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Rediscovery, Chapter Eight: Godless
Posted By: Smackblasta<Natemeep@aol.com>
Date: 1 September 2006, 7:06 am
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Alarms blared as the crew of the Looking Glass scrambled about under the red glow of the emergency lights. Dukat' stood strong at the center of the bridge, determined to make the attackers work for their inevitable victory. Arla' gripped one of the bridge rails tightly as she watched the main viewscreen, the pirates' ship quickly becoming larger in the display. The deck lurched as the Looking Glass suffered another volley of laser fire.
Dukat' narrowed his eyes as he watched the display, gauging the distance left between them and their attacker. "Fire both impact torpedoes on my mark." He watched as the enemy vessel closed yet further. "Launch!" The deck shuddered as both launchers fired in tandem.
Impact Torpedoes were not meant for combat situations. Intended as a navigation tool for cluttered space such as asteroid belts, they were designed to cause a large concussive shockwave at the point of impact, in order to knock large obstacles out of the way of the firing ship. Slow and awkward, the heavy guided projectiles did not have the speed or agility necessary for ship to ship combat.
Dukat' had waited until the enemy ship had closed most of the distance between them, hoping to surprise them and deprive them of the time they would need to react to the launch and making the missiles a dangerous threat rather than a worrisome nuissance. He watched as the missiles appeared on the tactical display, curving around toward their target. Turrets on the enemy ship swivelled to target the missiles as it tried to slip inside their turning arc. Dukat' gritted his teeth as the defensive fire caught one of the missiles, but felt a burst of relief as the other slipped through the web of laser blasts. A cheer went up as the torpedo caught the aft of the ship, detonating in a spectacular orange burst and crushing the hull inward around the impact point.
The ship spun on its center axis as thrusters flared, fighting to halt the wayward tumble the missile had caused. It righted itself and pivoted back around to face them again as turrets locked on. Everyone standing was knocked off their feet as several energy bursts smashed into the Looking Glass. Arla' lost her grip on the railing and felt her head hit something hard, then everything went dark.
For several units, no one moved. It wasn't the shock of hearing the voice speaking in their own tongue, but the pure hatred that saturated the statement. The members of the team were glancing nervously at each other, none daring to speak and attract the attention of whatever was watching them. A moment passed, then Vinley waddled forward a few steps and gingerly poked the speaker that the voice had come from.
Arne' held his breath, but nothing happened. Another moment of silence passed, and he carefully walked toward the door at the far end of the room, motioning the others to follow him. They reached the door without mishap, which remained stubbornly shut when he tapped the darkened keypad. He nodded to Quso', who stepped forward along with another Sangheili soldier. Taking a moment to find handholds, they strained at the door, forcing the halves apart and into the wall recesses. A third soldier stepped through the door, weapon ready.
The door led into the middle of a large hallway, with the right side closed off by a heavy steel blastdoor. To the left, a single door led out of the room at the end of the corridor, marked by the blue arrow they had been following. Arne' followed Quso' and the other two soldiers towards the door as he motioned for the others to wait.
A mechanical whirring drew his attention to the door. As he watched, a pair of six-barrelled turrets deployed out of a hidden position in the ceiling, and came around to point at them. The voice that had been following them echoed through the open door as the barrels started spinning rapidly. "Your conviction stops now, Zealots. Your arrow will never reach this mark."
One of the soldiers grabbed Arne' and threw him to the side as the left weapon belched forth a solitary flash of light from the barrel. Quso' grunted as a single solid round impacted against the front of his hardsuit, but failed to penetrate. Arne' watched from the floor mesmerized as metal casings flew out of the backs of the guns with startling rapidity, but no more shots issued forth from their barrels. Sparks flew from one of the guns as the motor jammed, and the weapons silently retreated into their ceiling compartments.
Quso' helped Arne' to his feet before examining the damage to his hardsuit. The lead slug had scraped a deep gouge in the breastplate of the armor, but hadn't compromised the environmental capabilities of the suit. "I'm alright."
Arne' soberly got back into position behind the guards as they moved for the door again, all of them much more alert for any more surprises. He bent down to pick up one of the casings, examining it for a moment. The lead slug still sat inside the jacket, and after looking at it for a moment, he pulled the slug out from the metal shell. He tapped the empty jacket on his palm, and a hardened, grainy mass tumbled into his hand. "If I had to guess, this was supposed to be a chemical explosive that propels the projectile out of the shell at high velocity. They must be so old that they've lost their reactivity." He looked up at them as he set the shell back on the floor. "We were lucky."
"Please hold still, Supervisor! We haven't treated your injury yet!"
Arla' woke to a throbbing pain in her head and the high pitched voice of an Unggoy. She could hear shouting over the constant wail of alarms, and winced at the cold spray as the medic applied a wound sealant. It solidified quickly, and he set to work applying a dressing over it.
The distinct smell of burning plastic assaulted her sense of smell, and she forced her eyes open. The primary lights were dark, and the red emergency lights were muted by a pall of black smoke hovering in the air. The Unggoy helped her into a sitting position on the ground, and she took a look around. One crewmember was unmoving on the deck, which seemed to be at an angle compared to how she remembered it, and Dukat' was leaning against a railing, favoring his left leg. He noticed she was awake, and spared a grim smile. "Hurt my leg years ago in basic. It had to go and give out on me today of all days."
She closed her eyes and laid back out on the deck. "What's our status, Captain?"
He didn't answer immediately, and she heard the uneven clop of his hooves as he limped over to her. "We've lost main power, and are running on emergency generators. Our weapon systems are disabled, and we don't have any thruster control. The security teams are preparing to repel boarding actions."
"How long was I out..?"
"A little over two Tg-units. The only reason they haven't boarded us yet is they're still trying to stop our tumble that we picked up. At least the artificial gravity system is still operational, if not at full strength." He paused. "I have Tase' leading a squad here to help defend the bridge."
She forced herself up a little, leaning on her elbows. "I don't suppose there's any good news, is there?"
She felt his hand pat her shoulder clumsily. "Well, most of the crew is alright, and are busy barricading themselves in the hardened portions of the ship. They should be able to hold out against any straight forward assault. Some of the teams were even able to secure themselves in our food stores. So, depending on how determined they are, they may just take our cargo and leave."
Arla' remembered the grim look he'd given her earlier, and shuddered. "And if they're really determined?" She asked, looking at him.
He looked away for a moment, then back to her. "I've heard stories about a slave trade in the ungoverned reaches of space. They're always looking for more bodies."
A clang echoed through the ship as she felt the slant of the deck even out, and another alarm blared over the others. Dukat' stood, making his way back to the railing he had been leaning on, and touched his communicator. "All hands, prepare to repel boarders."
Arne' stopped in his tracks after stepping around the corner, taken in by the sight in front of him. The room had darkened consoles lining the walls on both sides, and past a partition wall he glimpsed the blue glow of the slipspace bubble. Dessicated bodies were littered across the room, some still strapped into seats in front of the stations, others collapsed on the ground. They were the first corpses they had seen on the ship, and Arne' hastened forward, eager to take a closer look at one.
A hand clamped onto his shoulder, halting his forward momentum. He twisted around to see Quso', who shook his head. "Slow down a little, Supervisor. We still need to make sure the room is clear."
Arne' hesitated a moment, then nodded, allowing Quso' to pull him back. "I understand, I can wait. Still, I don't think the floor is going to be electrified in the room itself." He looked again at the equipment inside. "Too much sensitive material to risk boobytrapping, I would think."
Two Sangheili squeezed past him into the room, scanning the walls and floor with handheld devices. After a few T-units, one motioned Arne' inside. "All clear, Supervisor."
Arne' stepped into the room, followed by Quso' and several of the team technicians. He suppressed a chuckle as Vinley went straight to the front of the room, absorbed by the view of space outside. He turned back to watch as two Sangheili started documenting one of the bodies lying on the floor. "Arne' to Rediscovery."
"We read you, Supervisor. Anything to report?"
"Some of the defensive apparati on the ship are still partially operational, so it's been slow going. But, we've found what I believe to be the ship's command center. We're examining the location now."
Bane' nodded as he listened to Arne's report. Despite what the young supervisor thought, they were making good time for a ship of that size. He muted the communicator for a moment to take a few status reports, then turned it back on. "Anything else we should be aware of, Supervisor?"
"Yes, actually. There's some form of intelligence still active onboard this ship. We think it's in the computer system, but we have had no contact with it since it activated the defensive systems." There was a pause. "It can speak Sangheili, and doesn't seem to like us."
He clicked a mandible, thinking. He was about to reply when the communications officer called out an alarm. "Sir, there's an unauthorized access attempt into our communications net!" Immediately after, another call came out, this time from navigation. "Sir! Navigation controls are offline!" A chorus of shouts from the other stations followed.
Arne' clicked the communicator again. "Captain? Bane'!" There was no response, not even the nearly inaudible buzzing noise that signified a successful connection. He looked to Quso'. "We just lost contact with Rediscovery." A flash in the lighting caught his attention, and he turned around to stare at the small pedestal that stood next to the darkened plastic partition near the front of the bridge. It sparked again, the top started to glow dimly, and a figure appeared above it.
The figure was small, hardly a half D-unit high, and was shrouded in a dark hooded robe, reminding Arne' of the robes that the Lek'Golo ambassadors wore. He could make out no other features of it, but realized he could see the plastic panel behind it. A hologram.
It regarded him for a moment. "You lingered here too long, zealot. Now this shall become your tomb as well as ours."
"Squad Three, pulling back! There's too many of them!"
"Squad Seven, we're pinned down at Storage Three!"
"This is Squad One, they're closing on the bridge! We'll hold them as long as we can!"
Arla' watched as each successive report caused Dukat's shoulders to slump a little more, his head to droop a little further. The captain had done a remarkable job rallying their defenses, but all the advantages were in the hands of the invaders. They were better armed and they had more manpower, and they already controlled a third of the ship.
Dukat' shook his head and started giving new orders. "Squad Three, meet up with Squad Four at Deck Three Galley, and give some assistance to Squad Seven, get their attackers into a crossfire." He glanced over at the main holodisplay, which was currently displaying a three dimensional map of the ship and the locations of the attacking and defending forces. "Squad One, retreat to the bridge entrance. Get inside and escort the command personnel to Storage Two." Cutting the comm system, he called out to the crewmembers nearby. "Lock down all system controls, I don't want them to be able to move this ship anywhere under it's own power. Use a hammer if you have to."
From the other side of the main entrance to the bridge, Arla' could hear shouts and screams, as well as the whining of energy weapons. At Dukat's signal the doors started to open, and the remnants of the security squad started pouring into the gap. Tase' was the last one in, backing through the door and firing his carbine into the hallway. The doors began to close achingly slowly, and Tase' stumbled backwards as an energy beam slammed into his shoulder.
The doors stopped moving with a clang when there was still a D-unit gap left between them. Arla' saw a metallic wedge caught between the halves of the door, with serrated sides that kept it from slipping out. Several small objects sailed through the open gap and bounced across the floor. Her mind barely had time to register what they were before they exploded, and Arla's vision went black for the second time that day as the concussive force slammed her against the wall.
Bane' gritted his mandibles as he tore the fiber optics communication line out of the wall port. Whatever it was that had attempted to take over the Rediscovery had done so through their comm net, which meant killing the connection between their ship and the ancient craft to sever the link it was using. However, that meant that Arne' and his team were on their own until they could get a message across. Bane' ordered a small team to suit up in environmental gear and head for the airlock they had used before, while the bridge crew tried to unlock the ship systems.
The shrouded figure flickered for a moment, and spoke again. "Your cohorts have abandoned you, Zealot. Despite their efforts to escape, they will not survive."
Arne' didn't know what the being was talking about. He blinked, looking at Quso', then back to the hologram. "I think there's some sort of mistake..?"
"Silence!" The figure seemed agitated now, and Arne' could see a faint blue glow underneath its hood. "Your Covenant of lies has chased us to the ends of the world, but no further! Your Covenant of lies sought our deaths beyond counting, staining the heavens red with the blood of innocents!" It raised an arm, pointing at the plastic screen behind it, and the screen lit up, displaying a row of three symbols. The rightmost one started changing, three times per T-unit. "Now you pay for your crimes, Zealot! Our final defiance will see you burning in the nuclear fires of retribution!"
Arne' took a step back in horror as he comprehended what the being meant. It turned to focus on him again, and its voice echoed through the room once more.
"Our destruction was the will of your gods. Where are your gods now!?"
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