Incursion Vector

050

[▲] R3, Lalande Repair Yards

Fastening ascension lines to their rifles' utility rails they each picked separate spots further up the elevator shaft to anchor their tow lines. As they had practiced hundreds of times before in situations involving a lot more explosions, once the lines secured to the hull they clipped the retraction mechanism to their offhands and simply let the magnetic field pull them upwards to R2. Once there they reloaded and repeated until they hit R3, breaking off into their teams with nothing more than a few thumbs-up for good luck. While Keiji's team would be continuing up to R4, across, and then down the elevator they were using as an escape route, Nim's was heading straight through R3 to get where they needed to be.

Keeping her rifle ready Nim headed off at a jog along the pathway Calli had laid out, cutting through wide-open storage rooms and deserted lots fashioned to look like playgrounds and small gardens. R3 had a palpable suburb vibe, or at least that was what she decided to call it. She had never actually seen a suburb inhabited by anything other than automated simulacra rigged for combat drills, but there were always lots of open areas which were prime hunting grounds for snipers. The fake spring sky with faint puffy clouds projected on the ring's ceiling also made it feel rather creepy.

Sunny skies in space were way too weird.

{-03 unarmed civilians in path ahead 10 meters-}

Nim repeated the notification immediately as she read it. "Dead ahead zero three at ten unarmed."

Keeping low beneath the top of the fake brick wall they were about to vault over Leo moved off to one side and instead walked through the gate. His appearance startled them enough that they never bothered to look at her and Damien as they jumped over and left a knockout grenade at their feet. Before the civilians realized what was going on a small cloud of sleep-inducing gas caused them to hit the ground unconscious before they could shout in surprise.

"Down to five of those now," reported Damien.

"Everyone looks to have mostly cleared off from adjacent sections," said Leo after consulting his VTI. "Shouldn't be an issue. Errant's strategy of reporting multiple bomb threats to station security seems to be working rather well."

Nim laughed. "Either that or everyone's flipping their shit about the eppie mechs breaking everything breakable on R2."

"High Command is going to be furious after this one," agreed Damien.

They paused at the boundaries of a false turf park to give Keiji's team time to catch up as Karda spoke up over their flight's channel. "Nah, not nearly as furious as Yutani's company. Corporate executives are given contractual guarantees against being taken hostage while they're on stations like this. Otherwise they'd never come to places like Lalande and the owners would loose out on a massive chunk of high-paying clientele. The PR damage is going to be way more expensive than whatever property damage we cause getting her and her secretary out."

Colonial legal crap never made any sense to Nim. "Even if she's brand new?"

"Any safeguard contract is always attached to the position, not the person," he answered. "As long as she's legally CEO tenure doesn't matter. Lalande is definitely getting sued over this."

In an odd display of unprofessionalism Keiji chided, "You should ask their legal team to include your profanity fines in the settlement as a thanks for getting her out, Riptide."

Nim sneered at empty air even though she knew everyone in the flight could guess her reaction. "Kiss my ass, Lawman."

They resumed wall-jumping through the suburb towards the dividing plate that marked the cutoff point for the housing area. Beyond it, according to Calli's maps and trajectory, was the utilitarian Section 6 containing the half of the guts of R3's life support systems. The other half was contained across the ring in Section 12 and nowhere near any of their approach vectors. Getting through was going to be a tight fit, but they had to time everything just right so both teams arrived at their breach points ready to go in. Dropping in too early gave the pirates time to count them up and prepare accordingly.