Chương 167: Chapter 137

For most species, being in the command and control structure of the military is preferable to being on the front line. For many Terrans, they would rather face the enemy steel to steel drone to drone than be in command. - Seeks Meaning in Violence, New Mantid Press, 29 Post-Glassing Vak-tel groaned when he saw that he was supposed to follow the Solarian Admiral directly. She was already standing in the middle of the corridor with her SMG up and close to her chest.

She was completely silent but not even pretending to take cover. Vak-tel just knew that the Admiral would get her dick blown off and he'd be the one blamed for it. Sure, Impton had made her sound like she was dangerous, but for some reason Vak-tel couldn't really take the warnings seriously. Sure, she was large, but power armor and modern weaponry made physical size and strength irrelevant on the battlefield.

Clipdek hit the floor and knelt down for a moment, the glitter of the holofield being projected from his knees and waist as he crouched down. Marbles dropped from his hip, rolling in midair, wings unfurling, and the microdrones buzzed away as more of the Company dropped down into the hole. The squads EW expert was hard at work.

"Psst," Cipdek's voice came across the side channel.

"Everyone's linked." The last of the boarding party, a Mad Man and a Monster Class, dropped silently into the corridor.

"Enemy channels are isolated. Mapping feed coming back. Enemy data lines are not encrypted between systems," Cipdek said. Vak-tel looked around. There was the weird Nookie script on the walls, weird symbols, and what was probably warnings. The ship was still under atmosphere, the lights were still a soft whitish-yellow, and the gravity was. 8 Confederate Standard, which was still listed as a G for some reason that Vak-tel had never been able to figure out.

"Dumping you data," Cipdek's icon for the private channel was a Terran Descent feline face with credit signs for eyes.

"Roger," Vak-tel said. The dropship crew started dropping down next. Sergeant Letrill motioned for everyone to get into position around the Admiral, the eight Telkan squad put at the eight points of the compass around her. There was a clink and Vak-tel heard the others get tied into the net. Cipdek always tried to keep at least their small group linked up on the close range commo network.

"Hey, Impton and the others of First Matine Expeditionary Force carry hand axes, right?" Cipdek asked.

"Yeah," Nrexla said.

"VIP has a weird axe thing on her back. Nasty curved spike with teeth on the inside of the arc on one side and a nasty axe blade on the other. Handles have a weird angle to them," Cipdek said.

"Probably some human crap. Eyes out," Vak-tel said.

"All right, the VIP wants to take their Damage Control first," Sergeant Letrill said over the squad link.

"CO will be coming with us."

"What about the rest of the Company?" Sergeant Mret-nak asked.

"They have their own objectives, ours is keep the VIP alive and relatively unharmed while we make for the DCC," Sergeant Letrill said.

"Data says its almost a straight shot to the DCC." The NCO paused for a moment. Vak-tel saw the commander's channel icon flicker. Normally it wouldn't for a junior enlisted like him, but Cipdek made sure they were all tied in.

"Let's move out," the NCO said. The first thing Vak-tel noticed was that the Admiral just walked along at full height. No crouching down slightly with bent knees or hocks, no shrinking down. Just fully upright with the SMG cradled to her chest, looking around as she followed Sergeant Letrill, who had taken the lead. Vak-tel was in the back, the CO just to his right.

"We have incoming. Six. Unarmred or armored," Cipdek suddenly said.

"Against the walls. Cipdek, get a holofield up," the CO ordered. Everyone lunged against the walls except the Admiral, who just stood in the middle as Cipdek tossed a marble in the air. The marble dropped down then hovered an inch above the deckplate. There was a slight distortion in the air and Vak-tel knew it was an illusion of the corridor they were in being completely empty. The first of the Nookie troops came by.

The low, six legged ones with the wide prolate spheroid with the ends clipped off body, the mouth in front and underneath. It had its body covered with cloth that had markings, but Vak-tel didn't know what the markings meant and the data wasn't loaded into his HUD. It stopped, making noises like meat slapping together, sucking sounds, and bubbling. Two others moved up next to it. They shifted and a fourth came up.

The group shifted so they were all staring at each other, their bodies all 90 from the one next to them. Suddenly the width of the corridors made sense to Vak-tel. The last two came up, staying slightly back. It was obvious that the Slappers had decided to use this particular intersection for a discussion of vast importance.

"30 seconds till battery failure," Cipdek warned.

"Cutting out enemy biometrics." There was silence for a second that was broken by the sound of slapping meat and bubbling sucking noises.

"They've slowed down." The CO cursed.

"10 seconds till battery failure. All elements prepare to..." the CO warned. Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions. The Admiral suddenly moved. The SMG snapped to her waist as she released it, reaching behind her back and grabbing the two axes. She took two steps forward even as she brought the axes around in front of her. She stomped the nearest one at the back of the body, crushing their anterior end into the deck with a spray of icor.

She took another half-step, kicking the one on her right hard enough it flew into the air to slam against the wall, purple blood bursting out in a halo even as the legs fell off. Vak-tel was still trying to decide what to do. The CO was still talking.

"engage..." She stomped again, this time mid-body, and blood gouted out fhe forward mouth as well as exploded from beneath it. The legs popped off even as she took another step forward, stomping again.

"... the..." A kick sent the fifth against the wall, half of its legs flying off, blood and gore bursting from the body. The stomped one last time.

"... enemy," the CO finished saying. The Admiral put the axes behind her back and moved back to where she had been standing as everyone stared at her. She ignored the stares and brought her SMG back into the ready position. The silence only lasted a few seconds.

"Continue on mission," the CO ordered. The squad moved forward and Vak-tel couldn't resist looking. The stomps had destroyed the fibrous external hide, pressure cutting it. There was bulging around the footprints. The kicks were driven deep into the bodies. The blood made a skritching sound as the squad moved through it.

"Disabled their biometric links," Cipdek suddenly said. Made it look to their computers like it was a data hiccup and the VI isn't paying attention to it now."

"Stay on their EW," the CO ordered.

"Roger, sir," Cipdek answered.

"DCC ten meters," Sergeant Letrill stated. The heavy double blast doors were closed.

"Opening," Cipdek said, his voice tense but quiet.

"Five seconds, firewall is gone. Emergency open." The double doors pulled back with the KRACK of emergency pistons. Beyond the double doors was a large hexagon room, with a terraced floor and ledges with workstations above. There was also roughly sixty Nookie troops in the room. From the big bipedal lizards to the Slappers themselves. None of them were in shipboard armor. Worse, it looked like shift change. They started to turn to look at the Telkan troops.

"We're engaged!" the CO snapped. Even as he was speaking the Admiral was moving forward, her SMG out. She was firing before the second syllable. To Vak-tel it sounded like one long ripping burst, even as he moved forward with the others. One of the Slappers was highlighted.

"I want him alive," the Admiral's cold dead voice came over the commo. Vak-tel knew he was fast on the trigger, fast to recognize and engage targets. But it was frustrating how many times he went to lock onto a target only to see it explode into salsa chunks.

"Dammit," Lance Corporal Juvretik snapped. Vak-tel knew what he was bitching about. The Admiral was advancing into the room. One of the big lizards ran at her and Vak-tel started moving forward to help the Admiral. Instead she let go of the front of her SMG and without even looking put her hand in the lizard's face. Then she closed her hand, ripping away the lizard's face and crushing the front of its skull. It lost interest in the Admiral and Vak-tel considered the rounds he put into it to be a mercy.

Vak-tel's armor suddenly fired APERs grenades, fragmentation and spooky white phosphorus. He noticed other people's armor was doing the same thing. The grenades flew out, fins deploying, and homed in on the targets. The exits. The grenades exploded only a few meters from the doors, the 30mm grenades spewing out white hot fragmentation as well as the spooky WP. Vak-tel could hear the screams but was too busy yanking the trigger as fast as he could verify the targets.

The one that was highlighted raised up slightly, holding what looked like some kind of pistol. A burst from the Admiral ripped the legs off of it, the last round hitting the weapon and detonating with the bright bluish-white snap of antimatter. Another was running, all six legs scrambling, and it got highlighted. Vak-tel was close enough to reach out and grab it. It started making the hissing sounds along with the meat slapping sounds.

As Vak-tel lifted it up he saw the mouth on the bottom open up and the tentacles uncoil. The tentacles started slapping against him, trying to grab his arm or find a weak spot in his armor.

"FUCK!" Vak-tel yelled. The Slapper vomited up digestive juice on him. No alarms kicked off so Vak-tel wasn't worried. The Slapper got a pistol out form somewhere and lifted it up, intending on pressing it against Vak-tel's helmet and shooting him through the top of the head where most species had the weakest armor. But the Confederacy was too used to top-down drones, so the armor wasn't thinner to save weight. Better a little more weight than having your head turned into a canoe.

Not that it mattered as the pistol suddenly exploded, taking the slapper's grasper with it. Vak-tel got a glimpse of the Admiral. She had just grabbed a slapper by thrusting her hand into the body and finding something to grab hold of, then she had slung it across the room to knock down a bunch of lizards who were trying to rush for the door. One hand was still pointing the SMG at Vak-tel for a second before she went back to shooting at a detail trying to push through the doors.

"Shipboard security is here!" Cipdek yelled. The Admiral turned from where she had been hosing the front of consoles, her rounds punching through the shred the Nookie's on the other side. The opposing forces were wearing hardshell plate. Vak-tel got a burst off, still trying to hold onto the slapper with one hand, and saw his round get deflected. Oh, yeah, near-peer, he thought. He started smacking the slapper with the butt of his pistol. Grenades were being fired on the upper levels as the squad spread out.

The Slapper finally went limp and Vak-tel dropped it on the floor. One of its legs blew off and Vak-tel looked over in time to see the Admiral turn and hose down one of the doorways, the big. 70 caliber rounds from the SMG punching through hard-shell body armor and ignoring defensive fields.

"Got it. Isolating DCC," Cipdek said, his voice still even and calm. The doors slowly rumbled shut.

"I triggered fire alarms all over the ship. They'll be busy trying to figure out what is us and what isn't," Cipdek said.

"Good job, Marine," the CO said. The Slapper Vak-tel had thrown away was squalling and vibrating in place. The severed leg's stump was spurting out purple. The Admiral held out her palm and fire shot from something implanted in her armor's palm. Vak-tel just knew that it probably smelled like burnt ass out there and was glad he was in environmental armor.

When the Admiral started making choking, meat slapping, gurgling sucking sounds Vak-tel wondered why his armor wasn't at least loaded up with speech to text translation. The Slapper answered and the Admiral spat out more. Vak-tel wondered what they were talking about.

"Kill it," the Admiral said, turning away and walking toward the other one she had wanted.

"Um, it's a wounded prisoner, the Laws of Warfare state," the Captain started.

"Fine. You deal with it," the Admiral said, moving up to the next one. The Captain looked at the wounded Slapper, which was staring at him with the six eyes above the forward mouth, the feeding tentacles dropping from the forward mouth and wriggling around. Vak-tel watched at the Admiral leaned over the other one, speaking to it. After a moment she turned and walked toward the far end of the room. Cipdek looked up from where he had been sitting at one of the consoles.

"Got the external communications system on a loop. Nobody except this ship knows they've been boarded and I've disabled the communication torpedo launchers," the EW counter-warfare specialist said.

"Good job, Marine," the CO said, moving up next to Vak-tel. The Admiral had moved up and put her palm on one of the computer consoles.

"I didn't think an Admiral would be willing to break the Rules of Warfare or the Deneb Conventions," the CO said softly over the channel to Vak-tel.

"You know who Senior Sergeant Impton is?" Vak-tel asked.

"He was the one in the simulation where we were supposed to play the Mantid on Terra, right?" Captain Kemtrelap asked.

"Yeah, that one," Vak-tel said.

"He's been around a while. He was trapped on Terra the whole time the Bag was up."

"So?" the Captain asked. The Admiral walked over to one of the bodies, kneeling down and pulling a knife from the sheath at her calf.

"He told me to be wary of her. Said she's some kind of monster. Had the nickname "Mauler' or 'Mangler' or something like that," Vak-tel said. The Admiral wiped off the blade and tucked it back into the sheath. The Admiral cut something out of the body while Vak-tel was talking. The Admiral wiped off the blade and tucked it back into the sheath and moved over to Cipdek.

"Clone this," she said, tossing a gore covered object. Cipdek looked at the CO, who nodded, then went to work. After a few seconds he nodded, leaning back.

"Got it."

"Good," the Admiral said. She turned to the CO.

"Get the men together," she said.

"Where are we going?" the CO asked. He had a bad feeling. The Admiral just checked her SMG.

"The Bridge. I want to talk to the Captain." Vak-tel knew this was going to be bad.