Another impact shook the records lab. Sparks showered and the backlit consoles flickered dangerously again. Commander Huggins ducked away as flashes of weapons fire strobed in the corridor outside. He was cradling a broken arm and holding an exhausted blaster pistol in his other hand.

“Eight hostiles! Maybe ten!”

Jayce Hunter worked madly to stabilize the Constellation’s Signals Analyst. He was unconscious and bleeding from two catastrophic shrapnel wounds. The standard medikit from the lab’s emergency supplies was useful, but Jayce knew if he didn’t get the attention of a trauma unit within the next 20 minutes, he wasn’t going to make it.

Tom lunged into the hall and sprayed rapid-fire plasma bolts in the general direction of their attackers. A secondary explosion caused the floor to lurch, and a wave of acrid smoke drifted back into the lab. The Fury’s XO took the opportunity to drag one of the unconscious marine guards back into the lab to safety.

Lieutenant Sutherland was barely conscious. Her uniform had enormous chemical burns along one side. The advanced fabric narrowly saved her skin from being incinerated in the blast.

“We were pretty lucky, eh, ma’am?”

Hunter continued working furiously. “Only because this room is packed with gear and consoles, Lieutenant. If that center unit hadn’t been here, we’d all be strumming harps right now.” Jayce pulled out her handheld comm unit. “If I give you this do you think you can figure out why we’re off the air?”

“I’ll do my best ma’am.”

“Outstanding.” The Commander handed the young Signals Officer the device and finished her work on the other wounded man. “That will have to do until we can get a medical team down here.”

“He doesn’t look too good, ma’am,” Amy said.

“In about fifteen minutes, he’s going to look a lot worse. Get us back on the air, Lieutenant.” Jayce slapped the woman’s good shoulder to encourage her.

“Aye.”

Hunter moved quickly across the lab and retrieved the TK40 rifle from the unconscious corporal she had threatened earlier. She put her hand to his forehead. Up to now she hadn’t been aware of just how young he was. She paused for a moment to think a good thought and then she performed a quick field evaluation of his weapon. It was in perfect working order with a full charge.

Now we can hit back she thought. She joined her XO at the door. “What’s the situation out there?”

“They’ve got heavy rifles and they’re moving up along the reinforced corridor to the right and further down.”

Jayce pulled the mechanical power lock on her weapon and let the connectors snap into place with a satisfying metallic thud. “Range?”

“Ten meters, maybe less.”

“Perfect. Let’s blow them a kiss.”

Jayce Hunter suddenly appeared in the center of the besieged corridor and leveled the relatively large rifle at her hip. A flash of stark light reflected from the drifting smoke, launching a fast moving bolt of energy down the corridor. A half-second later, Hunter detonated it with another shot, and a savage explosion twisted and battered the bulkheads up and down the passageway.

Two shadowy forms slipped across the passage, drawing a barrage of rifle fire from Hunter. At least one of the attackers fired back, but the shots were wide and impacted against the ceiling. Jayce pumped lance after blinding lance of white-hot energy into the floor and walls, causing debris to eject, splinter and scatter all over the corridor.

Another figure appeared and hesitated in the open. In a split-second, Hunter realized the attacker was readying another grenade. She fired another bolt down the hall just as a second attacker broke from cover. The detonation filled the hallway with fire.

There was a scream, followed by a burst of weapons energy. A deafening vicious second explosion from the dropped grenade ripped a hole in the station’s internal atmosphere. One of the attackers ran headlong from the conflagration, his entire body in flames. Jayce ducked to one side as more weapons fire followed shouts and the sound of falling machinery.

In the ensuing confusion, Hunter managed to hit two more of the attackers with bursts of lethal plasma energy. The safety systems had long since been out of commission, so every shot that missed blew another cloud of hot, razor sharp debris off the walls and ceilings. Hunter fired another extended burst, causing several more violent explosions, and then ducked back into the records lab.

“Having fun?” Huggins asked.

“Always preferred a stand up fight,” Hunter exhaled, holding the rifle muzzle straight up as regulations required. “Sutherland! Tell me a happy story!”

“We’re being jammed! We don’t have the power to punch through the local distortion field with this equipment!”

“Fine,” Hunter sighed. She pulled a second handheld comm unit out and tapped configuration codes into it. “Let’s see them jam this.”

“What is that for? You’ve got two of those things!?”

“Yep. This one is a VLF ultrawideband transmitter. Takes several seconds to send a data packet, but unless you’ve got a matter/anti-matter reactor powering your jamming equipment, you’ve got no chance of modulating the signal.”

“Who are you calling?”

“The world’s smallest invasion force.”

Not far away, Commander Hunter’s mini-bots were still in formation, headed up a well-lit but empty corridor towards the research side of the station.

A little red heart-shaped indicator light on Echo’s forward-facing chassis snapped on. “It’s Acey! It’s Acey!” she shouted. “She says she’s in trouble and she needs help!”

“Let me at ‘em” Rebel growled. He revved his drive train, but only managed to spin his tracks.

“You have to wait until you’re on the ground, Rebel” Butterfly said in a “bigger kid reminding little kid” tone of voice. She carefully maneuvered along her flight path.

“Brothers and sisters,” Wave began. “As we prepare to take the field of battle, let us all remember though we be awesome individuals, we are also one, and as one we will prevail.”

“You know it,” Lunar added.

“Don’t be scared, Butterfly! I’ll protect you!” Echo shouted.

“I’ll be okay!” Butterfly was picking up residual weapons fire readings.

“Acey sent me a battle plan! I’ll share it with everybody!” Echo said excitedly.

“That’s the corridor!” Wave said. “Shaka, dudes and dudettes. Let’s carve the chop!”

To a spectator, what happened next would have looked for all the world like a 1950s monster film with little model trucks and tanks attacking a guy in a hairy rubber suit. Butterfly performed a textbook assault airlift maneuver, descending at maximum safe speed and placing Rebel in the center of the corridor. She detached and reeled in her magnetic harness as she pitched forward, using her main rotors to accelerate up the battlefield. Rebel’s powerful quad-drives kicked in and the chunky little tank rolled towards the action, climbing over small pieces of debris effortlessly.

Wave pulled up along Rebel’s right flank and collapsed his bay ramp. Echo’s lightbars began rotating red emergency lights as she backed down the ramp to the corridor floor. As soon as all four of her wheels were on the ground, she swerved to one side with a chirp of her tires and accelerated, following Butterfly’s lead.

Lunar banked into a position about six feet above Rebel and Wave. “I’ve got targets! Establishing telemetry and battlespace datalink! Acknowledge!”

“Rebel acknowledges!”

“Wave acknowledges!”

“Echo here! I read you Lunar!”

“I see it, Lunar!” Butterfly said.

One of the intruders had fallen back to swap energy packs in his rifle. He saw the little vehicles first. As usual, there was a moment of hesitation and amusement as he saw a tank in the distance roughly the size of a thick encyclopedia climbing slowly over a pile of broken conduits and rolling ponderously down the other side. That hesitation was what the mini-bots always counted on, as it gave them time to close range.

Before he knew what was going on, a tiny helicopter burst from the drifting smoke and accelerated up the corridor right at his head. The shadowy intruder stumbled back as Butterfly whizzed past. By the time he had regained his feet, the sound of buzzing emergency horns, chattery sirens and chirping alert signals filled the corridor. He looked down to find a lights-rotating ambulance bumping into his ankles.

“Emergency! Emergency! Clear the road! Clear the road!”

Finally a 110-decibel compressor-charged banger siren sounded, which was enough to drive the intruder back several yards. Echo accelerated down the hall, swerving around the wreckage of the battle, lights spinning. He turned and Lunar was hovering six inches from his nose. A targeting laser appeared right between the intruder’s eyebrows.

“My name is Lunar, and you are my prisoner.”