Kalaya leaned over and watched with approval. “I’ve got Elleen sitting up on the bridge loading those for me. That’s important since you don’t seem to grasp the concept of ammo conservation.”
“She loaded all these?” That must have taken forever!
“She asked what she could do to help so I showed her. She’s fast and accurate at it, too. By the time this little guy gets back, she will have another belt ready to go if you need it. That girl is strange, but she may be more of a friend than you realized.” I made a mental note to thank her profusely; if I lived.
Finished, Kodo leaned down and kissed Kalaya on her holographic cheek, and unlimbering his rifle, took off down the corridor ahead.
My friend gently touched the side of her face with her hand and smiled warmly. “Well, we had better get moving as well. We don’t have as far to go, but time is still of the essence. The fleet won’t stay flummoxed forever.”
“Right! Lead on, oh Great Queen of all Hamsterdom!” I followed her down the passageway. Kodo was already long gone, but it probably made no difference as Kalaya veered up a stairway that cut off to the left. I hoped she was taking the back way so we stayed out of sight of any more marines.
We went up four levels and back down two to avoid marine patrols, finally reaching Level 10.
There she stopped me. “We have to be quiet now, Laree. I’ll give you instructions through your helmet, but you shouldn’t talk unless absolutely necessary. There are a lot more of them up here than I planned for, and the Betas have only just arrived to help clear out this level.”
I nodded to show I understood and pulled my pistols out of their holsters. I followed her for a few hundred steps, keeping low and quiet. I mentally adjusted the pickup that funneled sound into my helmet and was startled to hear strange noises filtering down some the cross-corridors we passed. They sounded familiar somehow, but I couldn’t place them. We slowed even more as Kalaya’s body language screamed caution.
“Dammit, they turned around!” Kalaya growled through my headset. “We need to hide you! Now!”
We were in a long empty passageway with nowhere to hide! “Where?” I gasped softly looking around.
“Sit here in a ball with your back to the wall,” she commanded, pointing at the floor, which I did as if my life depended on it. Instantly, she projected a crate around me and just in time! The two armored marines rounding the corner up ahead saw only a young blonde woman standing next to an innocuous looking box. Thankfully, she made the crate so that I could see them but they couldn’t see me.
“Freeze!” they shouted as both of them instantly leveled their rifles at her chest. Nestled within the confines of my imaginary shelter, I nervously fingered my drawn firearms as I considered the chances of taking them both out.
“Not yet, Laree, don’t panic. Remember, they can’t hurt me,” I heard Kalaya whisper in my earphone.
“Let’s see your hands!” they demanded advancing toward Kalaya cautiously. Just then, four more marines came up behind our original two, weapons drawn as well.
Crap, I might have had a chance with only two, but six? Kalaya smiled and held up her hands in mock surrender. “Good afternoon, gentlemen,” she said in her most seductive voice. She must have known that the other four were right behind. It would be interesting to see how she got us out of this one.
“Shut up!” one of the two in the forefront shouted while one of the new guys in the back broke out a hand radio and began urgently speaking “Command! Command, come in! We have taken a prisoner. The individual matches the description of the ship’s captain. Requesting orders to proceed!” He waited a few moments and then tapped the handset against the wall roughly. “Dammit, there’s still nothing coming through on these nerfing radios!” he blustered and finally stowed the radio away, looking at another marine for guidance. “Radio’s still out, what do you want to do, Sarge?”
Just then, there was a loud crash from the passageway behind them and several of the marines looked over their shoulders nervously.
“Murphy, Garza, check that out,” Sarge ordered briskly.
“Yes, Sergeant,” they confirmed and, with a dip of their heads, backed away down the hall and out of sight.
“Where are the rest of you hiding?” the sergeant demanded, taking another step closer to Kalaya, his gun still trained on her.
She grinned disarmingly. “I’m sure I have no idea what you are talking about, Sergeant. I just stepped out for a breath of fresh air and was accosted by your men here.”
“You know exactly what I mean! Where are the rest of the alien scum?”
“Well, if it’s scum you’re after, I can certainly help you out. Our pool hasn’t been cleaned properly in something like, oh, I don’t know, 987 years. I’ll have to remind myself to speak harshly to Raoul, our pool boy about that.”
She smiled again, taking note of his confused stare, then her face changed and took on a more predatory look. “All musings aside, Sergeant, you should be more concerned about where your men are than mine.” A series of loud noises followed by wild bursts of weapons fire and hysterical screaming filled the air from the hall behind them. A few seconds later, there was dead silence and the marines looked at each other nervously, with a couple of them now covering the hallway with their rifles.
With a muttered curse, the sergeant backed away from Kalaya and glanced at his men. “Bajwa, you’re with me; Perkins, Morton, stay here and guard the prisoner. Command wants the aliens captured alive, if possible; but if she tries to run, shoot her. When I come back, if she isn’t standing in that exact same spot, I will take it out of both your hides! Am I clear?”
“Yes, Sergeant!”
They departed cautiously, leaving only the two remaining. I was starting to wonder just how long she planned to keep up this charade when I noticed a flashing readout on my HUD. The ambient temperature in the passageway had gone up considerably. It was now 95 degrees outside my imaginary box. Thankfully, my suit was self-regulating so I stayed cool and comfortable, but from the way the soldiers were fidgeting, I would have to say their armor didn’t have the same feature. Large droplets of sweat formed on their foreheads and began to steam up their face shields, even Kalaya seemed to react to the heat.
“Whew! You boys must have damaged the climate controls in this area; it’s getting a bit warm in here, don’t you think? You wouldn’t object if I took off my jacket would you?” Both of them licked their lips and shook their heads as if fascinated by the concept. As I expected, she stretched and pulled languidly on her jacket as if she was the main attraction at a high-end strip club. She finally removed it with a flourish revealing a sultry black lace bra that highlighted her perfectly chiseled body and all that glistening sweat. Even I had to admit it was impressive as hell!
“Much better…thank you,” she murmured in appreciation as she fanned herself slowly, tossing the jacket aside.
“Ah, no problem at all, ma’am,” they chorused.
Distracted as they were, I decided it was time for me to pop out and put an end to this travesty. I gathered myself up and then spared a glance at the marines to select my target. But something was wrong. Both of them were standing perfectly still, their eyes as big as saucers and staring straight ahead, not moving a muscle. Ok, ok, I know Kalaya’s chest is magnificent and all that, but really! Grown men shouldn’t have that kind of reaction.
Disgusted, I looked up at Kalaya to see if she was doing something else inappropriate to cause this…and to my surprise, she had vanished! What the…? That was when I heard the smallest semblance of a low, throaty rumble from behind me of all places. Apprehensively, I turned my head and then slowly I raised my eyes until I was looking up into the toothy muzzle of a nightmare that I had hoped never to see again! My biggest fear! The wolves of Fleece were on the ship!
One of them uttered a short, clipped bark, which served to jolt the marines out of their funk. With a pair of screams like I hadn’t heard since girl’s day at the park in fifth
grade, they panicked and ran back down the passageway. A couple of wolves streaked after them, their long nails clattering on the polished decking before finally gaining traction. Once out of sight, I don’t think Perkins and Morton made it very far judging from the growling and screaming. That was drowned out by crunching noises that sickened my stomach so much that I directed my helm to let me hear it no more.
“Stay calm, Laree,” Kalaya’s voice intoned confidently. “Stand up slowly.”
“Ca…calm, you say?” I sputtered under my breath as I shakily willed my legs up under me and slid my shoulders up the wall. Rising slowly to my full height, I noticed the box had disappeared and I visible to the world. Edging my head sideways at a pace that would have pissed off a snail, I looked to my right.
Four reddish eyes peered back into my faceplate from a mere foot away. Four eyes, huge slavering jaws of death, massive paws, practically impenetrable hide. Yep, it had the full package, and two of its friends stood beside it! If it wasn’t for the suit, their hot breath would be all over me. I was gonna die and it wouldn’t be pleasant!
I shut my eyes hard and waited for the inevitable.
However, the pain I expected never came. In fact, nothing happened for what seemed the longest time, until I sensed something large and wet on my face shield. I opened my eyes in bewilderment to see one of the monsters licking my helmet. Its wide, slimy blue tongue trailed sloppily across my faceplate like some obscene squid tendril. Squeezing myself up harder against the wall, I managed to gain a little space, but then another joined it and began nuzzling me from the other side.
Strangely, neither of them attacked me. They just looked at me with their heads tilted slightly as if trying to figure out exactly what I was.
“Say hello to Beta Squad,” Kalaya chuckled from the other side of the passageway, where she had recovered her jacket and now leaned jauntily against the wall.
“This is Beta Squad? How is that possible? The last time, they tried to eat me for lunch. Why aren’t they trying to eat me?” I carefully holstered my pistols; pretty sure they wouldn’t have done anything to these guys anyway. One of the wolves started to get more physical in all the wrong ways. He started digging his snout into my armor and inhaling deeply with long bellows-like breaths, starting with my armpits. He finally shoved his head between my legs and nuzzled me contentedly.
“Kalaya!” I said in a strained voice. But my best friend just stood there laughing at my expense. The next thing I knew the wolf practically lifted me up by my thighs and threw me on his back in his ardor to find something! What, I wasn’t sure. “Kalaya!” This time, I used a bit more force in my voice.
Still chuckling, she finally did something about it. “Sit, boys!” My friend commanded and punctuated the order by making a strange clicky-clicky noise. To my amazement, all three of them sat down on their haunches and wagged their tails like the friendly puppies they weren’t. A distant part of my mind even registered that they were kind of cute – when they weren’t trying to rip off my legs! “They aren’t really fond of human flesh…too salty. Most of their aggression is about us being in their territory and not being pack.”
I dusted myself off and was grateful that the suit had processes for handling accidents. I squinted over at Kalaya and growled, “Care to explain why I was nearly groped to death by your new pets?”
“Sorry, Laree, but that was the funniest thing I’ve seen in like a thousand years! It turned out way better than I could have hoped,” she cackled hysterically.
“What? You planned this?”
“Well, you didn’t actually believe that stuff I sprayed on you was bug repellent, did you?”
“Grrrr…so what the hell was it?”
“I wasn’t completely finished with their training, so I imprinted a chemical marker on you so they would recognize you as friendly. As it turns out, this is a special time of year for the pack’s females and their pheromone production, and well…as you can see, my sweet boys like you a lot!”
“So you caused me to smell like a bitch in heat, and then my dearest bestie pimped me out to a pack of wolves? Is that what I’m hearing?” I practically screamed incredulously.
“Well, when you put it that way…”
I was so going to kill her! Then another horrifying thought entered my head. “So does that mean that Elleen…”
“Don’t even go there!” Kalaya giggled, as we both convulsed with relieved laughter for a few minutes.
“I am so telling Kodo that you killed two guys with your boobs!”
She smiled evilly. “If you do, a bit of pheromone spray will be the least of your problems.” She turned saucily and began to saunter down the passageway, calling over her shoulder. “Kodo is the only man who gets to see my pom-poms and live to tell about it.” Snickering, I continued after her.
Chapter 25
Kodo
I sped off from the girls at a dead run. I needed to get all the way to the back area of Engineering and I needed time to set up. At least, that what was what I kept telling myself. Deep down, I knew I was running for much different reasons. While I loved them both, I needed to be as far away from them as possible. The destroyer of my youth that I had kept bottled up inside was tearing at his cage, and I knew the only way to protect the ones I cherished was to let him out of his bottle.
Shaking my head to clear those thoughts, I took a deep breath and immersed my mind in the training hardcoded within. The clearest threat was the MURGs; I had counted thirty of them outside the ship and, thus far, we had encountered only two. That they were using the regular marines as cannon fodder was unquestioned. They hadn’t even made a half-hearted feign at the bridge, and an old axiom came to mind, “he who controls Engineering controls the ship.” They would be waiting for me there; time was running out and I needed a plan.
I sprinted until I ran across the first bodies. Pieces of space marines were strewn across the Aurora’s passageways like discarded toys. Scorched spots on the walls and ceilings testified to a brief, futile resistance by the human fighters, but Fleece’s home guard was ruthlessly efficient. I had asked Kalaya how she managed to lure them onto the ship when they seemed so afraid of it earlier. Apparently, she had been impressed with the intelligence they displayed and started working with them out of curiosity right after our incident in the wyvern hanger. At the time, she had no idea they would become part of our defense force. Occasionally, my helmet picked up the high-pitched training whistles in the 100 kHz range that she used to move them around the ship. Gunfire and screams would usually follow shortly after.
My four-footed friends weren’t getting them all, however. The sensors in my suit were very, very good and I was able to use them to my advantage to take out two more marine checkpoints along the way. I could have avoided them, but I knew the MURG suits probably had similar abilities and I wanted them to see the friendly icons in their displays wink out one by one.
Twenty minutes later, I was cautiously eyeing the decorative glass doors that marked the entrance to the outer suite of the Aurora’s Main Engineering. I knew there would be offices down both sides of a curving, three-story passageway wrapped around a central ramp that descended down through the floors of this level and into the heart of engineering country. The offices had been built for the eventuality of Aurora becoming a functional spacedock. Her enormous engines would have been converted to quantum reaction mass breeder factories to supply fuel for ships. I shook my head; I guessed that wasn’t happening anytime soon. The heavily armored entrance to the important technical and control areas lay well beyond the bottom of the ramp area and straight ahead. When it looked like we might have to fight instead of run, Kalaya’s drones spared no expense in time or materials to assure that no one but me was getting through. Of course, that was before we knew about the stolen Mexxak tech.
For a moment, I thought that shaking my head had loosened a circuit in the suit, as I noted with a sinking feeling that my HUD was filling up with static. The MURGs had depl
oyed a highly effective jamming system in the area! Not only couldn’t I see where the enemy was, but I also wouldn't be able to communicate with Kalaya until I found it and eliminated it or perhaps got into more shielded areas of Engineering.
I pushed through the decorative salon doors and let my gaze fall on the ramp, which was my destination; it was a trap of course. The jamming signal as much as heralded it. But Laree should be almost at her appointed station, the fleet would be recovering soon from Kalaya’s tricks, and the exterior drones were severely depleted. I had no choice; the Aurora had to fly! Loosening my knives and popping a fresh magazine into my rifle, I headed down the ramp at a run.
The place lit up impressively; I immediately began taking fire from three sides. Dodging as best as I could, I returned fire. A few MURGs who seemed to be confident enough to stand up from behind concealment and blaze away at me found out the hard way that my jammed helmet display wasn’t my preferred targeting method. Nanites aligned in my pupils to give me a firing solution even faster than the faceplate. The slow-moving heavy slugs from my rifle ripped through their Mexxak armor. In pilfering the design, they hadn’t taken into account that the Mexxak have extraordinarily thick skin. It’s actually quite a matter of racial pride for them. They have no particular care about kinetic damage, so their battlesuits reflected that as well. Great suits against energy beams, rays, and plasma, but they won’t stop a thrown brick. If I hadn’t already been hit several times, I might have found the expression on their faces as they fell to be amusing.
Their armor was also ineffective against a decent knife blade with some muscle behind it, although it would stop the little darts that Kalaya’s drones spat out incessantly. I made it past the halfway point before I took my first rocket hit. It smashed me in the left shoulder and I felt several plates from the suit bulge out to react to the impact and send the warhead careening away from me. Unfortunately, it didn’t work as well on particle beam weaponry. With nowhere to hide, I had to rely on speed. At least, until I felt a deep burning sensation in the back of my left knee.
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