Doing the job

Preface

Doing the job is a piece of player-created fiction written by Casiella Truza. Originally published on the blog Ecliptic Rift.

Doing the job

Just outside the entryway, two figures waited in the shadows. One worked quietly at an electronic keypad. The other glanced down the corridor uncertainly while clutching a weapon. They exchanged few words, and those only in whispers.

“How long?”

“H-Hour in less than 120 seconds.”

Silence, then: “I think that might be enough.”

“Don’t mess up this time…”

Before the other figure could answer, klaxons began to blare. Emergency lights came on. Their rotation caused the shadows to swim. Shouts of men preparing for violence echoed down the corridor.

They didn’t move. They didn’t even flinch.

After another few seconds, the door slid upwards. The two moved through it without a word and ran down the corridor behind it, pulling items from the packs on their backs. A uniformed guard stepped out in front of them just before they reached the end of the corridor. He opened his mouth to order them to halt, but one of the running figures pulled a blade from his belt and buried it in the guard’s throat with a flick of the wrist.

The control room that had housed the guard looked out upon a cavernous chamber. Girders led from the walls of the chamber to disks supporting a number of glowing tanks in concentric circles. From the center of the tanks, a blue-white beam extended downward to a similar set of equipment at the bottom of the chamber.

“Signal received. Fleet is through the cyno.”

“Roger that. Let’s do some of their job for them.”

They moved several control levers all the way forward. Indicator lights changed from green to red. The pair moved through an exit on the other side into the chamber. With practiced ease, they tossed the charges from their packs towards into the center of the top set of tanks. Ringing echoes announced that the magnetic clamps found the surfaces of the tanks.

Shots ricocheted off the metal walls next to them. A tactical team fanned out onto catwalks further up in the chamber. They retreated back into the control room quickly, ducking under the consoles.

One took a small communicator off his belt and held it for a moment. The other frowned. “I have a bad feeling about this.”

“I know.”

The explosion that brought down the starbase shields could be seen from the surface of the nearby moon.