Chronicles of a Space Mercenary 3: Vengeance (25 page)

“Jump!” I told the females as the sound of the millions of thundering hooves vanished with the loss of gravity and then I did just that
before my own footing vanished beneath me. I timed my jump fairly well and bumped off the now darkened ceiling just as we heard the mass of Kievor go tumbling past beneath. They were entirely invisible to us in the utter darkness but we plainly heard their distinctly prey animal braying and bellerings of distress mixed with the sounds of heavy bodies colliding at velocity as the now out of control herd tumbled past in the zero gravity environment. Kievor clearly weren’t very coordinated in zero gee I thought crazily.

Visibility was gone for only a moment however as the first of the horde of storming Fsyth fighters began blasting
their way through the still darkened ceiling. The blaster flashes illuminated a strange scene indeed. There were Kievor floating everywhere and struggling ineffectually to find purchase in the zero gee. Legs kicking and thrashing, unable to understand all that struggle would get them nowhere. My reptiles launched themselves through the new openings still being created in a thousand places at once, guiding themselves by the numerous blaster flashes lighting up the whole place and upon the franticly screaming Kievor floating everywhere in the atmosphere. That was when the lights and gravity came back on.

It
was a reduced gravity and dimmer light, as if some secondary power source had kicked in, but I was on the ground in a moment and sending Kievor blood and gore raining everywhere before the battered and bewildered Kievor could gain their feet and react. Reptiles were dropping from the ceiling in droves however and soon I had to put that blaster away and do as the rest of my reptiles were doing. I fell upon the closest Kievor and with snapping jaws and with flesh shredding teeth took my first taste of a reptile’s favorite snack- fresh organic grass-fed herbivore. It couldn’t get any fresher. The blood ran red.

Chapter 60

My reptiles dropped out of the ceiling and right onto the herd. I killed dozens myself before the main body of the herd broke free and quickly raced out of sight. Somehow I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not but I called my reptiles back from chasing after them. If we chased them we would run into a trap was my sure guess. I looked around to find Serrath and Leethea covered in blood and mania shining from eyes. Serrath was still chewing.

“Finally a taste of revenge.”
Leethea said as she licked blood from red-covered green reptilian lips.

“I wouldn’t speak too quickly.” I said as I felt the first rumbling. Every reptile felt it
and this was the sure trap I had been expecting- this or some other equally deadly variation. Every being within the Kievor Trade Station felt it and it was originating from right under my feet.

“They’re separating the core kernel.” Serrath said as she looked at the ground under her
own feet. “The Station is about to come apart.”

“We need suits.” I said as I bent and
then sprang for one of the new openings in the ceiling above. My claws caught the edge and I was back in Level One. I reached down and grabbed the females as they jumped and hauled both of them up and into the corridor this breach let into. I didn’t think it was necessary to order a retreat for the rest of my troops nor was I wrong. In a moment there wasn’t a reptile left below and we were moving up through the Station one slow level at a time. Fsyth moved fast but there was a whole Station above us before we would get back to our ships. As I felt the rumblings beneath my claws swelling I became increasingly sure we weren’t going to make it. The Kievor would get their revenge one way or another but as has been previously noted if there was breath in my lungs there was yet hope in my heart.

There were panicked beings rushing everywhere and I found our first spacesuit as its previous owner was
just climbing into it. I poked a claw into its neck and then tossed the lifeless body to the vibrating deck. It was too small for me but would fit one of the females well. I held it out to the two of them as I scanned for more suits. There seemed to be few and then there was the question of how to get the being out of it without damaging it. Serrath took the suit and handed it to Leethea. We waited patiently while she quickly got into it and then we were climbing levels again.

About twenty levels later
I noticed another suitable space-suited being on a similar quest as we- that of getting the hell off the Station before it came apart at the
seams
and climbing levels as rapidly as it could amongst the hordes of other beings all bent on the same mission. I didn’t recognize the race of this particular reptile but I did notice that it wasn’t moving quite as quickly as we. I landed on its back and choked it out with a skinny arm full of carbon-strong thin little striated muscles while the females held it still so it couldn’t thrash around and damage our suit. It was too big for Serrath and though I felt guilt at leaving her as the last without a suit quickly had the reptile out of it and myself into it. We climbed.

Serrath found her own suit about forty floors later hanging from a rack inside a closet providence might have it that we climbed right past. The Station was already beginning to come apart
, the slight breeze I was feeling leaving no question about if it was coming apart but only how long before that occurrence and I had a pretty good idea what we’d run into if we did make it to the outer level before it came apart completely. Either the congestion of the packed mobs of beings would entirely block our way or most likely in my mind those areas had been completely vacuumed out when the Station lost power and the outer level probably now sealed with airtight emergency hatches and no way to get to the outer level without creating a hole and letting in the vacuum.

“We’ll be mobbed by hundreds for our suits if we continue on to the upper level.” Serrath said.

“We might as well wait it out here.” Leethea said as a large group of Fsyth caught up to us now that we had stopped and filled the corridors around us at the cross-corridor junction where we had paused.

There
were several hundred in this group but most had been separated amongst the hordes of beings all climbing upward and as each fought for its own life. Many of those joining us had acquired suits but not all. I addressed those who had not; “Go as a group and help each other find suits. The Station is coming apart and you are not going to survive without suits. Go!” I said. Now was not the time for chivalric shows of loyalty though why I really wanted them gone was because the Station was coming apart and I didn’t want asphyxiating crazed reptiles ripping my own suit open in their frantic search for atmosphere where there was none.

“I’d say our odds look pretty good for once.” Serrath said to two uncomprehending looks.
It was just then it so happens that the Station began to break open and the slight breeze turned into a gale.

Chapter 61

The backup power source went out- or was turned off- gravity and lights going with it but space-suits are generally equipped with thermal or scan imaging technology and these were no exception. The environment lit in my faceplate in the green glow of thermal energy and the simple computer chip in the control-module of my suit generated the rest of the real-time image. I leapt for a sanctuary before I lost my footing completely and with the females right behind we sailed into the hatchway of the watering-hole I had chosen as our goal- it was the closest open hatchway and time was of the essence.

We bounced off the ceiling in our upward momentum and then
kicked off that ceiling to come to rest among the permanently fixed tables and chairs of the establishment. If it wasn’t bolted down in a Kievor Trade Station it was likely to find another home but it would be our home and haven for the moment. I wrapped arms and legs around the base of a table while the females did the same and tightened ourselves into the smallest knot of inter-tangled limbs as possible. There was a lot of atmosphere in this place and I had no idea how bad it was going to get. Then the gale became an irresistible force that came and went quickly but took everything movable with it before it departed. The bottles and elixirs behind the bar as well as everything else not nailed down went over our heads in a rush and out the hatchway. I watched with little emotion as dozens of my reptiles went flying past the corridor opening at velocity and probably right out into space, was my guess. The suction ripped at us but we were one of the immovable objects this gale was not going to blow out to sea. Then the atmosphere was completely drained from the Station and everything not anchored down gone with it. Though we had killed billions of
innocent
beings in the process we were alive and that was all that counted.

“I think this was your best plan ever.” Serrath touched her helmet agains
t mine to share her wisdom. If there was a way the suit-coms of space-suits from three entirely separate reptilian races could be synchronized so that we could communicate I wasn’t going to figure it out at that moment. The lines of alien script flowing on the face of the control-module on my sleeve made my head spin and were as comprehendible to me as Bren’s mathematical equations- nor did I want to experiment and push the wrong button. The suit had activated automatically when I had sealed the helmet and since I could breathe and very much desired to keep it that way I would just have to suffer without a com. I was sure there was very little the females might have to say at this moment I really wanted to hear, in any case. Silence could sometimes be golden and even more often harder to find.

I
moved my helmet away before she could share more of her wisdom with me but didn’t bother giving her a look. We were alive but what were we to do now? What was going to stop the Kievor from destroying the shell they were leaving behind just to be sure they had put an end to me forever, that they had put an end to all of us. Nothing was what I was thinking. We had accomplished nothing as far as I could tell beyond forcing the Kievor to abandon the Station section of one ship- a minor victory at best- and we were probably only moments from our own end. The victory would in the end belong to the Kievor. I briefly wondered how long it would take the much diminished Kievor kernel ship to completely destroy the shell it had left behind but decided I didn’t want to know when the sudden shudder of the table leg in my hands told of far off blaster explosions- large ones. So it had begun I thought as I used the table to gain my feet. The females were right behind me as I leapt for the hatchway.

We kicked off the ceiling of the corridor in the direction everything else had gone just moments previously. There were still several dozen of my reptiles and as a group we went shooting down the corridor, bouncing from walls, deck or
ceiling upon occasion to keep ourselves moving. The piece of the Station we were in had a minor rotation of some kind and there was a very small but noticeable pull to my right. At least there was no chance we would get stuck drifting in the middle of the corridor. I had once done that when I had turned the gravity off for a moment and then accidentally fell asleep. When I woke I was stuck in the middle of my Bridge with my whole crew there to witness my embarrassment. They had floated in the hatchway laughing for twenty minutes while I space-swam my way back to my chair. Getting stuck in the middle of a corridor here could be an entirely different matter. I knew of no beings which could space-swim their way out of the path of an oncoming blaster bolt.

The suction had cleared everything out of our path so it was clear sailing
at a fair velocity once we got the hang of it yet it still took more than an hour to finally reach the breach. When we did it was a sight to see. The end of the corridor was open space and the cutaway slice of Station surrounding us far too large for the imagination much less mortal eyes to grasp in its entirety. An entire planet sized ship cleanly dissected in half… and something else as well.

“That’s the Kievor kernel ship!” Serrath said after leaning her helmet against mine.
She sounded slightly in awe and I could just barely make out what she was saying but the news was late in any case. I could see it for myself. A perfect sphere of trans-metal now devoid of the grassy plains which had so recently adorned it but there was more to it than that. It was immediately clear the ship was adrift and without power because it was on a head-on collision course with the other half of the shell and I seriously doubted the Kievor were planning to ram it on purpose.

H
ow the kernel ship had lost power- considering Kievor technology- was beyond my mental capacity but the massive blaster damage on our half of the shell and visible from my vantage answered the question as to why the kernel ship was on a collision course with the other half of the shell but not how they had lost power. They were blasting this half of the shell when their power went out and their last blaster bolts were enough inertia-impetus to set them on a slow but sure course towards what was certain to be oblivion for the kernel ship when it struck its much larger just abandoned half-shell. It looked like Kievor on a half-shell for lunch if I was any sure judge. I could offer no theory as to why the kernel ship had lost power but things that were unexplainable just
were
and I didn’t give it a second thought. The all-powerful god Luck once more ruling in my favor and probably due to all the business I drummed up for Him.

We had a few minutes to kill before the other half of the shell did our final work for us but
only one of us moved a muscle while we waited expectantly for the ship to stop playing possum and wake up in the last moments just in time to save itself. Anything was possible in this Universe and the Kievor ship wouldn’t be finished until it
had
collided and until it did Serrath and I stood mute sentinels in front of my remaining troops to witness its last moments- or to run if it woke up.