Adjani cursed as he flew through the maelstrom of battle, knowing full well that this was not his preferred battlefield. “Just a little furtha’,” Adjani said to himself as he rapidly approached the Eclipse dreadnaught. Slapping the side of his neck, his armor activated. Subdermal implants sprouted from his back and wrapped around his body and head with thin sheets of black carbon steel, creating an airtight seal. The metal around his head morphed into a faceless mask with a pair of piercing red eyes.
At his feet, a large, black, rigid backpack that held his weapons and ammunition sat, waiting to be used. He pulled it up into his lap, pulled on the shoulder straps, and secured them behind his back just before he pulled a lever in the cockpit of his ship and promptly ejected himself into the vacuum of space at incredible speed. The HUD of his helmet tracked his trajectory toward one of the holes in the ship that the missiles made, mapping his speed and distance to the target in meters. The only reason he wasn’t killed immediately by this action was because Monarch’s supporting fighters intercepting any ships on his flight path.
As he drew closer to the target location, he began spotting small details he hadn’t noticed before. A small glimmer of blue light from a force field shone down a hallway at an odd angle. Adjani smiled as force fields were one of his specialties. He moved his backpack to his back, pulled out two machine pistols with fifty-round magazines in each hand, and fired a few shots to his right and down to bring him up a few meters before firing a quick burst up to stop his ascent. The breach in the dreadnaught’s hull grew ever closer at a rapid pace, and just before he got to the ship, he sent a mental command through his HUD to activate his shields as he brought his legs to his chest and entered the ship.
His thin shield encountered the force field, and he passed right through the shield, boarding the ship at a near-unstoppable speed as the artificial gravity took over, and he began to drop slowly. The final thing he noticed as he passed through the forcefield were the half-dozen unprepared crewmembers just barely noticing him as they worked to keep the ship’s internal systems from failing.
Adjani smiled from within his helmet as he aimed and fired a volley of bullets that shredded the two nearest of the crew and wounded the others just before he collided feet-first with the third crewmate, shattering their ribs and crushing their heart and lungs. He rolled off the woman he impacted to bleed off his momentum before sliding into a crouch and firing back at the remaining three Eclipse crew, killing them in another volley of bullets as he slid down the hall, creating sparks from the metal of his suit and the metal floor. He only stopped when he impacted the wall at the end of the hall, his suit dampening the impact and keeping his head and neck stable to prevent whiplash.
He stood as an alarm blared throughout the ship as a woman yelled, “Intruder alert! We’ve been boarded on level three!”
Adjani turned around, his red eyes locking onto the woman down the hall as she yelled into an intercom. He smiled as he let her yell her warnings for a second longer before firing his one remaining bullet at her. The bullet impacted her right temple and splattered her brain all the way down the hall. With a chuckle, he holstered his machine pistols at his waist as his backpack unfolded, revealing two small robotic arms that reloaded the pistols, and the top of his pack opened to present him with a variety of choice weapons.
“Dis is goin’ to be fun,” Adjani said with a smile as he pulled out a semi-auto rifle. The black steel of the rifle blended perfectly with his armor, with the only difference being a glowing yellow line at the end of the barrel and a glowing circle near the middle for the sights. His pack closed once he pulled the rifle out and finished reloading his machine pistols.
His HUD pinged and showed the path to the bridge as Violet’s voice came over the comms, “All ships! Re-group and defend the main fleet! We need to buy enough time for everyone to capture the flagships and win the battle! Adjani, Oni, Sparky, you’ve got ten minutes to capture them. Don’t fail.”
Adjani laughed and said, “Ten minutes?! HA! Dis’ll take me two.” He cocked his rifle and ran down the hall jumping over the fresh corpse he had made. Three men rounded the corner at the end of the hall, and Adjani took aim and fired two shots. The first bullet passed through the head of the first man, turning his head into red mist, ricocheting off the wall behind him and hitting the third man in the side of his head, killing both instantly, while the second bullet splattered the second man’s head on the wall with the first man’s. “Twenty, nineteen,” Adjani muttered as he kept running, never slowing.
He rounded the corner the men had come from and saw six more people already running to cover after seeing their friends die before them. Adjani fired at the closest person’s knee before firing two more shots down the hall. The first shot passed through their knee, causing the woman to scream in pain as she collapsed into the hall. The bullet hit the ground, ricocheting up and into another person’s ankle, who hid behind cover, before planting itself in the shoulder of a man further down the hall, causing him to stumble as he fell into cover. The second shot passed through the heads of two more men while the third killed the last man who entered the hall.
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Without slowing down, Adjani drew one of his machine pistols and dispatched the two people who fell into the hall screaming in pain before firing a shot at the ground before the final man. It ricocheted off the ground, hitting the other side of the doorway the final man hid in, and blew his brains out the back of his head. “Eighteen, seventeen, sixteen, fifteen,” Adjani said as he holstered his machine pistol, still not slowing down.
Adjani rounded the next corner, ducked through the first door on his right, and began climbing the servis stares to the top decks of the ship, taking the steps two at a time. Within two minutes, he reached the top deck of the ship without running into any more of the crew as they most likely swept level three of the ship. He peaked through the door to see if anybody was guarding the bridge, and to his disappointment, he counted fifteen heavily armed men and women guarding the bridge.
Bracing himself against the doorway, he took three quick, deep breaths before taking one long, deep breath and holding it. He felt his heart rate slow to a crawl, and he felt as though his perception of time slowed by ten percent. Releasing his breath, he took one more deep breath to hold before he came around the corner, bringing his rifle up, and fired. The first shot took one of the guards in the back of the group by surprise and turned their head into red mist.
The rest of the guards were quick to act and fired down the hall. Their shots were so inaccurate that Adjani hardly bothered dodging the shots, only avoiding the shots his HUD predicted would hit him. He crouched and spread his legs wide to get low and fired three more shots. Each one eliminated an enemy with a single shot to the head. He quickly moved to the far side of the hall and avoided more plasma bolts that were now being staggered and spread in an effort to hit him.
Releasing and taking another deep breath, Adjani fired three more shots, killing three more guards in an instant. One of the remaining guards cursed and yelled, “Shield’s up!” and three guards tapped a button on their forearms, creating an energy shield. Three guards came up behind the shield bearers, slid the barrels of their guns through the shields, and began to fire with the shield bearers, joining them in their volley.
Their shots became more accurate, and Adjani was unable to avoid this volley. Three shots impacted his chest as he tried to avoid them, and he fell to the ground entirely still. The guards stopped firing, and the shield bearers slowly approached Adjani’s still body. Once they got close to the body, Adjani moved in a flash, bringing the barrel of his gun up through the shield of the closest guard and firing one quick shot into their face at point-blank range. The other guards jumped back, but one was too slow as Adjani swung his legs around and swept their legs out from under them before mounting them and firing into the downed guard’s head.
With a quick sprint, Adjani tackled the last shield bearer and used him as a human shield. He fired three shots at the guards standing before the bridge entrance. His human shield screamed as the three nearest guards fired at them. The armor of the shield bearer protected him from the majority of the damage but severely burned his skin underneath. Adjani threw him at two of the guards and fired at the last guard before firing two more shots at the falling three guards, killing them before they hit the floor, leaving the in-pain shield bearer alive long enough for Adjani to pull his machine pistol and finish him off.
“Zero,” Adjani said to himself, putting his empty rifle away and breathing heavily, “Dis is why I’m a snipe’ah. Nevah’ liked runnin’ and fightin’ close range.” He examined the thick blast door to the bridge and pulled a grenade launcher from his pack. He examined a dial on the left side of the launcher and adjusted it to the needed ammunition type, ‘Breach Charge.’ Then, flipped the launcher over to the right and adjusted another dial that represented the detonation countdown, setting it to twenty seconds.
He pressed the launcher against his shoulder and fired five quick shots that impacted the blast door with a dull thunk and stuck to the door. The charges were tube-shaped with small drills and magnetic legs that stuck to the door. The charges began to drill into the door, the diamond-tipped drill bits eating through the hard steel like a hot knife through butter.
Adjani put the launcher away, pulled out his machine pistols again, and waited only a few seconds before the charges detonated and blasted the door inwards. Charging in, Adjani didn’t hesitate to fire through the smoke his charges created at the hazy orange outlines of the few people in the room who stood and pulled guns. They went down in an instant, and as he passed through the smoke, he lept at the man who stood at the holo-display table, knocking him back as Adjani planted his foot on the man’s chest and a gun in his face.
The man Adjani stood over was none other than Captain Draftnik himself. The man wore a black cape over one shoulder and a custom black and white military suit and cap. His face was aged and wrinkled from years of privateering and commanding his fleet, with a long hooked nose and hazel eyes. Pressing the gun against Draftnik’s forehead, Adjani presented his proposal, “Draftnik. Me friend. I know I owe yah money, but I’ve got ah new employah an’ I’ve got standin’ ordahs to captah dis ship an’ all its crew. It would help if yah surrendahed.”
Draftnik scowled and said begrudgingly, “Lieutenant, open a line of communication to whoever is flying that federation dreadnaught and give them my unconditional surrender.”
Adjani smiled and got off Draftnik, “Good choice, man.” Then, he checked the time, clicking his tongue as he noticed it took him almost five minutes to complete his task.
***