Stars ablaze

Battle Moon

The corridor was empty. An eerie gloom came from the reddish lights from the side. Most likely the Sh’armak had a special way of knowing where they are, as they don’t have eyes. This light could not be for them.

She slowly moved forward. She kept her gun aimed at the corner of the hall. No movement was seen, but she was sure that that could change any moment. Thera knew that there had to be at least five enemy soldiers in this ship and it didn’t dive head down, so unlikely any of them had been severely hurt. If they had been trained well, like herself, they should have been in safe holding before the ship so much as entered the moon’s limited atmosphere.

“Scrhk, Thera private, come in.”, it almost made her jump as the sound came on her earpiece. “Da f…”, she started to hiss. “Be aware that swearing is not permitted, required or helpful keeping a low profile”, the AI voice came through the communication device. “You are nearing a sideway where a room with two lifeforms are to be found. Thread carefully”. Thera finished her curse in her head.

Why did they do that? She was fully trained and capable of taking out these enemies by herself. She had run so many simulations, it was easy to prepare for any situation. Her hand went to a device on the wall next to what seemed like a doorway. It was larger than required for a human or P’ktar like herself, but was clearly a doorlike thing. As her hand neared the device, she could feel a prickling sensation through her suit. This was the implant taking its moment to hack into the bio-cyborg system of the enemy. The ship, they had found out early in the war, was half organic. They were a sort of space lions, that were tortured half to death to be obedient spaceships. The word lion wasn’t really doing justice to the majestic beasts that they were. There were questions whether they were beasts or somewhere intelligent beyond a certain level.

The door started to move, very slowly. Thera turned and then flung herself to the side. A projectile flew through the door at the spot her body had been a moment before. The head pierced a wall behind her and after a short reverb coming from it, a soft boom was heard in the wall. The ship howled. Strange screeching noises were audible through the verly low atmosphere in the ship. The sounds were unrecognizable for the AI Translation. The biggest issue in the whole war.

They had not been able to translate even the slightest of the Sh’armak language or communication. This didn’t help in figuring out their motivation or way of moving on the cosmic battlefield. Thera had studied the history of the war, the history of the grander battles that they had learned of. The way whole planets were subdued. The way that sometimes a species or group had been able to withstand the Sh’armak army. It hadn’t been nice, it hadn’t been clean. There had been massacres, there had been simple obliterations of convoys of ships. Thera had a good feeling on what these enemies would do, but still not WHY or when.

Another projectile left the now fully opened door. It hit almost the same spot. The shrieking from within the room had softened and was accompanied by other sounds. Thera grabbed a small orb from her side and ticked it twice. Then when confident the arming was done, she tossed it into the room via the opposite wall. She couldn’t hear the orb bounce, but imagined the trajectory.

The walls and floor were somewhat organic, so the bounce would keep going by three seconds from opposite wall, on the leftside on the floor, then to the wall, after which it would end up about four meters into the room. The spot from which the projectiles had been shot, it was most likely going to be a full impact when the charge would go off.

A green flash emerged from the room, mixed with the red of the hall lights, made a weird purplish lightshow. After the light dissipated, Thera felt a tug to her body, as the atmosphere was sucked into the room. She counted to ten and then looked around the corner. That was a mistake. A laserline aimed straight at her and eventhough she could jank her head back, her shoulder was pierced by something very hot. Thera bit her lip to prevent herself from screaming. In a reflex she moved….