It wasn't hard to guess where the majority of the credits in the universe went. The war industry never ceased to gulp down an unending amount. The crates in the storeroom were filled with weaponry that would have most tremble with greed at their sight.
Amon was unimpressed. The SFC was better equipped, and his equipment was already modded to his liking. There was no reason to loot subpar gear.
But what was for most people hard to guess was where all these credits came from. Since Amon had been in the industry, he knew quite well. It was logistics and transportation.
In the expanse of the universe and its massive amounts of resources, it was companies like the Helion Syndicate, and of course, his beloved House Arthas, that got rich protecting and moving cargo throughout the galaxies.
Most would fail to understand, or be unable to connect the dots of why they were fighting this day. If only they knew that the SFC was a merc company owned by House Arthas. The Marines were here to cull the competition.
A frequent occurrence happening in the concealed darkness of space with spaceships often disappearing without warning. So frequent that the spacefreighter had an escort that the SFC needed two Dreadnought-class battleships to ambush.
The ambush had gone well, apart from the staggering combat personnel losses. But the high command didn't particularly care for those numbers going up. The importance of breaching the enemy’s defenses made up for the losses. And they were inside the enemy ship, that was all that mattered.
Amon calmly observed another ambush awaiting their arrival somewhere ahead, where previously two miniscout drones had been destroyed, and the mapping indicated several pockets of fighting. Amon chose to avoid them while he grabbed the tech he needed.
He held his blaster at the ready and pointed downwards. Plasma guns had short range but scaled powerfully the closer one was. They were perfect for close-quarter fighting, hence why he was holding one. The standard-issued SFC blaster fired short bursts of plasma in a wide spread. Devastating and deadly.
His modified biosuit could only absorb a few hits close range, yet each would knock him off my feet. And he was a large target inside these narrow corridors.
To avoid such fate Amon relied on his tech, his training, and the abnormal reflexes of his body to keep him alive in case he found trouble aiming at him.
Mainly his tech though. The miniscouts had Type 3 sensors installed to spot any kind of threat. The standard Type 1 image/audio only, or Type 2 spectrum imaging, couldn't pierce through cloaking tech not like what Type 3 sensors did.
When he had upgraded the drones with cloaking features, Amon made sure to make them foolproof.
From the drone scans, he knew four lurkers with active phantom cloaks held a corridor further inside, to the right. They didn't know his exact location but would likely suspect it from the messy entrance into the battleship.
Inside the storeroom, the Artificial Magnetic Atmospheric Field (AMAF) was degrading without the metasphere on, and already the vacuum of space was licking at the atmosphere around them.
Amon nudged his two troops forward and sealed the door as they exited. They went left.
—-
No alarms blared inside the enemy battleship. They knew the Marines had breached the hull. And because of that, they had prepared countermeasures.
A signal close by pulsed and degraded. Amon’s brainchip receiver caught it as it spread but before he had a chance to scan for its origin and content the unknown datapacket bypassed his firewalls causing his optics to flash red in warning. The HiRON5 brainchip immediately rebooted to prevent entry to the malware AI the enemy had just sent out.
With a heavy sigh, Amon prepared himself to go on without the support of his apps for quite a while until the brainchip was up and running.
It was more than a simple nuisance since Amon relied heavily on his apps to keep his miniscouts in order.
Luckily the most probable target for the hack, the main battle server on a reinforced drone hidden somewhere on the enemy vessel, was still online having fended off the attack. The mapping hadn’t been compromised, a blessing since that would have him moving around the battleship blind as a newborn.
His companions were entirely unaware of what just happened. Lowtechs had the best defenses against hacking–a standing joke around the universe, but he didn't hold them to it. They were doing him a great service today. He grinned, however, unable to reign in his feelings.
He always found it mildly sarcastic that whenever technology made a breakthrough, war would find another way to war. Not that any of this was new; it was just levels on top of levels.
Together they searched the corridor and the next in a slow, tight formation. Most rooms were a mix of crew cabins and storage spaces like the one they had entered from. His little treasure trove grew as he added item after item, and was soon forced to select only the most valuable parts they came across.
It would be a month until they returned to the SFC’s main hub. Parts would be in short supply until then. Even if he thought of it they couldn't just exit the ship trailing bags of loot. It would attract too much attention.
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One of his miniscouts beeped him. His eyes glanced at the HUD’s mapping that was still online despite his apps still buffering, waiting for the brainchip to finish powering up. The drone was dodging through a group of Syndicate soldiers, who gave chase hot on its rotors.
Amon cursed loud enough for his two companions to freeze and look back at him. He briefly imagined the looks of concern under their masks.
Unfortunately, the miniscout was flying towards their position, leading the pursuit of the enemy troops. The evasion algorithm had found the safest path to disengage. They were of a similar mind, the loyal drone followed in its master’s footsteps. Yet there was no time to evac their asses away from the path without being especially reckless. Phantom cloaks stalked around the ship after all.
The HiRON5 was booting, there was a buffering sign on his HUD that showed the progression. No matter how many times Amon saw that loading circle, he still felt an especially savage urge to destroy the little chip or pull his eyes out. He was certain the human race had developed a certain aversion to it.
The odds of the likely confrontation were not terrible, however. They just had to prepare a few tricks. A party was always better with planned entertainment.
“We’ve got incoming,” Amon said to his two aides and they tensed like rusty metal. He gave them a brief go-through and they set up in preparation. He could see from their movements their adrenaline running high. Trigger-happy Marines wouldn't be an asset in an ambush but this was the hand he’d been dealt with, he would pull through.
They didn't have to wait long, and the miniscout, with its cloaking down, buzzed through the corridor.
Even with his assurances Igor and Gardenia pointed their blasters to the passing drone. Amon exhaled in relief when they didn’t react, blasting and giving away their position.
They were hidden inside a crew cabin, under a phantom cloak, nullifying partly any infrared sensors that would reveal their position.
Soon thereafter he heard the enemy soldiers pursuing in a line with the vanguard chasing after the drone, and the rest clearing the passages and empty rooms.
During the preparation, Amon had trapped the end of the corridor with a tripwire, Lowtech, and thus invisible to the unattentive, for a nice welcoming show.
The first enemy passed by in a rush. He wore a bulwark over his biosuit, so thick it could withstand any close-range blast. Seeing the enemy had them huddled down close together. No reason to leave a stray limb poking out of the phantom cloak. It would be the first target in the upcoming fight.
Next, came the soldiers. One entered the cabin in a rush pointing a blaster ready to fire yet he saw nothing but a vacant room. His biosuit was black as the void, merging seamlessly with the shadows of the dark cabin.
KCHIN
The sound of the trap snapping pierced the air. The vanguard had reached the wire and tripped, activating it. Amon imagined a blast that would rock the battleship, but he hadn’t used any explosives, this wasn’t the pre-Astro times. Instead, he used a nasty gravity mine, the only one he carried with him. It would pull at anything not secured in a radius inside the corridor.
THUNK
The bulwark soldier hit the mine secured on the corridor wall with a crushing sound. Amon heard the other soldiers getting dragged by the powerful gravity and saw them flying sideways past the cabin’s door. The pull was too strong for them to resist. Silently without any hesitation Amon stood up, letting the phantom cloak fall behind him, and kicked the distracted enemy out of the cabin.
Inside the cabin room, the ship's artificial gravity blocked off the majority of the gravity mine's effect. But as the soldier reentered the corridor flailing his arms, he was unable to find purchase and the pull carried him with force as he slid almost vertically to where the rest of his unit was crumpled and stuck.
When Amon reached the cabin door, the gravity’s effect disoriented him. He could feel the full force of 12m/s2 pulling him sideways even through the battleship’s artificial gravity grounding him to the floor. If he jumped out it would feel like a free fall but the corridor would now be the downwards.
Hugging the door with his feet and checking the other way for any strugglers, Amon brought out his second weapon and pointed at the press of bodies. A human ball of limbs and biosuits watched him aim.
The helmets muffled their screams. Yet he still shuddered when he fired the armor-piercing rifle.
—-
Amon disliked looting bodies.
The gravity mine, spent mere minutes after its activation, was drenched in bodily fluids and for a moment he was indecisive if he wanted it back.
The extra space would help with the looting. With the apps back online Amon recalled the remaining miniscouts back to his position. Eight were left operational, but all were running low on power. It was better not to waste them unnecessarily, without their power-hungry cloaking active. They were too easy a target.
Igor stayed nearby, while Gardenia kept some distance from the massacre with the pretext of securing the corridor’s other side.
Amon’s HUD showed the fighting had progressed to the ship’s bridge where the enemy was making a last stand. Due to the nature of the work, they understood there wouldn't be any surrender.
Still, phantom lurkers were a danger and damn difficult to flash out so everyone was on high alert. They didn’t want to share the fate of the bodies lying in front of them.
They tread carefully from then on, picking at things that caught Amon’s attention until a ship-wide alert let them know they were recalled back to the Dreadnought. The fighting had ceased with all the Helion Syndicate personnel dead and the trio barely had seen any action, a clear win for the three of them if Amon may add.
Finding an exit wasn’t difficult, they followed other Marines and exited through a drilled hole in a room with an AMAF still active. It would be too greedy of him to snatch at the metasphere in front of so many eyes but he still thought about it a second too long.
The darkness of the universe greeted them on the outside, and at the center, the Dreadnought loomed invitingly. The space in between had numerous SFC Marines returning from the battle, flying through the distance, swapping places with crews that would repair and operate the enemy battleship until all returned to the hub. The two enemy vessels were part of the loot the SFC would take back home. A big reason why they didn't just blast them to pieces in the first place.
On the other side, a similar sight was happening near the spacefreighter.
Amon jumped off the battleship trailed by his two followers. They would stick together until the deal was done. His biosuit propelled him forward in bursts of speed coming from his boots.
At any other time, he would be enjoying the weightless trip, but the exhaustion and nerves of battle had him wishing for nothing but a bed to lie on.
With the Dreadnought's shields down, they approached in a controlled manner and entered through one of the numerous open portals.
A scan beamed them just as they touched down, and they got the green light to move through. Amon went straight to a vacant storage room, where he pulled out two chip-holding credits and received his treasures in exchange.
He was pocketing 16 metaspheres and a small number of essential parts that would be useful in upgrading some of his weapons.
The two privates paused before exiting, “Sir,” Gardenia said hesitating momentarily. “Thank you, for keeping us alive.”
She was still shaken from the battle but with her helmet still on Amon couldn't tell what kind of face she was making as she said it. “If we had been on our own…”
Amon lifted a hand to stop her and went through several different conversations in his head before replying. “If I hadn’t been there you would probably be dead, Private.” Soft words would only produce soft actions and he needed them to think clearly about what he was going to tell them. “Here we are, where 32% of the Marines aren’t. Congratulations on making it back, both of you.”
Their posture looked uncertain and vulnerable. So he decided to push a little more. “Find me later if you wish to get a few bioaddons.”
They stiffened at his words, but it was not an uncommon reaction. An unregistered genedoc, offering these kinds of services? In any other part of the Arthas-controlled galaxy, he would be hunted down.
Yet life as an SFC member was ever so free. Nobody looked too closely at what they did. The high death rate would be the last judge for them all. So Amon looted and cut corners every chance he got. Compared to everyone else here he could make wonders with the tech he found lying about. He was a trained Neoengineer retrained for war.
Now it was only a matter of trust. Trust that he needed to win over, or how would they surrender their bodies to a stranger?
“We don’t have the credits t..to…” Gardenia mumbled a reply.
“Ah, but you do now,” Amon said and pointed at the credits they were still holding in hand. “It’s something that might save your lives in the next spacedive. You will not be the first or last to upgrade during this trip.”
“You mean there are others?” Igor blundered and received an elbow hit from Gardenia.
Amon remained silent and they understood he wasn't going to reveal anything more to them. Not now at least. They exited the storage room, and he gave high odds of seeing them again in a few days, especially Gardenia.
He could almost smell the fear.
