Good morning everyone. Trying to make things a tad more regular. Hopefully I'm doing an okay job with the quality of this chapter. Nervous as usual, I suppose. So you all have my thanks for giving this story a chance and taking the time to read it.

My thanks as well to Swordsman, Jake, Atlan, Orsai, and everyone else that is helping me out on this story. Your help means a lot to me.

Hope you all enjoy the story, and here's chapter 12.

Chapter Twelve: Demon's Run

Every instinct in Angela's body screamed for her to pull that trigger, to send a burst of fire streaming towards the alien entity that stood before her, to cut it down before it could plant something in her mind. The creature's helmet made its features impossible to read or determine and so she tried to focus on its body language, looking for signs that it was about to leap to one side or the other. She hadn't forgotten her first encounter with the creature, and by gods, it could move.

It was still as a statue for several seconds, and Angela was aware of the strange looks that some of the others were giving her. Slowly, ever so slowly, the thing started to bend its knees and lower its right arm, the one carrying the disruptor pistol. It placed the weapon on the ground, and then that bizarre, six-fingered hand pushed it. The weapon clanked noisily over the metal floor as it slid towards where she was. It bumped against her foot, and she quickly reached down and secured the gun, her eyes and Inferno never leaving the being in front of her.

"Neraktar, osi fendari," it said, shaking its hands slightly as it stood back up.

Was it surrendering? Angela wondered, and then quickly tried to shunt that thought out of her head. This thing could read minds to at least some degree. She couldn't' feel it poking around in her head this time, but that didn't mean that it wasn't. For all she knew, it might have planted some sort of programming her mind the first go round, something that would prevent her from being able to detect it if it snooped around again. At the same time, it was all she could do not to let herself get overwhelmed by a dozen other questions, like how in the hell the thing had managed to get onboard the Arcturus and what the hell was it doing.

"You have any idea what this thing is, or what it's saying?" Samantha's voice shook her out of her reverie. The Lombax shook her head.

"Let's just say I've had a run in with it before. No idea what it is, but it's psychic, and it's dangerous." She said, never letting her weapon drop.

"A mind-freak? Wonderful," the Novalian said with a shake of her head. "At least it doesn't seem to be a big fan of pirates." She gestured to the corpse in front of the alien.

But is that just a clever ruse? The scientist thought to herself. She noticed that the alien was looking over her shoulder, slowly walking towards the far side of the corridor, its hand inching its way up towards one of the weapons slung over its back. Her gun moved to track it, as did everyone else's. The Lombax was also well aware of the fact that they were running out of time. The pirate groups were closing in on them, and if they were caught out in the open like this, it was going to turn into a nightmare.

"Frak!" The alien suddenly hissed and looked over towards them. It made a waiving gesture with its hand, and then pointed to the rear guard, or rather, what was left of it. It spouted off in its native tongue while making some more gestures, pointing at them and then making a vertical chopping motion. It drew the weapon that it had been reaching towards, a seemingly armored gun as it pointed at the group and the waived further up the corridor.

"Unless I'm much mistaken," Samantha said, coughing a bit as she spoke, "that's the universal 'get the hell out of the way' gesture."

Angela nodded her head and backed away from the entity, moving with the rest of the group. She kept her weapon trained on it as it slowly moved up towards the hatch that they'd just sealed. The locking mechanism was beginning to glow a dull red and she cursed under her breath. They were starting to cut through it. They needed to get to the cargo bay, now.

"Let's move!" she barked, heading for the stairs.

Meanwhile, the alien creature braced large rifle against its shoulder and then a deafeningly loud roar shook the corridor. Angela yelped as her sensitive ears were assaulted by the noise, even through the safety isolators of her helmet, and she had to resist the urge to drop her SMG and clamp her hands against the side of her head. The noise came again and again, until three shots had rung out in total. As she staggered over towards the stairs, her ears ringing, she saw the alien come back around the corner. The rifle seemed to leap up out of its hands and nestle itself back into the harness that it had been drawn from. Meanwhile, the alien reached down and pulled out another pistol from its left hip. Angela cocked her head and narrowed her eyes behind the helmet that she was wearing. Had the thing shot the pirates through the wall? If so, how? Did it simply take an educated guess at where they might be standing and open up on them? Or was it something else?

A thought occurred to her as she moved towards the stairs, flicking a glance over her shoulder every couple of seconds. Arden had mentioned that the power armor that the dead alien had been wearing had appeared to have a myriad of sensor units onboard. Infrared, ultraviolet, and the like, but also that it appeared to have had some more exotic active scanners. Was it possible that the thing could see through the walls?

She shook her head, quieting the instinctive, Lombaxian urge to go tinker with something and instead focused on getting the rest of the group down the stairs. It took a couple of minutes to maneuver the wounded down, and they were thankfully not attacked during that period of time. From there, it was a short, ten meter dash towards the primary door leading into the cargo bay. She lowered her Inferno, and pressed the recall button on her SDU. The submachine gun vanished and she quickly walked up to the control panel.

"Don't suppose anyone here has the access codes to this thing?" she asked, looking about at the motley mixture of crew and passengers with her. She got several nervous glances and headshakes in response. "Didn't think so. Okay. Not a problem…" she trailed off as she began to slice into the unit.

Memories of the first time that she'd done this, back when Qwark had taken over Megacorp and she'd gone rogue, came to mind. She sliced through the door's electronic defense protocols as if they weren't even there and quickly overcame its comparatively primitive security algorithms. The massive double doors started to open with a shudder and grind. The noise and vibrations would have been audible throughout half the ship and she winced, clutching at her skull at bit in an effort to drown out the noise.

"Move forward, check your angles!" she heard Samantha shout and the Novalian led the way inside.

Angela resummoned her weapon and hurried forward as well, looking for the heavy, black storage crates that would mark where they'd stashed the combat drones. It would take some time to search, given that the massive bay was easily a hundred meters long and wide. At the same time, the unarmed civilians made their way towards the center of the large bay in an attempt to put as much cover between themselves and the firefight that would soon be on them. Samantha sealed the door behind them and others moved to cover secondary entrances.

It was about a minute later that Angela heard a loud screeching noise and looked up over one of the shorter containers to see the armored entity shoving its back against one of the large storage crates. There was mass of sparks as it braced itself and shoved the container along, the security crew making haste to get out of its way as it pushed the container in front of one of secondary entrances.

Blocking off access points, forcing the enemy into a meatgrinder, Angela thought to herself, understanding the logic perfectly.

Then she went back to her hunt. The clock was ticking, and seconds could make the difference here.

Lear deactivated his grav boots as he looked about and double-checked the placement of the container. This one looked solid, now it was time to move onto the other secondary entrance. He was aware of the stares that he was drawing as he did his work. You'd think they'd never seen a suit of power armor before, he thought to himself before it occurred to him that they might well have not. Everything that he'd seen so far seemed to indicate that by and large these people were more advanced than the Empire was. However, that in and of itself didn't mean that they had developed everything that his people had. The stopping power of the higher end weaponry, like the energy cannon he'd seen that feline alien use in the combat feed, might have been potent enough to render power armor a wasteful, inefficient investment. It sure as hell hadn't helped the Centurion that had been one-shotted by the weapon.

He vaulted over a couple of the lower-lying containers, finding another one that was about four meters high and maybe twice that in length, and if his scanners were correct, filled to the brim with some type of metal ore. Most importantly, it had a clear line of sight between its current position and the other secondary entrance door. He turned on the grav plating to his boots to give himself more leverage and mechanical advantage, and slammed his shoulder into the crate. It dented inward from the force of the blow, and shrieked in protest as he started to guide it across the floor. He grunted as he got it into position and let out a sigh of relief.

A moment later, he heard an ecstatic whoop from the other end of the cargo bay, and recognized the voice of the alien that he kept running into, the one that he'd been following. He holstered his FST-47 and drew his pulse rifle. He fiddled with the underslung grenade launcher, pulling it off the weapon and sliding it into a holster resting just above his backside. Then he reached down into his supply belt and pulled out a tactical foregrip, sliding it onto the railing on the bottom of the barrel as he walked towards the girl. Should have done this earlier, he thought to himself.

He walked up towards the area where he'd heard the girl shouting. He couldn't see what she was up to, much to his surprise. The containers were lined with something that even the powerful scanners of the T-28 couldn't get through. Note to self: try to obtain a sample of that material for MSE scientists to study. Yet another thing this strange neck of the universe had that had proven itself superior to what he was used to. What the hell were they dealing with here?

He heard a mechanized whirring noise, followed by a heavy stamping that reminded him a lot of the noise a Tribunal Guardian made when she was going out of her way to announce her presence. A moment later, a quintet of large, black armored robots emerged from within the depths of the cluster of containers. He remembered those things; they'd attempted to chase him down in the excavation team's encampment. A little extra firepower was never something to snub, and he nodded his head as he walked up behind a chest high crate and leveled his weapon at the door. He could see the pirates starting to swarm this way and he frowned. The doors would help, funneling the pirates into the area, but he still found himself wishing for a more ideal weapon for the situation. An MPAC-4 would be good here. Set it up at a fixed position to where its large barrels and general unwieldiness would be less of an issue, and then let the double-barreled particle cannon scythe through the enemies like wheat at harvest time. A Phalanx would have been even better, he thought, looking over at the combat droids.

Stop wishing for things you obviously don't have access to and focus, he berated himself. The enemy would be on them in less than a minute, he suspected. The other armed security members and civilians were coming up as well, some of them clambering up on top of crates and taking up elevated positions. The feline alien was one of them, pulling out that compact weapon and hunkering down behind one of the smaller crates. Others took shelter at ground level and braced themselves near the heavy battle drones, while still others took up flanking positions on the doors. Wise positioning, but they were a little thin as far as defense in depth was concerned, with no way to replace their losses. Well, nothing that could be done about that, Lear thought to himself.

He saw the pirates descend to this level, and leveled his pulse rifle. He'd been able to shoot through the thinner bulkheads, but he doubted that the same could be said of the three meter thick blast doors that sealed the cargo bay off from the rest of the ship. The LRAM might do the trick, but he didn't need to actually go ahead and make an entrance for the enemy to be able to get through.

They were setting something up, a breaching charge no doubt, and he narrowed his organic eyes. There were dozens of the enemy, scores of them. Some carried shields, other heavy repeaters or those close combat flechette weapons. Others were priming grenades, and Lear decided to make those his priority targets. His armor and scanners were hardened against EMPs and such, but that didn't mean they were impregnable. A powerful enough blast might yet knock them out, and he didn't want to get too many of those plasma grenades hurled at him. Here we go. He thought to himself as he watched the pirates moving away from the door. At about five meters distance, they stopped, and a half second later, the shaped charge detonated.

A deafening roar filled the large room, and hundred kilogram chunks of the door were sent flying by the breaching charge. He ducked as one went sailing over his head, sticking the '27 over the lip of the container that he was hiding behind and sighting a target up through the smart-link. A shield bearer came charging through, a grenade primed and in his hand. Lear squeezed the trigger, and the full powered shot screamed out of his pulse rifle at over five thousand meters per second. It ripped through the energy shield and the alien and the man behind him both exploded with a sickening popping noise. The primed grenade dropped and bounced, detonating a moment later. Most of the raiders managed to escape the blast, and worse, it helped to widen the hole that they'd made.

Too late to worry about that now, the Revenant thought as he fired over the lip of the container, his rifle kicking backwards as his somewhat awkward grip prevented him from controlling it fully. All around him, the armed organics and the combat drones opened up, pouring a hellacious amount of fire out of the four-meter wide hole that had been ripped in the door. The attackers responded by forming up into a shield wall, pressing forward while the heavy repeater operators fired at them. Lear was forced to drop down completely as two of them focused on where he was. He didn't want his primary gun getting shot. While his shield covered the gun to a degree, and armored though it might have been, knowing his luck of late it would be enough to knock the ASPR out of action.

One of the armed civilians fell from his perch with a scream, a hole as large as his own head burned straight through his abdomen. A sonic grenade exploded a moment later and took out another one, throwing her back through the air, her broken and crushed body dead before it hit the ground.

Lear tossed one of his own grenades, as did the feline alien perched up high. The two devices landed next to each other, and the combined explosion took out the vanguard of the attack. With the shield carriers down, the rest of the team was exposed and the combat drones made short work of them. The Revenant was tempted to whistle as he saw the glowing purple beams of their arm cannons reduce the raiders to half-vaporized messes. If nothing else, perhaps they would prove to be a potent psychological aid.

"The reports coming from your soldiers are not the most optimistic," the Contact muttered as it paced down one of the hallways. "So far, they've allowed a band of refugees to get into the cargo bay, get set up, and activate at least five of the combat drones. Clearly we need to open up another entrance way." It looked over at Corta, and the Pirate Captain nearly shivered as he stared into that cold, emotionless visor. "I'm beginning to wonder if our faith in you and your crew was misplaced, captain."

"My crew's doing the best we can," Corta fired back, waiving a large finger in the contact's face. "You told us to expect heavy resistance but—"

"And so far you've encountered precisely one unforeseen element," the Contact's voice was as neutral as ever. "The stowaway's presence is a complication, nothing more. I'm more concerned about your inability to dispatch a few armed passengers that managed to smuggle a storage deck and some armor past the security sensors." The Contact cocked its head slightly. "Truly, Captain Corta, I would have expected a pirate to be familiar with such tactics. If this truly is the best that your crew can do, I suspect we will be getting other… employees… in the future."

"Now you listen to me you corporate shill," the Pirate Captain started to say, slapping one of his massive hands down on the Contact's shoulder and setting his feet to push the thing into the nearest wall. Corporate Contact or not, no one talked to him that way.

That was as far as he got before the Contact seemingly exploded into action. Its right hand moved up, swatted the Captain's much larger arm away, and then grabbed it by the wrist. The Contact yanked down and forward and before the pirate captain could even begin to react, he was pulled off his feet, his face sailing forward to meet the entity's armored kneecap. His head slammed backwards and his tongue was bathed in the coppery, metallic taste of blood. Spots and stars of multi-colored light danced before Corta's eyes and then he felt his head twist and stop. He didn't move, he didn't shout, and the men and women that were around him stood still as well.

He recognized this hold and now that he could focus a bit more, he could feel the pressure of the Contact's hands against the sides of his face. Another millimeter, and his neck would snap like a twig. As it was, his spinal column was tingling in agony, his eyes watering a bit in pain as he gasped for breath.

"Know your place, Captain," the figure said, and to Corta's surprise, there was an element of irritation to it. It was the most emotion that he'd ever heard in the Contact's voice, all the years that he'd known it.

"Let him go or we'll shoot," one of the crew members said, her voice cold.

"Your first shots will not be sufficient to kill me, and by the time you begin to squeeze the trigger again, I will have ended your Captain's life," the Contact said, looking over at her. "After that, I will kill you. And anyone else who opens fire on me."

"You couldn't take us all down," another one said, an Agorian that growled softly as it hefted a heavy repeater.

"Couldn't I?" the Contact returned his gaze forward. "But let us assume that you do take me down. I assume that will be small comfort to those who perished in the undertaking. And even if you do, my superiors will hunt you down. They will find you, and they will kill you." There was a pause. "So which do you want more? For me to die or for you to be able to walk away with your lives?"

For ten seconds no one moved, and then the crew slowly lowered their weapons. The Contact nodded, and then released Corta from its grip. The Captain slumped to the ground, panting softly, a hand coming up to massage his bruised neck. He was tempted to spit to clean the blood out of his mouth, but just did manage to remember that he was wearing a helmet. He swallowed, wincing at the foul taste as the Contact moved back around in front of him.

"Remember you place, Captain Corta… Finish. The. Job." It said, before turning and jogging towards the sound of the battle.

Coughing a couple of times, the Captain rose up to one knee, glaring at it. Once again, the temptation to shoot the thing in the back rose up. He checked the urge again. It had a shield, anyway, and he wasn't certain how well his armor would stand up to those micro-rockets that it had. One thing was certain, though, if his crew survived this mess intact, he was definitely requesting a new contact. One with a little more tact and respect for his position and the services he provided. He massaged his throat as he rose back up to his full height and shot a glare on the Contact's back that would have blown through battleplate as it rounded a corner and headed down a staircase.

"Orders, Captain?" one of his subordinates asked.

"Fall in. I'm overseeing this personally," he said. "And if that thing wants to lead the charge, let it. Maybe we'll get lucky and it'll eat a missile meant for one of us."

Angela unleashed another burst from her SMG, and followed it up by hurling a sonic grenade down towards the entrance that the pirates had made. It cooked off with a satisfying crump and she could hear screaming. Good, she thought savagely. However, their opponents were learning. The alien that was with them had demonstrated its ability to counter the shield carriers… rather dramatically at that. However, it couldn't do everything, and as Angela looked down, she saw it reloading its weapon again, sliding an empty magazine out of the butt of its weapon. The alien drew another magazine out of a pouch and the empty mag stopped before it hit the floor, as if suspended by magic, and then floated to the pouch that had just been vacated. An efficient reload, but that was the third time that it had done it since the firefight had begun about six minutes ago.

She remembered Arden's warning about one of the drawbacks of using acceleration guns: the solid shot ammo took up a lot of room, and didn't allow for large bursts of sustained fire like you got with a laser or plasma weapon. She didn't know how many reloads it had, hell, it was entirely conceivable that there might be enough pirates here to run the damn thing out of ammo.

A burst of fire came out from the hole, joined quickly by a second. Two heavy repeater operators were standing at the opposite side, blind-firing their heavy weapons into the cargo bay. The cover that the others were using was rapidly being atomized by the heavy weaponry, and she winced as one fellow stayed exposed for a fraction of a second too long. He fell backwards, screaming and clutching at a stump where his arm had been vaporized just above the elbow. One of the combat drones was struck a moment later. Its energy shields held for a moment or two but were quickly overwhelmed. The drone ducked down, but not before several shots struck it center mass and left blackened craters on the exoskeletal plating that covered its chassis. Angela could see where a few wires sparked and the drone cursed loudly, a slightly frantic undertone to its mechanized voice as it cursed and swore, but the thing still seemed to be able to fight.

So far, they were holding the proverbial line once again. But how long would that last? How long could that last? Eventually they'd get some dedicated breaching equipment and just blow their way through the walls or the doors or something. Then they'd have a multiple front war on their hands, and that wasn't going to end well for them.

That thought had no sooner crossed her mind then there was a thundering roar from the far end of the cargo bay. Angela ducked down behind her cover and looked over at it, seeing fire and smoke, partially blocked by the cargo container that was blocking the entranceway. A second explosion followed, and then a third, and her eyes widened as she saw a huge, gaping hole ripped straight through the container. She cursed under her breath and opened up a command line to the combat drones.

"Units three and four redeploy to the new breach. Get over there and stop them!" she shouted, leaning back out and firing again as more pirates started to pour through the initial hole. Damnit, what she wouldn't have given for some more mines. She fired an extended burst at the head of an Agorian that was trying to rush through. A couple beams went wide, but most of them hit home and cut through the armor plating and blew its head apart.

The corpse slumped to the ground as the leftmost pair of combat drones stamped off towards the new incursion, laying down suppression fire as they moved. The pirates momentarily retreated back the way they'd come, a few that had moved too slowly blown to pieces by the fury of the plasma blasts that they'd been struck with.

The intensity that these raiders were attacking with was astounding, the Lombax thought to herself as she primed another grenade. They typically lived by the belief that no amount of loot was worth dying over, and they'd look for easy targets. Lightly defended, something that could be taken over with a minimum of casualties on both sides. Corpses, after all, weren't going to fetch a good ransom price, and word getting out of a whole-scale slaughter would make future targets more likely to fight to the death. The fanaticism that they were showing bordered on the insane. They were acting more like a military force after a specific objective than anything else, ready to take it or die in the attempt.

More gunfire came from the far end, along with a weapon discharge that sounded like dozens of rockets flying through the air at once. Her blood chilled for a moment. Did one of them have a RYNO on hand? The drones radioed in that they were engaging their targets, and Angela found herself having to return her attention to the situation in front of her. A myriad of rocket propelled grenades streaked out of the hole that the pirates had made in the main door. One of the combat drones exploded as a dozen struck home on it and Angela watched as the ensuing shrapnel ripped Corporal Antioch apart. The corporate security officer was dead before he had a chance to scream. She saw blue lightning leap up around the armored alien, as well as bits of white-hot metal bounced off of it. The energy shielding that it had, Angela thought. A moment later, the creature simply vanished into thin air. Then she heard screams and that cacophonous booming of its weapon firing on full automatic from the other side of the door.

Then it was back in front of the entrance that the pirates had made, backpedaling as it fired one or two shots at a time back through the hole. Its shields were flickering as more shots struck it, and it suddenly leaped and hurled itself back out of the way, rolling back up to its feet and dashing off towards the cargo containers that were underneath where the Lombax was. Defenses must have been running low, she thought to herself. Still, with any luck it had been able to take out the grenade launcher and whoever had been operating it. What use was it to kill the weapon's user, when his or her friends could just reach down and pick up where they had had left off?

She heard more explosions over by the new entrance that the pirates had made, and the unmistakable sound of a droid cooking off. Just three left, one of them by itself. This is it… she thought to herself. Still over fifteen hundred rounds left in the current power cell, no reason to hold back. Her compatriots seemed to be thinking the same thing, as they opened up with a massive amount of fully automatic blaster fire on the original entrance. The defenders filled the thing with so much plasma fire that the metal around the gaping hole, which had faded to a dull red, turned a bright orange and actually started to turn molten once again.

She heard more micro-missile fire from off to the right, mixing in with the heavy cannon on the security drone. There were a couple of screams and the unmistakable sound of an individual being more or less flash-vaporized by a direct energy transfer weapon. She heard a faint crack below her and saw that the alien had disappeared once again. Then she refocused her attention on the primary breach. The firestorm of plasma fire that was ripping back and forth was continuing without end, a rainbow hue of death that made it impossible for either side to make any headway. There was another explosion to the right, and an electronic death-scream from the drone. Fething hell! Angela thought, their right flank was open.

The loud shockwave of the alien's weapon echoed through the cargo bay, resounding like a thunderclap at the same time that there was that sickening, wet popping noise. It had gotten someone or something. Hopefully, it was whatever had taken out the drones. For a moment, she found herself actually wishing she could talk to the thing, if only so she had some semblance of an idea as to what was going on with it.

She found out a moment later when it teleported back around the corner just in time for a barrage of micro-missiles to go flying past it. The projectiles sailed over the cargo blocks that covered their right flank and her eyes widened. She leaped from where she was standing a fraction of a second before the missiles exploded just below where she had been standing. She fell ten meters to the ground, hitting it with a roll and coming back up to her feet, sprinting forward as she heard the containers groan and shriek and start to topple over. Clumsy as she could sometimes be, the Lombax found herself grateful for her heritage. Her quick reflexes and her body's robust nature had probably just saved her life.

The cargo containers smashed to the ground behind her, shaking the entire cargo bay as they spilled out their contents. Metal ore, raw materials, and what looked to be several tons of caff. Someone's going to be pissed. She thought sardonically as she leveled her SMG and poked her head around the corner. In the time that it had taken her to get back into the action, the pirate group that had flanked them had entered the battle proper. She could see a massive alien, easily three meters tall, barking orders. The Captain or one of his lieutenants, the scientist thought to herself. As she leveled her SMG she could see the strange alien off fighting with another figure, black armored and sporting twin wrist mounted SDUs. Their unusual "ally" pumped a five round burst into the other entity from its acceleration gun, but a personal shield intercepted the fire and then the thing was in CQC range. It reached out and snatched the rifle and a wrestling match over the gun ensued, mixed in with a flurry of punches and kicks.

That was all she was able to see before the two were out of sight, back around behind another storage container, though she could definitely hear the two going at it, a series of rapid, metallic "booms" ringing out as they kept slamming each other into the crates around them. At the same time, she opened up on the large alien, spraying a hailstorm of plasma towards him and then lobbing a sonic grenade for good measure. The pirate rocked backwards a bit as a dozen rounds struck home along his head and chest, and then he and the others scattered when the grenade sailed in. One of his lackeys was too slow and the ensuing detonation pulverized him. Some of the ones that had thrown themselves out of the way of the way of the blast had also put themselves squarely in the crosshairs of the few remaining defenders and the combat droids. Most didn't last long enough to pick themselves back up to their feet.

The Lombax couldn't spare any more thoughts regarding them, though, as the massive officer roared and unleashed a double barreled storm pistol and a blade thrower. Angela ducked back down as she felt white-hot, molten metal splash onto her armor from a basketball sized hole that had been blown in the edge of one of the cargo containers. She heard the distinctive pinging noises of blades ricocheting off the metal and kept her head down. She turned over onto her stomach and started to slither along the floor. She heard another scream from one of the defenders, and could only assume that the man had at least been mission-killed.

A few more shots blasted through the remains of the crates over her head, and she knew that she had to play it very carefully here. If she kept moving among the tumbled wreckage, she could take advantage of her better agility and smaller frame. On the other hand, it didn't give her as much room to maneuver about. She heard the blade-thrower charge up, and cursed as a series of guided, ricocheting razor blades bounced around. One of them homed in on her and lodged itself into her left thigh, and she let out a reflexive yelp. The plastoid armor plating had held up, but just barely. A couple of millimeters thinner and she'd have had the thing imbedded in her flesh.

She pushed herself along underneath another angled crate and then hurled a cryogrenade where she thought that the pirate officer might have been standing. A loud curse confirmed that she was on target and she jumped up just enough to get a bead on him. Part of his right leg had been frozen to the floor, and she opened fire on him, aiming for his helmet. Two plasma bolts struck him squarely in the forehead before he dropped down and ripped his leg free.

"Miserable bitch!" he snarled, hurling a grenade of his own.

The Lombax dashed to the side, feeling the heat through her armor as the plasma grenade detonated and turned a five-meter wide area into molten slag. She fired on full auto as she got a clear line of sight, her eyes on the pirate's twin weapons. Bolts struck the man in his chest, face, and shoulders, but his armor held up, only just starting to glow from the fury of the plasma bolts. He raised his guns and fired on her as she tried to duck out of the way. A disruptor bolt ripped past her head while a barrage of flying razor blades came at her. She ducked around a corner but the guided weapons homed in. In desperation, she dropped down into a ball and curled her arms and legs around her body. She winced as she felt impact after impact, hissing as she felt a white-hot streak of pain shoot up her left arm. A warning icon appeared on her HUD, indicating that the hermetic seal of her armor had been breached.

All the while, she fired at the pirate officer, and distantly couldn't help but wonder how much he had spent to get whatever armor he was wearing.

Lear twisted as he kept a death grip on his gun and then teleported out of the way of another strike from his opponent, as various subroutines tried to process the information that his sensors were feeding him. The sensor feedback was accurate. No heart, no brain, no organic elements of any kind. A droid, it's a fraking droid! He snarled inwardly as he looked at the black armored thing and hastily teleported again. Bipedal, able to pass as a humanoid, and very, very heavily armed. Unbelievable. He appeared on top of some crates and fired down onto it, only to find his pulse rifle's KKVs being stopped dead by a personal energy shield. He heard the thing screech out something in the tongue that these aliens apparently spoke, and some of the raiders maneuvered around to fire on him. Is that thing in a command position?

A droid in a command position? Self aware? Focus, kill it first, deal with culture shock later, a subroutine of his twin minds berated him as he sensed the actions of the organic adversaries. He leaped off the containers, and took out the trio that had been flanking him on the way down. The combat droid, or whatever it was, stuck an arm around the corner and unloaded a barrage of micromissiles. Denied the warning he might have got with an adversary of flesh and blood, Lear activated his teleporter and his grav boots. He slammed into the wall with enough force to dent it inwards a bit and started to run up it, firing as he went. He weaved and bobbed about as best he could as he continued to fire on the thing. It moved out into the open, raising both of its wrists and returning the favor.

With the world slowed around him, he was able to watch as the thing took a moment to turn and face one of the remaining combat drones. With an air that bordered on casual contempt, it unleashed a half-dozen of those rocket propelled warheads. The friendly combat drone simply flew apart. He fired again and emptied the few slugs left in his magazine and the thing dove down behind cover as its defensive barrier shattered. Lear reloaded as fast as he could, lamenting how quickly he was burning his way through his ammunition. Enemy shields slightly inferior to mine, but definitely in the same league.

He tracked the robot as it barked more orders, and a four-man group of raiders that had poured in through the second breach headed for where the civilians were hunkering down. The drone moved to join them, and Lear cursed under his breath. He disengaged his grav boots and flipped around, slamming into one of the crates with an ungodly loud bang and denting it inwards as he began to sprint forty meters towards the civilians. Now in range of his destination, he teleported to the far side of the passengers' little walled in sanctuary. The first pirate that began to round the corner was met with the Revenant's fist accelerating towards his face. Enhanced by the T-28's dual layer strength augmentation and his own "innate" abilities, the raider's helmet and head were little more durable than a water balloon. Its head more or less exploded as the armored fist drove through it. A hip-fired shot took out two more, before another rapid teleport put him behind the last man. He lashed out with a kick before the alien knew what had happened, shattering armor and bones as the raider flew through the air and slammed into a cargo container a dozen meters away.

Then the combat drone itself reentered the equation as it stormed up around the corner. There was a flash and one of its micromissile launchers was replaced by another weapon. A blistering wall of heat filled the air as Lear's temperature gauge skyrocketed. He could hear the screams as the civvies scrambled backwards, some of them scorched and blistered by the ambient heat of the air. He fired on full automatic, the momentum of the impacts driving the robot backwards as Lear's shields were drained. The deck plating underneath him was white-hot as his foe swapped out its weapons yet again.

It dove back around the corner, and a barrage of pink tinted energy bolts streaked around the metal crates. To the Revenant's shock, the shots homed in on him, blasting into his shields. He nearly reeled from the shock of this unexpected attack vector, but instead armed a grenade and hurled it around the corner. The droid leaped and rolled away, clearing the blast with room to spare. Lear's teleporter was still recharging, and he moved up to the corner, sticking the ASPR-27 around the edge and firing, using the smart-link to aim the gun. He fired a couple more times as the robot returned the favor, before turning back and with blinding speed, slammed into Revenant. It made another grab for the gun, and this time got a better hold on it. The two struggled back and forth for a few moments, wrestling over the weapon as they slammed back and forth in the glowing-hot channel formed by the various cargo crates and left impressions of themselves on the superheated containers.

Angela grimaced as yet another razor blade bounced off of her armor's chestplate, leaving a deep scar in its wake. If I get out of this alive, I'm definitely picking up a larger arsenal, she thought as she fired another burst at the officer.

Any semblance of order to the defensive effort had collapsed by now and the battle had turned into a frantic "every man and woman for themselves" type ordeal. Screams, blaster fire, missiles and grenade blasts filled the air as the cargo bay turned into an all-out warzone. She lobbed her last cryogrenade as she continued to fall back. The pirate officer jumped over the blast and rolled forward as the air behind him literally froze solid. She put another burst of fire into him, a six shot barrage that blackened and charred his right gauntlet. Another burst slashed into the storm pistol, blowing it in half and rendering it inoperable.

"You miserable little rat!" he shouted, charging forward and drawing a power-saber. The Lombax's eyes widened as she saw the crackling energy field run across the length of the metal. She dived to the side as the raider charged in and swiped back and forth, furiously swinging the weapon to and fro. What the hell did it take to bring this guy down? She jumped backwards to avoid another strike, and continued to fire on the alien in front of her. Like a berserk war grok, though, he just kept coming. Even at full power, her Inferno just lacked the stopping power to deal with whatever tricked out armor he was wearing. She needed her disruptor rifle, however ill-suited for a close quarters fight that it might have been. She'd need a second or two the line the larger rifle up for a shot, though.

That was a second or two that her opponent was determined not to give her. She ducked and rolled as the blade sliced over her head. The tip end of it cut through the reinforced metal of the cargo container behind her as though it was no denser than air. Any slower and that would have been her head, Angela thought. The Lombax looked about, and spotted an overhanging lip a couple centimeters long, about five meters off the ground, and more importantly, the container opposite of it, short enough for her to jump off and reach. She rushed towards it and warped her Inferno back into the storage deck. Then she tensed her legs, and jumped into the air. Her long, nimble fingers reached out and she grabbed ahold of the lip and then braced herself against the side of the container as the pirate officer snarled. She leaped away moments before he swung again, and tried not to think about the noise of the power-saber as it cut through the metal of the crate. She was just grateful that she'd apparently pissed him off to the point where he'd forgotten about his blade thrower.

Her muscles tensed as she grabbed hold of the other container and quickly pulled herself up. The pirate below her gave out a snarl of rage and she heard his blade thrower start to charge up, the spinning razors starting to wind up. She summoned her disruptor rifle and leveled it against her shoulder, flicking the power gauge up to maximum charge. She leaned over the edge and aimed down at her adversary. However, before either of them could fire, the Arcturus suddenly shuddered with enough force to drive Angela to her knees, while the raider down below lost his footing and tumbled to the ground.

"The hell?" she muttered.

Captain Corta Ikona could feel his blood pulsing and veins at either temple throbbing as he grit his fangs. He recognized the woman that he was chasing. The one that had gathered these people up and led them on this "merry" little chase, and the one that had no doubt killed a number of the men and women under his command, and the reason the Contact was so pissed at him right now. His power saber shook as he picked himself up off the floor. Oh, he'd have fun with her, he thought to himself as he stabbed the blade into the container she was on top of out of sheer frustration. Maybe take an arm or a leg at first, nice and slow, make her beg for death before the end.

"Captain, captain!" he heard Jentry shouting into his ear.

"What?" he bellowed as he blindly fired his blade thrower. Some of the blades curved around the top and imbedded themselves into it, but judging by the lack of screams and/or gurgles, he'd guessed whatever damage he'd inflicted was negligible. This was confirmed a moment later when the girl stuck her head over the edge and fired a disruptor rifle at him. The shot struck him dead center and blew a fist sized hole in his armor plating. He threw himself away from where he was before she could follow through with another round. A series of shots that were far too close for comfort tore into the floor behind him, super-heated steam and vaporized metal filling the air.

The feline alien jumped off the container that she was on and landed lightly on another set of them. More green colored bolts of energy filled the air as the hunter became the hunted.

"We've got incoming! Military patrol coming out of warp, Sir! We've just lost the Saber and Nova's taking a beating!" his subordinate screamed. "Meteor's coming under heavy attack as well."

A roar that sounded more akin to a feral war grox's than any sapient creature's left the Captain's mouth a moment later.

"Tow the damn ship out of here!" he said as the freighter shook again. "And hail those warships! Tell them we have hostages that we'll execute if they don't back the feth off!"

"Trying sir!" there was a frantic undertone to Jentry's voice. But Corta couldn't spare anymore thoughts for his lieutenant.

This was partially due to the blinding pain that came from having his left hand vaporized. A moment later, his left forearm was likewise turned into ash and vapor, and the Captain howled as he tried to put more distance between himself and the damnable "civilian" or whatever the hell she was. No! he screamed inwardly. This isn't the way it's supposed to go!

This was supposed to be a hard job, but they were still supposed to be in and out with minimal casualties. Then he was supposed to get rich enough to buy his own planet. Instead, his crew were being taken down like bowling pins and now the rest of the convoy had gotten far enough away to not only transmit their distress signal, but for someone to actually respond to it and arrive on the scene before they could tow the stricken freighter away.

He suddenly tripped and stumbled to the ground, landing heavily on his wounded arm. It took him a half-second to realize why he'd tripped: he no longer had a right leg. He screamed in pain and rage and denial a moment before another bolt tore into his head. Captain Corta Ikona never felt the shot that ended his life.

Angela breathed a sigh of relief as she delivered the killing blow. She hoped that pirate was someone relatively important, that way she could at least inflict some morale damage on the attackers and disrupt them. Regardless, though, she was still needed. She forced her hands to stop shaking and raced forward over the mess of spilled and broken crates in an attempt to regain the high ground. Shots still rang out everywhere, making the cargo bay sound more like a firing range than anything else. The Lombax growled as she finally got a peek at things. The pirates were stumbling about in confusion, some of them screaming orders and others shouting back as the ship rumbled again, a loud subsonic "bang" vibrated through the room. Someone or something is pounding the hell out of the boarding craft she thought to herself, as she sighted up another pirate and squeezed the trigger on her rifle.

The man screamed as the energy pulse ripped into him and tore him apart. At the same time the sole remaining combat drone continued to fire at any hostile target it could see. There was no sign of Samantha or the other defenders, and Angela didn't know what had happened to them. Much as she might have wanted to, though, she couldn't go hunting for them. The civilians were still in danger, and from the sound of things, their alien "friend" was still fighting that other specialist, or whatever it was. They needed to finish this up, and quickly.

She fired on another pirate that was rushing for the door. It took her a split second afterwards to realize that the pirate had been attempting to retreat. Another raider broke from the fight a moment later, tumbling to a stop when Angela's retaliatory fire vaporized his legs below the kneecaps.

There was a crack suddenly, and a slamming noise as something impacted against the crates below her. She peaked over the edge of the crate and gazed down to see the alien and the other pirate… commander? Specialist? Whatever it was. The two were a pair of blurs as they struggled and wrestled about, fighting over the alien's acceleration gun and throwing out a strike, kick, or other blow when they got the opening. The raider suddenly twisted and brought its leg up between the alien's knees. The armored entity grunted at the impact, and Angela noticed that there wasn't that telltale shield flare that she'd seen before. It head-butted the pirate and it seemed that for the moment its defenses were also down.

Seizing on this opportunity, the young woman leaned a little bit further over the edge and sighted the pirate up. She squeezed the trigger and fired the disruptor rifle. The officer took the shot in the left shoulder and the force of the energy bolt amputated it. It remained silent as electricity arced over the stump, confirming its robotic nature. It twisted about once again, tearing the acceleration gun from the alien's grasp. It kicked the alien away hard enough that the alien sailed ten meters through the air and slammed into a cargo crate. The metal crumpled inward from the force of the impact and the crates stacked on top of it creaked and wobbled alarmingly, as though they would topple over at any moment. The robot flipped the weapon around and then squeezed the trigger. There was a click, but nothing happened. The failsafes… Angela realized as she fired again. As soon as the weapon had failed to fire, though, the raider had hurled the weapon at the alien and jumped to the side.

The armored entity jumped forward, caught the acceleration gun, shouldered it, and fired in one smooth motion. The shot ripped into the chest of the robot and left a hole big enough that Angela could have thrust her head all the way through it. The hostile drone immediately leveled its remaining arm and a double-barreled micromissile launcher appeared on it. It fired off a barrage at the alien. There was a weak flicker of a shield flare as the alien dashed out of the way, and then the creature fired again. The thunderous roar of the alien's gun echoed in the air as it destroyed the launcher. Undeterred, the android summoned another weapon and sent a stream of white-hot plasma based fire towards its enemy. The Lombax moved to fire again and clipped it on its damaged side. The disruptor bolt tore out a massive hole in the machine's side and together with its other wounds, the thing had sustained enough damage that if it had been an organic creature, it would have been long dead.

Still it continued to fight on. It turned to face her, bringing the plasma-thrower up towards her. There was a soft 'pop-crack' noise, barely audible over the din of the battle raging around them and the alien teleported in and slammed into the drone. An invisible force picked the android up and slammed it into the container they were next to with enough force that the robot's body smashed clean through it and into the rare-earth ores that were contained inside. The droid struggled to free itself, but the alien fired its weapon one more time and blew the thing clean in half. The upper half of the robot tumbled out of the container and onto the floor. It looked up at them from where it lay and cocked its head to one side. There was a high-pitched beep, and then it abruptly exploded.

The shockwave knocked her down and catapulted the alien off of its feet. Grunting heavily as she landed on her side, Angela pulled herself back up and looked around for her rifle. The Lombax saw it a few meters away on a lower cargo container, and she quickly clambered over towards it. The pirates continued to scream, though with the ringing of her ears, she could not make out what they were saying. As she peeked up over the edge of the container in front of her, though, she figured that it was some variation of "let's get the hell out of here" judging by the way they were all scrambling back through the various holes that they'd made in the doors.

"Is it over?" she asked quietly, keeping her rifle level against her shoulder.

As the sounds of battle slowly died down, it certainly seemed to be. The ship still rumbled on occasion, every minute or so, but it seemed to be caused by something external. Was that it, then? The pirates had gotten what they wanted, or in a fit of petty spite, were blowing the ship up? Had everything they just accomplished just been for nothing? Or was whatever had been attacking the boarding craft getting the upper hand?

Angela had no way of knowing at the time, or realizing just how much chaos she had helped sow within the ranks of the enemy. With both their corporate contact and their captain dead, and their ships under attack, the pirates had adopted the age-old adage of "run for your life, and the devil take the hindmost."

She looked over at the alien, which seemed to be examining its gun for damage. There was some discoloration along the barrel plating, and a slight dent on the right side, from what she could see, but the creature nodded to itself and put the weapon back over its shoulder into that old fashioned harness.

The Lombax felt the fur on the back of her neck starting to rise. It had helped them tremendously in this fight, but that didn't mean anything. It could have been simple self-preservation, a "the enemy of my enemy is my temporary ally," type deal. She kept her eyes on the thing as she moved back over to where the mainstay of their defensive effort had been. There were a lot of bodies there, and the combat drone moved from one to another, prodding them and placing its "normal" hand against the bodies.

It looked over to her as she drew closer and scanned her. "Doctor Cross," it said. "Four survivors." It nodded down to one at his feet, and Angela gasped as she recognized Samantha. The blue-skinned Novalian was charred, and there was blood leaking from one of her ears, but she was breathing steadily.

"Samantha!" the Lombax shouted, sliding down onto her knees and reaching for the portable medical pack that she carried.

"Did we win?" she asked quietly.

"I think so. They've retreated at least," Angela said, fishing out some burn salves and liberally applying them to the cracked and blistered skin on the face of her compatriot. She winced s she noticed that on the other woman's left arm, the pattern of the tunic that she'd been wearing had literally been burned into the flesh. She was going to need some reconstructive surgery most likely.

The Lombax fished around in the portable medical kit, pulling out a hypospray unit and filing it full of a combination of painkillers and anti-shock medications. She placed it against Samantha's neck and a moment later the pain-filled grimace on the Novalian's face relaxed. It took her a couple more minutes, but she finally got the other woman patched up, and she let out a sigh of relief. There had been enough death today. She looked up at the surviving drone.

"Carry her to the others, and be careful about it." She said, wiping off her hands.

"Yes ma'am," the drone said, nodding its head and kneeling down. It slipped its blaster arm under her back and used the one that had a hand to pick her up and cradle her against its chest. Then it started to move through the maze of toppled crates and destroyed containers.

The other three survivors were able to move under their own power, and limped behind the drone. Angela hoped that they weren't the only ones that had made it. She supposed they'd have to wait and see. Movement out of the corner of her eye caused her to jerk her head around and she saw the armored entity walking over towards an overturned container. Someone was struggling next to it, a pirate by the looks of it. She could see where his legs were pinned by the container, and winced reflexively. She wondered for a moment if the alien was going to execute the trapped raider as it walked up next to him. The man's squirming became frantic and desperate and he flailed about as he tried to pull his crushed limbs out from underneath the hundred-ton mass that had fallen on them.

It was of course, useless, and the man whimpered as the armored creature stood over him. He started to shake and spasm suddenly, screaming and clutching at his head. Oh gods… Angela's eyes widened as she realized what it was doing. It was inside of the pirate's mind. A torrent of emotions washed over her as she watched the man scream wordlessly, tearing his helmet off and revealing a green furred face. He clawed at his scalp and slammed his own head against the floor. There was a dark, sadistic part of the young woman's soul that reveled in seeing this happen. The man had fought her, would have killed or done worse to her and everyone else if he'd been given the chance. Hell, he probably already had executed a few people today.

But she'd experienced a mental probe from this thing first hand. The feeling of an outside entity crawling around inside of your head, not knowing what it was doing, or what it was after. The feeling of violation and the knowledge that the one place you expected to be your sanctuary had been intruded upon. Hers hadn't inspired anything like the reaction that she was seeing now, and the Lombax wondered what in the world was going on that was making this one so much more violent. She cast aside the how and the why for the moment. She leveled her rifle, aimed a meter or two away from the alien, and fired.

Before she'd even finished squeezing the trigger, it looked up at her. "Enough!" she screamed, vaulting over another fallen container and marching up towards the thing. "That's enough."

The pirate was a pitiful, broken wreck, whimpering and sobbing on the floor as he tried to curl up into a fetal position. The alien just looked up at her, and then nodded his head and turned to walk away. "As…you…wish…" it spoke.

Okay. Hope that was an okay chapter, and that you all enjoyed it. As I said last time, hoping that my update schedule is going to become a little more regular now, and you all have my thanks once again for being patient with me. Any advice, feedback, constructive criticism or the like is very much appreciated, and I do want to thank you all for taking the time to read my little story.