Roland cut the link, tired of waiting. “There could be any reason why, just not one that makes any sense to me. That ship is teeming with sensors and a bridge crew that could fill the entire Rackham. They’d have known we were coming before we dropped out of subspace.”
The bounty hunter handed the finer requirements of landing the ship inside the hangar to the Rackham’s AI. Though their docking request hadn’t been accepted, it also hadn’t been denied, which was permission enough for Roland. The hangar itself was quiet, devoid of the usual mechs, pilots, and engineers. The ship’s AI extended the struts and touched down on one of the empty landing pads.
“I don’t like this,” Len commented, his mouth stuffed with Laronian Peddi-bites.
Roland shrugged in an effort to keep himself calm. “It’s a Nexus-Class vessel, Len. What is there to worry about? It’s not exactly on fire, is it?”
Punctuating his rhetorical question, the internal doors to the hangar exploded in front of the Rackham. Intrinium fire shot out of the smoke and C-Sec officers ran in every direction, shooting wildly behind them. Through the viewport, the Rackham’s crew could see the officers take cover behind the workstations and aim their weapons at the smoking doors.
“We need to help them!” Naydaalan was already running for the exit.
“Against what?” Roland left his chair and peered out of the viewport as a group of Shay C-Sec officers flooded the hangar and attacked those taking cover.
“Oh shit!” Ava put her hand to the glass.
By the time Roland set foot on the hangar floor, the firefight had scattered and reinforcements were arriving via the smoking corridor. The bounty hunter raised his Tri-rollers at the newcomers before seeing that there were no Shay among them. The Raiders did what they did best and found the killing angles that put their enemies down. With the help of the reinforcements, the group of Shay were hunted down across the hangar and dropped.
“It won’t last!” Roland shouted over to the C-Sec officers.
It was too late. They had already lowered their guard, believing the Shay to be down permanently. One of the first cyborgs to be shot had found its various pieces and stood up with its rifle aimed at a Tularon’s furry head. The ensuing Intrinium fire kicked of another firefight and the hangar erupted into chaos again. The distraction of just one or two resurrected Shay gave the others time to put themselves back together.
Roland tapped his earpiece. “Matthews!”
“I’m here,” she replied.
“This isn’t going to end,” Roland explained. “We need to reach the bridge!”
“Raiders, form up on the door!”
The bounty hunter sprinted back to the smoking ruin of the internal hangar doors with Naydaalan jogging beside him. The Raiders naturally fell in behind them as they made their way through the ship. There were signs of violence in almost every corridor. Keeping their eyes forward, the team stepped over alien bodies and trod through puddles of blood. Roland noted that there wasn’t a single Shay body among the dead.
“These bastards keep putting themselves back together,” he said.
Naydaalan hopped over a fallen Raalak and used one of his four hands to access the comm panel on the wall. The effort was made that much harder by the smeared blood that ran over the console and down the wall.
“Bridge, do you copy?”
Roland imitated the Raiders and took up a defensive position within the corridor, using the Raalak’s stony bulk as cover.
“This is Charge Hox,” the Laronian captain replied. “Who am I speaking to?”
“This is Naydaalan. I am with Roland North and the Raiders.”
“Please tell me you have returned with some answers. Why are the Shay attacking us?”
Roland stepped in front of the panel. “Is the bridge secure?”
Hox replied, “They’re trying to break through. They’ve already gained access to our communications array.”
Roland shook his head. “Never mind that. Is your Starrillium still operational?”
There was a moment’s pause on the bridge’s end. “Yes, but I’m not taking the Valkor anywhere until we learn what has caused this outbreak. For all we know it’s contagious. It could infect every Shay.”
Roland sighed, his patience wearing thin. “It already has. We saw the same thing on… Never mind! You need to get us to Arakesh immediately. They’re here.”
There was another pause on the bridge’s end. “You mean…”
“Yes, the really bad world-ending assholes are here and they’re heading for Arakesh. You have command, semi-command, of a Nexus-Class battleship. So, let’s go blow holes in them.”
“That’s a little hard to do when my bridge is under siege and my engineering team are unresponsive.”
The bounty hunter rolled his head in exasperation, before turning to Ava. “Colonel. Take your team and find out why engineering is being so shy. Nayd and I will take the bridge.”
Ava nodded her agreement and directed her team down the opposite corridor. With Jess in the Rackham’s infirmary, the Raiders were down one, reducing their team to four. Was he actually worrying about them? This was exactly what Roland hated about taking on a cause: it always came with responsibility. This time, however, the cause was for the protection of all life in the galaxy, which included his own, so the bounty hunter let it go and reminded himself he was still the selfish bastard he wanted to be.
As he and Naydaalan moved through the ship, more firefights could be heard echoing down the ship’s corridors. More than once they came across Shay putting themselves back together, their limbs and organs dispersed in a smoking mess. Roland opened the door to his left and kicked the top half of a bisected Shay inside before Naydaalan kicked the legs and gun into the science lab on their right. The Translift at the end of the T-junction continued to open and close on the dead Atari strewn over the threshold.
“The bridge is two levels up,” Naydaalan said.
Roland looked down the corridors, hearing gunfire and screams coming from both ends. “I hate walking anyway.” The bounty hunter gestured with his head for the Novaarian to get inside the Translift while he dragged the Atari’s pink body out of the way.
When the Translift doors opened on the command deck, both human and Novaarian had pressed themselves against the walls. This offered nothing but an empty lift for any Shay who happened to check behind themselves as they tried to breach the door to the bridge on the opposite end of the corridor. Roland could hear the infected aliens working away at the bridge’s internal locking mechanism with a variety of cutting tools. The briefest of glances gave him a quick headcount and he decided his Tri-rollers weren’t going to cut it.
“Roland,” Naydaalan hissed when he saw the bounty hunter removing an implosive grenade from inside his hide coat. “This is the command deck,” he whispered.
Roland flexed his fingers by his side, urging the Novaarian to stay calm. The bounty hunter considered his options, agreeing that a black market grenade would do some serious damage to the blast doors. Then again, what else was there to do?
Roland stepped into the middle of the Translift and yelled, “Yoo-hoo!” Only when the Shay had turned and made a dash for him did he release the grenade down the length of the corridor.
As quickly as he could, the bounty hunter reactivated the lift’s doors and pressed the button to keep them closed. The implosion was deafening and the force was strong that the lift’s doors were ripped from their servomotors and pulled into the corridor.
Roland blinked the ash and smoke from his eyes while he rotated his jaw in an effort to regain his full hearing. Naydaalan was the first to recover and he swept through the command deck, checking for any lucky survivors. A single hand remained, its semi-robotic fingers slowly crawling across the floor at the edge of the implosion site. Roland kicked it into the Translift and commanded it to go anywhere else.
Naydaalan slapped the side of his elongated head, appearing somewhat disoriented, and gave Rola
nd a look.
“What?”
The Novaarian grunted. “I cannot decide whether my chances of survival are higher or lower in your presence.”
Ch’len’s voice chirped in their ears. “Definitely lower…”
Roland wiped the sweat from his eyes. “Thank you for your contribution, Len.”
After making contact with Charge Hox again, the heavy blast doors slid apart, inviting them on to the bridge. Roland had never been on the command deck of a Nexus-Class ship before, but looking around, he was confident the Rackham would fit perfectly inside its walls.
The crew appeared haggard, some sporting injuries, while others simply looked to be in shock. To Roland, the Shay were as alien as aliens could get, making it much harder to sympathise with their race’s current predicament. To these people, however, and the rest of the Conclave, the Shay were just as regular a sight as their own species, with many finding love and friendship with the cyborgs of Shandar.
Charge Hox still managed to carry an air of confidence about him. “I’m glad to see you made it,” the Laronian said. “Since you took care of our little problem out there, I will do my best to forget the illegal weaponry you used.”
“I’d start using it yourself,” Roland replied. “These buggers can put themselves back together. Doesn’t matter whose parts they use.”
“This is unprecedented.” Hox shook his blue head. “We’ve never seen anything like this before.”
“Not on this scale,” Roland countered. “A team of Shay engineers went nuts and tried to destroy the Paladin a couple of months ago.” The bounty hunter glanced at Naydaalan. “Then there’s what we found in the Solian Way…”
That got the Charge’s attention. “You found a Starforge?”
Roland could still see the colossal ship in his mind. “I wish that was all we found. Like I said, they’re here. A whole fleet of whatever they are came through and split up. The largest piece is heading for Arakesh.”
Naydaalan dipped his head. “The Shay on board the Starforge were the same as they are here. Whatever is affecting them, it appears to be wide spread.”
The Laronian lifted his chin. “How widespread?”
Roland shrugged. “Have you tried opening a channel to the capital?”
“Of course,” Hox replied. “When the Shay members of the crew first became… wild, they attacked key parts of the Valkor. Engineering, communications, and navigation. With their knowledge I would say a single Shay could cripple any vessel in C-Sec.”
Roland was running through all of their options as he wiped his hand over his head and through his hair. “How many Shay are there on board?” he asked.
Hox turned to a Nix crewmember, whose dark chevron head looked from his console to the Charge. “At present, there are two hundred and seven on board.”
Roland’s eyebrows shot up. “Shit! How big is your crew?”
“The Valkor is home to three thousand C-Sec officers,” the Nix answered, his pincer-like legs shuffling nervously under his station.
“Can you find them all with internal sensors?” Naydaalan asked, looking over the nearest holographic display.
Charge Hox loosened the red collar around his neck. “We can find them, but it’s hard to deal with an enemy that can get back up.”
“What’re you thinking, big guy?”
Naydaalan took over the Nix’s console and brought up holo-feeds from all over the ship. “They react to a perceived threat like a pack of animals,” the Novaarian explained. “Issue a ship-wide command ordering everyone to lock themselves in the nearest room and stay off the access corridors. No one is to engage the Shay.”
Charge Hox couldn’t see where this was going. “What would be the point of this plan? We can’t just hide and hope they go to sleep.”
Naydaalan raised his hand and with it came a blue hologram with the Valkor’s emergency fire protocol. “We section them off and open the airlocks.”
There was silence on the bridge as everyone considered the Novaarian’s plan. Ultimately, it came down to Charge Hox, who stared intently at the emergency fire protocol.
“Open a ship-wide command,” he ordered.
Roland ignored the details and tapped his earpiece. “Matthews?” There was no reply. “Ava?”
The colonel’s ragged voice came over the comm. “The engineering room is ours,” she said between Intrinium fire. “But, they’ve blocked our exit. They really want the Starrillium."
“Don’t bother trying to get out,” Roland relayed. “Just get the doors shut and hunker down, we’ve got a plan.”
“Is this your plan or Nayd’s?” she asked.
The bounty hunter rolled his eyes. “What does that matter?”
“Because if it’s your plan I’d rather not hunker down inside the room with an artificial star inside of it.”
Roland laughed to himself. “You blow up a Starrillium one time and a man gets a reputation…” He cut the comm and turned back to the bridge crew. “Engineering is ours again.”
“Truly?” Hox asked incredulously.
“The Raiders come from a time of war,” Roland explained. “This is just another Tuesday.”
It was clear that Hox didn’t understand the entire reference, but the Charge remained on task and gave the order to activate the emergency fire protocol. The internal sensors, displayed on the Nix’s console, showed every crewmember who hadn’t been turned into a mindless zombie running for cover. All over the ship, doors were being locked and the weapons fire alerts were dying down.
Other bridge crewmembers oversaw the lockdown, closing the blast doors that cut across the corridors in a particular order. The Shay were slowly, but surely, being herded down specific corridors, trapped in a maze.
A Trillik crewmember popped his green head up. “They’re hacking into the blast door controls, sir!”
Hox checked over the status and location of his crew one last time. “Do it.”
The Nix activated the protocol and airlocks all over the Valkor opened the ship up to the cold vacuum of space. The holo-feeds were chaotic, with debris, dead crew, and Shay being sucked through the corridors.
Roland slapped the back of his hand against Naydaalan’s arm. “Nice work, big guy.”
Hox turned to the Trillik. “Locate all of our dead and have them brought back on board. They deserve their burial rites.”
A Laronian officer surrounded by walls of holograms stepped aside to address her Charge. “Sir, we’re still reading Shay life signs around the communications suite. Six to be exact.”
The bounty hunter removed one of his Tri-rollers and checked the ammo count. “We’ll take care of that. Just get us to Arakesh as fast as you can.” He tapped his earpiece. “Raiders, converge on my position…”
Chapter 12
It had been a long time since Telarrek had been through his combat training, but the Novaarian fell in with the strike team and adapted to the best of his ability. He let the strike team leader take point as they gained access to the Clave Command Tower. Scorch marks and dead bodies provided a trail that led directly to the command tower’s control room.
That was where the Intrinium fire was coming from.
Using hand signals, the Novaarian strike team leader instructed his soldiers to take up positions, ready to breach the control room. Telarrek adjusted his translucent dreadlocks, ensuring they were draped over his back and out of the way. The ambassador was suddenly very aware that he was the only one not wearing the traditional gold plated armour of the Novaarian armed forces, and wished he could substitute his ambassadorial robes for anything made from that golden myopallic ore.
“Strike!” The leader followed two of his unit through the parting doors, quickly followed by the rest of the team and Telarrek.
The control room was a mess of broken glass, strewn bodies, and smeared blood, but all eyes were on the hulking Raalak in the middle of the deck. High Charge Uthor, a mountain of rock on four legs, had two Shay crawling over his body
while a third came at him from the front. Uthor roared in defiance and threw one of the crawling Shay at the approaching enemy, wielding its cybernetic body like a bat.
Ignoring the remaining Shay on his back, the High Charge picked up a C-Sec blaster and pointed it at the two scrambling aliens. One shot to each sent the pair flailing into the glass wall at the front of the control room. A strong Raalakian foot to the chest sent one through the glass and a second blast forced the other Shay through and out into Clave Tower, where they would both fall for several minutes before any kind of impact.
“Come here!” Uthor reached over his shoulder and grabbed the Shay that had been trying to burrow into his rocky skin. The Raalak strode over to the jagged hole in the glass and tossed the screeching alien out.
One by one, the officers who staffed the control room began to appear, most of them were injured in some way.
Telarrek stepped past the strike team and met Uthor. “Greetings of peace, High Charge.”
Uthor prodded his back, where his red uniform had been torn to shreds and golden blood seeped through the cracks in his skin. “I think peace will have to wait, old friend. Where is the Highclave now?”
Telarrek couldn’t believe the times he was living in. “The Highclave is gone, Uthor. Only Councillor Brokk survived the attack, but his situation is critical.”
The High Charge leaned against the railing and took a deep gravelly breath. “We need to form an emergency council, immediately.”
“I have already sent word to every ambassador in Clave Tower. They will be here shortly.”
Uthor swivelled his head. “Every ambassador? We only need five from the core worlds.”
Telarrek shook his head. “Look around, Uthor. This is war. It concerns every species in the Conclave, not just the core worlds. They all need a voice…”
“High Charge.” The voice came from a Laronian who had taken up her position again. “More reports are coming in of Shay attacks.”
“Where?” Uthor asked.
The Laronian officer replied with an expression of despair, “From everywhere, sir.”
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