The Zenyth of Salaten

Chapter I

"Slip-space anchor detected! Take evasive maneuvers to avoid interdiction!" The system repeated for the third time in as many minutes, prompting a single clawed digit to once again mute the alarm before it gave the digit's owner a headache...again.

"Ah hell!  Sssshut up!" The pilot hissed at the console in front of him, waiting patiently for his personal weapons platform to deploy. He had no interest in evasive maneuvers, not when his signature obfuscator cost so much money. The signal obfuscator made his ship show up as something much smaller than it was, loaded down with cargo and with scant few weapons available for defense. It was a prime target for pirates fishing for easy prey. He wouldn't even have to pretend to resist the interdiction because their anchor would interpret the added mass of his ship as resistance and notify their captain of his perceived resistance anyway.

"Evasion failed, interdiction imminent! Jump-drive cooldown activated. Hardpoint deployment detected." The system notified him, prompting a smile and slight chuckle. They hadn't realized their mistake yet, by the time they did though, it would almost certainly be too late. The pilot moved his control console to the left, prompting his ship to enter combat mode and deploy his own hardpoints. Two medium pulse lasers, two medium autocannons, and one large imperial hammer. He quickly powered down the autocannons and powered up the pulse lasers while the hammer was loading its three-shot burst.

Before his own ship was fully combat-ready the alarm began blaring again, this time it was the radar lock notification. The pirates finally figured out that he wasn't some tiny little trader and they were still powering up their weapons regardless. That earned a chuckle from the pilot as he rammed his throttle all the way, pulling back on the flight stick, boosting quickly and almost instantly overheating his own engines. The effect was a quick One-eighty that left him flying in reverse but facing his pursuers. Normally his engines would have far more heat dispersion but most of the power had been allocated to both the shield and the hammer.

This was the first good look he had of the interdicting vessel and it really was a large and intentionally intimidating vessel. It was a jet black imperial cutter with red tips on each wing, a stylish choice for a pirates vessel to be sure but not something he was particularly concerned about. The cutter quickly unleashed its full payload on his much smaller vessel. Missiles, pulse lasers, and cannons all unleashed hell on his shield. Luckily for him, the shield held steady and he was able to eject a heat sync, breaking their lock on him and instantly easing his overheating engine. Boosting yet again, his ship's warning alarms began blaring to notify him of the dangerous change in momentum as he flew past the vessel and slid in behind them barely five hundred meters from their bright blue engines.

"My turn!" He declared to no one in particular as his pulse lasers returned fire. It was a waiting game though, he didn't actually expect to breach their shields with his own lasers when he had something much larger and much more precise charging. He didn't make nearly as much money off of destroying ships as he did disabling them and clearing out their crews.

The cutter attempted evasive maneuvers but while their firepower might compete quite effectively with his own, their speed and maneuverability could not keep up. He easily kept his spot at their rear, too close for anything but fragment cannons to reach him and in the wrong location for those to target him. He was essentially in a blind spot and while he wouldn't be able to stay there indefinitely, that wasn't his goal anyway. His lasers kept the pressure on them, forcing them to focus their power on their shields and engines as well. Even when they managed to break his lock by mimicking his own previous actions, they were still receiving nothing but straight hits because his nose was almost right in their ass.

A green light popped up on his screen notifying him that the hammer was ready to fire and he quickly picked three systems to aim at. Their jumpdrive, engines, and cargo bay. He held his fire though, waiting on them to drop another heat sync and lose his targeting before he released the barrage, smiling as he felt the resounding thunk-thunk-thunk of his weapon firing. The hammer was a railgun designed by imperial scientists that would typically only be available to the most wealthy and highest-ranking imperial officers. Luckily for him, the Federation had a bounty out for any imperial officer caught transporting slaves in their space and he practiced more than a little imp' hunting on occasion. One such occasion had netted him the beautiful and dangerous hammer.

The superheated projectile punched through shields and traveled straight into the hull, causing both kinetic and thermal damage to the cutter, breaching the targets, and disabling them for the foreseeable future. The cutter slowly sputtered to a stop, his own ship doing the same as he lined his own cargo bay with theirs and anchored his ship to them. Ignoring the multiple attempts to hail him by the other ship, he slithered out from what had once been the pilots' seat but was now a large metal bar for him to coil around.

He slithered out of the cockpit and directly into his ships' main corridor before placing one of his massive clawed hands against the access panel to his insanely well-stocked armory. His personal weapons platform was something most creatures in the universe wouldn't even be able to carry without attaching it to a mech frame, but for Salaten it was just a comfortable weight against his scales. The seven hundred and some change pound backpack had a small autocannon that hung against his right hip and a fragment cannon hanging against his left. There were four different load-outs that he typically went with and this one was the close-combat variant. He wasn't sure what to expect on the cutter aside from a crew of roughly thirty pirates and he'd rather be prepared to get in close as there wouldn't exactly be any room for him to get a bead with his railgun, and he'd have too much structure damage if he went with his beam laser (cutters are worth a fat penny after all.).

Prepped and ready, he traveled to his cargo bay, where the auto-lock was already releasing and forcing the cutters' broken door to do the same. He stood off to the right side of the opening cargo door, expecting something fun as soon as the door opened all the way. He wasn't surprised either as smoke grenades rolled into his own cargo bay, quickly going off and pouring thick smoke into his hold.

He chuckled again and opened his left hand to his side, letting the weapons platform do its job and releasing the fragment cannon into his waiting hand. Pulling the fragment cannon in front of him, he checked the breach just before the smoke became too thick to do so. Closing his eyes, he opened his hood to focus on thermal energy instead. He wouldn't be able to see as much detail, or as far, but with the smoke, he was likely the only one with any real vision left.

Heavy boots thumped into his hold and shots rang out, some hitting his scales but not piercing. That was good news to him, it meant they had no idea what they were dealing with or really where he was. Two shots from his cannon filled his hold with what used to be an entry crew. He waited a moment longer before quickly slithering to his open cargo bay and lunging inside of the cutters. Landing on three of the entry crew that must have lost their courage against the thick wall of smoke and death that his cargo hold had become. His weight and the force of his lunge broke them almost completely and he relished the feel of their bones crunching and popping beneath him.

Releasing his fragment cannon finally, it swung free for a moment before the platform winched it back into place and reloaded the spent shells, making a loud "Ding!" let him know it was ready for service again. He wasn't interested though because he heard a sound that made his blood run cold, well colder than it already did. A whirring sound that indicated an autocannon, and likely indicated the presence of a mech suit.

Before he had time to react, the mech was already peppering his scales with shells, luckily the pirates opted for the cheaper rounds instead of armor-piercing rounds and he was able to quickly regain his bearings and zig-zag around the much larger, now empty cargo hold which kept the mech from landing any more shots then absolutely necessary. Quickly closing in the gap, he launched himself at the mech, colliding and nearly toppling the large suit of battle armor. His right hand went to the mech's mini-gun and angled it further away from him. The mech's arm began whirring and he had an increasingly difficult time holding the gun away from him. It quickly turned into an arm-wrestling match between himself and the machinery. Holding that lock for a solid minute before the gears in the mech's arm started to strip and send sparks shooting off away from the two.

His face was level with the mech's visor and he could see nothing of the pilot aside from his panic-stricken eyes and the flashes of red that would be internal structure alarms and machine fault alarms. Once the arm started moving freely, guided by the massive naga, a quick jerk up and back down tore the machinery and the pilot's arm free of the rest of the mech before Salaten smiled, revealing his nine-inch long fangs. He could almost smell the pure terror coming from the mech pilot as he continued to struggle against the giant snake pathetically.

Salaten was done playing with his new toy however and with lighting fast movement, sank his fangs into the mech, just barely piercing the metal shell deep enough to sink the tips into the human pilot before he started pumping his corrosive venom into the poor humans' weak flesh. The human immediately began screaming in the mech, his blood already pouring from the empty armhole and it only took one more moment before the visor opened in an attempt to make it easier for emergency aid to be administered to the pilot. He released the mech and listened with rapt attention to the humans dying screams, memorizing each and every tone as his venom slowly dissolved the mans' flesh until there was very little remaining.

Untangling himself from the mech completely, he took in the interior of the ship for a moment recognizing the setup as a moderately standard variant. There would be a single corridor, with a barracks on one side and a mess hall on the other, subsystems would be scattered along the main corridor but the focus would be on either side and the cockpit. The cockpit would more than likely have a hardened blast door to protect against easy mutinies and possibly a security system if it hadn't been disabled completely by the captain just in case.

His face was level with the mech's visor and he could see nothing of the pilot aside from his panic-stricken eyes and the flashes of red that would be internal structure alarms and machine fault alarms. Once the arm started moving freely, guided by the massive naga, a quick jerk up and back down tore the machinery and the pilot's arm free of the rest of the mech before Salaten smiled, revealing his nine-inch long fangs. 

He could almost smell the pure terror coming from the mech pilot as he continued to struggle against the giant snake pathetically.  Salaten was done playing with his new toy and with lighting fast movement, sank his fangs into the mech, just barely piercing the metal shell deep enough to sink the tips into the human pilot before he started pumping his corrosive venom into the poor humans' weak flesh. The human immediately began screaming in the mech, his blood already pouring from the empty armhole and it only took one more moment before the visor opened in an attempt to make it easier for emergency aid to be administered to the pilot. 

He released the mech and listened with rapt attention to the humans dying screams, memorizing each and every tone as his venom slowly dissolved the mans' flesh until there was very little remaining. Untangling himself from the mech completely, he took in the interior of the ship for a moment recognizing the setup as a moderately standard variant. There would be a single corridor, with a barracks on one side and a mess hall on the other, subsystems would be scattered along the main corridor but the focus would be on either side and the cockpit. The cockpit would more than likely have a hardened blast door to protect against easy mutinies and possibly a security system if it hadn't been disabled completely by the captain yet.

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Zenyth's faded snow-colored ears had perked up at the first sound of gunfire. The appendages on her head reacted first before the rest of her body, fatigued and laying flat in a cage that was all too small for her, followed suit. The escape on her pod, the physical skirmish between her and the pirates, and the long travel on the slave ship going to God knows where had put more than just a kink in her neck.

She sat up as awareness returned to her senses. Before she could make any guesses about what was happening, a male scream full of agony echoed throughout the ship's intercom system, a deafening voice that was marked with the black of death that the wolf and the rest of the slaves in the darkness of the cargo area knew was inevitable. Her glowing golden eyes glanced over to the other dozen of slaves, all in their on individualized cages, some whispering to each other, others having their ears as perked as she was, listening to what was happening. 

 "A riot? Mutiny?" whispered the male centaur in the cage next to hers, his human hands gripping tight on the bars of his cage, as his horse tail, a bush of black, blood-painted hair, flicked behind him anxiously. 

 The other captured beasts towards the back said nothing. Zenyth looked over at them, to assess their condition not out of necessarily compassion, but curiosity. Caring too much about strangers merely because they all got captured at the same time would bring heart ache she could not afford right now. She saw cages with a harpy, a female siren, and a minotaur, towards the back, the minotaur the only one groaning as he lay in his own pool of blood. Those were the three out of a dozen that were dying or already dead. For pirates, this lot had not done a good job in assuring they would have proper and clean goods to sell. They must have been new to the working the slave trade.  If the situation were less dire, Zenyth would have scoffed.

More gunfire. Stomping of the rest of the pirate crew as they took their places to find whatever was going on out there. The ship's alarm systems were starting to go haywire with noise and light. Zenyth, her snout and white fur colored in red as the alarms' light bulb above blared a blood colored fury, looked up towards the door of the cargo area that the pirates had kept locked. Unsure of what their fate would be, the surviving beasts held their breath for what was to come.