“Alright, sound off. Farsus, you got those disruption charges armed and ready?”

The Hard Luck Hermit always kept a few ion projectiles aboard, to disable a ship and capture the targets aboard alive when possible. The ones they had on hand were out of date and a little sluggish, making them useless against anything too fast or too modern, but Doccan ships tended to run slow and simple, making them a perfect target. Farsus gave his approval and then moved to arm the warheads and load them into the Hard Luck Hermit’s launch tubes.

“Next up, Tooley,” Kamak said. “You manage to rub two brain cells together long enough to get the docking tube back in shape?”

Tooley made exactly three rude gestures before confirming that yes, she had gotten the tube working. Another tool meant for ship-born captures, the tube could latch on to another vessel and hopefully force the hatch open. If not, Farsus also had a few shaped demolition charges that would definitely get a hatch open, along with most of the wall around it.

“Doprel, you got the restraints ready?”

“Yep,” Doprel said. There weren’t many species quite as large or as strong as Doccan’s in the galaxy, so they couldn’t use simple handcuffs. They’d jury-rigged a solution from spare cables and cords lying around the ship, and tested it on Doprel himself to be sure. It had been awkward spending an entire night trying to tie up Doprel, but it had paid off and they’d all sworn never to talk about it again.

“Corvash, Po Lo-”

“To Vo.”

“Whatever. You got your guns ready?”

“Yes sir. Though absent any time in the firing range, I can’t say with complete confidence-”

“Noted. Corvash, you?”

“It’s a gun. I point, I shoot.”

“Good man. You keep pointing and shooting until whatever you’re shooting is no longer moving,” Kamak said. “After all the fights you’ve seen Doprel in, I don’t need to remind you Doccan are tough motherfuckers, especially compared to species like us. Do not let up, even if you see them ‘bleeding’. They’ve got a subdermal layer of shock-absorbing fluid, so if you see them leaking, it doesn’t mean they’re dying, it means they’re pissed off.”

Kamak pointed at Doprel. He wasn’t fully comfortable being an example, but he put up with it for the sake of demonstration. Corey re-examined his gun again. There’d always been a mix of exotic armaments like plasma and laser weaponry aboard the Hermit, with a few ballistic rifles like back home on Earth in the mix for special occasions, but today they all had good old fashioned slugthrowers. Apparently the Doccan could shrug off laser weaponry especially well, since the self-cauterizing nature of energy weapons worked against itself when creatures with an internal fluid barrier were involved.

“Do not aim for the center of mass. You’ll be here all day, or you will be if a Doccan doesn’t grab you and eat you alive first,” Kamak said. “Aim for the head and the extremities, with special focus on the arms. Legs are good, but tougher to get through. Lot of density in those stumpy stompers.”

Corey had mostly lost interest in the lecture, but To Vo appeared to be taking furious mental notes, as if she planned to make a career out of killing Doccan. She put that energy into even the most tedious tasks, however. A few swaps ago she’d typed out several pages of notes while Corey explained how to change a water filter.

“Track the target I call, focus your fire, and remember that we need to leave at least one alive,” Kamak continued. “Any questions from the squad?”

To Vo immediately raised her hand. Kamak sighed, but gave her the all-clear. Life or death situations were not the time to leave any unanswered questions, even stupid unanswered questions.

“Sir, in the event that we’re engaged in close range, what do-”

“You cover your face and hope to gods Doprel gets to you before the Doccan rips you in half or eats a part of you you can’t live without,” Kamak said. “If you get close enough to the face, you might be able to punch them in something sensitive and buy yourself two seconds before one of the aforementioned possibilities happens.”

“Oh dear.”

“It’s a long tube. If they start getting close, back up.”

Kamak gave his gun a firm pat on the barrel, to emphasize the importance of heavy weaponry, and then turned back to Farsus.

“That about cover it?”

“Our tactical situation is sound,” Farsus said. “Doccan are known for efficiency, not cleverness.”

“Alrighty then, everyone ready and loaded?”

One by one, the armed crew sounded off, and Kamak shouted to their only crew member who wasn’t holding a gun.

“Tooley, we’re good to go. Load up the ‘distressed traveler’ ping.”

“Can do, captain,” Tooley shouted back. She flipped a switch and loaded up one of the ship’s false-flag identification beacons. Being able to lie about what kind of ship they were was very illegal, but very useful. It helped them slip through Bang Gate security without attracting attention and today, it would help them draw in their prey. Tooley flipped another switch and started broadcasting a distress signal as well. They had recruited To Vo La Su and her naturally squeaky, pitiful voice to mimic the high pitched whining of a lost traveler whose ship had been damaged in the Bang Gate explosion. The Doccan were not overtly aggressive most of the time, but when a vulnerable target presented itself, they seized on the easy resources.

“Ready to charge headlong into enemy territory on your mark, Kamak,” Tooley said. She wasn’t even a frontline fighter in this plan and she still didn’t like it.

“Get it moving, Tools,” Kamak ordered. “We know what we’re doing.”

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Mostly, Tooley thought to herself. Mostly. She slid the accelerator forward and started them careening toward the decrepit space station the Doccan had occupied. She even jiggled the controls intermittently to really give the ship that “unsteady due to heavy damage” look. After a few jiggles, she decided to code it into the ship’s autopilot so she didn’t have to do it manually. Their quest might take a while.

As was often the case, waiting proved the hardest part. Corey kept his gun close to his chest and occasionally tapped his finger against the metal shell. To Vo mirrored his nervous habit for a time, but found it did nothing to ease her own nerves.

“Is it always this...quiet?”

“Usually,” Kamak noted. “That’s the thing about any fight you plan in advance. Bullets move so damn fast you usually spend more time thinking about the fight than actually fighting it.”

“And is that supposed to include all the ways you could die?”

“Yes,” Farsus said. “I find thinking of jaunty showtunes helps.”

“I am the very model of a modern Major-General, I’ve information vegetable animal and mineral,” Corey sang. While intended to amuse, everyone else in the hallway looked at him like he’d grown a second head. “What? We were talking about music.”

“Singing doesn’t translate well,” Kamak said. The translator chips they all had could do wonders for detecting sarcasm and other vocal cues, but there was no possible way to match the rhythm and rhymes of even a short song with the varied syllables of several alien languages. Corey’s brief song had sounded like absolute gibberish to everyone who listened.

“Right. My bad.”

“You killed a few seconds, at least,” Kamak said. “Maybe not the way you wanted to, but still.”

“Glad to be of service,” Corey said, with a mock salute. After his hand returned to his side, silence reigned in the room again. It lasted a few minutes before Farsus decided to kill it himself.

“On the subject of translation errors,” Farsus said. “Shall we play a game of Follow Up?”

“Follow Up?”

“Someone says a word, then the next person has to say a word that starts with the last letter of that word,” Kamak grunted. “And so on and so forth.”

“I, for example, would say ‘armature’, and Kamak would then say-”

The silence returned for a moment before Kamak sighed and relented to peer pressure.

“Asinine.”

“Huh.”

“And then Doprel might say-”

“Mountainous.”

“What are you even doing? None of these words are related at all, even by letter.”

“Not as you’re hearing them,” Farsus said. “As I said, the limitations of our translators play a large part.”

“Well then I could just say any given word, and you’d have no way of knowing if I was bullshitting or not.”

“To do so would be to betray the spirit of the game, Corvash,” Farsus said. “Think of it as a thought exercise as much as a game. View and analyze phonetic differences between languages.”

“And as another upside, the longer you play this game, the less you’ll mind if the Doccan kill you,” Kamak said. Farsus’s “games” always eroded his will to live.

Any further discussion of time-killing came to an end when Tooley dimmed the lights in the hallway.

“Eyes up, boys and pig,” Tooley said. “We’ve got inbound.”

“Confirmed it’s someone we want to kill, and not someone trying to help us?”

“Believe me, Kamak, this ship can only be a Doccan retrofit,” Tooley said. “This thing’s -fucking fires, this ship is older than your grandma, Kamak. Watch your fire, kids, a stray bullet could knock this thing to pieces.”

“Don’t worry too much, the Doccan love to build them sturdy,” Kamak said. While the Doccan mostly stole ships from other species, the oldest and frailest of their vessels were still durable, thanks to the Doccan tendency to spot weld and reinforce as much as physically possible.

“Good news about the ship being so damn old is it’s big and slow,” Tooley said. “Permission to fire, Kam?”

“Weapons free, Tooley, shut them down.”

Tooley chuckled to herself and manned the torpedo’s. She always loved getting to fire the weapons, especially at hard-to-miss targets. Her aim wasn’t very good.

Even Tooley’s pathetically inaccurate aim could still hit a target the size of an office building and moving only slightly faster. The disruption charges hit the target and bathed it in ionizing energy, shutting down the Doccan’s jury-rigged electronics. Tooley waited for a moment, to make sure the ship was truly dead in the water, before pulling them in close.

“Looks all clear, folks,” Tooley said. “No way to read life signs through that thick-ass hull so you’re going in blind.”

“Assume at least four,” Doprel said, holding up a four-fingered hand. “They like to base things around four.”

“Noted. Stay quiet through the sealing procedure. Airlocks are tricky.”

Kamak held up his hand, and the boarding crew stayed silent. The harsh sound of long-motionless mechanical gears grinding to life filled the corridor. Corey grabbed the wall as the ship started to shift and pivot towards the ship they would soon be attached to. The ship’s personal gravity kept him firmly adhered to the floor no matter how they moved, but he still got an odd sense of vertigo whenever they did complex maneuvers like this.

“Contact made, system link established, airlock ready to open on your mark, Kamak,” Tooley said. “Huh. That’s several complete sentences without insulting you. Give the order, Captain Whiskey Dick.”

“Thanks, Tools. Open the door and then go clean out that empty space between your ears.”

The insult went unacknowledged, but the door did start to open. Kamak shouldered his gun, the rest followed suit, and they held their ground, guns raised, as the hatches started to open. A rush of cold air surged out of the Doccan ship as the hatch hissed open. Apparently they skimped on the climate controls. Kamak let the rush of cold air wash over him, sending a cold shiver down a tense spine. Eyes and guns stayed locked on the opening until arms started to get sore.

“Nothing,” Kamak said.

“Perhaps they don’t realize they’ve been docked,” Farsus said. “Their systems are both outdated and under duress thanks to our disabler. It’s possible they have no auxiliary power.”

“So maybe they’re not expecting us,” Kamak said.

“Or maybe they’re waiting just on the other side of the airlock,” Corey said.

“I was just about to say that,” Kamak said. “But more sarcastically, of course. Only one way to find out which is which. Doprel, this is a polite request-”

“I’m on it, captain,” Doprel said. He was about to volunteer anyway. The Doccan would try to kill anyone who boarded on sight, but Doprel was still the most resilient, even if it was his own equally-resilient people trying to kill him. He stepped forward, gun still in hand, until he reached the end of the tunnel. He put his finger a little closer to the trigger as he took his final step out of the boarding tube and into the ship.

“So far so good, I- oh!”

Doprel was pulled to the side by an unseen force, falling out of view. Kamak was the first one to sprint through the docking tube after him, gun raised.

“Doprel!”

“No contact!” Doprel shouted. “No contact! I’m fine, I just-”

Kamak found out exactly why Doprel had fallen very soon -and very fast. His dead sprint down the hall took him through the opening, and then through the air, at high speeds, before he bounced off a wall and started drifting down the hallway.

“Motherfucker,” Kamak grunted. He grabbed on to a loose section of piping in the ship’s hallway and tried to hold himself in place. “They don’t even have the gravity turned on?”

“Is this a problem, sir?”

To Vo stepped through the doorway and manged to begin floating much more gracefully than the first two.

“Hey, Miss Lady Cop, could you remind me what the first Kinetic Absolute is?”

“Of course sir! The first Kinetic Absolute is that any two entities which exert force on each other will exert force of equal measure...on...opposite vectors.”

To Vo looked down at her gun. That was a hell of a lot of exerting force, and the empty air of the space ship made for a lot of possible opposite vectors.

“I see the problem.”