Derelict 3, Chapter 35.

Chapter 35.

Casting aside the now lifeless hulks of the human ships it had captured, the Gargonth began its attack. Plasma bolts fired from strange orifices in the Gargonth body. The rounds weren’t the most accurate, but there were enough of them that Slater started taking hits. He could feel the energy burn into his hull a bit deeper with each blow. This monster was more than it seemed, it could damage his Derelict, and its blows hurt, badly.

Slater held off on the keel gun, wanting to make sure his first shot didn’t miss, given the aggression of the Gargonth, he didn’t know if he would get a second. The keel gun wasn’t his only weapon, though, and Slater opened up with the eighteen-inch main batteries. Easily crashing through the exterior carapace armor of the Gargonth, the rounds punched deep inside. Gouts of vapor were expelled from each wound as bodily fluids leaked from the stricken Gargonth. It didn’t slow its approach; even as successive volleys tore at it and the smaller secondary guns added their fire to the mix.

Slater also began to salvo out the remaining ship-killer missiles. Many of the strange openings that allowed the living ship to fire its version of point defense had been damaged in the earlier battle, but enough remained to take down relatively small missile volleys. It was just an added distraction to keep the enemy occupied; Slater was lining up for what he hoped was the kill shot. Given that the Gargonth hadn’t even tried to avoid the other gunfire, Slater decided his chances were good at scoring a hit. The doors covering the bow of the ship opened, and Slater could feel the energy in the keel gun waiting to be unleashed.

The barrel that ran nearly the entire length of the Franklin began to glow, and with a force that felt like a kick in the stomach, the weapon fired. Slater watched as the five-meter diameter; core-hardened round flew toward the Gargonth. With a speed that was double what his other railguns could produce, the target could do little to avoid the shot, even it was interested in avoiding it. Hitting just to the starboard of the Gargonth bow, Slater watched as the space around the enemy ship creature exploded into a cloud of viscera.

Slater could feel his enemy was in pain, a pain it deserved. As the Gargonth flew closer, Slater could see it was drifting, the organs that propelled it growing dark as it bled out into space. The keel gun had blown a hole completely through the enemy ship just aft of the bow. Gore continued to leak out into space, and the entire crew held its breath as they waited to see if the monster was truly dead.

He could still feel the presence of his foe, it was alive, but its mind was mad with pain and anger at the damage it had taken. A fresh wave of agony radiated out from the monster as the front of the ship sheared off, the Gargonth sacrificing part of itself to keep the rest alive. About a kilometer of the bow was gone, but the Gargonth was still over twenty kilometers long. Its engines reignited and the monster continued its course toward the Franklin. Slater had been waiting to see what had happened, but he hadn’t ceased fire with his other weapons. Even now, more railgun rounds and laser blasts dug into the open wound that was the front of the Gargonth.

“Missile magazines are dry, is that thing trying to ram us?” The sailor at the weapons console asked.

“We can only hope, line our bow up with the Gargonth, close the outer doors, and prepare to ram. My MOBS will tear this thing's guts out,” Slater ordered. The heavy doors closed, and the ships continued their collision course. At the breach of the weapon, Slater’s MOBS gathered. Ten squads were waiting, each squad having eight cyborks and a pair of kobots. To reinforce them were a dozen gnomechs and a few construction drones to print up more ammo and make repairs if needed.

The thing he was fighting tried to lash out directly into Slater’s mind, but he was beyond whatever pitiful attacks the creature could throw at him. He had defeated parasites and resisted the will of the council, an angry Gargonth was nothing compared to that. Despite the buzzing pain in his head, Slater was symbolically grinning from ear to ear. The monster was trying to hurt him directly, but instead of burning Slater’s mind, the monster was revealing its location to him. Slater could feel where the heart and mind of the Gargonth was. The section of the enemy ship lit up in his sight, about a quarter of the way down its length, and in the center of the living ship. This was the true foe, the intelligence behind the monster. If his MOBS could make it there, he could kill this thing once and for all.

As the two ships approached, both the Gargonth and the Franklinslowed, not wanting to kill themselves in the resulting collision. Slater could keep the interior of his ship in a constant state, but he didn’t want to test how far that power went by colliding into something as big as his current target at full thrust. Just before the two ships hit, Slater fired a final volley from his main guns even as large tentacle-like appendages erupted from the middle of the Gargonth ship.

The bow of the Franklin connected, digging itself deep into the wounded monster. More waves of pain erupted from the monster’s mind, but it wasn’t the only one hurt. Slamming into the hull, Slater could feel the Gargonth appendages dig into his armor, pushing it aside with sheer strength and a corrosive secretion. His hull was breached in four places, the monster tearing the gaps wider as it tried to worm its way into his ship.

The doors to the ram opened and Slater’s MOBS began their assault. It turned out he wasn’t alone in this strategy, and where the hull had been breached by the Gargonth tentacles, horrific-looking creatures began to flood onto the Franklin. Some walked on two legs, some four, and others slithered like serpents. The Gargonth boarding party was a nightmare of claws and teeth, and they were heading through the ship on a mission to kill Slater’s core.

“Captain Guzman, prepare to repel boarders,” Slater ordered. Like with his previous human crew, the SAC sailors and marines knew their business. Inside the rifle range, Diaz had his marines set up shop. The bunkers there were occupied by human defenders even as Slater activated all his internal defenses. A handful of sailors also donned armor and gathered weapons to help in the fight. The others armed themselves but had only nominal training for this type of battle. Not wanting to overfill the rifle range compartment, Slater had his drones prepare fighting positions closer to his core room for the other sailors to defend from.

He could have called back his MOBS to aid in his defense, but they were making good progress, brushing aside the hasty defense the Gargonth had arranged. Just like he had done, the Gargonth was throwing most of its strength at the foe, trying to destroy its enemy before Slater could destroy it first. Given the size of the monster, Slater would have thought the Gargonth could afford a larger force of defenders to go along with the boarding party.

“Shouldn’t there be more of them?” Slater asked.

“I don’t know boss; it looks to me like there’s enough headed our way and I don’t want to wish for any extra. Maybe this thing is doing what we do, managing its resources to keep in the fight. With all the damage the fleet inflicted on it before we got here, maybe it reabsorbed some of its internal forces, needing the biomass more for fixing the ship than for worrying about boarders it wasn’t all that likely to face. Given the number of those things pouring onto our ship, they kept more than enough to deal with boarding a couple of humans ships,” Pixi said through the mouth of the stealth rat he was currently occupying.

It was a logical argument, the monster reapportioning its resources to meet the current threat. While humans could have boarded it, they had already lost too many ships for that threat to be significant. Whatever the case, there were more than enough attackers to keep him busy. The swarm of horrors poured through the first deck, Slate’s only defense being the automated turrets, grenade launchers, and pre-placed mines. They took a toll on the foe, but it seemed there were hundreds already aboard and the flow of new attackers hadn’t slowed down in the least.

Slater had taken considerable damage in the collision, most of the turrets at the bow of the Franklin were wrecked, and only a few survived that could fire at the enemy. Two of the tentacles digging into his ship were within range of some of his guns. A five-inch battery went to work while several point defense turrets opened up on the other tentacle. His attacks had the desired effects and in only a few shots, both tentacles had been severed, the bodies of the hideous boarding party spilling from the stumps. Slater had only stopped half the boarding access for his enemy, the other two tentacles stayed where they were, the boarders from the two severed ones were no doubt either rushing to the undamaged ones or setting off in pursuit of his MOBS.

He would need more defenders if he wanted to buy enough time for his MOBS to do their thing. Reprocessing twenty of his construction drones, Slater freed up enough control power to create five gnomechs to reinforce the rifle range. His construction bots worked fast but given the speed at which the Gargonth were tearing through his ship, Slater worried that the newest batch of defenders wouldn’t be ready in time. He also had some of the construction drones begin sowing more mines throughout deck three. There was time to do that at least. Every kill and every second gained by a kill brought his own forces that much closer to the heart of the Gargonth ship.

On the Gargonth ship, his forces were making good progress, it looked like the enemy wasn’t expecting Slater to counter-board them and had placed most of its resources into taking the Franklin. While resistance was light, there was resistance, and his MOBS were taking casualties as they moved toward their target. The defenders his MOBS faced were a terrifying collection of teeth, claws, and acidic spit. Had his troops been something other than Derelict controlled forces, there might have been issues with morale. Slater’s MOBS didn’t care how scary or imposing a foe was, they just engaged and destroyed them. His weapons were much more effective and even when the enemy closed into melee range, his cyborks gave as good as they got.

The distance they had to cover was going to the problem more so than the number of defenders facing his MOBS. Their target was about five kilometers away from where Slater’s troops had started their attack. Thankfully, the Gargonth mind was closer to the bow of the fleshy vessel. If it had been aft, they would be facing a journey of fifteen or more kilometers. Needing to be ready for a counterattack at any time made his MOBS move slower than Slater would have liked, but they were making progress and he watched as they ground their way toward the target. The closer they got, the more the defense stiffened against them. In addition to the occasional attacks by the Gargonth warrior creatures, now what he guessed were worker drones got into the fight. They were less powerful than the other defenders but killing them took time and used up precious resources.

The construction drones following Slater’s MOBS were printing up ammo every chance they could, but he had only been able to bring a limited amount of salvage along. Normally, he could strip the enemy ship for resources, but the Gargonth was entirely biological. There were trace elements of a metallic nature, but processing those would take far too long. So, the advance continued, every step toward the enemy was a victory, but the enemy was also closing in on Slater.

The flood of creatures continued to board the Franklin, pushing past the first deck and were now halfway through the second. Automated defenses were taking out many, but for every attacker they killed, five more poured aboard the ship. Reaching Franklin’s third and final deck, the attackers began to run into the additional mines that Slater had just printed, up. The flurry of explosions failed to stop the advance; these creatures were as fearless as his MOBS were.

Slater’s only real chance to stop the attackers was in the rifle range. That was the one compartment where, without his MOBS aboard, he could hope to win the fight. There were three bunkers built into the deck, giving complete coverage of the long compartment, and allowing for overlapping fields of fire. If one bunker were taken out, the others could still put up almost as good a fight. Knowing this would be the final chance to stop any boarders, Slater had the compartment stuffed with automated defenses to help his human defenders.

Around the entry hatchway command-detonated mines were placed, ready to unleash hundreds of steel projectiles into the attackers. Four ceiling-mounted heavy machineguns were placed in the corners of the compartment, their twenty-five hundred round internal magazines stuffed with the latest explosive rounds Slater had developed. Twenty hidden compartments in the ceiling hid magazines full of various grenades that could be dropped on attackers. Each compartment held a mix of frag, ripper, and laser globe grenades.

The SAC marines and a few of the more skilled naval crew manned the three bunkers, each holding six defenders. Slater had mounted both a heavy machinegun and a grenade launcher in each bunker, giving the defenders inside some serious firepower to work with. If things got danger close, a pair of flamethrowers installed at the base of the bunkers would activate, burning anything foolish enough to approach. Along with the heavy weapons, each defender had a rifle, the SAC design being nearly identical to what Slater had printed up for his MOBS. Plenty of ammunition for all the weapons was stored in the bunker, it would be some time before they ran dry, and to prevent that, a pair of construction drones were waiting in the next compartment with additional resupply.

The other crew was placed to defend the recreation area, the tables, and other heavy objects in the room were converted to provide cover. Each crewmember was armed with a rifle and grenades. Just like the marines in the rifle range, all the crew wore heavy body armor. If the enemy overran the marines and the automated defenses, he doubted the remaining crew had much of a chance, but at least they would be able to fight back. He included the two Chixturax kids here as well, both Kraxton and Bexlan volunteering to participate in the defense. They wore a set of armor that Slater had designed for their race, and they also were given laser rifles fitted to their strangely shaped hands.

Slater also prepared himself, intending to make his stand with the crew, refusing to hide out and let them die for him. To improve his chances of survival, Slater had updated the avatar, giving it coaxial machineguns mounted alongside the railguns. The railguns might be overkill in the smaller confines of the ship, but too much firepower was never a bad thing. Command detonated mines also covered the surface of the avatar, poised to blast back any Gargonth attacker that got too close. His weapons were rounded out with a pair of the smaller, pistol caliber weapons that he had designed for the cyborks. They were mounted at the top of his Avatar and would provide close-in defense once the mines had been expended.

“Major Diaz, are your marines ready?” Slater asked.

“Aye, sir, we’ll stop them cold, don’t you worry,” the man said with determination. The resemblance to his grandfather was eerie, but Slater reminded himself that this man appeared to be cut of a different cloth than his traitorous relative was. Where the grandfather had tried to run, the grandson stood firm, ready to fight alongside his marines to defeat the foe.