"Captain, are you alright?" a synthetic voice asked over the bridge PA.
"What? Who's that?" Sei'rik asked. The ensigns didn't move off the floor.
"My name is Winter," the voice replied. "I'm on Deck 3. I've hacked into the shipboard computer. I can open the door whenever you'd like."
"But, the pirates-"
"They're returning to their ship," Winter replied. "I've sealed off the antechamber beyond the bulkhead, but you need to move. The ship doesn't have enough power to sustain the environmental shield around that drill once they pull it out."
"Talara, get everyone up and away from the drill," Sei'rik ordered. "Winter, can you, uh, give me a report on what we've lost?" The Captain didn't even care that this woman had had hacked into her ship.
"Certainly. 72% of passengers and crew have been transported to the slaving vessel. There are Gnarl on every level except Deck 1 dragging the living and the dead back to the docking tubes and shuttle. Observation - Deck 1 - has been cleared completely. Apart from the bridge, Deck 2 there are a only a few passengers remaining. I've locked them in their rooms and cycled the airlocks to keep people out. On Deck 3, the dorsal corridor and two of the arterial corridors have been emptied. Deck 4 is being used as a staging ground for the pirates. There's a shuttle docked with the port-side bay. The rec rooms on Engineering - Deck 5 - have been emptied but the engineers have holed themselves up in the engine rooms and there's heavy fighting. Medical - Deck 6 - is currently being cleared. The pirates are even taking people on life support. Deck 7 - Stores - has been emptied. The worker drones are loading the ship's supplies into the slaver's docking tubes."
Talara and the other ensigns walked solemnly over to Sei'rik. "Come on," Sei'rik said to them. "Winter, open the bulkhead." It dawned on Sei'rik that Winter wasn't a crew member she could boss around. "Please."
The bulkhead groaned open and the six Techara bundled into the birghtly lit antechamber. Officially, this was an R&R room for tired bridge crew, but the crew had called it the Vent, due to the fact that most of them used it as a place to get work issues out of their system.
"So many people..." one of the ensigns whispered.
"Karai, could you get us all some water," Talara asked the girl who had spoken.
"Uh, yes," the girl nodded, moving over to the tiny kitchenette.
The Captain looked at her five surviving staff members and felt helpless. The three shocked interns were sitting on the floor in a fugue state. Talara knelt beside them, trying to keep them occupied. She was such a brave girl. Was this all Sei'rik had left of a crew of 600? She'd lose more than her position for this. Sei'rik remembered her Security detail who protected her. She ran back through the open bridge bulkhead and checked for a pulse. Yes! It was faint, but it was there. The Jargol hadn't killed them. Sei'rik's eyes widened. The Jargol hadn't killed them. Had Alee wanted... No... She'd wanted them to have to eat living people to survive...! Sei'rik felt like throwing up. Choking it down, she grabbed the unconscious officer and pulled her out to the Vent.
The other three officers were also only unconscious. Sei'rik was thankful for the chance to make her failure up to them. A better captain would have handled this so much better.
"Winter, you can close the bridge bulkhead now," Sei'rik said to the open air, hoping the woman was still in the camera feeds.
There was silence.
"Winter?"
"Sorry, Captain," the synthetic voice replied. "The slavers just launched the shuttle on Deck 4 and cut the power for the whole deck. I'm working on keeping any stragglers alive. Closing bridge door now."
"I... Thank you," Sei'rik sighed. This stranger was doing so much to save her ship and what was she doing? Nothing. Her eyes flicked to the emergency kit on the wall beside the kitchenette. She had nothing to lose.
Walking over to the emergency kit, the Captain placed her finger on the scanner. The white box beeped cheerily and slid open. Sei'rik grabbed the medpack inside and tossed it to Talara. Behind the medpack, sat two Techaran Blasters and a pile of emergency rations. Sei'rik tentatively reached for the blasters. Her webbed fingers wrapped themselves around the two pistols' textured grips. Her training had told her never to use a gun unless you had to, and to value the lives of other people. Sei'rik couldn't think of a time that needed gun more than this.
The Captain pulled the two blaster out of their compartment and affixed their holsters to her belt.
"Winter, which deck needs the most assistance?" the Captain asked.
"Deck 5," the synthetic voice replied. "Lighting just went out and the engineers are still fighting down there. I'm trying to get cameras back online."
"I'll be right there," Sei'rik replied.
"Captain, no," Talara said firmly. "You can't go out there! Stay here, where it's safe."
"My ship is my responsibility, Talara," Sei'rik replied firmly, as she donned the flak jacket of one of her unconscious Security chiefs.
"Don't do this," Talara begged. "You'll die! There's no point in going down with the ship."
"Have faith, ensign," Sei'rik replied. She didn't let her eyes meet Talara's; she knew that what she would see there would make her stay. "I haven't always captained a passenger liner."
"I believe in you, Captain," Talara replied. "I would give my life for you, but these people... The ship is falling apart. You don't have an exosuit." She was scrambling for excuses but Sei'rik knew what she was trying to say.
"I will return as soon as possible," she told her frightened crew. "Talara, you are the bravest of my crew. You will be fine. If you can't believe in me, in the hope of me surviving, believe in yourself." The huddled ensigns looked like they were concussed. "And remember: All we are is borrowed. We belong to the gods. They are watching us."
"Kerrah," Talara whispered sadly, a silent tear rolling down her cheek.
"Kerrah," Sei'rik repeated, before she turned and keyed open the starboard-side bulkhead.
The corridor was deserted, but the stains on the floor told a story that Sei'rik wasn't sure she needed to hear. To her left, the passage was blocked by the side of the mining drill. Sei'rik pulled one of the blasters from its holster - just in case. Techaran Blasters did not rely on ammo, energy cells or thermal clips, like the rest of modern firearms. Instead, the blasters used special conductance circuits in the grip to propel a Techara's own bioelectric discharge through plasma coils and out along a knife-like barrel. As such, they were only as powerful as the Techara who fired them, and their range varied considerably between individuals.
Sei'rik let her hand build its electric charge, making her skin tingle and turn an oddly pearlescent hue. The blaster responded in kind, making a soft whirring noise, before the series of plasma coils began crackling with a blue field of electricity. Even though she was no longer behind a protective bulkhead, Sei'rik felt a little safer than she had before. Now, she wasn't just an officer; she was a threat.
"Hey, you!" someone shouted down the corridor to her right, snapping her out of her reverie. A whistle of distorted air forced her to jump back into the cover of the doorway. Stunners. At least they wanted her alive... Peeking around the corner, Sei'rik pulled the trigger on her blaster as she saw the pair of Cataron slavers. An arc of white lightning raced down the corridor and collided into... a wall panel. Sei'rik swore. She hadn't worked on her target practice in a few years.
The two men had scrambled for cover in the thin wall supports that jutted out into the corridor. Sei'rik could still see them from her post. She held her blaster up at eye level and fired it towards the most exposed one, before ducking back in to avoid a stun blast. The sound of screaming and tenderising flesh also made her grin. She was glad that she was closer to escape, but her training reminded her that the dying man was a real person too. There was an alarmed shout - maybe a name - and a skittering metal noise hurried towards her. This time, she didn't even need to look to jump out of cover and slide across the floor away from the grenade.
She couldn't remember hearing it go off, but her ears started ringing with an almighty shrill and sun spots dotted her vision. Squeezing her eyes shut, she fired her blaster back down the corridor blindly. She was out in the open on the floor of the corridor. Her vision cleared enough for her to roll herself away from an incoming sonic blast. With the world upside-down, she raised her blaster and fired along her line of sight.
The crackling white spear slammed straight into the pirate's upper leg. He screamed and fell onto the floor, as the electricity made him convulse. He kept screaming as he rolled around on the floor. Sei'rik couldn't look away. She had used blasters to kill before, but indirect shots were always painful. The weapons trainers at Tai'k's Naval Academy always insisted that a shot to the head or heart was the most merciful way to end someone's life. With the voltages that Sei'rik and most of her fellow captains could reach, their shots would stop an organic heart in milliseconds.
The smell of charred flesh wafted towards Sei'rik as she stood up. Lying in a pile of urine and smoke, the two pirate's bodies convulsed involuntarily. Walking over to the two corpses, Sei'rik had no fear of touching their still-live carcasses. As she did so, her body absorbed some of the electric charge, stopping their afterlife twitches. Sei'rik said a silent prayer for them as she checked them for decent equipment. The one who had thrown the grenade still had a bunch more of them strapped to his belt. Sei'rik's eyes drifted from them to the mining drill. Even if they were all sonics, they might still damage the drill's environmental seals. The pirates would need to repair it before they could use it again. A flicker of malice had her pull the man's belt off, wrap it into a tight, explosive ball and arm the grenades on 10 second timers. She lobbed it down the corridor behind her and ran for the elevators.
The sound of the makeshift bomb going off was earsplitting.