When they first saw the creature in the left fork of the hall, the Sikka had openly laughed at it. The squad's leader had gone as far as to imitate it, dancing back and forth in a mock replication of the thing's strange behavior. By the time the raiders had finished their meal, they were ready for some more entertainment, and it was obvious this would be suitable for a few minutes of their attention before they could regroup with the other squads heading for the engine and the bridge.
In fact, even from a distance it was utterly comical. Hopping in light bounces between its feet...
Ridiculous.
Their pack generally liked to go find those few that were on their own, and chase them down or challenge them. Generally it was the first option, their blood-lust usually got the better of them, but for the sport of it they often gave their secondary victims a chance. A small chance, mind you, but the game of it always made the kill more satisfying.
Many of them casually whipped out their heavy blades as they argued who could advance first. The weapons were designed for both one handed and two handed use, a weapon with a double sided edge. Powerful weapons for those with multiple limbs to utilize. As the leader swung his in a lazy arc, he stared at the strange ship-beast and considered his options.
The creature was unlike any he had ever seen before. It had no claws, no tentacles or thrashing tail, and not a single primal weapon seemed to be present on it's lightly haired body. In fact, it was actually the most unintimidating ship-beast the pirate had ever seen. Which was saying something, considering he had seen quite a few. To make it seem even less dangerous, though, it simply stood there: bobbing back in forth in some strange defensive mannerism- perhaps too scared to advance.
Pity was not an emotion pirates felt often, but in this case it almost seemed reasonable. Damn thing obviously didn't have any rational clue what fate was waiting for it. The beast was as good as dead.
Pity aside, behind the creature was their next meal, and it was already bleeding and terrified. And it was common knowledge that prey always tasted better when it was terrified, so there was no two ways about it. The ship-beast needed to be removed.
The resounding chortle announced the largest of their raiding pack was stepping forward: W'quexel the Slayer had come to the front.
“This creature must be frozen in terror!” W'quexel chortled to his fellows, letting out a long gurgling laugh. “It barely moves at all! Even it's eyes won't budge!”
As his three digit feet stepped over what remained of the fallen prey, W'quexel drew a sword from his back and began to whip it through the forms. The Slayer towered above the rest of the pack, a trait seen only in the most blood thirsty of their kind. It meant he had killed and eaten his nest-mates upon hatching and grown stronger as the sole recipient of nutrients. It also meant he had the most dominant of the predatory instincts. He was a Sikka that had bested the strongest enemies while working for the Union, and as a pirate he had bested all of the encountered ship beasts so far in single combat.
Uncharacteristic as that may be for a pirate, it wasn't without results: for W'quexel had never even come close to losing. From Tangle-Thrashers to Draglings, he had survived to feast on their flesh. One weak and docile creature such as this would be no match for his skill with a blade.
Roaring, W'quexel threw himself forward with a perfect stroking lunge as saliva trailed behind him. He thought of nothing but his sinking his jaws into that strange new flesh and wondering what flavors it might hold.
...
[Yitale]
Slow and steady panting made the steam rising off of the light rifle's barrel flow in a strange pattern as it dissipated back into the contained atmosphere of the ship. The weapon had come close to overheating from the massive use it had just been through, and along the outside of left casing there was a dark singe from where returning fire had found its way to score a hit.
That had been extremely lucky, considering what that shot would have done to the individual carrying the weapon. Had the shot been angled only slightly higher, things would have been far worse. Still, if the odds were to truly balance themselves, luck's debt had been paid with interest this cycle. At least, as far as the shipmaster was concerned.
Yitale checked the monitors once again with a hissing note of rage and frustration. The display for present signs of life in the other portions of the ship was not a welcome sight. Wherever crew members were displayed, the hostile life forms also seemed to be, and there was nothing to do but watch as the green dots of her crew as they continued to blink out, one by one.
Her ship had not been prepared for this type of assault, and to make things worse: she had it running at half the normal crew numbers for the vessel. Even if everyone had been armed and equiped to repel this sort of assault, which they weren't, the end result would still have been being out-numbered.
Another shudder ran through the ship and the monitor faded to black.
Yitale checked as several other screens also fade. If her guess was right, the boarding party had reached the engine room just then and dispatched the first FTL generator supplying a majority of the power to the bridge.
This theory was confirmed as an addition shutter rocked and killed the second one, thus removing any hope of breaking free. At this point, all that was left running now was the life support and the distress signal.
It was a mess.
Yitale had barely been able to shut the bridge gates before half her crew this side of the ship had died in a brutal and savage massacre. Those who hadn't died and made it to the relative shelter of the bridge, had only survived because she had spent every last round of light ammo on board the bridge trying to fend off the attackers.
... And because she had the good fortune of not having her command station twelve units to the left.
Which was a very lucky break, because if that had been the case, the boarding party would have crashed directly into the middle of the bridge instead of the hall itself, and Yitale would have had no means of survival.
"Survival" was a relative term anyways considering there was heavy plasma drilling occurring outside those doors, Yitale's rifle was empty, and the remainder of the crew had no real weapons left among them.
They were trapped, and there was no way out.
...
It was an odd sight for the man.
Though the warty creature's arm was bulging with the effort of showing it's skill, he could see the blade sweeping and tracked it with ease.
It wasn't that it wasn't of a dangerous speed... no, it wouldn't be pleasant to be hit. The man knew that for a fact. Yet, as the creature rushed with one swing to another, with almost no effort: the man dodged.
It felt... slow.
It was as if the attacker moved in slow motion.
Another cut wisped past, and he ducked, only to run into several punches being thrown by the creature's other limbs. Unable to do much about it, the man braced and let them hit him, keeping his focus on the blade. Much to his surprise, the blows bounced off of his flesh with the effectiveness of a heavy shove and barely a bruise.
Stepping back to duck another swing of the blade, the man felt confused.
Was this it?
He could swear the surprise of the creature in front of him almost threw itself off balance, landing with an angle to rotate and save the momentum of its swing for a thrust from behind it's back. Yet, again, the move- clever as it was, flew by without issue as the man ducked and side stepped.
It wasn't only that this was all too slow: he was simply that much faster.
As the onslaught continued, the dodging and weaving became easier as the movements of his alien foe slowly molded from something unfamiliar into a regular pattern of increasingly desperate attempts. The alien before him was beginning to strain, and the perfect form it had moments ago was no longer as precise, or even aimed at anything in particular. The foaming saliva at it's mouth was gone, and a look of rising panic greeted the human.
It knew, like any creature that killed another to survive, that death was turning to stare it in the face. And no matter how quickly it flashed that sword out to strike, the swings weren't enough.
In contrast to the creature before him, the man wore a smile.
Another spinning back thrust, but this time the man had seen it coming a mile away. Landing on the balls of his feet, the man threw a quick kick as he dodged past the lunge. Though he had not put as much force into it as he thought it probably required, the round house caught the creature's chest with an accurate and fluid motion- and then continued to travel for quite a ways further.
The creature's body shattered.
Almost as though its skeleton was made of glass. Limbs flailed in pain, torn nerves, and ripped tendons, the alient tumbled and tried to writhe away from the human as it crashed into the wall. Astonishment was more visible than fear as reality caught up with what had just occurred. The sword dropped, forgotten, as violent bleeding seeped seeped through it's torso. The once prime fighting form looked as though it was a skin filled with lumpy green meat.
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The infamous and legendary W'quexel the Slayer was barely minutes from death, brought to kneel from a single blow. One sudden hit that had impacted with such speed and strength that it might as well have been from a vehicular impact.
Disbelief, still had not enough time to come to grasps and turn to terror.
Slowly W'quexel turned and tried to gasp for it's companions, trying to issue commands to help while there was still time, but they were just as shocked. Their reactions were too slow to do anything but watch as the ship-beast moved unnaturally fast and took up a blade from the floor where it lay.
W'quexel barely had time to bellow a cry before it's life ended and leaked upon the hall floor.
...
Despite that one's apparent size, the creatures before him were light-weights in comparison to what he had expected. Though they seemed large, their density was almost a joke, and it was as if their bones were hollow. The kick that had ended the fight had been intended to simply knock it down, but instead the thing had burst like a disgusting water-balloon. He'd kicked it once, and it had broken.
As the human glanced down at the green gore on the ground he saw some blue. The warty alien's stomach contents had been emptied upon the floor with the rest of it, and there in the middle of it was a face.
Disgust tore through him, that was the crew members head- the fucking thing had swallowed a head. It had killed a living breathing thinking form of life with intellect, and eaten it. Murder was one thing, but to disrespect the dead in such a way- to kill and eat someone capable of true thought? What sick bastard would take joy in that?
His rage was back in an instant.
Unforgivable.
...
"What in all the..." Zort let out a curse as his personal squad arrived, just in time to see the other pack open fire on the shipbeast. If his eyes weren't deceiving him, the bloody mess behind it was W'quexel. "How in all the void did the thing manage that?"
Better not to find out he supposed.
In unison Zort raised his own weapon and fired upon the creature, letting several more light-round loose to continue the volley as the other pack expelled the last of their ammunition. Around him, several others did the same- yet, to his shock and horror: the beast simply charged them anyways.
Zort's many eyes widened.
Their light-rifle rounds didn't even pierce it's hide. In fact, they didn't even come close.
As it tackled one of his raiders into a wall, Zort let out a gurgle, as he watched a fully grown Sikka splatter into a liquefied mess.
Zort began to step backwards.
Void have mercy: the beast wasn't even close to stopping.
Another Sikka lost its arms, bones and flesh snapping as they were ripped away, and a heavy kick threw them to the ground.
Zort backed up further still.
Who in all the empty black hells had they boarded? This shipbeast wasn't normal!
One by one his raiders were ripped apart by strength which rivaled that of a mechanical exosuit. The beast's lower limbs alone were flashing like shockwaves to break spines and organs in sudden kicks, all while an upper limb whipped a heavy class blade that tore through and ripped aside anything else. Swinging the heavy weapon as if it were nothing.
Such a blade took years to master, and just to swing such weight with accuracy was impressive in its own right, but the beast seemed to dance with it: like it weighed nothing at all. Just to move such a dense and heavy weapon... The creature likely weighed as much as three of them combined. Zort knew it, then. There was no loss of balance, no adjustment to the weight it held: there was a heavy-weight packed into that small form. Muscles and density that could shrug of live rounds and crush bones.
In his fifteen cycles of military and raiding combat, Zort had never seen such strength. Not even from an enraged Rullah in it's death dance would match this. It seemed as if the creature had been genetically engineered for combat.
Zort continued to back away, but his eyes couldn't help but linger as the creature naturally anticipated the few surviving Sikka still trying to bring it down. It had tracked their movements, and with disturbing ease, it was executing counter attacks. Quick and brutal stikes that made the quickest of his raiders seem like spawnlings. Its arms whipped and tossed the weapon it held like a toy between them.
Slowly, and quietly Zort stepped around the corner, taking a forked hall away from the melee, as he ducked back down the hall at a steady pace.
He would let his crew take the glory on this one. Eventually the beast would tire and die, just like all the rest who inhabited the ship, but he certainly would not be the one to make it happen.
That's why a captain had a crew after all.
...
The man stopped when the motion did, the last creature now in two separate pieces on the floor. He winced as he raised a hand and felt the burns on his skin. The scorches covered his chest and back with thin lances of pain, and branded him with dark dashes... but that was all they were.
Burns, but nothing deep.
He slowed his breathing, taking heavy gasps as he surveyed where he stood. Aside from the marks that covered his body, he was also covered in grime and gore. The air smelled of death and foreign things he wasn't familiar with. Chemicals and corrosive stenches...
He turned to look at the surviving crew member, expected fear.
Yet, he found none.
Fumbling with a fallen weapon, his newfound friend looked at him with wide eyes. Pure in color, he stopped short as she began to sing a song that echoed through the halls. One that was, beyond a doubt, of happier tones than the one he'd heard not long before.
Using the weapon as a prop to stand, the crew member struggled to rise, offering a slender hand, and it wasn't long before the human found himself walking through a spaceship with a singing alien on his back.
He'd earned himself a guide, it seemed.
At first he'd had moved them slowly through the halls, checking every corner, but soon they were moving rapidly. The enemy didn't seem interested in springing traps or setting ambushes, they were just blindly-chasing and killing crew whenever they found them. Which was a good thing... well, not good, but beneficial, as it kept the invaders from realizing someone was returning the favor.
His new companion hummed with renewed energy as her tail swept out at each intersection and provided direction to travel. A song called out to surviving crew members, but there were few, and more often than not they ran into the boarding party instead. On three separate occasions the human had to retreat and set his companion down to fight, and on three separate occasions he lived to retrieve her again.
Each time he was a little bit slower, though.
Pain.
It had begun to set in, and his endurance beginning to fade. At this point by a rough count, he had killed around twenty of the creatures attacking the crew, and every time he thought the last of them was dead, another group was around the corner, feasting on whoever had been unlucky enough to have been caught by them. Sometimes they were still alive when it was happening.
Those fights, the man found, were over the quickest.
Of the ones that had survived, few were able to do much but lean against the wall, their features were etched with pain and sorrow. Still,the the one on his back continued to sing, and those capable continued to gather.
Though he was unsure of the exact direction, it was becoming clear to him that they were heading towards what would be the front-end of the ship. Behind the man and his singing companion were five crew members, each armed with a scavenged weapon they had picked from a fallen enemy. These were the only ones who had been left able-bodied enough to walk, and determined enough to fight. Their courage though, had been met only with tragedy. By the man's best guess, it had been an hour since they had found anyone still alive, and even the optimistic alien passenger seemed to be growing quieter. Her song occasionally breaking at the sight of another fallen friend, or what was left of a fallen friend. Though she seemed to be trying to keep it from those behind her, sobs of sadness could reach his ears.
His anger grew.
He knew he shouldn't feel for them. Yet, he felt hatred now. Pure, dark, and sick, hatred.
He could feel it boiling in his skull, behind his eyes. No one should cause this level of pain and suffering.
No one.
...
The plasma was beginning to cut through the center of the door, and Yitale found she was armed with a gun that might as well be a useless brick. Perhaps, she could bludgeon one of the pirates to death with it before they ripped into her and ate her alive. Beneath her cloak, her tail shivered in terror.
On the outside, though, she continued to sing a low hum of bravery. To lead by example was important, even if she knew that she wasn't fooling anyone.
This was the end.
It was going to be brutal, and terrible, and she had no chance of surviving it.
Yet, her spawn were behind her, and she would not let them die before she went down protecting them. As she glanced back at them her song grew. Together, Sonat and Syzah tended the wounded, and draped shreds of scaled cloth over the faces of the dead. Her remaining crew held determined eyes towards her as she continued to sing. They would stay with their shipmaster to the last.
The doors began to keel inwards under strain as the plasma cut through the final remaining barrier between her crew and certain death.
A solid crash echoed through the room. The heavy metal inched forward.
Another...
And then another...
Each time the door moved a little closer, as if it was grasping at straws trying to keep itself from falling; as it if was trying to buy them seconds more to live.
Then, unceremoniously, the doors fell.
Yitale had never been one to wait for fate to come to her, she had lived her life seeking it out, and she had planned to die that way. She'd done horrible things in service to the Union. She'd fought battles, she'd killed, she'd watched life and death flash before her eyes.
So, without waiting, without letting fear hold her in place, the shipmaster rose to meet the enemy, her light-rifle clutched like a club. A cry of battle sprang from her as she rushed forward.
Out of the fog of the plasma breach, an enemy stepped into her view, and she swung with all her might. A solid crack rewarded her effort and she turned to the next figure, spinning with the impact to try for a second hit. Her target seemed to expect this though, because the creature ducked low to respond with a double edged blade. Parrying with a grunt of effort, she caught the weapon with her rifle, and hit the creature in the jaw with it's butt, then the barrel, then the butt again. Taking advantage of it's surprise at such a maneuver, she rammed it's chest with the barrel like a spear.
It screamed in pain, but did not fall.
Snatching at its belt, she stole a blade free of its sheath, sinking the weapon in deep as the aggressor roared in pain, before flopping down to the floor.
Then, another replaced it.
Only, this one was large. Much larger than her, and it's many limbs seemed to tremble in rage as it rose from a hunched over position to spring at her.
With a heavy motion, it swung a much larger blade down at her, and Yitale parried badly.
She wasn't cut, but her whole arm shook from the effort, and her legs almost gave out. As she struck back, it simply tossed her strike aside. Her efforts slow and clumsy, lacking the muscle needed to properly use the weapon she'd liberated.
So it was, the duel continued. Some of her blows landed, but they were small cuts and scrapes. Nothing of great effect- nothing fatal. Her continued efforts simply seemed to anger it, and despite her speed she quickly found herself outmatched and pressed to stay alive.
It wasn't alone either, she knew. As they fought, more and more of the creatures seemed to be filing in, their many limbs clutching similar bladed weapons that cried out for slaughter. Her crew behind her would face them with bare hands and thrashing tails- they would stand no chance. She had to give it to them, somehow she had to find a way for them to win.
With a quick side parry she broke the creatures grasp on it's blade, and stunned it with a thrust to one of it's many eyes. It coiled back in pain and rage, and she abandoned the blade there, throwing herself back towards mangled rifle as another massive swing came for her.
Rolling under another creature's attack she grasped the grip, and with the full effort of her body, came up with a fierce overhead swing of the blunt rifle. Hammering in the blade she'd previously left in her assailant's eye. Green blood covered her as her effort was rewarded.
Dropping the rifle again, she wrenched the creature's sword free of its dead hands, and screamed out a song of hope and defiance.
One which then died, barely after leaving her throat.
Ten more creatures were now in the room, and they all eyed her with a look that meant only one thing.
Hunger.
They circled her with deadly, predatory, grace: cutting down any of the crew in their way- forcing the others back.
Yitale knew.
She understood: this was nothing but a game to them, now.
Something they did, as they played with their food.
From every possible angle attacks would fly, and Yitale would desperately parry. Twice she fell only to roll up in time to avoid certain death. Slowly but surely they wore her down. Her movements began to falter, and the weapon she held with both hands began to dip lower and lower until it was simply dragging on the ground. Then, in an instant she found herself pinned on her back as the largest of the group encircling her held her down with it's many limbs. It effortlessly plucked the blade she had been using from her hands and slowly dragged it along her belly, cutting her thin gray uniform beneath the cape with a razor's edge. It chuckled as another limb reached out and grabbed her tail, and brought it closer to the blade.
Her scream of agony could have been heard in a vacuum of the void as the creature began to skin her alive.