The Black

-earlier-

Captain Alex “Dozer” Collin’s glanced up at the shuttle’s “ramp light” as it flashed red “THIRTY SECONDS!!! HELMS ON!” He bellowed. The now familiar data link spun up in his mind as his helmet sealed into place and pressurized.

“Check one two.” His monotone call out was not to be confused with calm. Every fiber of his being seared with anticipation mixed with violence as “Dozer” Peered out through Captain Collin’s calm features. He subconsciously ran through a double-check of his gear. Including a 50-centimeter Vorath dagger that now rode in ornate alien leather against his right leg. It was the weight of a short sword in earth gravity... in Delmar standard G… it was deadly fast.

“5 bah 5. Link is live” came the drawl of his counterpart and former CO Captain Nico Galanis. The towering Texan’s drawl was crystal clear through his helmet.

“Team 2 is ready” Collin’s reported as the last of his men’s icons linked up and blinked green.

“Confirmed, team 1 likewise. We’re hitt’n the middle. You go fore, I’ll go after. Priority is the bridge and survivors. Send survivors to the shuttles.” Galanis Drawled.

“Roger” Collins responded before swapping to his men’s channels.

“Make ready!” He bellowed. He bore a snarling smile, Hearing the tale tell clattering of magazines slamming home and weapons chambering ammunition. “Alright you Murder monkeys! We are the cavalry!! We make for the bow! We got friendlies mixed with enemies in pockets of resistance. Check your fire as you move! Second squad!! You are on port-side duty! Push survivors toward the shuttles.”

The telltale hiss of venting atmosphere dulled the sound, but a resounding “HURAH!!” still rang through the helmet’s speakers.

“First squad!! you boys are starboard side!! Same thing, watch your fire and push survivors a’midships!” He bellowed. “The fuckers wanna come for us and ours?! Teach them what the MEANS boys!!”

A roar of promised violence rose again just as the bow guns of the shuttle barked, vibrating the deck with their staccato song. The shuttle touched down bow first as the rear ramp dropped.

“On me!!” Dozer howled as he and his men barged out of the shuttle each squad rounding opposite corners of the shuttle unleashing a wall of GAUSS rifle rounds into the survivors of the shuttle's first volleys. 45 seconds later only the armored men of Sol were left standing as the teams split and got to work.

—————————————-

-current time-

Cory Grarzia was covered in blood and gore. He silently thanked whoever designed the new void suits that had been issued out since the Humans had arrived. He was shot in at least a dozen places. His left arm was hanging uselessly from a laser rifle blast to the shoulder joint. His right had taken three laser pistol blasts at least, only one had penetrated. It seemed that his suit had better armor than he had assumed as he had taken no less than 7 laser rifle hits to the chest and two glancing plasma hits that had burned away his overgarments. He, Laris, and one Human by the name of “Jesse” were all that were left. Jesse wielded a human pistol while Laris and Cory both had three-quarters depleted laser pistols. Cory had scoffed at the human crew's love of lowly kinetics until he watched Jesse turn two C’Clarim into shattered ruin from the hydrostatic shock of a supersonic round passing through their insides. This was after Jesse had run his rifle dry hosing the corridor to the bridge with the blood and gore of a Thermian Squad in full armor and 6 beings strong. The door to the bridge was jammed half open and a console, ripped clean off the wall by Jesse, lay in the gap as both obstacle and cover. That had been an unpleasant surprise for Cory, who had ignored most of the reports on Humanities strength. Theirs was not a one-sided fight. Captain Olyvia was down, propped up on a cushion with her suit's left leg providing tourniquet pressure on her upper thigh as she was missing her left leg just above the knee. She was unconscious from the blood loss or the pain. The bridge crew had numbered 8. 4 died in the first seconds. As the Pirates stormed in with laser and melee weapons. Jesse and one other human named Vince lead the counter by literally ripping the helmets off of the two Thermians leading the assault and snapping their knecks with their hands. Vince lay dead from a laser rifle blast through the back of his helmet that signaled the second attack. Jesse’s rifle had turned the second attack into still dripping wall ornamentation as the blood’s water was still boiling off in the vacuum. Unfortunately, that rifle now lay empty on the floor discarded for a sidearm that still had ammunition and a few spare mags.

“I got movement” Jesse’s voice in Cory’s helmet snapped him to reality. “6… no… 7.. 4 Lizards, a wolf, and two Bugs.” He spat. “They have pieces of deck plating in front of them. My pistol won’t get through.”

“Fuck” Cory swore in English. Something about the word spoken in the Human language seemed to convey the sentiment correctly. “It’s been an…”

Cory froze as his helmet crackled, “Give me 20 seconds” a strange calm voice metronomed into his ears.

Jesse broke into a feral grin as he locked eyes with his XO. “This will be good” he said before leaning out and emptied the magazine in his pistol into the oncoming enemy. He aimed for the walls as he sent ricochets along the edges of their attacker’s makeshift armored shields. Fresh splashes of gore signaled at least a few new hits as the whole group crouched, huddling down behind the armor.

Just as the closing pirates lowered the plates to the ground in a sort of wall. They began to fire on the beleaguered bridge crew. Cory caught movement behind them as the most heavily armored void suits he had ever seen rounded the far corner.

Resistance had been heavy, but mostly futile, as Alex’s squads moved through the ship. Human Marine’s armor was designed to handle up to humanity's supersonic kinetic weapons. The relatively low energy and low power laser and plasma weapons largely were ignored by their main armor. Alex was down 3 men from laser rifle shots to their slightly more exposed shoulders, arms and legs. Laser pistols could be ignored completely as “Dozers” team bullied their way through a sea of carnage until they finally reached the bridge’s entrance corridor.

When Captain Collin’s saw the situation, he decided not to order open fire. He simply drew his Vorath dagger, itself a signal, as every one of his first squad drew their own hand-to-hand preferences. His mind absent-mindedly recognized that he had an audience as he and his men crashed into the pirates with the sharpened blades of cold steel.

Cory only looked on. Almost a full bloody minute later, only one Thermian was left. Holding a severed wrist, he crawled backward looking up at the leader of their rescuers. His eyes widened as the armored figure wielded a massive dagger of a type Cory had only seen in myth and deep legend. The figure knelt on one knee next to the last pirate before a deft flick of his arms seperated the pirates head from his shoulders leaving a perfectly cut line in the deck plating now quickly being covered in arterial spray.

“CLEAR!” Cory heard through the open channel. His blood froze as cold as ice as he realized the humans before him had dispatched the entire attacking force, in the corridor, without a single word or sound. The armored leader sheathed his blade before approaching the survivors. “Cory Grarzia?”

Cory could only nod.

“Captain Alex Collin’s, get to work stabilizing the ship. I’ll leave 3 men with you as security. We need to get your wounded to care.” He turned “Send Doc up! We got wounded!!”

With that Captain Collins turned and departed, “Three pull security! The rest, on me. We have more decks to clear!”

—————————————-

Patrick crouched inside the engineering tunnels of Celestial Traveler. He was not a large man, and he had never felt the need to learn how to fight. Yet, here he was, with 3 Delmar engineers and 2other human ones, all crouched in the crawl space hoping for a miracle. He decided to peek one more time. To his horror he saw one of the pirates poking at the Terran-made Fusion core. Warning lights flashed as the idiot came dangerously close to blowing everyone to space dust.

‘Fuck fuck fuck fuck’ he thought. There were three of them. All armed, and Patrick had nothing but an old revolver his pop sent him off with. He wasn’t even sure the ancient chemical ammunition was still good. He had grabbed it out of nostalgia more than need when the alarm sounded and the pirates came.

“If they keep going, we won’t be here much longer…” one of the Delmar engineers, a female by the name of Camorra whispered, crawling up to him.

“I know Cammy,” Patrick used her nickname the Humans had taken to. “Fuck. Tell the boys back there that I’m going to need em.” He whispered.

Moments later the other three humans were up next to him “What’s up, boss?”

“They are fuckin with the fusion controls... almost blown us all to hell twice so far. We need to take them... I’ll go first… but this thing only has six shots. I need you to hit them from the side while I make noise” he grumbled.

“Alright boss, give us 20 seconds to get ready,” the three said as they silently slid out of the service tunnel that was behind one of the desks.

Cammy crawled back up and watched the others get in position. “Will it work?”

“Pops was meticulous... I hope it does” Patrick slowly pulled the ancient K frame from his pocket. He quietly slid the action open and checked the rounds. They seemed clean enough. “Oh, you mean the plan… We don’t have a choice” He murmured realizing she wasn’t talking about the weapon.

He almost dropped one of the rounds as Cammy leaned in and blew him a kiss over the comms. “For luck” she whispered before pulling back into the tunnel with the rest.

Patrick allowed himself a small smile, “No pressure. Girls are watching.” He chuckled to himself before taking a deep breath.

—————————————

Captain Galanis wiped the blade of his old K-Bar on his suit’s pant leg before re-sheathing it as the eliminated pirate sentries guarding the entrance to engineering were dragged away. His men lined up to breach.

Nico activated the controls as the door slid open. His hand shot out in a halt command as he saw a young human engineer jump out from behind a console wielding a blued Smith and Wesson.

————————————

Patrick jumped to his feet and bellowed his hatred over open frequency, not so much as to scare his opponents, but to attract their attention. It worked, as he was the only non-pirate visible at the moment. His pop’s old gun felt solid in his hands, evoking memories of his childhood, plinking cans in the Nevada desert. He leveled the weapon in front of him, seeing the familiar sights in front of him line up on the nearest pirate.

The pirate’s head exploded as a 125 grain jacketed soft point entered the criminals helmet just below the visor at over 420 meters per second, Painting its insides with his brains.

Patrick’s hand hurt as the pistol bucked in his hand, he had forgotten how different full power 357 magnum was from the 38’s his pops let him plink with. He lined up on the second pirate who was already charging him. His pistol bucked a second time and the pirate’s shoulder turned to mist as its left arm fell to the floor, a third shot into the lizard chest ceased its thrashing. The third never got a chance to run, he was tackled by the three other humans, which shattered 4 of its ribs; and it was being held down on the floor, Patrick’s blood boiled as he walked over to the pirate. Noticing the murdered men and women, he called friends and colleagues, haphazardly piled up in one corner of the room... the ones that didn’t make it to the service tunnels…. He leaned over the struggling but subdued Thermian on the floor. He leaned in so their visors touched, making sure that even if it wasn’t on wideband, he would be heard. “Why!” He bellowed in common.

“Ordersss.” The Thermian grinned “by now, our leader is tasting the flesh of your cap….” The pirate’s head popped like a balloon as Patrick pulled the trigger. He had tucked the pistol up under the pirates chin... The 357 bullet entered the pirates lower jaw, mushrooming to the size of a silver dollar before exiting the top of its skull. The contact shot’s bullet not only sent hydrostatic shock through the cranial cavity of the lizard, but the firing gasses of the kinetic weapons chemical reaction were forced into the helmet at extreme velocity and temporary wound cavity created detonated the lizard’s head with enough force to crack its visor. There was nothing recognizable left as the overpressure sprayed blood and brain matter out both the entrance and the exit hole.

Patrick and his colleagues stood up from the lifeless pirate, and Patrick froze as he heard his helmet’s com crackle to life. “Well, Gawd Dayum, what the hell you need us for” came a very Texan voice over his radio. Patrick turned to the entrance to see an entire squad of human marines standing there casually watching with their commander walking up to him, “Nico Galanis. Dam good shootin’ son. How many survivors ya got. Let’s get em to the shuttles.”

“We can’t. These dumbasses nearly sent the core critical. I need everyone still capable to help me get the grid back under control, before we all go Big Badda Boom.” Patric said, holstering the ancient weapon with new respect.

“Ha! Well, I ain’t gonna argue wit ya! We’ll take the wounded and leave two guards. The mop-up should be over inside the hour.” Nico drawled. “We’ll let you know when to repressurize.”

Patrick nodded as his surviving engineering team crawled out of their hiding place. “Let's get to work, people!” He ordered as he turned for his own console.

————————————

“The Marines report all clear, admiral!” The Coms station yelled. A cheer rose from the Bridge crew and Clint let them for a moment before raising his hand, commanding silence. “We got a long way to go, Celest is hurt worse than we thought. Captain, launch fighters, standard CAP rotations. We are going to be here a while.”

“Aye admiral” Captain Harrison responded, “alright people let’s get to work, I want anything not flying legitimate beacons dead or being watched carefully. We OWN the black in this part of space for as long as it takes.”

Clint nodded to his flag captain before turning towards the door, “good work everyone” he said before departing. He had a report to write.

______________________________________________________________________________

Cory Grarzia sagged into the chair of the assault shuttle that had born his saviors 44 hours later. Celest was a broken hulk. Her Main drives were completely destroyed, and she was incapable of holding atmosphere. Her Core had been stabilized by the surviving engineering team, but the power grid was too badly damaged to risk relying on emergency containment fields. Cory was the last off the ship. She was shut down, and to be taken into the Galvestons main Destroyer Docking cavity amidship. There she would be clamped down and taken under tow back to Delmar. Cory looked out over her as they departed. Celest had been his home for 3 years… His pack shifted at his feet. He had been given enough time to pack up his belongings, as had the rest of the survivors. The rest would be cataloged and sent to the next of kin upon reaching Delmar Shipyards.

“Kid, you held. Whatever happens next, remember that.” came a rumbling voice next to him. Captain Alex Collin looked across the shuttle to him, being one of the few Humans who approached the shorter end of a Delmar male's height at slightly over 2 meters tall. Alex was not the visionary of wrath that Cory had seen putting pirate scum to the steel. His face was relaxed, kind even as he looked over at the traumatized first officer.

“I never want to remember any of this….” Cory quipped, staring down at his hands, remembering the blood staining on his void suit from tending to his captain, she was alive, but only just.

Alex stood and walked over to sit next to Cory. “Son... no… you are a warrior now. Cory…” Cory’s head snapped up as the man remembered his name, “Do not try to forget. It will haunt you until you do something desperate or stupid… You are not the same man you were this morning. None of us survive our first taste of war unchanged. Some choose that path. You were forced down it. You must embrace that change, make it your own, become its master so that it does not become yours.”

Cory leaned forward with his elbow on his knees, “I’m no Apex… I don’t know if I can do that.” He balled his single working fist, “Those fucking pirates took my home from me…” His voice turned into a growl as his fists tightened. He stopped short, startling himself at his own actions… His pause of silence was filled with a flood of all that had happened. “I’ll never be able to go back will I”

“That’s the funny thing about change. It happens whether you like it or not.” Alex drew his Vorath Dagger, big enough to be a short sword for a human, “It happens whether you like it or not” he thumbed the edge carefully, looking for any flat spots or dullness before inspecting the tip and sliding it back into its sheath.

“Is that what changed you?” Cory asked, unable to not stare at the weapon from a species that was relegated to myth and legend, until they threw an asteroid at his home-world.

“Aye, it did. It’s how I got my nickname. Those big gray fuckers ambushed us when we captured their ship. It was my first real mission as an officer. A spear to my sergeant’s arm before the big bastard holding it drew this blade and charged me... I hit that fucker right in the gut with my shoulder and plowed him into the plating before blowing his head off, but not before he stuck me…” he drew the blade again, “with this.” He handed it to Cory. It felt unusably heavy in his hands. He felt its heft, unable to believe entirely he was holding it as he gave it back, “I figure it's fair and all. The other guy doesn’t need it anymore, and he gave it to me before he died anyway.” Alex finished with a dark chuckle.

Cory caught himself amused at the joke, “seems fair” he added with his own snort. “Thank you, Captain. I think I need some time to think” He admitted.

Cory got a hefty slap on the back, “Good man. Take your time, these things are not to be rushed.” The Human stood and returned to his original seat, honoring Cory’s request.

Cory was still staring at his hands when the Shuttle thumped lightly on the hanger deck of Galveston’s port side hanger 1.