Semo practices the silent mantra and visualizations that Livea taught him as they make their final approach. It is surprisingly effective at helping him focus and soothe his pre-fight jitters.
At Hugh's instigation, Semo barks back the imperial equivalent of, "Sir! Yes, sir!" He steps over to the the lead tech and makes a show of noting his id / insignia. Then, he waits and follows the rest of the team out, taking up tailgunner position on the squad.
The Delta members instinctively match pace as they tromp down the short connecting hallway to the circular corridor linking their hangar level. A Needleship is very long but not terribly wide, and with most of its decks oriented perpendicular to its thrust traversing the hangar and storage levels is more like exploring a skyscraper. A noisy, sleek, deadly skyscraper.
Internal security is fairly light, as it turns out. The central lift nexus running up through most of the Righteous Purpose is watched by an ensconced attack drone on each level. The team walks past a handful of white-tuniced crew with no reaction given on either side. As with so many things Imperial, there are a trio of lifts waiting in the nexus.
"This is our ride," Oskell says. Oskell, Swalni, Ahaz, and Taiz pile into one of the lifts headed for Engineering. "Happy hunting."
You can't help but wonder what Haj is doing as the lift darts upward towards the Needleship's CIC levels. The Bashakran is constantly tapping away at his handheld.
"Making sure we aren't made," he says offhand once he notices he's the only person doing anything of note in the elevator. "Keeping their IFF checks going in circles, setting up loops in their drone feeds, that kind of thing. Heads up, it's just about go time."
The lift does indeed slow and finally halt a level below CIC - just as their intel said it would. The bridge isn't immediately accessible from the main lifts precisely to prevent the kind of hijacking the Delta fireteam is about to attempt.
One or two guards on the CIC entrance and one sconce-drone. Won't have auth-codes to give them, won't have legitimate bridge access. Either use the gatecrasher to maintain stealth or breaching charges to stun the interior targets. If there was one guard on the outside, there'll be two inside CIC. Only one inside if there were two outside. Then the commander, pilot, copilot, weapons officer, comms, and sysop. Commander, comm officer, and both pilots have immediate access to vox - they go down first. Crew barracks are generally 3-4 levels below CIC so they'll be alerted by any explosions. The ship runs weapons sensors at all times so ANY Imperial gunfire'll set 'em off.
Haj slides up next to the secure hatchway that leads up a short flight of steep steps and into the small security checkpoint before the bridge. He connects his handheld to the access lock.
"Gatecrasher's ready to go, Captain."
Mellish looks around the circular space. Records of past subjugations, colorful representations of orbital bombardments, victories against dark shapes in the night, commendations and trophies (some gilded, some grisly) handed down from on high. Mellish snorts in disgust and yanks the connecting rod holding the shroud and fake beamer receiver on his SCAR. The Hollywood props slide off the front and the Hebrew Hammer checks his weapon. Mag pouches are uncovered, sidearms re-holstered within easy reach, swords loosened in their sheaths.
"Blow the gate, kill the officers first, then walk your fire to the rest of them. I want this thing clear and the exits secured pronto. Everybody ready?"
He looks around one last time, then quietly supervises the team as it assembles for dynamic entry.
It's actually a relief to reach the final staging area. Now is the time when the butterflies drift off and clarity settles in. Semo sheds the shroud from the SCAR-H and glides his hand briefly over the hilt of his sword.
Haj's gatecrasher kills the hatch panel with a brief squawk of dying circuitry. The secure hatch dilates with a woosh. Hugh and Semo pound up the steep steps (almost a ladder) to the cramped checkpoint. A lone Turai pushes off the wall she was leaning on as the ceiling-mounted drone swivels to face the newcomers.
Hugh's SCAR-H fups. The Turai's head snaps back and the dead woman spins on her feet, painting the checkpoint's steel walls with a red swath of arterial gore. Semo's blade flashes up and bites deep into the drone's casing. A flash from inside, and the machine dies as quickly as its human counterpart.
One Turai outside means two on the bridge.
Haj and Mellish stack up on the wider hatch leading into the Righteous Purpose's CIC. The Bashakran cortex bandit hooks up the gatecrasher one last time and nods to Hugh. The Delta captain counts it off.
Haj burns the panel and pops the hatch a split-second before the team moves. With the grace and speed instilled by countless practice, the three Delta and one lone rebel breach into the Needleship CIC.
The Righteous Purpose's command and control wastes little space - in fact, judging from the brief glimpses of the reinforced, humming walls and compact dimensions, the entire bridge is likely a sort of room-sized crasher or possibly a lifepod. The commander, an (expectedly) older man with the pale skin of a spacer, is bent over a holodisplay when the team does their Kool-Aid Man impression. Arranged around this main display in a semicircle, the rest of the bridge crew sit back in articulated, comfortable command chairs. It's just like the simulation - the pilot, comms officer, and sysop in the right arc, the co-pilot, and weapons officer sweeping out to the left. One Turai is mere feet from Hugh; the second is opposite the holodisplay, standing with a clear view of the bridge crew and the entrances.
8 targets. Only a few seconds before one of them reaches a vox.
Hugh steps right as he passes through the CIC hatch and shoots the Needleship commander in the small of the back. The man turns and flails; Hugh aligns his rifle's post with the officer's head and gives the man a brain-mist halo. Hugh picks up the comms officer reaching for his console in his peripherals. Another step, another fhup, another dead Imperial.
Hugh pays no heed to the armored Imperial three feet away from him. That Turai's got a bigger problem, and its name is Semo Putupu. The Samoan sergeant delivers a quick slash across the Turai's sword arm and follows it up with a savage, full-power kick that shoves the Imperial down amidst the command couches. With his primary threat stunned, Semo turns and takes off the pilot's head along with the upper section of his crasher.
Mellish breaches left as his SCAR clatters off in short bursts at the co-pilot. The Imperial's quick; Mellish's rounds chase him off his crasher before they catch up to him midway to the meager cover afforded by the commander's central console. A handful of through-and-throughs explode out the copilot's chest and throw him to the deck.
Meanwhile, Haj loses it. Just like the old adage "the map is not the territory", real combat is not training, and the Bashakran just stands up and burns his mag at the most visually imposing but most impotent target. The second Turai, still halfway through drawing his sword and a good 15 feet from any of the fireteam, is pummeled by an eternity of armor-piercing 7.62mm and falls to the floor looking like an old soda can after an afternoon of plinking.
Semo's wounded dance partner is clambering up the dead pilot's crasher, sword in hand. The Needleship's sysop moves in slow motion, sliding off his couch and making for the dead Turai's weapons. The weapons officer, however, pulls a derringer-like handlancer from an ankle sheath and tries to make it to cover (and maybe, just maybe, sound the general alarm) behind the central console.
One thrust with the Turai blade guts the drone as Hugh pastes the lone Turai at the checkpoint. With the checkpoint secured, Haj moves up and performs his technomagic, causing the hatch to cycle open.
In seconds, they are inside. Semo turns his aggression on the Turai just inside the door, using more muscle than skill to move the obstacle out of the way. This opens the way to a more important target: the pilot. Semo takes his head off at shoulder level.
Seeing the weapons officer dive behind the central console, Semo takes a couple of quick steps and dives over the console after him. The console isn't likely to be much defense against 250 pounds of angry Samoan coming over top with with one of these beautiful armor-shredding swords in hand...
Semo vaults the center console with surprising agility and takes the weapon officer to the deck. Semo gets back up and twists his sword; it finally comes loose from the officer's skewered eye socket with a crack and a sluccch. On the far side of the console, the ragged remains of the sysop tumble to the floor in synch with brass from Hugh's rifle.
The wounded Turai gets to his feet just in time for Mellish to step around Hugh and meet the Imperial with a SCAR barrel. There's a cacophony of suppressed reports, loud plunks, the ting of empty brass, and the unmistakable wet slaps of rounds hitting meat.
Haj pushes one of the former bridge crew off the sysop's controls and checks the immediate areas around the CIC before querying the surveillance systems in place in Engineering. They've all been destroyed; that's a fairly good sign, so Haj patches the CIC into Engineering's vox network.
*I was just about call you,* Oskell's voice comes in clear over the intraship communicator. *We have Engineering but we've kind of sealed ourselves in the overseer deck for the time being. That ain't the problem. The consoles down here are shot up pretty good; We can't even get our doors open, nevermind vent atmo and herd the crew towards the lifepods. Maybe you can handle that from your end while you sound the abandon ship.*
Rising from behind the console, Semo yanks the sword from the weapon officer's eye socket. He quickly wipes the gore on the leg of his uniform as he sweeps the room with his eyes. As expected, resistance has been negated.
Knowing his job, Semo is already reaching for the door controls when Hugh issues his command. "On it, sir!"
"Mellish, take the left door," Semo says, gesturing. As soon as he's certain the doors have been sealed, he takes the right door himself. The only meet-n-greet anyone's going to get here will be filled with pain.
"Copy that," Hugh replies. "Sit tight and don't let your guard down, they might try to rush you when we start."
He nods to Haj.
"Seal us in, then prepare to vent the ship. Start with sections that don't have a lot of people in it, I want to keep the casualties limited. Give me a sign when you're ready."
(once Haj signals)
"Do it."
As Haj starts venting, Hugh takes a deep breath, shifts his voice to his most commanding Imperial accent, then sounds the general alarm and puts the vox on PA mode.
"All hands, this is the Captain speaking. We are experiencing a massive loss of atmosphere. Report to the lifeboats and abandon ship. I repeat, all hands abandon ship. This is not a drill.
With the general alarms comes a sudden shift in gravity - the faux-grav shuts down quickly but smoothly. Semo and Mellish grab nearby handholds to steady themselves as they keep an eye on the CIC's exits. The three central lifts reset with dull slams felt even on the bridge; the emergency bulkheads between each level cycle closed to limit any decompression. Outside in the void, just above the Righteous Purpose's right front quarter, a faint mist of ice crystals glimmers in the harsh light of Boranai's sun.
Haj brings up a compound-eye-view of the Needleship's surveillance. Hugh's commands appear to be working. Crewmen float through the lift-tubes, vaulting from handhold to handhold in the zero gravity. Haj does his best to keep the decompressing compartments just behind the main exodus of crew. Sure, he makes a few mistakes (as twenty Imperials die in ever-quieter agony when the primary maintenance corridor vents a few seconds before the crewmen clear out), but nobody's perfect.
The bulk of the crew reach the lifepod bay and jettison in about five minutes. The light thumps of each pod's departure match the ever-decreasing glyph count on Haj's displays. As the pods start cometing their way through Boranai's atmosphere, a laser transmission blinks its message onto the comms console:
You Dig, Cargo Cult on docking standby.
"I think we're ready for the freighters, Captain," Haj says. "If any of the Purpose's crew are still aboard, they're not going for the boats and they're keeping to where there's no surveillance."
"Good. Fire up the engines and move us away a bit, I don't want any stragglers in space suits deciding that they'd rather get back on at this stop. Signal the freighters that they can move in, seal the hangars when they're in. Vent everything that's not a direct route from the hangar to here, if you haven't already. We'll start sweeping when we have more bodies in here."
He looks to Semo.
"Might want to check the manifest for a bottle of bubbly, Sarge, we've got us some renaming to do."
"Let's wait for reinforcements on that," Hugh responds. "We're short on people and I need both the bridge and engineering defended against a counter attempt."
The huge Needleship's impellers gently grasp Boranai's gravity well and shove the soon-to-be-renamed Righteous Purpose away from its shower of lifepods. The freighters You Dig and Cargo Cult glide smoothly into the cap-ship's hangar bay. Haj lights up a pressurized walkthrough for the reinforcements.
It's not too long before two rebel... marine? warchiefs arrive at the pre-CIC entrance checkpoint and broadcast appropriate codes identifying them as Mardy and Quper. Quper, the taller, paler, and hairier of the two, keys his vox after authenticating himself.
*Cap'n, I've got men ready to take aboard any prisoners. Where are we on getting the orbital's sentry guns taken out? Do we have contact with the other boarding team yet?*
"Yes, sir!" The captain knows best, so Semo bides his time.
Later, the freighter crews arrive. Still suspicious, Semo moves to the door. "Let me check them out, Captain, before they come in." He's been on teams that have used the hide-behind-the-friendly-face trick, and doesn't want to fall victim to it himself.
If Hugh consents, Semo will issue a "Move back from the door" order. Once they have complied, he'll step outside - naked Turai sword in hand - and check that no enemy are hiding just out of sight before allowing them in.
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