Devil May Care Ch. 05

"Ballsfuckshitcuntshitfuckfuck-"

Dey jerked back in revulsion as the monster started to scrabble onto her ship. She heard its body clunking against her hull plating -- and heard screams. Other pilots were not reacting as well as she was -- and she literally hadn't stop swearing the instant it had landed. A tentacle plunged through the ceiling with a howl of metal and a sudden hiss of escaping air. It wrapped around her helmet, covering her view -- she felt an impact near her wrist. Her 65 shuddered and shook.

It's taking control! Loki snarled. I can't stop it, it's physically rewiring the ship.

[It's a bloody K9, it's supposed to do TWO things -- and neither of them are this!]

###

"What is going on?" Atty asked, grabbing onto the bar ringing around the command position. "Why the hell are my fighters shooting at my other fighters!"

"The science team is studying the-" one of the sensor officers said.

The Hamilton Cylinder fired. P88s were last generation laser weapons, but they were being fed by a space station' reactor and had a space station's thermal control systems, not the relatively small Chinese patrol boats that they were built for. The end result was that the laser blasts were sustained. The shields redirected the light away, but every second of sustained fire ticked the shield's battery power down.

"Return fire!" Atty said. "Hold off on the railguns -- I don't want to hole them if we don't have to."

The entire ship shuddered as the dorsal lasguns started to fire, tapping into their integrated K12 batteries. The angular momentum of the batteries, normally controlled, caused an ever so faint reverberation. The shields redirected the beams.

"Sir!" the sensor officer shouted. "The black hole -- it's..."

Atty looked at the hologram.

The black dot representing the black hole.

It had doubled. And as Atty watched, it quadrupled. Then, as he watched, each one darted forward. They banked around the ship. But they didn't fire. They flitted up and down -- and Atty's eyes narrowed as he recognized a pattern in their movements. His lips pursed.

Atty frowned. "Drop the shields."

"Sir?" The officer handling the shields looked incredulous.

"Now!" Atty said, lifting his hands. The shield operator started to tap away at the controls. The shields dropped and the laserfire that was coming from the enemy station started to buzz along the hull. The groan and creak of armor plating stressing under the sudden heat rang through the ship, almost louder than the clangor of the rest of the machines. The black holes on the screen darted forward. Atty dropped his hands. "Raise shields!"

Two of the black holes slapped into the suddenly resurgent warp-fields. The vacuum of space and the immense size of the Biden prevented there from being a satisfying thump. But Atty managed to fill in the blanks.

###

Dey felt the faceplate creak under the press of the tentacles. She felt a sudden trigger hit. Memories surged past Loki's blanketing presence and she felt clammy coldness creep up her spine. Her skin buzzed and she closed her eyes. Loki's touch was felt through her soul. Nerve induction gave a lot of interesting abilities to an AI. Cut the kneecaps out of a panic attack was one of them. Now was not the time to remember-

Tentacles.

Dey screamed. "GET. THE. FUCK. OFF. ME!"

Loki's voice joined hers and the warp field that exploded off her body slammed into the cockpit windshield. The tentacle exploded away and Dey lurched back into the seat. She gasped -- and saw three big fucking problems. The first was the spiderweb tracery spreading across her face plate. The second was the series of spreading ice fractures on the front of the FS-65's canopy. The third was the fact that her starfury was swinging around, coming to bear on the jets of another 'fury. The fluxguns opened up and only a last minute swerve sent the other American pilot out of danger.

Another trigger.

Pure. White hot. Rage. She grabbed onto the latch of her restraints.

Dey, are you-

[Ho yes, we are going to do something crazy,] she thought, her mental voice ragged. Dey squeezed her hands. But he didn't stop her. The latch clicked open as the cracks continued to spread. Dey took a moment to slap a fixpatch on her faceplate. The smart gel flowed into the holes and turned transparent, giving her a perfectly fine view. There was a similar, if bigger, patching system for the canopy. Instead, Dey braced, lifted her legs, and grinned.

"Knock knock."

Her feet hit the canopy. Augmented by her integrated rig and boosted by a spurt of warped space/time, the canopy exploded outwards in a haze of glass. The outgassing that roared past her kicked the insane 65 off course enough to save an American pilot from being splashed by her guns. Dey's hand grabbed onto the edge of the cockpit and she swung herself around with a series of inertial corrections -- Loki played the cold gas thrusters on her spacesuit like a violin, bringing her soles down onto the roof of her star fighter.

Standing there, Dey could forget she was in the middle of a battle -- with bullets zipping invisibly through space in every direction. Mostly because there was a cancerous tentacled mass of former K9 missile glaring at her with a single baleful yellow eye. Dey drew her pistol. The missile reached for her with a tentacle and spun the 65 at the same time. Dey ducked low, planting one palm against the deck. Magnetic palm engaged, and her implants canceling out inertia, she had time enough to aim.

Missiles weren't built tough. Even ones twisted into monsters by whatever the fuck the black hole had been shooting.

[Bring us around to another captured 65!] Dey snarled.

No time -- jump!

Dey kicked off. Her boots unmagged and she went soaring away, her former fighter tumbling away. It suddenly vanished in a spray of twisted metal. Time seemed to slow as another fighter darted past her, fluxguns trained on her body. Dey reached out with her hand. The grapnel built into her arm had been helpfully integrated with her space suit. The grapnel slammed into the wing of the other captured fighter and Dey let herself pivot on the contact point, swinging up, then down onto the back of the ship. This missile had burrowed into the back, between the vents of the fluxchem engines. Dey fired a laser blast at it -- but the missile twitched and jerked to the side.

"What the hell is going on!?" The voice of the pilot bounced inside of her helmet.

"Pest control," Dey snarled -- firing again. This time, her laser scythed the missile in half. "Get us close to RB-9!"

"Look out!"

Dey's eyes widened as she saw the fighter was flying straight for a ripple in the blackness of space. Dey ducked. The ripple flared with what Dey's HUD claimed was purple light. And then the 65 she was standing on had changed. Muscle and sinew made of steel and plastics bulged underneath her feet. Bone spurs thrust from around fuselage warped into something more nightmarish than the darkest vids she had ever seen. Her feet were caught -- and the gurgling shriek from the pilot made her realize that whatever had hit them, Dey had seen the best of it.

The fluxchems were still burning.

Dey groaned. [We're not heading for the station are we?]

Now is a time for a comforting lie, yes?

###

Marin had never expected to spend his first real, honest to god space battle -- well, his third, but this was the first with a capital class ship -- sitting in a recovery ward, trying to not worry. But every time he tried, his mind went back to Dey. It was like touching a broken tooth. He couldn't stop it. His eyes closed as he felt the entirety of the Biden shudder. Groan. Alarms wailed down the corridor. But in his room, he had nothing he could do but wait and pray. Another groan and another rumble. Then suddenly, the lights in his room flickered and he felt the ship lurch to the side.

"What was that?" Marin asked, grabbing the walls.

###

"Raging Bull-2," Desna hissed. "Shields are down along the entire port side and damage control says the impact killed fifteen people and took out one of the-"

"Sir!" Atty's head swung around to look at the main display at that voice. "The black holes!"

One of the surviving black holes darted towards the gap that one of their own fighters had torn in their defense.

"Does Electronic Warfare have any explanation for why my own Vjs are shooting at my ship?" Atty growled.

"Sir, they say that the fighter craft have been taken over physically -- they rewired the computers, it's not a hack."

"Sir!" Desna's voice again. "RB-9 is on a collision course-"

"Brace for impact!" Atty shouted.

"For the station, sir!"

The black hole on the main display slammed into the Biden.

###

"Evacuate Deck 2, Section B. Evacuate Deck 2, Section B."

The cool, automatic voice came from the PA. Marin didn't need to be told twice. He hurried along the corridor with a crewwoman who walked with him. She was a brunette with a wide nose and who looked as if she was starting to realize that space battles weren't all fun and games. They made their way towards the exit from the section -- the airlock doors that separated the ship into sections remaining open for the moment. A sudden sound of screaming metal made Marin stagger -- the ground under his feet shaking slightly. "What was that?" he asked.

"It didn't sound like a main gun," the woman hissed.

The next scream they heard wasn't metal.

For a few moments, Marin wasn't sure why someone had thrown a pile of steaks through the airlock that they had been walking towards. Then he saw the bright white teeth and the amazingly blue eyes that someone had seen fit to give those steaks. The image tried to resolve, but his brain didn't want to understand what he was seeing.

"This way, this way!" the woman hissed, dragging Marin backwards. Marin was more than willing to move with her. But he couldn't tear his eyes away from the airlock. Nor could he turn away as hell stepped through the doorway.

It was humanoid. That made it worse. It stood about seven feet tall, effortlessly filling the space it occupied. It had broad shoulders which came to spiked tips. Its arms and feet ended in immensely long talons, and yet it stood on them, poised and elegant. Its skin was a pure black, drinking in light. The space around it swirled with pieces of detritus, like a thousand tiny pieces of dust and metal -- and blood - had been caught up in its orbit. They swirled around it faster and faster as it slowly looked at Marin and the woman.

Marin gulped slowly. The woman lifted up her pistol and shot the creature. The laser beam hit its chest and vanished, as if she had just shone a laser pointer at it.

"Run," Marin whispered.

They both turned and sprinted away, Marin forgetting all about the doctor bitching him out for stressing a recently sealed stab wound. His feet pounded on the decks -- and behind them, he could hear the groan and squeak of metal that came from the monster's every step. Risking a glance back, Marin saw that its felt bent the deck upward behind it, like leaving inverse footprints. Then he slammed into something heavy and hard -- sprawling backwards. A marine in full battle armor, carrying an AFG-55 in his arms, looked at him, then up at the monster.

"Fuck!" he swore.

To the point, Marin thought. But the other marines filling the corridor were well trained. They dragged Marin and the woman back and out of the way, kneeling down, aiming at the monster.

"Open fire!" One of them shouted.

Marine rifles were made to protect hearing, a vital goal in an enclosed metal space. But four of them going off at once, at full automatic, was enough to overcome even the hyper-advanced design of modern silencers. The black monster continued walking forward, with the casual disregard of a slasher movie killer. Bullets didn't miss the creature -- Marin watched with wide eyes as he saw some of the near misses skim, stretch, warp like taffy as they ringed around the monster, then fall into it.

"It's a black hole," Marin whispered -- voice lost in the gunfire.

The marines backed up.

The monster flicked one hand lazily.

The detritus orbiting around it flew out -- and with precise control over gravitational fields that bordered on the supernatural -- the monster skinned the marine's corporal. The detritus worked under the skin, then flung themselves outwards, leaving the man standing there, too shocked to even feel pain. For a few seconds.

His screams filled the corridor as Marin was dragged backwards. Then the airlock door was slamming shut, the surviving marines and the navy woman standing around him. Marin scrambled to his feet.

"Oh, nooo, no, d-don't join the coast guard, join the airforce, that's where exciting things happen," the woman whispered.

Marin pinched the bridge of his nose.

Air force.

Not navy.

"I spend too much time with aliens," he whispered -- and the fact he felt embarrassed about making that mistake here and now was saying something. Then embarrassment became a wild ray of hope. "This way!" he said, authoritative as he could manage. "Come on!"

The marines and the airforce servicewoman hurried with him. Behind them, the human screams had stopped. The sound of metal tearing had replaced it. Marin took a hard right -- avoiding a series of corridors that had been blocked off by closed doors.

"Where are we going?" the woman asked. "Also, wait, you're a civilian-"

"I'm a civilian explorer," Marin said, turning to face her, then looking at the marines. "And I know this: When in doubt, find the oldest alien in the area and ask them to explain what the fuck is going on."

The woman's eyes widened. Marin nodded, glad to see she was being cooperative. He turned to the left.

But the marine behind her jerked his head to the right. "The brig's that way."

Marin about faced and hurried to the right.

###

Dey smashed down with her palm -- the focused strike augmented by a knife thin bubble of warped space shattering apart the strange, bony protrusion wrapped around her ankle. The momentum sent her spinning backwards. Not a moment too soon. A few seconds later, the stricken strike craft flew itself between the station's main guns and the Biden, immolating itself in a single instant of laserfire. The bloom of white light caused Dey to flinch -- almost as much as the knowledge of how much shrapnel had to be shooting invisibly past her. None got close enough, nor went fast enough to penetrate her shields.

And, hey.

She was in range.

The grapnel touched down lightly. Loki was skimming through the chatter from the space battle, his voice gave her the grim estimation: It's not good. One of the holes boarded the Biden. It sounds like its ripping its way through deck 2. We've lost four fighters and -- shit! He shook his head. The STS ship just got its engines taken out.

[So, it's all down to us.]

Yup.

[Good.]

Dey's heels thudded onto the deck.

Onto the last bastion of the enemy.

TO BE CONTINUED