The Apex Warriors

by Marc Stevens

  I thought that might get a chuckle or some other cute comment. I was wrong. Tria’s voice came over both mine and Sael’s comms, and it was an octave higher than normal. “Something is trying to access the tunnel behind us!”

  I assumed all of the racket coming from behind me was coming from Tria’s progress through the tunnel. It was disheartening to find out I was wrong, again.

  Sael called to us. “Our exit point is just ahead!”

  We were moving downward at more than a forty-five-degree angle. I did not think it was possible for Sael to go any faster without literally falling face-first and sliding down the narrow passage. I had to give credit where it is due, she was putting some distance between us. Having a couple of extra arms seemed to be an advantage. I crawled faster trying to stay with her and knew Tria was doing the same.

  Our increased pace was generating a lot of noise. To me, we sounded like gravel in a gutter pipe. With the ship being dead quiet, every hostile on it would have to be deaf not to hear us coming. The hatch Sael was heading for suddenly blew inward in a shower of sparks and flame. I was not able to stop as quickly as Sael, and collided headfirst into her, shoving her forward to the smoking wreck of a hatch. A glowing tentacle whipped into the opening and wrapped around her. I grabbed her legs in an attempt to keep her from being pulled out of the hole. We both got jerked out together and slammed to the deck. The suddenness of the bone-jarring stop knocked the air from my lungs and scrambled my vision. I had no doubt it did the same to Sael. I was trying to regain my senses and take a much-needed breath. I heard Sael let out a loud grunt and then saw her flying like a ragdoll down the corridor behind me.

  I could feel the beast imprinted into my brain come crawling out of the grave I had mentally buried it in. I sat up with a growl and raised my arm for a beam shot. I was met with one of those big spiked tipped appendages the Prule Hunter uses for feet. The Bio-machine tried to drive it right thru me with a massive kick that sent me flailing down the passage in the direction Sael had gone. I found myself lying in a heap against a bulkhead. The pain in my chest had me wondering if the Hunter’s spike had impaled me. Any breath I had gained after being slammed to the deck was voided from my lungs. I was painfully gagging and wheezing for air and my ears were ringing like a siren. My eyes were out of focus but could make out the numerous warning lights in my HUD urgently blinking out in distress at my current condition.

  A brilliant white light lit the corridor. Over the top of the loud ringing in my ears, I heard the warbling screech of the Hunter. Another bright flash and the screech cut short. Something slammed into my legs. I rolled over thinking the Hunter was going to use me as a flyswatter. Willing myself up on my hands and knees I started crawling only to fall across Sael’s body. She was obviously still alive because she started beating me like a drum. I rolled off of her and discovered what had slammed into me was a large piece of a Prule Hunter’s capsule-shaped torso.

  My vision cleared up and I found myself being pulled backward. The ringing in my ears subsided letting me know my hearing was slowly correcting itself. I could now hear the Troop Master yelling over our comms. He was telling Tria to check her fire, and that he and Coonts had the Principal Investigator and me.

  I reached up and tugged at Klutch’s arm so he would stop dragging me around like a feed sack. He let go and I groaned as I got to my feet. Tria rushed to me and gave me a hug that my battered ribs felt right through my armor. Sael struggled to her feet and leaned against the wall. Pointing down the corridor she said the armory was three hatches down. I cleared the warning lights from my HUD. Most were reporting on the generally poor condition I was in. My suit AI introduced a painkiller into my system with a shot of stimulants for dessert. I in no way could say I felt better, but the consolation was that I have been in a lot worse shape in the past.

  I checked on my team’s status. With the exception of Sael, whose health pretty much mirrored my own, we were still combat-capable. Our condition reminded me of something I heard a battle-weary Sig trooper tell his superior officer. He said that his troops would march on because they still had a whole lot of dying left in them.

  2

  Klutch took the lead and Coonts the rear guard. We boosted rather haphazardly down the large hallway at high speed and set down in front of an equally large vault-like door. Of course, it was closed and locked, but we were not inhibited by such problems.

  Sael pointed at the door and let her poor health dictate her tone of speech. “What are you waiting for Troop Master?”

  I heard Klutch mutter something under his breath over our comms and then look back at me. I gave him a quick nod and he made us a portal. Sael tried to push past him but he elbowed her away. He extended his fighting hooks and dove through. We piled in after him. To our surprise, he was entangled in the arms of a Prule maintenance machine and was hacking away at it. Tria shoved me aside and boosted shoulder first into another that was coming to the aid of its counterpart. We split up and piled onto the machines and tore them apart piece by piece until we were able to slash open their biomass vessels, putting an end to the fight.

  An oath from Coonts made me tear my attention away from my handiwork. My no-light sensors revealed the nature of his swearing. The place was ransacked and void of weapons. There were pieces and parts of what was once weapons scattered everywhere on the deck. The Bio-machines had disassembled them for reasons only known to them.

  The Troop Master still being a little miffed at Sael, turned on her. “Is there anything else you want us to waste our time doing?” he spat.

  Sael was undeterred and moved to one of the empty weapons racks on the wall. There were twenty rifle supports on each rack. She grabbed the number three support on the middle rack and twisted it like she was unscrewing it. The sixth twist made an audible click, and the whole rack opened like a door. Behind the rack was a hidden storage room and it was lined with weapons and crates.

  Sael turned back to us. “We have been in this situation in the past. Hostile forces always loot the armory. Some even make the mistake of using it as a prison for the ship’s crew.”

  I would enter that little nugget into my notebook. The secondary armory was not in the original plans when the Fury was at Alpha Base. Sael went inside followed by the Troop master. The first thing the Tibor did was grab one of the big anti-ship rifles from the closest rack.

  Sael saw Klutch smile and look down the accelerator rails. “That will be of no use to you.” She said. “It will only function in the hands of my people.”

  With that said, she grabbed the weapon and tried to take it from Klutch, but he wouldn’t let go. He pulled away from her and flipped it end for end grasping it by the barrel. With a sneer, Klutch said, “I knew that I was going to use it as a bludgeon.”

  Sael squinted her eyes and then tried to take the rifle away from Klutch. Enough was enough, this was getting us nowhere. Tria reached her open hand out to Klutch before I could jump them for acting like a couple of children. Klutch pulled the rifle from Sael’s grasp, gave her a big toothy smile, and handed it to Tria. He then reached down and grabbed a crate off the deck that he knew held Chaalt grenades, and stalked out of the hidden depot. I was thinking I was going to have a word with my team about the bickering. A lot of it was Earthman attributes that came directly from interacting with me. Why they would embrace those particular mannerisms was anybody’s guess.

  Tria must have sensed I was on the verge of chewing some ass and opened a private comms channel to me. “Let it go, Nathan, we are all suffering from battle fatigue and the uncertainty of our destination. Once they are concentrating on our survival, their discipline will quickly be restored.”

  I knew she was right and held my tongue. She smiled at me and I nodded to her. Turning back to Sael I gave her a questioning look. “Surely there is something in here we all can make use of besides grenades?” I said.

  The Principal Investigator turned and went to the back of the cache. She moved a crate aside and touch
ed something on the wall that I could not make out. The wall parted, exposing an indentation that held six pistols and what appeared to be a small box. The pistols were similar in many ways to the Tibor capacitive discharge weapons carried by their active-duty troops and mercenaries alike.

  She held one out to me. “You should be familiar with this. I almost removed your head with one when I first met you.”

  I did remember the pistols. They packed even more of a punch than the Tibor model and did not overheat as quickly. They could not penetrate Prule shields but were hell on them if you could catch them when they were down.

  Remembering my first encounter with Kala Mor Dee, I displayed the very same idiosyncrasies I was going to berate my strike team for. I took the pistol from Sael and examined it. I put it up to my helmet’s face shield looking down the business end. “Ah yes, I do remember it now,” I said sarcastically.

  Tria rolled her eyes and gave me an elbow. Sael mumbled something disparaging about my ancestry and handed me another. She turned to Coonts with the last four in each of her hands. “Here, you can arm that walking stench factory if you so desire, or keep them for yourself.”

  Coonts walked out of the cache with the pistols. He had a look that told me an argument was going to be an inevitability. “Coonts,” I said. “No arguing or dicking around, just give Klutch the pistols.”

  The over-muscled Grawl stiffened at my statement but did not turn around when he gave me a thumbs up. “No problem Commander, I had no intention of arguing with the dick.” He acknowledged.

  I just shook my head knowing that we were all making light of a very bad situation. I turned back to Sael who now held the small box in her hands. “What else have you got Principal Investigator?”

  “These are prototypes and have yet to be tested,” Sael said as she pulled a flat five-inch disk from the box and handed it to me.

  I turned it over in my hands, noticing it had a half-inch thick by a two-inch-tall spike in the middle of one side. “Is this some kind of mine?” I asked.

  “Yes.” She said. “It has a Containium penetrator spike with an undetectable quantity of anti-matter inside. They were developed specifically for destroying Hunters and Hiveminds. The trigger controller ignores anything that does not fit those unique Prule profiles. The disk will detonate if a proper target passes over it. The mine is capable of firing at angles up to forty-five degrees. When a shielded Prule steps over the device, it will sense the shield’s energy field passing over it and then will detonate inside of the shield bubble.”

  It was an ingenious piece of ordnance if it worked as designed. As far as I knew, the Chaalt made some of the best tech in the galaxy. I had a feeling this would be no exception.

  “Sounds great, how many do you have?” I asked.

  “Just these four,” Sael replied.

  I winced and an old human adage passed fleetingly through my brain. Beggars can’t be choosy.

  Tria leaned over my shoulder and took the device from me and examined it. “Can the Prule detect it and avoid the device?”

  Sael gave me an Earthling shrug of her shoulders. “Unknown, as I have already stated, they are untested.”

  A metallic clank resonated from outside the hidden cache. The Troop Master called over our group comms, stating the obvious. “We have company!”

  The Prule found the remains of their comrades in arms. The search for the culprits responsible ended at the armory door. A dull thump that reverberated through my boots made me exit the hidden cache with Tria and Sael following close behind. Coonts and Klutch were on their knees with their pistols up and ready. They both had a munitions crate full of Chaalt grenades on the deck beside them. There were two grenades already floating close to the overhead above the armory door. My attention was drawn to the glowing orange spot in the middle of the hatch. It wasn’t a stretch to guess that it was a shot from a Hunter’s energy cannon. Sael closed up the cache and took a knee pointing her rifle at the door. Another thump shook us and the orange hot spot glowed almost white. Tria ran forward and put the Chaalt mine on the deck. She kicked some of the weapons parts littering the compartment over the top of it before retreating to my side. Another loud clang came from the door and a Hunter’s spiked appendage penetrated the hot spot. When the Prule jerked it back out for another try. Sael put an anti-ship round perfectly through the hole. The warbling screech of a pissed-off Prule came echoing through the breach.

  Not liking the idea of being trapped in such a small space in a shootout, I glanced behind me. The layout of this deck was very similar to the Legacy. The brig was on the other side of the bulkhead. It was smaller than the armory but had an equally formidable hatch protecting it.

  I pointed to a location on the wall. “Klutch, make a hole!”

  The Troop Master snatched up his grenade box and ran to the spot. Coonts did the same and we crowded in around him. A thump at the armory’s hatch splattered us with molten metal. Klutch activated the portal device and we went through it as quickly as possible. The Troop Master tossed another grenade from his stash and jumped through, closing the portal after him. He collided with Coonts but got no response. Before he could give Coonts a piece of his mind, he saw what had us frozen in place. We were shocked at the morbid scene our no-light sensors depicted for us. Slaughtered and decomposing Chaalt bodies were everywhere. A quick scan revealed they were dismembered, and all were decapitated. It was hard to say if all of Sael’s missing crew was now accounted for, but I had a body count of forty-one. The condition of the bodies indicated they have been dead for a while. The extremely low levels of oxygen in the toxic atmosphere helped preserve the remains. It would still take a forensic scholar to identify who they were.

  Sael slowly moved among the remains. “This accounts for all but twenty-six.”

  I thought she had more to say but was interrupted by a tremendous jarring blast that sounded like a sledgehammer striking an anvil. We were nearly knocked off our feet. “That was the mine!” Sael called over our comms.

  I pointed to the brig hatch. “Klutch, let’s hit them in the flank while they are preoccupied with the armory.” The Troop Master nodded his agreement and made his way carefully through the bodies strewn about the deck. When he saw we were lined up behind him with our weapons ready, he triggered the portal device. We went through the gray shimmering opening fast and were not disappointed to see the enemy was indeed fixated on the armory. A grim smile crossed my face when I saw there were pieces of a Hunter scattered outside of the wrecked armory hatch. The Chaalt mine was now tested as far as I was concerned. In my opinion, it would receive an A-plus for ass-kicking. If we lived through this cluster grope, I wanted to add similar devices to our loadout.

  There was another Hunter with its shields up and firing its energy cannon blindly into the armory. It had three maintenance machines standing in the corridor behind it. All of them got a sensor read on us at the same time and tried to pivot in our direction. We opened fire. Klutch and I not wanting to leave anything to uncertainty, hit the Hunter with a beam shot each. The simultaneous shots blew the Bio-machine into high-velocity debris that destroyed one of the maintainers standing closest to it. The remains of the Hunter were still raining down around us as the rifle and pistol fire from my strike team turned the survivors of the surprise attack into inanimate scrap. Our scanners confirmed we were the only living contacts in the passage.

  The hangar was the last hatch behind us and I didn’t want to be surprised by any more uninvited company. “Klutch, you and Coonts put some grenades in the drop tubes while Tria, Sael, and I check out the hangar.”

  The pair snatched up their grenade crates and boosted down the passage. Tria and I turned away to investigate the hangar, but Sael stood frozen in place. I didn’t know if it was the fact that we were systematically destroying her flagship, or finally knowing the fate of her former crew that had her standing like a statue.

  “Principal Investigator, we need to keep moving,” I said in a neutral voi
ce.

  Sael slowly turned to me and I saw the fire in her eyes. It was classic Kala Mor Dee. She was in the mood to do some killing. Woes to anything that tries to stand in our way. We boosted down to the next hatch. The oversized opening was of course sealed. We took up a defensive position with our backs to the bulkhead on each side of it and waited for the return of Coonts and Klutch. They didn’t make us wait long. They came boosting down the corridor at high speed.

  “The up and down tubes are mined, and we have no movement to report.” The Troop Master said.

  Seeing that the two were still toting grenade crates with them, I decided they needed to share. “Divide up the last of your grenades among us and let’s survey the hangar.”

  Tria, Sael, and I got five each. Knowing the two as well as I did, I knew it was not an equal distribution. Both Coonts and Klutch were hoarders when it came to things that went bang, or death and destruction in general. They would have their empty ammo storage packs stuffed full.

  I pointed to a spot on the far side of the hangar hatch. It was where the control center was located. If the Prule were preparing for hangar operations when the Fury reached its destination, the exterior hatches would be operated from that location. We stacked behind the Troop Master and he initiated a portal. We went through fast and ready. Klutch opened fire with both of his pistols before I could even locate a target. He blazed away like an old west gunslinger point-blank into the backs of two Prule maintainers. The Chaalt pistols were blowing fist-sized holes right through the unshielded Bio-machines. They went down in thrashing disjointed heaps. Tria and I extended our fighting hooks and drove them into their biomass containers. They went still and the rest of my team scanned for additional targets.

  Coonts called out on our comms. “No detectable hostiles Commander, unless they are aboard that shuttle.”