To say that the impact took the wind out of the lieutenant would be an understatement. He was sure that he had cracked his faceplate, and his panic only subsided when his suit diagnostics assured him that no such eventuality had occurred. Lt. Pimenta had an incredible pain in his solar plexus. The pain was turning his head dizzy. As he separated himself from the foam, he looked at where he had crashed and realized that his solar plexus area had landed splat in the middle of a rivet bump. Thankfully it had not damaged his armor or the suit, but it had knocked the wind out of him.
He instructed his suit to administer him a quick stimulant dose, usually reserved for shock injuries like a bullet wound. He knew that it was an overkill, but now was not the time for him to be going all woozy headed, just as they were reaching the first critical juncture of their mission. He pushed his feet against the wall of the space station to float towards one of the interplanetary shuttles. These two shuttles were the only shuttles that remained near the space station. All the local shuttles had flown away from the space station in the last few minutes. Both the interplanetary shuttles had undocked, but had not turned on their thrusters yet, so they were drifting very slowly away from the space station.
Lt. Pimenta ordered his suit to foam his gloves only, and was able to stick them to the shuttle hull. He couldn’t contact the heretic commander to check how they were progressing. The radio blackout due to the EMP blast still in effect, although his display was showing that the amount of radio noise was subsiding. It would be clear in a minute or so. The lieutenant hopped on the surface of the shuttle using his foam dexterously a he had practiced many times during his training. He had to reach the closest heretic and communicate by induction to get a status report.
In the periphery of his faceplate display, the computer was indicating that the third missile was on its way to renew the fading EMP blast and keep the moon cut off by radio for a few more minutes. At one level he knew that the missile was only doing its programmed job, which was essential for the plan, but at another level he cursed the missile for prolonging the radio jamming. He could have given anything to talk to the heretic commander to find out how they had progressed with their mission.
---XXX---
Scent of Swiftness grudgingly admired and acknowledged the ingenuity of the Ka-Baal. It wasn’t the science of the foam that he marveled at. He was sure that the curious caste of his beings were equally capable of conjuring up a similar foam for the purpose. It was the creative inventiveness of the Ka-Baal to think of such a concept and develop the needed materials for it, so that they could execute the boarding process, which he marveled.
His beings had been fighting in space much longer than the Ka-Baal as he knew now. Yet in all their long history, his beings had not developed this tactic of boarding as part of their offensive doctrine. It was a strategy that was perhaps never considered necessary or prudent or for whatever reason never used. Their beings had always relied on brute strength. The Ka-Baal used deceptions, sophistication and trickery as a substitute for brute strength often. That was the fundamental difference between the two beings. To that extent the Ka-Baal lived up to the reputation they had gained.
Despite the bravado he had displayed to Master Offspring of God, Swiftness was sore and was sure that he had sprained two of his limbs massively. He had pushed himself and his warriors to the limits to prove a point to the Ka-Baal warriors about the physical superiority of his beings. Swiftness suspected that even in this act he had somehow been manipulated by the Ka-Baal commander into performing such a dangerous act. He didn’t care. He was here for the warrior glory, and there was plenty of it to be had.
Swiftness didn’t have to hide or stalk. He remembered what Master Offspring of God had said a short while ago. So he let himself float and used his micro thrusters to fall in line behind three other beings who were heading towards the entrance hatch of the interplanetary shuttle. Shaitans weren’t truly capable of feeling nervous, but they were capable of feeling apprehensive. Swiftness was apprehensive like hell as he entered through the hatch.
The first contact he had with another being inside the shuttle, he noticed that the other being instinctively withdrew its body as if it had touched a very hot object. Before the being withdrew his touch though, Swiftness had taste its slime signals through the suit, just as the being must have tasted his. The being had experienced the equivalent of surprise rather than alarm. The being touched Swiftness again, this time sending rapid enquiry signals as to who Swiftness was and from where he had arrived, since he was unknown to the being, and the being was fairly certain that he knew every soul currently in the academy.
Swiftness had to fight every instinct of his, which was screaming at him to deploy his claws and gut the soft underbelly of the enquiring being. That was the way of the warriors. Unfortunately Swiftness was now fighting to a plan drawn up by the Ka-Baal, which like them, required deception, deviousness, and the worst possible affront to his beings – a lie. So despite his instincts, Swiftness lied that he was in one of the incoming shuttles to the space station, having just arrived to the moon. He had special instructions from the Proctor, and needed to see the pilot.
The enquiring being blocking his way did not move. The taste of the skin slime of the being indicated that what Swiftness had said, did not add up. There had been no new arrivals to the moon in over thirty cycles as far as he knew. Yet slowly and reluctantly, the being let Swiftness pass, perhaps due to the shock and confusion of the moment, or perhaps because lying to another being was such an alien concept that it wasn’t even considered.
Swiftness quickly made his way through, brushing past another being, who tasted equally surprised at the unfamiliar taste of Swiftness. He got excited when he brushed past the third being, because it was the taste of one of his own warriors. So some of his warriors had made it inside. If the situation turned to violence, as he was sure it eventually would, he would not be fighting alone. That gave him additional impetus as he hurried towards the pilot chamber at the heart of the shuttle.
The pilot chamber, as the name suggested was the equivalent of the cockpit of the shuttle. It was at the absolute center of the shuttle because the Shaitans had nothing to see out in space. Everything they needed to taste was available at the tasting stations in the pilot chamber, which was connected to the sensors and scanners on the skin of the shuttle. In fact there was nothing special about the pilot chamber. In theory the shuttle could be controlled from any of the niches with a tasting station dotting the shuttle. The pilot chamber was more of convention, tradition and historical holdback to the early days of designated stations that could only get the sensor and scanner inputs and take commands for ship movement. It was a situation very similar to the evolution of the human cockpit or the bridge. In theory a human shuttle can be flown from the cargo hold, just as easily as from the cockpit. Having a cockpit was just a human convention.
The good part of the pilot chamber was that like the rest of the shuttle, it didn’t have any door. Something missing from all Shaitan social habitation. The only doors Shaitans have was for functional separation, like airlocks or water locks. So it was fairly easy for Swiftness to quickly reach the pilot chamber, where two beings were occupying their respective niches. The bad part was also the fact that the pilot chamber didn’t have any doors. If and when Swiftness took over, he couldn’t just lock himself in and take control of the shuttle. First if there was someone on the shuttle with override codes, then that being could take over the shuttle from any of the niches onboard. Even if no one possessed the override codes, they could physically attack the pilot chamber and take over.
The pilot chamber would have to be continuously guarded or every non-believer being would have to be physically eliminated. Both were daunting tasks, but those were for later. At that moment, Swiftness had to ensure that these two beings in the pilot niches did not start the engines of the shuttle to take it away from the space station, in an effort to save it. The harder part was that Swiftness co
uldn’t just kill these two pilots. He needed them alive all the way to their final objective.
Time to test the magic poison of the Ka-Baal. The one thing that had earned the Ka-Baal their name. Swiftness had always been curious and fascinated about this poison that detached the mind of the being from his body. He had never seen it in action, neither had any Shaitan outside of Alpha Shaitan. The fascinating description of the effects of the poison filled him with morbid curiosity. Unfortunately, every being on the shuttle was in void suit, and the shuttle itself was airless, open to space at the moment. So the easy way of administrating the poison by air was out.
Swiftness had to administer the poison physically, which meant that he would finally get to fight. Stealth was still important though. The radio blackout meant that the pilots couldn’t raise an alarm over the radio, but they couldn’t be allowed to slip away. Swiftness had brought one of his warriors along with him, and positioned him to block the exit. Then he approached the pilots. The first pilot Swiftness came in contact, tasted of confusion the moment he was touched. The confusion was not just due to unfamiliarity with the taste of Swiftness, or the ostensible message Swiftness conveyed, but it was also due to the area of the pilot’s body that Swiftness reached for.
Shaitans normally touched each other on the limbs or on top of the carapace. Swiftness reached for the point where the body joined with one of the limbs on the underside. The equivalent body location of a human armpit. Shaitan custom required beings to let other beings touch each other, since that was their primary mode of communication. Thus despite his confusion, the pilot let Swiftness touch him. Swiftness instantly deployed his modified claw, which was hollow and had a hypodermic syringe embedded in it.
The pilot started struggling immediately, deploying its own claws in an effort to slash at Swiftness. By the amateurish efforts of the pilot, Swiftness realized that the pilot must be a novice, who had not yet matured into a full grown adult, hence lacked strength as well as skill. Swiftness used his own limbs to keep the limbs of the pilot at bay, while he pumped the poison directly into the large lump of neural nodes that existed on each of the limb connections of a Shaitan.
Shaitans didn’t have single point of vulnerability in their body. They couldn’t be knocked cold the same way you could knock a human out by a blow to the head, or a kick to the balls. Instead Shaitans had these neural node lumps at the pits of their limbs, which were the closest analog to a point of vulnerability. Injure enough of them, and a Shaitan is incapacitated. The Ka-Baal healer had instructed the True believer warriors aboard their vessel that the quickest and most effective way of administering the poison to a being, was to inject it directly to these nodes. If the poison could be injected in all the six nodes on the pits of all the six limbs, then the being would become a zombie in minutes. If it was injected in only a few nodes or in other parts of the body, then one had to wait for the circulatory system of the being to transport the poison to all the nodes before it took complete hold over its body which might take a long time. Time that Swiftness didn’t have.
Swiftness used his superior strength and training to overpower the pilot and keep it pinned and proceeded to inject the poison into the other nodes of his body. He had turned on the program in his suit computer that had been provided by the Ka-Baal. It was supposed to be the control program, through which more efficient instructions could be given to a poisoned subject. The program was strictly not needed. A poisoned subject was immensely susceptible to suggestions, even when those commands were given directly through the skin slime by another being.
Swiftness noticed to his amazement that by the time he had reached the third node of the pilot’s body, the first limb had stopped struggling. It was flaccid. That made Swiftness’ job increasingly easy, as he went about administering the poison. He was thankful for this, because despite his warrior training, the two sprained limbs of his were hurting like crazy while he grappled and struggled with the pilot.
The other pilot meanwhile was blissfully unaware and busy in his own niche. Radio blackout meant that the other pilot couldn’t hear the panic alarms of the first pilot through the suit. Neither was any sound being transmitted in the airless environment. Being completely dark, there was no possibility of even seeing the struggle going on just a few meters away, if the Shaitans had vision in the first place.
As Swiftness was administering the poison on the last limb, he got sloppy primarily due to his two sprained limbs. He loosened this tightly wrapped limbs on the limbs and body of the pilot slightly, which enabled the pilot to slam one of his still functioning limbs on to the tasting station. Tasting stations were networked with each other and the rest of the ship through optical fibers, which are impervious to EMP blast. The tasting stations were operating normally.
The cry for help of the pilot was tasted immediately by the other pilot, who jumped from his niche and pounced on Swiftness with its claws fully deployed. Swiftness turned instinctively, and using all his warrior training started deflecting the slashes of the second pilot. The suit computer of Swiftness was blaring multiple alarms about breach of suit integrity, where the second pilot’s claws had found its mark and ripped his suit. Shaitans have a distributed brain system, so they can process multiple disparate information at the same time without getting distracted from any one of those information. Swiftness could taste the information that his suit computer was feeding him and analyze it, even while fighting with full concentration with the second pilot.
The suit breaches would not kill him immediately, but eventually it would, if left untended for many more minutes, Swiftness concluded after tasting the data.
The first pilot was not completely incapacitated yet. It was making feeble efforts to slash and stab Swiftness too. Swiftness was having a hard time fending off both the pilots at the same time, while trying to administer the poison on the second pilot. He could really have used the help of his warrior standing just a few meters away blocking the exit. It was the turn of Swiftness to be shortchanged by the radio blackout. His warrior had no idea of the life and death struggle Swiftness was involved in, and did not come to his aid.
Swiftness used all his warrior training to keep pushing the second pilot who probably was also a novice by the way he was fighting. This put some distance between him and the first pilot who was having trouble moving, as most of his limbs had stopped responding to the commands of the central brain. Swiftness got the respite he needed and started injecting the second pilot the same way as he had done to the first. After Swiftness had injected into four of the nodes of the second pilot, he realized that his suit was sounding an insistent alarm. He needed to give it attention immediately.
Swiftness pushed the second pilot with as big a heave as he could manage in his weakened state due to the suit leaks and rushed back in the direction of his own warrior standing guard at the exit. He needed the help of the warrior urgently. The second pilot made an effort to follow Swiftness, but was crawling on three limbs.
The moment Swiftness had touched his own warrior blocking the exit, he realized that the warrior was himself engaged in a mortal combat with not one but two non-believer beings. So their ruse had finally been discovered by the non-believers! It was not a surprise. What was a surprise, was how long it took them to realize and act upon the infiltration by the warriors of Swiftness. He had been studying the warrior protocols of the Ka-Baal, and realized that their own beings were far too trusting of each other, and hence were susceptible to the kind of infiltration that he had pulled off. The Ka-Baal did not completely and unconditionally trust anyone. Not even their own beings. They had layered protocols for access to everything, and strict regimen of authentication and authorization, almost as if every other individual of their own beings was a suspect or a traitor. Swiftness had found this practice of the Ka-Baal strange at that time, but realized that those protocols prevented an infiltration like the one that Swiftness had pulled off.
Those were idle thoughts for later, which Swiftness co
uld indulge in, if he lived. The immediate need was to repair his suit so that he lived. There was no way that his warrior could help him. He was fighting for his own life, which could end at any moment. If it did, then Swiftness would be the next target, and would surely be killed in his weakened state. If Swiftness had to live, he had to repair his own suit and start recuperating with shot of a stimulant that his suit could administer.
Swiftness had no option but to try to repair his suit as best as he could. The tears on the limbs were easy, which he could repair fairly well by himself. But it was not the tears on the limbs that was his main problem. Each limb was compartmentalized, so the air pressure loss affected only that limb. With his warrior training he could live with a few limbs open to space for some time. The problem was the big tear on the top of his carapace, which was bleeding air from his main body, and causing his main brain to asphyxiate.
Swiftness took the stimulant shot first to boost his limb dexterity, which had started going sloppy due to lack of oxygen. The stimulant injected an extra-large dose of oxygen laden nutrients directly into his bloodstream which would clear his mind for a short time. The Swiftness felt the top of the carapace with his limbs and foamed over a large part of the carapace and hoped that he had placed it properly enough to stop the leak for the time being. His suit computer reported that he had achieved partial success. The tear was still leaking air, but at a much reduced pace, letting a higher air pressure build inside the suit, which should keep him oxygenated enough. He then quickly worked on repairing the tears on his limbs, which the computer reported were a good job and had stopped the air leaks completely.
Triumph & Defeat (Shaitan Wars Book 4) Page 29