Hyperlinks in the text are intended as supplemental material, discussing elements of the science behind the science fiction. They are not intended as required reading for the story. Hyperlinks will be provided at the point in the story where it comes up, but all the links will also be collected at the bottom of the post for easy reading.
“What do you mean, rebellion?” Amara asked, eyes wide with excitement.
“For a long time,” Thia said as she continued running down the hallways, challenging everyone else to keep up with her long-legged strides, “we’ve been aware that groups among the casteless were independent of the rest of the Kthid. Several of my people have managed to find shelter with them down in the warrens below, on more than one ship. It just never merited much consideration before now – they were out of the way and uninvolved, and without resources, and they showed no interest in causing trouble or drawing attention to themselves.”
“But now they are?” Amara panted, struggling to catch up.
“They are now,” Thia confirmed as she ran. “Something changed. Someone persuasive convinced them that your people would grant them sanctuary if they managed to get off the ship and defect.”
“It might be a hard sell in the middle of war,” Amara muttered. “But maybe…” She looked up at Thia. “How big of a distraction is this going to be?”
“We’ve never been able to get a very good estimate of their numbers,” Thia admitted. “Maybe between ten and twenty percent of the casteless were selected for having a not-sufficiently-aggressive temperament. Maybe half of those might rise up. It’s enough to make a pretty big mess, at least. Even with minimal weapons.”
“Especially here, since so many of the casteless here died in Sarcand’s gambit to make it through the wormhole,” Amara agreed. They came to an intersection and Thia paused, looking both ways and evaluating. “We need to rethink old decisions. There isn’t a woman on this ship who deserves to die as a slave of the Kthid. If this distraction is going to be big enough, we can-“
“Yes,” the Faliran Queen said, turning to smile at her. “It means we might be able to get a lot more of our people off this ship. As many as we can.”
“I’ll have to go and organize that,” Nameless said, stepping up. “Your people know the plan has changed, but there are more than Faliran involved. We need to direct everyone onto this new plan to take and hold the breach.”
“Tell them it will be deck 33, rear ship, starboard side,” Thia said, stepping forward to clasp her three-fingered hand onto Nameless’s shoulder. “Stay safe, friend. One people.”
“One people,” the grey-skinned woman said before her six eyes flicked to Amara. “And you stay safe as well.”
“I will…” Amara said as she watched the brave Arane split off from the group, running down another passageway… vanishing into the belly of the beast that was no doubt beginning to awaken. The kind of uprising from the casteless that Thia was talking about couldn’t go unnoticed… the entire ship was about to become a warzone, and Nameless was heading into it alone.
She couldn’t help but wonder if she would ever see the woman she had so utterly misjudged ever again.
Thia watched her go as well, and Amara wondered if she was thinking the same thoughts. Her facial expressions and emotions seem so muted compared to Human ones, and while years in proximity had taught her some of them the alien queen, even more than other Faliran, remained largely inscrutable. “One people?” Amara asked softly. “I thought that was for Faliran.” She had heard it used between them as an acknowledgment a few times, slowly figuring out the meaning and cultural significance.
“She is Faliran,” Thia answered softly. “In the only ways that matter.” The alien monarch shook her head, and her multi-faceted eyes narrowed. “Come on. The Kthid are aware of what’s going on by now. We need to take and hold our escape point before they figure out precisely what the plan is and hit it with everything they’ve got.”
She ran. Amara, along with the other Faliran warriors, followed.
Ki’an’i was unnerved that she was actually close enough, and moving slowly enough, that she could actually see a space battle as it happened in the distance through the portal out into space… the faint glimmers and shining light from around Set III representing the frenzied fight for survival or extinction. It was like beholding a cluster of closely aligned stars twinkling against the darkened skyline. It was a sight that would have been enchanting, romantic even, were it not for the fact that the Sethis Templar knew that every one of those minute flashes represented a bomb or torpedo going off. The Kthid armada wheeled around the world, rotating around it in a powered orbit that allowed them to rain fire “down” on the defenders. The HEF, for their part, fought back with all the power they had access to – missiles detonated with fierce flashes of nuclear fire that even at this distance hurt her eyes to look at, and the bright, pulsing light that marked the firing of railgun munitions.
The HEF and the Kthid Imperium were at war. She could scarcely believe it. Never before had she seen such an armada of Federation warships… they hadn’t had this many when she had left on the Midgar-6. Seeing the sheer number of ships mean that they must have been constructing them day and night since the fall of the Midgar-6 to have an armada that could stand up to the massive Kthid fleet here in firepower and numbers, at least a little. It was as if she had returned from a long voyage to behold Earthen civilization and found it had evolved into something else entirely. Somehow, someone had escaped from that ambush. Word around the ship right before she and that worm Shale had escaped was that all the survivors of the Midgar-6 had been captured, but clearly, someone had gotten the HEF a warning.
The invasion was, horrifically, predictable. The Kthid were a race of militaristic and omnicidal slavers and so of course the HEF itself would be their next target after the Midgar-6 had been conquered. It was just that… Earth had been the beacon she had been striving towards for so long. Finding it now engaged in a desperate existential struggle far eclipsing that which had occurred upon the Midgar-6 was extremely discouraging.
At least the HEF now seemed to have a fighting chance. An armada with which to combat the reptiles. And, how fortuitously, this spatial scrimmage across the stars had provided the Lealings the perfect distraction with which to fulfill their mission.
An especially bright – but short-lived – inferno erupted. An uneven ball of flames that shone brighter than any other starlight. Ki’an’i knew what that represented and a foreboding sensation ran through her body… that was the detonation of ship’s fusion reactor. A battleship had just been destroyed. But had it been Kthid? Or one of hers…?
“Target acquired!” a Lealing technician squeaked to her right, her voice high-pitched enough that it seemed to sound perpetually surprised. “Bringing it up on the screen.”
Ki’an’i turned and looked. Around her, Lealings worked the ship’s bridge at a pace that would have seen frenzied on a Human ship. It was only that they had been this way the entire time, even before the Lilis hop, that let the Sethis woman understand that for them this was normal… just how they behaved, compared to the more controlled and disciplined-looking approach that the HEF used. “It matches the description and what transponder data we have,” one of the bridge officers reported. He turned to one of the Faliran, the strange-looking bug people hanging out on the backside of the bridge. “Can you verify if your Queen in on-board that one?”
The alien’s face was impossible to read for Ki’an’i. The insect, the Faliran, was apparently male and had thin wings and membranous fins on their arms and legs that to Ki’an’i’s eyes had no chance of successfully lifting him off the ground. His face was mostly covered by the green and brown chitin that covered his body around and between his clothing, forming almost a mask obscuring much of his face. “I cannot,” he said without taking his eyes off the screen. Was he… nervous? It was impossible to tell. Ki’an’i would be nervous in his place. Hell, she was nervous in her place. “Not how it works, I’m afraid.”
This was the mysterious uplifting race that the Lealings spoke so highly of… the ones they were here to rescue. They were, to a one, tall, lean, and strangely aloof in comparison to the sociable, hyperactive, and ever-curious Lealings. Yet for all these stark differences the slim bat aliens appeared to venerate them in some capability as progenitors and guides, people meant to be obeyed… not that, from what Ki’an’i had seen, the Lealings special brand of inquisitiveness ever allowed them to consider anything as “holy”. Tikaani herself had mentioned that the Falirans mentored their species to not only industrial civilization but also space flight. Providing them plenty of technology and education in the process.
“I see,” the officer said unhappily.
Ki’an’i felt fingers poke her in the side. “Is that the dreadnaught that initially captured your colony ship?” Tikaani questioned, the bat-winged gal standing to her flank.
Ki’an’i wasn’t sure how to answer that. It was a long time since anything had left Ki’an’i feeling so genuinely dumbstruck. Part of the templar training involved an aloofness towards the vicissitudes and vacillations of life, letting them flow over her. Thomas Shale’s sexual torments had left her horrified, panicked, and fearing for her life… yet never quite straight-up flabbergasted. “I, ah…” she said, leaving the Lealing hanging for several seconds while the scan readings on the ship continued to rotate on the screen.
“No reply? You not certain?” the inquisitive big-eared female said.
“No–No,” Ki’an’i stuttered.
“Ki’an’i!” Tikaani exclaimed in her characteristic high-pitched voice. “You cannot phase out on us now! This mission is for real. Very dangerous! Very important! Are you sure you’re up for this? If you’re not, you can stay behind an-”
The Sethis woman shook her head so hard that her hair petals fluttered. “No! I’m fine. I’m going. There are people I’ve sworn to protect there.” She took a deep breath. “Forgive me, Tikaani. That is the ship that attacked the Midgar-6. The very same. I stared at it through the shuttle as we drifted, and I’ve seen it in my nightmares a thousand times since. I could not forget it.”
Tikaani cooed through pouted lips, and it took Ki’an’i a moment to realize her gaze had been following the moving flowers and their intoxicating scent… and she wasn’t the only one on the bridge that did so. The Sethis templar wished that she could control the pollen in her flowers as readily as she could the spores she gave off. “Good then. The ship that attacked you is the one their Queen is aboard.” Uncharacteristically, the Lealing turned silent and thoughtful. In the meanwhile the crew of other Lealings were hard at work analyzing everything that they could learn concerning the mighty dreadnaught which was displayed upon the big-screen monitor – the Death of Hope.
“I’ve wondered something,” Ki’an’i asked quietly.
“Hmmm?” Tikaani responded, turning her look back to the other woman.
“This is a very dangerous mission for you,” Ki’an’i said, “and you’re very far from home. You’ve spent years in space, away from your world to go here… on a rescue mission. To save someone who isn’t even one of your people.”
“Yes?” Tikaani said, tilting her head.
“Why?” the templar asked.
Her large ears cocked to the side as she tilted her head further, looking confused. “What do you mean? Why risk so much? Queen Thia is the last Queen-form of their people. She is the living memory of their people and their best hope for the future. It’s worth any risk to recover her.”
“For the Faliran, perhaps,” Ki’an’i said. “But for you? You don’t owe them this much.”
Tikaani just shrugged and smiled. “It’s not about owe. They would do it for us. And they gave us the stars.”
And for them, Ki’an’i thought, it really was that simple. They had gone on this mission out of gratitude alone… because someone who had been kind to them in the past needed help in the future. It was alien… and yet all too familiar, in a deeply refreshing way. Years of suffering beneath Shale had left her feeling less than Human… an animal ball of reactions and dreads more than a person. She had fallen deep into herself for survival, doing what she had to do to survive one more day, and left all of her high-minded ideals behind.
Only, she hadn’t, had she? She had acted to protect Tikaani… an innocent woman who had been kind to her. Maybe there was still something left of her besides grim duty.
She missed her husband.
“Ki’an’i,” Tikaani broached after a few seconds. “We are here to save their Queen-“
“I know,” the Templar injected.
“It’s just… We have no idea what happened to the members of your crew. If they are even alive or not. But the Ktihd are great villainous reptiles. They are mean and green, unlike you, who are kind and green-” The constantly odd phrasing of this ever-so peculiar species made Ki’an’i smirk. Tikaani shook her head. “What I’m saying is… we have to prioritize rescuing Thia. That is why we came here in the first place. She needs to be our priority number one. We cannot aid your people before she’s secure. That is to say, if they have even survived for this long, or are still on the Death of Hope,” the Lealing stated with some regretfulness, and remarkable focus considering her usual hyperactive nature.
“I understand,” Ki’an’i replied with a rare note of wistfulness to her voice. It was a hard thing to acquiesce to. If they were still alive… Amara, Anna, Evy, Leila, and all the others could potentially be so close. She owed it to them to save them. Yet that wasn’t the only debt she owed. She, like the Lealings before her, also owed a debt of gratitude here. If there was one thing her training as a Templar and profession as a soldier had thought her, then it was the discipline to forsake one’s own yearnings for the importance of the mission
“I am glad!” Tikaani chirped with a smile. “Wanted to have you along, if there was even the slightest chance we can save some of yours, too.”
While thinking of Amara, Anna, and all the others, Ki’an’i shot the Lealing a faint smile. Tikaani’s warnings were been perfectly accurate. At this juncture, she didn’t even know if anyone of the old Midgar-6 crew was even alive or not. And that Dreadnaught was the size of a city, so even if they were the chances of her stumbling upon them alive and with their sanity intact seemed positively minuscule. Better to help the friends she presently had… and to worry about miracles when they provided themselves.
“Got an opening!” one Lealing abruptly exclaimed. “Beginning approach.” Ki’an’i felt it as the ship began to accelerate, the crew guiding it toward the identified dreadnaught. The speaker’s tail swished from left to right in a fit of excitement. Ki’an’i had learned to speak the Lealing tongue a little during her year on the ship but she could barely read it at all, and it made her feel blind as the only sense of where they were and where they were going appeared in the batches of mathematical and technical data that might have been above her technical orbit to understand even if she could read it. Every other Lealing appeared to be frantically double-checking their colleague’s calculations and conclusions, coordinating with their computers and speaking back and forth to themselves in their rapid tongue so quickly the words vanished into a confused jumble to Ki’an’i. They all teemed and jostled around almost like a horde of kittens fighting over whom would gain access to the bowl of milk left out for them to feed upon.
“Correct!” one said with a nod at last.
“Precise!” another confirmed.
“No flaws detected!” said a third.
When the Lealings all confirmed and began to work on the plan that they had put together Ki’an’i felt the impulse to be dumbstruck into gobsmacked silence swiftly returning. To any member of the HEF, the Lealing’s way of command and going about scientific inquiries would seem like a mixture of sheer chaos with flashes of brilliance… like a pack of teenage geniuses who were too absorbed in their sugar-rushes and virtuoso computations to have any idea what was going on around them. Yet, somehow, they managed to make it work. At the very least it had gotten them this far, far from their home world and deep into space.
The one who had pinpointed their trajectory towards the Death of Hope smugly nodded towards her collages as the pathway was agreed upon. Coupled with cutting their engines entirely it would ensure the minimal risk of exposure. The plan, as Ki’an’i understood it, relied on two facts. The first was that the Kthid ships were running a powered orbit. That meant, by force, that each of them had a blind spot… behind the engines. Back there, the radioactive wash would destroy any readings a sensor could try to take. It meant that if they approached from that angle, the Death of Hope would not be able to detect the relatively-tiny Lealing ship before it was too late. The second was that, while it would be impossible to hide from the sensors of a thousand other ships, they could shut themselves down enough that they could make themselves look like a wreck from the previous battle perhaps. It wouldn’t stop them from being detected, but in the middle of a battle, with their crews and computers prioritizing detecting and intercepting attacks from the HEF, they should – should – go unremarked. Then they could breach the Kthid warship and then make their way inside as clandestinely as possible.
If a race as hyperactive as the Lealings could ever manage a stealthy infiltration, anyway.
Ki’an’i waited, tense, as amidst the furor of stellar combat the Lealing ship darted towards the sleek, angular bulk of the Death of Hope, their fate entirely in Sir Isaac Newton’s hands. If the course they plotted was wrong, they would die. If their assumptions about what would keep them being detected were wrong, they were dead. Instead, they skimmed in its wake, running tensely on passive sensors. This silent journey took them past tier after tier of bombarding artillery guns sending their munitions towards the enemy lines. Several times returning fire from the HEF came what felt like dangerously close, even if it were dozens of miles away in their orbital path. They grazed by the resulting infernos on their path straight to where they were supposed to be. Then, finally, the ship suddenly blazed back to life and they soared over the rear of its hull like some fly crawling across the facade of a colossal eidolon.
Their goal was a section of hull seemingly no different from any other. Ki’an’i had sported innumerable places where they might be able to latch on and cut through the hull to board, but they kept moving… why, and to where, she did not know. She guessed that they must have some sort of line of communication with the person they were here to rescue and where they needed to connect, and that she was feeding them insider information. At last, however, the ship landed with a heavy thud and clamped to the ship. “Positive contact,” one of the crew members announced. “Breach team, start cutting.”
“That’s our queue to get down there,” Tikaani said, grinning. “Let’s go!”
By the time they reached the proper deck, work was well underway. Ki’an’i hadn’t ever seen this deck, but now that she had it was obvious that it had been designed for this exact purpose… the kind of laser-drill apparatus into a breaching corridor was not something that most spaceships would have any need for. From here, they were able to cut into the armored shell of the Death of Hope and create a passageway into it. As the passage forced its way inside of the Death of Hope’s crimson innards, the landing ramp was engaged, opening like the maws of some metallic beast and Ki’an’i was the first one out. The green-skinned Sethis templar stood clad in an alabaster-white one-piece uniform that her newfound allies had so kindly fashioned for her. It was light and very flexible, perfect for her craft… and wearing it made her feel almost normal again.
K’i’an’i scanned her eyes from left to right and found nothing. Moving on featherlight footfalls she padded forward, scouting out her surroundings to make sure that nobody was truly around. As she surveyed their breach zone, she could hear the roar of the Kthid guns booming hollowly in the distance, small shakes through the deck of the ship… yet the area looked almost completely abandoned. She never would have guessed that this area was part of an active warship. Wherever the Lealing’s intel had come from, it had been good… this area could be held.
“Clear!” Ki’an’i called. Then behind her, Lealing marines began materializing from out of that maw, armed and looking intense despite the way their eyes flickered between subjects at a million miles an hour. Ki’an’i lifted her own rifle and strode forward, taking the lead of twenty Lealing marines, including Tikaani… they had to clear the whole passageway ahead of them and eliminate any potential hostiles they ran into if they had to. The Lealing ship appeared to have slipped through a blindspot in more than the sensors… it seemed from the lack of Kthid warriors in their thick metal power armor that they had yet to notice the intrusion… something that Ki’an’i was extraordinarily thankful for. She remembered battling these troopers on the Midgar-6 and knew what utter cataphracts they could be in battle.
The auspiciousness of landing in an abandoned wing of the craft soon vanished as they headed out into hallways of truly towering size, far too tall to be anything but crafted for being auspicious. The templar peaked past every doorway to clear the rooms and make sure that they could advance. If they encountered any of the Kthid that needed elimination, it was vital that they were going to keep the advantage of ambush and be the ones attacking first. Heavy footsteps drew the Templar’s attention. “Patrol!” she hissed, diving for cover to the side of the hallways into a cargo nook, tightening her grip on the rifle slung around her neck and the blade at her side.
The Lealings, meanwhile, employed a much more ingenious way of avoiding detection. True to their bat-like nature they simply bunched their legs beneath them and jumped about thirty feet in the air, grabbing onto elements of the ceiling around the lights and hiding away from the red lighting. Their wings didn’t flap much, but they did one powerful burst along with the jump, adding to their leap until they vanished indistinguishable into the shadows that surrounded them above. In these spaceship corridors built to such mastodon proportions, there were plenty of such places to hide. No Kthid even looked upwards as they passed them by at a solid run, clearly in a hurry. Despite her earlier worries, the floor-bound Ki’an’i was the liability when it came to remaining unseen, rather than the hyperactive Lealings.
The armored Kthid patrol, thankfully, appeared to be frantically headed somewhere with real purpose, and they weren’t headed for the breach. They were heading somewhere further on, into deeper, more remote sections of the ship. These were not worth the risk of attacking, she judged. Once they were gone, she rose from her hiding. “Onward,” she whispered to her unit of Lealings. They resumed gliding in single file back down to the ground, holding their wings out in almost like parachutes as they dropped lightly back down to the ground.
It didn’t take long until she discovered where those warriors were coming from… the screams down the halls guided Ki’an’i right toward them.
The prowling templar kept her back towards the wall as she gingerly approached the doorway, and she gazed into a vast circular domed chamber. It made Ki’an’i blink because the sanded ground and surrounding, stone-carved bleachers with several tiers of rows looked like they belong in the ruins of ancient Earth cities, not aboard a spaceship. It was some kind of sporting arena of some kind that resembled a place for the bloody gladiatorial duels of primitive barbarity. Her suspicions were all but confirmed upon noticing blackened spots of the sand where blood had been allowed to clot and dry. However, there was not currently any sport. amphitheater was currently not used for sports, nor for blood… instead, other precious bodily fluids were being spilled across its sands.
The center of the room teemed with lascivious, sadistic Kthid. Position-wise, they were all marshaled around a circle of what appeared to be abused, supine females. Most of what Ki’an’i could see was their hulking scaly backsides as they humped and rutted and snarled. At first, the templar believed that they had formed a simple, if horrible and brutal, collection of nearby rapes. The closer she looked, however, the more glimpses she got of the alien women between cracks and openings between the lizards and she could realize something was horribly, cruelly amiss. These women weren’t simply tied-down, or pinned. They were affixed in a far more gruesome and nefarious way.
The majority of these strange, alien women were a kind of grey-skinned, six-armed creatures with hair and strange crimson crests emerging from their scalps. Assembled in a circle as they were, their spindly appendages had been knotted together to bind them in place… their multiple arms bent, broken, and folded so that it looked like a cobweb of entangling limbs ran between each and every individual. It was a ghastly, bewildering sight as if they had been tied up with the Kthid assuming they possessed tentacles for appendages rather than flesh and bone to break. Ki’an’i had no idea if something about the alien’s physiology enabled such brutal contortions in ways that it didn’t for Sethis or Humans. She got the distinct impression, however, that it did not… that their screams were not simply because of the enormous and energetic cocks being rammed into them. The pitch and volume of their cries of anguish seemed too wild and dynamic for that, the soul-rending agony of destruction loud enough that the woe of their torment drowned out the cackles and snarls of the fiendish reptilian rapists.
Tikaani hissed from behind the Templar. “Those are Arane,” she whispered. “A slave race of the Kthid. Servants. Very bad.”
Ki’an’i didn’t need to be told how bad it was… Every time one of those musclebound reptiles slammed forward the alien women were simply not being reamed, but propelled forwards from the thrusts. Only… they couldn’t move. The binding of their twisted arms kept them contained on the spot. Normally a Kthid rapist would hold onto his victim so as to pin her onto the ground, yet here the biological bondage accomplished the deed instead. Needless to say, such a containment put an immense amount of agonizing strain and jostle on their interwoven limbs. The powerful rutting aimed to drive them forward — while the ensnarement aimed to keep them prone. Thus the sexual acts were like a contest between the Kthid and the arm-knots they had formed, the force of their fucking competing against one another… and the screams of the unwilling contestants in this sick activity thundered out their pain. They attempted to beg, probably pleading in an alien tongue for mercy, and yet they received only even harder backbreaking pummeling for her complaints. The Kthid were not going to busy their sadistic reptilian minds with matters of mercy when engaged in a sportslike session of rape.
Had this been a torment of one then it would have been horrible enough, but yet this was truly a communal activity. Every one of those aliens was captured in those monster’s spiderweb of torture, tossing, twisting, and bouncing as they were being pounded into missionary-style. All of their buxom breasts wobbled during the affair, a series of orbs that swung violently with each thrust as a testament to how hard the Kthid were rutting. Only one in that circle appeared to have been affixed belly-down and pounded from behind, instead… Probably just because their monstrous rapists wanted to do something a bit different. Such was the excruciating agony of their ir excruciation that some of the Arane appeared to have gone insane from the agony. Their madness was to the misfortune of both themselves and those flanking them. Bereft of self-control, they would trash madly trying to get out of this hellish situation. This caused them to tug and pull on all of their six spindly arms, yanking on those already painful bounds. The Kthid would laugh whenever such a spasm of madness occurred, no doubt delighting in how much tighter the pain made the rest of them as they clenched. Only utter fatigue or losing consciousness from the paralyzing pain could halt one of the Arane’s spasms once they got going. The caiman’s fucking these unfortunates actually seemed to slow down in their pumping, just to make them last longer.
Ki’an’i could help but think of Thomas Shale as she observed these masculine demons. Comparisons were as natural as they were evident. The callousness, the cruelty, the complete disregard for a female being’s bodily autonomy, it was very familiar to what she herself had been suffering through. Like the Kthid, Thomas Shale had been obsessed with his own sexual power and measured its worth in how completely he could hurt and dominate another living breathing lifeform. They were of the same mindset. The key difference was that these Kthid seemed biologically perfected to carry out such travesty. Evolution had granted them all the attributes and equipment needed to make this sexual sadism a very cornerstone of their civilization. The Kthid were what Thomas Shale had wanted to be.
Once a Kthid had finished inside one of the grey-skinned aliens he would plop his dick out, leaving a mutilated and sperm-drenched mess behind him that wept his cum like tears, and then step aside so as to let someone else take his place. They’d then go over to the edge of the arena and have a seat, idly scratching their groins in sordid amusement as they did. There was actually something… off about these Kthid. They seemed a little smaller, though barely, and they moved with more bravado than confidence, each clearly trying to outdo the others. Ki’an’i wasn’t sure what that meant… but she could see one thing that was important. Resting among those stone steps were the weapons of these Kthid warriors… Mostly sidearms. Blades, bludgeons, and the occasional pistol. The templar spotted none of the hulking cannons that she had faced during the storming of the Midgar-6, none of the nearly impervious armor. These were very important details to note… it made this possible. Though they were outnumbered, without such firepower she and her Lealings could probably take out this group of the malevolent caiman monsters with the advantage of surprise on their sides.
Ki’an’i was just about to give the order to her Lealings to attack whence she noticed some other aliens entangled in this depraved ring of rape and torture. Inquiring about who they were stayed her hand for but a few scant seconds. Unlike the many-armed Arane, these aliens appeared aquatic in origin. Instead of being grey-skinned, their hues were oceanic blue and bright violets and glowing, iridescent swirls. Ki’an’i had not noticed them earlier due to the few members present behind shoved into the back of the circle, but despite having only having a humanoid collection of limbs they were entwined just as brutally as the Arane… and when that would leave a neighboring Arane with arms free they inside twisted them to other body parts. Their blue bodies jutted purplish dorsal fins, large enough to look like the miniature wings of cherubs. These had been cruelly twisted and pulled to fit around the Arane’s slender arms, utterly mangling them. Those outstretched fins looked so extended that they seemed ready to snap from their person. With every savage yank that the Kthid’s lurching caused, such mutilation seemed ever more likely. These aliens weren’t just in danger of having permanently mutilated arms… it looked like they could suffer a complete dismemberment!
One of them in particular howled loudly in his snarling language, pointing towards one of those Arane entangled in the rape-circle. This woman’s rapist was hammering at her cunt so viciously that her nimble body was starting to jut out of the circle. This strained the “cobwebs” of limbs that kept her affixed to the rim, bending them outwards. The more it went the more it looked like those slender limbs were about to snap like twigs bent too far and rip apart. Her mouth was a perpetual shrieking portal to her anguish as this happened, and her whole body rose so that she jutted a whole head-length apart from her peers. Noticing the feat he was about to achieve, the savagely thumping Kthid redoubled his efforts to make it so. The poor alien screamed again, her arms creaking, her shoulders popping downwards, the collarbones standing out in all of their harsh skeletal relief. Those positioned next to her experienced similar explosions of contortionist pain. They even tried futilely pulling her back down as it happened, though their effort was so meaningless that nobody even noticed.
Around her The Kthid all cheered, gathering around that Arane in particular and hoping to see a vicious maiming. Her torment had their reptilian interests absolutely ensnared. Even those of the young warriors seated on the edge rose, focused on it, hoping to witness this culmination as clearly as possible as the raging barbaric rapist hollered aloud, exerting every muscle to make his lower-body drill like he wanted to fuck awareness of this heinous act into the mind of the Dark Star itself.
This was an opening. All of the enemy Kthid were distracted and clustered closely together while their eyes were diverted toward that central orgy. Opportunism in a war never was going to get better than this. Readying her pistol and blade, she hissed the order to attack to the Lealings and then pointed her gun toward those immobile targets. It would not be the Arane or the poor tortured blue aliens who were about to die… it would be them, instead. “Fire!” she ordered and the muzzles of their guns went superheated with discharged plasma.
Energy-based munitions slammed into their Kthid adversaries from a blind angle, and Ki’an’i was delighted to note that many of them were either not wearing their aegis generators or had it turned off. Even if the Lealings had been poor shots, those reptiles stood so closely together that missing would have been impossible. Despite being so unblooded, however, the bat-alien marines proved to be skilled marksmen… Kthid fell with plasma burning through their chests, skulls, and thighs. Ones hit solidly in the chest often seemed to almost explode as their blood boiled from inside of them. For others, blood spurted from uncauterized pressure wounds, spraying out to further stain the gladiatorial sands and showering recumbent slaves in scarlet red. In the opening seconds, the ambushers had taken a tithe of the warriors… they had started out outnumbered but had immediately evened the odds.
One of those malachite giants roared a battle cry loud enough that it shook Ki’an’i’s skull inside her head, and he dove away from the exposed center, dropping to all fours and racing on them as fluidly as the Kthid walked on two. Though their opening salvo had been flawless, the Kthid reacted fast and without nearly as much shock and confusion as Ki’an’i would have hoped… they hadn’t even finished unleashing a second volley before the cluster had scattered and everyone was running for the sides… and their weapons. These Kthid were trained for war, drilled for it, and to be dazed and awed was apparently not their lot in life… They erupted into sudden warfare as smoothly and effortlessly as a fish would commence swimming when thrown into an ocean.
“They’re heading for their weapons! Stop them!” Ki’an’i yelled and stormed in through that opened egress, firing as she ran. All Lealings charged in after her, leaping high and taking to the skies to maximize their aerial advantage… locking their wings and only slowly drifting downwards as their rained plasma down on the scattering Kthid. Those Kthid closest were peppered with munitions, but it was far less effective now… nearly all of those who were still alive and moving had an aegis shield up by now. Without the luxury of taking aim at unarmored foes concentrated fire was required to fell them, and in the chaos that wasn’t often available on purpose.
This was what swords were for.
Ki’an’i headed straight for the Kthid nearest to her. Having reached the bleachers he hurriedly leaned down so as to pick up a weapon of some kind… the templar didn’t wait to see what it was. In mid-sprint, the Sethis dropped and glided feet-first across the sand like a footballer intercepting a ball. Ki’an’i however had no intentions of merely blocking his access to that firearm… from this close, she could move with impunity inside of his shield. With a swipe of her sword-arm, she clove the Kthid’s reaching hand clean off. His fist managed to clasp around the handle yet it no longer had any owner. Instead, the green giant bolted upright and roared like a bellowing dinosaur from sudden pain.
He thrashed, trying to stop back from her and kick her away, but Ki’an’i cleanly rolled away and rose, eyes scanning, taking shots with her off-hand at anything hostile that moved. The Sethis woman had worried that years of torment at the hands of Thomas Shale might have dulled her battleground instincts… that she would be too fearful, too meek to fight. The Lealings had gyms to work out in and keep up muscle mass, but even being in one and practicing her moves had been enough to drive her almost into a panic attack at times. Here, though… in the midst of a deadly battle, terror could find no grip on the templar. Determination blanketed it, her mind locked into crystalline rigidity… her movements were smooth and natural and well practiced. It was time to test if she had recaptured enough of her old self to stay alive.
The unhanded Kthid charged toward her like a rampaging linebacker. It was evident he intended to use his sheer mass and physicality as a weapon against the smaller woman, run her straight over and leave Ki’an’i flattened and crushed. The Sethis fired off three shots that splashed off against his aegis before realizing the musclebound brute wasn’t going to slow down. Instead, she played the part of the rabbit and made the attack into a chase.
The perusing Kthid closed the distance between them with startling speed, but Ki’an’i only needed to take a few long strides before happening on the kind of opportunity she had been searching for. Before her was a Kthid with his back exposed. She ran right up to him and took a step on the bridge of his tail, the second on his slanted backside, and the third on the nape of his neck. From this position she kicked off so to do a backward somersault through the air, arching right above the charging Kthid toward where her Lealing companions coasted down from the skies, avoiding her pursuer adroitly and running them into one another. The would-be tackler was going too quickly to manage to stop when he realized what had happened. The Kthid whose body she had used as a launching platform had clearly not appreciated the attack and was in the process of swinging backward with his own cleaver-sword. Ki’an’i, however, didn’t have time to watch which Kthid managed to hit the other and do the most harm to one another, however… the moment she landed she had to dodge and roll so to avoid the swings of murderous reptiles. She had no hope of slaying all of them, but that wasn’t her job here… her job was to be as disruptive as possible and survive. She had an entire Lealing marine fireball behind her – above her, really – and they would do the damage, as long as she kept the Kthid on the ground too occupied to focus on shooting back.
Beside her, the Kthid who had so savagely been fucking the Arane stood over the remnants of his brutal murder. The armless woman lay beneath his feet, leaking semen oozing out prodigiously from her yawning pussy. Six bleeding wounds existed where her arms should have been… The circle of rape had been broken, and the rapist glared at her from just a few feet away, verdant scales coated in enough blood they looked more red than any other color. The stark crimson coating on his scales matched well with the utterly murderous smile that he wore, sharp reptilian teeth glinting Ki’an’i’s way. He spoke to her, in a language she didn’t understand, but Ki’an’i had no difficulty in understanding what he meant to say. A boasting threat. That she was next, spoken with no nerves or feat at all.
He rushed her, dropping to all fours in a rushing lope. Ki’an’i faked a leftwards dodge, then rolled to the right instead. The feint succeeded but what Ki’an’i had not been accounting for the speed and agility the young warrior had… he very quickly corrected his course, closing on her like a charging bull… and the fact that he was unarmed wasn’t much concern for a monster with as sharp of teeth and as much muscle and mass as he had. Then as she tried to put her sword between her and the charging monster Tikaani came falling out of the sky toward them. The nimble young Lealing soldier let go of a burst of plasma fire that drilled straight through his legs. With the important, delicate muscles down there turned into bloody steam the Kthid’s sprint turned into a fall which turned into a painful tumble, sand scattering in all directions as he rolled towards where Ki’an’i stood. This bit of sabotage provided the templar just enough time to jump away in the nick of time. She landed hard and had to roll upon impact, gasping as she quickly surveyed the battle.
The aerial agility of the Lealings was providing them a decisive advantage. With an Aegis shield of their own to defect most incoming fire, the Kthid had to jump and swipe with their weapons in hopes of downing one of those adroit little flyers, and it was an awkward task to keep that sort of swing slow enough to penetrate the shield. Even if it was, it gave the Lealings enough time to usually maneuver around the murder blow. Tikaani had explained to her that their species’ natural environment was amidst the thick canopy of trees and so were experts at gliding around barriers and obstacles from one branch to another, chasing prey or seeking the ripe fruits they preferred, and that practice and evolution aided them well now… although they couldn’t stay permanently aloft they did a good job of staying out of reach most of the time, and covering one another when someone had to ground themselves and prepare for another job, peppering the dragon-snouted monsters from above. Ki’an’i very much enjoyed seeing their wrathful draconian expressions twisting into expressions of pain and frustration.
Yet not all Lealings would make it out of this battle alive. They could dodge weapons swings, but dodging several at once was a challenge… one that they were not always up to. Others fell to concentrated weapon fire from Kthid sidearms. Still another all but blew apart as one of the dual-barreled rifles was brought to bear against her, smashing her with sheer force even through her aegis. Once one of the bat-women crashed it was all over… if they went down without covering firm they were quickly swarmed before they could take to the air again. Kthid who had managed to secure firearms quickly realized that shooting towards their spread wings was more effective than trying to hit their slender bodies, and once enough damage had been done the brave alien marines were forced to crash land into the sand, and the savage caimans could pounce on them. Their oversized tails were also exposed targets for the reptiles to exploit. Their drag behind the actual torso made them easy targets for slicing. Once, Ki’an’i saw a Kthid run up the belchers, jump off back towards the middle, and clasp onto the tail of an unsuspecting Lealing with both arms so that he could drag her down towards the ground.
Despite all that, despite the fact that everyone on this ship was young and from a peaceful time, despite the fact that all their training at war was in practice, the Lealings performed amazingly well. Frustration showed through on the Kthid’s faces at battling this enemy who could so expertly dodge and kite around their attacks. The most lithesome alien species that Ki’an’i knew of was battling the hulking monstrosities, and somehow they were winning!
Putting her head down, Ki’an’i fought with everything she had.
“Hey, Ki’an’i! Come look at this!” a now sand bound Tikaani shouted, standing where the rape ring had once been.
The Templar headed over, passing several burned Kthid corpses on her way there. They had ended the enemy to a man. Several of them had attempted to escape and alert their commanders… they couldn’t afford to let any of them go. Ultimately, the room had been cleared. They had signaled for reinforcements, and a second squad of marines had arrived just behind them, helping secure this segment of the ship.
Unfortunately, none of the slaves had survived. Some of the Kthid had started throwing them like missile weapons at some point, looking to batter the Lealings out of the sky… tearing them away from their companions and hurling them like a fleshing boulder. Others had been stomped to death in the frantic attempts to get out of the line of fire. A few unfortunately women looked like they had taken stray plasma fire. Ki’an’i had to comfort herself with a promise that all of the poor women whose lives had ended so horribly and so suddenly would be avenged.
“What going on?” the still panting Sethis asked her Lealing friend.
Her hand wiped away a blotch of blood from her forehead, the bat-alien looked just as exhausted and battle-worn as Ki’an’i herself did. “This slave? I think she is… you know, one of those Thomas Shale-thingies. What did you call them?” the big-eared girl asked.
Ki’an’i’s heart clutched as she gazed down into that gore-stained sand. “Human,” she said. “This one was a Human.”
It felt somehow strange to be peering into a Human face again. At least one which wasn’t the loathsome, ugly visage of one Thomas Shale. This woman was nobody she recognized. She was a completely anonymous victim, a corpse within the pile, her hair black, her eyes amber, her death-grimace twisted and frozen into a rictus that served as a testament to the suffering she had experienced whilst expiring. Not one of the crew, she felt sure. One of the colonists, probably. Her arms were brutally twisted several times over as proof that she had been part of this cobweb before Ki’an’i and the Lealings arrived. Finding her here like this served only the purpose of confirming to Ki’an’i that this massive dreadnaught still housed the Human captives.
“I’m sorry…” the former Security Officer muttered ruefully to herself.
“What was that?” Tikaani asked.
“Nothing,” Ki’an’i replied, feeling the sting of painful failure clutch inside her chest. She was partly to blame for this. As Security Officer, she had been one of the four women who had been broken in order for Sarcand to receive the codes. After all, if she had not given up that code…
The Lealing made a confused face at noticing her friend’s sadness. “Ki’an’i. There’s nothing you could have done for this one. The bad ones killed her before we got here.”
“I know,” Ki’an’i sharply exhaled. She was afraid to tell the Lealing that that was not the source of her existential woe… her own memories were. Memories of her friend who may still be trapped within this vast vessel. Friends who may still be pinning away with the hopes of rescue, but who with all likelihood were already dead, lost, or driven insane from what the Kthid had done. Even if she dashed off on her own in search of them… the ship was so big that she would have had greater odds of finding a needle within a haystack.
Ki’an’i felt it difficult to adhere to the serenity required by her templar training. Necessity however dictated that she did. The Sethis swallowed the lugubrious feelings within her and then returned to the tasks at hand.
Behind them, a single Faliran man stepped into the chamber through the same passageway they had used, flaked by four Lealing marines… Ki’an’i’s group had served as a vanguard to protect this group. As far as she understood they were some of the very, very, very few Faliran men left alive. As that upright insect entered the room, he looked about as if ruminating on some distant memory, or as if having seen the place in some faintly-remembered dream. To Ki’an’i’s eyes it looked as if he was trying to orient himself after inarticulate instructions. The addled moment quickly passed though and he stepped up toward the two of them
“This is the place,” he said firmly. “We’ll need to clear more space ahead, deeper into the ship, but this is where we’ll find her.”
Ki’an’i pouted her lips. “Deeper? The further we get away from the breach, the harder retreat is going to be. It’s already going to be a nightmare to hold this much if the Kthid realize we’re here.”
“At least now we’re reinforced,” Tikaani injected.
“Movement ahead!” one of the Lealings said over their radio.
That was one of the ones on sentry duty, watching an entrance. Everyone scrambled for cover. For Ki’an’i and the Faliran, this meant hunkering down behind the nearest Kthid carcass. The Lealings meanwhile took to the skies and affixed themselves to that doomed roof, ready to drop a deadly ambush on any hostile patrol. If Ki’an’i could sweat, she would have been… her body felt the strange, tingling sensation she always did when her Human evolutionary instincts warred with her unique Faliran physiology. If they were hit again now they might be in trouble, and…
After a long pause, the voice came again. “Contact friendlies.”
“They’re here,” Tikaani said, swooping down to the ground with excitement, gesturing with her head towards the entryway they had sent that soldier to guard. She seemed eager, and Ki’an’i couldn’t blame her for it… this was the moment she had sacrificed so much to get to experience, after all. This was the culmination of all she had worked for. The Sethi turned and looked. Another force was coming through the passageway now. They were mostly made up of Faliran, she thought… those these ones looked different from the ones on the Lealing ship. More heavily muscled, more carapace, taller. They were led by a tall, slim alien woman of different-still carapace patterns.
The Sethis woman stared on, eyes squinted in disbelieving confusion. Recognition and realization refused to slot inside her mind. Before hopes she had not permitted herself to crystalize into something real the Faliran male rose and dashed from their cover and headed towards the group, lowering himself into what was clearly an alien imitation of a bow before the winged, slender Faliran. “My Queen,” he said, voice ragged.
Ki’an’i rose from beyond her cover. Her eyes bulged, but they were not directed at the queen… nor at any of the other Faliran that surrounded her like an honor guard. Instead, she looked at the dark-skinned woman beside her.
The Human woman.
“Ki’an’i?!” Captain Amara Black, eyes wide, noticed the fallen Security Officer staring at her from across the sand. Immediately the Captain was struck into a state of equal bafflement to grand to communicate in Human words. Several seconds of blind astonishment lasted between them. The two comrades had been so long separated that it seemed their brains refused to accept the truth of one another… barely recognizing one another on sight. Instead of responding, Ki’an’i stumbled towards the woman, moving like a person chasing some ephemeral phantom that she feared would vanish before her eyes. Amara did the same. Whence they meet in the middle, both stopped not knowing what to say.
Then Ki’an’i wrapped her best friend in a tight hug and let herself cry.
“You two know each other, then?” Tikaani peeped from beside them. Around them, many other Lealings were dropping from their gliding posts to the sand, fear of an attack fled.
“Amara…” Ki’an’i breathed breathlessly. She squeezed, hard… unwilling to let go.
“What happened to yo-” Amara continued before a great shout interrupted her.
“Enemies!” the Lealing who had been watching the hallway shouted. Firepower answered her cry, pouring down the hall and into the arena room. Ki’an’i, Amara, Tikaani, the Lealings, and the mysterious Falirans all turned their heads towards that sudden calamity as hulking, snarling Kthid came storming through the door. The amphitheater erupted into its second gruesome battle. Yet this time, the enemy was armed and possessed the advantage of initiative. Everyone scrambled to battle as the sandy pit turned into one massive brawl. From the very start of this fight they were in a worse situation than they had ever been in the initial battle.
Ki’an’i and Amara dove into the same initial direction, behind the colossal carcass of a Kthid. Enemy plasma-blasted immediately began bombarding the room, turning sand to glass or vapor depending on how far away it was from the impact. The body, hulking though it was, was almost immediately turned into more of melted slag and steam than meat. “We need to run for another cover!” Amara shouted, her hand grabbing onto Ki’an’i and pulling her after, not that the Sethis woman needed encouragement. The two of them took off on swift-running feet, looking silly as they attempted to keep themselves low to the ground.
The Lealings had immediately taken to the air, but even through the return fire they unleashed Even though return-fire from the Lealings harried the Kthid charging into the chamber, those aggressive attackers seemed intent on bringing everyone here down. They seemed furious and driven, snarling after then. “What pissed them off so much?” Ki’an’i shouted as they ran.
“You killed some of their young,” Amara shouted back as she flipped over the side of one of the stone platforms, hiding behind it. “This part of the ship is where their mature whelps train.” She put a pistol up on the rim and fired off a few shots to give the Kthid something to think about. “This stone is going to get chewed to pieces… We need to head towards the doorway!” Amara shouted over the roar of plasma fire.
“Agreed!” The naked woman vaulted over the stone and began sprinting across the sand. Ki’an’i ran after her, spraying pistol fire as quickly as she could to encourage warriors to keep their heads down. Two Kthid armed with the cleaver-swords they preferred took off after them, the reptiles sprinting with shocking speed.
The two HEF officers had almost reached the exit but the two Kthid behind them were only steps back, their armor doing very little to slow their movement. They weren’t going to make it… blades already raised to strike. Ki’an’i kept firing behind her, trying to discourage her, and so she wasn’t looking when she ran directly into Amara who had suddenly stopped. She tripped, sprawling… and so saw as an enormous, hulking Kthid walked through the doorway they were trying to reach, hefting a double-barreled cannon and directing the muzzle back towards them. The pit of Ki’an’i’s belly froze at realizing she was in the deadly line of fire, that she was about to die just seconds after finding her friend as a survivor.
He barked something Ki’an’i didn’t understand, but Amara apparently did… he reached out, grabbed Ki’an’i, and dragged her flat. Then the heavy-armed Kthid began firing… but not at them. The recoil of the cannon shook his bulging muscles as he blasted the two pursuing Kthid, the heavy cannon shots smashing against their aegis like a flaming comet. Their shield held against the blast itself, but the force of it scattered them like they were stuck by a hammer.
Amara and Ki’an’i looked up at the shooting Kthid, then back at the two chasing warriors blasted away in a cloud of super-heated steam, then back at him again as he strode forward, past him, and continued firing at other of the armored Kthid warriors. Their mouths were left hanging in slack-jawed amazement. Somehow the shock of seeing each other again had within seconds been eclipsed by the shock of encountering this… ally. More Kthid came rushing in behind him, equally armed. Instincts made the two of them shelter their faces as if expecting them to attack, but instead, this new group of Kthid stormed right in and joined the fray… on their side.
“Thia was right…” Amara whispered.
“Amara!” a familiar feminine voice spoke. Both the two HEF officers gazed upwards, their jaws still further open than she should have been as a woman came into view from in the middle of the rogue Kthid. “Don’t just lie, Captain! We have to get up an- holy shit!” Anna – Blessed Anna of all people – cut her words off as she stared at Ki’an’i. “Is that you?! How in the universe did you get here?”
The idea of the small medical officer emerging from outside of a crowd of armored Kthid was making Ki’an’i blink in disbelief, unable to believe what she was seeing. A huge, gun-toting Kthid in just a loincloth and an aegis generator slung over his chest like a bandoleer loomed right behind her tiny frame like a prison warden…
Only he wasn’t watching her. He was watching out for her.
“A-Anna!?” the Sethis blurted.
“I thought you were dead!” Anna exclaimed.
“…Close…” Ki’an’i muttered.
Amara was the first to bolt upright onto her feet, her eyes turned back towards the battle. “Let’s deal with this later, and make sure we survive this moment first, alright?” Raising her weapon, she turned and sprinted back into the fray after the unarmored Kthid. Others followed her, including Anna’s bodyguard, and the doctor stalked his steps as if only to stay safe in his shadow. Ki’an’i, still dazzled by all these old faces and surprising allies that she had just encountered, was the last to get onto her feet. How absolutely quick her situation was changing. After having lamented their loss for so long they were now standing right in front of her, and she was so confused that she was seeing stars!
Ki’an’i shook her head vigorously to clear up her head. She raised her gun and sword, and joined the fight to secure the arena once again.
“So, these are the rebels?” Amara questioned.
“We are the Sons of Kan’lun,” Meimetos answered. The ancient-looking large Kthid had introduced himself at the tense standoff that followed the end of the battle, and it was only Anna standing between the Kthid and some of the Faliran that prevented an escalation of tensions.
“And how did you make it here?” Princess Thia asked, looking around at all the faces around her. “I know none of my people told you where to find us.”
“As we fight, we’ve drawn the attention of the warrior caste,” the elder answered. “They’ve been opposing us everywhere, so we’ve been trying to commandeer surveillance systems and track them as much as possible. A large concentration of warriors converging on something other than a group of casteless seemed… highly relevant, something that we should discover the truth of.”
“Listen, this is all a very long story,” Anna Constantos stated, standing beside Meimetos. “What’s important is that they’re on our side. They’re going to help us take the ship if we can, and then I’m going to help them get off this ship and into Federation hands.”
It was post-battle. All of them stood in a circle in the middle of the coliseum. The shock and delight of various reunions had been worked through. New faces had been introduced to each other and names exchanged. Confusion was being replaced with a clarity of purpose.
“That will never work,” Princess Thia stated. “There are too many warriors on board, too well-armed and armored. An attempt to seize the ship is doomed to failure.”
“We have to try!” Anna insisted. “What else can we do? When else will we ever get an opportunity this go-”
Thia looked to Amara for a moment. “Do you know this one? Is her judgment sound?”
“Anna,” Amara said solemnly. “I hand-picked her for my crew. She’s the finest medical officer I’ve ever seen. I trust her.”
The Faliran queen slowly nodded, as if coming to a decision. “Very well then. Given that your group could have just ended our rebellion and did not, I am forced to concede you are our allies for the time being. Future events will decide if you remain so.” She took a deep breath. “We cannot seize the Death of Hope, but we can escape it. There is a ship waiting for us, attached and ready.”
“That’s where we come from!” Tikaani smirked and made some gesture that resembled a dignified salute, or would have if it wasn’t ruined by an excited series of little hops.
“Escaping the Death of Hope needs to be our priority,” Thia continued. “And we need to take as many of our people as we can get here. We have…” she thought for a moment, “room enough for close to 100,000 aboard the ship. It wouldn’t be comfortable, but it needn’t be… we are in the Human system already, and we will either reach it safely or be dead long before our comfort becomes an issue. That much more is more than we will be able to collect in the time allotted, anyway.”
“We’ve broadcasted a signal to the HEF fleet,” Amara injected. “We told them to expect escaping friendlies. If we can make it to their lines then they’ll provide us with shelter.”
“Tremendous,” Meimetos said. “We can manage a fighting retreat back to here, and escape to your ship.”
“If you can hold them long enough for us to get more people off this damned ship,” Thia said as she stared into his eyes, crimson meeting crimson, “then I would call you friend, and welcome you to join us.”
“That’s it then? We go?” Tikaani asked.
“Alright…” Princess Thia agreed. “We’ll rescue as many people as possible. But if we’re going to do this, then we’ll need to have some sort of plan…”
The details were hashed out quickly between them. It was a bit confusing for Ki’an’i who didn’t understand the languages being used at first. Queen Thia and Anna and Amara all seemed to speak the same tongue effortlessly at this point, but until someone had the bright idea to strip one of the Kthid corpses for their translator earring the Sethis and the Lealings needed everything repeated for them. Afterward, it was much faster. In the end, they agreed that Ki’an’i and the Lealings were going to continue to hold and secure safe pathways back to the escape ship. The Sons of Kan’lun would cause distractions and confusion amidst the enemy by casting as wide of a net of destruction as they could, and making room for slaves to move behind them. While this was happening, Amara and Thia and as many of their Faliran as they could gather would work on saving as many slaves as they possibly could.
“But we need to move quickly,” Princess Thia commented right before they were to scatter. “By now, Sarcand has undoubtedly realized that something is wrong.”
A dark expression overcame Amara Black’s visage. “Good luck, people,” the Captain stated. “And stay alive!” she swiftly added. “When I said everyone deserves to get off this ship I mean you all as well.”
All three groups took off in their own direction, exiting through various passages. Ki’an’i spearheaded the Lealings who ran after her… stealth was not going to be an issue any longer, and the further ahead of the ship they could set up strongpoints would give them more places to fall back to, let them hold the bays for longer. They had just finished setting up the third such point when she could feel the Lealings behind her all suddenly stop.
“What is it?” she asked, turning around. Ki’an’i found the Lealings in what she could only describe as a state of wary caution, locked in disquiet as they looked around for something they could not find. The emotion was quickly intensifying. The Lealings looked around them, towards the floor, walls, and ceilings, as if expecting unseen enemies to leap at them from every angle. Their bat wings wrapped around their unguarded torsos tightly. Many sniffed the air as if barely able to whiff the scent of some terrifying creature. Whatever was disturbing their finely-tuned senses was seriously worrying them. “What is it? Talk to me! Tikaani!” Ki’an’i insistently urged.
“I… I don’t know!” the Lealing responded, her large tail very agitated and active. “It’s some smell I’ve never felt before.” Her voice was fast, almost panicky. “It’s… it’s hard to think straight. I think… I think we need to run. I think we need to run right now!”
Ki’an’i had never witnessed the Lealings like this before. These might not be veteran soldiers but they were trained combatants and had shown incredible bravery and skill so far, and yet that very bravery seemed to be leaking from their systems like water through a sieve. She could feel it mood of the group… their morale suddenly hung from a thread, and she didn’t know why.
Then a shrill, baleful, viscera-crawling scream resounded, loudly enough it shook walls. This was not the tyrannical roar of a battle-raging Kthid, however, but something that registered as equally predatory and vicious. One of the Lealings dropped their rifle in terror. Ki’an’i’ felt a spike of terror that attacked her own courage, and made her belly seem suddenly weak.
And she knew what was coming.
“What… What was that!?” Tikaani asked, the horrified Lealing about to start a route.
Ki’an’i recognized that ferocious cry instantly. How could she ever forget it? Nobody who ever heard that hunting cry with their own ears and lived to tell the tale ever did. “Void Tracers,” she whispered, nightmarish flashbacks of the horror of Kthid captivity and what they had done to her suddenly harassing her mind, assailing her very soul. That fear, that panic, wanted to take sudden root… her hands trembled enough that she barely managed to keep hold of her weapons. The shrill shriek came again. Closer this time. They were heading right towards them. Ki’an’i’s allies were ready to flounder, stepping backward on trembling feet. The Lealing’s familiarity with these beasts added to their sense of extreme unknowable terror. “They… They smell even more terrifying than the Kthid!” Tikaani whimpered. She and the others edged backward.
Ki’an’i didn’t. Instead, she breathed in and out, slow and steady, keeping her imagination firmly on the right concepts… on what she was doing. Piece by piece she ordered her mind into a crystalized form of ideas too solid to break. The importance of what she was doing. That panic would not help. That evolution’s fight or flight response here would get her, and her friends, killed. During battle, there wasn’t time to meditate, but that was why she practiced… so that her mind could sink into a templar battle trance at a moment’s notice. One breath at a time she forced the useless emotions like fear and discomfort and exhaustion to wash away, anxiety flushed away.
Then when she opened her eyes again they were calm, and hard.
The Kthid had unleashed Void Tracers on their own ship… a brute force attempt to slaughter the rebels down here. The majority of casualties in a Void Tracer attack usually took place in the first ten seconds, when the fear stole the nerves completely of everyone involved… and while these brave marines had fought well they were still green soldiers, unblooded until this very hour… they simply didn’t have the experience to stand firm against horrors like these.
The green-skinned woman gripped the hilt of her pistol and blade even tighter. That was why the templar existed.
“Focus on me,” she barked out the order with steel in her voice. People, at least Human and Sethis people, reacted automatically to words spoken like that, orders given right. The Lealings, it seemed, weren’t so different. “If we stand, we win. Form up on me. Weapons up.” Stopping these Hammerheads would be up to her. She would not allow fear to be the death of them so close after having reunited with their friends! “They will come on the walls, and the ceiling. They’re fast… faster than the Kthid, but they don’t have shields… blast them, and keep firing until their bodies make a chokepoint. If someone goes down, pull them to the back.”
Eyes narrow, Ki’an’i sighted along her pistol, sword held in one hand behind her and out of the way… and while they still looked unsteady the Lealings formed up around her, raising their own weapons. “Not yet…” she whispered, listening carefully… feeling the hormonal pressure that came as the monsters grew closer. Closer… closer…
“Now!” she shouted and began firing down an empty hallway. The Lealings did the same. A split second later a tide of violent, chitinous murdergeists poured into that hail of plasma, and the battle was met in earnest.
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