IMP29

==Chapter 29 - Important People==
Tharkad Orbital Anchorage
Tharkad System
Lyran Commonwealth
November 30, 3097
[Tharkad Orbital anchorage...]
Security cameras might have noticed the movement, if they were pointed the right way.  The team moved between the docks. In fives, passing across the connections to LCS Hermann Steiner and LCS Katrina Steiner.
Expertly they moved. As the security systems looked the wrong way, at the interval the security sats moved and the sensors saw nothing.
Until they reached LCS Frederick Steiner...
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Aboard the Battleship, LCS Frederick Steiner
Klaxons sounded as the outer locks opened.  Crewmen had been working, but Captain Krieger had chosen to be ready for accidents-all crew aboard were in Pressure suit state Alpha-ready to don helmets at a moment's notice if a fault triggered the doors or an accident during the work happened.
The invaders didn't expect the crew to be ready to fight back, suited up, alert to breaches. Thanks to the urging of their commander, just a little bit paranoid.
Johannes Krieger wasn't a paper sailor. While he came up through the fighter branch, he'd been one of the first Warship officers dragooned and trained by Elizabeth Ngo's reforms.
His marines, were ready in seconds and his crew understood the instant that strangers were among them with weapons that it was a fight.
In space's in vacuum, nobody hears the weapons. Only those on the same channel can hear the screams.
Along Battleship ring, strategically placed explosives crack jump cores and ruin drive housings. As the saboteurs are fighting the crew of the Frederick Steiner, enlisted and junior officers putting up unexpected and unplanned-for resistance.
The battle takes nine hours of fighting corridor to corridor, compartment to compartment.  The attackers don't retreat, the defenders don't surrender, and Security does not respond.
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