The engineering ROR, Katadromiko 52, non-system space
Cleo, after explaining who she was and where she came from, had disposed of the armoured suit in a utility room, back down the main corridor. After adhering some more holo emitters around the walls of the ROR, she’d joined Grogun inside and they’d sealed up the door.
‘I’m hoping he hadn’t informed the hive of our whereabouts,’ said Grogun, activating the controls and screens.
‘It was a her,’ said Cleo.
‘What, in the suit?’
Cleo nodded
Grogun grunted. ‘The girl in the forward ROR called herself one of the queen’s wardresses. Perhaps she was another of those, whatever they are.’
‘Bugs in human form,’ said Cleo. ‘It seems they’ve perfected it.’
‘Not entirely,’ said Grogun. ‘Their speech is a bit robotic still, well, the one I met was. It’s certainly something to watch out for.’
The screens had started to come to life and they both went silent for a moment as they scanned them for more up-to-date information.
‘Are you able to reactivate the ship’s systems from here?’ Cleo asked.
‘It seems they were shut down from one of the other RORs, so I would think so,’ she replied, sliding into one of the seats.
‘Perhaps lighting, shields and environmental first,’ said Cleo. ‘Just to give anyone on the float, time to get back to the deck or grab something solid before you initiate the gravitational plating.’
The screens became a lot brighter once power was restored to the vessel’s lighting systems.
‘Ah, notice how the bugs are bumping into things as the lighting was restored,’ said Cleo. ‘That’s something to remember. Their eyesight takes a while to adjust.’
‘You say the Gabriel is nearby?’ Grogun asked.
‘It is.’
‘I noticed on my walk outside, there are some dark shapes flying around out there.’
‘Bug rocks,’ said Cleo.
‘Does your ship have the capability to get rid of them?’
‘There are hundreds,’ Cleo replied. ‘We could destroy quite a lot of them, but would eventually get overwhelmed and be in the same situation as you. Every simulation I’ve run reaches the same conclusion.’
‘How many ships would you need for the odds to run in our favour?’
‘I see where you’re going with this,’ said Cleo. ‘It depends on the ship in question, but if you could crew twenty to thirty gunships, then we might have a fighting chance. The downside of this is the bugs have thought of that.’
Cleo pointed at a couple of the screens.
‘You see, they’ve stationed a load of bugs inside all the major hangars where the gunships and fighters are. They’ve been planning this for a while. They were expecting you to turn up, they had the master codes and an intimate knowledge of the layout of the vessel. The only thing they weren’t expecting was your last-minute design change.’
‘This room being here instead of engineering. Yes, I was counting on that and now I come to think of it, I haven’t asked you, how did you know where I was?’
‘Scanned for humanoid movement. I knew it must be someone important when you were traversing the hull, but I couldn’t meet you out there as there’s nowhere to suspend my emitters.’
They both paused to scan the screens again. It was obvious the reducing bug movement had suddenly increased again when the lights came back on.
‘Have you shut out the other RORs?’ Cleo asked.
‘Yeah.’
‘Perhaps the shields next. It’ll stop any more getting aboard.’
Grogun’s hands flashed across the illuminated icons and on the screen showing the vessel’s pictographic real-time status, a thin blue line formed around it. Next, the two vents in the ceiling began wheezing quietly as Grogun reinitiated the environmental system.
‘Okay,’ she said, sitting back in her seat. ‘I hope everyone’s ready.’
‘Gravity next?’ Cleo asked.
‘Yep.’
Grogun reached forward and tapped one last icon. She immediately felt the weight of her suit for the first time and there was a clatter as a couple of loose items in the room dropped to the floor. They watched on the screens with mild amusement as a few bugs caught high up in the central atrium crashed to the deck, most remaining there unmoving.
The ship shuddered slightly. Grogun switched some of the monitors over to exterior views to find rock debris flowing around the newly reinstated shields.
‘They were trying to send in reinforcements,’ said Cleo. ‘Communication around the hive mind can’t be all that immediate. The shields had been up for twenty-three seconds.’
‘Let’s have a bit of payback,’ said Grogun, activating the main array and bringing the weapons online. ‘The Gabriel’s not in the vicinity is it?’ she asked, glancing over her shoulder at Cleo.
‘No,’ she replied. ‘You’re free to target anything that moves.’
Grogun smirked and programmed the heavy cannons to automatically target anything that moved.
‘Have some of this,’ she growled, touching the initiate icon.
Immediately all the cannon turrets began tracking and firing. They had hundreds of targets and within a few seconds the area of space around the cruiser was a blizzard of laser bolts criss-crossing in all directions and all finding their targets. A hailstorm of rock debris began rebounding off the 52’s shields.
‘Edward would call this a turkey shoot,’ said Cleo, watching the carnage on the exterior view screens.
‘What’s a turkey?’ asked Grogun.
‘A flightless bird they eat at times of celebration on his home planet.’
‘They eat birds?’
‘You wouldn’t believe what they eat on that world.’
‘Shame they don’t eat bugs,’ Grogun replied, rolling her eyes.
‘Actually they…’
A series of bangs and crashes close by stopped Cleo mid-sentence. Grogun flicked through a bunch of corridor scenes until she found the view outside the ROR. The passageway was full of bugs feverishly ripping off wall panels and encroaching on their position quickly.
‘Shit, they know where we are,’ she said, grabbing her tablet and rifle.
Cleo put her hand on Grogun’s shoulder and whispered in her ear as she tried to stand, then promptly vanished.