Chapter 53. Plasma Fire.

  “What are the crazy kobolds talking about?” Watkins asked.

  “I think we’re about to find out,” Lani replied as the kobold on the station loudspeaker began to shout. The kobold must not have closed the comm channel after it had made its threat, as whatever was happening in the compartment had caught his full attention.

  “No! I told you to release it toward the halflings. That thing is heading toward the CIC,” the kobold screeched. The mic picked up other kobold voices chattering. For now, Watkins had his troops hold their positions, covering the passageway that led to the next compartment.

  The sound of tearing metal was heard and then a rapid burst of laser fire from multiple pistols. Arguments, and shouted warnings made it almost impossible to understand what was going on. Watkins listened as the noise and commotion slowly abated, but the quiet wasn’t from some kobold victory, and the lack of sound was occasionally interrupted by the death shriek of a kobold.

  “Cover me, I’m getting to the escape pod,” the original announcer shouted.

  “No, the pod’s for me, not you,” a kobold voice replied. It was answered with a single laser blast. A moment of quiet ensued, then a final shot and scream of pain.

  “Since there’s nothing on our sensors, I assume the escape pod wasn’t used,” Watkins said. Lani confirmed that nothing had left the station.

  Nothing happened for several minutes, allowing a couple of reinforcement MOBS to arrive and bolster his numbers. Worried about what might be coming after them, Watkins had any further reinforcements held back in the station’s cargo hold, it would become a fallback position if the troops the current compartment couldn’t handle things. He also made plans to quickly seal his ship and push away from the station if there was a threat they couldn’t handle.

  Something slammed against the hatch leading deeper into the station. A second, stronger blow arrived, denting the metal hatch. The hatch was designed to keep the atmosphere inside the station in the event of a breach, which meant they were strong, but these on the station weren’t as tough as the alloy Watkins used inside his ship. Another blow bent open a corner of the hatchway, and the long tentacle slithered through to grip the hatch and pull.

  “It’s another void beast. Probably part of the one we experimented on long ago,” Lani offered.

  “You’re right, the morons must have woken it up from statis and figured they would use it to kill us off. Too bad for them, the void beast seemed to prefer kobold for breakfast,” Watkins said as his MOBS opened fire. With the reinforcements that arrived earlier, Watkins had 14 of his MOBS in the compartment. There wasn’t much in the way of real cover as the kobolds had found out earlier, and the void beast didn’t even try to avoid their fire.

  Coordinating their shots, the MOBS kept up a steady barrage of plasma bolts. The void beast didn’t like it one bit and went into a frenzy, losing more of its mass as it finally managed to pull the hatch off. With the entire thing exposed, Watkins could see that this one was much larger than the creature he had dealt with before. Who knew how many kobolds it had feasted on and incorporated into its mass.

  The void beast had no discernable form, the mass of its body was constantly creating arms, legs, or tentacles at a whim to move itself and attack. As it entered the compartment, Watkins ordered his MOBS into a fighting retreat. They kept up a constant battering of plasma fire, each hit burning deep into the monster with a sound that reminded Watkins of a steak hitting a hot grill.

  Caught between its rage at the damage inflicted upon it, and its need to get away from the pain, the void beast hesitated, and the MOBS made it pay dearly for that hesitation. It was odd, seeing the void beast hit with so many plasma shots, and instead of being blow apart, it just seemed to shrink before his eyes. It made a last-ditch effort to get at the living biomass in front of it, crashing through the cubicle debris as the MOBS formed up at the hatch leading to the cargo hold.

  Several of the MOBS were running dry on power packs for their plasma rifles and were switching to pistols. Watkins ordered those with only pistols to fire them quickly and then retreat to the cargo hold. The drones with the chargers were there, and while there weren’t enough fresh packs to go around, they would at least have a few shots to work with.

  The last thing they needed was for the void beast to catch the MOBS that had run out of ammo and use their biomass to grow itself. One by one, the MOBS fled back to the station’s cargo hold. Another replacement had arrived, and the ones with live ammo positioned themselves to fire into the hatchway where the beast would hopefully be slowed a bit as it forced its bulk through.

  Laser blasts seemed to be less effective on the void beast than the plasma rifles, but they still hurt it. The thin beams burnt away small bits of its odd flesh with each hit. The volume of fire was dropping as the power packs of the MOBS’ weapons began to run dry. Wasting no time, the void beast hurled itself at the remaining MOBS. The troops got bottlenecked at the hatchway, and the last two were caught by the beast.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  Unable to feel pain or fear, Watkins’ MOBS never gave up the fight, switching to melee weapons even as the void beast hauled them closer. Hands, tentacles, and claws formed on the beast, and it used them to shred its victims and pull them into its main mass. The MOBS were rapidly dissolved, the beast leaving behind only the inorganic gear and bits of tech that had been integrated into the minions.

  It had caught only two of the halfling MOBS, but those two provided the fuel for the beast to regenerate a portion of the damage it had taken. The thing was still smaller than it had been when they first sighted it, but it remained a powerful threat. The last few troops to escape, Watkins ordered to run back to the Canon. There were no charged power packs for their weapons, and they were just free biomass for that thing if it broke through.

  Watkins finished up the latest replacement MOBS and then shifted the fabricator to the production of more power packs for the plasma rifles. It was too bad that they’d relied on the war trophy laser pistols instead of researching better plasma pistols. If the troops had been equipped with level one plasma pistols, Watkins figured that they might have had enough firepower to put this thing down before they suffered any casualties.

  It entered the passageway behind the fleeing MOBS, the last of which were just entering the cargo hold. Once the passageway was clear, the barrage of fire on the void beast continued. With the few recharged packs that the drones hauled in, and the fresh troops that had arrived, the MOBS were able to keep up a slow and steady fire on the void beast.

  More of it was blasted and burnt away, removing any gains it had made from devouring two of the MOBS earlier. Now, the thing was about the size of the one that had invaded his ship the first time. That one had been dealt with using only drones and the simple cutting torches, and a similar sized beast had no chance against real firepower.

  Most of the rifles ran dry, and the MOBS were using up the last of the charge in their laser pistols when the void beast finally slowed. Unable to keep producing its odd array of limbs, it slowly pulled itself forward with one claw. Shot after shot was made, and the void beast eventually went still, its mass no more than that of a small dog.

  It quivered a few times then began to dissolve into a disgusting gunk that dried and hardened into a football sized chunk. Remembering Lani’s instructions to not try and reprocess the monster, Watkins ordered a drone to haul it outside the ship and toss it into space. From what little data they had on the thing, Watkins was pretty sure it was dead, but just in case, he calculated for his drone to toss it so the remains would eventually hit the system’s sun.

  “With that thing gone, we can clear the rest of the station. I’m not taking any chances, and we’ll examine everything in case there are any other surprises waiting for us,” Watkins said, ordering his MOBS forward. The two drones hauling the power pack charger followed on their heels, slowly replenishing empty power packs as they finished charging up.

  The compartment with the makeshift terminals and cubicle farm was pretty much destroyed. Much of what they found was going to go right into the reprocessor, but Watkins tagged the most intact terminal for Lani to hack into. It required a drone creating a direct connection to it, but in only a few minutes she was hard at work parsing though the kobold database.

  The next compartment was open now that its hatches had been torn apart by the void beast. Inside, they found flickering lights, and what looked like recently destroyed lab equipment. Three hatches led to smaller spaces, that looked to have been offices or something of the sort originally. Each hatch had been torn open as the void beast searched for more victims.

  So far, they hadn’t found anything resembling a stasis pod, or any servers from the original station. There was always the chance they were hidden away, but there was only one more compartment they hadn’t examined yet. As a drone overrode the hatch codes, Watkins watched as his troops moved into the compartment.

  Several storage crates were stacked in the compartment. He had his MOBS and drones tear through them, only to be disappointed when they revealed repair parts for the kobold ship, rations, and a few bits and bobs that were useless to him as anything other than salvage. His crew, and the station’s database, weren’t here.

  There was one hatchway remaining, it led to the compartment that had been ripped in half. A drone was sent outside the station’s hull, confirming that nothing remained inside the partially destroyed compartment. He had built his hopes on recovering something of himself here, and it was looking like there was nothing here for him at the station except for some raw materials.

  “Watkins, I think I’ve found something, it might be what we’re looking for” Lani said. He looked at where she was indicating, and it wasn’t the station or anywhere near it.

  “What am I looking at?” Watkins asked.

  “Another station, smaller than this one was originally, and intact. According to the data, it attacked any kobold ship that approached, but the occasional halfling ship was allowed to dock there,” Lani said.

  “Why? Did the halflings build a whole new station? The kobolds could barely keep this one from falling apart, and the halflings didn’t strike me as any more competent in that arena,” Watkins said as he parsed through the data.

  “They didn’t build it, they found it. That was the station covering jump point one, the jump point that led to your home world. It was never hit when this station was destroyed and must have lain abandoned until the halflings and kobolds came here looking for an out of the way base for their piracy,” Lani explained.

  “I see, the kobolds were stuck on this run-down station, while the halflings had a much better base of operations. The only challenge for the halflings was that they would have to pass by the kobold defenses whenever they entered or left the system, either that, or they’d have to take a much longer route to return to their station,” Watkins said, as he looked at the positions of both stations and the jump points on his internal map.

  “Watkins, if your crew and my data still exist, that’s where it will be,” Lani said.