The Unseen War

Chapter 2

Earth Year 3008, June 12th

Four Months after the Attack

Being a Totaller was a brutal experience for someone who had never been in space before. The whole idea of being a Totaller was that a small crew would be able to board an enemy spacecraft and disable anything accessible from the exterior before making their way inside for combat. The idea that people were so small that they were untargetable by the enemy guns was still unconfirmed in my mind.

The space suits were well equipped but not overly heavy because of the fact that an enemy ship would have its own self generated gravity. The main pieces of a Totallers equipment was two air tanks, one for breathing and one for the airpack, kind of like a jetpack but powered by air. These weren't interchangeable as the breathing tank obviously used oxygen and the airpack tank used carbon dioxide. The other equipment included electromagnetic gloves, a radio for communication, a small laser pistol for combat in the enemy ship, a laser knife for cutting wires opening enemy ships and close quarters combat, and a small high powered flashlight. The suits already were equipped with flashlights but they gave a second one in case of damage.

A lot of the training was studying different types of ships and variations of design, where to look for junction points, the most effective ways to remove paneling without opening the ship to the vacuum of space, and common designs that individual species tended to use. Then it went into where to target to disable the lights, where to disable the Sibylline core, and different equipped weapons.

We were in the middle of a target drill, we would push off our ship towards a specific target and then pull ourselves back in by our tethers. We usually did it in asteroid fields to have something solid to aim at, but the Qhilophs that lived in our usual asteroid field had started to become too friendly and were getting in the way of our training. Rather than attacking them and risking them becoming aggressive, we moved to open space to train.

I liked the Qhilophs, they felt like friendly birds from back on earth. They were larger than people but non-aggressive unless otherwise provoked. No one had any idea of how they managed to move through space, they had wide flaps on either side like manta rays. But with no air in space to generate force off of, those weren't what allowed them to move. I personally thought that they might generate their own magnetic field that allowed them to float towards asteroids.

Suddenly, we had our first enemy encounter. A Tracer ship appeared out of a Pass and the battle began as the Tracers opened fire on our ship. I was the first to respond and did something that I thought I was unprepared for, I pushed off of our ship and angled myself towards the Tracers ship.

After more than two months of practice, it was scary how natural floating towards an enemy ship felt. It wasn't as risky as it sounds because after a ship drops out of a Pass it has to wait an hour for the Sibylline core to recharge. The riskiest part was the blasts that came from the Tracer ship. I glanced behind me and saw three other Totallers moving into action.

We were all drifting through space slowly, hoping that none of the blasts would hit us as we moved through the open space. I kept myself as small as possible knowing that we would have to move quickly to disable the weapons. Suddenly there was a force from behind me, someone had been hit and the explosion propelled me forwards. I crashed into the side of the ship and managed to catch a protruding piece of metal. I could feel the vibrations of the guns going off and two Totallers making contact nearby me. I looked around and saw that one of the Totallers hadn't managed to find a hold on the ship, luckily he remained tethered to our ship. The other Totaller had managed to get on the ship, he activated the electromagnetic gloves which reminded me of my own.

After activating my gloves, I started to move towards the guns. A Totaller crashed into the ship on my right, his gloves sticking to the Tracer ship. I kept moving carefully, keeping everything in my mind that I had been taught about dealing with enemy weapons. I was surprised that out of the five of us who pushed off, three had made it onto the Tracer ship.

The gloves made climbing the outside of the ship easier than I would have expected. I felt like a bug on a large animal. I felt there was no way that I could do anything to something this big. I know the weapons and certain systems had exposed pieces depending on different ships. Even the Taggons had their gravity cores semi-exposed on their ships, though disabling those wouldn't be too helpful in combat.

I made it to the first gun and started to pull everything that was loose with my hands. I got a couple wires exposed and was about to start pulling on them before I remembered the tools on my suit. The tools were well insulated so as to not conduct electricity, as well as the suit, but I could still feel my hairs standing on end from the electricity that filled the air. The gun in front of me powered down and stopped shooting. I checked around me again, and saw that a couple of other Totallers had moved into action, a couple more had even made it to the Tracer ship already. The Totaller who had landed near me before hadn't moved yet, so I made my way to him. I grabbed his shoulder and shook him. His head tilted backwards and I saw his helmet had been broken by the impact. It had been too late for him since he made contact with the Tracer ship. I screamed in frustration, feeling the pain of trying to save people but being unable to. Frustration of doing everything you can and not achieving the results that you want. The anger from people you know dying to things well outside of your control. If we won this battle his body would be recovered and his personal belongings would be sent to his family. If we lost it would be scavenged by the Tracers and sold off around the different Quadrants.

I started moving towards the next gun, more determined than before, mindful of everyone around me. The guns went down one by one, then the lights on the outside of the ship went off. Someone had disabled the lights, meaning the inside was just as dark as the outside now. Soon we had disabled everything that we would need to and our squad gathered at the airlock.

One of the Totallers used a laser knife and started to pull apart the access port and managed to open up the airlock door. We made our way inside without damaging the structural integrity of the Tracer Ship. I was surprised that there was only one or two Whists guarding the airlock. They must not have been expecting any resistance from our training group.

The inside of the ship was dark and straightforward. It felt a lot more like the training exercises than a battle. The Tracers seemed unprepared for an attack inside the ship, but maybe it was the speed of our squad that surprised them. The laser rifle made it easy to stop most of their advances while we stuck together and took over the ship.

The Tracers were a mix of Whists, Regored and even a couple of humans. The Regored were the most resistant in the ship. They were large, had tusks on their faces, and were able to take several shots before they would be taken down. If I had been by myself, I wouldn't have made it out alive. But with me and four other Totallers we were able to take the ship without losing a person from our five man team.

The aftermath of the Tracer attack could have been bad. They said that my quick actions are what they credited to be the deciding factor in the battle. They then offered me a promotion, but there weren't enough benefits to make me consider it. I was confused about how the Tracers had come across where we were training. But considering how poorly prepared they were for our attack it might have been a coincidence.

The Totallers casualty count was five out of the seventeen that had been doing drills, each casualty listed felt like a punch in the gut. I knew that the only thing that had separated me from those who were listed was luck. There had been one killed by the Tracer guns, the one who had broken his helmet against the Tracers ship, and two had gone into the ship by themselves and lost to Regored, and the fifth had something go wrong with his airpack. He had lost his tether and wasn't able to get to the Tracer ship or our own. He hadn't been able to be found after the battle.

What an awful way to die, floating out into space, slowly watching your oxygen deplete. The long, slow way that you would feel yourself losing the ability to breathe. You would have all that time to think about everything that had gone wrong in your life. The temptation to just remove your helmet and submit to the cold vacuum of space. Maybe holding onto the feeling of hope. Hope that somehow you would be found before you ran out of air. Feeling yourself suffocating slowly...