Stories tagged “space war”

  • Approach

    One of the things that earthsiders don’t really realize is both how quiet and how noisy it is in space. When you are in your suit, there is no noise from outside. I watched explosions going off all around me in a silence as complete as if they were v...

  • Entry

    Ready the grapples. Deploy. Impact. Within 15 seconds thirty of us are on the outer skin of the enemy ship. My earphones tweet and my HUD directs me to the rally point. The LT. has the demo squad place the breaching charge, an open rectangle of explosi...

  • Inward

    I reach an intersection. The corridor I am in continues straight, following the curve of the hull with a side corridor leading deeper into the vessel. I drop an IR marker and take the left. As I move I take out the lights. One slug to each panel and th...

  • Deeper

    My shoulders still hurt a bit from the sudden deceleration, but when you’re Spec Ops, you have to deal with that kind of crap. I take in the IR views given by my suit, open a bulkhead door, and venture inside. My fellow Spec Ops team is invisible...

  • Hangar

    The IR floods with a piercing, laserlike green, then compensates. I’m in the hangar now, a vast and cavernous zone with ships and personnel flitting about. Some unsecured ships and individuals are floating up now, unsecured when the grav system d...

  • Confrontation

    I am suspended above a vat of some translucent blue fluid. Electrodes are attached to my skin and my bald head. I am naked, strapped down to a steel scaffolding. The door opens, sliding upwards. A man walks in. I instantly recoil as far as my containme...

  • Pain

    Pain shoots through my body with disconcerting intensity and distressing rapidity. I am submerged in a perfluorocarbon fluid (most likely ultra-purified perfluorodecalin; it’s what everybody uses in training), enabling me to breathe but not to sc...

  • Shooting at the Breeze

    There is total chaos in the hangar. Things are blowing up all around. The door to the missile magazine opens up and I run in, taking out obstacles. Everybody is in a panic because nobody can see us. Some of my teammates enter in with me. A large shudde...

  • The ELF in the Woodwork

    I cut open the protective plastic sheathing on the bomb components. Deftly manipulating them, I assemble the remotely-detonated explosive device. My ZOOT-suit is wired to transmit its location data to my HUD so that I can see what I am doing. The devic...