Derelict 3, Chapter 9.

It might be a few days before I'm able to post again, but I will have another by Sunday or so. 

Chapter 9.

There was some delay between the time Slater had finished his preparations and when the next batch of contenders entered his makeshift Derelict. He couldn’t tell if that was due to the lack of interest in his core after his humiliating defeat or if there was some other factor in play. When the red warning light and countdown started, Slater and Pixi were ready for something to happen. Sitting around a waiting was far too reminiscent of his time spent floating through space.

The entry to his territory hadn’t changed from the last incursion, three oversized hatches opened, and a new group of intruders charged in, the blue beams of disruptor weapons leading the way. These intruders were familiar, these were invaders that Slater had no qualms about his MOBS gunning down, these were gnomes. Like many of the contenders challenging his Derelict, these gnomes wore body armor that did little to protect them from the weapons that Slater’s MOBS employed. With lasers being the most common weapon for the majority of the races, their armor was geared toward stopping heat and light-based weapons, doing little to protect against the armor piercing explosive rounds his guns fired.

His kobolds and orcs opened up on the attackers, gunning down leading gnomes and causing frenzied shouts to change out weapons from the others. True to form, Slater’s kobolds were scoring a decent hit rate and the orcs that did land hits, seemed to do so more to luck and the small battlefield area, than any skill on their part. More and more gnomes poured out, threatening to overrun his forces with their sheer numbers. The orcs then made a smart move, pulling grenades instead of continuing with their poorly aimed fire. Four explosions went off just in front of the barricades, shredding the attacking gnomes. Normally, a force brutalized this much, this quickly, would have surrendered, but something kept these gnomes going, something that revealed itself as a final mob of gnomes pushed their way into the compartment, laser pistols blazing.

On the head of a gnome safely hidden in the back of the attackers was the conical red hat of command. If Slater’s forces could take it out, they would likely win the fight. As it stood, the gnomes had gotten lucky and a laser beam found its way into the firing port of two of the barricades, inflicting deadly headshots on two of his kobolds and leaving his volume of fire cut in half. The gnomes continued past the sides of the barricade and engaged the orcs and kobolds in melee.

A quick count showed that the gnomes still had fifteen attackers and Slater was down to only four orcs and two kobolds. His orcs were putting up a good fight, unable to miss at short range and their superior strength and size gave them a reach advantage when using their bayonets. The gnomes had blades that were sized somewhere between a knife and a shortsword, and they wasted no time in surrounding the defenders and stabbing away at the orcs and kobolds who couldn’t defend themselves from every angle.

Just when it looked like he was facing a second loss in a row, his bilge rats entered the fight. Dropping from the ceiling were ten of his ferocious defenders. Slater had started the battle with a dozen, but two had caught some grenade fragments earlier, their claws thankfully still grasped the metal rings in the ceiling, preventing them from falling down earlier and giving away their presence. No less than three of the rats dropped onto the gnome with the red hat of command, claws and teeth burrowing into armor not designed to stop that type of attack.

“Pliggleflaz, get these off me, ow! Hey okay, we surrender, stop eating me!” The gnome with the red had screeched as he ran toward the hatch he had entered from. Slater really wanted to finish him off but was forced to order his MOBS to stop when the restraint dome slammed shut over his core. Ten sad little gnomes limped their way out of the compartment, leaving behind nearly thirty of their kin. Before the hatches closed, the gnome in the now shredded red had poked his head out shaking his fist at the MOBS.

“Listen up you Chixturax bugs, don’t think you can defeat the Elgenflazzle clan so easily. You stole our recipe to buy this core and we’re going to see it destroyed unless you pay up now and pay up big,” the gnome said before ducking out of the compartment just before the hatch closed. In his haste the red hat of command dropped from his head, and his hand reached in to retrieve it at just the wrong time. With a meaty clang, the hatch sealed, leaving behind the hand and the red hat of command it was still grasping. They were too thick for sound to penetrate, but Slater thought he could make out some high-pitched screams from the injured gnome.

“Bwa ha ha, that was a classic ending there, Slater. With that finish, our number of followers should skyrocket. Man, I hope those gnomes keep coming, there’s nothing I like our MOBS fighting more than a gnome,” Pixi said. It was true the that the end to the fight was pretty dramatic, and it was one Slater found himself actually enjoying. The fact that Slater was now in possession of the battered red hat of command only made things better. As his drones began to process all the salvage, he ordered them to leave the red hat alone, placing it behind one of the barricades. If the gnomes returned, he’d have one of his orcs wear it just to taunt them.

“It sure looks like they don’t intend on giving up anytime soon if they entered big of a group of challengers into the arena just because we had one of their cookie recipes. There sure were a lot of them, I wonder if the arena has any limit to the number of contenders that can enter?” Slater asked.

“I’m sure Hixrax can find out, but I wouldn’t put it past these administrators to let anything go if the challengers paid enough up front,” Pixi said.

“Well done, Slater, you’ve come back strong from the prior defeat,” Hixrax said as the comm link opened.

“Thanks, any update on a location for our ships?” Slater asked.

“Yes, if you don’t mind building remotely, we have a place that will work, but we need another 25,000 credits before we can secure it. It’s an old cargo loading dock that was abandoned years ago when more efficient cargo platforms were created for the station. Other than some smugglers, nobody goes there anymore so we can buy it for a fair price,” Hixrax said.

“Great, I still need your ship designs, the sooner you can get them to me the better, I don’t want the construction drones sitting idle because I’m working on the final designs still,” Slater said.

“I will have them sent over shortly; I think the elders wish to speak with you before a final design is selected. Now, we need to end our conversation before it’s noticed. Here are the latest station rankings, well done, we will talk soon,” Hixrax said, cutting off the link. Slater looked at the results of their latest fight.

Sarton Station Ranking for the Chixturax core shard: 273/274.

Total views: 11144.

Victory/Defeat: 15/1.

Total kills: 119.

Favorite MOBS: Automated drones.

Fan favorite MOBS: Orcs.

Number of fan followers: 67.

Credits earned in last match: 124.

“Looks like we’re moving up, Slater, only 272 more ranks to jump before we’re number one. At least we’re getting our fans back,” Pixi said.

Slater was glad to see improvement but was a bit baffled about how the station calculated the favorite MOBS. Was his favorite the most often used? How did the fans vote for their favorite? He supposed it really didn’t matter and got to work rebuilding his forces. With the additional salvage from the fallen gnomes’ gear, he had enough to build a ladder for the bilge rats to climb up to their ambush points. The core was up to 94% and he felt he could add a few more units. Just when he was going to print up some more rats, one of the walls to the entry compartment opened, giving him some new space to work with.

“Hey, that’s good, look, they left us a housewarming gift,” Pixi said. The new compartment was the same as his others, only this one had a half-dozen crates sitting in the middle. A quick peek from one of the construction drones, confirmed it was a supply of scrap metal for him to use. The quality of the scrap was garbage, but Slater didn’t care, his drones and nanobots could turn garbage into gold if he needed to.

The old entry hatches were replaced by a smooth metal wall as replacement hatches were placed in the new compartment. His Derelict was finally getting some shape instead of a boring and dangerous straight line of compartments. Having been built off one of the side walls of his old entry chamber, the new compartment would force contestants to have to make at least one turn as they attacked.

His drones were taking in the salvage and Slater had to think about the best use for it. Normally, he would have just pushed out more MOBS but if he wanted to move up the rankings and start making some serious credits, he needed to put on a good show. To that end, Slater held off on creating extra MOBS and took some time to look at his Derelict design. The place was boring, just a collection of four empty compartments and his core room.

“So, Pixi, I think its time to spice things up,” Slater said.

“Yep boss, it’s time to make this place stand out, what were you thinking?” Pixi asked.

“Let’s start with making each compartment a different experience. I think the viewers would love to see some variety in the fighting. I doubt that the other core shards are doing much to make things interesting other than creating deadly mobs of limited variety. We’ve got a lot in our database to work with, so we’ll start the contestants with something not too difficult,” Slater said.

“Woah, Slater, you do know that we get more cash if you stop them early, don’t you?” Pixi asked.

“Sure, but I’m beginning to think the real money isn’t in stopping them quickly, it’s in building an audience of fans. So, we get a little less on each run because they make it a few more compartments deeper into our Derelict, but a larger fan base and a higher ranking should more than overcome that,” Slater said.

“Nice, so what’s the plan for the entry compartment? Pixi asked.

Slater didn’t reply and instead got to work. The entry compartment was a bit more difficult to design given that he could never really know where the intruders would enter from. A mobile defensive force might work better to show off the action than the heavy fixed defenses he was using before. For defenders, he would stick with the bilge rats, a half dozen of them, along with a pair of the grenade versions. A few experiments with creating obstacles led to Slater learning how to make things lighter and use substantially less salvage. The decorations just needed to block line of sight and not provide hard cover for his mobs.

His bilge rats were turned loose as Slater went about placing several empty storage crates and broken equipment on the floor. Contestants entering the Derelict would see what looked like a partially destroyed cargo bay. The rats weren’t that tough, so he did need to beef up the challenge a bit, but what to do?

“Hey Pixi, any ideas on a trap for in here?” Slater asked.

“Hmm, that might be a bit difficult since we can’t dig into the deck. Oh, I got it, I think. You know how our reapers were taken out, well, most of the contestants probably know that too, why not put a destroyed reaper in a corner, only leaving the weapon system still operable. It can light up anyone not paying attention. In fact, between rounds we can have the drones move it around the compartment, or maybe even hide it inside an empty crate. Hey, sometimes we can even delete it and leave them wandering around the compartment looking for a threat that isn’t even there,” Pixi offered. It was a good idea, and he created the upper torso of a reaper along with the weaker, and less salvage intensive, assault rifle arm. It was propped up so that the weapon could traverse and hit anything in front of the hatch leading to the next compartment.

The next compartment was designed like the crew quarters in his old ship, with some bunks and footlockers. As far as defenders for this compartment, he created six kobolds and dressed them in matching spacesuits to create the image this was a real starship that the contestants were boarding. Unlike his old Derelict, the footlockers weren’t armored, so his kobolds wouldn’t have any real cover, at least not yet. Instead of having the kobolds in full battle rattle, he equipped them like an off-duty shift, with laser pistols and no armor or grenades. To improve the challenge, a pair of sneaky bilge rats were hidden inside two of the footlockers, ready to leap out and attack anything getting too close.

His next compartment would be the mess hall. A row of tables was placed in the center of the compartment along with a working food synthesizer. Slater thought it would be a nice touch for the viewers to watch and guess whether the contestants would risk eating from the dispenser or not. Inside here, the difficulty ramped up and he placed six orcs with full armor and weapons. Unlike the earlier compartments, these big green bruisers would be ready when the intruders arrived.

For the final compartment before his core room, Slater build the ship’s bridge. A series of control consoles were manned by a group of eight, well-armed gnomes. He had just enough salvage to reinforce the consoles to give the crew some protection from incoming fire. The “captain” gnome wore the red had of command and was equipped with several grenades as well as a pair of laser pistols. For weapons, the other crew had laser carbines with bayonets attached. Sure, human style rifles would be more dangerous, but the lasers seemed to fit the gnomes more than a firearm would. He could only hope that some gnomes were among the attackers, the red hat of command should really rile them up.

Slater was at his limit of control; the bridge crew had even forced him to scrap a pair of construction drones back in Ixlab’s storage room. His salvage was nearly gone as well, but he was no prepared to give the viewers a good show, and hopefully, make some serious cash. The icing on the cake was that his core should be fully healed by the time the next group completed a run through his Derelict. Once that happened, who knew what Slater would be capable of.