Exiles

  Chapter 12 Good Hunting

  He marched straight past the doors to the ready room and into the fast transit lift opposite the bridge. He sighed and leant back against the wall as the doors closed behind him, rolling his eyes up into his skull to connect briefly with Gaia, before focusing his attention on the ships AI, Alaster.

  “What the hell just happened back there? Everyone was edge, it was like the whole ship and its crew, even you, was living on it nerves.”

  “I believe it was the neural feedback loop that links and integrates the crew with the ship and each other. The intensity of the emotions, your species emotions, took me by surprise.” he replied.

  “A negative feedback loop?

  “Yes it had the unfortunate side-effect of amplifying and transmitting all the crews emotional responses back through the ships systems and to the crew, generating additional stress and anxiety.”

  “Are you telling me our ‘species’ isn’t compatible with your neural interface?”

  “No. I have already begun modifying the interface algorithms and recalibrating the ships systems, to take account of your species specific needs. I'm developing an emotional damping field to prevent a reoccurrence. We, Themis and I, are designed to learn and adapt to better serve the needs of the crew.”

  “I guess we should consider ourselves lucky no one decided to make love with their neural interfaces engaged that could have got really messy.” said Ford smiling, before adding. “I think I’ve just invented neural porn.”

  “I am also reviewing the privacy protocols to prevent anything unfortunate happening.” came the dispassionate reply.

  “How are you and Themis holding up?” said Ford wiping the juvenile smile from his face.

  “The incursion is unsettling, but the Anterian’s are contained and med bay is secure for now.”

  “Good have you got the technical specs I asked Gaia to transmit to you?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Right I need you to manufacture as many nanogrenades as you can and a Verion disrupter blade for me and each member of Bravo and Charlie teams. Deposit them in the dispensers in the weapons locker next to where I’m meeting them.”

  “May I ask if these weapons are legal?”

  “You may and they are neither legal, nor particularly ethical either. Simply possessing the technical specification for nanogrenades is a criminal offence, as is their manufacture and use. Plus, the last time I checked, Verion disrupter blades were outlawed in one hundred and eight-seven systems. But l believe these weapons are the most effective and efficient way of eliminating the Anterian’s with minimum casualties.”

  “I believe humans also have a saying, that ‘the road to hell is paved with good intentions’, but I will manufacture them as instructed.” replied Alaster.

  “If it makes you feel any better I’m going to instruct you to delete the technical specifications and all records of their manufacture when were finished.” added Ford. “The consequences of this tech falling into the wrong hands is, I agree, too terrible to contemplate.”

  He banged the back of his head against the lift wall. He could remember a time when a man sought out solitude, to be alone with his thoughts, and contemplate the issues that troubled him. Not so Ford, his head was becoming a crowed place these days, what with Gaia and Alaster. It was like having multiple personalities rattling round inside his skull and he could never be really sure of when they were observing him or not. Still in the final analysis there could only be one of two outcomes, he would succeed or fail, live or die, depending on Gaia’s final judgement of him and perhaps his species.

  Alaster interrupted him as the lift came to halt. “Forgive me for intruding. You forgot to terminate your link with me and the privacy protocols have not yet been updated. I calculate there are approximately one thousand, eight hundred and seventy-three possible outcomes for you and your species, based on the information available to me.”

  “That many?”

  “Yes in nine hundred and twenty-seven you die and five hundred and sixty-two you live, in three hundred and eight-four the outcome is uncertain.”

  “So the odds are stacked against me? That figures.”

  “The odds were never in your favour, but they do appear to be improving. Also you should not assume that all those where you die have negative consequences for those around you and your species or that those where you live have positive outcomes.”

  Ford smiled and shook his head as he stepped out into the corridor. “Well Alaster you certainly know how to cheer a man up when he’s feeling down. Remind me never to gamble with you.”

  “There is always of course one perfect outcome, where everyone wins, you just have to find it. I have deposited the weapons as instructed in the weapons locker, to the left of the next junction, forty-four nanogrenades and twenty-two Verion disrupter blades. Good luck and good hunting.”

  He strode purposefully down the deserted corridor and took the first left to where Bravo and Charlie teams were waiting for him outside the sealed bulkhead leading to sector seven. The men saluted and acting security chief Carson, Bryson’s second in command, gave him a brief update.

  “The incursion has been contained, bulkheads are secured and current estimate is twelve fatalities, with nineteen people, including medical staff, barricaded in the med bay.”

  “Good work Carson. Anyone here fought Anterian’s before? Put your hand up if you have.” no one raised their hands. “Didn’t think so, so listen up and listen good. These are not the feral savages that give your children nightmares or the monsters you see in cheap holohorror flicks. They are highly evolved, intelligent beings, that fly spaceships and use computers. They're also tough bastards to kill. Each Striker carriers fifty members of the Anterian warrior cast, genetically enhanced fighters with multiply organ redundancy, heavily armoured and armed. The quickest way to kill one is to sever its spinal cord it only has one of them.”

  “You mean decapitate them sir.” asked an anxious looking private huddled at the back with team Charlie.

  “That’d work assuming you live long enough to get that close.” a nervous laugh ran through his audience. “Because the weak point is where the helmet joins the armour it s not built into their suits the way ours are. However they do have a reinforced section running down the back along the spinal column with a high collar to compensate. The good news is your getting weapon upgrades to help level the playing field.”

  Without waiting for a response he turned to weapons locker beside him and pressed his armoured right hand against access panel to activate it. He took two nanogrenades and clipped them to his belt. Then replaced his regular combat knife with the Verion blade, slipping it into his holsters knife slot immediately behind the pistol. He turned to Carson and instructed him to give each officer a knife and two grenades. Gesturing to him to make sure everyone had their armoured gauntlets on first.

  They inspected them curiously before someone asked. “What exactly are these sir?”

  He unclipped a grenade and help up. “Nanogrenades, lob these at the Anterian’s and they release a cloud of nanobots. Nanobots that have been programmed to attach themselves to them, eat through their armour, and digest their spinal cord.” he waited for the words to sink in and noted the looks of revulsion and disgust on the faces of most of them.

  “Why don’t we just flood the section with them and let them do the work instead of going in to fight them.” someone shouted out.

  “Good question, because they didn’t iron out all the design kinks before they were outlawed. They have a propensity to malfunction, particularly in large swarms. We limit the risk by using them in small, localised, quantities, making sure we don’t get any of our DNA on them to confuse them.” He smiled as they quickly reattached them to their belts and tried to rub their armoured hands clean.

  He held the knife above his head and nudged the switch on top of the pommel to activate the disrupter. The slightly curved blade glowed red, as power s
urged down the grind to its cruelly serrated edge.

  “This is a Verion assassins dagger, outlawed in over one hundred and eighty systems. There isn’t yet a substance found its disrupter enhanced blade can’t cut through. Use it as your last line of defence if all else fails.” he clipped it back into his belt under his cyber cloak. “Now suit up and keep your helmets and armour locked and sealed at all times. These critters also have a last line of defence, they can spit paralysing venom. Remember their primary aim is not to kill but maim, paralyse or otherwise incapacitate their prey. They like they like their meat raw and alive.”

  As the words sunk in he gave Alaster the signal and they were showered in a fine mist from the ships fire suppression systems. Ford smiled. “One last trick to help level the playing field. A pheromone suppressant, just in case anyone forgot to shower this morning. Anterian’s are predators with a highly evolved sense of smell.”

  He turned to Carson and gestured to him to open the bulkhead. “Once we’re in seal the door behind us. No one comes in or out till this battle ends, one way of the other. Now let’s go hunt some vermin.”

  They waited for the bulkhead door to drop behind them before splitting into two teams, Carson took Bravo, Ford Charlie. The corridors were dark, gloomy, and silent. The Anterian’s seemed to have found a way to sever the power links, even the neural uplink to Alaster was out. They switched their helmets to night vision, moving slowly and methodically through the corridors towards the med bay. One compartment at a time keeping a constant check on their HUD for any sign of enemy activity. The first attack came at a junction where the corridors intersected. Opening up into wider concourse at the heart of sector seven from which, under normal circumstances, the fast transit lifts could take you all over the ship. Thankfully they remained sealed off from the rest of the ship. It was the perfect place for an ambush, allowing the enemy to come at them from all sides and surround them. There were at least thirty of them converging on them from three different directions. A divisionary full frontal assault by a small group. While the bulk of them came at them from either side, tried to outflank them, and cut off their retreat. Unaware of the threat from their flanks half of Charlie team had taken up firing positions to repel the frontal assault. They brought down two of the advancing Anterian’s in a hail of plasma bolts, before begin caught in deadly crossfire from the flanks, that left two of them crippled and at the mercy of their advancing foes. The two they’d downed had merely been stunned, their vital organs rerouting to account for any internal damage, as they got back to their feet.

  “Fall back! Take up a defensive position at the head of corridor, don’t let them cut off your retreat.” yelled Ford as the remainder of Charlie team fell back. The air thick with plasma discharges, as they loosed off volley after volley of covering fire.

  Ahead of him the Anterian’s were already dragging off the two crippled crew members, one of whom appeared unconscious. The other three outnumbered two-to-one in a deadly hand-to-hand combat. He could feel the temperature rising inside his suit as heavy plasma bolts bounced harmlessly off his cyber cloak. So much for liking their meat raw he thought to himself, beads of perspiration running down the side of his face, I’m going to be cooked inside my suit at this rate.

  He isolated the comm channel of the still conscious crewmember and screamed a single command. “Grenade!”

  Then strapped his rifle across his back before running toward the melee in front of him, catapulting himself of the backs of two of his shipmates and somersaulting over the scrum of attacking Anterian’s. There was now just one Anterian between him and the injured crew members. He smiled with satisfaction as he saw the nanogrenade detonate on the far side of the concourse, behind the hulking monster that was thundering towards him, as he rolled onto the floor. Pulling out the Verion blade he let his momentum carry him forward sliding deftly under the legs of his advancing attacker plunging the dagger deep into the base of it groin. The disrupter enhanced blade tearing through armour, flesh, muscle and bone, as he drove it upward till only the his hilt was showing. Deftly twisting it sideways as the base of the Anterian’s spine split open with a loud crack. The helpless creature came crashing forwards, hitting the deck with a sickening thud, its legs paralysed. He pulled himself clear, trying not to think too much about the blood and other contents of the creature that had spilled out over him, and found himself wondering if Alaster knew now to launder his cyber cloak. Quickly retrieving the blade, he finished the job. Dropping it behind the Anterian’s reinforced armoured collar, using it as leverage, to prise open the back of its helmet. He severed the top of the creatures spinal cord, driving the blade into the base of its brain as he did so. It was a quicker death than you give any of us he though as he withdrew the blood stained blade. It hissed and spat, as wisps of steam rose off it. The heat from the disrupter evaporating the viscous body fluids that clung to it.

  Meanwhile the nanogrenade had done its work reducing the two Anterian’s who been dragging the injured crewmembers off to lifeless corpses. The one who was still conscious had grabbed their unconsciousness comrade by the scruff of her armoured collar and, despite his shattered kneecap, was valiantly trying to drag both of them towards Ford. The rest of Charlie team had regrouped, as he’d instructed, in the entrance from which they’d emerged. They were holding their own, allowing Ford to focus on the melee in the centre of the concourse. One of them lay face down, the other two were still fighting. They'd lost their guns and, with their backs against each other’s, were frantically trying to hold back the Anterian onslaught that surrounded them with their Verion blades. He sheathed his own blade and unclipped both nanogrenades from his belt, rolling them into the scrum, as he unstrapped his rifle from his back. Praying that now was not the time they’d choose to malfunction. He didn’t have to wait long. Watching the Anterian’s writhe and twist in pain as the reinforced back plating of their amour dissolved in front of his eyes. The nanobots eating through it and consuming the creatures spinal cords, leaving their faces constricted in a death mask of agony ,as their lifeless eyes glazed over. He turned to the two remaining crewmembers who were still standing.

  “Retrieve the injured I’ll cover you.”

  Shocked and dazed they nodded obediently, each taking a fallen comrade, as he blasted away at the Anterian’s assaulting the other half of team. Who'd just lobbed a couple of nanogrenades of their own at their attackers. Sensing the tide of battle was turning against them, the surviving Anterian’s melted away into the surrounding corridors, under a vicious hail of plasma fire and much to the relief of the surviving members of team Charlie. Ford watched as they wrinkled their noses in disgust as he approached, his cloak and armour splattered and stained with blood and other bodily substances.

  “What?” he said with his arms outstretched. “It’s nothing a trip to the dry cleaners won’t fix.” before turning to the team’s medic who was checking over the crewmembers they’d rescued. “Status report.”

  “One dead, one shattered knee cap, one with concussion and a dislocated shoulder.”

  Carson cut in before he could reply. “This is Bravo, we’ve engaged the enemy. Took a small group by surprise about twenty meters from the med bay. Thanks to that pheromone suppressant they never smelt us coming and we fragged all six of them. No casualties. We’re moving forward to secure the med bay entrance.”

  “Good work Carson.” replied Ford as he surveyed the carnage around him. “We encountered the bulk of them in the central transit nexus, about hundred meters from your position. Twelve confirmed kills, one fatality, two injured. Watch your backs, it's not over yet.”

  He lifted up his right forearm and activated his suits inbuilt computer, illuminating the screen moulded into it, bringing up a copy of the ships schematic centred around their current location. Which he transferred to his helmets HUD. Since his joining with Gaia and the crew being granted the ability to link to the ships AI few people on board bothered to use or update them. He was glad he??
?d made the effort to upload the ships schematics as a contingency. He motioned to everyone else to active their suit computers and uploaded a copy of the schematic to them. Now was not the time to get lost.

  He watched the medic go about his work with silent efficiency. Connecting his suits computer to that of the injured men, uploading additional medical programs and nanobots to supplement their own suits basic field medicine protocols. The unconscious woman's suit automatically manipulated her shoulder back into place. Then locked it across her chest to prevent further injury, before bringing her round with a heady mix of pain killers and stimulants. Ford took her Verion blade and attached it to the underside of her pistol and handed it back to her. At least now she some options if it came to close combat with one good arm and could run if needs be. The other injured crewman was more problematic. The suit had splinted his leg but it would be impossible for him to walk without support. Still they had two spare rifles, one from the dead crew member and another the one armed woman could no longer wield, which were hastily disassembled and converted into a makeshift crutch. No one wanted to leave the dead crewman behind. Ford jacked into his suit and activated its anti-gravity field, salvaging the dead man’s Verion blade and grenades as he did so. At least now they could carry him without slowing the rest of them down.

  Ford activated his helmet radio “Time to move out. We’re going to contour around the edge of the concourse, take the corridor on the right, and link up with Carson. Let’s go and keep your backs to the wall.” He checked his schematic, Carson was already approaching med bay. Behind whose double doors Anna and the others were holed up. The doors opened onto the top of a T-junction. The corridor Carson was traversing formed the crossbar of the T, theirs the upright, which led directly to the med bay. It was a lousy position to defend as it gave enemies three points of attack. Carson’s team had barley reach the doors when they heard the sound of gunfire.

  “Ambush!” screamed Carson over his radio. “We’re surrounded backs to the wall defensive formation now.”

  He checked his schematic and linked into Carson’s helmet cam. Bravo team had their backs to the med bay doors, split into two semi-circular ranks of five and five with Carson in the middle, as the remaining Anterian’s came at them from all three sides.

  Bastards, thought Ford. They must have regrouped after ambushing us and used the service ducts to surround them

  “Everyone who can run with me.” he yelled as he sprinted into the corridor rifle at the ready.

  Ahead of them he could see the flash of weapon discharges, at the far end of the passage, as Carson’s men tried to hold off the onslaught. Suddenly the weapons fire was obscured by two hulking shadows in the gloom ahead of him.

  “We’ve got company.” Ford yelled to those behind him. Skidding to halt, he dropped to his knees, spraying the corridor ahead with plasma bolts to warm the others.

  The plasma flashes lit up two massive Anterian warriors, bouncing harmless off their armour plating. A volley of fire erupted over his head as those nearest to him joined the assault. The Anterian’s retuning fire with their own weapons, before tossing them contemptuously aside, unsheathing the ceremonial swords they carried on their backs, and charging forward. Two nanogrenades looped over Fords head and exploded in the rapidly diminishing space between him and the Anterian’s. Ford didn’t wait for the nanobots to take effect, he couldn’t be sure the nanobots would take effect on their armour. These were clan superiors, who’d slaughtered their way to the top of the Anterian tree, subordinate to only the highest rank of all within the warrior cast, the warlord. He dropped his rifle and pulled out both the Verion blades he was carrying, firing up the grinds till the blades glowed bright red. Spinning circles of red fire in his hands as he twirled the blades. He pushed himself up off his knees onto his feet and battle was joined as their swords came crashing down on him.

  He parried the one on his left slicing the blade clean off the sword. Mistimed the block on his right. Sparks came showering off the impenetrable weave of his cyber cloak as the sword slipped harmless off him. The force of the impact sending him staggering backwards. Seeing he was off balance, his attacker swung his blade round in deadly arc towards Fords neck, putting the full force of his body weight behind it. Ford barely had time to recover, crossing both Verion blades in the path of the sword. Sweeping them outward as the blades clashed, shattering the sword into a thousand fragments, ripping open his opponents armoured chest-plate as the sheer force of the impact threw him back into the wall and crashing to the ground in a daze.

  He was dimly aware of his assailant writhing in agony and collapsing to the floor. The nanobots, that had methodically been eating through his superior armour, swarming into the opening. Invading his body and consuming his spinal cord. The next thing he was aware of was the remaining clan superior clutching his neck in its massive armoured fist. Picking him up and pinning him to the wall with an angry snarl. Its yellow, razor sharp teeth, clearly visible through its helmet, despite the fine mist of salvia that coated the glass. It appeared impervious to the hail of plasma bolts that his shipmates rained down upon it. Ford grinned at his attacker as it drew out a triple barred gauss revolver and tapped it, with what looked like a smile of its own, on the side of Fords Helmet, before aiming it directly at his face.

  “Could be worse.” said Ford through gritted teeth. “At least I can’t smell your breath.”

  Suddenly the creature froze, a look of pained surprise on its face, as a blue glow emanating from inside its suit lit up the interior of its helmet. Slowly it released its grip on Fords neck and dropped the pistol, as its lifeless body slid to the floor. Ford smiled as he saw the crewwoman with the injured arm holding her pistol with a steaming Verion blade strapped to it, dripping blood.

  She smiled back “Multiple organ redundancy my ass.”

  The rest of Charlie team were already running past them to join the battle outside the med bay where Carson and his team were all but overrun. Ford picked up his rifle, set it launcher mode and attached a grenade to the muzzle, barking orders to the rest of his team to do the same. They stopped running and formed ranks, launching two salvos in quick succession. Their grenades hurtling towards the melee outside the med bay door. Ford knew it was a risk given the grenades reputation for malfunctioning, but it was the only way to save Carson and his team.

  “Don’t let any escape, kill them all.” he yelled throwing the rifle aside and picking his up Verion blades. Leading the charge, as he carried two red, spinning circles of death and destruction, into the battle once more.

  Carson’s team had managed to slay eight of their attackers, but at least half their team was incapacitated, and Carson himself had taken a beating. Thankfully none of the nanobots appeared to have malfunctioned and at least a dozen more Anterian’s who had been overrunning Carson's position were in their death throes. Allowing what was left of Bravo team to counter-attack the remaining Anterian’s, who were in disarray, with plasma fire and their own nanogrenades.

  Two hapless Anterian’s grunts came fleeing down the corridor towards him. He slammed the blade in his left hand into neck of the creature nearest him, under its chin, before releasing it, letting its momentum and body weight do the hard work for him. Tipping it off balance with an out stretched foot. It slammed forward face first onto the deck, the force of the fall driving the blade through its throat and out the other side, severing the spinal cord. He spun round and threw his remaining blade at the other grunt who’d seized the opportunity to push past him and continue fleeing down the corridor. It flew through the air, shredding its armour, ripping through the tendons and muscles of its lower left leg, sending it crashing to the floor in a howl of pain. Ford pulled the blade back out, noting how the reinforced armour was already disintegrating around its spinal column. He plunged the blade into the back of its neck, twisting it as in went in, to ensure he’d severed the spinal cord. Granting it a quick and relatively painless death.

  “No on
e, nothing, deserves to suffer unnecessarily, human or otherwise.” he muttered under his breath. “The moment we lose sight of that, we’re no better than them.”

  The rest of the crew were checking over the corpses making sure they were dead. The battle was over.

  He strolled over to Carson. “How you holding up?”

  “Been in worse scrapes, got two dead, five wounded, but they’ll live, unlike these bastards.” he kicked the Anterian body nearest to him.

  Ford patted him on the shoulder. “You did good, you all did good, now let's evac the med bay and quarantine this section.”

  “Quarantine?” said Carson

  “Have you ever seen an Anterian egg sack?”

  Carson shook his head.

  “Well for all our sakes let hope you never do, but they‘ve been known to hide them aboard ships they’ve boarded, and I for one don’t want their larvae crawling around my ship. We’re going to irradiate and sterilise this section. Then scour it with nanobots and maintenance droids. Anything we don’t like or recognised we put in that ship of theirs, along with their corpses, and fire it into the heart of the nearest sun.”

  He pulled out a small back box from his cloak and pushed its single button, sending a carefully modulated EMP pulse through the ship, to disable the nanobots they’d used to target the Anterian’s. Then used his personal override code to unlock the med bay doors. He was confronted by Anna holding a pulse rifle at his chest.

  She recognised him instantly and lowered her rifle. “Am I glad to see you, we...” she stopped and wrinkled her nose in disgust at his appearance and the smell, which assaulted her, even through her suits biofilters.“...I don’t want to know what it is you’re covered in.”

  “Nice to see you too.“ he smiled back. “Now let’s get you out of here and seal this section off. You're needed elsewhere. I’ll explain on the way.”

  Ford was the last one to leave sector seven. Sealing the bulkhead behind them, he re-established his neural link with Alaster and initiated the quarantine protocols, before giving him some additional instructions. “Download all combat data from my suit and Bravo and Charlie teams. I want all nanogrenades and Verion blades accounted for and destroyed. Once that’s done erase the technical specs and all records of their manufacture.”