“Second boarding party accounted for,” Pirra said over her system.

It hadn’t gone as smoothly as the last, with Squad Two being caught in their pincer as the Hev had pulled back. The fight had gotten messy, and the boarders scattered.

But none had escaped.

The Hev were in their territory, and even more than their technological edge, this was their biggest advantage. The ship tracked everything; even if somehow they could avoid sensors, the ship would know if a door was opened or hell – even detect the movements of air where it didn’t think there were beings.

The Craton was a smart ship.

Pirra felt a swell of pride at that thought, and her mind jumped for a moment to Alexander – who she checked again and confirmed was safe deeper in the ship, in one of her many bunkers. Short of a direct hit by a relativistic projectile, he’d be safe in there . . .

But she couldn’t spend more time on him now. Not only because of the more important work, but because she couldn’t let her guard down.

“We have two down,” Kiseleva told her. “Lal is injured, and Suarez is KIA.”

Pirra took a deep breath. “Is Mwanajuma looking at Lal?”

“Yes,” Kiseleva said flatly.

“And how about you?” Pirra asked, noticing the human woman’s limp.

“I am fine. There is no blood, is just minor sprain,” she replied.

Pirra was not convinced, and checking the woman’s vital signs, she saw that the woman’s suit was administering some decently strong painkillers to keep her going. But nothing seemed broken or bleeding, so that was good.

“Go to Squad Three. Send Zivai and Guoming to reinforce squad two. Come back with Hesson. If you still think you can fight then, you can stay.”

Kiseleva frowned severely, but nodded.

She looked to the rest of her squad. “Najafi, LaMarr, you’re with me. We’ve got another Hev boarding team on the scopes, and-“

A boom shook the ship.

“What the hell was that?!” LaMarr asked.

Pirra’s system flooded with new data. “Looks like a Hev boarding pod just detonated. On the Equator Ring . . . damn, it’s done a number on the local systems.” She shook her head. “We can’t account for the whole group. We need to go check it out – make sure none of the boarders are still alive.”

They were currently holding a crossroads from the outer parts of the ship to the inner, where they’d ambushed the last Hev group. Pirra made a chopping motion down the hall. “Open this blast door, we can meet-“

The door began to open, too quickly, she thought.

Even before it was open more than a crack, her drones began to fire. She hadn’t even registered what she was seeing, when a muzzle flash blinded her.

Stumbling back, she had caught only a glimpse of the Hev’s weapon as it lifted – and suddenly she was thrown back.

Shots were going off above her, and she heard voices calling out over the radio, drones whizzing by above her.

Above her? She realized she was on her back, and moving – someone was pulling her.

Tilting her head back, she saw that it was Kiseleva, dragging her away. Others rushed past on the flanks, firing. Second and third squads had arrived to reinforce them.

The firefight was intense, but brief. In only a handful of seconds, the fire stopped, and she looked back towards the now-open blast doors, seeing an entire unit of Hev on the ground. All of her team was still standing.

“I’m all right!” she said, before she was even sure she was. If her armor hadn’t held, she’d be dead.

Her faceplate was cracked, she could see it now.

Kiseleva stopped and looked down at her face. “You look in one piece.”

“I think I’m fine,” she said. “Thank the sky for armor . . . Is anyone else hurt?”

“No,” she heard Jack Lal call. He had bandages on his upper arm, but seemed all right. “The one that shot you was the only one who got a shot off. I think something was distracting them.”

“You were very lucky,” Kiseleva said to her. “The officer only had a pistol. If he’d had a rifle . . .”

“It was just a pistol? It looked . . . a lot bigger than that,” Pirra said.

“I imagine so, when you’re staring down it.”

Pirra got to her feet, a little shaky, but forcing herself not to show it. She could have nightmares later. Right now she needed to focus.

“We didn’t know about this squad,” she realized.

Hesson leaned out of a room. “They were using cutting frames to go through the walls and avoid chokepoints,” he said. “Still, the ship’s systems should have known about them and been tracking them . . .”

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

Pirra’s stomach twisted. She turned on her radio. “Commander Pirra to all commands; some Hev are evading the ship’s tracking through means we’re not yet sure of. Have everyone keep their eyes open.”

Kai Yong Fan’s voice came back to her. “We read you, Commander. Be advised that Hev bodies may be rigged with biological or chemical weapons that activate on death.”

Her eyes widened. “Everyone back out of the corridor!” she called. “The Hev-“

“Shit, I’m getting the warning!” someone called. “Some kind of poison cocktail. Shouldn’t be an issue unless your suit is compromised, though-“

Pirra snapped her gaze to Lal. His eyes had gone wide.

Then hers fixed onto the cracks in her own helmet.

“Move!” she barked.

They moved, and she ran a diagnostic over herself. Her vitals were elevated, and her system began to figure out what the hell the chemical compound was.

“Jack, are you okay?” she asked.

The man coughed. “I think I got a whiff of something, Commander, but-” He lurched, and began to spasm.

“We need a med unit down here,” she barked. “Anti-tox team!”

Kiseleva put a hand on her shoulder.

“It won’t affect you,” she said calmly. “It’s designed for humans.”

Pirra’s eyes went back to Lal, who was foaming at the mouth. Med drones were hovering around him, and two heavier ones lifted him.

His vitals were dropping fast.

A drone was checking her, and she saw the confirmation of what Kiseleva was saying appear. The compound had been identified, and while it was toxic to her kind in large doses, in small amounts like she’d gotten her body would detoxify it in a few hours.

Pirra watched for only a moment before tearing her eyes away.

“We have a job to do still,” she said, her voice hoarse. “Spread out the drones to search for stealth Hev teams. I don’t want a single one of them getting past us. And get me a replacement helmet.”

----------------------------------------

The three coilguns of the Craton fired again, one after another in a staggered barrage as the ship rotated. The three shots took two different ships, piercing one of them twice.

“Secondary explosions,” Jaya commented. The one they’d hit twice was breaking up. The other one had its engines flare off and began to simply coast.

“Forty-five heavy enemy ships disabled,” Urle said. “Six dozen more lighter vessels knocked out. The rest are rapidly getting out of close range, Captain. Should we save the lasers and PDC ammo?”

“Yes,” Brooks said. “But don’t let up on the missile fire. Go for engines; if they’re already burning away and we take those out, then they can’t come back to threaten us later.”

Kai Yong Fan was clearly listening intently to something, and Brooks looked to her. “How are we faring with the boarding parties?”

She listened a moment longer, then looked up.

“We have successfully contained and destroyed the majority of boarding parties, but three are still unaccounted for. Commander Pirra’s team found one who had tech that was letting them confuse the ship’s sensors somehow – it’s not something we’ve seen before.”

“Something of Fesha origin, I’d wager,” Urle said sourly. “We were wrong to think the P’G’Maig were only getting cheap trading trash – this is some advanced tech.”

Brooks glanced at the scopes and saw that the Fesha ship was still out there, holding far beyond weapon’s range. Watching all that unfolded.

“Pirra is re-deploying her drones to find the missing boarders,” Fan continued. “On top of that, at least some of the Hev seem to be booby-trapped, and are releasing toxic compounds upon death. We’ve had almost a score of casualties as a result, mostly among the Volunteer units.”

Clenching his jaw hard, he closed his eyes for a moment, holding back any rash words that wanted to come forth.

Then, taking a deep breath, he collected himself. Too many depended on him for his blood to be anything but cold.

“Order all teams to take extra precautions, and deploy drones to counter and clean the contaminated areas-“

Warning lights flashed across the board again, and Brooks looked up.

“More Hev ships incoming,” Cenz said. “A sizable force, at least thirty battleships and ten times that in support ships. They are . . . ten minutes missile range out.”

Brooks felt their eyes all turn to him, looking for, hoping, expecting that he had another miracle to pull out.

He felt, for the first time, a constriction in his chest.

“Reload all missile racks, and prepare to fire,” he said.

The officers nodded, and turned back to their command consoles.

To the bitter end.

----------------------------------------

The explosions, coilgun firings, and other sounds had died down. Apollonia had been listening to the confused din as she had sat against the wall.

Was it calm now?

Opening the door to the room, she peered out into the hall.

They had said there had been boarders, it had broadcasted as a priority into her earpiece. But she hadn’t heard a thing since the force of impacts – which she’d seen enough movies to know were probably the boarding pods.

It had taken time for her mind to come to the realization that just because there hadn’t been fighting here . . . that it might not last.

Her heart was pounding in her chest as she went out.

In all the shows, there were squads of soldiers facing each other down long halls, explosions and drones and bullets flying, with beings dying by the score.

The last thing she wanted was to be caught in that.

Her knees were still trembling, and she knew she had to get to safety. But where? The bunkers were not going to open for her, she felt. Especially since she had left her tablet in the last one.

On New Vitriol the emergency alarms had been tripped regularly, sometimes for good reasons and sometimes fake ones, but she had found out first-hand that once those doors were closed, they were not going to open for stragglers, especially those who couldn’t positively ID themselves.

Made sense on some level, she thought. But the fact that the most helpless seemed to often be those stragglers, she felt that on some level that policy was partly intentional to help get rid of such people.

The Sapient Union wasn’t like that, right?

She thought they might not, and she didn’t want to risk going there and getting stuck out.

She didn’t have her tablet, but there were terminals in the halls. They seemed everywhere, but she didn’t see one now that she needed it. She began walking down the hall as fast as she could manage, having no direction but at least wanting to move, hoping luck was on her side.

She found one after what felt like minutes, and brought it up. It scanned for her system and gave an error, and she let out a curse. Of course everything was locked down!

A memory came to her; a code Jaya had drilled into her in their training. It was long – actually a whole poem that, Jaya had admitted to her, she thought was rather stupid.

She didn’t even remember what it meant, and didn’t know the language. But the words were easy to spell, and there was a mnemonic for remembering it . . .

Humming to herself, she tapped it in. The first try failed, and she grew frustrated, but forced herself to do it again, slowly. Her hand was shaking, but she managed.

“Basic authorization given,” she system told her.

That was all she’d get . . . even with that crazy long code. But maybe it’d be enough.

“Are there are any open bunkers?” she asked. They flashed up on the screen, but nearly all of them – at least those near her – were showing as closed.

“Any other secure areas?” she asked. Some others popped up. The medical area was a hope for her – until she saw how far it was. And the internal rails were only being used for emergency functions. She did not want to have to walk that far. She’d have to skirt the command deck, and that area definitely would not let her in without her system . . .

One room was closer to her, though. An armory.

And the officer in charge was listed as He That Squats on Yellow Sand.

Her heart beat faster. She had to go there.

She tried to contact him, but the system only reported an error. All non-essential communication was shut down at the moment.

She would have to walk. But it wasn’t far.