Page 112 of Star Claimed Omega
‘You’ll need to attach and blow a hole in their side,’ Miral replied. ‘Hard and fast. Run in, guns blazing. Make it a totalsurprise. Once you’re inside, I’ll do my best to interface with their systems. See what they’re hauling, who they’re sheltering. Maybe even hack their command logs.’
Shouldn’t give us trouble.’
‘Famous last words,’ Boaz growled, and Zev chuckled beside him.
‘Don’t jinx it,’ Santi muttered.
‘We’re good at surprises,’ Boaz rumbled.
‘Good luck, I’ll provide arms support from the Corvette helm,’ Miral stated, fading from view.
The cabin fell into a tense silence. Helmets were checked. Weapons armed.
Santi stood and faced his team, his utterance a snarled timbre. ‘Let’s tear the truth out of these ghosts.’
They buckled in as the lighting activated into battle mode, senses stimulated into wakefulness and alertness.
Concentration ratcheted as the hunt had begun.
TheRed Skullship loomed in the distance, a jagged silhouette drifting just beyond the flotilla’s outer ring.
It was a menacing vessel, long and narrow like a rusted blade forgotten in the void. Pocked with old scars, its exterior bore the gang’s insignia: a jawless skeleton’s head flanked by twin sickles, etched in burgundy paint across the flank.
The ship’s name burned white beneath it in cracked block script:Crimson Widow.
‘She’s a scavenger gunner, all right,’ Zev muttered, his voice tight through the comms as they approached under stealth.
‘Rail gun clusters on the port. Makeshift plasma turrets grafted to the nose. Ugly as sin,’ Boaz added, grinning as he inspected his ammo.
Inside the hold of the stealthed Signet corvette, tension shimmered with an electric charge.
The Signet commandos shifted in their harnesses.
Most were hardened, loyal fighters, but it was the four at the front who carried the heft of the group’s myth.
Santi crouched nearest the forward ramp, strapped into his harness, breath slow. Beside him, Kaal and Zev checked their forearm blades and ghostcasters.
Boaz leaned against the wall, shoulders rolled back, calm as a mountain before a storm.
A flicker of light pulsed in their neural nodes, signaling from Miral.
‘All right,niños,’ Santi rasped. ‘Two minutes to breach.’
He tapped the side of his helmet, and the HUD synced to theWidow’s hull schematics, courtesy of Miral’s mid-flight hack.
They were going in at midship, where the external plating had weakened due to micro-meteoroid scarring.
‘One clean shot with a one-two punch and we’re through. Masks on. Comm silence once we cross the threshold.’
Santi unsnapped his harness and moved to the portal. The air hissed with decompression as the magnetic clamps clung to theWidow’sflank.
With a thud, the breach torpedo deployed, a white-hot cylinder that slammed into theRed Skullvessel and burrowed in.
Then,BOOM.
The external shell ruptured with a thunderous crack. Metal screamed as the torpedo’s core vaporized a perfect ring through the Widow’s side.
‘Go!’ Santi barked.
