The hanger’s inner door opened and the five gnomes charged through it pointing their guns ahead of them. They quickly determined the hallway had no enemies for them to shoot. The gnome wearing the red hat checked the control panel for the first hanger’s inner door.

“Bah it’s locked, fine, we will take the ship first, Dirg you stay here and guard this door, kill any humans that try to escape.”

The other four gnomes pushed forward down the hallway slowly as Dirg remained guarding the door. The gnomes reached the next door, it slid open to reveal a recreation room with gym equipment and virtual reality pods but there was no one inside. The door on the other side of the hallway suddenly opened as Dominic stepped out as he screamed.

“Where the hells all the food!”

He suddenly stopped as he spotted the gnomes and turned around walking quickly back into the cafeteria as he muttered,

“maybe I should check the fridge again.”

The gnomes moved to follow him, they pointed their rifles towards the cafeteria, as two of them reached the door, they lent in, one going high the other low. They squeezed the triggers of their rifles sending lasers all around the room. Dominic crouched down hiding behind a counter as he waited for a lull in the gunfire.

“We have you trapped human, give up and we will make it quick!” the gnome with the red hat yelled into the room.

I could see Dominic crouching behind the counter slowly working a spell into his hand. The shorter gnome wearing the green hat stopped firing as he stepped into the room.

“Prince Wizzlekizz, maybe the human is already dead?” he asked as the red hat wearing gnome followed him into the room.

“Perhaps, but the humans are cowards and sometimes play dead.”

Dominic laughed as he stood up from behind the counter and thrust his hand forward as he yelled.

“I am not a human but I will send you off with a bang.”

A fireball flew from Dominic’s hand, racing across the room it hit the green hat-wearing gnome in the face and exploded. Both Gnomes were sent flying out of the cafeteria, they passed through the open recreation rooms’ door and slid across the floor. The two remaining gnomes decided to check on their mates as they fired their laser rifles into the cafeteria blindly.

they backed into the recreation room, using the door frame for cover they kept firing into the cafeteria, taking glances over their shoulders to check on the other two gnomes.

“Oh god!” the younger looking one suddenly exclaimed as he stopped shooting and turned to face his two friends.

The older one also stopped shooting as his eyes landed on the gnome that had been wearing the green hat. Who now had smoke rising from his chest and face. He was dead. Prince Wizzlekizz was slowly rising into a sitting position as he fumbled around the ground for his red hat.

“The hell, did he use magic?” he asked in a woozy voice.

The other two gnomes leapt back from the door frame as a second fireball flew past them, it missed them by inches and caused their beards to singe slightly. Their leader was not as lucky. The fireball hit him in his open mouth before exploding sending pieces of his head flying in all directions, this time he was dead too. The younger gnome, having stumbled back to the door frame after the fireball had passed him, saw his dead prince and quickly turned to leave the room.

“screw this, I’m getting out of here before I end up dead too!”

He ran out of the room. He quickly stopped dead in his tracks, his mouth slowly falling open. Dominic had caught the older of the two who had already been making a run for it and was holding him off the ground in one hand. The gnome's rifle was laying at Dominic’s feet as the young vampire drank the gnome's blood from his neck.

“Can I please have this one?” a soft polite voice came from behind the surviving gnome.

The gnome turned to see a young woman standing behind him with her hands clasped over her lower abdomen. She smiled warmly to the gnome as Dominic responded.

“Sure, he is all yours.”

The gnome took a few steps back as the colour drained from his face.

“Wait, please wait, I want to negotiate!”

Mistie started to giggle softly as she turned her head towards the ceiling.

“My King, the food wishes to negotiate with a dungeon.”

She looked back down at the gnome not even waiting for me to respond before she told the gnome.

“Oh well, I guess dungeons don’t negotiate with food.”

The gnome dropped his rifle as he turned and fled. He only made it twenty feet before Mistie had grabbed the back of his shirt and lifted him off the ground. Her fangs sank into his neck and she began to drink greedily. I turned my focus from them after I sent Keisha to the last gnome.

As she walked towards the gnome he raised his rifle.

“Do not fire that little thing at a vampire unless you seek death.” Keisha snapped at him.

He ignored her warning and started shooting lasers down the hallway causing her to dodge and fall back into the cafeteria where Dominic and Mistie had moved to enjoy their food in comfort.

“Lying scum, we know only humans were aboard that fleeing barge, you can’t fool me!”

Keisha turned to look up at the ceiling. Amelia came running down the hallway dodging the laser fire closing in on the gnome. Keisha, seeing the opportunity, jumped out of the cafeteria and grabbed a laser rifle as she rolled across the deck and into the recreation room. Amelia didn't dodge into a room, instead, she scooped the other rifle up and continued to advance as she fired back at the gnome.

Dirg suddenly under laser fire decided to dive across the hallway and slap the panel to open the second hangars’ inner door. Keisha lept forwards extending her hand towards Dirg, she managed to reach dirg and swiped her claws down his side as he fell through the opening door. Dirg screamed as he hit the deck. My full attention was on the action. It was so dramatic that I felt like I needed a box of popcorn as I watched Dirg dragging himself across the deck towards the dropship. Keisha was slowly following him like a cat playing with its toy. I suddenly remembered I had organic Materials laying around and quickly sent my two construction drones to clean it up. They flew down and soon arrived in the recreation room. And began to tear the corpses apart and feed them into an opening in the bottom of their sphere.

I slowly pulled my attention away from all the action. I had quickly grown bored of watching Keisha stalk Dirg before the search of their dropship. Dominic and Mistie had both wandered towards the hanger door between them and the humans. Amelia was laying on the floor in a pool of blood, appearing to be dead. I ignored her as I could see her wounds had already begun to heal. I glanced at the humans watching them, they had been sitting on the deck next to the barge, but now they were standing up as they psyched themselves up for something.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Keisha, leave Dirg alive, send him back with a message, you know the one,” I said as I watched the humans slowly approaching their hangers’ inner door.

Then I heard Dirgs' voice. “Message? What message?”

Keisha smiled as she loomed over him.

“Thank you for coming to play with us, please come again.”

Keisha turned and walked back to the door. As she reached it she turned to look at Dirg still laying on the floor staring at her.

“Oh and bring more food next time, i'm hungry.”

She then closed the door behind her. The colour in Dirgs' face quickly drained away as he continued to stare at the closed door. After a few seconds, his eyes unfocused as they moved back and forth before he let out a scream.

"What the hell? How did a dungeon core give me a quest to bring back twelve people as well as five hundred metal."

My attention was instantly on him as I had not given him a quest nor had any idea how to do so. Dirgs' face suddenly changed to one of glee

“This is perfect, I can send that jumped up git Mcgregor and his boys here to die, then I can take over their territory and get elevated in my clan.”

He smiled happily as he jumped to his feet and rushed back to his dropship. Just before he passed through the hatch I heard him say with immense glee in his voice

“maybe I’ll even get a red hat of command!”

The hatch closed and as I watched the dropship slowly and a little wobbly, lift off and fly out of the hanger. I smiled as I turned my attention back to the humans who had gathered around the hangers’ inner door. My vampires were waiting for them on the other side. It was at that moment that I received a notification that the construction drones had finished cleaning up the four gnome body’s and had received fifty resources and one hundred organic Materials.

I was about to mentally click on a young vampire when a knocking interrupted my train of thought and caused me to look at the humans as one of them knocked on the door.

“Hello?” he called out.

Dominic suddenly pushed Keisha out of the way as he placed both of his hands on the door and whispered almost predatorily back.

“Hello, has the little rabbit come to play?”

I watched confused expressions pass across the human’s faces as they looked at each other. The man turned back to the door before calling out.

“We are not rabbits, we are human, we wanted to thank your captain for rescuing us from the gnomes, may we peacefully board your ship?”

On the bridge, I saw Cody quickly rush over to a console and push down a couple of buttons.

“This is Captain Cody, I have sealed myself on the bridge but the rest of the ship belongs to a dungeon core, I strongly recommend you do not board this ship.”

I watched all the humans take a few steps away from the door. A few in the back even bolted for the safety the barge promised. The man was still at the front of the group and he was glancing between the barge and the door.

“I am human,” Cody suddenly added.

I am not sure how I did it, but I made a holographic display on the wall appear next to the door so they could see Cody as well as a second one showing the four vampires waiting on the other side of the door, at the same time a holographic display appeared above the console in front of Cody so he could see the humans. I watched the look on the man’s face relax a little.

“Cody, I am Captain John Dartin, you say you are on the bridge of this dungeon ship, do you have control?”

Cody began to look around the console in front of him as a frown appeared on his face.

“At the moment I have limited control, why?”

I knew Cody had no control at all, but I was curious to see where this was going. However, before the man could reply one of the other humans grabbed his shoulder and asked.

“John, are you sure about this? You can't take control of a dungeon ship not really and in attempting it you will put all our lives at risk, the gnomes have been dealt with we can safely escape back to Ka’ust and deliver the information on the invasion forces numbers, let’s just leave.”

John turned around suddenly to stare at her.

“You fool, now the dungeon will think we are against it!”

One of the cameras on the outside of my ship could see Dirgs' dropship flying away. I mentally clicked the young vampire twice. The construction drones got to work on them as Cody asked.

“What do you mean, Invasion of Ka’ust?”

The woman glared at John before looking up at the ceiling.

“About two months ago we received a transmission from a race that called themselves the Slazkar. The transmission came with a video, they looked like lizards but their front legs ended in hands instead of feet and they walked upright. They declared Ka’ust to be within their territory and then demanded that Ka’ust hand over all of its resources for the good of the Slazkar empire. The end of the transmission came with blueprints and instructions on how to build and pilot two spaceships. An asteroid mining vessel and a long haul barge. However, the military being what it is, decided to see how they could weaponise these ships. When the Slazkar found out about this it caused… issues, and they declared war. Oh, we also received protocols and instructions for delivering the resources.”

John nodded his head as he turned away from her.

“Yes, we have already had a few skirmishes with them and managed to survive but now they are sending other races to soften us up a bit, like the gnomes.”

Cody frowned slightly.

“So, what do you want from this ship?” he asked.

John suddenly smiled as he looked at the holographic display and replied.

“I am so glad you asked, Cody.”

I suddenly had a feeling of dread, like something really bad was about to happen.

“On behalf of the United Peoples of Ka'ust, I hereby declare this frigate class ship is now the property of the Ka'usts' Military, under the authority of-"

Cody started to laugh, interrupting John as he waved his hand back and forth.

“Wait, wait I am confused, first you tried to come aboard peacefully in hope of convincing the captain to change course when that failed you moved on to stealing the ship from the captain under the authority of a planet’s government, is that right?”

John straightened his back a bit more as he glared at Cody.

“For the good of the planet every human must do their part to defend their homeworld and this dungeon ship will be placed between Ka'ust and the invading force so they can board the ship allowing it to whittle down their numbers before they move onto Ka'ust buying humanity the time it needs to prepare!”

Cody’s face slowly formed a frown on it as he looked down at the controls.

“What you say makes a lot of sense, but how are you… oh, the military is messing with the mining lasers to turn them into weapons aren’t they?”

John nodded his head.

“Yes they are, but we need more time to fix them to all the ships and get them into position”

Dominic started banging on the door.

"Open the door little rabbit, I'm hungry!"

John's head turned to look at the holographic display of Dominic.

"Shut up, you have no say here monster!"

Dominics face crumpled into anger. He took a few deep breaths before smiling sweetly.

"Oh little rabbit, you might as well just open this door and let me feast because this ship will not make it to your precious planet any time soon"

Cody let out a sigh as he looked down. I could see Cody cursing Dominic out in his head. John slowly turned his head to look at Dominic.

"What do you mean 'will not make it to my planet any time soon.’ Is there a problem with the engines?"

Dominic opened his mouth to reply but it was Cody who spoke first.

"There is nothing wrong with the engines, I assure you, I have made sure this ship is in complete working order!"

Something about that caught my attention as I slowly turned my full attention to Cody.

“Cody, how did you get aboard this ship and why was you messing with that control panel?”

I saw Cody’s facial features twitch slightly as he slowly backed away from the console. I saw the three vampires by the inner hanger door bristle before turning and running down the hallway headed for the bridge. Cody stopped about halfway between the console and the bridge door as his right hand reached for a bracer on his left wrist that I had not noticed. His face was one of annoyance.

“Damn, you were not meant to work it out this fast. On the bright side, I guess, enough damage is already done.”

he quickly typed something on his bracer before vanishing in a bright flash of light. Slowly turning my sight to the humans in the hanger I asked the only thing I could think of.

“Humans don't have that level of technology, do they?” all the humans started to shake their heads slowly.

“Yea, I thought not.” I sighed.