HUMANITY UNLEASHED
Part 2: First Blood
Vacuum suits sealed against impending decompression, the strike team readied itself to breach the Heart of Loll.
Six Hiddrell stood in the dock between two latched and sealed steel portals. They were armed with energy weapons of Trylixian design and short blades carved from Krix bone, harder and sharper than titanium and crimson red.
Each portal had a small window embedded in its center. One window looked out into space, where the sleek exterior, and bulbous gravity well generators of the incapacitated Heart of Loll grew larger and larger in size.
The other window looked back into the Trylixian sphere, where the Trylixian officer responsible for this particular dock waited for the proper moment to unseal the outer hatch.
The officer stood, as all Trylixian’s did, no taller than 2 feet in height. His torso was essentially a rough pill shape, studded with arms, ending in hand-like appendages – 3 on each side, 2 in front, and 2 in back, for a total of 10.
To human eyes, a Trylixian would look like a rough amalgam of several creatures haphazardly mashed together into one, bizarre form: the height of a small child; ten appendages reminiscent of a centipede or the tendrils of a rambutan: the fingers of a jungle frog; the minutely scaled skin of a mackerel fish; and the iridescent coloration of a beetle’s chitinous exterior.
In the center of this strange combination of features, on both sides of its central mass, between the upper and lower arms, were two eyes, one facing back and one facing front. Each eye had two separate retinae, thereby affording stereoscopic views and increased depth perception. Each arm ended in a four digited appendage with one prehensile digit and three non-prehensile fingers, and a Trylixian could walk, or even run if necessary, on any combination of those appendages. As a result, the orientation of a Trylixian’s torso was never set, always shifting. To compensate, their two eyes evolved a complementary function – they were able to spin in their sockets, stabilized internally so as to maintain a consistent viewing perspective regardless of the torso’s orientation in space. Trylixian’s did not give much consideration to having a front or a back, but for non-Trylixian species, the presence of an oral orifice on one side, and a separate orifice for waste disposal on the other, allowed for a convenient delineation.
The Hiddrell commander, Skvv, his six eyes glowing lightly behind their form-fitting helmet, glared at the Trylixian with disdain through the glass. Of course it was the Hiddrell who were called upon to do the Federation’s dirty work, yet again. The loose alliance between the Hiddrell and the Trylixian’s notwithstanding, the Hiddrell still harbored a profound distaste for the Trylixians, who they perceived as a weak and cowardly race, incapable of hand to hand combat, despite all those disgusting little hands, preferring to hide within their precious spheres. The peace brokered between the two races by the Loloth may have been in the best interest of the fledgling Federation, but it left a bad taste in many mouths.
T-minus five seconds. 5, 4, 3….
The Trylixian voice came over the closed coms of the strike team, automatically translated into the clicks and hisses of native Hiddrell speech. Without a word, the very essence of preparedness, the six Hiddrell became totally still, each ready to leap out into the void and latch onto the Heart of Loll’s smooth hull.
…2, 1, Brace. Brace. Brace.
The sphere came to a hard stop and actually bumped into the Heart of Loll. Skvv hissed in frustration and made a mental note to excoriate the sphere’s captain upon their return.
There was a loud release of air and then all ambient noise disappeared as the outer portal burst open. Artificial gravity had been cut off in the docking bay and the strike team did not hesitate to leap out of the sphere toward the paralyzed Loloth ship. One by one they bridged the zero-g gap through the vacuum, latching themselves magnetically to the ship’s exterior.
Skvv clicked out an order over comms and two of the soldiers took small plasma cutters and began boring a perfect hole to the interior, each beginning at a point and cutting a half circle. When the cut was complete, Skvv clomped over, magnetic boots holding him to the hul.l. He kicked the metal round into the ship, and leaped in without another word.
The other Hiddrell followed and the last to enter removed a small extruder from his belt and filled the hole with a temporary gel seal. The ship’s life support systems were still active, and the hallway they’d breached quickly began to fill with oxygen again. The team began walking down the hallway and soon the sound of their magnetic footsteps reappeared as ambient noise.
The vessel’s interior was quite dark, lit only by small blue emergency lights. However, the Hiddrell, with their excellent night vision, were well equipped for the situation. They walked forward methodically in pairs of two – one pair in front, one in the middle, one covering the rear, and in this fashion, slowly made their way to the command deck.
Skvv sent a whispered report back to the Sphere.
No lifeforms yet. Gravity is null. Life support …
Skvv paused as he felt his foot slosh through a puddle of liquid. Bending down, Skvv dipped a finger in the stuff and lifted it for a closer look. Mothet of pearl and congealed. Loloth fluids. He scanned the floor and soon saw the shriveled skin of this particular murdered creature, like the discarded latex of a popped water balloon.
We have a Loloth casualty. The ship appears to have been infiltrated.
Skvv’s team continued onward, passing by several other wet spots, each the inglorious remains of one of the galaxy’s most powerful species, the glue of the Federation, reduced to a puddle. Skvv allowed himself to wonder at that and at the absurdity inherent in the universe.
Finally, the team arrived at the sealed hatch to the Command Deck. The hatches were deactivated, and so two soldiers stepped up and undid an emergency latch. The latch was mandated on fire doors in every federation ship, no matter the racial origin, for scenario’s just like this. With a hard push the sliding door opened.
Hiddrell honor dictated that Skvv, the leader of this strike team, should be the first to enter any new, uncharted area, so that he might be the first to engage with any enemies there. However, one of Skvv’s soldiers, Hrzkar, fancied himself a competitor to Skvv’s leadership. A power struggle had been simmering between the two for weeks, and both knew that a dual was inevitable in the near future. As a sign of Hrzkar’s disrespect, he brazenly entered the Command deck first, a fact which was lost on none of them. Skvv noted that he would issue the duel challenge immediately upon their return to base.
No sooner had Hrzkar passed the threshold into the command deck than he was fallen upon by a flailing animal, wielding a crude instrument of destruction, some steel pipe or another. The beast caught Hrzkar by surprise, striking a terrible blow to Hrzkar’s head, shattering his helmet and sending shards of plastic deep into several of his eyes. Hrzkar instinctually dropped his rifle and unsheathed his Krix dagger, entering a low crouch and facing the assailant. With a vicious hiss, Hrzkar leapt at the beast, as Skvv and his team watch from the door, standing by, as honor dictated, once hand to hand combat was begun.
Hrzkar swiped at the creature’s exposed abdomen, missing by only an inch. The wounds to Hrzkar’s eyes on the right side of his boomerang shaped skull impaired his depth perception.
The strange assailant leaped back from Hrzkar’s blow and rebuffed with a strong downward swing of the pipe. Hrzkar chose to block the strike rather than dodge it. The pipe impacted Hrzkar’s left arm hard, fracturing it beneath the skin. But the manuever was a success and the pipe ricocheted downward, throwing the creature off balance. Hrzkar seized the opportunity and swung in and sideways with his blade, jamming the point deep into the creatures skull at the temple. The tall bipedal form twitched violently on the end of Hrzkar’s blade.
Skvv watched with both disappointment at Hrzkar’s survival and begrudging respect for his victory. In watching, Skvv and the other soldiers had become myopically focused on the rare spectacle of hand to hand combat between Hiddrell and an unknown race. While they watched, a smaller creature of the same strabge species picked up Hrzkar’s dropped rifle.
The blast of blue energy lit the room like a miniature sun. Hrzkar did not even have time to turn around before the fusion beam impacted his back, exploding him in the blink of an eye into a thin myst of dust and ash.
Skvv and the other squad members hissed and clicked ferociously at the impudent barbarousness of Hrzkar’s dishonorable murder. The creature with the rifle, smaller than the tall, dead one, turned toward the rest of the Hiddrell squad, a look of terror in its eyes. It raised the rifle again, and fired. But Skvv was already running forward, dagger drawn. He jumped forward into a low roll, underneath the incoming blast, which continued on behind him and incinerated another squad member. Skvv came up right in front of the creature and knocked the rifle from its hands, even as he sent his dagger racing for its abdomen, slicing a wide gash. Steaming gore poured out, and Skvv’s nostrils were filled with the scent of the a new enemy’s First Blood.
The creature’s eyes opened wide in pain Skvv stared into them with all six of his own. With a fierce kick he sent the monster to the ground, where it writhed and moaned like a coward slithering in its own entrails.
Looking down at the creature in disgust, Skvv turned back toward the remains of his squad just as a third creature, looking more like the first, but shorter, charged at him from the dark. Skvv was tempted to eviscerate this one too, but he recognized immediately the value of keeping one of these strange beings alive. Uncertain the best way to incapacitate it, Skvv decided to take a simple approach. As the creature came in and took a swing, Skvv dodged the blow and whipped the thing in the back of the skull with the butt of his dagger. It seemed to work, as the creature fell to the ground, unmoving.
Skvv took a breath, relishing the bloodlust flowing through his veins, and then took stock. Two of his men were dead, killed by these feral beasts. Ashamed in part, impressed in part, Skvv ordered the living but unconscious creature bound. The other one had stopped moving on the ground, its face pale and frozen in a grimace.
Skvv and his men finished their search of the ship. Several Loloth, huddled together pathetically, were found hiding in a supply room. No other strange creatures were found alive, although three of their corpses were discovered along the way.
Once Skvv was certain the ship was clear, he sent back a brief communication to the sphere.
Sweep completed. Three enemies encountered. Two casualties suffered. Returning with prisoner for interrogation.
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