“Alright, our little gun show just got a hell of a lot more complicated,” Kamak said. Zero-G combat was a pain in the ass even for people who’d been specially trained, and as far as Kamak knew, that only applied to Farsus. He and Doprel had been in a handful of zero gravity fights, but he was less than confident in his skills and knew that Doprel felt the same.
“I’m not confident in our ability to manage this combat scenario,” Farsus said. “Melee combat is generally more viable in zero gravity environments, and we cannot hope to beat the Doccan in melee range.”
“On the other hand, lot of handholds here on this ship,” Corey said. He grabbed an exposed mechanical element, one of many jutting from the patchwork halls of the ship, and latched himself in place. It wasn’t a perfect solution, but they had places to brace themselves to avoid the zero-gravity recoil problem. To Vo braced her foot against an oddly welded ridge in the ship’s hull and kept her gun up.
“Could we leave this vessel disabled and wait for the Doccan to send reinforcements?”
“We’ve only got enough disable rounds for one more ship, and the Doccan always escalate linearly,” Doprel said. “They’ll send two, maybe three next time.”
“It’s a little messier than anticipated, but this is still our best shot,” Kamak said. “Guns up.”
The team shouldered their weapons and started kicking off the walls, drifting down the darkened halls of the ship. The vessel had enough of an auxiliary power system to keep some emergency lights on, but even those were intermittent, with many bulbs burnt out by the Doccan’s lack of interest in repairing such a negligible function. They did not feel fear, much less fear of the dark.
Corey, on the other hand, was feeling a lot of fear. His casual interest in sci-fi films had done him a lot of good out here in space so far, but now it was starting to backfire. He’d watched Alien one too many times to be comfortable drifting around the dead silence of this spaceship. He tried to remind himself that there were no xenomorphs here. The only aliens he had to worry about were nigh-unkillable super strong emotionless behemoths.
In retrospect, that was worse, and Corey decided to start thinking about literally anything else just in time to hear something go click.
A three round burst of plasma fire soared down the hall, briefly illuminating the length of it in green fire. One of the bolts caught Farsus on his broad chest, but his armor mostly negated the damage. Kamak returned fire, sending a stream of bullets up the hall, and Kamak himself careening the other way. In his haste to return fire, he’d forgotten to brace himself. The rest of his fireteam made no such mistakes.
With his back to a wall, Corey turned his gun towards the Doccan and took aim. There were two of them, both even larger than Doprel, and wearing patchwork armor to boot. That was an unpleasant development.
“Take out the guns first,” Farsus shouted. The Doccan themselves were durable and heavily armored, but their guns were as fragile as any other weapon in the galaxy. Corey took aim and peppered the Doccan’s limbs with a spray of gunfire. One of the two had the wherewithal to clutch their gun to their side, letting their arm absorb the brunt of the gunfire, but the other kept trying to return fire even as a bullet finally hit home. The metal slug cracked through the plasma repeater’s energy chamber, and the weapon started to vent green fire as the energy cell leaked.
With his weapon damaged, the Doccan took the next logical step and launched himself at his opponents, massive arms raised and ready to strike. The crew took advantage of the zero gravity recoil and let go of their handholds in the wall, then fired at the approaching Doccan. The recoil propelled them away as bullets peppered its thick hide. With no gravity to make it flow outwards naturally, the strange fluid layer beneath the skin of the Doccan started to leak out in blobs of oozing blue.
The floating globs splashed into dozens of tiny droplets as Doprel met his kin coming the other way. The divided drops then scattered in every direction as the shockwave of their colossal impact traveled outwards. Another spray of blue fluid followed shortly after as Doprel dug his fingers into a patch of bullet holes and tore a massive chunk out of the Doccan’s exterior carapace.
“Doprel! Give me an angle on the face!”
With a quick grunt of acknowledgment, Doprel spun around and put the Doccan he was grappling in a headlock. He kept his arms wide and his face behind the Doccan’s back as Kamak took aim at the Doccan’s head and fired. A quick round of bullets tore through the air, a few managing to find purchase in the Doccan’s face, tearing out one of its eyes and a few chunks of mandible. The floating drops of blue liquid pouring out of the broken head were soon joined by a thin flow of black bile -the real lifeblood of the Doccan.
“Not going to be interrogating that one,” Kamak said. “Focus fire and take out his friend!”
Kamak drifted forward and grabbed on to the broken body of the dead Doccan, using it as cover as the hail of bullets continued. Under fire from five sources at once, the Doccan’s defeat was inevitable yet worryingly slow. Corey kept his rifle focused on the joint of its arm for a solid thirty seconds of sustained fire, but it didn’t even drop its gun until the arm was only attached by a few strands of tattered, fibrous “muscle”. Even at that point, the Doccan simply switched hands and continued firing until Farsus blew a big enough chunk of its head off that it stopped moving entirely. Doprel walked up and ripped its other arm off just to be sure, while Kamak took a final few potshots at the head of the other one.
“Bastard’s aren’t afraid to play dead,” Kamak said. “Especially when they know they’re at a disadvantage.”
“Good news is, this means there’s probably just two more,” Doprel said. “If we were dealing with multiple groups there’d have been a full crew of four after us.”
“Best news I’ve gotten all week,” Kamak said. “Now where are the others…”
“We are located in the cockpit.”
Five guns pointed in five different directions as the voice boomed out from a PA system.
“What’s going on?”
“You have stated an intent to interrogate a living subject, and have proven your ability to defeat two or less Doccan in combat,” the monotone voice proclaimed. “There is no further purpose to violent resistance.”
“I see,” Kamak said. They really were logical. “We’ll be right there. Guns up, of course. I’m not dumb enough to not see a trap.”
“We lack the resources to commit to such a deception.”
That did nothing to ease Kamak’s suspicion, for reasons the Doccan could not at all understand. He, Doprel, and Farsus kept their guns up as they head upwards, towards the cockpit of the makeshift vessel. Corey was not far behind, until he realized To Vo La Su was quite far behind. She was bouncing slowly around the hall, trying to dodge floating globs of Doccan ichor—and a few chunks of the Doccan themselves.
“You’ve just got to accept you’re going to get messy and move through it,” Corey said. “The laundry machine on the Hermit is surprisingly good.”
“I don’t have that many clothes to start with,” To Vo mumbled. Due to the impromptu circumstances of her “recruitment” To Vo had the clothes she’d been wearing and a few spare outfits Tooley had been willing to throw at her—most of which fit poorly and had suspicious stains already. “But that is not my issue. I do not- there is a certain amount of- I can’t-”
“To Vo?”
The former transit authority tightened her grip on a gun she was entirely unsuited to carry and took a deep breath. One of the globs of Doccan ichor drifted worryingly close to her face, and she backed away.
“I didn’t want to do something like this again.”
“Again?”
To Vo was naturally small, but she still found a way to shrink in on herself.
“The world I come from was harsh,” To Vo said. “We did harsh things to live. All of us.”
A few chunks of gore drifted by Corey’s head. He knew better than to ask what she meant.
“Yeah. Look, I get it, but, these guys came after us because they thought we were a defenseless bunch of stranded travelers, right? You think they brought all that firepower to escort a bunch of lost souls back to safety, give them a nice pat on the back and a snack for the road? If we’d actually been lost travelers, we’d be dead. And eaten, quite possibly.”
“But we aren’t travelers, and now they’re dead,” To Vo said, pointing out the drifting Doprel corpses as she spoke. “How can this be right?”
“Look, To Vo, nothing’s ever completely ‘right’. Even when you’re purely trying to help someone, who’s to say they ‘deserve’ it, or that there’s not someone else who needs the help more and isn’t getting it?” Corey asked. “You’re never one-hundred percent in the right. Sure, maybe we’re a lot closer to that line between good and bad than we could be, but I think we’re still on the good side of things.”
“And what happens when you’re not?”
Corey didn’t have an answer for that question. Luckily for him, he didn’t get the chance to try.
“Would you two stop fucking moralizing and back us up? This is still a combat zone!”
The ever obedient To Vo La Su was the first to grab her gun and kick off towards the cockpit, heedless of the gore she had to splash through on the way. Corey followed closely behind her, secretly quite happy to let her absorb all the floating ichor instead of him.
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As it turned out, the Doccan were sincere in their desire to surrender. That left only one dilemma to resolve.
“So. Awkward issue,” Kamak said. “We’ve only got enough restraints for one of you.”
“We will offer no resistance,” one of the Doccan said.
“Oh sure, for now. Until we get attacked by someone else, or we all turn around at once, or you decide you might have a good opportunity.”
“This point is sound,” the Doccan admitted.
“Which one of you knows more about the recent movements in people fighting you guys, and why your people blew up the Bang Gate?”
“I am more knowledgeable on all military matters,” the Doccan on the left said. Kamak pointed to the one on the right.
“And you agree with that sentiment?”
“Yes. However, your inquiries might require a greater knowledge base. I am in charge of monitoring the social habits of various Doccan, and may possess relevant information.”
The other Doccan had barely finished speaking when Kamak shoved the barrel of his gun in their mandibles and pulled the trigger. A burst of rounds tore through their cranium and the Doccan fell over dead. The only surviving Doccan did not even react as his comrade collapsed. As black blood started to drift through the air, Corey very deliberately avoided To Vo’s gaze.
“Not particularly interested in your social media. Alright, Doprel, tie the other one up,” Kamak said. “And you. Got time for questions?”
“I will accede to any line of questioning that does not actively endanger the Doccan species.”
“Great! What’s your name, champ?”
“Doprel.”
Doprel looked up and over the other Doprel’s shoulders.
“Doprel, why is our new friend also Doprel?”
“It’s...actually a term for the working class of Doccan’s,” Doprel said. “I didn’t have any other name, and by the time I realized what was going on it had sort of stuck, so...yeah.”
“Do you want a better name?”
“No, no, like I said, it’s stuck now, no sense changing it,” Doprel said. “Not like we hang out with other Doccan enough for it to be confusing.”
“On that note, for the purposes of this conversation, you are Junior,” Kamak said. The newly christened Junior did not object to this designation, so Kamak assumed he accepted it. “What do you know about why the Doccan attacked the Bang Gate?”
“We were recently informed that new stresses upon intergalactic shipping routes would place additional importance on our galaxy as a trade hub,” Junior said. “Your Galactic Council endures our presence and our attacks on your shipping route as acceptable losses. If this galaxy was to become more important on a galactic scale, they would feel more pressure to protect it, and therefore take more aggressive actions against the Doccan species. A pre-emptive strike to lessen the utility of our home as a trade route mitigates this risk of escalating conflict.”
“And blowing up a fucking Bang Gate isn’t an escalation?”
“The gateway is destroyed. Retaliatory attacks achieve nothing. Your Council has nothing to gain from further conflict.”
“What if they’re worried you’ll blow up another fucking gate, Junior?”
“The measured presence of other species in this galaxy ultimately benefits us by providing resources we would be otherwise unable to acquire,” Junior said. “We have no reason to completely close ourselves off.”
“You guys have a lot of work to do on understanding other species,” Kamak said.
“Typical warfare does not stop when one side considers it merely ‘convenient’,” Farsus said. “If the Galactic Council decides on hostilities, they will not stop until they possess a considerable advantage over you.”
“By our appraisal they already possess a significant advantage,” Junior said. “However, if I survive our conversation, I will pass on your appraisal of the situation to the homeworld.”
“Jury’s still out on your survival. Tell us this and improve your odds: Who told you about all this shipping route bullshit?”
“It was [TRANSLATION ERROR].”
Kamak rubbed the sore spot where his translator chip was implanted and tried again.
“Say again?”
“We were informed of these developments by a [TRANSLATION ERROR].”
“Alright, not going for a third try here,” Kamak said. Whenever the translation software ran through the full suite of languages it knew, it started to overheat a little, and Kamak didn’t want a hotspot in his skull. “Doprel, I thought you gave us the whole language?”
“I did!”
“If I may theorize,” Farsus said. “To my understanding, the Doccan are a very literal people. Junior, when your people are faced with a new entity or concept, do you invent a new word for it?”
“When it is the most convenient course of action, yes,” Junior said. “Oftentimes compound words are formed. Your own people are referred to as ‘Red-Large-No Carapace’.”
“An apt descriptor,” Farsus said. “So we can assume whatever introduced these concepts to the Doccan, it was something they first encountered after Doprel’s departure, and something so unique it prompted the creation of a new word.”
“Fun times,” Kamak grumbled. “Junior, can you describe the thing whose name we can’t understand?”
“I have never seen it.”
“Peachy. What do you know about it?”
“It displayed enough intelligence that our central command council took its provided information seriously.”
“And did your central command stop to think about whether this word-we-can’t-understand had any ulterior motives?”
“Non-Doccan rarely approach the Doccan without ulterior motive,” Junior said. Had he any understanding of irony as a concept, he might’ve pointed out his current situation. “It was decided that the threat presented was legitimate enough to act without regard to possible external agendas from the [TRANSLATION ERROR].”
“Please stop saying that,” Corey whined.
“I am unaware of any reason to do so beyond your physical movements,” Junior said. To him, the flinching Corey did every time he said the word was just a strange muscle spasm, as the average Doccan did not experience pain.
“Just don’t fucking say it. Back to the point, you should know that whoever or whatever brought this stuff to you, they’re using you and your actions as a smokescreen to get away with their own shit,” Kamak said. “They’re pushing to change trade routes and pressure new parts of the galaxy. Maybe the threat is legitimate, but it is only legitimate because they are doing what they’re doing.”
“Noted.”
Junior’s quiet acceptance of the dramatic twist unsettled Kamak more than he’d like to admit. Maybe it was just because he’d lived through so many dramatic twists and turns lately, but he felt like that warranted more of a reaction. The emotionless Doccan accepted every new twist of fate the way a calculator would accept a new number plugged into a math problem.
“So...if we let you live, you’re going to tell all this to your planetary council or whatever?”
“New data will be considered.”
“Fan-fucking-tastic, I guess. Anyone else got questions for Big Blue Number Two?”
“I’ve got one,” Corey said. “How long ago did that weird thing bring you guys all this info?”
“Eighteen Doccan days ago.”
“That comes out to a few months, with everything converted,” Doprel said. The Doccan homeworld had a very slow rotation period.
“Once again putting it well before our run-in with that purple ship,” Corey said. “So we really did just get caught up in a plot that was already going on.”
“If that’s supposed to make me feel better, it doesn’t,” Kamak said.
“It might be useful, at least,” Corey mumbled.
“Final call for questions,” Kamak said. “I want to get out of this floating piece of crap.”
“Just the one,” Doprel said. “If what we’ve said is true, and the Doccan find out they’ve been manipulated into making their own situation worse...what will they do about it?”
“It is impossible to make an assessment of the situation without a consensus of at least one Doccan hive,” Junior said. “If not the full planetary council.”
“Well what would you, personally, do?”
“Obey the consensus of the hive or council.”
“Let’s say there’s no hive or council-”
“If all hives and the council have been obliterated, my priority must be to repopulate the Doccan species first and foremost, ignoring tertiary matters such as this.”
“Doprel,” Kamak said. “Whatever you’re looking for, you’re not going to get.”
“Yeah. Got it.”
Doprel’s sullen silence infected the rest of them, and their interrogation was put on pause for a moment.
“Has your interrogation ended?”
“What?”
“You have asked for final questions and are now silent. Is your interrogation finished?”
“Pretty much,” Kamak said. They’d learned this particular Doccan was next to useless, so they didn’t have much reason to continue. “You got a last request?”
“In some form. Do you intend to assault, kill, or otherwise impede the entity you believe has manipulated the Doccan?”
“That’s the plan, yeah,” Kamak said. “Speaking of assaulting or killing-”
Kamak hefted his heavy rifle once again.
“Cooperation will be beneficial,” Junior said. “Remove my restraints so that I may assist.”
“Oh, yes, sure, that sounds like a great idea,” Kamak said. “Assist us with what?”
“Surviving.”
Something Junior wouldn’t be doing much longer, if Kamak had anything to say about it. It was hard to read a Doccan, but he knew a bluff when he saw it. The captain raised his gun, and had it shoved down again by Doprel.
“Kamak.”
In any other situation, Doprel would’ve been on board with calling the bluff, but the Doccan didn’t bluff often. Kamak reluctantly accepted Doprel’s caution and played his part.
“Okay, this is me taking the bait,” Kamak said. “You’re going to help us survive what?”
“The patrolling warship on route to this location,” Junior said. “My willingness to discuss important information with you was a stalling tactic. We sent a distress ping shortly after you boarded.”
While Kamak started swearing, Farsus did the slightly more sensible thing. He hopped on the comms and turned back towards the Hermit.
‘Tooley, ping the long range scanners.”
“Okay. We got...huh,” Tooley said. It took a moment for the full details to come in, but even the most basic scan functions couldn’t miss the vessel coming their way. “That is a big one. I think that might be a Corrhulk.”
“They’ve kept a fucking Corrhulk flying for the past century?”
“What exactly is a Corrhulk?” Corey asked. He felt context was very important.
“It’s big and it’s got a lot of guns,” Kamak snapped. The Corrhulk was one of the last true warships the intergalactic community had mass-produced. Nowadays what few heavy cruisers existed were mostly just carriers for swarms of small fighters, but enough heavily-rusted Corrhulks were still shambling along in merchant fleets and pirate gangs to give the ship a reputation. “Tooley, what’s the Corrhulk’s ETA?”
“Couple drops if we’re lucky,” Tooley said. “I can get us out of here before then if you get back to the ship.”
“And provided it doesn’t try to chase us,” Kamak said.
“Undo my restraints and I will transmit your cooperation to the vessel,” Junior said. “There is benefit to mutual cooperation.”
“And if your friends on the ship don’t agree?”
“Then you will be killed.”
“Love the bluntness,” Kamak grunted. “I’ve got enough friends.”
“Kamak,” Doprel grunted.
“Oh, I’m sorry, are we making friends with your cousins who want to eat you now?”
“We have more enemies than allies,” Farsus said. “Questionable friends are still friends.”
“We’ve got like four drops on our escape window, guys,” Tooley said. “Whatever you’re going to do, do it now.”
“There are those among the Doccan who have spoken to our informant directly,” Junior said. “Further dialogue may yield further relevant information.”
“Oh fuck me,” Kamak said. “Whatever. Not like we’ve ever made a smart decision, might as well make a stupid one on purpose.”
With a reluctant nod from Kamak, Doprel reached down and untied the thick cables holding Junior in place. The titanic alien immediately drifted towards the console and started inputting a complex series of commands.
“Get back on the ship,” Kamak ordered. “Tooley, prep us to detach and start calculating a faster-than-light vector for us. We’re negotiating over comms, and if they say anything we don’t like, we’re out.”
“Oh, are we not going to invite the murderous sociopaths onto our ship for some drinks and snacks?”
“Just shut up and get us ready, Tooley!”
“Ready to die, maybe,” Tooley grumbled. She shut down her comm link in order to get the last word and started calculating their escape route while everyone else made a mad dash back to the Hard Luck Hermit. Before she rounded the corner and drifted out of sight, To Vo La Su took a look back at the cockpit, back at Junior.
He’d picked up the corpse of his dead copilot and was beginning to gnaw on it. No sense letting good nutrients go to waste. To Vo started to wonder what they were getting themselves into.