Deep Space
Uhlek Badlands
G'Nunk Warship Regepple

The plastic work went quickly in the deserted engineering hold. In the play of three minutes, the Thrynn Marines anchored explosives and remote blasting caps down the length of the main feed lines running back into the engine wells. Corporal Rassyth looked back toward the twisted, burned out hatch.

Almost time to move again.

* * *

Dozelord Gannuzo stared aghast into the glowing white emptiness around the Uhl child. There were no Ghettus Dragons to quench the surging rage in the narcotic blood of his crew. No meat to throw to his rabid hounds. Gannuzo spun around to face them, a sudden pang of fear in his corroded innards. The G’Nunk tasted his fear, and for a moment, they were quieted.

ISS Belfast Windfall

Grix brought Windfall around hard to port, out of the path of a missile, banked back a hard three-quarter turn to starboard, then yanked the rudder grip to his abdomen. The tactical end result was a plunge on the zulu axis. Plunge had nothing to do with the gastronomic result.

“Son of a bitch!” observed Boz Grabow. “My stomach's in my throat, Biggs.” Across the bridge, strapped into his chair at the laser console, Mack managed a laugh.

“Get it Boz – Skipper was too cheap to go for the Bandolari dampeners – he got the generic ones they were selling on the tube last year!”

“Shut up, kid,” roared Biggs. “Shoot the lasers.”

G'Nunk Warship Regepple

The bramble of biomechanical creatures spun out of Gannuzo’s control, rolling on a boiling sea of hormones and chemical rage. The first titanium claws plunged into the powerless dozelord’s throat, ripping a cavity into his flesh and spraying his rancid blood across the massed G’Nunk. His nerves flared searing orange hot, and his mechanoid lines succumbed to cold, white overload. The crowd ripped him into chunks of meat and metal, then swarmed out into the ship in search of other wet blood.

* * *

Corporal Rassyth crammed Venn’Bk and the remaining Marines into an evac vehicle, his ears perked by the sound of the approaching G’Nunk. The momentum in this fight was long from his hand, but the damage was done. He reached down to his hip and grabbed the detonator. He clacked it three times and rode the shock as Regepple’s engines disintegrated. Now victory was in his hand: batten the hatch, launch the pod.

But on some primitive impulse, Rassyth turned and looked back into the ship. He crouched motionless in the cramped pod for a long, tense heartbeat. There was no decision to make, only a mantle to carry.

A herd of ravenous beasts rounded the corner, pushed forward by a blind hunger for death. Corporal Rassyth brandished his bayonet-sword, leveled his reverb rifle and let fly the glutteral roar of his distant fathers in all the places they had ever fought: from the green jungle hell of Thoss to frigid ice floes in bitter methane seas on unnamed worlds.

Rassyth squeezed the trigger and his rifle belched fire. Behind him, Gazz hunkered up against the hatch and sent a volley of grenades smashing into the onrushing horde. The other Marines threw in, slapping fresh magazines into smoking wells, firing relentlessly, living the fight. Beyond this moment they saw nothing, relished the slow drip of every bloody second, feeding on their own fear, knowing the taste of glory.

But not Venn’Bk. He saw nothing more than boys throwing sand at crashing waves. He ducked into the pod, hit the batten switch and watched the hatch slide shut as the G’Nunk smashed into the Marines.

Not one turned to look back.

A second later Venn’Bk blacked out under the force of the pod blasting out into open space.

Thrynn Frigate Jussru

Captain Rssa watched the stern quarter of the G’Nunk warship flash bright and rip away from the hull. He knew immediately it was terminal damage. “Helm, attack course; weapons, converged sheaf, center mass,” he commanded on instinct. The frigate bore down on the bleeding hulk like a frenzied shark.

“Solution,” said weapons.

Rssa scanned his tactical display, giving hope its due, but there was nothing. “Fire,” he ordered, then, missiles away, “Helm, make your heading zero-niner-two mark zero-niner-zero, bring all remaining power to the engines.”

ISS Belfast Windfall

“Bring her to starboard!” shouted Biggs, nearly jumping up from his desk. Grix was already working the angle and Windfall narrowly banked clear of the rocketing shrapnel coming off Regepple’s wreckage. It wasn’t a second before Arella had the update.

“G’Nunk ship destroyed -- bio signs to zero. Thrynn ship breaking contact to coreward...her weapons are tight.”

“What about the Uhlek?” said Biggs. Arella looking at all her displays, checked the readouts, and double checked them. There was no other way to put it. She pulled her headphones off and looked back at Biggs.

“They’re...drifting.”

Biggs O’Rourke Hilsfar exhaled. Then he took a swig of coffee.

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Next: “Moretto Strike”
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