For some reason, the screech had shifted to the bridge's intercoms; a hacking attempt, or was Barix screwing with him?
“Rift plotted!” the slight man said, and Aiden slowed the ship and altered course for the coordinates that popped up on his display. “On my mark . . . now!”
The screeching noise filling the bridge, which might've possibly spread to the nearby corridor's intercoms as well, cut off abruptly, and Aiden gasped in his first breath in what felt like a minute as his mind warped with the familiar sensation of rift travel. The display flickered and the attacking ships disappeared, to be replaced by empty space as far as the sensors could read in all directions.
Safe.
He barely had a moment to relax before he realized the gunner was vaulting over his chair, a cauterizer in one hand and a KFM in the other. The young man called out as he moved in a blur towards the exit leading to the engine room, speaking his words calmly and precisely but at double the normal cadence.
“Riftjumpsuccessfulmovingtorepelboarders!”
Then he was gone. Aiden cursed and grabbed his own cauterizer, bolting after him; the gunner was always quick when it came to repelling boarders, but never this quick. It was obvious he wanted to get to the engine room to protect the two women inside, and while a more sentimental person might assume he was worried about his mother, he obviously had a different motivation.
He was rushing to help Lana, same as Aiden was.
The Last Stand seemed larger than it was because a lot of rooms had been packed into a small area, in and around machinery and vital systems. The corridors led straight through the ship to connect to everywhere in the most efficient manner, meaning it didn't take long at all to sprint the entire length of the vessel.
Unless of course you were the enemy combat androids, and heavy doors were being dropped across your path every six feet or so. But for him and the gunner the path was clear. Actually just for him; the young man was already out of sight ahead and probably widening his lead by the second.
By the time Aiden rounded the last corner before the engine room the fight was almost over. He saw Ali and Fix approaching from the other direction, catching one of the Deek combat androids between them in a furious battle of flailing limbs and firing weapons that hit nothing but bulkheads, threatening to send them all into space with explosive decompression. The Last Stand's two robots prioritized disarming the android to prevent that, leaving the three in a vicious melee that only ended as the Deek boarder was literally ripped to pieces.
The gunner was only a step behind them in neutralizing his enemy, inhumanly fast and accurate with his cauterizer in disabling the combat android's weapons. The boarder rushed to close the distance to the vulnerable human, a fight that should've been laughably one-sided, but the gunner evaded the big android's heavy but blindingly swift blows with the ease and grace of a master martial artist, and wielded his kinetic force multiplier with the precision of a surgeon, smashing joints and finally crushing the robot's head.
It hit the deck with a shudder Aiden felt beneath his feet from all the way down the corridor.
But the sight of the two combat androids being handily dispatched didn't fill him with any particular relief: boarding teams sent three, he saw only two, and the door to the engine room had already been broken through.
Heart in his throat, he rushed past the gunner as the young man ensured his fallen enemy was deactivated. Cauterizer ready, he ducked into the smoke billowing out the shattered doorway and began searching for the remaining android.
In spite of the obscuring haze and the noisemakers scattered around the room jarring his focus, it didn't take long to spot the smoking remains of the final robot six feet inside. Aiden felt his knees buckle slightly in relief as he trained his weapon on the downed boarder, just in case.
“Clear!” he called to Lana and Belix, hoping they were still alive to hear. “All three boarders are down!”
From somewhere in the smoke he heard the Ishivi cursing in relief. “About time. I nearly got my head blown off.”
Aiden paused beside the downed android, confirming it was disabled. “Didn't stop you from blowing this thing to bits,” he observed wryly.
Belix gave a ragged laugh. “Wasn't me, I was too busy hiding so I didn't get blown to bits.”
He frowned, staring down at the melted ruin of well-aimed cauterizer hits that had cleanly disabled the combat android. Fix and Ali had been out in the corridor with him and the gunner, so if Belix hadn't done this then that just left . . .
From somewhere in the smoke he heard frantic gasping, what sounded like either pain from an injury or a full-blown panic attack. He holstered his cauterizer and cautiously approached, relief warring with worry. “Lana? Are you okay?”
The gunner bolted past him, dropping to his knees to wrap his arms around the young woman, who'd been hidden behind a maintenance locker. “Shh,” he said quietly, rocking her gently. “Shh, you're okay. It's over.”
Aiden quickly confirmed that the young woman had no apparent injuries, and his worry was replaced by annoyance and a hint of jealousy; he should've been the one comforting her.
Lana sobbed and hugged the young man back. “Did I get it? Did I stop it before it could hurt Belix?”
“You did,” Aiden replied, dropping into a crouch to rest a hand on her shoulder. “That was some good shooting.” He supposed she had been spending a lot of time in full immersion with the gunner, and the construct's dives were probably all training related. Even so, you didn't develop precision like that in a few days, which meant her performance was mostly luck.
“Incredible shooting,” the gunner agreed, gently rubbing her
