"Ignorance you can cure with a book, stupid takes a shotgun and a shovel." Anonymous Age of Paranoia scholar.

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"There are jobs only YOU can do! From mail delivery to driving street sweepers to in-person comlink incoming call answering! Do your part for your community, your world, your star nation, and your people! GUARANTEED SASH DECORATIONS!" - Sign outside of Citizen Recruiting Office

"Service guarantees Citizenship!"

Staff Sergeant Undrat stood ready in the drop pod. He could feel the thrumming of the hyperdrive engines driving the massive troopship "I Got What You Need, Baby!" through the lower hyperspace bands. His stomach twisted slightly from the weird feeling of water rushing through him but he closed his eyes and recited his mantras.

When he opened his eyes he did a quick visual observation of his HUD. Weapon M318 20mm autocannon, wireless link OK, ammo at full, slush at 6%, heat at 3%, usable condition. Armor: MXR-821 Heavy Infantry Assault Suit, neural jack OK, ammunition at 100%, slush at 5%, heat at 4%, armor integrity at 100%, all systems OK.

He was in a drop pod, ready to be fired through grav drivers at the planet for rapid insertion. The pod was heavily armored enough that it could even survive a C+ cannon hit that destroyed the Needy Baby and the onboard engines would get them to a planet within a few days, long before life support in the suits failed.

He knew his job but he opened the file and watched the briefing again, looking at the topological maps as well as the initial operational plans.

It was good to make sure that one knew all the details they were cleared to know about.

He noticed a creek on the map that did not seem to be accounted for on the map and pinged his Company Executive Officer as well as the Operations Officer with a cut-out of the map section.

Before he could get an answer the ship dropped out of hyperspace.

Undrat's stomach clenched and dropped at the same time and he could feel the Needy Baby rolling in space, reorienting.

The engines fired off, filling his vision with sparkles, and the microjump made Undrat feel like there were three or four copies of himself stretched out that took a second to catch up.

Immediately the ship started shuddering like it was being pounded on by jackhammers.

"Heavy Weapon Section, Third Platoon, sound off," Undrat ordered over his NCO command channel.

All twenty-six men of the two thirteen man squads verbally checked in.

Right afterwards there was a hard blow to the ship that made the entire thing shudder.

"DISMOUNT DISMOUNT DISMOUNT!" the order flashed in his vision right before the doors to the droppod dropped down and the restraints released.

The pod bay was massive, housing two thousand pods, each pod surrounded by fire grav-rails and an iris beneath the pod. At the far side were the grav-plate acceleration strips to fire the strikers toward the planet. Past the strikers, which were fully loaded and waiting for deployment in a risky maneuver, were massive doors.

"What is transpiring?" Undrat asked Sergeant First Class Kwradwark.

"Unknown. Orders from the battle bridge," the Platoon Sergeant said. "Stay alert."

"Roger," Undrat said. He clicked over to his two squads. "Stay alert, men."

Captain Kelly Logan Iltwek suddenly broke into the channel. "Recycle all ammunition, fab up copper jacketed lead core frangible ball rounds with bronze casing contained chemical propellant only, four to one red tracer mix. Depower all hypervelocity systems," the CO ordered, her voice tight. "Deploy chamber gas pressure modules."

Following that was a digital note for each weapon in Echo Company's inventory max cyclic rate. Madame Three-Eighteen was limited to ninety rounds a minute firing rate, which made Undrat nod. Vacuum caused difficulties with heat dispersion. The casings and the low rate of fire would keep her heat levels down to manageable levels.

All according to doctrine.

Undrat heard his platoon leader answer affirmative, and gave the order to his own men automatically. The gas pressure module would ensure proper heat dispersal as well as allow the chemical propellant to function.

Shipboard combat munitions, Undrat thought to himself. He had read that Field Manual six month ago and sometimes still mulled over the knowledge it had contained.

He requested permission and received it, then forwarded the pertinent sections of the FM to his two squads. He knew the other Section Sergeants would be doing the same thing. Each of his men signaled receipt.

"To the front, doubletime, two rank serrated firing line!" Captain Iltwek ordered, the line appearing in Undrat's HUD. "Ready weapons!"

Undrat jogged forward, leading the way, his two squads behind him. They moved in front of the strikers, leaving a large enough gap for the noseguns to fire, and faced the huge doors at the far side.

Undrat saw the sparkling blue of the permeable atmosphere and integrity screen come on-line.

The whole bay had the razor-sharp clarity of vacuum and Undrat nodded. Confederate Naval regulations stated that all ships with the possibility of combat were to have the atmosphere pumped out and all crew be in armored vacsuit.

Undrat stood between the two heavy weapons squads, waiting.

The vibrations through the floor were getting heavier.

ALL CREW - PREPARE TO REPEL BOARDERS appeared in his vision with the icon for the ship's Battle Bridge and the ship's captain.

The doors shuddered and Undrat could feel it through the floor.

Claws punched through the gap in dozens of places.

GUNS FREE AT BAY CHIEF DISCRETION appeared in his vision, again, signed from the battle bridge.

"Men, deploy guns," the CO of Echo Company ordered.

The claws bent so that half were touching the lower half of the door, half the upper part of the door.

Undrat and his men lowered their M318 20mm autocannons.

The vibration picked up and Undrat knew whatever it was was trying to open the two meter thick doors.

GUNS FREE! appeared with the icon of the Deployment Bay 17 Chief Operations Officer.

A slight gap appeared between the doors and what looked like large purple and white tongues pushed into the door, licking the inside of the door, leaving behind bubbling trails of slime.

Undrat tagged the tongues and forwarded it to his two squads.

GUNS FREE! appeared with the CO's icon.

The warsteel was melting, slagging, as the molecular acid chewed at the thick door plating.

The entire exchange, from the "All Crew" signal to "Guns Free" had taken seven seconds.

"Direct fire on assigned marks," Undrat ordered, his voice calm and remote. "Open fire."

He clamped down the fire lever at his own words.

Madame Three-Eighteen was perfectly silent in the vacuum, just the vibration of the massive bolt carrier slamming back and forth, the frangible belt disintegrating as the ammunition ripped through the weapon, the heavy bronze casings flying free. The gas dispenser ticked down to 78.5% before the nanoforge started directing oxygen and CO2 into the gas storage cylinder.

The rounds slammed out from the entire firing line, 19th Infantry Regiment deploying their firepower against the massive tongues licking at the inside of the door. Tracers whipped across the deployment bay, four heavy rounds per tracer.

The fire was pinpoint accurate, slamming into the meter thick tongue. Acidic blood sprayed out, landing on the floor, sizzling silently as the warsteel bubbled.

The interior of the doors bulged as smaller tongues suddenly pushed through the gap even as the gap was opened a full meter.

Undrat silently ordered his men to concentrate their fire between the tongues and into the gap. The tracers showed Undrat that he was not the only team leader to order such and he gave a mental nod in approval that others had paid close attention to training.

"Prepare to repel boarders!" came over the open channel, the icon for the Needy Baby's digital sentience commander flashing.

The softened, pitted, and melting warsteel suddenly peeled inward. Heavy toothlike structures unfolded and began pushing the doors open further. Green fluid gushed out and onto the bay floor as well as the bottom of the doors.

Dozens of creatures, like horseshoe crabs with scorpion stingers, poured through the gap.

Undrat ordered Third Squad to concentrate fire on the Dwellerspawn boarders and ordered Fourth Squad to maintain fire on the organism that had delivered them, using icons and blinked in carats.

"Undrat, have Fourth Squad go to M9982 rounds," the CO ordered.

Undrat passed it on, nodding to himself. The M9982 round was a low explosive force chemical explosive 20mm round with a grooved endosteel jacket intended for lightly armored infantry suppression.

Less than three seconds later the rounds hitting from Undrat and Fourth Squad began detonating inside the creature's mouth, blowing out rags of flesh and causing sprays of yellowish-green fluid to gout out.

The claws suddenly went limp and the impacts of the heavy 20mm rounds started forcing it away from the bay door.

Two others rushed forward. One was shaped like a large brine shimp, heavy armor on it. It wedged itself in the doorway and slowly started to stand up.

Undrat and Fourth Squad started firing at the limbs, the smartgun linkage allowing them to hit with pinpoint accuracy. The rounds hit, shattering chitin armor, and Undrat saw its throat begin to bulge as the upper part of the thorax convulsed.

Undrat walked his fire up the creature's body and into the throat, which was bulging like a python that just ate a pig. The throat exploded, thick viscous fluid pouring down the front of the creature. The chitin started bubbling and dissolving, vapor freezing in the vacuum.

More creatures were slamming against the partially opened doors, some of them trying to pull the door open wider, others vomiting acid onto the warsteel, more of the creatures vomiting up smaller creatures that tried to rush into the bay, and some attempting to force their way through the widening crack in the door.

**popping shell coolant line nine frozen** Undrat's green mantid engineer said.

"Understood," Undrat replied.

The icon for the engineer protective housing went amber. Undrat kept firing, keeping an eye on Madame Three-Eighteen's heat level. The CO was designating targets with an amber caret over them and Undrat used his gold bracket carat's to signal Third and Fourth Squads their targets.

Still more Dwellerspawn pushed forward, trying to get into the bay. 396 climbed onto the back of the M318 smartgun harness, shaking a can of thermal spray, then began spraying the frozen coolant line, the chemicals in the spray combining and warming up the line.

The door gave out with a grinding rumble that Undrat felt through his boots, peeling outwards as the acids softened the warsteel enough to make it pliable by the biomechanical limbs of the Dwellerspawn.

The coolant line cycled and the heat from his gun dropped by half within a second. 396 scurried back to the engineer protective housing, closing it and filling it with breathable kinetic shock gel.

"FIVE STEPS BACK!" the Regimental CO roared over the command link.

Undrat stepped back slowly, deliberately, still keeping up his fire.

More and more of the Dwellerspawn were getting their feet onto the deck plates of the deployment bay. Undrat could feel their anticipation as the members of the Regiment stepped backwards, mistaking what was happening for a retreat.

At five steps he was even with the cockpit windows of the strikers on his left and right.

The guns on the nose of the strikers opened up. Shell casing bounced across the deck as the heavy 30mm cannons cut loose at 750 rounds a minute of High Explosive Dual Purpose Incendiary. The tracers made it look like a solid bar of light panning back and forth across the Dwellerspawn that had gained access to the deployment bay as well as the ones moving forward on intertia, their 'wings' folding up and sweeping back along the bodies.

In less than ten seconds the bay floor was clear, the bodies tumbling away from the ship. The incoming ranks shattered as the strikers raked the lines again and again.

Undrat took a drink of the lemon-lime G8R8 from the tube, tabbed up a piece of stimgum, and started chewing it, watching with a practiced eye for any of the smaller Dwellerspawn that might make it through the massed firepower of the 26th Air Cavalry Regiment (Hell Bringers) striker fire.

The door was cleared and no more Dwellerspawn were moving in as the Engineers rushed forward, hefting heavy metal saws and cutting torches.

"Five steps forward! Check lines of fire! Friendlies downrange! Smartgun systems only with reflex triggers!" the Regimental CO ordered.

Undrat took his five allocated steps, keeping the regulation one meter stride.

The twisted metal of the doors were cut away. Three times guns fired at smaller Dwellerspawn, only the size of a large pig, smashing them back out into vacuum. The engineers pulled out the door anchor sections, dragging them to the side with the help of their powered loading frames, while other crews muscled in new doors that still gleamed from the heavy Class-IX nanoforges.

The doors shut with a clunk that Undrat felt in his boots.

"Stow primary guns. Go to sidearms and cutting bars," the Regimental Commander ordered. "Battalion Commanders, issue orders. Naval orders are to fight the ship. Stand by for orders."

Undrat stood still, chewing his stimgum, waiting patiently.

"Echo Company," the Company CO's voice was tight, strained, stress obvious in her voice. Undrat checked the metrics on his HUD. She was still within standard deviations for close combat. "Heavy Weapon Teams Alpha and Bravo, report to Sally Port Seven-Alpha-Two."

"Roger that, sir," Undrat replied.

Staff Sergeant J'Zert from Delta Company pinged Undrat and Undrat opened the commo window. The Staff Sergeants in charge of the Heavy Weapons squads of 44th Battalion, 5th Brigade, 19th Infantry Regiment appeared. At the top of the five rows of eight Section Sergeants was Major Lo'stander, the Regimental Special Tasks Operations Officer.

"Reconfigure your weapons to the attached file's specifications. Mantid engineers, grav-lock boots for external hull movement. Check your cutting bars. Navy has its hands busy, it's up to us to clear the hull," the Major stated, her voice clear and steady and slightly musical.

Undrat enjoyed the accent most Rigellians possessed.

"Anything we can fire isn't going to get through the Needy Baby's armored hull, but no antimatter. Each Section Sergeant will be operating under your own authority. Route any orders through me for archival and after action report examination," the Major said.

A line appeared on Undrat's HUD.

"Each of you Section Sergeants will be moving to a designated sally port and assigned a hull area to clear and keep clear. You may engage any spaceborne targets up to a range of ten kilometers. Additional tasks may come in from Naval Ship Combat Control."

"Roger, sir," Undrat said.

He followed the line, ending up near an external hatch where four armored Naval ratings were waiting.

"Beyond this is nothing but space and hull plating!" one of the ratings yelled out.

Undrat noted that the rating's helmet was dented.

"You have a head injury. Seek medical attention," Undrat ordered the Navy sailor, pointing at his helmet.

"He will once you guys are out," another said. A third revved his cutting bar, which Undrat noted was smeared with ichor. "If you lose connection with the hull plating use your grav-line to pull yourself back. Trust your greenie, he knows how to operate it."

"Roger," Undrat said. He clicked the channel to his men. "All mantid engineers, review grav-skyhook system deployment and usage in a zero-G environment."

The mantids all blinked icons back.

"Good luck, Army," the rating said. He used the hand-crank to open the airlock door and Undrat led his men inside. Once in, he gave the rating a thumbs up once the door thumped shut.

The outer door slid open silently and for a moment Undrat stared outside.

The other ships of the landing force were visible to the naked eye. Mixed in were Dwellerspawn vessels under ten kilometers away. Both sides were firing at one another at what was basically point blank range for a naval battle. One closest to the I Got What You Need, Baby! was shedding objects that unfurled wings, gathered stellar mass energy, and glided toward the Needy Baby on gossamer strands of gravatic energy.

"Follow," Undrat ordered. The men of Third and Fourth Squad, Echo Company, signaled ready.

Undrat trundled out onto the hull, taking the long strange step where he rotated ninety degrees to stand on the hull.

Up ahead were what looked like barnacles gripping the hull.

"Fab for armor piercing high explosive incendiary," Undrat ordered. "Anti-armor rounds. Adjust cyclic rate to three hundred rounds a minute."

The icons blinked back.

"Deploy primary weapon," Undrat ordered, bringing his own Madame Three-Eighteen into play. He tagged the nearest barnacles and passed the targets to the two squads, leaving four men total, two from each thirteen man squad, on point defense and close quarters defense.

"Targets marked," Undrat's voice was cold, remote, dispassionate. "Staggered firing line. Advance."

The Tukna'rn infantrymen began moving forward, heading toward the barnacles as they moved into two ranks, separated by five meters each, with the second rank shifted so they were in the gap between the troops of the first rank.

"Watch your fields of fire. Mark friendlies for smartgun and reflex trigger exclusion," Undrat ordered.

The icons flashed back as the Tukna'rn thumped forward.

"All elements, probing attack. Engage marked targets," Undrat ordered. "Twenty rounds, observe effect, pause firing. Mark."

He squeezed the firing lever, raking one of the barnacles. The explosive rounds hit, shattering the thick shells and revealing shredded internal biological structures. Ichor and blood sprayed out and froze in the vacuum, causing a sparkling fairy-dust plume.

"Munitions effective, go to active engagement," Undrat ordered.

The two squads opened fire on the barnacles, shredding them. Many released their gripping foot suction hold once the fire ripped at their internal tissues, floating away from the ship, propelled by the impact of the heavy 20mm rounds.

To the Tukna'rn infantrymen, it was a simple job. Move forward, engage the barnacles, kill them, move on.

Twice the infantrymen had to use their cutting bars and power armor enhanced strength to rip the twenty meter wide barnacles away from where their tongues had bored into the hull and their mouth-claws had gripped the hole.

Six times the Dwellerspawn creatures, strange and twisted, with hard chitin shells to protect their internal and soft tissues from the harsh vacuum, attempted to assault the Tukna'rn infantrymen.

Madame Three-Eighteen let the Dwellerspawn know that the Tukna'rn weren't interested in entertaining visitors.

Three times the infantrymen turned their weapons to help with point defense against the swarms of biological units disgorged by the dead or dying Dwellerspawn ships. Each time their firepower was added to that of the ship, raking the enemy from the skies.

Finally the recall notice came.

Undrat did a visual check to ensure all of his men in his two Heavy Weapons Squads were present, then marched them to the nearest sally port. He had them slowly turn around, then had Corporal Mafrek run his plasma fueled 'flamethrower' over each soldier, the plasma induced fire still working in vacuum, just to make sure there was no tiny biological attackers hiding on the armor.

Undrat and his section clomped their way into Troop Mess Hall 32C, standing against the wall. The Regimental Commander themself came in and addressed the Heavy Weapon sections of 19th Infantry Regiment. The command channel clinked on the suits, voice and speakers useless outside of armor since the atmosphere of the ship was still contained in the mass tanks.

"Excellent job, men. The Captain extends his compliments," the Colonel said.

Undrat felt a rush of pride.

"The Needy Baby is clear. Return to your drop pods. Insertion will be on the next orbital pass in four hours. Get sleep while podded. Ground combat is heavy. All Company Commanders, ensure proper lock-in," the Colonel stated. "Brigade Commanders, take charge."

"BULWARK!" everyone present, including Undrat, barked over their suit commo.

Undrat felt the warm glow of pride as he returned to the deployment bay.

Clearing the hull of a spaceship engaged in combat had been a unique experience for him.

He couldn't wait to write his former Overseer about it.