John noticed the moment they dropped out of whatever faster than light travel the ship employed. Unless he was in the stash there was always a glitch in his peripheral vision as the unreality and whatever the hell the things that existed outside the boundary of the universe were inflicted themselves on his consciousness. The sudden relief as that itch vanished caused him to glance around from where he and the team had formed up in anticipation of their mission.
“John?” asked Vic, noticing his sudden shift as his helmet moved to pan around like a kid staring at bubbles blowing through the air.
“I’ve got a link back to Earth,” said Prime. “Initial message is going through. The larger update is going to take over an hour to transmit.”
“We’re back in real space. The… things outside are gone. I can see the other ship. Bob, can you pull from my implant?” John muttered. The other ship was almost identical to the Kipragtsek. A few hundred miles long with a bulbous shape as various holds and bits of machinery jutted out of the main structure.
A timer appeared in all their vision.
Deployment timer:
4 time units.
“John, find us a good place to drop in, quickly! We need somewhere we can store Doris as well!” said Prime in a rush.
“I’m looking, dammit!” John grumbled as he searched the other ship floating a thousand kilometres off the flank of the Kipragtsek. As he looked he could see the damage across large sections of the interior of the Hagrutship. Someone or something had been blasting chunks out of the bloody thing.
He found a room similar to their own and far enough away from the ongoing violence that burned in his vision. It was as close as he could manage to get to the vast engines of the voidliner.
“Ok. Got somewhere. Brace yourselves!” He blipped himself across first then quickly brought the rest of the team across. Boarding ships in space shouldn’t be this easy. As soon as Doris appeared he felt something hideous and he glanced back to the Kipragtsek just as it twisted reality and vanished.
“We’re on our own now,” he said grimly. Doris knelt down on her haunches and the backpack detached, falling softly to the ground with a clang that shook the air. Or would have done had there been any air.
“We’re in death pressure!” said Flash as he rushed around the room examining the doorways that they associated with the brainwashed Shrell popping through to play a game of cards and fish for whiskey.
Prime scurried over to an interface that he would have been instantly rebuked for even looking at on the Kipragtsek and began connecting to it, wires and waldo arms extending to mate with the alien connections like they’d been made for it. They probably had been, Bob had not been wasting his time aboard the Kipragtsek.
“What’s going on in the rest of the ship?” asked Felix in his much lighter armour. He brushed a hand against his thigh and glanced around nervously. Felicity reached out and rested a hand on his shoulder and his anxious body language vanished, returning to the unshakably confident Prophet he usually seemed to be.
“Various species are fighting against the Shrell. They suck by the way. The Shrell aren’t fighters but they’re still driving them back. Bunch of ape-like things, bunch of cuttlefish looking bastards, bunch of- urgh those things are gross! It’s like a real life monster mash,” muttered John.
“So who do we deal with first?” asked Evie, eager to get to the fighting.
“We need to prioritise defending the bridge and the engines. If they go we’re all dead,” said a B-3000 that had joined the group to replace Prime who was busy hacking into the ship's systems while other spider drones were stripping samples of metal and machinery from other parts of the room.
“I can’t port us in. Both areas are covered by some kind of field,” John grumbled. “We’ll have to do this the hard way.”
“There’s no such thing as an easy way,” said Raoul as he attempted to crack his knuckles before realising his armour made it impossible.
“Sam, are your clones immune to the lack of oxygen?” asked Vic.
A clone appeared and moved forward, flexing her arms and trying to breathe. After thirty seconds it collapsed and vanished.
“No. They’ll only last a minute or two at most unless we can get the air back on.”
“I’m working on it. Need to get into the security systems before I take over life support. Security is going to take a few minutes, life support will be more like half an hour,” said Bob.
“I can summon and lose clones. It doesn’t feel nice but I’ve been through worse,” Sam reached out and clutched Raoul’s hand. The armour separated their flesh but the connection felt very real to them.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
The door at the end of the cavernous space hissed open as the pressure balanced out. A hundred clones of Sam, lacking the heavy armour, rushed forward and quickly spread out into the nearby corridors. They were met with a series of ineffectual attacks that they batted aside with blasts of incandescent eye beams.
As the rest of the team emerged they saw the clones pinning the aliens to the floor and walls around their base of operations. B-3000s ran past, their footfalls silent in the vacuum that had taken over the ship. Collars snapped out, immune to lack of oxygen as the collars would take what they needed from the prisoners once they were activated.
The collared aliens were pulled back through to clear the corridor as flying drones took off ahead of the Carnival. John looked sadly at the captured fighters.
“They’re all less than level thirty. This isn’t even a fight! Bob, how can we stop them suffocating?” John asked.
“They can already breathe. Somehow. Ugly bastards. I’ll set up an airlocked tent. It won’t be able to take any damage but we can give them some basic life support.”
“I’m going to move ahead. Bob, send some drones as well?” asked Sam.
“Sure,” a B-3000 said. The rest of the team moved out into the ship and began threading their way through the corridors towards the engines. Whatever was going on at the Lord Captain’s location wasn’t as urgent as the risk some random blast of power would rupture the esoteric machinery that contained the nightmare energies of the engines.
John looked through the structure and assessed the situation. The aliens hadn’t spared them any attention yet but that would change. The bloody things were all manner of weird. They flowed along on singular muscular feet, a multitude of tentacles or a pair of limbs. It was like watching a zoo being taken over by the animals. He took a moment to reassess his thoughts. They would all be sentients who had joined the system just like…
“We’ve got a team of humans aboard as well. They’re just at the edge of- shit. They went into the command deck. Fuck! I should have just pulled them over!” His voice was angry and regretful.
“That changes things,” said Felix.
“Things. We must help other humans!” added Felicity as the pair began striding after the drones and clones who had moved deeper into the innards of the ship. Beams of black and gold power lashed out to clear their way.
The rest of the team ran after them, their heavy footfalls silent. Shrell were splattered against walls here and there as they moved. As well as other species they didn’t know the names of. The violence had been sporadic but intense. Hundreds of metres were pristine, gleaming metal then suddenly ten metres of the walls and ceiling of the corridor would be painted in various colours that came from a single source: blood.
They moved fast towards the engines. Some of the enemies reacted too quickly to be collared and were put down mercilessly by the casters creating new sprays of colour on the bronze walls. Most were no threat and the impromptu prison they had built began to fill up with an oddball collection of aliens.
“Once the engines are safe we should rush the command deck,” said a drone as it unleashed a torrent of energy into an amorphous blob that had been blocking the corridor.
“We’ll need to hold them!” gasped Vic as she ran along next to Evie. Evie reached over and pulled Vic onto her disc and continued to zoom along.
“Guess your suicide mission theory was bullshit Reg!” Evie giggled as she took a corner at high enough speed she and Vic ended up standing horizontally on her disc as she blurred round the turn.
John appeared in front of them and the enemies ahead fell into pieces. He flashed forward again and led the way for the rest of their trip. Fifteen minutes later, having taken dozens of prisoners and killed scores of low level aliens, they arrived at a glowing barrier that had been holding back the locals.
The gore was horrific. Greens, blues, pinks and the more usual red was splattered across the corridor. Vic stepped off Evie’s disc and a wave of fire burned it clean, leaving pristine metal behind the wash of heat.
“How’s the link back to Earth?” asked Flash as he eyed the barrier that had denied the native of Hagrutship access.
“Half of the main update is done. I can’t get anything back until the whole thing goes through,” said a nearby drone.
“Let’s secure the other access points to the engines. We must preserve this vessel for the Alliance,” said Felicity from the rear of the group.
“Bugger the Alliance! We’re in this for our species!” snapped Reg, hovering behind her. Both of the twins spun and glared at him. With their silvered masks up the effect was largely lost on the massively armoured Scotsman who scoffed over the comms. “Ye cannae intimidate me children. We need to get home for any of this shite to be of any fecking use at all.”
The twins glanced at each other, seeing their silvered masks mirrored and stepped aside reluctantly.
“How many more access points are there?” asked John, looking to move the conversation away from something that could spiral into an argument.
“Two more. This is the central one. The other two are easier. I can send some drones to hold them. Next job: save the other human team and deal with the main mutineers,” said Bob. “You should be able to port my drones into place?”
“At least it’s not a suicide mission,” laughed John bitterly as his eyes moved through the structure. Reg barked a laugh that sounded even more bitter than Johns. All they’d faced thus far were low level dross. If the mutineers weren’t a threat why the hell had they been deployed to put them down? He blipped groups of drones into position to defend the other points of entry to the engineering section as Bob set up a series of turrets to help hold their current position.
“I’m into the life support systems. God this is amazing! The coding, the tech! I’ve got breakdowns of systems that will revolutionise things on Earth! Christ! The metal this fucking thing-” a metallic leg bashed against the nearest wall and the sound actually carried to the rest of the team as the atmosphere was quickly replaced, “- is made of is amazing. I need to spend some time plating Doris in this crap!” Bob’s voice was shrill as his excitement overrode any other concern. “This alone made the whole trip worth it!” he chortled.
“We’ve got humans to help. We’ve got a ship to take back from mutineers. How are you enjoying this?” asked Evie. “Zeeg isn’t this mental!”
“I am not mental at all,” said Zeeg as she came through a wall and stood before the rest of the team. As long as she remained out of phase oxygen wasn’t a problem for her and with her reserves she could remain intangible more or less indefinitely.
“Anything unusual?” Vic asked the dog.
“This entire place is unusual but I haven’t found anything that is escaping Dad-John and the drone network,” the dog replied, sitting down and wagging her tail in and out of the wall.
“Then let’s move to the bridge. With life support and the engineering sections secured, that's our next objective,” said Flash
“Um. I wouldn’t say secured,” muttered Bob in a resigned voice.