“Activate personal shields.”
A slight electronic hum rose from among his gathered men as they each activated their force shields, their preferred close-combat weapons held confidently in their hands. Unlike most of the Hexguard Corps, Eric had insisted his personal action team be trained for various unorthodox scenarios ranging from exo-suit assault to voidship defense. In a Corps made up of vicious killers too violent and independent-minded for the regular Union military, his crew had built a reputation for ferocity and efficiency unmatched by any other.
"Let us out, Pig."
The depot doors hissed as they shot upward, revealing the surprised expressions of the Dovans clustered in front of them.
“Give ‘em hell, lads!” Eric shouted, gratified to see the alarm and shock on the alien’s faces rapidly turn into fear. His squad roared in answer, a sonic wall of killing intent moving outward as they hacked and thrust at their surprised foes.
Eric was among the first to make contact, his heavy blade chopping down and to the right to take off the enemy commanding officer’s legs from under him. As dark blood sprayed and the officer fell, Eric barreled forward, slamming the shimmering surface of his personal shield down onto the toppling body. The shield discharged, breaking into ionized particles of energy that coursed through the body of the hapless officer while his killer leapt over him and onto the second line.
With his shield temporarily deactivated, Eric took hold of the hilt of his bloodstained blade with both hands and swung at the fear-frozen second line, bowling them over and sending bodies flying with hideous wounds spouting dark, stinking blood. His target was the shattergun crew at the back, who were frantically reloading the bulky weapon as the Hexguard tore into their comrades.
Eric reached them just as the crew's loader slammed down the shattergun’s cover.
His first swing took the gunner’s arm off at the shoulder, and his second slammed his blade to the hilt into the loader’s sternum. The rest of the gun crew fell back as they scrambled to free their personal weapons, only to be swept away as the rest of Eric’s men piled onto them.
Eric planted a foot on the loader’s chest and pulled out his blade, taking the time to look over the crowded corridor.
Pushing forward on his right, Bull was methodically chopping down screaming Dovans with his cruelly-serrated axe, while Serra was charging forward with a chilling smile on her dark, blood-streaked face. Her heavy mace swung up and down with clockwork efficiency, her enhanced musculature ignoring fatigue and the shock of her blows as she broke bones and shattered armored skulls.
The entire skirmish was over in seconds, the last Dovan dying messily against the blast doors that Pig had remotely slammed down at the far end of the corridor. Serra straightened from her fighting crouch, flicking her mace to rid itself of blood and brain matter before she thrust it back onto a sling on her belt.
“Medic!”
The cry went out and Eric saw one of the men close to Serra's end of the corridor being supported down to the deck by his comrades, a large, heavily bleeding wound on his thigh. Serra rushed over, pulling her standard-issue rucksack off her back. She was beside the injured man in moments, pushing aside the men who had begun to cut away the fabric of the man’s pants, clasping a bulky device on to the pale blood-spattered flesh above the ragged wound.
Eric winced as Serra activated the device, knowing that at that moment, hundreds of fine, metal filaments under the direction of a specialized medical AI was burrowing into the man’s flesh. Seconds later the bleeding from the man’s wound stopped, and Serra quickly and expertly cleaned the wound with an aerosol spray before stapling the edges of the wound shut and placing a bandage over it. In minutes, her job was done, and she was turning to Eric for further instructions.
The Captain gave the young woman a nod of appreciation, pointing at the blast doors before giving her new orders. “Serra, I want that door rigged to blow if anyone messes with it.”
“Will do, Cap.”
“Rome, get working on those traps, I want them set up every five feet down this entire hallway.”
“On it, Sir.”
“Doc, get those turrets live and deadly.” Eric pointed at the bullet-riddled remains of the defense turrets that held the gimballed autoguns supposed to defend the corridor from invaders.
“The rest of you gather anything useful then get this area cleared.”
Voices rose acknowledging his orders and idle chatter picked up.
Eric turned his attention to the Dovan corpses around him, his fists clenched tight to hide his excitement. This was his secret vice, the second reason he had been forcefully retired from the military, the dark compulsion that Eric fought against every single time he killed a foe.
Loot.
The psychotherapists and empath-moderators who had worked on him had labeled it a variant of gaming addiction, but rooted in actual lived experiences. They established that it had started out as a survival mechanism, a way for Eric to keep himself supplied and fed during that long winter. From there the pathology had evolved until it came about that Eric became compulsively drawn to loot, especially from those he had personally killed.
Time, discipline, and lots of drugs and therapy had allowed him to tone down the intensity of the compulsion somewhat, but stress and excitement, for example engaging in close-quarters combat, always brought it to the fore. Eric had learned that quick actions while everyone was distracted helped a lot to calm down the raging need to ransack his foes, allowing him to get past the initial craving fast enough that his men never noticed his affliction.
Moving with practiced speed, Eric quickly divested his victims of ammo magazines, usable consumables, and small easily-concealed valuables, helped along by Pig’s tags and prompts, moving from body to body in a way that suggested strategic scrounging instead of pathological need. He was done within a few minutes, cravings satisfied, allowing himself time to relax and work on the next phase of his defense strategy.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
Thirty minutes later Eric called his squad together for a new command briefing.
Serra and Rome had finished rigging the corridor into a multi-stage exploding death trap, while Doc’s crew had managed to get at least one of the defense turrets patched up and serviceable while also modifying the captured shattergun to automatically fire at whatever the defense turret was aiming at. Pleased with their work, Eric showed everyone a defensive plan designed to stall the enemy commandos and make them more cautious as they tried to break through into the research facilities beyond.
“Remember, our goal here is to play for time.” Eric said as he finished his briefing, rubbing at his chin as he took in the uncharacteristically solemn expressions of his men. The reality of their trapped situation was beginning to sink in, but Eric was damned if he allowed soldiers under his command to spiral into that morass of second-guesses and defeatism.
“H-X has the Violetta and the Gaviard in orbit with a full Corps battalion and ordinance enough to break up a moon. All we have to do is keep these Dovan assholes from getting to the good stuff before the rest of our boys get down here and stomp them down!”
There was a chorus of assent from his troops, and Eric felt the mood lift. He forced confidence into his voice as he finished off his speech. “Keep smart and shoot straight. Once we’re topside again the first five rounds are on me!”
A cheer went up as the Hexguards set off in their individual tasks, though Eric felt it was due to the reminder of the two Corporate cruisers in orbit above the planetoid more than his little speech. He just hoped he could get most of them out.
Shaking his head Eric went down the ramp and headed for the doors to the Inner Lab. Before he had closed half the distance Doc had caught up to him, and Eric almost laughed at the grim expression on the man’s narrow face.
“What’s the real plan, Captain?”
“What do you mean soldier?” Eric countered as he glanced briefly at his helm display to make sure he was off the squad net as he continued walking.
“You know as well as I do topside doesn’t even know we got hit.” Doc hissed, catching hold of Eric’s arm, stopping both of them. “I don’t see how they’d be sending down the cavalry right this minute.”
“We don’t really know that do we, Doc? Which is why I need you to get the eggheads and techs we got down here to start working on a way to get a signal through.”
“Sure, I can do that.” Doc said with frown, but he had calmed down enough to let go of Eric’s arm. “In the meantime, what are you doing?”
Eric shrugged and continued his walk, his face grim as death.
“I’m going to find out what the hell we’re guarding in this festering bunghole that warrants a Dovan kill-brigade getting shoved down our throats.”
“We captured a dragon.”
“Come again?”
Eric was in the large, beautifully-appointed Deputy Director’s office at the administrative floor of the facility.
The Deputy Director himself, Dr. Alfred Lee, was bald, slightly overweight, and sweating profusely even within the carefully air-controlled room. The big man lounged back in his oversized armchair, trying and failing to project confidence and authority. Various certificates, awards, and prints showing Alfred with several important-looking aristos covered the wall behind the large desk. A bottle of very expensive Remdan Scotch was half-empty before him and going by the smell, it looked as if Alfred had been fortifying his nerves extensively since the raid started.
“We. Captured. A. Dragon.”
The alcohol had obviously loosened the Deputy Directors’ lips because he hardly hesitated before starting to speak. Sure, his tone was sarcastic and condescending but usually Eric didn’t mind that too much as long as he learned what he needed to know about a situation.
Although, to be fair, this was nowhere near what he had expected to hear at all.
“Do you mean some sort of space monster…”
“I mean a Dragon, Captain. Horns, wings, claws, the works.”
Eric’s disbelief was clearly showed on his face because the Deputy Director gave a bark of amusement before settling back in his chair with a glass half full of liquor in his pudgy hands.
“Sounds like fairy-fucking stories huh? Well take a look y’self.”
The man must have flipped some sort of switch because the entire left wall of the office shimmered and became transparent, showing the laboratory floor, which was off-limits even to Company security, that occupied the entire lower half of the facility. A large holding stage dominated the middle of the room, looking like some sort of metal rib-cage.
It was what the cage held however, that drew Eric’s attention.
A monstrous, generally reptilian-type creature was held down by huge chains in the middle of the stage. Judging by the size of the people working nearby Eric figured the creature would stand approximately four meters high at the shoulder, though its prone posture made accurately judging its dimensions difficult. The creatures’ entire body was covered by thick, tough-looking black and silver scales that shimmered with a weird dark iridescence. Large leather bands containing two-foot wide satchels were strapped all around the monsters’ body and under its wings. Or rather, one wing and the jagged stump of the other. A huge muzzle covered the front of the creatures’ wedge-shaped head, its heavy, angular shape sweeping back to a pair of large, sigil-carved horns. The creatures’ huge eyes were closed, giving the appearance that it was sleeping peacefully.
“Hellfire!” Eric whispered, his brain trying to make sense of what his eyes were showing him.
“Impressive, isn’t it?”
Alfred had walked over to stand by Eric’s side to look out over the floor.
“How did you…?”
“It was actually the Dovan’s that captured it,” The man said as if in answer to Eric’s half-asked question, but Eric could see the Deputy Director was just talking, glad to have someone he could unburden himself onto. “They chanced upon it somewhere in the Underwend, literally bumped into its unconscious body while in transit. They managed to get it onto the ship and sedate the creature, but not before sustaining extensive damage to their ship’s superstructure.”
“Emergency exit?”
“Yes,” Alfred slurred, swaying slightly as he shoved his free hand into his pocket. “An H-X cargo ship followed their distress beacon and found them adrift. The cargo ship Captain was smart enough to see the potential of the situation and called over Corp-Navy to acquire the asset.”
“So, we stole this from the Dovan’s?”
“Acquired Captain… we acquired this asset.” Alfred said, gesturing at the dragon with his glass. “That over there, is a one-of-a-kind opportunity, one that comes very rarely in human history. Its secrets are better with us than any filthy xenoform polity.”
So the Deputy Director was a xenophobe as well as a thieving ass. Figures.
“Which is why you and your men have to get rid of it and every sign that it was ever here now that the base is compromised.” Alfred drawled, with what looked like genuine regret on his face.
“What?”
The Deputy Director turned to face Eric, and for once the man’s jowly face was deadly serious. “We can’t have the Dovan’s recovering any evidence of what we have here Captain, not when such evidence could incite an inter-species war.”
“My orders…”
“Are now overridden. I am invoking Protocol Zero-Zero Red.”
“I don’t…”
"Pig? What is this?"
“Ok… Umm… Authorization code please.”
“Sovereign, Lever, Multiple, Dinner, Five.”
“What is the secondary?” Eric asked automatically. “Home is the safest place to be.” “Ok, Director.” Eric said resignedly, saluting the man who stood before him. “You’ve established your bonafides. What do you need done?” “Glad you asked son, glad you asked.”