Chpt. 19) Aggravated Assault

  I set the engines of the Reaver to maximum, moving at top speed toward the battle on the other side of the planet. I quickly yelled over the ship’s comms, “Haru, get up here!” as I closed in on the battle, I took stock of the situation. The Treasure Hunter fleet had taken severe damage. Seven of the ships floated in orbit as nothing more than piles of scrap metal. Thirty-four ships had been moderately to severely damaged, while the remaining seven ships around the fleet’s flagship were untouched, and the flagship itself had a singular dent in the haul where a boarding ship protruded like a splinter. The remaining Draeger ships retreated as they lost connection with their command ship, and the rest of my fleet pursued them to cover their retreat.

  I didn’t have to wait long before Haru came rushing onto the bridge, “What do you need?!” she asked in a hurry, understanding that we were in an emergency.

  Locking a course adjacent to the battle that brought the Reaver to join the retreating ships, I relinquished control of the ship and answered, “Alexandra isn’t answering comms. I’m going after her. You keep the ship intact.”

  As I walked past Haru, she stuttered and managed to stammer out, “Wh-what? I don’t know how to fly this thing?!”

  “You’ll figure it out! Just don’t crash or get hit!” I called back from the door as I broke into a run and got on comms again, “Doc, get to the hanger bay right now.”

  “What for?” Dr.Whisper asked almost immediately.

  “Alexandra isn’t answering comms. She might be injured or dying. I’ll need you with me if that’s the case,” I answered promptly as I reached the elevator, smashing the control panel to open it and selecting the medical bay floor.

  “All right, I’ll be there,” Dr.Whisper answered after a moment. The elevator doors closed and soon opened again to the medbay. I held the door open as I waited for Dr.Whisper, who soon came running to the elevator with a black shoulder pack full of medical supplies.

  “Do you have everything you need?” I asked as she entered the elevator, and I selected the hanger.

  Dr.Whisper shrugged, “Maybe. But we’ll see when we get there. I at least have enough to stabilize her if she’s injured.”

  I nodded and took a quick, deep breath, and sighed. I want to sleep. I’ve been up too long. It’s just one thing after another with this endless mission, and I need to start pacing myself from now on. Just one mission here or there, and I’ll be ready to set everything up by then. Then I looked at Dr.Whisper, who seemed nervous as the elevator doors opened, revealing the Mauler. I elbowed her side gently and said, “Relax, it’s not your time to die. Not for a long while.” She looked at me, a little startled at first, then nodded as she fell into step behind me as I quickly boarded my ship.

  “Ghost, do you have a lock on Alexandra’s location?” I asked the air, knowing that Ghost was listening.

  “Yes, she’s a floor below the bridge of the Treasure Hunter Flagship. Judging by the ship’s sensors, she’s pinned down by a couple dozen crew and taking fire. I’m still working on getting access to their cameras, so I don’t know her condition,” Ghost answered after a couple of seconds delay.

  “Heard, take control of the UAV VX-12s. We’ll need their support to get there,” I commanded.

  Dr.Whisper looked confused as she sat in the co-pilot seat and asked, “How do I do that? Not to mention, I don’t know how to fly one of those things. I thought I’d be flying with you?”

  I shook my head as I started the ship, “Doesn’t matter. You focus on not getting shot when we land.”

  “Wh-what?!” Dr.Whisper stammered in shock just before I pushed the throttle to max and sped out of the hanger, immediately going into the ship’s combat mode as the ten UAV VX-12s all rose and followed my flight path out of the hanger.

  Red outlines, so small they appeared as dots in my vision, filled the ship’s sensors, lighting up every fighter in the sector. I growled to myself and barked, “Filter out our ships from the Treasure Hunter ships and mark large clusters!” My ship’s onboard A.I. quickly scanned the sector, and all the red blinked out before another scan crossed my vision, filling the screens with blue and red dots in equal numbers. Some areas had yellow spheres highlighting areas that had the highest concentration of fighting.

  I sent that information to Haru as I sped off toward the flagship, crossing over the bow of the Reaver. I put full power into the Mauler’s engines, ignoring the weapons and shields in favor of moving at full speed. We crossed the space between the Reaver and the battle within a few seconds, causing me to slow down drastically as I began weaving my way through the space junk and the battle.

  I pulled up on the yolk and spun right to avoid a large wall of scrap metal and dived into the remnants of a frigate’s massive engine. The ten VX-12s followed my route perfectly as I came out the other end of the engine and pulled up to avoid a squad of Treasure Hunter fighters speeding by, chasing a squadron of Monarch’s Swarm Fighters. I slammed the throttle forward as I came out of the turn and sped toward a cluster of Treasure Hunter fighters, Draeger fighters, and Monarch Swarm fighters. “Haru, fire at the cluster nearest to my coordinates! Danger close!” I yelled over comms before connecting to the Monarch fighters nearest to me and calling, “Get out of the dog fight! Incoming broadsides!”

  The Swarm fighters quickly abandoned the dog fights they were in and retreated just before a dozen neutron beams tore through the cluster, destroying dozens of fighters, more than a few of which exploded in a brilliant explosion, indicating that they were bombers. I sped through the gaps in the cluster that Haru made for me as the VX-12s took up a protective formation around me. Three in front, three behind, two above and below. All of them matched my every move as I weaved my way through the battle, getting ever closer to the flagship.

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  Soon, the ships surrounding the flagship noticed my trajectory and the turrets began firing at my position. I ignored them and pushed the throttle to full, outpacing the barrage of flack rounds being fired at me. The turrets quickly adjusted to my speed, and I began evasive maneuvering. I pulled up, spun my ship in a corkscrew, and drew close to one of the frigates firing at me. The firing stopped as they didn’t want to attack their own fleet. As I drew close to the frigate’s engines, a squad of a dozen fighters flew up behind me and began firing ineffectually at my ship. I cursed as I began evasive maneuvers again, and the fighters escorting me broke off to engage the attacking fighters.

  I didn’t look back at the ensuing battle as I beelined it toward the dreadnaught’s air dock. Flack cannons quickly began firing at us again as we broke away from the frigate’s proximity, and two of the shells exploded near enough to the hull of my ship to cause significant damage. I cursed as warnings began to fill my vision, and alarms blared in my ears. Although that might have just been Dr.Whisper screaming. With the damage to my ship too extensive to make it to the flagship, I changed my trajectory and aimed for the hangar of the nearby battleship. Two more shells hit my ship, and I screamed in anger as I brought my ship into crash-land in the battleship’s hangar.

  The combat assist system automatically shut off and detached itself from my head, revealing the red flashing warning lights, the smoke filling my ship, and the screaming Dr.Whisper. I coughed as I involuntarily took in a lung full of smoke and wheezed, “We need to get out now!” Dr.Whisper nodded and coughed as she removed her seatbelts and crawled out of the co-pilot seat. I quickly got up and grabbed her by the scruff of her jacket, beelining it to the airlock. I slammed the emergency open button for the door, but nothing happened. I coughed as I took in another lung full of smoke. My vision began getting blurry, and I took a step back. I braced myself and charged forward, intent on bashing the door open with my cybernetic enhancements. Then the door opened, and I inadvertently launched myself out of my ship and barely had enough time to right myself and land on my feet, just in time to see Dr.Whisper crawl out of the wreckage of my ship and fall to the ground, coughing out her lungs.

  I paid Dr.Whisper no mind as I stared, bereft of the joy of being alive, as I took in the wreckage of my ship. I ran my fingers through my hair and shook my head in disbelief. The Mauler was my pride and joy. I had spent years making the ship from a box of scraps my Master had gathered for me when I was fifteen. It had been with me for so long that I couldn’t imagine life without it.

  A plasma bolt sped past my ear and impacted the side of my ship, and I slowly turned to face the engineers and pilots who gathered around and pointed all sorts of rifles and pistols at me as if to threaten me with bodily harm. One of the men in the front was yelling something at me, but I couldn’t hear them beyond the sound of blood rushing in my ears. I couldn’t see the color of their skin as my vision painted them in red. All I could feel was my hands reaching in my jacket to pull the twenty feet of tungsten-nano polymer wire that made up the majority of my Kyoketsu-shoge and the control gloves sliding onto my hands.

  The heat from the plasma-covered wire reached my skin as I growled, “You,” the engineers and pilots stopped yelling as they all directed their attention to me, “You destroyed my ship.” My glare filled the men with fear as a few of them soiled themselves, and the rest soon followed as I spoke the final words they would ever hear, “You will all die.”

  ***

  I began to spin my Kyoketsu-shoge in a wide circle, quickly gaining speed before whipping it at the furthest pilot in the group before me. The curved blade of my weapon latched onto the back of his skull, and I pulled. The plasma-heated blade cut into the man’s head, and he toppled forward into the rest of the pilots and engineers, making them stumble forward.

  I took a quick, deep breath as I coughed and lost my concentration for a moment before quickly coming to my senses and pulling my blade back into my hands. We need to get to get to Sparky. As much as I want to, I can’t afford to fuck around with these guys. I looked over my shoulder and saw Dr.Whisper getting to her feet. I jumped backward, grabbed her by the scruff of her jacket again, and pulled her forward as I ran. The nearest engineer recovered from their stumble first and raised his plasma pistol at us. I pulled back with my free hand and swung my blade at the man. He fired, and the bolt hit my right shoulder as I swung at him. The blade cut deep into his neck as I screamed in pain.

  Gritting my teeth, I pulled on the blade as we ran past, trying to ignore the burning pain in my shoulder. The glowing blade came out of the man’s neck like a hot knife through butter and clattered on the ground behind us as we ran. I looked around wildly for a ship to steal and found two nearby options. The nearest one being a HE-N4 two-seater bomber with brown shielding that gave it an animalistic look and a blacked transparisteel cockpit, and the other was an FK-N0 starfighter. I ignored the starfighter and belined it to the bomber while under fire from the crew that recovered from their stumble.

  I ducked and weaved as the volley of bolts flew past us, and once we reached the bomber, I almost threw Dr.Whisper up into the ship as she climbed its side. I activated the cybernetics in my legs and jumped up the ship in one go, and as soon as I landed, one of the plasma bolts stuck my right thigh, and I screamed in pain as I fell to my knees. I crawled into the cockpit of the bomber, my Kyoketsu-shoge falling in a bundle into my lap, and began the ship’s start-up sequence.

  Dr.Whisper crawled into the seat behind me as I closed the canopy and activated the engines. “Are you all right?” Dr.Whisper asked as the canopy closed, concern in her voice.

  I pulled back on the yolk, and the bomber sluggishly rose from the ground, moving toward the hanger bay exit. “No, I’m not all right!” I snapped through gritted teeth as I struggled to push the throttle forward, and I growled in frustration at the slow speed of the bomber, “Grrr! This hunk of junk handles like an obese whale!” Dr.Whisper reached forward and grabbed my bad shoulder, eliciting a low growl of pain as she began to massage it. “What are you doing!?” I said through gritted teeth as we left the hanger under fire from the crew.

  “Checking to see if there are any broken bones,” Dr.Whisper answered calmly, “Have you had anything to eat recently? If so, how much?”

  “Grrr! I haven’t had a chance to eat anything in a while,” I answered.

  Dr.Whisper didn’t say anything immediately as she moved down to my leg and squeezed hard, causing blood to seep out and me to scream in pain. My vision began to blur as tears formed in my eyes, and I felt unconsciousness began to take hold of me. I shook my head and continued to fly toward the flagship, aiming for an airlock on the starboard side of the ship, nearest to Sparky. Dr.Whisper clicked her tongue and said, “That last bolt hit an artery, and you’re bleeding out. We need to land so I can stitch you up.”

  I shook my head as we reached the airlock without a problem, and I began docking with the ship, “We need to save … Sparky first,” I objected, my breathing becoming labored for some reason unknown to me.

  “You’re not saving or killing anyone if you’re dead,” Dr.Whisper countered as the airlock sealed around the bomber’s hatch.

  I chuckled and shook my head, “Silly wabbit. I’m Death. I can’t die … unless I allow it.” My vision began to blur even more, and I felt lightheaded and woozy. The hatch opened, and Dr.Whisper acted quickly, pulling me out and laying me down flat on the ground. The last thing I saw before I blacked out was Dr.Whisper cursing as she began to tear off my shirt and cut off my pants.

  ***