Chapter 9: Guerilla Warfare [https://i.imgur.com/meSQHBK.png]

"Alright, we're in position," Nicholas says. The room he and Darius stand in looks to be a storage area, with large, visibly empty tanks filling the room in rows. A delivery system built into the room's ceiling and floor hint of these tanks being moved and used for something at one point, though long since become defunct for whatever reason. Darius nods in agreement.  "We're going to climb in these tanks and get out of sight."

"Understood," the voice of Tah-Kuell echoes clearly from their bracelets. "They've almost broken through the first door. Sarah? Ava? How are things on your end?"

Elsewhere, Ava and Sophia have taken residence in another room on the ship. This room is home to one large particularly loud piece of machinery, stretching from ceiling to floor, settled into the center of the room. Through the glass screen on the machine, a single beam of pure white light extends, gently caressing some manner of pitch black energy. Ava, stalking slowly around the machine, stares at the contraption. "What is this thing, anyway?"

"That's probably the source of the ship's power," Tah-Kuell responds through Ava's bracelet. "I'd have to look at it myself to know for sure, but just judging by the sound--"

"And that doesn't seem like a concern to you?" Ava groans, following Sarah over to a ladder and climbing up. Tah-Kuell lets out a chuckle. "Absolutely. If they destroy it, we'll all wind up dead, but they won't do that because there's much more money to be made selling this ship intact. Now, let's see... one final check here... Sophia, are you prepared?"

Sophia, climbing through a vent elsewhere on the ship to reach her destination, nearly collapses to the floor as she falls from her exit hatch, dusting herself off as she stands tall again. "Ow. I mean, yeah, I'm good." 

Her room, bathed in a bright red light, has numerous doors leading into it, though each door seems to lack power, deactivated. Along the walls covered in piping of all shapes and sizes, leading off to parts of the ship unknown, a single active terminal awaits input. "I'm totally ready for this." She reassures herself, crossing the room to the computer. "Alright. I'm at the computer thing, Tah-Kuell. Tell me what I need to do."

"Okay. I'll be transmitting instructions to your omnitool momentarily. Simply type what it shows you, and we'll get you back to the bridge," He responds. "Give me a moment here." There's a period of quiet, a deathly silence that's soon broken by what sounds like a loud crash deeper in the ship.

"Oh, no. We have a problem. They got through faster than expected. Resourceful bunch. Hunker down a moment, Sophia. I need to get these men separated before I can send your instructions."

"Great." Sophia frowns, tapping her foot nervously as the sound of footsteps echo off in the distance, growing louder by the second. She nearly jumps out of her skin as her omnitool activates suddenly, creating a holographic chart full of an alphabet she can't recognize. She takes a deep breath and exhales, typing cautiously into the terminal. "Christmas tree. Funky looking Y. A thing that looks like a fish..." She's slow, careful not to screw up, pressing each key. "You know, this would be a lot easier if this stuff was in English."

As if responding, the omnitool begins to glow a faint blue, shooting a beam of light at the terminal. The keys on the terminal shift from the alien language to English, reassembling themselves in mid air, as do the instructions. "Whoa! What the... Okay. I can work with this." She begins to type faster, glancing quickly between the instructions and the keys.

"I'm almost done, Tah-Kuell. Are you ready on your end?"

"As ready as I'll ever be," He responds.

"Okay." She strikes the enter key to send her commands, and the terminal reacts immediately. The red lights around the room begin to pulse, accompanied by a klaxon of steadily increasing volume, warning her of the changes. "I think I did it. I'm done."

"What's that? I can't hear you over the noise." Tah-Kuell responds, his voice drowned out.

With no warning, the doors to the room all open at once, the lights in the hallways switching from their sterile whites to that same pulsing red. Sophia lets out a curse, hearing the footsteps louder than ever without the door buffer. She turns her attention back to the vent, though the option of crossing the room to climb back into it seems impossible without getting caught. Thinking quickly, she takes advantage of her smaller size to find a hole in the pipes big enough for her to crawl into. Slowly, she kneels, taking a vantage point that allows her to see through the space between all the piping and machinery.

The klaxon stops, and into the room rushes several of the marauders, R'rith among them, pointing their weapons about in search of anyone in the room. Each of the marauders wears similar armor: a jet black metal, covering them from head to toe, that makes them look as intimidating as it does formidable. While all of them are clearly humanoid, the variance in shape and size ensures they're distinct species. Only R'rith is quadrupedal, his arms and legs stomping the floor as he walks into the room with a fierce look. "Keep searching. I get the feeling we're being toyed with..."

The marauders nod in agreement, before they slowly pile out of the room. R'rith stays behind, however, leaning his body high and sniffing the air. He turns slowly in Sophia's direction, gradually stepping toward the girl's hiding place.

Realizing the danger she's in, Sophia's eyes widen. She lifts her hand to cover her mouth, fearing that she might make a noise. R'rith continues sniffing and comes far too close for comfort, stalking this way and that near the pipes, trying desperately to see through the cracks. Only several inches of pipe stand between the massive beast and Sophia, and the way the creature's body brushes against the piping on each subsequent pass causes them to groan from the pressure.

"I know you're here, girl. I can smell you..." R'rith snarls, slowly raising a paw to slam the piping near him. It buckles and groans under the assault, releasing a hiss as it loses pressure. There doesn't seem to be anything inside, but whatever used to be in it has the distinct scent of ozone. "Why not make things easy and come out? I have no quarrel with you. I promise to make your death quick, maybe even merciful."

The next attack strikes close to home, mangling a pipe only inches away from Sophia's hiding place. Her breath hitches in her throat as she holds it, trying to kneel lower. The newly broken piping releases steam, which quickly begins to fill the room, making it difficult to see. She can just barely make out the silhouette of the Blith trying to see her through the cracks, and she shifts to try to move away. The pipes once again groan as R'rith moves against them, reaching his paw into the gap between them and the wall, swiping idly, attempting to catch her.

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Under the strain of R'rith's weight, the pipes he's pressing against suddenly cave in, releasing even more steam into the air. Clearly it's enough to hurt, because he instinctively reels away with a deafening roar. Each of his eyes are forced shut from the steam, leaving him to his other senses for the moment. "Ahhrggh! I WILL COMPLETELY DESTROY THIS ROOM UNTIL I FIND YOU, GIRL!"

Seeing her chance, Sophia quickly shimmies through the newly created opening, dashing around the blinded R'rith and across the room. Just by the sound of the footsteps, the Blith turns to face her general direction. "There you are! You little pest!" He snarls, charging into the fog. He leaps forward, expecting to pin the child beneath his paws, but he finds nothing but a fierce collision with a wall he can't see to stop before impact. Sophia dares not look back as she crawls through the vent, her heart threatening to beat right through her chest as the Blith's enraged roar echoes behind her.

"Alright, Tah-Kuell." Sophia speaks into her bracelet as she crawls through the vents, trying not to sound like she'd just seen her life flash before her eyes. "I'm on my way back. How are things looking?"

There's a brief pause before Tah-Kuell responds. "Thanks to you bypassing the terminal controls, I have greater access to the ship's internal systems, but I've got bad news. This ship doesn't appear to have any weaponry, or even defenses. Judging by this, I assume this ship may have been a science vessel, but even those tend to at least have light weaponry and defensive measures. If Ava and Sarah are successful, though, we'll at least have a plan B for now."

"Well, I'm on my way back to the bridge. Don't leave the others hanging."

"I had no intentions of leaving them without assistance," Tah-Kuell says, pulling up the camera of the room Nicholas and Darius are situated in. A single marauder slowly stalks through the room, separated from the others, his weapon at the ready. He peeks around each corner, the tanks doing an excellent job of keeping his view obscured. His body language clearly states that he's tense, prepared for an ambush. Though, not from above. Tah-Kuell seems to have changed cameras just in time, as Nicholas motions for Darius to be prepared. He lets out a yell, leaping from the higher tanks; the marauder can't turn around and aim his weapon in time, but while Nicholas's weight causes him to stagger, he doesn't fall; the armor being heavier and bulkier than Nicholas had anticipated.

The marauder struggles, though he quickly pries Nicholas's grip from him, throwing the boy to the floor. Pipe in hand, Darius descends from his own tank, unleashing a powerful blow to the back of the marauder's head. The cold metal impacts the helmet hard enough to crack a piece of it off, sending the marauder tumbling forward, losing his balance before hitting the wall. Though, the move seems to be calculated as the mercenary stands, leveling his weapon toward the boys. "Don't move!" The voice from the helmet, deeply robotic in nature, wobbles in a manner one might assume to be from damaged electronics, but is still clear enough to be understood. 

Realizing that their gambit had failed, Nicholas slowly stands, raising his hands in surrender. Even Darius drops his pipe begrudgingly, the metal clanging noisily against the grated floor beneath them. "We surrender," Darius calls, trying to calm the assailant. "Don't shoot."

Keeping the weapon ready to fire, the marauder reaches a hand up to his helmet, a visibly malfunctioning liability after Darius's successful attack. He presses a button on its side, and the helmet hisses, splitting down the middle, opening to reveal the person inside. A female, her mid-length red-orange hair cascades down as she removes the helmet, forcing her to shake her head to get it out of her eyes. Her green eyes are the perfect contrast to that flowing orange hair, and her pale white skin, all implies a European ancestry. Her looks are marred only by a single scar stretching diagonally across her left cheek, a wound that has long since healed from some incident long ago.

Both Nicholas and Darius, stunned by her beauty and the fact that she's not an alien, stare in disbelief.

"You're... human?" Darius stammers.

"Yeah, last time I checked," she says, keeping her weapon aimed at the teenagers. "Stay right where you are, and don't make any sudden movements."

Both teenagers stay tense and on the defensive, although it's clear she could take care of either of them in a second. Nicholas speaks up after a moment of silence. "Who are you?"

The woman uses a free hand to wipe the blood dripping from her lower lip, and quickly brushes away the sweat from her forehead before turning her attention back to the boys. "I'm the one holding the rifle, so I'll be the one asking the questions. How about you tell me who you are and what you're doing on a ship like this?"

"That's a long story..." Darius glances briefly down at the pipe near his feet, as if it could help them get out of this situation somehow. "Nicholas and I, along with a few others, wound up on this ship by accident, and now we have no idea where we're going or how to get back home. We've just been trying to survive ever since we left Washington."

There's a look of mild skepticism on the woman's face, but as she looks around at the tanks surrounding them, she gradually seems satisfied by the explanation. "So there's more than just you two? How many of you are on this ship?"

"Six," Nicholas responds.

"There we go. That wasn't hard, was it? It's nice to see such well-behaved kids out here in the cosmos, such a rarity," the woman jokes. "Anyway, if I know R'rith, and I know him pretty well, you're probably down to five now."

Both Nicholas and Darius frown, glancing at each other.

"Relax. I'm playing around. R'rith will probably round you all up and do something cruel like, I don't know, launch you out of an airlock or something," she muses, reaching a hand up to scratch at her scalp.

"Can you help us?" Nicholas pleads. "We're not even supposed to be here. We're going to wind up dead."

"We're Human, just like you." Darius nods in agreement with Nicholas, trying to appeal to the woman's maternal instincts. "Please, help us."

The woman leans her head back a bit, releasing a brief bout of raucous laughter. "I'm not your mom, kid. I'm not going to help you just because you ask." She shakes her head a bit, finally lowering her weapon. "There's only one thing that motivates me, and that's money. If you're as hopeless as you say you are, I doubt you have any scratch. You're going to have a tough time giving me something more valuable than what R'rith's offering me to take this ship."

Thinking fast, Nicholas holds up his arm. "What about this? It's an omnitool. I've heard it's, uh... living nanotech metal?" He looks to Darius, who nods, confirming that he was right in the description. "I'll give it to you if you help us get these marauders off the ship. I'm sure you'll find a use for it."

The woman looks between both teenagers, noting that both have a bracelet on one of their wrists. 

"Living nanotech metal, huh? That stuff's expensive and hard to come by." She mulls it over quietly for a moment, before she smirks, her eyes bright with the thought of the money she'll make. "I want both." She motions to both Nicholas and Darius's wrists.

"Okay." Nicholas says, nodding in agreement. "But we'll only part with them when the job is done, just so we're sure that you're not planning to betray us if you decide you want both the ship and the omnitools."

The woman grins at this, visibly impressed by Nicholas,  before she steps forward and extends a hand toward the two teenagers. She lowers the rifle down and puts it beside her leg. Cautiously, the two take her hand, one after another, shaking it firmly. "All right, kid. You got a deal. Keep your omnitools for now, you'll probably need them if things go south, but for now, just stick with me, alright? I've got a plan."