Derelict 3, Chapter 13.

Chapter 13.

The entry compartment doors opened, and boarders started pouring in. The group was led by a pair of kobolds firing laser pistols wildly at anything they thought might be a danger. They were followed by a pair of heavily armored dwarves with the now familiar shields held up to protect them from any return fire. Behind the dwarves were six more kobolds, these were better equipped than the first pair and sported body armor and the more powerful laser carbines. Behind the last group was something Slater didn’t expect. A hulking figure stomped into his Derelict, and it took him a moment to recall where he had seen one before.

“Wow, a troll, they’re kind of rare,” Pixi said.

“Rare or not, that one seems to be in charge,” Slater replied, watching as his rats made their attack.

Like the previous attacks, his six bilge rats charged from behind the junk placed in the compartment and were immediately taken under fire by the numerous attackers. They went down quick, but did their duty to buy time for the grenade rats to close in. Not risking being seen, they detonated as soon as they were within range of the nearest targets, the pair of pistol armed kobolds. The twin explosions knocked the lead kobolds off their feet and peppered their unarmored bodies with lethal amounts of shrapnel.

“You’ve got to be tougher than that to be on my crew,” the troll said as he looked with disdain at the two fallen kobolds. One twitched a bit, still alive but bleeding out quickly. The troll grabbed the wounded kobold, eliciting a yelp of pain as he raised the wounded invader up to eye level.

“Kheros, do we proceed to the next compartment?” One of the shield wielding dwarves asked. The troll grunted and gestured toward the hatchway leading to the crew quarters. His team, and the troll was definitely in charge of this group, stacked up at the hatchway. The troll, apparently named Kheros, took a final look at the wounded kobold in his hand before leaning in to take bite of the helpless creature. A wet ripping sound was heard as Kheros finished off his wounded teammate. He tossed aside the corpse and motioned for his team to continue.

“He’s almost as bad as a Derelict with the whole eating your team deal,” Pixi said.

“Yeah, I’m not sure that’s the best way to build team morale. At least this Kheros seems like he’s as dumb as he is hungry. I’m not sure how much it would cost to review the latest vids of our Derelict, but he obviously didn’t think it worth the credits to do so,” Slater replied watching as the boarding team ignored the seemingly destroyed reaper in the corner. A simple viewing of the previous competitors would have revealed the trap. Slater had meant to adjust its position or switch it out with something else, but there was too many other things demanding his attention.

The dwarves placed their shields to block any incoming fire from the crew quarters and one of the kobolds hit the switch to open the hatch, triggering not only the hatch, but also the inactive reaper. Armor piercing explosive rounds began to pepper the crowd of competitors, the first rounds shredding the kobold that had opened the hatch. To their credit, the competitors reacted quickly, the dwarves pivoting to provide protection with their shields while the other kobolds began to return fire. The reaper was being burned down by all the laser fire, but it had killed one kobold and its shots were blasting chunks out of the shields that the dwarves were holding. Already left in a damaged state, the reaper wouldn’t last long under the groups focused fire.

While it looked like they were going to take out Salter’s reaper with little further trouble, the contenders had forgotten an important fact, they had opened the hatch to the crew quarters, and several were now standing in front of the open hatchway. A flurry of laser pistol shots from the regular kobold MOBS inside the crew quarters lashed out, landing a few lucky hits on the contenders. The remaining contenders all wore some level of armor, armor designed specifically to defeat laser fire, limiting the damage Slater’s MOBS could pump out.

Slater’s attention was drawn from the hatchway and back to the troll who was even now charging the damaged reaper. Sensing the approaching danger, the reaper shifted fire, but only had time to get off two shots before the troll reached it. Kheros was unarmed, but that didn’t seem to hamper his ability to fight and with the screeching of tortured metal, the troll pulled the reaper apart, starting with its rifle arm. Back at the hatchway, the dwarves had readjusted their shields to cover the open hatch while the other kobolds returned fire at Slater’s MOBS. One of the kobold contenders was wounded in the leg and rolled himself away from the fight, casting fearful glances over to the troll as it did so.

Using the hatch coaming and the dwarven shields for cover, the kobold contenders were well protected from incoming fire. Unfortunately for them, well protected wasn’t completely protected. As a kobold leaned around the hatch coaming to fire, a trio of laser shots hit it in the unarmored face. Slater’s kobots had made their presence known and had scored their first kill. Two more kobolds were taken down by his new MOBS insanely accurate fire, the remainder hid behind the bulkhead, unwilling to expose themselves to what appeared to be certain death.

“Cowards, you think you can hide from some stupid Derelict MOBS and still earn a cut? No way, I’m going to take care of this and anyone who doesn’t follow me into the next compartment won’t get a single credit of the prize money,” Kheros said. His threats along with their greed, egged the other contenders on. As they moved in, Slater’s kobots were able to snipe one of the dwarves, adding another kill to their tally.

“Do you think the troll can take on all three of our new kobots, boss?” Pixi asked.

“Maybe, if he gets into melee, I don’t think the upgrades we gave the kobots can stand up to that thing,” Slater said, noticing that the damage the reaper had inflicted on the troll was already starting to heal, those trolls were hard to put down permanently.

“Follow me!” The troll roared as he pushed aside the remaining shield dwarf to charge into the crew quarters compartment. Things hadn’t gone all Slater’s way, and two of the three normal kobold MOBS had been taken out in the initial firefight. The remaining one fired with its laser pistol at the charging troll, scoring hits but doing little to slow the monster down. Almost casually, the troll swatted aside the kobold MOBS ripping its head off in the process as it crashed through the bunks to get at the kobots.

His kobots weren’t intimidated by the rampaging troll and fired laser blast after laser blast into its warty hide. Unlike the rifle fire from the reaper, the lasers seared into their target, the burning damage seemed more painful to the troll and Slater would be willing to bet that the damage would be harder for it to heal. He didn’t want to lose his first kobots to the rampaging troll, he had to do something. Slater reached out and latched onto the strange mana energy pool he had accumulated, unleashing a mana blast. His mana pool took a dip as blast caught the Troll in the side. While it did little damage, the blast did throw the troll into the far bulkhead, stopping his charge and stunning him for a moment.

The kobots didn’t hesitate and continued to pour fire into the now furious troll. As the troll stumbled to his feet, incoming fire peppered Slater’s kobots, dropping one of them. The remaining dwarf and kobolds had followed the troll into the chamber and were joining the fight. Dipping into his mana pool further, Slater erected a shield between his kobots and the incoming fire. His MOBS still had a clear shot at the troll and even with one of their number down the other two continued their accurate barrage, each shot seeking vulnerable areas.

The other contenders didn’t stop either, and with each hit on the shield, Slater could feel more mana drain from his reserve. He could hold the shield in place for a long time against small arms laser fire, his mana pool was large and the drain on it for the shield was minimal. The troll looked like he was on his last legs, the kobots had taken out both of its eyes and the monster was roaring in pain and flailing about as it tried to find its tormentors. With a grunt, Kheros the troll finally dropped to the deck, even his amazing regeneration ability was unable to handle the damage output from the kobots. The MOBS didn’t cease fire on the troll until half of his head had been burned away, guaranteeing that Kheros would not regenerate.

A blast against his shield startled Slater, he kept the shield intact, but his mana took a big dip from the blast. It was the dwarf; he had thrown a grenade and was even now preparing to toss another at the kobots. Slater looked more carefully at the dwarf and could see he had several grenades hooked into his belt. These newer contenders were much better equipped than the dregs he had faced off against during the first few matches.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Pixi asked.

“Of course, watch this,” Slater said as he used his mana manipulation ability to pull the retaining cap and pin off one of the grenades on the dwarf’s belt. The dwarf was too focused on throwing to notice what had happened. When he reached for the next grenade, the dwarf had only had time to give a partial shout as the grenade that he was reaching for exploded. The blast shredded the dwarf and peppered the remaining kobold challengers with shrapnel.

Slater dropped the shield and his kobots went to work on the remaining invaders, who put up only token resistance in their wounded state. The restraint dome slammed down as the final survivors announced their surrender, forcing Slater to call off his MOBS. Two wounded kobolds dragged themselves out of the Derelict, leaving Slater time to take stock of the fight that had just occurred. His magic abilities were limited, but powerful in the right circumstances and his kobots had exceeded his expectations. The only question that remained was what would happen when a disruptor beam hit one.

They should net a nice amount of salvage and biomass from this attack. Multiple, well equipped contestants had fallen, including two dwarves who always seemed to keep all sorts of devices on their persons. While they used less salvage than the reapers, his kobots were still salvage hogs compared to the standard kobold MOBS. Being larger, Slater figured the orcs would prove even more costly.

“Our boys outdid themselves; they were much more accurate in actual combat than I thought they would be,” Pixi said.

“You’re right, but they didn’t seem to want to fire on the move, which could leave them vulnerable. I’ll have to think about some means of defense for them, we can’t count on me being able to have enough mana to protect them in every fight,” Slater replied.

“Maybe some shields like our reapers had? Sure, the kobots couldn’t carry one that heavy, but a scaled down version they could crouch behind might help out quite a bit,” Pixi offered.

“Good call on that Pixi, I was thinking we would have to build fighting positions for them,” Slater replied. The shields were a good idea, and it would be less costly than building fixed defenses inside the Derelict. Once he was able to reset the Derelict, he would have some shields printed up. For now, he would keep the same split in the room between kobots and regular kobold MOBS. It wouldn’t be wise to ramp up the difficulty too fast, some of the viewers may enjoy a slaughter, but Slater knew that for long term growth, it would be better to make things challenging, but not impossible.

“Hey, what gives with the lockdown? Normally they let us go about our business after a group of challengers,” Pixi said.

“I don’t know, maybe the Chixturax kids are back, look the hatch warning is on,” Slater said. The hatch leading from the station into his core room was lit up, letting him know someone was on their way inside. Hopefully, they were bringing him more salvage to work with. A few new compartments would be nice as well. This was a big win, so it should have entertained the viewers enough to warrant some kind of reward.

The hatch cranked open and the visitors weren’t at all what Slater had been expecting. First a monster sized pair of humanoids entered the core room. Each was easily nine feet tall and while the trolls were around the same height, they had a lean and athletic build. These new monsters were built like weightlifters, if weightlifters went around in thick armor and held laser rifles that were double the size of the ones a normal humanoid would wield.

“Ogres, that would be my guess,” Pixi said. These were the muscle; Slater was waiting for whoever was in charge to make themselves known.

The ogres pointed their weapons at Slater’s core as a half dozen heavily armed dwarves followed them inside the core room. It was starting to get a bit cramped inside the relatively small compartment, but a Derelict Core didn’t really have any personal space issues. Behind the dwarven guards, another pair of dwarves entered, lugging an orate wooden chair, finished in crushed red velvet. These dwarves weren’t fighters and wore normal workmanlike coveralls. They placed the chair in front of his core along with a small table. The unarmed dwarves then left the compartment and a new and even stranger figure walked in.

He didn’t really walk, in fact, the newest arrival floated in a foot off the ground. The newcomer was tall and skinny with a light purple skin and no hair on its body that Slater could see. Dressed in expensive looking robes, the new visitor had a bulbous head that housed two large black eyes and instead of a mouth, the creature had several short tentacles that twitched about. It waived its hand and the armed dwarven guards left the compartment. The two ogres looked at the new figure, who floated over and sat on the ornate chair.

“But we’re here to protect you boss,” one of the ogres said. The newcomer stared in reply, and for a moment, it looked like the ogre was going to argue before it turned and left the room with its companion. The ogres slammed the hatch shut and Slater could feel the locks cycle closed. Slater could feel a tingling sensation pass over his core as the newcomer spoke directly into his mind.

“I think we can dispense with this, after all, its not like that has any effect on you, does it,” the voice said. With a motion of the newcomer’s hand, the restraint dome snapped open.

“Now, I believe we have much to discuss Slater, where shall we begin?” The voice asked.

“Boss, I think we’re in trouble,” Pixi whispered to him. Slater had no idea what was sitting in front of him, but he somehow knew in his core that it was the most dangerous being he had ever encountered.