by Marc Stevens
“Commander, we have Prule coming down the corridor to our rear!”
This may not have been such a good idea after all. We were between a rock and a hard place.
“Klutch! Make a hole!” I yelled.
Before he could active the device, a Prule maintainer stepped into the hallway and froze. Klutch threw his arm up and put a stream of armor-piercing rounds into its belly. It pitched forward onto the deck and started slinging the contents of its biomass reservoir all over the place. Coonts opened up to our rear, and two high-explosive blasts shook the corridor. Our asses were officially in the fire after that. Klutch jerked his plasma caster out in front of him and sent two big squirts of hellfire out into the group of Prule that were moving in our direction. We had every machine in the place zeroing in on our location. Tria called over the group comms.
“We have to move now or we will be trapped in here!”
Coonts’s minigun firing to our rear left us little choice as to where we could go.
“Klutch, get us to the engine spaces!”
The Troop Master sent another stream of plasma out into the gathering Prule and then boosted for the engine room. As soon as I cleared the edge of the hallway, the first thing I saw was a large gravity lift loaded with equipment. Just beyond it was a large group of Hunters rapidly moving across the passage to intercept us. I sent a beam shot into the lift, blowing some of the equipment to pieces and sending it nosediving for the deck. Tria saw what I was doing and put a follow-up shot into the control cab. The aft section blew off, dumping the whole flaming mess down on to the Hunters. Coonts must have decided we were going to be sucking shit shortly. The antimatter proximity warning went off in my HUD. It went from red to yellow, which still meant we were in for a rough ride. I could not see the threat that was encouraging him to blow us all up. Visibility was crap because Klutch had everything between us and the engine room blast door blazing with plasma fire. If that wasn’t enough to get my juices churning, the blast door started coming down. We dove for the deck at the base of the rapidly descending door. The only thing I could think of at that moment, was whether or not we would be welcome in the presence of our maker.
25
A lot of people do not believe in divine intervention. I would tell any who asked that there was indeed such a thing, or our maker wasn’t quite ready for us to soil the carpet of his heavenly abode. The shockwave from the detonation of Coonts’s antimatter shell blew us to the deck and under the engine room door. I have always known we were lucky, but not that lucky. If that was not the hand of our maker giving us his nudge of approval, then we died in the blast and this would be our hell for the rest of eternity.
My HUD was blacked out from the detonation. Justice’s subsystem that made the operation of our armor possible put the stick frame outlines of our surroundings on the HUD view screen so we would not blunder about blindly. This feature enabled me to see the clawed appendage of the Prule maintainer just before it smashed into my torso. The blow did not do any real harm to me but did give me a damage warning indicator for my ammo pack. I rolled to the side before the next blow could land. My wits were now working on all cylinders, and I fired a burst of armor-piercing rounds up into the bottom of the machine. It collapsed on top of me but was blown off by a blast that sent me flying into the pressure door. The warbling screech of a Hunter let me know I had bigger problems lurking in my immediate future. I boosted hard for the ceiling just as another blast hit the door. My HUD highlighted my target and also showed me the whereabouts of my strike team. We were scattered about the huge engine room and were all fully engaged with hostile targets. The entire engine room radiated from explosive blasts and weapons fire. The beast in me was tearing its way out of it cage, and I could feel its rage taking over. It had been a while since I felt the monster’s hate-filled anger and, in some ways, it was reassuring. If I was going to die, it was going to make sure I had plenty of company going with me.
I rolled hard to my right, and my beam weapon came up with what seemed like no effort on my part. I hit the Hunter dead center, knocking it down and dropping its shield. My next shot explosively scattered its remains in all directions. While I got the beast’s approval, I did not win any from my team.
“Nathan! Cease fire!” Tria yelled out over our group comms. “If you breach the star drive’s antimatter containment fields, we will all die!”
The reality of the warning my significant other doused me with was enough for me to wrest control back from the beast. The blast from my beam weapon had caused collateral damage to two Prule that were in close proximity to my target. The maintenance machines were attempting to drag themselves back into the fray. Coonts hosed them down with his minigun, blowing their remaining appendages to shrapnel.
“Commander, you must not let them open the blast door!” Coonts warned. “I do not have a clear shot!”
My HUD flashed a warning and highlighted two Prule up on the level above us. Coonts was engaging more targets, and Tria and Klutch were back to back sending streams of armor-piercing rounds into the Prule surrounding them. I boosted for the Prule on the landing above me, but my target fixation earned me a penalty shot from somewhere below. I was blown cartwheeling into the machinery above my targets and dumped on the floor at their feet. My vision was blurry, but I could still see enough to make out the clawed feet that started hammering me nonstop. I was fortunate because my attackers were the small versions of the Hivemind and were unarmed and unshielded. That made them relatively soft targets, but the blows they were raining down on me were anything but.
“Commander! The door is opening,” Klutch shouted. “Do not make me come up there and close it myself!” The Troop Master must have thought I was napping, and the deadly edge to his voice meant he had all the trouble he could handle.
It’s a shame the smell of a Tibor had no effect on Prule. It crossed my mind that the odor Klutch was giving off at the present would probably kill a great many lesser races. Between the testy insubordinate tone of my Troop Master and the ass stomping I was once again on the receiving end of, I again let the beast in me off its leash. My launcher came up and pointed at the control panel the Prule were standing at. The beast must have triggered a round of high explosive, because a lucid person would not have done such a thing. The distance was maybe four feet to the recipients of my hate. The explosion blasted the Prule into numerous pieces and sent me flying more than thirty feet over the upper level rail to the deck below. While my armor did soak up the punishment it had received, that didn’t mean there wasn’t pain involved. My brain was rattled like a peanut in a beer can. My vision was wonky as hell, and I had major fault warnings on my minigun and needle weapon. It was hard to get any clarity as to our current state of affairs because my audio pickups were zoning in and out.
I felt myself being pulled across the deck and I was not in the mood to play patty cake with another machine piece of crap. I was going to give the high-explosive route another go, but felt my arm being pushed down. My vision was coming back, and I was greeted by Coonts’s upside-down helmet filling my faceplate. My hearing was on the mend as well. He was yelling over my comms channel to hold my fire. I pushed his helmet away from my faceplate and rolled over with a groan. The blast door had stopped moving. It had risen about a foot before I put a spanner in the works. The other thing I noticed was there were still several hostiles in the area, but they were all thrashing around on the deck like brainless idiots. Even the Prule I could see through the gap under the door were having wild seizures. My brain finally put together more coherent thoughts, and I realized the symptoms were nanite-related.
Tria and Klutch pulled me to my feet. Tria cleared her war mask and put her faceplate to mine.
“Commander, Klutch and I have expended our nanite reservoirs,” she said. “It will not hold back the Prule for long. Their numbers are too great. We need to get out of here before they attack in mass.”
My brain was back to understanding complete sentences. We d
id not possess enough weaponized nanites to protect us indefinitely. The large area and number of hostiles would effectively dilute our attack to the point it would no longer incapacitate the bio machines. We were screwed unless we could get out of here.
“Coonts, you take our charges and put them where they will do the most damage,” I commanded. “Set them so they cannot be tampered with. Program them for remote disarm and detonation. Set the fail-safe for twenty minutes. Klutch, find us a way out of here. I don’t care how you do it.”
We gave Coonts our scuttling charges, and he boosted up onto one of the gigantic drives. He momentarily looked around and then disappeared into the maze of machinery. Klutch started putting portals on every spot that he thought would have a void large enough for us to make our escape. We would be able to tell if he was successful if the nonstop cursing that was being mumbled over our comms ceased. Tria and I got down on our knees and peeked under the blast door. The amount of carnage we had inflicted on the Prule obscured our view. The machine carcasses stretched into the distance. We both knew it would be foolish to think the Prule had given up. Somewhere out there, they were massing for an attack. Our options were quickly going to run out if we didn’t get out of here soon.
Just to keep the scat eaters honest, I put my arm under the door and raised it to what my HUD suggested would give maximum distance. I cranked the yield on an antimatter round until I got an orange release warning. As soon as Tria got the warning, she boosted away from the door. She called out a warning even though the rest of the team got the same messages. I let the round fly and boosted for the upper level, where Tria and Klutch took cover. The detonation shook the ship and blasted pieces of Prule and other debris through the gap under the door. In response to the high-order detonation, the door finally decided it should do what it was originally designed for and slammed down to the deck, sealing us inside. The upside was we didn’t have to worry about the Prule sniping at us through the gap. The downside was unless Klutch could portal us out, we were trapped like rats in a dumpster.
Coonts dropped down from the drives and joined us. In the top right-hand corner of my HUD, a small green remote detonator box appeared. It had the word armed in the middle of it. Coonts had transferred control to me. In the event I was not capable of doing the deed when the time came, the control would pass to Tria and then back to him and finally Klutch. He was putting contingencies in place if things went really bad for the chain of command. I was hoping like hell it would not come to that.
But Klutch’s mood and demeanor were making me think we were in a steamy one up to our eyeballs. He was still probing for a good portal location only to have the hole promptly close on every try. Between curse words, he alerted us the device was starting to lag between attempts. I had to give it to the Prule: they knew how to protect the engines and antimatter containers on their starships. Klutch jumped down from the upper deck and slowly shook his head. It was now confirmed. There was only one way in, and one way out. He had a look that I had rarely seen on his face: gloom. This place would prove to be our tomb unless we took drastic measures. Not wanting it to come to that, I decided to go to plan B, even though I had yet to come up with one. My team gathered around me, and I wasn’t about to let them think I didn’t actually have a backup plan.
“Klutch, make a portal on the blast door,” I said. “I am going to send a full-yield antimatter round through. After the round detonates, you make another portal, and we get out of here. My plan is for us to get to the utility access where we boarded.”
Tria commed me on my private channel. “I know you just made that scat up. I just wanted to tell you it would have been my plan as well.”
Tria boosted with Coonts to the bulkhead on the side of the door and went prone on the deck. Klutch looked at me, and his gloomy expression changed to a goofy smile. He was game no matter how nutty the idea was. I took a knee so I had a good upward angle and gave Klutch a nod. He gave me a hole about ten feet up the door. I let the round fly; dire warnings be damned. He closed the hole, and we both boosted to where Tria and Coonts were waiting. We landed on our bellies and slid to a stop next to them. Tria reached out and grabbed my armored glove. She squeezed hard enough I could feel the pressure. There was a tremendous metallic clang, and the deck jumped hard enough to make me think the ship had slapped me in the face for the damage I had inflicted on it. I rolled over and glanced to the upper deck. All the control consoles were flashing with warning lights, and alarms were now blaring. The ship was telling us what we already knew: we had worn out our welcome, and it was time to get the hell off.
We got up and ran to the door, which had a very pronounced bow to it. Klutch activated the device but something huge must have been blocking the backside of the door. The portal closed. Klutch didn’t hesitate and pointed the projector to the top of the door. To my relief, he got a good hole. He jerked his plasma caster from its clip and boosted up and through. Tria, Coonts, and I were tight to his back. Klutch wasn’t going to need his plasma caster because we flew into a blazing inferno. The walls of the passage leading to the engine spaces were folded outward, exposing other decks and corridors. I was shocked at the amount of Prule that had gathered to attack us. As far as we could see, their mangled bodies were in smoldering heaps. The blast had pushed their remains up the walls, all the way to the overhead. There was a large rend in the ceiling, and smoke and flames were being sucked upward into it. Klutch never even slowed, and we flew right for it. He wasn’t going to hear any bitching from me about stopping and trying for a portal. It was the only sure way of getting away from where we were. We popped up through the flaming hole and found ourselves in a giant cargo hold. The freight that occupied the deck where the blast penetrated was on fire as well. Fire suppression systems were blowing out geysers of a thick gray foam that stuck to everything it touched, including us. What little our cloak suits did to hide our location was rendered useless.
Klutch started blasting balls of plasma in all directions, setting stacks of cargo ablaze, intensifying the spreading inferno.
“Klutch, save the plasma. We may need it!” I called.
“I have a plan, Commander!”
I didn’t think boiling us in our battle suits was a noteworthy plan. When he didn’t elaborate further, I knew he was making it up on the fly, just like I was. I had to give him credit though: the rapidly growing pyre was covering our retreat. The Prule weapons fire coming from the hold fell off drastically. Coonts had been firing nonstop to our rear, but he ceased. At the far end of the hold was a large open loading hatch. It was hard to say if Klutch knew it was there or not, but we needed a little bit of salvation and a way to get out of there would fit the bill perfectly. Klutch cranked up the speed, and we flew at maximum velocity for the opening. I could only think of one thing, and that was not to be trapped inside of the ship. Tria on the other hand, was thinking a little further ahead.
“Klutch, stay low to the deck so we are not exposed to the ship’s weapons!”
I should have been the one to think of that and alert the Troop Master. In a way, I was kind of glad I didn’t when I heard his curt reply.
“This is not my first boarding, Captain Burlor!”
After the cluster grope we had gone through, I could see where everyone might be a little testy. Tria could have chosen to verbally gig the Troop Master for his comment, but she let it slide. She knew how much stress Klutch was under to lead us the hell out of there in one piece. With the foam covering our suits, we were visible targets, so we started taking fire from the Prule Hunters on the upper deck. We were flying low and fast. Most of the fire was well to our rear but was progressively getting more accurate. I saw a flash just in front of Klutch that made him turn us toward the side of the ship. We ducked over the edge and stayed right against the hull. The ship was more than a mile long and we still had a way to go. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a turret swivel toward us. I wouldn’t have thought my sphincter could pucker any tighter. When the turret ope
ned fire sending beams of energy a couple of feet above our heads, I though it somehow dragged my throat into my ass and was strangling me. Klutch had us flying so tight to the hull, it was less than a foot away. We got lucky because the weapons turrets could not depress their fire any further without hitting the ship. The star-like heat given off by the weapons fire had temperature warnings flashing in my HUD. I normally wouldn’t claim being shot at could possibly have a redeeming factor, but in this case, it striped the sticky fire-retardant foam from our armor in bursts of fluffy ashes.
The business end of the ship was coming up fast. Beyond it was about five-hundred yards of open space and a gigantic pressure door that allowed the ship access to the facility. It was, of course, closed and sealed. I had yet to see a Prule warship that didn’t have an inordinate number of heavy weapons mounted on the bow. It would be ludicrous to think this ship would be an exception to that rule.
I had never heard a story where someone kicked a hornet’s nest like we had and only had one hornet wanting a piece of your ass for it. When we cleared the front of the ship, the Prule were going to stick it to us. Klutch must have been reading my mind because he slowed us down and went prone against the deck behind a shield emitter.
