Rig Runner

"It's not as if they can fire a railgun in here anyway. This is a civilian ship, it would pop a hole in the hull the size of a basketball, and we'd lose pressure."

He stopped dead in the hallway, and Nazka turned to look at him, waving her furry tail impatiently.

"What the hell are you doing?"

"Hang on, hang on, a plan is forming."

"What kind of plan? Hurry it up, we don't have time to fuck around."

"What if they couldn't use their guns?" Eriksen mused, scratching his chin pensively. "What if you had a hostage who happened to be outside of his pressure suit and in the line of fire?"

Nazka grinned, releasing her hold on her gun and letting it slide back into its leather holster.

"Now you're thinking like a pirate." She seemed to hesitate for a moment, her claws drumming on the revolver's metal cylinder. "So...how long do you want to be my hostage?"

"You're asking if I'm coming with you, but you know that I can't do that Nazka. I have obligations to my shipping company, to my clients, there are people depending on me to get my job done. I have a life here, I don't get to just walk away from that."

"I guess that's one of the things that I like about you, Eriksen, you stick to your guns no matter what. Fine, tell me exactly what you have in mind..."

***

The Planetary Defense Force squad marched along the hull, the magnetic boots of their armored pressure suits securing them to the metal. The UNN-black paint was chipped here and there by years of wear and tear to reveal the silver metal and ceramics beneath. Their gear was all surplus, but it was better than anything that civilians could get a hold of, military-grade armor and earlier generation modular rifles. Probably wouldn't count for much in a Bug invasion, and while that was the PDF's primary concern and the reason for the creation of the militia organization, they mostly found themselves doing police work and more mundane security operations.

The squad leader raised his fist in the air as they neared the freighter's hangar bay as a signal to halt, his four squad members stopping behind him, clutching their XMRs nervously as they waited for further instructions. His voice fizzed through on their suit radios, crackling to life as they watched the starfield turn around them, one of them glancing back apprehensively at their shuttle which was clamped to the vessel a short distance behind them.

"Form up, weapons at the ready. We don't know how many of them are in there."

This freighter had failed to make its delivery on time, so flight control back on the colony had done a long-range scan of the system and they had detected it cruising near where it must have jumped in. The squad had been dispatched via Warden to check it out, and once they were in short-band range, it had failed to respond to their hails. It was only after they had closed into visual range that they had seen the damage to the aft section, and shortly after, the cruel parody of a Warden that had matched velocity with it. That ship had also failed to respond to hails, and it had made no attempt to evade them, which indicated that the crew were likely responsible for the damage and were presently aboard the drifting freighter. It was a pirate ship, no doubt about it. The Warden's serial number had been erased and replaced with what looked like a crudely painted, black bear paw. The repairs to the hull were so spotty that it looked more like a scrapheap explosion than anything resembling its original streamlined silhouette.

"Hold your fire," the squad leader said, "don't shoot anything until I give the order. I'm looking at you, Murray, finger off that trigger. One more misfire from you and you're back on kitchen duty."

"Collective punishment's against UN conventions, Pete," another man added. "Murray makes soup about as well as he shoots."

There was a chorus of stifled laughter over the radio, and the squad leader waved for them to keep quiet.

"Damn it, Harry. You're supposed to use ranks when we're on duty, maintain radio silence unless absolutely necessary."

"Sorry, Sarge."

"Alright, we're going in."

He waved them forward, and they moved towards the curved ramp that led from the hull to the hangar bay, rifles raised as they navigated the odd geometry. Pete went first, the barrel of his rifle passing through the force field that held the atmosphere inside the bay, followed by his armored suit as he set foot on level ground. His stomach lurched as he entered the freighter's AG field, good, that meant that there was still power to the ship despite the damage to the aft section. His suit HUD blinked a green light to indicate that the atmosphere was breathable and that the pressure was Earth norm, so he flipped up his faceplate as the rest of the squad formed up around him.

"Ain't that against regulations?" Murray asked.

"I can't see shit in these helmets," Pete complained, "no reason to keep the visor down if the ship's atmosphere is green. These tin can pieces of shit won't stop a slug anyway."

"Would be nice if we could get the good stuff," Harry confirmed, sweeping his rifle around the hangar.

"Yeah and maybe Murray will be promoted to Admiral," one of the other PDF added.

"Alright wise up people, get your heads in the game. We got potential hostiles in the AO."

Nobody had been there to receive them in the bay, but there was a shuttle docked inside that looked so old that it might have been drawn by horses. Somebody was here who wasn't supposed to be. Might have been scavengers thinking they were salvaging a derelict, or it might be a whole crew of heavily armed pirates.

"Murray, Harry, check out that shuttle. I want the rest of you on the aft and fore doors to make sure that nobody surprises us."

The squad fanned out, two of them taking up positions by the two doors that led to the hangar, and the rest moved towards the shuttle. Just as Harry reached the landing ramp, he cried out in alarm, lurching backwards and shouldering his gun.

"Sarge! Pete!"

"What have you got Harry?"

Before he could answer, a massive, red figure descended the ramp. It was huge, taller than a man and twice as broad with limbs as thick as tree trunks, its heavy boots crashing to the deck. The squad scurried back, weapons pointed at the enormous thing as it peered at them through a narrow visor.

"Is that..?"

It was a Borealan, a fucking alien, near eight feet tall and clad in an apple-red pressure suit. It was heavily armored and around its waist was fastened a leather belt from which was hanging the largest handgun that Pete had ever seen in his life. His hands trembled as he kept his rifle trained on it. What the hell was a Borealan doing all the way out here? He had never even seen one before, at least not in the flesh, and yet here one was. It stood before them, towering so high that its round ears would have skimmed the shuttle's wings, standing as still as a statue as if waiting for them to make the first move.

Pete tried to compose himself, he was the squad leader damn it, he needed to take charge of the situation before somebody startled it and it tore through them like a bull in a china shop.

"T-This system is under UNN jurisdiction," he announced, watching the alien turn its armored head to look at him. "You got no business bein' here. Under section fifty-six of the UN charter, as a colonial security officer of the PDF, I got the right to subdue you by...by any means I deem necessary and bring you in for questioning. What are you doing on this ship?" It didn't answer, it just watched him through that narrow visor, its red armor reflecting the harsh lighting in the hangar. "Speak up," he shouted, "you a pirate? Piracy is illegal."

Its voice came through on speakers mounted in its helmet, it was female, its husky voice given a robotic timbre by the electronics.

"Looks like I've been caught in the act, I don't suppose you'll let me be on my way?"

"Are you alone?" Pete asked, then he gestured frantically to his squad. "Stay on the fuckin' doors, I don't want to be surprised by any of her friends." He turned his attention back to the giant alien, swallowing hard as the creature scrutinized him. Goddamn, it was huge, it looked as if it could snap a man in two like a twig.

"Hey, alien! You got an illegal ship out there with no serial number, and if you're a pirate, then I gotta take you back to the inner system. We can do this easy, or we can do it hard, there's five of us and one of you. You reach for that gun on your hip there, or take any actions that might be construed as aggressive, and we're authorized to light you up like a fuckin' Christmas tree."

As they watched, her long tail emerged from behind her, clad in a flexible tube that was painted the same red as her armor. To their surprise she deposited a human on the deck in front of her, she had been holding him with her tail as if it were a limb and he had been obscured from view behind the far larger alien. He was dressed in a sleeveless shirt and a pair of jeans, and he looked like he had run through a damned bramble thicket. There were cuts and scrapes visible all over him.

"Oh, I'm not sure that firing guns in here is a good idea," she said ominously. "One railgun round goes through the hull and mister freighter pilot over here has his lungs explode."

"Hostage!" Pete called out, "she has a hostage! Hold your fire!"

"She's crazy!" the man cried out, struggling in the hold of her serpentine tail. "She'll kill us all, just let her go!"

"Don't worry sir," Pete shouted, "the PDF is here. We're gonna get you out of this situation."

"Pete, you ain't no hostage negotiator," he heard Harry mutter over the radio. Pete shot him a murderous look as if to say I got this and turned his attention back to the Borealan.

"Now this doesn't need to get messy," he said, "you didn't hurt nobody yet as far as I know. This can go a couple of ways. If you let the pilot go and come peaceful, I promise that no harm will come to you and that you'll be treated fairly. We got juries and courts and the like, if you didn't do any real harm, they'll probably just send you back home. All the time you spend waitin' is time I'll spend thinkin' up a safer way to kill you."

"I have another proposition," the alien said, squeezing the human in her tail. "You let me board my shuttle and head back to my ship, and I let this tasty little morsel go. I'll be out of your hair, and nobody even has to know that I was ever here."

"I got a job to do, Miss, that ain't an option for me."

"Just do what she says," the struggling pilot demanded, a touch of hysteria in his voice. "She's a Borealan warrior, you can't fight her!"

"Let us handle this sir, we're trained professionals," Pete said as he slammed his visor shut. Now he could communicate with his squad without her hearing them, try to come up with a plan to get this guy loose.

"Harry," he said over the radio, "you got any idea what to do about this?"

"I got a couple, Sarge. If we let her board the shuttle, she's gonna be in her Warden and gone before we make it back to ours. It's a five-minute walk across the hull. We could try taking a pot shot at her head, she's got like two feet on that pilot, shouldn't be much danger of collateral damage. Problem is we don't know what kind of armor she has on. If it doesn't penetrate or glances off and makes a hole in the ship, we're fucked."

"It's a railgun, Harry," one of the other PDF soldiers muttered. "Of course it will penetrate, that's the problem. It'll go straight through her head and then straight through the hull behind her regardless of what grade of armor she's wearing."

"Okay, so we can't shoot her," Pete hissed. "Come up with something else!"

"We have the non-lethal gear, right?" Murray asked.

"Stun attachments won't go through her suit," Pete replied tersely.

"Well then what the fuck are we supposed to do?" Murray exclaimed.

"I'd start with not making plans over an open channel," a female voice said. Pete cursed under his breath and tapped the side of his helmet, a gesture to switch to a secure channel.

"God damn it why did nobody tell me that the channel was open you bunch of muddy-"

The alien moved fast, hurling her human hostage backwards into the shuttle like a doll, her fist hitting the ramp control before he had even landed. There was a pneumatic whir as it began to close, and Pete heard the pilot shout something as it sealed with a hiss.

"Don't kill them Nazka!"

Pete cursed and aimed his weapon, but in the time it took to zero in on his target, she was already gone. She ducked under his gun, impossibly fast for her size and weight, her fist hitting his torso like a ton of bricks. The armor might as well have been made of paper, the shock that the blow transferred to his body comparable to that of a kevlar vest stopping a bullet, lifting him clear off the deck and depositing him a few feet away. He skidded on his back, his armor sparking against the deck, his XMR now in the Borealan's hands. She hesitated for a moment then broke it over her knee, snapping it like a bundle of twigs. He rolled onto his side, clutching at what must be bruised ribs, his chest piece dented and cracked.

"Don't shoot," he wheezed into his radio, "my suit's seal is broken!"

The four remaining PDF soldiers pointed their weapons at her, unsure of what to do, their instinct to unload their magazines into her barely kept at bay by the Sergeant's order to hold fire. If they blew a hole in the hull then he would die of hypoxia within a minute or two, his suit was no longer airtight.

Someone fired but there was no electromagnetic crack of a railgun accelerating a slug, instead two prongs impacted the alien's red armor. They sparked with electricity, arcing between the two points and dissipating, her pressure suit conducting the stun gun's paralyzing charge harmlessly. She turned towards Harry, who was hurriedly trying to slot another stun round into his weapon's underslung launcher, accelerating towards him like a freight train. She barreled into him, knocking him over with her shoulder like a linebacker, flipping him head over heels to land heavily on his belly. She stamped on his XMR with her heavy boot, bending the metal, and then gave the prone figure a swift punch to the back of the helmet. There was the sound of cracking glass as the helmet bounced against the floor, another broken visor, and Harry lay still.

The soldier who had been guarding the hab module door discarded his XMR, drawing a baton from a holster on his belt, brandishing the club as she advanced towards him. He took up a low stance, twirling the weapon like a tonfa, Nazka cocking her head at the display. The weapon flashed out, and she made no attempt to dodge it, the material rebounding off her armor like it was made of rubber. She let him hit her a couple more times, the human battering her thigh and her midsection to no avail, eventually slowing as he realized that it was having no effect.

"Oh, come the fuck on," he muttered.

She delivered a swift jab to his face that dented his helmet and popped the visor right out of its frame, the man falling on his ass as he clutched at his head, the metal ringing like a bell. A crack like thunder rang out in the hangar, echoing as the Borealan flinched in alarm and dropped to the deck like a cat, trying to lower her profile as her gaze fixed on Murray. He was holding his rifle in shaking hands, the electromagnets that lined the barrel in copper rings glowing orange as they dissipated heat.

"God damn it, Murray," someone called out, breaking the shocked silence.

She was on him before he could so much as blink, his weapon torn from his hands and sent clattering across the deck, the alien gripping his head in her massive fingers like a cantaloupe. Rather than crushing his skull, she twisted his helmet and tore it from his shoulders, leaving the shocked militiaman standing with his pale face exposed. She dropped the busted helmet to the floor and turned to look behind her, searching for where the slug had impacted. She spotted a hole in the shuttle's main engine the size of a fist, but there was no hiss of escaping air, no decompression. Fortunately, the shot had gone wide, and it had hit something hard enough to stop it before it passed straight through the obstruction and out the other side.

She glanced at the final soldier who was still standing beside the access tunnel door, and he threw his weapon to the ground, raising his hands in surrender and shaking his head vigorously. She turned her attention back to Murray, who shook like a leaf as she reached out and placed an armored finger on his forehead, pushing him gently so that he fell over to sit on the floor.

"You're in time-out," she grumbled.

***

Nazka marched back over to the shuttle, hitting the door release and stepping clear as the ramp lowered, Eriksen hurrying out to scan the room with wide eyes.

"I didn't kill any of them," she said, standing with her hands on her wide hips. "And none will die later from their injuries. It was a loophole, but I thought you'd be upset." He played his eyes over the writhing or unconscious PDF. One of them was sitting on his ass, apparently in a state of shock. Another seemed unharmed and was standing rigidly, his hands raised above his head. "I broke open their suits so that they wouldn't risk firing, at least most of them had enough sense not to. I think that one is better suited to farming than soldiery," she said, gesturing towards the helmetless soldier who was sitting on the deck and rocking gently.

"Something hit the shuttle," Eriksen said, his tone alarmed.

"Someone fired, but the slug hit the engine compartment. Good news for us but bad news for the shuttle. Do me a favor and go run the system diagnostic, will you? That damned cockpit is too cramped for my liking."

He nodded and disappeared into the troop bay, Nazka remaining outside to keep an eye on the hapless PDF soldiers. He slid into the oversized bucket seat and tapped in the diagnostic command. The flight control systems were locked to Nazka's pad-print, but he could still access the subsystems, watching the console light up and display the current status of the vessel. The main engines were shot, red across the board. The fuel line pressure was at zero, and the damage from the railgun round had erased half of the sensors. This vessel wasn't going anywhere, it was kneecapped.

He emerged from the shuttle, Nazka turning to look at him as he shook his head.

"It's a bust, she won't fly. The main engines are destroyed."

She cursed in her native language and turned to the PDF soldier who was standing with his hands up.

"You, where is your shuttle?"

"O-On the hull," he stammered, "anchored to the underside of the freighter."

"Is it ready to fly?"

"Yeah, yeah it'll fly, but what about-"

"You're taking the long way home," Nazka said, then she swiveled around to shove Eriksen into the shuttle's troop bay. She pushed him roughly up against the wall, out of view of the soldiers, and hit the release on her helmet. She dropped it to the floor, lifting him off the deck and pressing her lips against his, locking him in a desperate kiss that sent him reeling. Everything else seemed to melt away, like an oil painting left out in the rain, sounds becoming distant and faint as her tongue pushed into his mouth and her fluffy palm found his cheek. They were in their own little universe, alone together even in the crowded hangar, Nazka's taste and touch all that Eriksen cared to focus on.

Her movements were soothing and gentle, but there was an underlying passion and urgency as she clung to him, fierce and greedy as if she was trying to cram a drawn-out and sensuous session into what precious few moments remained to them. He cupped her face in his hands, feeling her smooth skin beneath his fingers, meeting her invasive embrace as best he could as her long tongue roved in his head.