---Droid---
---Jackson’s perspective---
“Where is he!?” I demand of the tall redhead, the well built blonde and the armored trog, with her hair only an inch or two long from my slagging her helmet last time we met “Where’s the Chinese centenarian!?”
“Not here, I’m afraid… though he is aboard… he’s guarding our botanist.” smirks the Brit.
“I guess I’ll have to go and find him after you three are dead then… even if I don’t really wanna fight you… You bored me last time.”
“We weren’t armed last time! Afraid of a level playing field?” taunts the 6’3’’ blonde with her hand on the handle of a 6’3’’ greatsword.
“Three on one you mean? That’s a level playing field to you?” I answer, dryly.
“It is when your body is made of bulletproof metal, faster than any of ours and stronger than all of us combined I’d say…”
“Put like that, I’d say it’s still far from fair to you three… Why do you even want to fight me again? I handed you all your asses last time!”
“Exactly… we wanna settle the score!” shrugs the Brit, drawing his 3ft long falchion blade, 1a with an M pommel by the Elmslie typology, I think… though it has a bit of an artsy wave in the leading edge.
“You burned off my hair.” accuses the primitive, dully.
“Yeah… that elongated skull does look a lot more noticeable without all that orange frizz, cavewoman! Sorry about that(!)” I retort, a smirk in my voice.
Her tan skin goes bright red… I must have hit a nerve.
“Good that your friends still wanna hang out with you now you’re so ugly!”
The blonde responds instantly “I actually prefer her with short hair! You get to see more of her face now!”
“That so? Maybe I should start offering my services as a barber then(!)” I say with a mock bow “Now… we gonna talk hairstyling all day… or are we gonna fight?”
I ignite the swordstaff.
The greatsword, saber and beak, hammer and spike of the bec de corbin all roar to life opposite me, glowing through red, orange and yellow, settling on white hot.
Having learned their lesson, they don’t charge me this time.
Instead, they fan out and surround me before they begin to approach.
The blonde is coming at me from my left.
The limey is coming at me head on.
The cavebitch is on my right.
Blondie has the most reach and is the first to make a lunge for me with that greatsword.
My blade flies out, straight for her center of mass.
She blocks it but is thrown off balance as I leverage away her sword and sweep my polearm in an arc to match the redhead’s.
He makes to sever my blade from its shaft but he isn’t fast enough.
The eggskull aims her bec at my extended leg but, still in a bind with the tea lover, I manage to withdraw it fast enough that the blade stabs into the floor.
I level a kick at her armor covered solar plexus and she’s hurled backwards, leaving her weapon behind, sticking out of the floor at a 45° angle.
The blonde has recovered her footing and aims another swing at me.
I pivot my weapon from the Brit’s to hers.
The advantage of the polearm is that I have a much larger offensive range than when I fought with my daggers (without throwing them, at least).
The disadvantage is that it’s way less easy to maneuver it!
All my justified arrogance aside, any one of these three could easily be championship fighters!
I can’t afford to get careless, since I’m not immune to plasma the way I am to bullets!
The primitive sprints forward and retrieves her weapon in the middle of a surprisingly elegant combat roll, reigniting it and swinging it into my shin.
Thankfully, it hadn’t warmed up yet, so the damage is superficial.
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
My swordstaff streaks down on her, only to be blocked by the teaslurper’s blade.
I spin and jump about 10ft away, bringing my weapon between me and the three.
They close the distance and begin a series of attacks that could pass for a choreographed movie sequence!
I’m actually at the edge of my capacity right now, just dodging and parrying their strikes!
“Guys… that’s enough… you can disengage…” comes the voice of the same woman that Kara spoke to over the comm channel, from the 2nd floor walkway.
The three of them instantly break off their barrage and put about 30ft of distance between themselves and me.
Strange…
I glance to where the voice came from.
I see a gynoid robot, taking the form of a young Human woman.
She mounts the barrier (in a way that would cause it to crumple under my weight if I tried to reproduce) and backflips off, falling about 20ft to the cargo bay floor and performing a superhero landing.
She completely undercuts the cool factor by straightening up and shouting “Woo! Did you guys see that?! Isn’t this new body great!?!?!?”
“Hey…” I say, unimpressed “…what’s the big idea here?! You think you can beat me just ’cause you’ve got a droid?… I’m sure it’s nice and all, for a civilian model, but that is not a combat frame!”
Turning her attention to me, she smiles unnervingly “I’m afraid you’re already beaten, Mr Stetter… you just don’t know it yet!”
“Kid, I highly doubt…!”
“You see, Mr Stetter…” she interrupts “…the moment you came aboard I began probing the firmware of every single component of your body.”
I feel a chill run through me in a way I haven’t for years!
She’s an AI. That explains how they knew they were being followed! Guess that ‘wrong turn’ they took a week ago was her doing!
That’s far from the most pressing concern, though!
“The code on all the military components was tough…” she smiles with her elastomer mouth, starting to walk towards me “… too tough for me, honestly. I definitely would have been able to subvert it eventually but, thankfully, I didn’t need to… You were so kind as to leave me a back door!”
She points to the bulky red arm, hooked up to the rest of me in a hurry by Rylan.
I raise my left hand to rip off my replacement arm but, at that moment, my whole body freezes.
“It’s too late for that, Mr Stetter… I already had control from the moment I made myself known!” smiles the droid I’m not able to turn my head to look at.
My body prostrates itself into a kneel and my knuckles place themselves on the ground, against my furious, silent protests!
A pair of robotic feet, pristinely sheaved in elastomer, appear on the patch of floor that I’m unable to look away from.
My vision suddenly becomes much more three dimensional and, without the sense data feedback from my hijacked body, it takes me a few moments to realize that that means my eyes are further apart! She’s opened my skull!
A nauseatingly 3D, robotic hand reaches between my eyes and is pulled back holding an inertially dampened container, filled with clear liquid and with a thick cable coming out of its back.
Inside is a wrinkled mass of pink flesh, pulsing as artificial blood is pumped around it.
You can’t!
This isn’t fair!
I can’t lose like this!
Put that back!
Give me back my body!
Let me fight!
Let me win!
Let me kill!
Don’t put me back in the dark!
Her hand moves to the cable.
I see the grasp, I see the pulling tension… I don’t see the disconnect as my world becomes nothing!
---Ro’oo’u’ouu’s perspective---
The Terran man sits on the ground, his legs crossed and his eyes closed as the Terran pirates carve their way through the door.
The small holy man is the only other person in hydroponics with me, assigned here as my guard, since I was too large to shelter with the others in the [Canteen].
The door is sliced open and three Terran pirates spill inside and point their [guns] at my sitting bodyguard, shouting commands at him too quickly for me to follow.
He begins getting up but, no sooner has he done so than all three of the pirates fall to the floor, unmoving.
How about that!
The pirates were so clumsy that I didn’t even need a guard!
---Waqa’arc’s perspective---
My lifemate nestles into me, terrified, as the plasmablade carves through the door.
The hole in the door is completed and falls inward.
I jump in front of Akrat, wings extended, crown plumes flared, back horizontal to the ground
As the monsters step through the entrance they just made, I prepare myself to die fighting them.
Qrawi’a… I shall be joining you in Akaros in but a few moments… and I will finally be able to tell you how sorry I am!
One of the monsters strides up to me and points the barrel of his gun squarely at my face.
Then, like lightning, the weapon is jerked upward and, like thunder, blasts a hole in the ceiling!
Only then do I have a moment to see Tcakqaal’s red maned, Human lackey holding the gun barrel before his body jerks violently forward.
There is a loud *thud* of bony flesh on bony flesh and the other Terran falls back, absent his gun, still held aloft like a trophy in Taylor's hand… He just saved my and Akrat’s lives!
---Kara’s perspective---
ShitshitshitshitSHIT!
What the fuck do we do!?
I’ve been trying and failing to pull away from this ship since the boarders went dark but, whatever I did, it just wouldn’t let us go!
Now, the tables have turned and we’re being boarded!
That probably means they’ve already taken care of Stetter, somehow!
Fuck! This is bad!
“Open this door!” screams a man’s voice from outside the cockpit.
I don’t keep any weapons in here!
I look around for anything I can use to defend myself with.
My eyes land on a boxcutter in a half open draw.
I grab it and clumsily extend the blade before turning to hold it in front of me, facing the door.
At exactly that moment, the man says “I’ve had enough of this! Break it down, Thran!”
I shriek as the (suddenly very flimsy looking) door is ploughed straight through by a powerful shape, about a head shorter than me and seeming to be made of silver and blue metal.
An extremely large, buff man with wavy, medium length, copper hair steps through behind what I now realise is a very stocky Neanderthal woman.
“Stay back!” I tremble, pointing the boxcutter at the pair.
The man’s bright green eyes come to rest on mine and go wide.
The colour drains from his already pale face as his mouth forms the question “Mum!?”
Baffled, I start “Wha…?” but that’s as far as I get before a gauntleted, Neanderthal hand grabs both of mine and a gauntleted Neanderthal fist impacts my face, breaking my nose!