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The VANGUARD-class corvette-gunship hugs the surface of the SOJOURNER, accompanied by a tight delta of escorting interceptors. They begin retrograde thrust with perfect synchrony. The grey, radiation-burnt blur of the SOJOURNER's hull slows, resolving into a landscape of panels and metallic outcroppings - a fossil record of human-made material that has been replaced, recycled, and replaced once more.
A sliver of warm light appears in the visual feed: a docking bay, opening amidst a forest of antennae and girders. The gunship fires its ventral thrusters before canting upwards, preparing for its final approach. The interceptors peel off in one-pair intervals, tipping their blunt winglets in acknowledgement.
For the purposes of a boarding operation, the spinal hanger was not your first choice. It was further from the bridge than the smaller shuttle-docks, meaning that your combat-clades would have to push through nearly three hundred meters of open corridor space before reaching the command bridge. However, the hanger was expansive and the spinal corridor it connected to was wide. Instead of pushing the point and eliciting suspicion, you had decided advantage of these traits as best you could. After returning to your carrier, you had packed the gunship to the brim with additional breaching frames armed with specialized munitions and oversized booster units.
You hoped that it would be enough.
The gunship enters the hanger, momentarily suspended over the assigned landing pad by RCS thrust. A contingent of indentured crew - something approximating shipboard security, perhaps, jet out on spindly, filigree-adorned EVA-rigs to formally receive your negotiating party.
You see the leader - just for a moment - his pale but surprisingly well-appearing face barely obscured by a golden sunshield. His eyes widen when he realizes that your envoy was no longer spooling down its engines. His mouth opens in a wordless scream as he frantically maneuvers his EVA frame backward.
He moves too late. Instead of landing, the gunship executes a hull rotation on full military thrust. Burning plasma from the drive column spears through the docking bay, filling the compartment with the off-red glow of ionized helium. Girders and walkways - EVA frames and their pilots - flare before disappearing like snowflakes caught beneath the noonday sun. Idly, you rebuff a series of urgent comm requests from the SOJOURNER.
Your primary breaching team jettisons immediately from the gunship's docking compartment. The gunship's point-defense chatter for a full five seconds, tunneling through the hanger into the SOJOURNER's spinal transit corridor. Immediately after, the gunship departs, mobilizing to the mothership's external hull to place secondary support-teams.
You switch views.
