Chapter twenty

Of course, they are but one kind of space-born life, one of many. However, space-born life is less diverse than terrestrial life, as the harsh conditions mean that there is no room for evolutionary error.

George crept slowly along the long, winding corridors. Silently, he cursed in his heart. It was meant to be a normal slaver raid, but everything had gone to hell when the slaver reinforcements had showed up with a goddamned battleship. Granted, it was an alien one instead of a Terran one, but his squad had only come in a small ship, and they were pinned by the enemy vehicles. Thankfully, they couldn’t bring anything big into the base, but his shields could only hold up to so much fire before depleting.

His squad had decided to split up and wage guerrilla warfare, but that had proved to be a bad idea. Even as he had managed to surprise a patrol and plant charges on their vehicle, Leman had been surprised by three patrols and had been pinned down. Charlotte, meanwhile, was slowly making her way through the vents to the command centre, to hopefully take out the leadership.

He was the only one who could help Leman, and so here he was now, carefully making his way to where Leman was. Hopefully he would be able to sneak up behind one of the patrols, to create enough chaos that Leman could escape.

As he arrived in the vicinity of the skirmish, he swore as he heard the characteristic barks of a heavy bolt cannon. Where the slavers had gotten one of them he did not know; what he did know was that it would chew through his shields like they were made of paper. He grabbed his comms as his brain spun. A change of plan was needed.

“Leman, change of plans. They’ve got a heavy bolt. That thing will deplete my shield in seconds.”

“I know, its depleting my cover too fast for comfort!”

“I need a distraction for long enough to get a charge into the nest.”

“I’ll try. Gas out in 3 2 1. Go!”

George sprinted through the gas, using his boot jets to get a boost over the top of the nest. He jumped again, this time over the nest, dropping a charge into the nest. As the gas cleared, he started sprinting away. The charge exploded seconds after, but before it had gone up in flames the heavy bolt had managed to get his shield down to 20%.

“Heavy bolt down, and my shields are almost gone as well. You ready yet?”

“Yeah, my shield booster’s up. let me handle the rest.” As the com clicked off, Leman took a deep breath before standing up, unleashing his minigun at the slavers.

The minigun roared, its eight barrels unleashing depleted uranium alloy bullets coated with dense plasma. Rounds fifteen centimetres long hammered into enemies as return fire tinkled harmlessly off a glowing blue barrier that had sparked into existence.

As the last slaver fell, full of bullet holes, George ran in to find Leman laughing maniacally amidst a pile of bodies while blood was painted all over the walls.

“Leman! You didn’t need to disassemble them! We could’ve captured a few for questioning.”

“Sorry captain, I was too caught up in the action.” Leman didn’t sound at all apologetic, but George just sighed. At that moment, their coms rang. Charlotte’s voice came through the speakers.

“Target eliminated.” George sighed again, this time in relief.

“Good, we can finally get out of here.”