by C. F. Harris
“Isn’t that the point of combat?” I said.
“You know what I mean,” Gorel said. “Suicide fighters are never an easy fight.”
“Right,” I said, tightening my grip on my plasma rifle.
I held that rifle up as I got closer, and drew a bead on the human tethered to the comm array thanks to its companion clinging to the thing in terror. The human flying through space reached the end of the line connecting them and jerked to a halt.
I figured this would be fast enough. That plasma lance might be a danger in close quarters combat, but I had no intention of letting the brave but crazed human warrior get close enough to take advantage of that melee advantage.
Only something happened. I fired a shot, but the human dodged at the last moment. I frowned. Drew a bead and fired again. Again the human was able to do a little twisting barrel roll that allowed it to completely miss my shot even dangling at the end of that tether.
“You sure you’re going to be okay there?” Gorel asked, his amusement clear as he no doubt watched my difficulty and thought how amusing it was to watch his captain being humiliated by a human.
I growled. Well if this human wanted to do it that way then that’s the way it would be. Perhaps it was cowardice to take this one out from a distance. Well I would show this human. I would…
“I’ve got this,” I growled as I closed in. I turned my plasma rifle around and attached it to my back, then pulled out a plasma sword of my own. Not quite the same as the plasma lance the human was wielding. No, this was far more dangerous as an edge of superheated plasma appeared around the edges of the blade which caused a glow to fall across my face.
I grinned. I would dispatch this human. I would prove which of our two species was the superior in a fight. I would…
The human looked up at me, and my breath caught. I felt a moment of surprise and shock, and that moment of surprise and shock was all the human needed to slam into me. With the regulated blade of pure plasma from her tool slamming into my armor at the same time.
I felt the heat from something working through my armor. Panic gripped me, and then training took over. I wrenched myself away from the human and kicked at her.
Because the human was a female. I hadn’t been able to see that at a distance. It wasn’t the sort of thing one could divine from the space suits the humans wore.
This creature attacking me with a bravery that would put my own warriors to shame was one of their females? Well if that was how all their females acted then I could understand why they had become such a fearsome warrior race.
I looked at my readout as I kicked at the human. My augmented suit gave me extra strength above and beyond what I already had from my training, and satisfaction washed over me as the visor on the human’s faceplate cracked.
Though I worried that I might have done something to cause the human to lose pressurization in that suit. Which very much wasn’t something I wanted to happen. No, I’d had a good look at that human, and that face was beautiful. Intoxicating.
I’d known the humans were exotic and strange with their odd skin tones and their rounded ears and the way they used their varied hair colors to attract mates, but I hadn’t been prepared to see one such as this with those bright green eyes staring out at me with a fierce determination to kill me.
I knew it was inappropriate in the middle of combat, but I couldn’t help myself. I felt a stirring below. An aching for this creature. And not only because it had been so long since I’d had my needs tended to properly.
“You going to be okay Vrath?” Gorel asked.
That pulled me out of my brief reverie. I wondered what he could possibly be talking about, and then I looked at my readout that gave the current status of my suit. And realized I was in serious trouble. The human had managed to hit me with that cutter, and it’d punctured a hole in my armor.
A small hole, to be sure. Nothing that’d gotten through to my skin. But a hole, nonetheless, and that meant I was leaking atmosphere to the vacuum and needed to get to a ship fast.
Damn it!
5
Rachel
My breathing wasn’t even picking up.
That’s how it always happened in the movies. Everything from ancient entertainments with people in ridiculous makeup to the new stuff you couldn’t tell from the real thing when you were immersed in a VR rig.
Something bad started to go down in the middle of space and it always cut to a shot of some poor bastard floating along in their suit. Their breathing always sounded like they were trying to suck all the air from their life support system as fast as possible through a straw.
I didn’t do anything like that though. I felt strangely calm as I looked at the source of the shadow.
The people on the ship weren’t calm. Dirk was shouting something about aliens coming for him, for all that he’d made it to the relative safety of the ship.
I rolled my eyes. He’d be lucky if they were coming for him. These had to be slavers out here in the middle of nowhere attacking a mostly unarmed repair frigate.
Why would we be armed with anything that could fight off a Vosk raider? We were in the middle of human space. Right in the middle of territory that was supposed to be protected by the Aegis Fleet, but of course the Aegis Fleet wasn’t right here at right this moment so I guess we were fucked.
If those were slavers then that turn of phrase might be uncomfortably literal for me and Kotomi.
Dirk had it easy. He’d probably be sold off to some species that thought human male was a delicacy. Or if I was lucky he’d be sold to some species that thought the male penis was an aphrodisiac and he’d have to live out the rest of his days as a eunuch.
As for what would happen to me and Kotomi and all the other women on the ship? The less I thought about that the better.
“Are you seriously doing this?” Kotomi asked, her breathing coming just as rapidly as the entertainments had led me to expect.
“Yes, we’re seriously doing this,” I said, unable to keep a manic grin from my face.
I was the only one grinning if the views of the rest of the crew in my heads up display were anything to go on.
I should’ve been terrified, but I couldn’t push down the excitement threatening to make me burst.
Something was happening. Sure I’d hoped to avoid this by avoiding the military, but a couple of years of doing boring repair work out in the many armpits of this galaxy had left me hoping for something. Anything.
Sure that something was probably my impending death now that it was here, but I wasn’t going to let them take us without a fight. Dirk was quietly sobbing over an open comm line, unencrypted so the aliens could hear him pissing his suit, but I wasn’t going out like that.
I made my way to the top of the lattice. Held out my plasma lance and flexed my fingers a couple of times to make sure everything was still working.
I still had plenty of life support in my suit. It could conceivably keep me operating out here in the middle of nowhere for a year without any ill effect.
Assuming I didn’t consider the slow onset of madness as I sat alone in a suit with nothing but an uninhabited star system and my own mind to keep me company as I ticked down my remaining life support on a slow descent to death waiting for a rescue that might never come while eating a nutrient paste reconstituted from my bodily waste to be “no ill effect.”
Kotomi was weeping quietly, but she was still attached to me. Maybe it was time to rethink that if she was this worked up.
“You can let go if you want,” I said.
“What?” she asked, staring at me through her puffy eyes on the comm screen.
“I said you can let go if you want,” I repeated. “Untether yourself. You don’t have to come with me if you don’t want to. You might have a few weeks or a month before you get to the auction block, after all.”
Her eyes went even wider, then narrowed as she finally seemed to get a little bit of fight in her thinking about what going up on th
e auction block meant. Good.
“Like hell am I waiting around for that,” she said, activating her own cutter, though her voice was still quavering. “Let’s do this.”
I grinned. I couldn't believe we were actually going to do this. We were going to attack Vosk raiders.
They had the usual two legs and two arms typical of the Vosk. It was surprising how close the ancient entertainments had been on that score. I knew there’d been ancients who scoffed at the idea of a galaxy populated with humanoid-life, but we’d since discovered several species that used that particular body style for whatever reason.
It was the kind of thing that really pissed off xenoevolutionary biologists because it shouldn't be so, and it was also something that was completely outside my pay grade and not worth worrying about right now.
"Come on Rachel," I whispered to myself, double checking after I'd spoken to make sure the comm line was closed.
The last thing I needed was for everyone on the ship to hear me psyching myself up to do something monumentally stupid. Especially when I had the example of Dirk out there showing me exactly how I shouldn't be behaving on the open line.
The Vosk moved silently across the void between their ship and the Linda. I tensed and waited for the first wave to get closer. I charged my plasma cutter and welder combo and switched it to the highest setting.
It didn't make any noise. If I was in atmosphere it’d make one hell of an ominous hum, but we were in the vacuum of space so there was nothing so spectacular as that.
It did make a bright flash as it turned the delicate latticework that kept communications going in this part of the galaxy into it so much molten slag beside me. It was a nice reminder that this thing could do some damage, for all that I was about to attack milspec alien raiders with a glorified repair tool.
I screamed in my mask, I could sure hear that, and launched myself at the lead element. I held out my plasma cutter in front of me.
It wasn't supposed to be a weapon, but I figured any tool that could turn metal into molten slag could also probably do a number on these aliens and their armored suits.
Kotomi screamed over the line, but her scream sounded more like terror than psyching herself up for combat. Oh well. At least she was coming with me.
At least I thought she was coming with me until I felt a tug on the line. I turned to see her holding onto the damned lattice.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I growled.
“I can’t!” she wailed. “I’m sorry but I…”
I hit the thrusters on my suit again, but nothing happened. Damnation I was going to kill Kotomi. Assuming she wasn’t killed by the aliens first, that is.
Unfortunately she was holding onto the comm array with enough force that I couldn’t counteract it with my own jets. The things were just tiny airjets, after all, all a girl really needed to get from here to there in the vacuum of space.
Which meant they weren’t close to enough to stand up against someone clinging to the metal lattice of a warp comm relay like the terrified screeching monkey she was.
I felt like doing some terrified screeching of my own as a plasma blast lanced past me. Fuck!
I hadn’t been intending to dodge the thing. No, I’d mostly been flailing at the end of the line thanks to Kotomi and had avoided the shot incidentally.
I’m not knocking it, don’t get me wrong. I looked up to see the lead element of the alien raider group coming at me. Fuckity fuck!
A glow at the tip of his plasma rifle. He was shooting at me! So much for slavers trying to take slaves. Or maybe it was that I had the plasma lance in my hand and looked like I meant business with the thing for all that it was a glorified cutting and welding tool that I was using as an improvised weapon.
I dodged as the tip of his gun grew almost blindingly bright. That happened when they were about to go off. I wish I could say I’d learned that from some great training or something, but I’d picked it up from movies about Terran-Vosk conflict.
I was glad some of those movies went for realism, because it saved my ass today!
“They’re shooting at you!” Kotomi shouted. “Get your stupid ass back down here and drop that plasma lance before you get yourself killed!”
“What happened to all that stuff about not wanting to be taken alive?” I asked.
“I changed my fucking mind when they started shooting at us!” she screeched, loud enough that I could tell my loudness compensators were kicking in to make sure I didn’t go deaf from her screeching.
I looked back at the alien. He was having no trouble closing the distance, and was that a fucking plasma sword he’d pulled out? The dangerous bigger brother to my plasma lance, and he was closing in with it.
Fuck!
This Vosk was tooling around with some impressive propulsion. Not the little airjets I was using to get around, and he slammed into me before I had a chance to think about going back to Kotomi and the false safety of the damaged comm relay.
I reacted without thinking using reflexes I didn’t know I had. I dug my plasma lance into his suit, and his face contorted in surprise and pain.
And oh that face. I stared into his faceplate and got a look at the most gorgeous alien I’d ever seen. I knew the Vosk were supposed to be good looking with that exotic gold skin, but damn.
Also? This totally wasn’t the time to be thinking about how hot the nice alien who was trying to kill me or capture me to sell me into sex slavery was, damn it! So I screamed as I dug in with the lance. This thing could cut through anything given enough time, including whatever fucking armor this asshole was sporting.
I didn’t need fancy weapons to fight off an invader out here in the vacuum. All I needed was to punch a hole that leaked his air into space. There was a lot more vacuum to fill around us than there was life support in that suit.
The alien roared in fury, or maybe it was pain, but even that was so fucking sexy on that face that was all hard planes and a body that was obviously built if the way that armor clung to him was anything to go on.
He pulled a hand back, balled it into a fist, and slammed it into my faceplate which spiderwebbed. I panicked and looked at the flickering readouts in my heads up display to see if there was any atmosphere leaking, but so far so good.
Not that I thought I was going to be good for long if he could hit me that fucking hard!
6
Vrath
I gritted my teeth and cursed as the human tenaciously kept at me with that plasma cutter despite almost knocking out her faceplate. Amazing that she would still fight even under threat of death!
I was completely and utterly captivated. She took my breath away, though of course some of that breath being taken away might have been a result of my suit leaking atmosphere at an alarming rate thanks to the hole she cut in the side.
I growled and shoved at her arm. I’d figured hitting her faceplate would distract her, especially after that hit threatened to bust the thing wide open, but no such luck.
So it was time for more direct action. I needed to get that damned cutter away from my suit and…
She pulled free. The heat from her plasma lance that’d been threatening to break through my armor entirely and start cutting my leg blessedly left, though it was replaced by a cold deeper than anything I’d ever felt which wasn’t good.
Also? The fight wasn’t out of her. Her weapon came down on my faceplate with more strength than I would have expected from a human female. My own faceplate cracked.
I blinked a couple of times. The faceplate wasn't supposed to do that. It was supposed to be reinforced.
I was going to have a conversation with Derok down in the quartermaster station. Either he'd been taken to the cleaners the last time we got new equipment, or he’d been skimming off the top secure in the knowledge that anyone who discovered the faceplates weren’t as armored as we’d been told likely wouldn’t live long enough to tell the tale.
Either way it was his fault I was in this situation w
hich meant he was one step away from the disintegrator.
Assuming the stressed faceplate didn't explode and expose me to the vacuum of space and kill me before I had a chance to teach him a final lesson about being more careful about our supply chain. Lessons like that were always more for the rest of the crew rather than the person being punished.
I moved to block her next blow. Grabbed her cutter and chopped at her hand. I couldn't hear the cry of pain, but I could see her mouth open in a mixture of fury and pain.
Her makeshift weapon floated off into the void. It would no doubt start orbiting around this star, and maybe someday if any species developed intelligence in this out-of-the-way system they’d find it orbiting thousands or even millions of years from now and wonder at how it got there.
I grinned. The pained expression didn’t last for long before she was clawing at me again. Amazing! This one had spirit.
I knew the humans could be formidable opponents. I'd even heard of the martial prowess of their women. How they descended on battlefields with their powered armors and fought just as well as their men.
It's not that I was surprised that women could fight as well as men. The women of my own people fought just fine thank you very much.
She brought her knee up and hit between my legs. My eyebrows shot up at that. We kept our equipment in the same place humans did, and it was obvious she was trying to get my attention by attacking a particularly sensitive part of my anatomy.
I instinctively squeezed my legs together even though my armor would’ve been more than enough to shield me from the blow. At least normally my armor should’ve been enough to shield me from the blow, though I wasn’t so sure about that now that I had the example of my faceplate that left me questioning all of my combat equipment.
I should have been angry that she was still attacking, but instead that piece of anatomy she was threatening was rock hard between my legs. I was surprised at the reaction.
