Repel Boarders

by Dean Henegar

For the room design, Slater installed four workstations for the normal kobold crew he would create. After all he had created, he only had three core power remaining and used all three to print up standard kobolds. To equip his kobolds, Slater decided they needed ranged weapons as well as something to fight with during melee. The interior of a ship was a compact place, and he was pretty sure that most fights would end up with his MOBS having to go toe to toe with a foe. He gave all his kobolds laser pistols and a cutlass as a melee weapon. He would have preferred to give the kobolds daggers, but the schematic he had unlocked was too crude to be very effective. Slater bit the bullet and spent the extra salvage on the better cutlass.

  Resources were getting low at this point; Slater was down to 149 salvage and 37 biomass. He wanted to build some traps in his core room but would need to tinker with the placement. For now, he would keep the resources he had as a reserve for emergencies.

  “How exactly did I create a boss pattern, Pixi?” Slater asked, curious about how the process worked.

  “You normally can’t just create a pattern like that, but we forced one out by promoting the kobold taskmaster without a premade template. Normally you have to research boss types in the lab . . . which we won’t have until we hit level 3—” Pixi was cut off by a loud clang echoing throughout the derelict as something nudged their hull. Alarms began to ring out.

  Proximity alert: explorers have docked with the derelict.

  — 9 —

  “I guess that means we’re about to have visitors?” Slater asked.

  “Duh, of course it does. Why didn’t you tell me they were about to get here? Your derelict still needs some fine-tuning,” Pixi shouted.

  “How was I supposed to know there were explorers about to board? It’s not like I have scanners tracking ships out in the system,” Slater grumbled as he moved his focus to the entry hatch.

  “How were you supposed to know? No, don’t tell me . . . You didn’t have the nanobots permeate the entire ship yet?” Pixi moaned.

  “Uh, how would I know I needed to do that? There weren’t any more compartments to grab, so I kind of thought we were done with that task until we got some more material to expand.”

  “Okay, as soon as these dopes are gone, you need to push all the salvage you can into nanobot production until we hit one hundred percent permeation. Once that happens, the nanobots will give us some sensor coverage outside. It won’t be that great since we’re only level 1, but it will give us at least a few minutes’ warning as well as an idea of what type of ship is approaching. Once we have full coverage, they’ll also get started on repairs to our core,” Pixi advised.

  “Fine. Now shut up. They’re coming in the hatch,” Slater said.

  He watched as the boarding hatch above the first chamber began to slowly turn. A dull thunk sounded through the ship as the hatch opened. Slater was unable to see inside; his range of vision was limited to areas his nanobots controlled. He did zoom in on the hatch itself, going all the way to a microscopic level—an ability that still left him feeling a bit woozy when he did it too quickly. The nanobots were doing their thing. Small bits of material were being pulled from the attached vessel as streams of power and information trickled down the chain of nanobots and into his derelict. The system was working as advertised.

  “What’s happening? Who is it?” Pixi asked.

  Slater was becoming annoyed with the interruptions. “Okay, here’s the deal. I’ll bump your permissions so you can watch the explorers, but only if you agree to keep it down unless you have something helpful to add. Once whoever this is leaves, you get slapped back to level 1 permissions, agreed?” Slater offered after reviewing the restrictions and making sure there was no way Pixi could cause any trouble at level 2. Having the parasite observe might help him; the little monster was occasionally useful.

  “Agreed, hurry up and let me look,” Pixi said.

  With a sigh, Slater confirmed level 2 permissions for Pixi.

  “Woah, okay, not bad what you did with the place, but not exactly what I would have recommended. Oh, here they come. Want to bet who it is that’s attached to our ship?” Pixi jabbered, excited at his new sensory input.

  Slater ignored Pixi as a figure dropped from the hatch and into his ship. A feeling of dread came over him as he realized what had arrived. The creature dropping down was a kobold. This kobold wasn’t some primitive holdover that had been kept in stasis on his ship; this one was fully clothed and held some type of rifle in its hands. The kobold looked around the entry chamber, checking to see if the coast was clear, before jabbering up to its fellows.

  “Periapkab, dip karalax dim,” the kobold said.

  “Oh, did you hear that?” Pixi asked.

  “Of course not. I don’t speak . . . whatever it is kobolds speak,” Slater replied.

  “Not again. You didn’t . . . Well, I guess you would have had no way of knowing. Open your settings tab on your interface, look under audio options, then select languages and hit auto-translate,” Pixi informed him.

  Once again, Slater was hampered by his lack of knowledge. It wasn’t as if he was handed a tutorial on this type of thing when he was transformed into a derelict. The only help had been Pixi, and he proved to be a deadly parasite that had expected to consume him long before he would have needed to know the details of his new existence.

  “Sorry to keep bugging you, chief, but there is something I should mention. When a group is boarding the derelict, our ability to print out MOBS is disabled,” Pixi advised.

  “What? Why and how is that possible?” Slater replied in shock. He was kind of counting on printing up more defenders as the ones in the front of the derelict fell.

  “Part of the accords agreed to by the council when the whole agreement with the other races was locked in. It’s hardwired into us, chief. Nothing we can do about it, just something we have to live with and that you need to be aware of,” Pixi replied.

  Slater was about to inquire further when the kobolds began to speak again. “Kipkip, come on. Way clear. Not dangers yet. This be new derelict. Much treasure for find. Even rich core we takes!” the kobold hollered up into the other spacecraft. The nanobots were translating their language, to an extent. Slater couldn’t determine if the kobolds naturally spoke this poorly or if the translation software was struggling to make them coherent.

  Five other kobolds, all attired and armed in a similar manner to the first, dropped down. “Sibkim, you and Krublin watch ship. Don’t abandon explorer team and we bringses you up shiny loot good things,” one of the kobolds shouted up to a pair that had remained in their ship. The six boarders then jostled about until they forced one of their number—the smallest—to take the lead. After being shoved forward by his larger kin, the lead kobold cautiously walked down the hall to the first hatch, tapping the floor in front of him with his rifle. Slater decided the confusing rifle-tapping process was just some poor attempt at discovering potential traps.

  “These are the bad ones I warned you about, boss. I think they want to kill us and take our core. Kobolds are downright dirty, greedy, and devious fiends. They don’t care a lick about the rules the council put forth. Unless somebody is around to catch them, they just do as they please,” Pixi said.

  “I guess you recognize a kindred spirit,” Slater replied to the murderous parasite.

  “Low, boss. Real low. You should think about not hauling around all that bitterness. It will eat you up on the inside,” Pixi said.

  “You would know all about eating things up on the inside since you’re a parasite and all.”

  “That right there is what I mean. You should really think . . . Oh, forget about that. Here they go into the first room,” Pixi said.

  The pair watched the lead kobold beg another to help him turn the heavy hatch wheel. The pair of kobolds got it turning, and with a loud squeal, the way was opened into the next compartment.

  The small kobold was pushed into the room. The others crowded the hatchway, looking into the
room but not venturing inside. The kobold inside made a halfhearted attempt to search the garbage and debris strewn about the room, kicking at boxes and pushing aside garbage with the barrel of its short rifle-like weapon. It had almost reached the hatch on the far side of the room when Slater’s rats attacked.

  Partially hidden in the debris, all four rats charged the lone kobold in the room. The kobold squealed in fear, firing off a round from its weapon and ineffectively hitting the ceiling of the compartment. The weapon turned out to be a laser rifle, this one looking like a much better design than the broken-down pistols his own kobolds used. Unfortunately for the kobolds, their rifles were also hampered by a long firing cooldown; the weapon merely clicked when the kobold tried to fire again at the swarming bilge rats.

  The four rats leaped upon their target, two grabbing onto one of the kobold’s legs while the other pair went for the throat. The kobold wore coveralls with a symbol that Slater assumed represented their vessel. The white coveralls began to turn red as the rats used their long teeth to carve chunks of meat from their victim. The kobold hissed and squealed in pain, shouting for help. His fellows were in no mood to do so. Instead, they all began to fire, and their shooting was not the most accurate Slater had seen; three of the bolts missed the rats completely and hit their own companion instead. The two shots that did reach their targets were powerful enough to finish off the rats, burning holes through them and killing the pair instantly. The remaining pair left the dead kobold behind and charged the kobolds in the hatchway.

  “So, do you think they ‘missed’ their shot on purpose? They must not have liked that little kobold very much,” Pixi said.

  “No, I think they were just bad shots since they obviously wanted to use the little one as a trap detector. Now shut up and let me watch what’s going on,” Slater replied to the annoying parasite.

  The kobold rifles recharged in time to fire another volley, destroying the last pair of bilge rats. He really wanted to get his hands on that schematic. The recharge time wasn’t as bad as his own laser pistols and it didn’t look like the rifles were in danger of randomly melting down. The intruders knew their business and immediately began to loot the rats’ corpses. Slater watched with interest as the kobolds reached toward where the dead bodies had been, the nanobots already breaking them down and transforming them into loot. Two of the rats yielded ragged hides, and two dropped long bilge rat fangs. The kobolds seemed pleased with the junk, items Slater would have gladly thrown in the trash if he was given them.

  The process of transforming MOBS into loot was fascinating to watch. When he had set the loot levels, the nanobots premade the loot and somehow stored the required salvage within the body of the various MOBS. When the MOBS died, the nanobots quickly dissolved the organic matter, leaving behind the predetermined loot. In this manner, Slater was able to recover the biomass and only lose the salvage spent on the loot. Thankfully, the salvage used up in the creation of the loot was even now being replaced one molecule at a time from the kobolds’ own ship.

  “One down, five to go. You know, I didn’t have high hopes that the bilge rats would accomplish anything at all. Maybe wound a kobold at best. I may have underestimated the little guys,” Pixi said as the kobolds began to cautiously poke around the junk-covered compartment in search of anything of value.

  “I think having all that junk in there gave them good cover. We’ll have to see about making some camouflaged positions for them to hide in. The surprise attack plan is a winner for the rats,” Slater said as he and the parasite watched the kobolds give up on finding any treasure and move toward the still-closed hatch leading out of the room.

  “Let’s see how they do against their own kind, boss,” Pixi said as a pair of kobolds began to spin the wheel into Slater’s mess hall compartment.

  The defenders in the mess hall heard the squeaking door and made a dash toward the weapons rack on the side of the room. Two of the kobolds were close, having been seated at the table nearest to the weapons, while the other two, trays in their hands, were walking near the food dispensers. When the door swung open, the invaders wasted no time, dashing into the room and firing away at the derelict-controlled kobolds. The pair holding trays never made it to their weapons, dying in a volley of laser bolts. The other pair grabbed their pistols and returned fire. One had decent aim—or blind luck—and hit an attacker right between the eyes. The other of Slater’s kobolds was not so fortunate, its weapon deciding to melt down instead of fire.

  A second volley from the attackers, aided by the faster weapon recharge time of their rifles, burned down the remaining pair of Slater’s defenders. As the bodies of his kobolds dissolved into loot, the invaders began to poke and prod about the room, looking for other loot and trying in vain to get the food dispensers to work. They had no idea the items were merely props for Slater’s compartment.

  “Not bad. We took out another, but I was hoping to have at least one kobold killed and one wounded since we had four of our own in there. Maybe the weapons rack is a little too restrictive. Ah, here comes the good part,” Pixi said as one of the kobolds looked into the trashcan hiding the pair of bilge rats.

  The rats leaped out. One latched its teeth onto the kobold’s throat, while its comrade satisfied itself with taking out one of the kobold’s eyes. The eye-devouring rat seemed especially pleased with its tidbit, making grunts of pleasure as it chewed, but its happiness came to an end as the remaining kobolds hosed them down with laser fire. Like they had in the previous room, the boarders had no concern for their own kin; at least one of the laser bolts slammed into their wounded comrade, finishing off what the rats had started. Slater’s two dead rats began to dissolve into loot, but at least they had helped take down another kobold. That left only three more intruders he would need to deal with.

  “These guys really don’t care about friendly fire, do they?” Slater asked, shaking the head he didn’t have in disgust at the small reptilians’ poor fire discipline. The usual round of looting—this time, the kobolds were careful to watch for more bilge rats—ensued. The loot dropped by the rats turned out to be another pair of ragged bilge rat hides.

  Eventually, the kobolds got bored with poking around the mess hall after spending an inordinate amount of time trying to get some grub out of the food dispensers. The boarding team bickered among themselves over the pitiful loot before opening the hatch that connected to the trap-filled passageway compartment. They moved cautiously and, to Slater’s disappointment, easily spotted and avoided both pit traps. The kobolds paused outside the bridge compartment, trying to figure out the best way to gain leverage on the wheel while avoiding the pit trap in front of them.

  “Hey, Captain Slater, this is our last room, and while the boss is tough, we need to be ready if the invaders pull off a miracle and get in here. You didn’t have time to prepare any defenses in our core room, but we do have the drones themselves, which can fight as a last resort. Best to get them fired up and where you want them, boss,” Pixi advised.

  Slater ordered four of the drones out from their hidden compartment in the wall, maneuvering them to the ceiling above the hatchway. When the kobolds made it through, the drones might just catch them unawares. His last drone was hidden behind their core itself. Slater was only willing to send it into battle as a last resort; he didn’t want to lose his last drone if at all possible. Losing all the drones was a slow death sentence.

  The door to the bridge began to squeal open. Slater watched as his kobold captain didn’t wait for the enemy to show. He chirped out commands to his “crew” as the defenders hid behind their consoles and took aim at the hatchway. The three remaining invaders crept in, not seeing the lurking MOBS taking aim at them. The boss stood up, firing both his pistols before holstering them and pulling out his pair of cutlasses. The other three defenders also fired and drew melee weapons. This time none of the MOBS’s pistols melted down. Two of the invaders collapsed under the barrage of laser fire. The final kobold invader fired at the
boss, hitting him in the chest. The boss stumbled but survived the blast, moving quickly to close with the invader as its weapon began the recharge cycle. It looked like the enhanced body structure of a boss MOBS was worth the extra core power he used up.

  Slater was getting the distinct impression that kobolds were not known for their bravery. With a hiss of fear, the final invader panicked, turning and fleeing from the compartment. Slater’s MOBS stopped at the door, not pursuing their attacker and following the rules Slater had set forth for their actions. This lack of action caused Pixi to start shouting at Slater.

  “Boss! Have your MOBS pursue. These guys said they would kill your core, so all bets are off. If that one gets back, he could bring more reinforcements from their ship.”

  Slater was just about to order the attack when the remaining kobold did something stupid—stupidity was another trait that seemed common in the kobold race. Thankfully, his kobolds just followed orders and did what they were programmed to do.

  “Not to worry, Pixi. Look.” Slater pointed at the terrified kobold as it—in its desperation to make it back to its ship—completely forgot about the pit traps. The invader triggered the trap right outside the hatch and fell in feet-first, impaling a leg on one of the spikes. The thing was down but not out. The kobold captain slowly walked over to the edge of the pit and looked down at the whimpering kobold. The captain raised his brace of pistols and finished off the last intruder. One of the kobold captain’s pistols melted down in the process. Slater would really have to see about upgraded weapons as soon as possible.

  “We don’t know if they’ll send more. Best get the drones to work while there’s a break in the action,” Pixi wisely suggested.

  Slater sent out a pair of drones to start gathering salvage and biomass from the fallen invaders as the others began the process of printing up replacements for their losses.

  For a tense thirty minutes, they watched the entry hatch, waiting for another wave of kobolds to emerge. Instead of a second wave, the hatch clanged shut and the kobold ship left. When the ship drifted off, Slater felt all his normal derelict functions unlock once more. He took the opportunity to push more salvage into nanobot production, feeling the familiar tingle as the nanobots infused themselves across the derelict. Once the last bit of the exterior hull was added, he hit one hundred percent permeation on his derelict.