Date Point: 4y 8m 2w AV
Izbrk, Planet Ikbrzk
Krrkktnkk A’ktnnzzik’tk (“Kirk”)
Kirk could hold his own in a fight and then some. After Kevin Jenkins, he was the being who had scored the second most Hunter kills during the raid on “Outlook on Forever”. He’d kept to his training throughout his political career and his new vocation as an agent of the human race, and felt pretty confident that his skills were now at the sharpest they had ever been.
It gave him a certain sense of assuredness and confidence as he picked his way carefully through the Izbrk street market, but that sense was hugely reinforced by the fact that Julian was in the crowd, following him.
It was amazing. Humans stood out in the crowd, despite their smallness. There was just something about the way they moved, looked around, held themselves…everything about a human was subconsciously predatory, and the herbivorous species of the galaxy gave them a wide berth as a result. Even wider, among those who had heard even a fraction of the new-found Deathworlders’ abilities and reputation.
But Julian could vanish. It was disconcerting. He would talk with Kirk, Kirk would look away, and when he looked back, there Julian wasn’t. But if he spoke to him over the silent comms implant in his head, the Deathworlder would be at his side within seconds, never approaching from an expected angle, always…silent. It sent instinctive flight signals right through the ancient, animal parts of Kirk’s brain, which he had to override by reminding himself that Julian was his friend and protector.
Pleasingly, it even made Allison jump. In fact, he wondered if Julian was doing it specifically to get back at her for her teasing.
“Jeeeez!” she hissed, for the third time as she turned and found him walking casually alongside her. “Will you stop that?!”
Several beings glanced at her, alarmed by a raised human voice, then looked away aware that taking too much notice of the business of others was potentially serious trouble. Oddly, they seemed to ignore Julian.
“Not joking this time.” he said. “We’re being tailed. Don’t look.”
Kirk and Allison exchanged a glance. “Tailed?” Kirk asked.
“Chehnasho. Three in the main group, one shadowing them. They’re all wearing cloaks, but I saw combat harnesses underneath. Looked like a kind of uniform: White, with three lines forming a triangle on them.”
“Is their leader female?” Kirk asked.
“I think so, yes. She has a prosthetic arm.”
“Zokrup. A mercenary leader, almost as famous as Five-Skulls Zripob himself, and with good reason.”
“Well, they’ve got some of those new jolt guns.”
“Options?”
“Bear with me.” Julian stepped aside as a stevedore drone grumbled past carrying a crate of some kind, and disappeared.
“Fuck’s sake.” Allison complained. “Where are you, you son of a bitch?”
“Right here.” He replied, walking past her in the opposite direction.
“JEEZ!”
Julian kept going, vocalizing quietly over their private communications. “Quietly please. There’s a left turn up ahead into what smells like a spice market. Kirk, There’s a vizkittik at the second stall selling, and I’m quoting here, ‘The oldest and slimiest Zrrks in the Expanse’.“
“Sounds nice, I could go for a really ancient Zrrk right now.”
Allison muttered something that Kirk suspected might have been a complaint about how other species considered humans to be the strange ones. Julian just kept talking. “Good. Stop off and buy one, haggle with the merchant. What they do next should tell us what they want. Allison, just like I showed you in training, alright?“
“Sure.” she muttered.
“If they make a move, we’ll let you talk for a minute, see what they want. If they’re unfriendly, then we take out the three spares and maybe this Zokrup can tell us something.”
“Nonlethal if you can, please.” Kirk said. “The Chehnasho Syndicates tend to take a dim view of…unauthorized violence in their territory.”
“You got it, boss. Enjoy your nice, rancid, dripping Zrrk.“
Allison pulled a face, which only creased up further as they got closer to the Zrrk vendor. “Dear God.” she complained.
“Fragrant, ain’t they?”
“Delicious.” Kirk commented. “Good meeting, cousin! These smell as good as advertised.”
“Ah, it’s an old family secret. All in the blackrot culture.” the vendor replied happily, launching into the patter that was shared by merchants the galaxy over. “My father always said the batch wasn’t ready until half of it had liquified…um, is that a human? Only my translator says she looks very ill, and I heard they carry dangerous diseases.”
“They have sensitive noses and for some reason Zrrk smells repulsive to them.” Kirk explained. “Don’t worry, she has a suppression implant.”
“Zrrk smells repulsive to them? I heard humans were strange but…I, ah…” The vendor faltered as Allison (who had gone a very strange colour) shot him the kind of murderous glare that only a truly irate Deathworlder could, but he rallied admirably. “Three for the price of two, and I’ll throw in a tzk’zr frond.”
“I have a better offer.”
The new voice belonged to, sure enough, Zokrup, who showed something to the vendor as her two associates levelled shock guns at Allison. “You go on a break and forget you spoke to this “cousin” of yours.” she stated. The vendor glanced back and forth twice, then fled, as did several others nearby.
“One-Shot Zokrup.” Kirk said, an admirable picture of calm for somebody addressing a feared mercenary. “I’m flattered. Somebody must think very highly of me to decide that I’m worth your time.”
“Compliments, Councillor A’ktnnzzik’tk? If I didn’t know better I’d say that you were stupid enough to try and talk me out of my contract.”
“A good thing you know better, then. I’m well aware that you don’t betray your employers.”
Zokrup blinked slowly and visibly, the Chehnasho equivalent of rolling her eyes. “So why the clumsy attempt at sweet-talking me?”
“I’m not allowed to be polite? Incidentally, is this a murder, or just an abduction?”
“Oh, it’s an abduction. For now.”
“Taking out the tail. Get them.”
“Thank you.” Kirk said to Zokrup and Julian both.
He drew and fired. The Chehnasho were all focused on Allison, who threw herself aside and rolled as she landed, fetching up behind a stall which grounded their shock-gun bolts, and by the time they realised that in fact Kirk himself was the more serious threat, two of them were down with their limbs badly broken under the hammer-blows of his pulse pistols, and his cybernetic arm had whipped up and extended the fusion blade hidden within it. The air seethed where the blade had slipped right through Zokrup’s personal shield and was now warring with the forcefield boundary. Greasy Chehnasho sweat erupted all over her face at the sight of a lethally sharp point held perfectly steady only an inch away from what passed for her nose.
Having a total of four arms had some major advantages. Among them was the ability to hold four weapons.
“Bad move, Councillor.” Zokrup spat, even as she dropped her own weapon.
“If you’re referring to the rest of your party, my own backup has taken care of that.” Kirk said. Years of politics had schooled him in the art of ambiguity, never committing to specific numbers when vagueness could hint at accuracy where precision might be completely wrong.
”‘Fraid I used a little too much force, there.” Julian added, arriving right next to the already nervous Zokrup and nearly causing her to impale herself on Kirk’s blade as she started. “You guys really break easily.”
Kirk saw in the way Zokrup’s shoulders sagged that they’d definitely scored a hit.
“Allison?”
She emerged from behind the stall, smoothing her hair down. Static electricity was holding it out away from her head, and crackling viciously as she tried to tidy herself up. “Are bad hair days gonna be a feature of decoy duty?” she asked.
Date Point: 4y 8m 2w AV
Ceres Base, Sol
Drew Cavendish
The largest part of excavating a giant hole in the ice, as with excavating a giant hole anywhere, was moving all of the material out of the hole. In low gravity, the job came with a whole mess of additional challenges. All of their gear had been designed and built in Earth’s gravity, for the tolerances it imposed. Jury-rigged engineering solutions had turned some of those limits on their heads—the sturdy steel arms of the excavators could now wield truly immense buckets and—so long as they moved carefully and slowly to account for the fact that the forces imposed by mass hadn’t changed—were clearing the spoil much faster than would have been possible on Earth.
Piloting those excavators while wearing a vacuum hardsuit was another matter entirely, and usually fell to Tracy Monroe, the mining team’s petite “girly girl” who seemed to take a positive delight in being the one who got to play with the big manly toys while all the roughneck males were stuck holding the surveying equipment and hauling the crates of explosives. Her helmet decal was a stylized Norma Jean, manning an enormous bulldozer and grinning wildly inside her helmet.
“Hey, boss?” she called out as Drew walked past her cabin with the spray paint for marking drill points for the explosives.
“Yeah?”
“Why wasn’t the geologist hungry?“
Drew just rolled his eyes inside his helmet. “Do tell.”
“He’d lost his Apatite.“
The open channel filled with groans and snorts of amusement.
Somebody else piped up: “Hey Marilyn. You know any jokes about Sodium?”
”…Na.” Drew could HEAR the gleeful grin both of the jokers wore after the setup was received.
“Jesus Christ…” he muttered.
“My sediments exactly…”
That one earned the culprit—an American coal miner whose racy “fallen angel” decal had earned him the nickname “wings”—a chorus of amused condemnation, and he took a bow, a difficult task in the rigid hardsuit.
It saved his life.
There was a flash of light, and a thump, felt through the soles of the feet, as something bright streaked down out of the interplanetary dark and carved a trench in the dig site behind Wings. To a man, the team turned away and cowered, protecting their faceplates against shrapnel. Drew felt something glance off his upper arm with a force that knocked him off his feet. He landed gently in the tiny gravity of Ceres’ surface, and hauled himself upright, hollering into the open channel.
“Everyone okay? Check in!” He glanced at the impact site on his upper arm. The impact had dented one of the rigid plates rather than hitting a joint, so the worst damage was some missing paint, a starburst of ugly grey between all the scuffed yellow and black.
“Jesusfuckshitohmygodfuck fuck fuck…“
“Wings! Check in!”
“I’m gonna throw up, fuck…“
Drew looked up. The impact had flung Wings high into, for lack of a better term, the air and he was tumbling wildly, suit bubbled inside the high-visibility yellow glow of his emergency forcefield. “Don’t you fucking dare, mate. Just like we practiced, focus on your heads-up display! You remember!”
“Yeah…yeah, focus on the HUD…deep breaths….” With his mind snapped onto what he could do to help himself, Wings showed why he was on the team by rapidly getting himself under control, both mentally and physically. A few precisely-timed puffs of propellant from his SAFER and his spin was corrected.
“Get yourself indoors mate.” Drew ordered him.
“Way ahead of you, chief.”
“Everyone else okay?” He asked. The request was redundant. His own HUD showed summarized information from all of the team members: anyone with a breach, a popped field or worrying vital signs would have been highlighted in red, but the very safety protocols that he himself had written called for everyone to check themselves and their work buddies. Redundancy saved lives.
It took them only seconds to check in, confirm that they were all intact and well, and could see no alarming signs of damage on any of their fellows. He ordered the team indoors anyway. Nobody knew whether a damaged suit might blow after staying sealed for a few minutes, but he didn’t feel like finding out.
With his immediate duties taken care of, the next step was a sitrep.
“Tower” he called, on the operations channel. “This is Dig One Foreman. What the fuck?!”
“Uh, Dig One, serious incident up here, all radio traffic is being recorded. Uh, Over.” The operator’s “over” was obsolete thanks to the radio squelch, but the man was clearly being on his absolute best behavior for the record. Drew knew he’d been unprofessional with his own outburst, but the Adrenaline was making it hard to keep a calm and composed outlook.
“No shit it’s a ‘serious incident’, we nearly lost a man down here!” he exclaimed. “What the hell hit us?”
“Uh, we’re still determining that, Dig One, over.”
“Well while you’re determining it, this Dig’s closed on my orders. We’re heading inside for a full inspection, we’ve got suit damage out here.”
“Uh…roger that, uh, Dig One. I have you, uh, coming in.” the radio squelched, then squelched again. “Uh, over.”
The place must have been a madhouse. Drew knew that the traffic operators were cool under even the most intense pressure, so for one of them to be so obviously flustered was worrying. “Keep me informed, Tower. Dig One Foreman out.”
He was last into the triple-door airlock, and it was only once they were safely in the mining suit workshop, behind the base’s triple-skin hull and thick concrete outer wall, that he allowed himself to relax and authorize the suitcrack.
Wings’ suit was ruined, the rear of it torn up and peeled open by flying shards of steel-hard ice. The man himself was badly hurt too, though sheer adrenaline had kept him from realizing the fact—bloody skin was visible at the bottom of some of the craters and gouges. They cut him out of it as their first order of business, staunching the bleeding as best they could until the medics arrived and carried him away.
Drew M stood aside to let them pass as he entered. His perpetual smile and the amused creasing around his eyes were both gone. As much as his tanned skin would allow, he looked pale, unwell, and anxious.
“Strewth.” he commented, proving that there were some things that no amount of stress could drive out of him.
“Yyyyep.” Cavendish replied.
“The fuck happened, mate?”
“Ask those useless twats up in the tower.” Drew C told him, turning around to start removing his own suit.
“Yeah, they’re about as useful as an ashtray on- JESUS FUCK! Cavvo, have you seen the back of your head?”
Usually, this impossible query would have earned a sarcastic retort and some friendly insults. Instead, Drew paused, then unlatched his helmet seals and lifted it off.
There was a triangular shard of ice the size of a credit card lodged in the back of his helmet, smack in the middle of the thickest bit, and still just penetrating through to open a hole to the interior. two inches to either side, and it would have lobotomized him.
The whole crew gathered to gawk at it.
The reverent silence was finally broken by the phone. Drew M stabbed the speaker button to answer it.
“Workshop, Tower manager here.” The speaker sounded much more composed than whoever Drew had spoken to only minutes ago. “You all okay down there?”
Drew M glanced around then said. “One of our guys is getting sewn back together, got major suit damage on a few others. The bloody hell happened?”
“From what we can tell one of the ore-haul drones suffered some kind of control software failure and fired its primaries on final approach rather than retros.”
“How does that even happen?” asked O’Neill.
“You got me there. The operator managed to force reset and restore control, but most we could do by then was deflect it. Taking it the other way would have crashed it into the base itself. Sorry for the scare.”
Cavendish spoke up so that the phone could hear him. “Sounds like the right call to me.” he said.
“Yeah, well. We’re starting a critical incident investigation up here. Meeting’s in three hours.”
“We’ll be there.” Both the Drews chorused. There was a click as the tower manager put his end of the phone down. Drew M. turned to Cavendish, his jaw set at a grim angle.
“Bloody oath mate, I’m never calling you paranoid again.” He said.
Date Point: 4y 8m 2w AV
Izbrk, Planet Ikbrzk
Krrkktnkk A’ktnnzzik’tk (“Kirk”)
Izbrk’s architecture was a study in graceless off-white concrete cubes, ruddy and austere in the sullen red light that penetrated the great forcefield dome. That dome made Izbrk a city with breathable oxygenated air, rather than a sand dune and a gasping death followed by erosion under the relentless sandstorms. Still, somehow, the sand and dust crept in, and was swept into the cheaper, poorer districts, where it accumulated until somebody was finally motivated to organise a crusade against the cloying orange powder that rounded out every corner and undulated across the road in the stiff artificial breeze of the atmosphere systems.
For once, the human predilection for clothing seemed like a sensible concession to hostile environments, rather than a strange cultural peccadillo. The grit between Kirk’s toes was chafing him terribly and he was devoting his upper hands full time to shielding his eyes from airborne dust, whereas Julian and Allison were both wearing high-laced tan boots sourced from army surplus back on Earth, and seemed perfectly comfortable inside their hooded jackets.
It was only when he glanced sideways at them that he realised they were both wearing dark glasses and some kind of flimsy white mask over their noses and mouths. If not for the subtle differences in body shape between male and female, he wouldn’t have been able to tell them apart.
“Could I have of those?” He asked after his third sneezing and coughing fit. Julian wordlessly produced one from the pocket on his leg and handed it over.
“You can try.” he said.
Kirk held it over his nose and tried to inhale—it was difficult beyond belief. “I think I’m using it wrong.” he said.
“It’s just a filter. You’re using it right. People wear these things all the time back on Earth.”
Kirk tried again. It was like trying to inhale through a wall. “They do?”
“Sure. I hear you can get them with, like, animal faces and stuff printed on over in China.”
Kirk handed it back. “How can you breathe with this thing on?” he asked.
“Deathworlder.”
“Of course. I…Oh. Good. This is the address.”
“Your old friend likes the low life.” Allison commented, surveying the street. The nearest garbage pile contained pieces of automated garbage collection drone.
“Far from it.” Kirk told her. “But he’s a practical being, behind the diplomat.”
“Diplomat?” Allison asked. “This guy’s from your security council days?”
“Before that, even. He and I go all the way back to the Outlook on Forever, long before it was famous…There. That’s the building.”
“You sure? It looks pretty much like all the others.”
“It’s the only one with a big enough door…”
They ducked through a swirl of dust and paused on the opposite side of the street, where Julian looked up and tensed, ready to leap. A hand landed on his shoulder.
“Nuh-uh, mister jungle. It’s my turn to be the badass.” Allison sprang up the wall, grabbed a cutaway that was the closest thing to ornamentation on the bland grey buildings, and swarmed up it in the low gravity. Kirk watched and admired as she turned at the top and caught the bag that Julian threw her, an item which he himself had trouble even lifting, but which the Deathworlder lobbed up to roof height with one hand and only a small grunt of exertion.
“You sure we need that?” Julian asked him. “I tied that mercenary up pretty good.”
“Chehnasho mercenaries don’t get a reputation like hers without being almost as dangerous as you are.” Kirk said. “She underestimated us last time. Let’s not make the same mistake.”
“Makes sense.”
“What did you bring for yourself?”
Julian just tugged his jacket aside—hanging from his belt was a knife as long as one of Kirk’s hands, and a hatchet. “Just the essentials.” he said, almost apologetically, as if he wasn’t carrying weaponry that could bring down a Vulza.
Knocking on the door produced no effect at first, but then, just as Julian was about to ask if he was sure they had the right place, the door—sealed against the invasive dust—popped and freely swung inwards.
They stepped inside, and Julian closed the door behind them, squinting to see in the darkness inside.
Something glowed an unwell yellow green in the far corner.
A voice spoke, quietly, as a heavy bulk around the glow shifted. “Ugnurukvuyung, uluhuguagnu-A’ktnnzzik’tk-lun“
“Vedreg…Oh, Vedreg, what did they do to you?” Kirk rushed forward.
“Luu?” The big being chuffed deep in his chest, something similar to a laugh. “Muragvu-lon murgutu. Muu murguto muurulu-go.“
Vedreg shifted as the light came up, and Julian fought back a sudden heave in his stomach. The Guvnurag’s great shaggy scalp had been shaved, and terrible ugly wounds covered it, the blood a startling blue where it soaked his dressings.
“You did this to yourself?” Kirk practically shrieked, clearly appalled.
“Gno. Surunguvuranmurulgugwun-vatwag.”
There was a shocked silence during which Kirk only stared at his old friend, and Vedreg turned his head away, flanks fading from shade to shade.
Julian eventually had to ask. “What’s he say?”
Kirk looked up at him. “He said it was the only way to escape ‘them’.”
Date Point: 4y 8m 2w AV
Folctha Colony, Cimbrean.
Captain Owen Powell
“Captain!”
Ross was at a dead run from the direction of the sensor array. The cobbled-together menagerie of technology that Adrian Saunders had installed had been one of the first projects in the colony to be housed inside a permanent structure, where it had been added to, patched into a series of monitors, and generally turned into the beating nerve center of the colony’s intelligence network.
“There’s a ship coming in sir. Five parsecs out. Looks like a freighter. Straight at us.”
He reversed course and matched the captain as Powell ran toward the sensor array and landing platform, handing him an earpiece.
“Legsy! Drop it and gear up!” Powell yelled. Legsy had already paused his demonstration as Ross approached. Now, he snapped out of jocular instructor mode, and into hardened special-forces veteran, pausing only long enough to acknowledge the order before heading to the armoury, long legs eating up the turf.
Powell got his earpiece in and keyed it. “Myrmidon, ground has incoming contact, looks like a civilian freighter. Can you see it?” He asked.
“We do, Captain. It’s still too far away to make out details, but it’s big, it’s slow, and it’s using a warp drive. Agree that it looks like a freighter.“
“Have the Hunters seen it yet?”
“There’s been no increase of chatter on their channels to indicate as much. If our best estimates as to their sensor range are accurate then we should see them start to take notice in about five minutes.”
“Any way to contact them?”
“Not until they’re in range for the swarm to see them, and they’re too slow to escape. It’ll be a massacre.”
Powell gritted his teeth. Watching the escape pod arrive a fortnight earlier had been tough—that tiny vessel had stood no chance in hell, and had been scooped wholesale into the belly of a swarm ship that had decloaked like a breaching whale and swallowed the little craft whole.
He weighed his options. It could be a trap. A stolen freighter full of the toughest and best-armed Hunters that the Swarm of Swarms could muster. In which case, any rescue mission would most likely end in death.
But what rescue mission could they realistically pull off anyway? Potent and reinforced as they were, neither of the salvaged Hierarchy ships would stand up to the hungry enemy at their gates.
He explained as much to Captain Manning as he entered the groundside CIC, familiarizing himself at a glance with the latest updates as the sensors teased new information from the unfolding situation
“We may have a solution there.” Manning replied. “It’s a risk, but I’m not watching a freighter full of people die on my watch.“
“Assuming it’s not a trap.” Powell reminded him.
“I’m prepared to take that risk, captain.”
“I was hoping you’d say that. What’s your solution?”
Date Point: 4y 8m 2w AV
Izbrk, Planet Ikbrzk
Allison Buehler
“Hey, guys…that mercenary found us.”
Allison settled in under the cloak that Julian had so thoughtfully packed into the bag. It wasn’t much—in fact it was little more than rough sacking, but the colour blended with the concrete and dust of her rooftop perfectly. At most, she would look like a tarpaulin left on the rooftop storage to keep the dust out, here in a place where it never rained.
“Reinforcements?” Julian asked her.
“I see five not counting that Zokrup bitch.”
“Only five? I smell a rat.”
Allison took that seriously. Julian was a blushing disaster with women, and a heck of a lot of fun to tease and flirt with, but she also knew that he had an unrivalled instinct for dangerous situations.
“I can’t move without risking them spotting me.” she said. “I can see the whole road, but don’t ask me about the alleys.”
“Leave that to me.”
“One jungle’s pretty much like the other, huh?”
“Better. No sticks to break, no snakes to step on.”
There was a pause. Allison had no idea how Julian had exited the building, but she had every confidence that he had, somehow.
“Okay…” he finally said, as the mercenaries continued down the street, knocking on doors and intimidating the frightened, impoverished residents who dared—or were coerced—to open up. “Alleyways are empty. Weird.”
“They can’t be that overconfident, can they?”
“Not after what we did back in the market. Not if they’ve got a brain, and I’m thinking Zokrup does.”
Allison watched the Chehnasho in question remove something slimy from a facial orifice, inspect it, then eat it. “Oh yeah. She’s a shoo-in for Mensa.”
”…oh shit. Stay down.”
Allison did so, burrowing back from the edge and down under her cloak. After a second or two, her ears caught what Julian had heard, and she tucked herself up as small and unnoticeable as she could manage, just peeking over the top of her wall.
Something that reminded her of a cranefly came skimming low over the rooftops and spun gently above the middle of the stree. Allison blinked as it kicked up a real wind to replace the half-hearted synthetic breeze, full of particulate irritants.
Kirk chimed in. “What’s going on out there?” he demanded.
“They brought a gunship.” Julian said. “Don’t show your face, or it’ll level the building.”
“Wrong.” Allison said, quietly.
“Whaddya mean, ‘wrong’? I’m looking right at it!“
“They brought three…”
Date Point: 4y 8m 2w AV
Ceres Base, Sol
Drew Cavendish
“You’ve reviewed the code already?”
Five of the IBM senior engineers were in the meeting, and they collectively shared the patient expression worn by all engineers when dealing with the layperson.
“Yes, we reviewed the code already.”
“Completely?”
“Completely. It’s simple and efficient code. That was the whole point.”
“Now that we’re all here…” Adele Park drew their attention to the arrival of the Drews. “Let’s get this thing started. How’s your guy, Cavendish?”
Drew sat down. “He’ll have some scars to show off, but he’s okay. Thanks.” He meant it. Being asked that by the base’s executive officer was genuinely a balm for his damaged morale.
“I’m glad.” She tapped something on her tablet computer. “Alright, meeting is called to order, in the chair is Adele Park, executive officer for Ceres Base One, the Hephaestus LLC. The business being discussed is the critical incident of this date, its causes, effects, and how to prevent a repeat. Are there any points of order before we begin?”
Drew raised his hand.
“Point of order Mister Andrew Cavendish, Dig Site One team leader.” Adele said, then extended a hand to indicate he could proceed.
Drew cleared his throat. “Adele, it’s high time we hold a meeting concerning ALL of the serious, significant and critical safety incidents that have befallen this facility since launch.” He said. “This is only the most recent in a string of potentially deadly mishaps, and we’ve seen no trend in improvement in response to our efforts to improve facility safety.”
“While not strictly speaking a point of order, the suggestion is well made.” Adele said. “The motion on the table is to expand the remit of this meeting to cover all safety incidents since the start of operations. Is there…I see several people raising their hands to second the…in fact, motion carried.”
Drew had already placed his thick incident folder on the table in front of him, unnoticed. Now, as he pushed it forward toward the center, everybody looked at it. “We may be at this for some time.” he said.
Date Point: 4y 8m 2w AV
Izbrk, Planet Ikbrzk
Julian Etsicitty
“They brought three…”
No sooner had she said it, than Julian saw them.
It was overkill by anything’s standards. Each of the gunships put him in mind of a sturdy metallic spider: A segmented body housing the engines, pilot and gunner, and four long but solid “legs”, each one of which terminated in a coilgun. Devastating firepower aimed at one target, or the ability to separately handle four different threats.
Still, there were some obvious design flaws. The kinetics were mounted high on the outside of the hull, making them an easy target, and the body didn’t look like it was armored. The whole assemblage bobbed and swayed in its own air wash, suggesting that it was a bitch to pilot and a nightmare to shoot straight, especially if the gunner was handling four different targets.
“Right.” He said. “We’ve got one big advantage on our side.”
“Do tell.” Allison sounded nervous.
“No thermal camera or any kind of advanced sensors.” Julian told her “If they had those, they’d have seen us both already and locked on. So, we can ambush them.”
“I could shoot out the engines?”
Julian considered it. The biggest and heaviest thing in the bag had been their gun, an Israeli STAR-21, the designated marksman version of the Tavor assault rifle. Chambered with 5.56 as it was, and Allison being the shot he knew she was, that was probably a sure kill against the exposed and unarmored engines.
“People live here.” he said. “I don’t really wanna drop a crashing gunship on ma, pa and li’l baby Vizkittik.”
He shrank down as one of the Chehnasho mercs sauntered past his alleyway hiding place. The other four and Zokrup weren’t far behind him. And a crappy plan came to him. Awful though it was it was the only one that presented itself in a timely fashion. The band were dangerously close to knocking on Kirk and Vedreg’s door.
“See the one on Zokrup’s far left?” He asked.
“Yeah.”
“Shoot him.”
Allison didn’t acknowledge the order, but a quiet second later, there were three thump sounds, and the selected Chehnasho fell bonelessly to the dirt in silence with a shocked expression on his face, and a large hole right through his center of mass.
The aliens snapped into formation, aiming in the apparent direction the attack had come from with commendable efficiency…for aliens.
By human standards, they made the laughable mistake of completely failing to watch their backs. Julian didn’t even bother bloodying his weapons. The second none of them were watching the alleyway, he dashed out, and two of the mercenaries were killed by the simple expedient of slamming their skulls together with a noise like a pillowcase full of potato chips being used for a piñata.
He slapped the third a lethal blow upside his greasy head left-handed as he moved, still astonished at how flimsy nonhumans were, and threw his hatchet with the other hand. Even though the merc’s shield emitter robbed the flying axe of most of its momentum, it still embedded itself in the frog-person’s rib cage with enough force to lift her off her feet.
It took only three or four seconds to go from the moment that Allison shot the first victim, to the moment that Zokrup was struggling in his grip with a hunting knife pressed to her throat.
“Holy shit, Etsicitty.” Allison said, clearly impressed.
“I’d call off your gunships.” He advised Zokrup, pressing just hard enough to draw blood. The hovering craft had turned their coilguns to face the carnage, and he was acutely aware of staring down the barrel of one of the few forms of weaponry out here in the galaxy that was truly dangerous.
“Yes…yes.” She agreed, and Julian congratulated himself on the way his half-baked plan had actually worked. She raised a hand to press at her earpiece. “Gunship one…
”…shoot us.”