Into the Frying Pan Pt.V
These fools thought she was weak and vulnerable, ripe for the taking. Astarte planned to prove them wrong. Ah’areds ambush on Femeri had left her half blind and weak for so long, it was that very blind spot that had allowed Kazlum to get the upper hand on her. So when she ordered a new cybernetic eye she had decided to pay an exorbitant amount to make it the most advanced piece of prosthetic hardware possible. When she had lost so much muscle mass during her long several months of recovery process she had realized that she had been neglecting her body and that she had been falling short of what her very expensive synthetic muscles and reinforced bones were capable of, so when she could finally move on her own she hit the gym, and she trained much harder than she had ever done before. Throughout life she had struggled to recognize all the things that made her weak, but once she finally did she always endeavored to turn those weaknesses into strengths.
The Egh’ahds and their Kruhur cronies thought that since they were dead in the water that made them vulnerable, but now they were about to realize just how hard Terrans fought when backed into a corner. They had forced them into a situation where the only way out was counter invade the Venom and destroy them from the inside out.
The smoke grenades obscured the enemies sight, but with her red eye she could cut through all the smoke and see them clear as day. Her prey spread out in confusion, trying to cover all possible routes until the smoke cleared and they could open fire. Astarte lifted her blade perpendicular to her body and dragged it along the wall as she continued to calmly march forward. It was a move that completely gave away her position, but that was fine by her, she wanted her prey to feel fear before she came to collect their heads. Their guns swiveled around and fixed on where the noise was coming from, and moments before they opened fire Astarte leaned forward and charged headlong into their ranks. Bright flashes lit up the smoke and Astarte used the temporary blinding light to get behind her prey and slashed with her blade. Ordinarily a regular person would struggle to cut through the thick coated canvas of their armor, but Astarte was not normal. She was strong and swift enough to go toe to toe with an Aunviry warrior, and the thick fabric guarding their necks was little more than tissue paper to Tenken.
One by one she sliced through the Kruhur’s thick neck and freed their heads from their bodies. One Kruhur who was larger than the rest was able to get a clean shot at her and it took it without hesitation, but Astarte saw it coming and had turned her shoulder to take the heat of the blast head on. It hit right in the center of her shoulder plates, but the insanely expensive metal took the heat without any warping and dispersed it back into the air without any of it getting through to burn her skin. It was an incredible feat of material science on the Toy mans part, and had probably saved the lives of her marines a hundred times over. It was too expensive to use as ship armor, and lost a lot of its effectiveness on such a large scale, but it was perfect in small thin plates of metal. Which had made plate armor once again a viable means of personal defense in the age of light-speed space travel.
The big Kruhur seemed shocked that she was still charging forward after a point-blank pulse fire shot, it backed up slowly before turning tail and running the other way, but Astarte wasn’t going to let it. She quickly out paced the big Kruhur and had yanked it back by the collar, it fell to the ground and Astarte turned and thrusted the point of her blade through its face shield and easily slid right into its brain. She placed a foot against its chest and pulled her blade free just as the rest of her team of marines jogged up to her. They glanced around at the carnage with awe and horror.
Unlike Astarte, who had always commanded her ship in her maroon armor, the marines had been suiting up from the moment the ship came under attack. So, unlike Astarte who was once again only armed with her inert plate mail and sword, they were armed to the teeth will all the most advance combat hardware money could buy. Inspired by the functionality of her new eye she had asked the Toy man to redesign the Menpo’s to incorporate extra functionality, now her marines were capable of seeing things in the infrared, and had a heads-up display that gave them a lot of useful information. That did however mean that Astarte now had to relearn how to tell them all apart since the molded faces of their Menpo’s had changed.
“What’s the plan sir?” One asked, it was hard to tell under the helmet, but she thought it looked like Brevot. He always wore a fierce dragon-like visage.
“We kill them. All of them.” She said blandly as she cleaned the blood off her blade.
“Is that it? There’s likely a whole ship’s worth of them, uh Sir” Definitely Brevot, his voice always climbed higher and got more frantic when he was questioning orders.
“You’re right, might take too long to kill them all.” She turned and saw the breach in the side of her ship were this team of Kruhur had entered through. She grinned “Why don’t we return the favor then, they boarded us so its only fair that we board them. Send a message to all Marines, I want them to push back the Kruhur and then hold the breaches. Once you’re done with that go collect some explosive charges, we’re going to strap them to the Venom’s power plant.”
He stared at her, and she could tell even under the helmet that he was shocked by the audacity of her plan. “But Sir, that means we’ll have to fight our way through a whole ships worth of Kruhur.”
She turned to stare into the darkly lit interior of the Venom “No it doesn’t, seeing as no other Kruhur have poked their head out that hole I’m betting that they only have a small force aboard the Venom, which makes sense seeing as Kruhur believe all non-deathworlders are inferior vermin. I’d say they weren’t expecting to face this much resistance early on and had been expecting to gain more ground which is why they spread their teams out so far in their initial attack. We need to take advantage of the confusion before they have time to redeploy.” She turned back to Brevot “I’ll give you five minutes to rally up a force, charge in the moment you’re all together. Until then I’ll be clearing the way for you.” With that she turned and strode into the enemy ship, Brevot was left standing behind her in stunned silence.
He gathered his wits and began shouting orders to his men, he sent two in to shadow Astarte, the rest he began to ready up for a frantic fight.
~~~*~~~
Ah’ared hissed at the screen as another radio channel went silent abruptly. That was the fourth station that had gone suspiciously silent, and he was beginning to grow anxious. The seizing of the Astaroth should have gone off without a hitch, the Hellworlders had been powerless and surprised, the Kruhur combat specialists should have had swept through them with little resistance. But even with all the odds stacked against them, somehow the Terrans had held off their initial assault until they could rally a proper counterattack.
The Kruhur soldiers had been stopped in their tracks only meters from the breaches, this prevented them from linking up and pressing forward like they had planned. But not only had they been stopped; they were apparently under heavy fire and were forced to give up hard earned ground. It got so bad that the leader of the Kruhur soldiers had requested that Ah’ared send his own men forward to help deal with the threat. And as much as it pleased him to hear the arrogant Kruhur beg for his help, he couldn’t help but feel a cold chill climb up his neck.
He had tried to order the nearest pod of his warriors forward, only to discover that they couldn’t be reached no matter what he tried. He tried contacting two other pods to discover that they couldn’t be reached either. The fourth pod he called were able to respond, but only long enough to scream that there was a demon attacking them, before going quiet as well. That was when Ah’ared knew that there were Hellworlders aboard his ship.
The insane savages, instead of actively dealing with the invading force had decided to charge into the nest of their enemy. And the scariest part was that they were carving through his men with ease. Ah’ared felt enraged at the disparity between them, his men were the scourge of all civilized species, but against these backwater savages they were little more than vermin to be exterminated. Every time he had clashed with Astarte his men had been mowed down, despite their overwhelming advantage in numbers and weapons. For Merta’s sake, they still used slug throwers despite the vast array of pulse weaponry they could have used instead. They were pushing back Kruhur warriors who had been training to fight since they were just younglings, nearly a third of their bodies were replaced with cybernetic prosthetics.
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Another section of his ship went silent and Ah’ared began to think he had them figured out, but then two separate signals went out at the same time. Two signals in two very different parts of his ship, all hopes of containing the threat went out the airlock, now he had to try and predict their next target and hopefully head them off by ordering more men to that section. At first their advance seemed aimless, and it meandered a lot. But then they both changed course and began to quickly advance toward two distinct points the reactors, and the bridge.
“They’re coming right at us” Sk’tharc clicked nervously.
Ah’ared lifted his head in a false display of bravado, “Good, they will charge right into our defentheg.”
“Will they be enough?”
“Even an Aunviry would need to be nervig if they faced what thege Hellworlderg are about to.” He proclaimed confidently, though deep inside he began to doubt whether this had been a good plan.
~~~*~~~
Astarte had carved her way through the Venom like an avenging devil, she had even heard several Egh’ahds scream ‘demon’ as she carved up their allies. She was soaked in their nasty green blood, and she had grown numb to their pleas for mercy. At first she just killed and charged recklessly into the next crowd of Egh’ahds, believing that she would eventually find the reactor eventually. But then Brevot’s team had apparently interrogated some of the Venom’s crew and had learned of a direct route to both the reactor’s and the bridge. Astarte had been the closest to the bridge, so she had ordered Brevot’s team to make a b-line for the reactor while she tackled the bridge.
Her wrath from that day on Femeri had returned full force, after the battle of the confederacy she had been content to let Ah’ared slither off to some dark hole far from her operation. She had fine with just murdering the leader of the Aunviry Marauders and obliterating their fleets. But now that Ah’ared had dared to shove his ugly head into her business once again she was determined to personally end this blood feud in the only way she knew how, with overwhelming violence.
With a stomp she crushed the head of the last remaining Egh’ahd between her and the entrance to the bridge. She approached the intersection that led to the bridge, and stopped just short of the adjoining hall. A sense of danger creeped up her spine, and out of a sense of caution she reached down and tossed an Egh’ahd corpse into the hall ahead of her. The moment the body was visible to some unseen plasma turrets, it was blown to bits and burnt to a smelly crisp. Her escorts who had been stoically following her path of carnage took several large steps back.
Astarte considered the remains before her and considered her options. Her armor was good at tanking hits, but that much fire power would melt it into a puddle of molten slag in seconds. She glanced down to the other Egh’ahd bodies and had a very disturbing idea, were the turrets on an automatic targeting system, or did they rely on a biological operator?
She reached down and tossed a severed Egh’ahd neck into the walkway, just like before it was blown to ashes, but this time she noticed that the fire only came from one angle and stopped suddenly. She tossed a third Egh’ahd corpse down the hall, and this time nothing fired on it, and that was all Astarte needed to know that the plasma turrets were being operated by actual Egh’ahds and not some computer. Without anymore hesitation Astarte charged around the corner and dashed forward, zigging and zagging as she ran. She was relieved to see that she had been right about the turrets having live operators, at the end of about ten meters of wide-open hall were two plasma turrets emplacements with two live operators. Ten meters was a lot of space to cover, and as she ran forward they would need to turn less in order to hit her.
They hesitated for only a few seconds, a second longer than any Terran operator would have, and that extra second gave her all the time she needed. Legs pumping as hard as they could in the lower gravity of the Egh’ahd ship she closed more than half the distance before they finally began to fire on her, but by that time Astarte had already changed course. Instead of charging directly at them she kicked off the ground and began to run along the wall above their heads, forcing them to pause and look up before they could continue firing at her. Normally running along ceiling the would have been very difficult, but in the lower gravity of the Venom and with some assistance from the EM thrusters in her boots she was able to flawlessly dash above them until she was behind them. She dropped to the ground, and without giving them any time to realize that she was there, her blade cut into their backs. Cutting right through their spines and killing them quickly.
Behind her she heard a clapping sound, she turned and saw that her escorts were applauding. She huffed out a small laugh, “enough of that. Help me stick some shaped charges to this door. we’re going to end Ah’ared once and for all.”
~~~*~~~
Ah’ared had been watching the camera feed when Astarte herself had done the impossible and had run up the side of the wall before killing his last line of defense. They had shot out the cameras shortly after that, and now all he could do was slowly wait with bated breath for the Hellworlder’s to break through his door. There was nowhere for him to escape to, there had only been the one way into the bridge, the idea had been that the outside defenses would be enough to discourage any attempts to break through. But those had proved utterly worthless, and now Ah’ared was trapped. His only hope of survival was getting a few lucky shots off at Astarte and her two lackeys.
Sk’tharc was standing next to him, gun ready to blast the three Hellworlder’s before it was too late. The seconds ticked by, and as time went by Ah’ared began to hope they had given up, as unlikely as that was.
For a long while nothing happened, and then with absolutely no warning there was an explosion and the three Terrans burst through the breach. Ah’ared and Sk’tharc had been prepared for them to blow their way in, what they hadn’t been expecting was the accursed savages to pick a different wall to breach. Ah’ared had been caught facing the wrong way, and by the time they began to turn towards the Terrans they had already closed the gap and were right on top of them.
One grabbed the pulse pistol out of Sk’tharc’s hand and broke her long neck with its other hand. The second Terran pointed his weapon around the room looking for any other hapless foes to slaughter, though there were none to be found. Astarte had charged right at Ah’ared, and with one slash of her blade both his hand and the gun fell to the ground. Ah’ared recoiled in pain and instinctively lashed out at her with it teeth, but instead of biting into her far more septic flesh, his teeth closed around hard metal. One of his fangs broke and his mouth began to fill with thick coppery blood.
Astarte let out a heavy breath through her naval cavities “You just don’t get it do you.” Her hand shot out and lifted Ah’ared off the ground by his neck, despite him being much larger than her physically. “You just don’t know when to quit.” She threw him against a nearby console.
He was reeling, trying to stand up straight when she placed a boot on his neck and pinned him to the console.
She leaned in close to his ear “Do you wanna know what pisses me off the most. You keep popping your ugly head into my business, and its very clear that you’ve got a huge grudge against me, and I couldn’t care less. You wanna know why you were able to escape that day back on the capital? It’s not because you’re a particularly hard person to kill, in fact its insultingly easy. It’s because you weren’t worth the time and effort. I had my hands full with Kazlum and didn’t care enough to devote any time to killing you, I was content to just let you slink off into the void never to be seen again.”
“Ulk’alah” Ah’ared growled.
“I assume that’s similar to saying buhlshiht.” She said blandly before she moved past it. “But it’s true, you aren’t worth my enmity, that’s what pisses me off about this whole thing. You hate me enough to crawl to the Kruhur and beg for a fleet, hate me enough to specifically target my ship, I just can’t be bothered to give a shit about you. I’m only here because we needed access to the ship controls, but seeing as your also here I might as well deal with you” she growled before leaning back.
Ah’ared couldn’t move beneath her boot heel, not even as he caught sight of her pointing her blade at his head. Then faster than he could process the blade came for him, and he closed his eyes so that he wouldn’t have to see his own murder. He felt a nip of pain on his scalp and a bit of blood dribble out, and awaited the rest to follow, but it never came. The weight against his neck went away and Ah’ared opened his eyes to look back at Astarte, who now had his crown hooked on the end of her blade.
“Ig that it?” he asked incredulously. Had she only wanted to take his crown, was his death really that far beneath her?
“Didn’t want to get blood on my new trophy.” She muttered as she took his crown off her blade.
“Wha-” was all he got out before a second, and final, flash of her blade severed his head from his neck.
~~~*~~~
Ah’ared’s body flopped onto the ground and Astarte turned away from it. She had been telling the truth, she really couldn’t care about Ah’ared. After her rage over the ambush on Femeri had faded she realized that she really couldn’t muster any hatred for Ah’ared, instead her subconscious had shifted its unresolved feelings towards Kazlum who was the real threat. During the battle for the confederacy she had been hoping Ah’ared would die in all the chaos, but didn’t have the spare manpower to devote to killing the Egh’ahd.
But after he sabotaged her ship and brought the Kruhur down on them she would be lying if she said that killing him didn’t have its own slight cathartic pleasure.
She looked over at her escort who held a white feathered Cék’ek she recognized as Kazlum’s personal parrot. Sk’tharc had been by Kazlum’s side for years, and likely had intimate knowledge on his operations. Keeping her could prove useful. On the other hand keeping her around would be annoying. “Kill the bird” she ordered before turning to a computer console. Behind her she heard a loud crack and the soft sigh of her final breath.
All the controls were in Union standard, designed to be usable to as many species as possible. It didn’t take her long to find the controls for the boarding ramps and thrusters, she used what little she knew about programming in Union standard to set up a series of commands. Once she sent a certain signal the Venom would release the Astaroth and thrust away at max speed, after it was safely far away from them they could detonate the explosives strapped to the reactor.
“Captain,” one of her escorts called “word from Charity, they’ve secured the package.”
She nodded, “Good, we’re done here as well. Tell them to return to the ship.” She ordered as she began to walk out of the Venom’s bridge to return to the Astaroth. Things weren’t over yet, Ah’ared might have been the spark to light the flame but killing wouldn’t make the rest of the Kruhur fleet vanish. They were likely still close behind them, and the Astaroth was still dead in the water and blind.
They were out of the frying pan, and now needed to handle the fire.