War Fleet: Resistance

folded out, behind which two rotatable landing jets were facing forward to slow down its descent. She’d seen a landing pad on the onscreen map in the shuttle, right behind the mansion.
“We’re going to have company,” she said softly into her wrist comm for anyone who was listening. “Reinforcements will land in a couple of minutes.”
“Do you think you can make it there ahead of them?” Olsen asked. He sounded tense.
“No,” Kota said, “but we don’t need to. Connery, Turgin, you’re on distraction duty. Keep the Arstans busy while Singh and I head into the mansion to extract the fleet admiral.”
Turgin was a young soldier with a baby face and slicked-back hair. He gave a sly smirk as if to communicate yeah, of course, we’ve got this and nothing can get in our way.
“Wipe that grin off your face, Turgin,” Kota said. “We don’t know how many of them there are, so we can’t afford to get cocky. Connery, you’re in charge. Keep your companion in check.”
“Understood, sir,” Connery said, and the full-bearded man nudged Turgin in the ribcage.
“Good. Keep your comms routed at all times both to the captain and myself.”
Turgin and Connery saluted simultaneously, and then marched promptly towards the landing pad to the right of the mansion. Kota and Singh continued onwards towards the mansion, still keeping their footsteps as silent as possible.
Kota didn’t think the Arstan troops from the ship would have had time to deploy yet, but she found it unlikely that the Arstans would keep a retired fleet admiral’s home unguarded. This was confirmed by a guard post on the spacious lawn outside, a sprinkler hose snaking from it. She lowered her spec-visor and zoomed in to see one guard posted there, green smoke rising from a thick straight pipe within his reptilian jaws, while he scanned the horizon with two bulbous eyes. This one had patterns of red scales over the thick eyelids that rose over each side of his head.
Two more were guarding a large single wooden door leading into the mansion. A shutter, composed of metal bars that seemed to slide down from the top, had been closed over this. The windows were barred off in a similar fashion.
Kota took some photographs from her display and sent them up to the Tapper, but there was no one on the channel right now to respond to her. They seemed engaged in other things.
“Looks like we’re going to have some trouble getting in,” she said to Private Singh. “Any ideas?”
“Probably time for some explosives, sir,” he replied.
Kota nodded. She’d hoped to avoid attracting undue attention, but it seemed that under these circumstances, they didn’t have any choice. Each Marine carried three standard-issue shrapnel grenades in their bandoliers, alongside one high-intensity plasma explosive.
“Let’s wait for our distraction,” Kota said.
She found a thick, gnarly tree branch, separate from the other trees around – this one with wispy blue flowers. She hadn’t been one for naming trees back home, and the number of species on alien planets made that even more difficult. But she could tell it would provide excellent cover for both her and Singh.
She stalked over to it, and then signaled Singh to duck down around the other side. Then they waited.
Soon enough, there came a crash from a distance and then the rapid sound of machine-gun fire. Light blossomed on the horizon, and the ground shook. Someone had just let off their high-intensity explosive, and Kota hoped that it was one of her men.
The guard nearest the hut turned to the commotion, raised his wrist to his face, and said something in a rasping, guttural language. Two more rushed out of the guardhouse, but the two soldiers at the door remained in place.
Kota and Singh would have to deal with them and the barred door themselves, for this was their chance to move in. She lowered her rifle and pulled the pin off her high-intensity grenade.

21
The defense station was massive enough for Olsen to fear it, although he’d been trained, at least from a tactical perspective, that it could be counterintuitive to think of an Arstan vessel as large or small. Each ship could act as one massive whole or as thousands of individual modules that reconfigured themselves into as many different configurations and formations as the Arstan commanding officer saw fit.
The station at first looked slightly spherical, with jagged protrusions along its surface. But soon enough, it split into twenty or so constituent parts, each one deploying shield-modules that pushed forward in small lattice formations. They made walls between the Tapper and the station’s more vital stations, much like phalanxes would have in the ancient Greek ground battles that Olsen had studied in military history school. He scanned the walls, with their blue shimmer that hinted at the protective barriers that surrounded them.
“I think I have something you can help me with, Novak,” Olsen said, not entirely facetiously. “How are we going to get through that?”
“We don’t,” she replied. “Any attempt to pass between the shield walls will cause them to close in and trap us inside, leaving the station’s weapons to annihilate us.”
“So let’s test the brilliance they gifted you with on the Wilson. What do you suggest in this situation?”
“You should first ask your cyborg for feedback so that you can get the opinion of Admiralty AI. It looks like they’re still waiting for you to make your move. But that’s what you would have done anyway in these circumstances, isn’t it, sir?”
Olsen nodded. “Rob, what’s the lowdown?”
“Admiralty AI sees no option but to flee, and recommends doing so imminently.”
“We’ve got Marines down there,” Schmidt growled, the burly weapons officer looking at the cyborg incredulously.
“And a high priority target, if we’re going to get that weapon back,” Olsen added. “Leaving now isn’t an option.”
Novak’s eyes widened. “Sir, with all due respect, if Admiralty AI makes a recommendation, we should follow it.”
“We’ll flee if we have to, but for the moment we haven’t even been engaged. Cadinouche, try hailing the defense station