to fan out and observe their surroundings.
 Una, Sabban and Hoki checking all around the cavernous room for any traps or presence of the enemy - While Kolme's machine quickly got to work accessing the station's internal systems via his array of sensor gear, a collage of radar dishes and small satellites perched on one shoulder of his mech.

The place was if anything a little dull to look at - An incredibly long corridor.
 Floors, walls and ceilings all lined with grey half-finished, metallic surfaces - Nothing more than sparse crates of long forgotten building materials, to fill a place easily large enough to house entire spaceships.
 It was almost overwhelming to Kolme, after so long aboard the narrow corridors of warships, to be surrounded by a space tall enough to make the Vijaik's 20-metre height feel short - And long enough to make the far end of the place barely visible from where he stood.

"I'm in everyone, portin' data over to ya'll now." Kolme said after his machine finally bypassed the blocking signal the Curadh was projecting from somewhere deeper inside the station.
 Now with access Kolme began to glance over reams of data, aswell as turning on the lights which illuminated the cavernous room in a warm yellow glow - Not too dissimilar to that of the Fluchtig's own smaller hangar bays.
 "Well we've still got complete power, some gravity too." He mused flicking through status screens.

"Can you detect the Curadh with it?" Sabban asked, clearly uninterested with the details of the actual station itself.

"Not yet, I've got full control over the port and some of the general details bu-- Wait look at that!"

"No way, that shouldn't be possible...." Hoki added in response to a reading Kolme had forwarded to the others.

"W-what's wrong with that, should the station not have those things.... sirs."
 Una, who had been almost silent till now, sheepishly said.

In a kind and matronly voice Hoki began to explain Kolme's findings;
 "Sort of Una, yes. By rights an abandoned station like this one, could still have some gravity and some power but this station has been uninhabited for a decade. The solar panels would degrade with time, the suppressor fields even faster than that but--"

"But according ta' this the station has 80% operational power generation and 72% of its gravity functions online. That little degradation, well, it implies someone must ta' been looking after this place as recently as three or four years ago." Kolme finished.

"Two of the battery caches are still running optimally too, and only one of the five has actually stopped."
 Sabban added flatly, still seeming mostly uninterested by all this.

"O-oh I see..." Una replied meekly, "I Guess that does sound kinda strange then."

"Lieutenant, what about area Hn3?" Hoki asked with a mix of curiosity and professional intrigue, her voice betraying her clear fascination with the place and the particularly strange energy signature appearing form this 'Area Hn3'.

"Hmmm, you're right the system maps show strange reading over there."

"The enemy?" Sabban added a touch too eagerly for Kolme's liking.

"Maybe, maybe not. I'd rather ignore it but I guess we better check it out before we go running inside the station proper - Wouldn't want to get hit from behind would we? Alright lads move out, Sabban you take point, Rookie you've got rear-guard."
 With a series of confirmations the group of mechs began to stomp their way through the dock. Between the many cavernous rooms like the one they had entered into, were a series of smaller service tunnels - Just tall enough for the Vijaiks to pass through. Now in the system they easily accessed the doors to these and quickly made their way through empty massive room after room.

Some were larger still then the first, while others had some small signs of life - Abandoned construction vehicles like cranes and small lorries - The odd portions of unfinished wall, revealing exposed networks of sprawling cables and plumbing beneath.
 After passing through a number of the ports and tunnels, they reached the door of their objective.
Yet another wall of plain grey metal, in a labyrinth of plain grey metal - But this one with the smallest difference, the words 'Hn3' above it in faint white paint.

Hoki's cyan machine stood to the right side of the door, Kolme's more traditional green mech to the left - Sabban with rifle raised, faced the door directly and the rookie stood a ways back, covering the tunnel entrance and their potential escape if needed.
 Before Kolme could give the order to breach the door, he received an isolated signal from Hoki;
 "Sir, you don't think this is what Scarlet meant? That someone has been using this station secretly, as a base or something?"

"Well if that is the case, let's just hope we haven't walked straight into a secret TSU shipyard eh?
 Be a 'real nice surprise' to find a secret fleet waitin' here for us wouldn't it." Kolme said back mirthlessly before switching over to the general communications channel;
 "Everyone ready? Door opening in three, two--"

The door slid open with a swoosh, cleanly splitting into two diagonal halves - The three mechs quickly rushing in and covering the area, searching for any signs of the enemy.

"What, what is this?" Hoki said after a few moments.
 Rather than a secret enemy warship, base or even Vijaik's ambush spot - Instead what appeared before them was a village of sorts. Rows and streets of white metal and prefabricated fiberglass houses lined the port floor in a sprawling mass.
 Interspersed were larger sheds, with even conventional civilian vehicles left parked on 'roadsides'.
 Put simply it looked bizarre, a white-clad settlement of square, blocky structures, built atop the the generic grey floors of a port-hangar bay.

"Why would anyone want to --" Kolme didn't get to finish his thinking, as the slightly static covered voice of Sabban broke across the radio;
 "Break for cover, now! Tango spotted at 9:30, repeat Unidentified mech ahead!"

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