Derelict, Chapter 17.

Chapter 17.

“What a dump,” Pixi said as they scanned their new “shipyard”. The location was in an old forgotten section of Sarton Station, which was perfect since it meant fewer people would be snooping about. What wasn’t great was the dilapidated state of the dock. Instead of being setup for heavy ship construction, this place featured a dock that was only large enough for a small shuttle. To even begin building his ships, Slater was going to have to do some major reconstruction. An airlock separated the station from this run-down dock, and once through, a tiny landing led to the actual dock.

“Ixlab, this is the best you guys could find?” Slater said through the interface with one of his construction drones, which were even now emerging from the storage containers they had been placed in to transport them to the dockyard.

“It is what we could afford, and you did say you could build anything. Instead of starting with a ship, you’ll get to start with the dock area,” Ixlab replied.

“Fine, let’s get to work,” Slater said. The Chixturax had purchased a score of salvage pallets for him to work with. Far too little for the construction of a ship, but enough to hopefully get the dock ready for what he needed. First off, he had had his construction drones create more of themselves, bringing their numbers up to twenty. Slater could handle more MOBS, but he wanted to keep some of his core power reserved for expanding the Derelict if that was needed.

The Chixturax had brought dozens of workers to help with the project, and it took some convincing to get them to realize his construction drones would work better if they weren’t “helped” by the unskilled Chixturax. Instead, he asked the Chixturax to oversee bringing salvage through the airlock. Given the rundown state of the rest of this part of the station, Slater had his drones refurbish the airlock before going further. It turned out to be a wise precaution as the seals were just about at the end of their lifecycle. While it wouldn’t hurt his drones, Slater had little faith in the shabby looking life support gear that the Chixturax used.

“Ixlab, would you like some new gear for your people? Those support suits look a little worse for wear,” Slater asked.

“If that is possible, it would be appreciated, these were the only ones we had from our old hive ship that still functioned,” Ixlab said. Slater pulled a pair of drones off the airlock rehab to examine and rebuild the support suits. With their strange body shape, it took some time to get the details right, but when he was done, the Chixturax wearing them would be better protected when they left the safety of the station. The bug-like Chixturax looked even more ridiculous inside their support suits, but they didn’t seem to mind and it sure beat facing the vacuum of space in worn out gear.

The airlock repairs were complete, and Slater was forced to delay his research on the Franklin in order to prepare a plan to rebuild the dock into something functional enough to build two huge starships. Before he could really dig into the dockyard design, the flashing lights let him know the next set of challengers had arrived. His Derelict was as ready as it could be, but there was still worry over whether he had missed something important.

A single oversized hatch into the entry compartment locked into place. Slater’s rats milled about, as ready as they could be for whatever was challenging their Derelict. This time, there was no blast of flame, or barrage of laser fire into the entry compartment. This time, something bizarre entered.

“What is that and why is it so…gooey?” Pixi said. Slater had no idea, but a large gelatinous mass had begun to flow into his Derelict. Inside the goo were some metal bars, what these were, he had no idea.

“Is that a weapon? Or is this a distraction created by whoever the new contenders are?” Slater asked.

“Uh, I think that thing is the contender, boss,” Pixi replied. As Slater watched, his wave of bilge rats charged into the slimy mass, which continued to flow across the floor. If he had to guess, Slater would have said the mass had the same total volume of a small car. It ignored the teeth and claws of his bilge rats, instead the slimy creature flowed around them, trapping the MOBS inside its body where there began to be slowly digested by the monster.

The slime was slow moving, giving his mine rats plenty of time to line up their attack. Twin explosions hurled thousands of metal ball bearings into the slime, enough to shred any other opponent, but not harming this thing as far as Slater could tell. His grenade rats did somewhat better, the explosions burning away some of the surface slime and causing the creature to recoil from the blasts.

Having cleared the compartment of defenders, the slime creature moved to the hatchway as several of the metallic looking bars inside floated toward the surface, somehow exerting force on the hatch wheel to open the way into the engineering bay. He was doubtful the orcs inside would fare any better than his bilge rats had done.

A pair of defenders met the slime at the entry hatch, shotguns blasting away. The blasts had as little affect as the mine rats, doing no visible damage. Their melee attacks with axes proved ineffective as well. About the only thing the melee axe attacks accomplished was getting the orcs close enough to the slime that it could surge out and trap them, devouring these MOBS in the same way it done to the bilge rats. To his horror, the thing seemed to be growing as it fed, the slime having grown from a car sized blob into a truck sized one. Thankfully, once it reached that size, it stopped growing and seemed content to let the remaining undigested parts of his MOBS just float around inside.

“Oh, now that’s just gross, why did it leave them all half digested and gooey like that?” Pixi complained.

“I don’t know, maybe its as big as it can get and its saving the rest of its meal for when it takes some damage,” Slater replied.

“Maybe those metal things inside are important, the kobots should be able to target them, I think,” Pixi suggested. It did seem that whatever those structures floating around in the monster were, they were integral to it interacting with the environment around it, like it was doing now with the hatchway into the cargo hold.

Another bilge rat smorgasbord awaited the slime in the cargo hold, a feast it was happy to grab, even if it couldn’t digest them all just now. The monster looked almost comical as it absorbed rat after rat, having trouble encasing so many in its slimy embrace. His kobots got right into the fight, firing at the monster, and their explosive shells seemed to hurt it. The armor piercing rounds hit one of the mechanical structures inside the slime, shattering it as the shell exploded. The entire monster quivered, and it began to pull the undigested victims in front of the remaining structures in order to protect them.

Shot after shot pounded into the monster, the kobots trying desperately to inflict enough damage to stop the thing. It was slow in doing so, but the monster didn’t have any trouble climbing up the stacks of crates to get at the kobot perches. As it made its way slowly around the compartment, Slater’s kobots were taken down one by one. They had proven the monster could be hurt and Slater noticed it had been forced to digest more of its prey to replenish its mass.

There were no free meals in the form of bilge rat swarms in the next compartment, only the now prepared defenders in the barracks. The slime was met with another ineffective mine rat blast, the shock of the attack pushing back the monster long enough for the defenders to build up their makeshift barricade of bunks and footlockers. As the slime made its way inside the barracks, it was met with a fusillade of rifle fire, the explosive round blowing holes into the monster.

The vulnerable metal structures were still being protected by a wall of partially digested MOBS, but that shield was being slowly absorbed to rebuild the slime creature’s mass as the continuous fire battered it. The barracks had four kobolds, two kobots, and four orcs to defend it and unlike the engineering bay, these orcs had rifles instead of the useless shotguns. It was hard for any of his forces to miss and the kobots continued to look for any openings that would allow a shot or two at the vulnerable metal bits.

With its unrelenting slow pace, the slime continued to creep toward the line of defenders. Before it was able to breach the barricade, every one of Slater’s MOBS that had a grenade threw them at the monster. Explosions rippled across the surface, charring the outer layers, and even blowing some chunks of slime away from its body. Those chunks couldn’t move on their own and simply dissolved into a pool of liquid. Far more devastating than the regular grenades was the laser globe he had equipped one of the kobolds with. The elvish designed weapon hovered over the target before exploding into a volley of laser blasts, most of which burned deep into the slime.

A pair of inattentive orcs looked over the barricade at the wrong time and were also taken out by the globe, but it had done massive damage to the slime. The slime slowed to a stop and Slater thought he could see the MOBS inside dissolve further as the monster tried to repair itself. His still living MOBS didn’t stop their efforts, continuing to fire as fast as they could into the slime as it paused its advance in order to focus on repairing itself.

With most the food inside it being consumed for repairs, the slime left one of the metal structures exposed for a moment. A moment was all one of the sharp eyed kobots needed, nailing the structure with a well-placed shot. Like previously, the monster shuddered as the vulnerable component was hit. Unfortunately, the volume of fire dissipated as his MOBS began to run out of ammo. In each of the compartments, Slater had placed a resupply container for just his type of situation, but it only held a dozen fresh magazines. The extra ammo didn’t last long with so many shooters and the weapons of his defenders began to go silent.

His MOBS could do nothing further and Slater ordered them to fall back, not wanting to feed the slime creature any more biomass. Back in the core room he had his construction drones begin printing up more ammo. By the time his troops made it back, there should be enough to get them back into the fight. It was strange at times, Slater seemed to forget that he could do things while intruders were inside his Derelict. It had been hard programed into him by the council not to create replacements while explorers were inside, but the council, and their control over him, were no more.

The slime stayed put inside the barracks for a while, feeding on its victims and rebuilding its lost volume. It looked like the loss of the second structure inside the monster had trimmed down its overall size, perhaps those devices were what was keeping it together. They would remain the priority targets for his MOBS, a target that would get easier to hit if he could starve it of new victims. Regrowing as much as it could, the slime headed into the chow hall.

Twin blasts from the grenade rats hiding in the trashcans by the hatch greeted the slime, burning away more of its precious mass. From behind overturned tables and benches, Slater’s MOBS engaged the monster. There was quite a collection of defenders inside, including the first four of his cyborks. The twin pistol-sized weapons over their shoulders poured out an impressive barrage, but this was the not the cyborks element, they shined when stuck into the melee, but the nature of this foe demanded they stay out of reach. Having eaten a good portion of the MOBS it had absorbed; the slime was having trouble keeping its critical structures protected. It didn’t seem to be able to move very fast normally, and while under fire and juggling partial corpses to protect his vitals, the thing slowed to a crawl.

Each individual explosive bullet didn’t do a whole lot, but the monster was forced to endure hundreds of strikes every few seconds. It was the death of thousand cuts, or in this case, the death of a thousands rounds of armor piercing high explosive ammo. Another critical structure inside the slime was hit, causing it shed more of its mass. They were making progress, but like the MOBS in the barracks, his forces were going to run out of ammo before they ran out of monster. His construction drones were printing up new magazines full of ammo as fast as they could, but they had only replenished about half of the ammo needed by the forces that had retreated from the barracks. Taking a chance, he stopped production on ammo and shifted to laser globes.

His forces inside the chow hall had now burned through all of their ammo and the reserve mags, leaving them no option but to retreat. Their retreat was covered by another grenade volley, and just like before, the single laser globe that his MOBS had proved especially damaging to the monster. It was out of raw material and wasn’t going to be able to hide its vulnerable parts any longer. The next compartment was the medical bay and the MOBS in there were less than ideal for the situation.

His defilers were melee based and Slater ordered them to fall back, they would just give his enemy more biomass to heal itself with. The two kobot doctors inside would do some work, their fire taking out another critical structure as the slime entered the compartment. Four of the kobots from the chow hall and barracks were given all the ammo that had been reprinted, along with four fresh laser globes. Rearmed, the four kobots ran to reinforce their comrades in the med bay.

Just as the med bay kobots ran dry on ammo, the reinforcements arrived. Taking cover behind one of the gurneys, the kobots lobbed their laser globes. The four devices hovered briefly over the slime before detonating. Laser bolts dug deep into the seemingly unstoppable monster, burning away slime and striking several of the strange metal devices inside the monster. Once the laser globes had detonated, the four kobots rejoined the fight, their rifles seeking out vulnerable spots.

“Cease fire, the Ku Ha Slime Lords have surrendered,”

Upon hearing the announcement, Slater ordered his forces to hold back, not wanting to violate any of the arena rules by continuing their fight after the foe had yielded. As he watched a small drone entered the Derelict and flew through the open hatchways until it finally settled into a hover over the much-depleted slime creature. The metal devices inside the slime floated to the surface. With a faint click, the metal cylinders attached themselves to the drone, which flew them back outside, leaving a now liquifying mass of slime on the deck in his medical bay.

“I’m glad I don’t have to clean that up, Pixi said, watching as Slater’s construction drones approached the slimy mass. The suffered no ill effects when testing the material, which turned out to be a windfall of biomass for Slater. Other than the few cylinders that his MOBS had sniped inside the slime, there was no salvage received. Hopefully, the Administrator would send him another batch of salvage before his next fight, whenever that was.

“Do you think the Ku Ha Slime Lords were inside those cylinders, or were they remotely controlling the thing?” Slater asked.

“No idea, but you may find out when you reprocess all that goop,” Pixi said. It was true, by reabsorbing the slime, and the remains of the destroyed cylinders, he might have a better idea about what he had just fought. In the meantime, he would have his Derelict cleaned up and his losses replaced. The last contender was a bizarre one, and Slater had a feeling that anything could happen from here on out. For now, he would wait for Hixrax to call him with the latest results. Was he going to make the top fifty by the next battle?