"Two minutes to contact."
A gruff male voice sounded in the ear. Einz—one of the Zabrak brothers, silent shadows who walk behind their commander and unquestioningly carry out all his orders.
Tough guys, from whom even a Mandalorian could learn a thing or two.
In general, Arkam, having tempered his pride, was forced to admit that he had greatly underestimated this reckless company of fortune seekers.
In those first days when he first showed up here, he was firmly convinced that it was the arrival of Mandalorians into the ranks of the Helldivers that would allow the latter to turn into something worthwhile. With their reputation as the best warriors and mercenaries in the galaxy, Jaster Mereel's former fighters should have quickly taken over the growing company of dogs of war.
How great was his surprise in those first days...
Training. Discipline. An incredible and insane goal... And a leader, one who keeps his word and fulfills promises.
Fists clenched until the armor lining creaked. The Beskar plating on the back of his hand shimmered dangerously, as if supporting its owner's indignation.
Arkam only had to think of his Mandalore—the first among equals, who was supposed to lead all his compatriots and change their lives forever...
Sula barely restrained himself from bringing his armored fists down on the nearest wall. Although most of the emotion had long since drained away during the farewell to his former commander, hot Mandalorian blood still boiled at the memory.
Betrayal. That was how Sula saw it, and he didn't care what others said.
Faithful to his oath, to his word, the former True Mandalorian had loyally followed Jaster Mereel, painting his banner on his armor.
But as soon as they achieved success, coming just a little closer to their goal, Mereel chose to settle for little and renounce everything he had talked to them about for so long.
Humiliated and betrayed, many turned away from him. And while most chose solitude and exile, going off to sell their skills to anyone who could afford them...
Arkam himself, with a group of like-minded individuals, chose a different path. And from the very day he arrived on the ship with the pretentious name "Freedom Rider," he had never once regretted his decision.
"Hey, hot Mandalorian boys! Those Hutt-spawn are trashing our guys, so there's work for you."
The voice of the first deputy and actual manager of the entire organization sounded in the helmet's speaker. A creepy girl with an incredible productivity ratio. Arkam never underestimated women, as there were plenty even in his squad, but this friend of the leader was cut from a completely different cloth.
But now was not the time to think about that.
The eyes of the veteran soldier looked around, peering into the darkness of the boarding pod, painted in somber crimson tones. Around him sat veterans just like him. Former mercenaries, greatly changed under the influence of their new commander.
Light armor had been replaced by sealed armored suits. Thick armor plates hung on chests, shoulders, and thighs. Not changing their habits, the former True Mandalorians, to a man, wore jump packs on their backs, and flamethrowers and other close-quarters goodies were built into their gauntlets.
Overall, their armor was the same as the other Helldivers, with the sole exception that it externally resembled Beskar armor.
"Style is your thing, don't just give it up."
Sam's words floated into his head. That day, Arkam and the others wanted to switch completely to stylized Helldivers armor, but the new commander talked them out of it. And in a way, Sula was even grateful.
Loud laughter erupted from the side, and glancing that way, the former True Mandalorian smiled patronizingly under his helmet. Two dozen young men from his distant homeland sat at the end of the boarding pod, having fun and fooling around. New reinforcements who disagreed with the rule of Mereel and Tapal. From their side, jokes could be heard about insane old men who strapped a bunch of extra iron on themselves...
"Youngsters. Eh, fools... Well, ancestors willing, half will survive this fight."
The Mandalorian felt sorry for them, but he wasn't going to say anything. He'd been through it more than once. His words would be taken as hostility, weakness, or condescension. Until they realized it for themselves, there was no point. Later, when their brains were rattled by blaster fire and detonator explosions.
Chuckling faintly, Arkam Sula affectionately ran his fingertips along the barrel of the heavy blaster machine gun. He, too, had been dismissive of all Sam's innovations at first.
But now, look at him. Packed up to his ears. He had so much steel on him that he felt the weight of his armor even while sitting. In his hands, instead of a rapid-fire blaster, rested a heavy machine gun capable of turning a small patrol ship into a pile of shit. Based on a Trandoshan design, this glorious machine had quickly gained popularity among all Helldivers.
And Arkam was no exception. A massive gun, eight kilograms of "democratic rage," as Sam liked to say. An effective range of nearly a thousand meters. Almost five hundred blaster charges that could fly toward the enemy in less than a minute.
Cracking his neck, the eternally calm Sula leaned back in his seat, ignoring his boisterous neighbors. Recent boys who had barely served two weeks in the Helldivers were too optimistic and noisy.
"Twenty seconds, prepare for impact."
Again, Einz's voice rang through the helmet, but Arkam noted it only with the edge of his consciousness. While the others anticipated the fight, he, as the commander, reviewed data from the helmets of other Helldivers. Telemetry and statistics flowed like a river before his eyes, showing what the regular troops of Hutt Space were capable of.
"Filthy slugs, they've killed so many people."
And the data was discouraging. With a cavalry charge, the Helldivers had burst into the enemy's rear, beginning counter-boarding operations across the CSA fleet.
The casualty statistics grew every minute; here and there, Helldivers fell, tearing victory from the hands of the cursed enemy with blood and fury...
The most trouble came from the assault droids. The three-legged, ball-shaped machines had a pair of blaster cannons on their shoulders. A grenade launcher in the right hand and a mounted blaster machine gun in the left. A small shield generator allowed them to stand for nearly ten seconds under the fire of a standard Helldiver rifle—which was quite enough to kill at least two, and sometimes three people. Fortunately, there weren't many of these beasts, and simple tripwires became a real "Kuat's heel" for them.
Furthermore, the narrow corridors had become a real meat grinder with nowhere to hide from a superior enemy, which only worsened the situation.
Glancing at the young men once more, Arkam again weighed the survival chances of the brash youngsters. Judging by the incoming data, only his men wouldn't have problems, given the durability and abundance of the armor they wore, not to mention the small self-charging shield generators installed in their backpacks instead of the famous Mandalorian missiles.
The impact of the pod against the ship's hull pulled the man out of his melancholy and pensiveness. Shaking off the last of his drowsiness, the seasoned dog of war quickly jumped to his feet, as if he didn't feel the dragging weight of the armor.
"In honor and glory..."
Dropping a few words dryly into the general comms, Sula drew attention to himself. His cold voice made all the youngsters shut up, while his old comrades synchronously thrust their fists vertically upward at chest level.
Plasma cutters were already slicing through the hull plating. A barbaric, primitive technology, assembled by a little Jawa and mass-produced, it handled the starship's plating perfectly. No frills. No beautiful designs or breathtaking engineering solutions.
"Grenades away."
When less than a couple of seconds remained before the full circle was cut, the explosions of smoke grenades were heard from the other side of the pod. Not all the mechanisms had survived the impact, and now a thick gray smoke was penetrating the pod, which only made their job easier.
"Activate motion sensors and thermal imagers."
A synchronous movement of hands to heads, and forty Shock Troopers took up combat stances. The countdown began in seconds.
"Three..."
Gripping the machine gun more comfortably, Arkam inhaled. His helmet had long since smelled of cigarettes, his cologne, and some elusive scent of plastic and electronics. This smell reminded him of something from his childhood, when his father would bring him plastic boxes with blaster attachments. Made in the capital, they were packed in cheap and mediocre packaging, but that scent always reminded him of those distant childhood days.
The helmet lenses gleamed dangerously as their owner lowered his tilted head, peering into the widening passage.
"Two..."
A small gap appeared ahead. Ion cannons had disabled most of the ship's electronics, but the emergency lighting was still working, and its tiny beams timidly broke through the smoke and the growing crack in the hull between the pod and the ship's side.
"One."
Einz's voice was still calm and even melancholic. Always confident in himself and his commander, his very behavior gave the soldiers confidence. The funniest thing was that both Zabraks apparently didn't even realize the moral effect their calm, confident voices had on the troops.
"Go, go, go."
Doubling the command with a hand gesture, Arkam was the first to run out, immediately picking out dozens of targets that had taken cover around them.
They had been dropped into a massive mess hall. The viewports had long been shattered and sealed by emergency bulkheads. All the tables in the room were overturned or smashed to pieces, and the bodies of corporate soldiers who had tried to fight for the ship were scattered around.
Beside them, the bodies of fallen Helldivers occasionally lay. In their black armor, they almost blended into the floor in the gloom. But Sula saw that there were quite a lot of corpses.
Smoke crawled along the floor, spreading in all directions.
The Cartel soldiers gripped their weapons convulsively and aimed into the smoky passage. But then, in the darkness, a flashlight beam caught the glint of metal. And just as the Cartel warrior was about to give the signal to attack, Sula and his men burst out in a semicircle, picking off targets.
"Fire."
A quiet, cold voice rolled through the comms, and twenty heavy machine guns flooded the mess hall with blaster fire.
A light show began that not every club in the Republic capital could organize.
Thousands of laser bolts lit up the space, tearing soldiers' bodies to pieces. Knocking down cover and thin partitions, the heavy Shock Troopers moved forward, relentlessly firing at any signature highlighted by a bright crimson light against the black-and-white image.
The roar of the old-fashioned-style machine guns was deafening. Excess gases from the Tibanna shots were vented into the air at the sides of the muzzle, creating loud pops and bright flashes that only intensified the effect.
With a slow and unhurried step, they advanced, destroying everything in their path with a torrent of plasma. Somewhere behind them, at their sides, and occasionally over their heads, the young Mandalorians frolicked, generously dousing the enemy with everything they had, but not reaching even a hundredth of the level of firepower created by Sula's Shock Troopers.
"Light run." It was time to speed up. A message flashed on the helmet screen that one of their groups was being pinned down on the upper deck in the opposite part of the ship. "Clear the rooms, don't spare the grenades."
The rumble of steel sabatons echoed through the ship. Thundering through the area, his Shock Troopers, packed to the ears, rushed forward, kicking in doors and, out of the generosity of their Mandalorian souls, tossing in detonators.
Nearby, the bodies of Cartel soldiers fell. Torn to pieces, they decorated the area with their insides. Even a complete moron could have found the tracks of Arkam and his men.
Walking ahead of everyone, the former True Mandalorian himself continued the culling of all those "unworthy of democracy." Sam's sermons filled the heads of everyone who had just begun to listen to his zealous and idiotic shouts; fortunately, the Mandalorian himself hadn't been infected by such things.
"Yet... But judging by everything, that's where it's headed."
Impaling a Cartel soldier who had run out from around a corner on a huge bayonet knife, Arkam kicked the corpse away and kicked a satchel charge further off that the loser hadn't had time to throw.
The enemy set up ambushes. They laid tripwires, mines, or collapsed corridors in attempts to delay, wound, or kill them. While this sometimes worked on ordinary Helldivers, and their lonely bodies were encountered, the Shock Troopers only laughed contemptuously and dryly into the voice channel, commenting on the overly zealous servants.
Pushing through the Cartel's defenses, the Mandalorian led his men further, and behind them remained smoking corpses riddled with plasma.
Turning another corner, Sula saw a crowd of fleeing soldiers. Not even covering their own backs, they simply ran headlong, just to be as far away from them as possible.
"Trash..."
Aiming his little girl at the backs of the cowardly slug-spawn, Arkam opened fire without mercy, striking down the crowd of thirty people.
Running in a tight group, the shots sometimes pierced right through, and the plasma charge would hit the next runner, bringing even more chaos and confusion.
Sparing no Tibanna, Arkam squeezed the trigger to the stop, smoothly moving the muzzle from side to side, allowing this weapon miracle of Shorty's production to show everything it was capable of.
The stream of blasters turned into a solid line. The walls closest to the fugitives were riddled, leaving large holes and gaps in them.
The entire corridor was lit up by a stream of continuous blue flashes.
As for the fugitives...
Stepping over scorched piles of meat, the Shock Troopers simply walked on, and now a chain of bloody footprints stretched behind them, leading deep into the ship.
"This is Sula. We are approaching your positions. Do you copy?"
In response, instead of a report, Arkam heard only the semi-insane scream of a young girl; straining her throat, clearly in pain and likely suffering from numerous wounds, she growled like a beast and shouted the answer into the comms:
"D-E-M-O-C-R-A-C-Y!"
Following this, the crack of an explosion echoed down the corridor, causing many to stagger in place, and the starship's walls groaned under the strain. A flash of flame broke through the ceiling, scorching the corpses and drying the blood trickling down the walls.
Synchronously shielding their helmet visors from the glare, the Shock Troopers nodded to each other in unison, then switched to a full run, with rare stops to finish off surviving Cartel soldiers.
Racing ahead of everyone, Sula blamed himself for not being fast enough. Although he was already a seasoned veteran, he didn't much like constantly reading reports, participating in writing death notices, or seeing off empty coffins into open space.
In the next corridor, they fell into an ambush. Having removed a blaster cannon from a walker, the Cartel soldiers had brought in all the remaining boarding droids on the ship and were now firing all their weapons with them, stopping the advance of Sula's Shock Troopers.
Splitting his men, Arkam, without doubt or question, continued to fire, slowly but surely picking off the mercenaries entrenched in the distance, who were taking cover behind droid shields and the armor plates of a corporate walker.
The traders' handiwork was worth its money and quite successfully took the plasma shots, gradually melting and becoming covered in a network of glowing cracks.
Calling clicks tapped in his ear. Yielding his position to another soldier, Arkam stepped away from the corner. Already connecting to the voice channel, he heard one of his men shouting about freedom, dousing the enemies without sparing the machine gun's heating barrel.
"All groups. Repeat. All groups. Retreat to your ships."
Exchanging a puzzled look with his deputy, Sula requested clarification, and as one of the trusted people and a high-ranking officer, he was given an answer with details.
"Zorba the Hutt has fled the planet, and the remnants of the Cartel fleet have retreated with him."
***
Read early on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Granulan