by Alex Guerra
A tiny window in my HUD held a layout of the ship. It was marking Seya’s signal in a red sphere approximately fifty yards in diameter—not too large compared to the size of the ship itself. It originated either from the second or third floor from the top. We would need to breach our way into the ship first but couldn't risk doing this right next to the signal from the outside for safety reasons, which meant we needed to enter from a different deck first.
Coming in at a slow speed was beneficial to us. Besides being more maneuverable and stealthier, we were able to slip by the carrier's shields. Normally the shield would react to anything going fast enough to possibly damage the outer hull. Mainly enemy fire or asteroids. Should we try to zip to our destination, the shield would deflect the dropship away, alerting its crew to our presence—at least that's what Dotty explained to me when I was hoping to go faster. Seya was so close now.
I had to keep my wits about me, letting myself sink back into the combat mind; the veteran who didn't rush and was smart about these things. The upgrades would apparently not dull my feelings—which was either a blessing or a curse, depending on how you looked at it.
We were beneath the shield now, and I cautiously double-checked if my suit was on correctly, even though Dotty assured me that it already was. The team buttoned up, and the pilots were ready inside their armored suits. I closed the inner door to the hold, making sure that all items not going with us, were secure within. After completing the inspection to satisfaction, I ordered the air drained out of the room and into the reserve tanks—nothing went to waste. The outer door slid open, the inside of the hold now one with the vacuum, and silence consumed all of us. I signaled for the team to begin the short spacewalk onto the hull of the carrier.
Fighting through the sickening feeling of weightlessness, I gently pushed myself off the ceiling of Dagger's hold and down towards the rest of the team, the first of which nearly reached the surface already. I looked back up towards the dropship, whose door was now closed, disappearing from view. Had someone been viewing the maneuver from the outside, it would appear as if our team just teleported in from nowhere, suddenly.
Dotty controlled the thruster nozzles on my pack, shooting quick bursts of propellant to slow my descent. When my boots touched the hull, the outsoles stuck to the surface with their magnetic lining. It reminded me of trying to walk through mud without losing your boots as I took my first few steps. The armored suits landed easily enough, which also made me realize that the size of the breach would have to be large enough for them to squeeze through.
Del had already unslung his pack, taking out a breaching kit for such a task. Rather than detonating an explosive to get in—causing a lot of damage—the kit consisted of a centerpiece which acted as a pivot point for a heavy wire with a laser cutter on the far end. The laser cutter was set to the appropriate radius and spun in a clockwise motion around its center. If the kit was the face of a watch, the laser was on full blast for the entire rotation, minus the entire five and six o'clock range from my perspective, in which the laser was shutting off and continuing again, once it reached the seven o'clock position.
We were making a hinge to flap open, much like taking the lid off a can. This also meant that if I didn’t move my ass to the side, the internal pressure would pop the "lid" open and squash me. I stepped to the side—in an effort to not be a casualty—as the laser kept working. Air from inside started to escape after a few rotations, when the leak suddenly burst, instantly bending the weakened flap outwards, its edge glowing red-hot. I could see that the hull was thick, but there was a lot of other electronics and a lining inside the wall of the hull as well.
The two armor suits made their way inside first, with the rest of the team following right behind them. My boots detached from the hull and the thrusters positioned me over the opening of the hole, slowly pushing me down into the corridor. The weightlessness wore off almost as soon as my waist passed by the opening—gravity suddenly increasing with speed and pulling me down the rest of the way with force. I landed a little harder than I hoped but quickly moved to the side for the next trooper behind me to enter.
I unslung my rifle from my back and pressed up against the wall, scanning down the ends of the corridor. The emergency airlocks had sectioned off the area we broke into automatically, but I trusted that the team knew what they were doing.
Del came down last, bringing along a wire with him attached to a small winch. He secured the winch onto the deck and activated it, reeling in the wire as he prepared the next phase.
The explosives expert brought the lid slowly back into its original position from the inside, while taking out what I could only describe as a large caulking gun. He painted an exorbitant amount of a foaming substance along the melted circumference, approximating the edges and forming an air-tight seal. Del stuck a pen-sized device into the foam as it quickly hardened.
"Done," he said over the comms. It was the first thing any of us said in the past few minutes since leaving the dropship.
Nadu, in his armor suit, unsheathed his sword and cut into the emergency door, allowing the air to slowly enter the passageway. Once the hissing stopped, Nadu tore open the rest of the door with the power of the armored suit.
"Dotty, do you see the nearest point you can upload to? I'd rather not keep cutting into every door we run into," I asked.
"Placing a marker now," it responded.
It wasn't too far away, and we took off with Nadu in the lead, the rest of the team in the middle, and Habi bringing up the rear. The two were effectively covering us should anyone catch us in the middle of the hallway. I checked the HUD to see where Seya's signal was coming from—eighty yards above us to the closest edge of the sphere; granted, that was also in a straight line.
We found some marked consoles. I grabbed a wire from my gauntlet and fed it into the machine, the A.I. starting its task of uploading their countermeasures into the system.
A shot buzzed just overhead, causing me to throw myself to the floor. Habi was shooting down the hallway where the round originated from, but I couldn't see any enemies from my current position. She laid down the shield, turning it into a makeshift cover for the rest of the team, who piled in behind it. I sat with my back against the console, my left arm raised in the air to prevent knocking the damned short cable loose. Nadu inched back, bringing his shield down like Habi and shielded me for the moment from the other direction.
Habi continued laying down suppressing fire, the team joining in, snapping rounds down the hallway. The shots that came back our way embedded themselves along the corridor. The progress percentage continued to climb and reached one hundred percent after an excruciating minute.
"We're in…time to move," I said over comms. "Dotty, map the fastest route to the area.
A highlighted route displayed over the current schematic of the ship. Habi shot a smoke grenade down the hall at our attackers, the plume of smoke billowed around the intersection at the end. The team continued down the highlighted path under fire. Our presence aboard the ship was now known, as evident by all the closed doors and the shipboard alarms blaring, but we expected this much going in.
The doors slid open as we approached, much to the dismay of the many imperial soldiers who were accompanying knee-high boxy robots. The machines skittered around on stunted legs, able to crawl on the walls and ceiling as well. The walls of flesh and machine impeded us at every turn. Nadu plowed through each barrier, destroying metal, shattering bones, and smearing blood, leaving those of us close behind to finish off the unfortunate few surviving the initial attack.
Admittedly, I was a bit shocked at the ruthlessness of the team as they continued on, their finishing blows an afterthought in their eyes, as they pressed towards the objective. The enemy would do the same to our team given the chance. Both sides would fight until the end, that much was clear.
We came to a stairwell we needed to enter, the armored suits, however, would not be able to fit. They went a little further dow
n to where some elevator pads were to meet us on the next floor. I ascended the stairs quickly with the rest of the troopers—the longer we took, the more enemies would come at us.
On the new floor, we scanned frantically back and forth, looking for new threats. We were getting close to our target area, but there was no way I would know what I was looking for until we found it. The team continued towards the red sphere on our maps, but it wasn't long until we met the enemy once again.
"Incoming!" shouted Kayton, the team instinctively seeking cover.
I got a better look at the boxed sentries crawling around all sides of the corridors. Each had two barrels sticking out of their frame, alternating laser fire at us between the two—reminding me of old anti-aircraft turrets—filling the entire corridor with bullets. They fell and littered the floor in seconds from our unrelenting fire but more quickly replaced them. The new ones crawled over their dead companions, firing back on us with impunity.
Garvo laid down suppressing fire, which kept the softer imperial soldiers at bay. If any of them decided to brave the hail of bullets, they risked getting gun downed almost immediately by Bon, who kept switching between the two sets of targets.
I continued to glance over at the map, seeing that we were just inside the marked area now. When I wasn't shooting at the enemy, I was checking my surroundings to see if there were any discernible markings of a medical suite. What signs I did find, translated into something akin to a room number and little else. The numbers didn't correlate to anything that was in the schematics. This must have been part of the variations Dotty had spoken of.
Dotty, why is the marked area still so big? Shouldn't you be able to pinpoint Seya's location yet?
Normally, I can locate signals within a two-yard deviation on a moving target from miles away. Unfortunately, the signal is getting scrambled by either the other electronics aboard this ship or perhaps, there is a barrier in place.
Are there cameras you can access through the system that will allow you to scout faster? I popped a few more rounds into one of the incoming sentries.
There aren’t nearly as many cameras located inside the vessel itself, most of which, are located along the outer hull. I am sorry, Arthur, but I am unable to fulfill your request.
We continued dispatching the waves of metal screaming at us with ease, with nearly all my shots finding their mark the first time around. The narrow corridors made this as easy as target practice, so long as we kept the pressure up. However, the enemy kept coming, moving closer and closer as teammates had to stop firing to reload briefly. They would eventually overrun us at this pace.
I cursed as I nearly got my head blown off the next time I peeked out. "We can't stay here any longer!" I shouted.
The familiar sounds of rotary guns came from down the hallway, as Nadu and Habi made their way towards us from the opposite end, allowing us to perform a pincer attack on the enemy. The armored suits slid over our position, pushing aside the metal bodies of broken sentries. As they got closer, there were areas where alien blood splashed over their forest green suits.
We had to take advantage of the lull in fighting.
"Quickly, half of you go with Nadu down that hallway,” I said, pointing to a nearby corridor. “The other half go with Habi down this one here. We need to split up to search the area faster." The team didn't have any objections.
While horror films taught me that splitting up usually spells trouble for those trying to survive, it would be the opposite for the monsters—that's what it felt like we were in this moment. Monsters.
I went with Habi's group, starting to search and clear each nearby room. We were probably in a science area because I kept running into rooms which housed either laboratories or storage rooms for chemicals and large tanks. Everything had a sterile look to it, clean and cold. While I originally thought the carrier’s primarily use was for transporting smaller vessels and housing plenty of fighters, there was clearly more to these ships. The Darkkon could even perform experiments, should it be necessary.
A carrier, along with the two frigates outside escorting it, would essentially work out as a mobile forward operating base. It was possible that they could stay in one place for months at a time before needing a resupply as well. The ship was massive, I didn't put it beyond the realm of doubt.
It was evident that the they evacuated the area. Other than soldiers or the sentries, there were no other personnel around. It was only a matter of time before another wave would come.
We continued down another hallway, entering a new room. There was something different about this room than the others. A container was broken on the floor, leaving a mess. Did someone drop that during the evacuation? I wondered. We cased the room slowly. I looked to Bon and pointed at the tables, motioning for him to check them.
I didn’t expect to find anyone among the open areas of the lab. I did, however, spy a peculiar spot available in the back corner of the room. I slowly approached the table, rounded the corner and stuck the barrel of my rifle in the long face of an orange and yellow alien.
“Don’t! Please!” he cried, putting his hands up.
I grabbed the alien by the front of his uniform yanking him out from underneath the table. The alien was so light, that I was able to toss him onto his back and onto the table with one arm. Bon quickly rushed over and held the alien down at gunpoint.
“Please, I don’t have anything you want, I’m just a scientist. I-I’m no threat!” he protested.
“A scientist is just what we might be looking for,” I said. “Where are the conglomerate prisoners!”
A confused expression dressed his face. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.
“Stop messing with us!” I slammed a fist on the table next to him. “We know you must have saw a bunch of Codari come in with an injured Darkkon woman around here recently,” I growled, putting the rifle barrel into his cheek.
“Wait—wait! Okay…I-I think I remember seeing a Codari recently, but there are a lot of Darkkon aboard this ship,” he struggled to say.
“How do you not remember seeing a Codari? You get a lot of Codari on this ship?” I criticized, pressing the rifle’s barrel harder into his cheek.
“N-No, I’m sorry! Look, I’m not a threat, please don't point your weapons at me. I’ll help you out, just please stop pointing those at me,” he said, pointing a long finger at our weapons.
“We’re in a rush. Where did you see them last?” I pressed.
“Uh, it was...just down the hall. They looked as if they were heading to the recovery unit near here,” said the scientist.
“Show me,” I said, bringing him up and pushing him towards the door.
“It’s just right down the hall, please, you don’t need me. It’s easy to find,” the alien pleaded.
“Amuse me,” I said, gesturing out the door with the rifle. “And try not to get killed by your own guys, they may mistake you for one of us.”
He gave me a hard look and glanced at Bon, who had lowered his weapon only an inch or two. It wasn’t fair, I knew that, but he had no choice in the matter right now. He should have left as quickly as the others if he didn’t want to be in this current predicament. We followed closely behind the scientist, with Habi and Ellar looking at him briefly.
“If he runs, shoot him,” I said.
“You got it,” acknowledged Bon.
“Kayton, we found a scientist here, and we think we have a lead on where the prisoners are. Keep searching on your end; I will give you an update as soon as I have one,” I transmitted to the commander.
“Will do” she answered.
The colorful scientist continued on cautiously, always being careful when approaching corners and looking first.
At least he had some survival skills, I thought.
Before continuing, he would peer over his shoulder at us, beckoning us to follow. He led us through two more hallways from where we found him. We arrived at a room marked with a few symbols Dotty
couldn’t translate for me. It was most likely not a word, but more of an icon. Before the icon were the numbers “1-7”.
“This the spot?” I asked in a low voice.
“Yes, but I’m not sure if we’ll find anything,” said the scientist.
“Let’s find out.” Dotty opened the door and I nudged the scientist through with my rifle in his back. The lights came on, suddenly. Motion detection? I wondered. The scientist continued into the room looking around, cautiously. Bon entered right behind me, while Ellar stayed at the door and Habi watched the hallway.
“Here!” said the scientist, moving over to a console on the wall. He frantically tapped commands in, as the panels along the walls slid away with a hydraulic sigh.
Hidden behind the panels, sat rows of tubes that stretched up to ten feet in height. The tubes slowly retracted from their upright positions on the wall-mounts and into a supine position towards the center of the room. The glass had a fog of condensation obstructing our views. The movement made droplets of water cascade towards the foot of the tube in long, erratic jerks across the cylindrical surface. Once the tube came to a completely horizontal resting position, it locked into place, shaking off the weakest droplets of water onto the ground. The perforated floor redirected the splash of water towards drainage ruts and carried it away towards the wall.
“Stand back,” I instructed, walking over to the nearest tube, and slid a hand over the surface, wiping away the layer of water.
Suspended within the tube was a body—one of the Codari.
“Ellar, get in here,” I said to the medic standing at the doorway. “Kayton, we’ve got something. Start heading to our position.”
“Is it them? We’re on our way,” she answered.
“That’s—Ornay,” said Ellar, upon seeing the Codari.
