by Will Crudge
Confident Jimma was unaffected by his energy blast, he took stock in the three reeling masses of metal and flesh that floundered about on the deck plate behind him. Screams of pain and all manner of curses abound. The follow on surge of troops behind the first three were now tripping over their fallen brothers - or sisters - He never did commit any bandwidth to identifying their physiological gender traits, after all… No time to waste, after all. It was his chance to free Jimma.
He retracted his right hand into his forearm, and a diamond carbide cutting wheel emerged to replace it. He sliced the restrictive cabling first, and managed to sever the heavy link between her ankles a moment later, but he ran out of time. A commando’s boot kicked him in - what would have been his - stomach, and he was sent sliding across the deck as a result.
That’s when the EMP cable hit him in his side, and the world went dark.
***
Katherine forced herself to snap into the present by sheer will power as she kicked her legs up, and launched herself back into a standing position. She smiled despite herself, but not because she pulled off a skillful maneuver, it was because she found her sword was still in her right hand. She saw Marbles trying to free Jimma with his cutter, and she noticed the enemy’s focus had been taken off of her.
Big mistake, Fuck-heads! She thought to herself as she gripped the sword with her off-hand, and broke out into a dead sprint. She watched her friend get knocked away, and hit with an energized tether cable a moment after. Instinctively, she changed direction in mid-sprint, and proceeded to slice Marble’s attacker in half. The soldier never saw her coming, as he was was cut from the crown of his head, and all the way down through his groin. Metal and flesh made no difference to the fully charged blade made of the nearly indestructible alloy. It was reinforced by a shaped-energy cutting surface, and it would not be denied its carnage.
Katherine didn’t even notice that she had been completely covered in blood spatter. She could have cared less. Her pulse began to quicken… her senses sharpen… and a surge of primordial energy began to manifest from the base of her spine. Some of the other Crimson troops turned towards her, but two of them were busy wrestling Jimma down while trying to reapply new restraints.
The first commando dropped right away, and his or her severed head tumbled across the deck plating, spattering blood as it bounced. Katherine began to side-step in order to prevent the enemies from drawing a clear line of fire on her without hitting one of their own. Her motions forced the commandos to react to her actions which gave her the initiative. She supposed they would have out-danced a normal non-powered-armor-wearing human.
But she was far from normal.
Katherine lurched to her right side, and then followed up with a fluid leap to her left. Her nimble actions enabled her to evade a plasma shot fired from the closest enemy. The enemy wouldn’t live to fire a second shot. She shifted her weight, rotated her hips, and launched her foot into the side of his head. The soldier’s helmet visor cracked on impact, causing him to drop like into a lifeless heap.
But before she could recover from delivering the deadly round-house kick, a stray a fist struck her in the face. She was sent stumbling backward into a crate, as the impact knocked the wind out of her. Thankful she managed to hold onto her sword, she then pushed back the pain, and launched herself forward for a second attack… but she was too late.
But by the time she had committed to the counter-attack, Jimma had killed the soldier who had clocked her… and everyone else too...
Jimma was an imposing sight to behold, Katherine thought. The War Master stood motionless as blood dripped from her sword. It took Katherine a few seconds to realize that Jimma was standing atop a heap of ruined flesh and steel…. Her statuesque visage wasn’t even diminished by the fact that she was completely nude from the waist down…. Bare legs and mysterious lady-bits were on full display.
“Marbles!” Katherine shouted once she snapped back into reality. She rushed over to the motionless drone, and checked him over. She found him lying on his right side, and she strained as she heave him into a cradled position in her arms.
“Will he be alright?” Jimma asked. Katherine noticed her voice seemed to come from further away. After a quick glance, she concluded that Jimma was checking on the fallen Zodiac, known as Grinder.
“He’s fine. His core processors and critical components are EMP shielded. The pulse just shut down his motor functions and sensors. He’ll come around after a maintenance cycle and reboot.” Katherine replied. “How’s Grinder?”
“I’ll be fine, too.” The familiar growly K-9 voice answered. But Katherine wasn’t sure if he was downplaying his condition, or if Zodiacs were really built as tough as she’d been told. In her sixty years of training, she’d met many Zodiacs, but she had never experience one engaging in live combat.
She glanced over and saw the massive animal shake his coat as if to shake water off of his fur. But she then felt a strange feeling down inside her own being… It was as if she could truly feel how the Zodiac did. She wasn’t sure where the sensation came from, but she figured it was the natural process of their collective gene pool merging their sense of awareness. Something she would have to try and get used to again, after thirty years of isolation.
“You didn’t think it would be that easy, did you?” An eerily familiar voice called out. Katherine, and her two companions wheeled around to the direction of the stolen frigate.
Standing there, was Peterson.
There you are, you bastard! She thought as she and Jimma raised their swords in unison. Grinder sent out a blood-curdling howl, and the fur stood straight up on his back…. As if a half-ton wolf-dog needed to look any scarier. “You took her! You took her, and you left me to die!” Katherine shouted.
“Who me? Nah!” The man with Peterson’s face, wore nothing but a set of sub-armor, and stood at the base of the frigate’s main loading ramp. The ramp was attached to the hull with two large hydraulic calendars, and the ramp seemed to be cut straight from the bottom of the ship’s hull. The man called Peterson, stood next to a large mass covered by a standard UAHC issued blanket. Katherine glanced over at Jimma and Grinder, as she noticed they were fixated on the object under the blanket… They both looked like they knew what it was. That must be their Zodiac friend… And it doesn’t appear to be alive.
“You took Trixie!” Katherine spat with tears in her eyes. She brought up her sword, and proceeded to take an aggressive step forward.
“Stop, Katherine!” Jimma shouted, and the War Master’s Candidate complied… but remained in her attack stance. “Look.” Jimma pointed at Peterson’s left hand. He was holding a heavy duty ballistic pistol down at the heap under that blanket. She realized that any false move may jeopardize a Zodiac’s life… If there was still one to be saved.
“You hear that, Trixe?” Peterson laughed sarcastically. “Did I take you?”
“No!” Trixie’s voice boomed out of the external ship speakers. “What are you talking about?”
Trixie! It’s Trixie! Katherine recognized her long-lost friend’s voice as if she’d heard it yesterday. She collapsed to one knee, and let the sword fall haplessly to the deck below. Her lips trembled as streams of tears poured down her checks. She was instantly flooded with a mixture of joy and terror.
“This girl out here, says I took you from her!” He clarified, but with no shortage of assholery in his voice.
“Who? Wha- Katherine?” Trixie’s voice sounded surprised and confused, but with a vague tinge of excitement. Katherine just began sobbing with joy, and she wished Marbles had recovered already. He would be so happy to hear her voice!
“Ha!” A new voice spouted, but it sounded nearly identical to Peterson’s. Then Katherine’s crying ceased in shock. She watched a pair of boots march down the ramp of the frigate, and then out into the open. The man was wearing spec ops armor, but it looked like a freshly coated matte black finish. The helmet retracted, and there before her incredulous eye
s, were two Petersons. “That, young lady, was all me!”
“Kat! You’re alive!” Trixie shouted with a joyous tone. “This dickhead, told me you were dead!”
“Sorry, Trix… I thought she was!” The new Peterson shrugged his shoulders, but his apology seemed like the epitome of dismissiveness.
“I came for you! I came to rescue you!” Katherine said excitedly.
“But – No!” Trixie replied in a mix of grief and frustration. “No, I am someone else now! Save yourself, and go!”
“Here that, sword girl?” The first Peterson, who stood by the blanket covered heap, said. “Go on! You’ve got one chance to leave alive!”
“Why so gracious, brother?” Zedd walked out from the shadows.
“Brother?!” Jimma exclaimed as her jaw dropped open.
“Oh, yes.” Zedd nodded. “Your people thought you were tracking twins, didn’t they? But alas… We’re triplets, young traitor!”
“And we’ve been alive for a very long time, I might add!” The armored wearing Peterson chimed in. “One of your beloved War Masters befriended… and then abandoned our mother. We are the result. She was then abandoned to raise three newborns in the slums!”
Without warning, Jimma sprang into action, and Grinder followed suit. She charged – bare-assed-and-all – at the base of the ramp. All Katherine could do was follow behind with her sword raised.
The armored Peterson fired a pulse blast from his wrist, and Jimma easily slapped it down with her bare hand… Katherine didn’t have time to gawk in awe, so she went straight for the man called Zedd.
His armor must not have any onboard weaponry, Katherine supposed. She knew that if he shared a War Master’s blood that he wouldn’t be able to operate automated defense systems without a neural interface. She soon discovered that she had guessed correctly.
All he could do was drop back into a low stance with his arms balled up in fists. She slashed downward on him, but a repulsive shield snapped into full array from his forearm, and the sword’s strike was deflected back in the direction it came. The sudden movement sent Katherine stumbling backwards for a moment. She quickly regained her footing a second later, and side-stepped out of Zedd’s counter-attack. An attack that failed.
He snapped the shield back into array, and tried slicing at her with its rounded edges. She easily evaded the slashes with a few well-timed sways, and then she countered with a single upward slash at an angle. The tip of her blade grazed the surface of his shield, and the clash of energies between the shield and sword’s cutting edge sent arcs of energy flying.
He quickly shifted his weight backwards, and then lunged forward for another slash, but Kat ducked down and wheeled around to slap his back armor with the flat-side of her sword. The additional force was minimal, but it did add enough to his natural momentum to make him crash forward into a pile of old ship parts.
He cursed in response, but then he regained his footing and stared her down. Katherine realized he must have hit his face on something, and he wiped a bit of blood from his lip. He grimaced, and then snapped his shield out of array. Fully exposed, she figured he was trying to draw her in for another attack, but she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction.
In a subtle movement, she pulled off a trick she’d developed from training in isolation. It was here chance to see if worked as well on an unsuspecting human, as it did the first time she tried it on Marbles… She shifted her sword stance into a more upright posture, and pulled the sword back across her body, and pointed her left shoulder toward her enemy. He would have no idea what would happen in the next few moments.
“C’mon, girl!” Zedd spat. He spread his arms wide as if to invite her to come at him. But it would be her vintage UAHC sidearm that would do the lunging. She betrayed no movement as she locked eyes on him, and then a sudden blast from the pistol slammed into his light armored chest plate. He dropped to one knee and gasped for air. She smiled inwardly, as she knew the pistol was rigged to discharge its entire charge in a single shot.
She was on the offensive now, and followed up with an overhead downward slash to finish him off… But he was ready this time. The shield snapped back into array, and she realized in a flash that she had over-committed in her attack. She was hurled back upward by the repulsive effects of the shield, as her sword was flung away.
The world went black for a second, but a moment later she realized she had impacted the deck, and was sliding backward. She slid into a solid object, but she was too distracted to figure out what it was. She struggled for breath, and her body was wracked with pain.
Before she could steady her breathing and fight back the pain, a shadow appeared above her. An ominous feeling crept up into her awareness, as she realized it was her enemy… The man that tried to rape Jimma.
A heavy boot pressed on her already laboring chest, and she was barely able to breathe. Her strength was sapped. She made a valiant, yet fruitless, effort to wrestle it away with her hands.
“Don’t struggle, little girl!” He said with the slithery tone of a predator. “It will hurt much less if you just take what’s coming to you!” He proceeded to begin unfastening his groin plate, and a crooked smile formed beneath his lifeless eyes.
She couldn’t scream… She couldn’t fight… all she knew was terror. The world began to fade away into darkness before one last sound rang into her ears.
Suddenly her lungs were free, and she gasped a full breath all at once. Her eyes closed to let it all in, and she released it a second later. Several strained breaths followed before she opened her eyes once more. And she let out a scream of terror when all she saw was the evil eyes of her enemy within a centimeter away from her face.
“I’m sorry about that!” Marbles’ voice spoke. Then the face of Zedd was lurched away, and Katherine realized his neck was broken, as his head was dangling from his life-less body. Marbles tossed the remains several meters away, and reached down to pull Katherine to her feet.
“You saved me!” Kat cried, as she fell into the drone’s cold metallic arms.
“It wasn’t me.” He said. She pulled away slightly, and shot him a scowl. “It was her.” He said, as he gestured with his head towards something off to his left. She turned to see a female with short matted hair, wearing mix-matched armor. Her torso plates wear scraped up heavy armored plating, but her limbs were covered in bright red commando armor.
“I’m Gail… Let’s get the fuck out of here!” Gail said with an assertive tone. Just then, the sounds of machinery, and ships thrusters erupted, only to be followed by a painful howl.
Pucker Factor
Location: Crimson Headquarters Facility, Geneva Command Orbital Station, Orbiting Planet Carrion
Date Time: Post Interstellar 010/31/4201 1756HRS Crimson Standard Zulu
System: Carrion System
Lieutenant Commander Segal enjoyed the evening shift. The top brass had gone for the day, and the enlisted personnel were rotating through the chow lines. Only a skeleton crew were on duty, and that suited him just fine. His dark hair was plagued by premature grey streaks, but his youthful face made him look younger than his years. He was a slight man, and his Crimson dress uniform seemed to hang straight down off his shoulders.
Segal casually sipped his coffee, as he circled the large holographic display pedestal that dominated the center of the CIC. He knew the Mwargoth activity was increasing at an alarming rate, but none of their sinister looking ships had been detected within twenty light years of the Carrion System. The display was set to project a three dimensional model of Crimson controlled space… or more accurately, what the Crimson Alliance considered under their control. The thick band that separated the UAHC and Crimson space, was known by many names. It was most often referred to as, the Contested Region. A sort of no-man’s-land that was the width of an entire light year.
The Alliance and their long-time adversaries, the UAHC and Unum, each had their own concept on how the map should be drawn. But the Crimson map depict
ed the Contested Region as more of a few light minutes, versus an entire light year. Either way, he figured, if the UAHC won’t come to aid their human neighbors, then borders that separated humanity would soon be rendered irrelevant. He fancied himself to be a pragmatic man. He was only a staff officer among millions of peers, and all he could do was follow his orders… and pray he would stay away from the action long enough to see his fiftieth birthday.
“Sir!” A voice spoke up. Segal turned to recognize Petty Officer Taj, who was several meters away, and sitting at a scan console.
“What is it, Mr. Taj?” He replied.
“I’m getting massive energy readings… Could be Mwargoth FTL transition!” The almond-colored skinned Petty Officer reported with a nervous tone.
Segal swiftly walked up to the Petty Officer’s workstation, and looked at the scan display. His eyes went wide in an instant. These readings are right on top of us! He realized.
“Melody!” Segal shouted.
The AI calmly replied. “Yes, Commander… I’ve already sent the data-burst to the 4th Fleet comms relay station.”
“We need to call for action stations, now!” Segal shouted while slapping his hand on the workstation table he was leaning over. Petty Officer Taj flinched from the abrupt impact.
“I don’t recommend that, Commander.” She replied confidently. “Pulling up visual now.” As she spoke, the map of stars on the holographic display faded away, and now the image of thousands of dots appeared in their place. Flashes of light were flickering and dying out, only to leave new dots in their place.
Segal rushed over to the display, and gestured his hands to manually zoom the image in. Human Ships! Thousands and thousands of them! They seemed be transitioning out of new FTL mode, a mode that was not too dissimilar to that of the Mwargoth ships, but their vector seemed to indicate they were coming from the inner stars.
