Chapter Seventy-Eight: Raid
August 15th, 3017
"Remind me to send Hull a thank you note." Katrina told Colonel Paige. "You've done a lot in a short amount of time."
"We're Marines ma'am." Paige puffed her chest up a bit. "We don't do things by half." She grinned. "We're better than infantry, we're shipboard littoral combat specialists, we could have been Black Navy Sailors, but we chose violence instead."
"Well, regardless of your job description, I'm glad to have you." Katrina said. "You split your troops up to support this operation and Hull's correct?"
"Yes Ma'am, we have two battalions of Marines at our disposal, one of them is with Hull, and I'm with the rest here."
"We move in as soon as we get the go signal from our people on the inside." Nondi Steiner spoke up. "Katrina will be staying behind while I supervise the operation." Nondi Steiner met Colonel Paige's eyes. "I need to know if you can follow my instruction and cooperate with the rest of our forces."
"You can count on us." Paige said firmly. "We are very good at our jobs."
August 16th, 3017
"We have a go, people." Nondi broadcasted to her forces, and the forces that had been hidden in the debris around the Odessa IV facility finally moved to take the shipyard. "The Archon wants a lot of prisoners for interrogation."
"Marksman copies." Paige replied as her Sting dropship dropped her and her company off. "We're here and beginning our approach."
Luyten 68-28 August 15th, 3017
"Commodore!" The sensor officer called out to Commodore Frye. "We have two of the same class of ship we faced at Ross 248 present, but they're shooting at each other."
"Ma'am" the Communications officer spoke up. "We're being hailed."
"Let them speak." Frye Commanded. "I want to hear what they have to say."
"This is acting Captain Rogers of the CSV Bordeaux. If you help us out, we can work out whether to be enemies later, we didn't sign up to commit atrocities across the Inner Sphere. I had to enact some desperate measures to say the least."
"This is the Manassas, we hear you, indicate which vessel is the enemy, and we'll be happy to assist." Commodore Frye responded. "We can sort out whether to kill you or not later."
"We're receiving a data burst with IFF embedded." The comms officer said. "Relaying IFF across the board now."
"Listen up." I said to Hanse Davion and the Marines with me. "We're aiming for the two Yardships below, it seems that we stumbled into Comstar's very own civil war, and now we get to step in. So watch your targets, if someone surrenders then disarm them and cuff them, we want data and intact machines." I took a breath before continuing. "Mathis and Rook will be leading the assault on the station, you know what to do."
"Sir," Sergeant Lovell spoke up. "I've split up the tech specialists between companies so everyone has several, they've got the mapping data loaded as well, so they'll be your guides."
"You heard the Sergeant , follow your tech specialists, they're on point for this op" I said.
"Yes sir!" They responded. And now the hard part began, waiting to get close enough to jump to the Yardship.
"I thought waiting in the rear of the frontlines for information was bad." Hanse observed to me via laser comms. "Waiting to be dropped off at an objective is worse."
"You get used to it after a while." I responded, "I forgot you got promoted quickly enough to skip a lot of the stuff that sucks as a front liner."
"That, and I always had something to do." Hanse said. "I'm not used to just being along for the ride."
"Well, in a couple of minutes you won't be worried about that." I said as I stood up and grabbed onto the handle above the "bomb bay" "Get ready Marines!"
"Commodore, the enemy vessel labeled the CSV Montpellier is drifting, and the Bordeaux is damaged."
"Make sure to divert a couple of the boarding parties their way." Frye said. "We may be able to salvage it."
"Ma'am, Captain Rogers wants to speak to you." The comms officer said.
"Alright, I'll speak to him." Frye responded.
"Manassas," Captain Rogers started. "We've taken some heavy damage, we're powering down weapons and slaving control over to you."
"Copy that Captain Rogers, prepare to receive Marines to enforce this." Frye responded.
"We'll accept just about anything as long as you're not shooting at us right now." Captain Rogers said.
"Nice to meet some fellow professionals." Paige said to the members of the 6th Hesperus Guards.
"Good to see some other Marines out here." The fellow Colonel responded. "Thanks for the Powered armor, it's nice to have some advantages here out in space for once."
"They're pretty nice to have." Paige agreed. "Certainly makes my job easier when my people can survive mistakes to learn from them."
The two groups of Marines continued down the corridor, clearing out any opposition and ensuring that no one did any damage to the Shipyards.
"How goes the capture of the two Yardships?" Paige asked. "I'm worried they may try and skuttle them."
"We captured one of them, but they seemingly bricked the system's controls, it's stuck drifting in space until we can get them fixed." The other Colonel shrugged, "The second one self destructed as soon as we got near it."
"We may have some things that will help with the bricked Yardship," Paige responded, "But we should probably finish our current job first."
"You're right." He agreed, and tossed a flashbang into the next room. "First." He entered the room with Paige hot on his heels.
"This is terrifying," Hanse said as we used the Jump jets on our Mithril to navigate to a lifeboat. "One bad move and we're gone."
"That's why we attached the tethers to the ship." I responded. "We're here." We breached the lifeboat and got into the Yardship.
"This wasn't in my reports." I said as we stepped over bodies littering the corridor. "I'm afraid this could be really bad."