Three Square Meals Ch. 090

The Kirrix were still continuing their futile efforts to chase the Invictus around the Alpha Tauri system. While their pursuit was proving hopeless, they had learned to spread out enough that Calara couldn't take down more than one drone carrier at a time. Still, there were only twelve left, the Latina methodically obliterating one every minute as soon as the Nova Lances had cooled again.

Faye swung her legs underneath her as she sat on the edge of Calara's Tactical Console. The Kirrix had launched another huge swarm of drone ships, but it seemed they'd learned from another past mistake and hadn't attempted to engage the Invictus without capital ship support. As a result, the cute purple sprite was left with nothing to do except watch this deadly game of cat and mouse. Although in this game, there was a pack of sluggish cats and the lightning-fast mouse was packing a very big gun.

"Maybe once those new heatsinks are installed, you should ask Dana to reconfigure the Nova Lances to fire faster?" Faye suggested, watching the heat slowly dissipating on the weapon loadout display.

Calara was relaxing in her chair, twiddling her thumbs while she waited for the Nova Lances to ready themselves to fire again. "That was my first thought too. I spoke to Dana about it and it's not just heat dissipation that's an issue. Apparently, we'd risk blowing power relays if we kept pumping that much power into the guns without giving them adequate recovery time. She mentioned something about phase-shifted impedance, but the explanation made my eyes glaze over, so I just took her word for it."

Faye laughed and nodded. "Yeah, that does make sense."

"How's John getting on?" Calara asked her lover, sensing the blonde's sudden anxiety.

Alyssa frowned, a worried look on her face. "The shit just hit the fan! They got into a big gunfight!"

The Nova Lances in the weapon loadout display shifted from red to green and Calara frowned at it in irritation as it chimed softly. "Let me just kill another drone carrier, then tell me what's happening."

Nodding distractedly, Alyssa brought the Invictus around, lining the battlecruiser up with another randomly chosen Kirrix capital ship. By doing so, she shortened the life-expectancy of its ten-thousand insectoid crewmen to a little over four seconds.

***

Sakura paced nervously behind the brutalist Trankaran office block, only stopping herself when she realised she was digging a gaping trench with the weight of the Valkyrie's feet. After checking the left avenue again and finding it clear, she carefully approached the right side, this time using the retro-thrusters on minimal power to counter some of the mech's weight. Sneaking a glance around the corner of the building, she crouched down so that she could maintain surveillance on the hive ship.

Using the scope built into the Valkyrie's targeting suite, she engaged its massive magnification to zoom right in on all the activity in front of the bloated Kirrix vessel. The insectoid race had been scouring the city for civilians, capturing them and herding them back towards the hive ship. Some of the Trankarans had resisted, and it seemed they'd been wounded with the excruciatingly painful neutron rifles as an example to the others. The injured were being ferried towards the hive ship on multi-legged sleds, the dozens of tiny limbs rippling like a centipede as it crossed the ground. The rest of the civilians were marched forward in long queues, herded towards an open door in the hive ship's hull by their Kirrix guards.

Unable to resist staring at the awful sight, a quick burst of activity drew Sakura's attention. A Trankaran child tried to run towards a bulky male rolling past on one of the trollies, but she was swiftly intercepted by an adult female. Sakura zoomed in closer, unable to tear her eyes away from the dramatic scenes. The child was crying for what must have been her father, while her mother tried to comfort her, picking her up in her arms and rubbing her back.

Sakura felt her throat thickening up as she tried to swallow, knowing the terrible end awaiting these poor civilians. She pulled the targeting focus back a bit, while wiping away the tears welling in her eyes, then followed the line of civilians as it snaked closer to the hive ship. Frowning in confusion, she watched as the men and women were separated from younger children at gunpoint, Kirrix soldiers ushering away the smallest of the Trankarans.

*Why would the Kirrix split up the civilians?* she asked Alyssa, wanting to know, but dreading the answer all the same. *They're taking away all the children...*

There was a lengthy pause before Alyssa replied. When she did, her voice sounded haunted. *They're too small for infestation...*

Sakura felt a sudden surge of relief, but Alyssa's tone sent icy fingers crawling up her spine. *What happens to them instead?* she asked in a deathly whisper, her eyes wide with fear as she waited for an answer.

*The Kirrix don't waste anything... newly hatched grubs need to be fed...* Alyssa replied, her voice quiet and subdued.

Sakura's heart lurched in her chest and she swung the Valkyrie's focus back to the mother and her daughter. The Trankaran woman was speaking hurriedly to the little girl as they approached the point they'd be separated. Sakura instinctively knew what she was saying: "Be brave, my little one. I love you so much!"

She felt the desperate urge to intervene and save them, but knew that she might be risking billions more lives in the process. Sakura felt that she owed it to them to remember the horrific sacrifice these poor people were being forced to make. Unable to help herself, she zoomed in on the little girl, wanting to try and freeze the image of her face in her mind.

What she saw there made Sakura's blood run cold. She'd seen that look before...

It felt like a lifetime ago; Adriana Tilvanoni begging Shinatobe to spare her two children while their home went up in flames around them. Adriana's son and daughter had looked on in horror as the merciless cyborg killer had butchered their mother. Shinatobe had then turned her blades on the son, the daughter looking up at her with a strange expression on her face. Behind her raw terror was a look of dreadful clarity. A brutal understanding that the world was not the wonderful place that she had always thought it was, protected from danger as she'd been by her mother's love. It was a stark realisation that the universe was, in fact, full of terrible monsters that preyed on the weak and helpless, sparing them no mercy.

The Trankaran girl had that look in her eyes now. It was a horrific, twisted piece of knowledge that no child should ever be exposed to.

*Sakura...?* Alyssa asked in a low voice, an undercurrent of warning in her tone. *What are you doing?*

The Asian girl rose from her crouch, the huge mech copying her actions.

*Exactly what John trained me to,* Sakura said, her voice full of cold fury as she stepped boldly into the street. *Be his instrument of Justice...*

She broke into a run, the Valkyrie leaping forward in huge strides as she charged down the street. The quad Photon Lasers on the mech's back swung around, lining up with the bloated ship of horrors that had been preying on the defenceless...

***

"Oh fuck!" Alyssa swore, darting a look of panic at Calara.

The Latina stared at her in alarm. "What is it? What's wrong?"

"It's Sakura, she's charging the hive ships!" the blonde blurted out incredulously.

Faye sat up sharply, her cute face set in a steely uncompromising mask. "Bringing in the Raptor to provide covering fire..."

Calara darted a glance at the Tactical Map, her eyes widening as she gaped at the Kirrix fleet. "Oh crap!"

Alyssa followed her lover's gaze and felt her heart lurch. The drone carriers had abandoned the pursuit of the Invictus and were now heading back towards Khalgron, the vast swarm of drone fighters racing ahead of them...

***

The window in the third carriage imploded, shattered by the salvo of neutron bolts striking the side of the train. Irillith recoiled from the shower of reinforced glass fragments, but managed to keep her hands squarely on the train's engine.

John grabbed Dana's shoulder and brought her down to a crouch. "Keep driving the train, but stay in cover," he said, his tone firm.

She nodded, not taking her eyes off the control panel, and patted him on the hand. "Go! I've got this."

He nodded and ran back through the second carriage, his eyes widening when he saw a flurry of neutron bolts flashing through the carriage at the end of the train. "Is anyone hurt?!"

Tashana had ducked down into cover and she poked her head around the door frame, her twin pistols held in her hands. "We're good. Return fire?"

He met her furious gaze and nodded. "From this carriage, not that one. The Kirrix are spraying the whole train at the moment, but we want to encourage them to aim for us, not accidentally hit Dana or Irillith!"

She quickly nodded her understanding, scampering past him as she hugged the right wall and peeked over the window frame to get a better view of their attackers. She ducked a second later, just as a spray of neutron bolts struck the second carriage, one of them smashing the window. Tashana recovered quickly, rising up and taking careful aim with her Quantum pistols before firing back. John couldn't see where her shots landed from where he stood by the door, but he knew just how deadly she was with those guns. Just as he was about to join her, Rachel strode past him carrying the Pulse Cannon.

"Irillith was a bit busy... she said I could have a go!" Rachel explained, an excited gleam in her eyes.

She stood brazenly in front of the window and placed an armoured boot on the seat against the wall. Tilting up the elegant support weapon, her eyes narrowed as she pulled the trigger, lighting up the interior of the carriage with strobing blue light.

John dashed over to the wall on her left, hugging the support strut. "Rachel! Get into cover!" he yelled at her in alarm.

Her stormy grey eyes flicked his way for a second, showing confusion at his stern command. "Why? I'm still fully shielded!"

He blinked in surprise for a moment, his lifetime of combat experience suddenly feeling slightly out-of-kilter with the wondrous new tech that Dana had developed. Although Rachel's aggressive stance went against every bit of training he'd received, he realised she wasn't in any immediate danger, at least not yet. He raised his Quantum rifle and aimed down at the Kirrix forces, watching them scurrying along the passage set into the canyon wall opposite the bridge.

Spotting a stationary Kirrix trooper who was firing a neutron rifle at the passing train, John lined up a shot with its chest and gently squeezed the trigger. The hyper-accelerated slug ripped across the crevasse, leaving a blue contrail in its wake, the slug hitting the insectoid soldier square in the thorax. While the Kirrix soldiers were tough and resilient, the shot still managed to utterly destroy its upper torso, sending the head and arms flying in a shower of sticky green blood. Unbeknown to John, the bullet continued onwards, hitting a second soldier deeper within that throng. The round struck it in the femur, severing the limb in another explosion of green ichor.

John scanned the gaps in the columns, searching for more targets. He spotted one of the larger overseer bugs moving amongst the horde and remembering Rachel's theory about the hive-mind. Placing the crosshairs on its seven-foot-tall body, he lifted the Quantum rifle's barrel a fraction to sight on its more ornate chitinous helmet. Just as he was about to pull the trigger and decapitate the ugly insect, a savage burst of blue laser bolts swept across his target, cutting the overseer in half. He lowered his rifle and watched in morbid fascination as Rachel strafed the gallery with an unending hail of laser fire.

What had once been a relatively ordered attack by regimented Kirrix troops was reduced to absolute bedlam. Legless soldiers thrashed on the floor, while one that had lost an arm tried to fire back one-handed, the shots sailing harmlessly wide. Any hit in the thorax practically exploded, half-melted body parts sailing through the air and hitting their fellow soldiers, until the metal floor was littered with twitching insectoid limbs.

Rachel turned the gallery into a charnel house, the bright blue storm of energy bolts scything through everything in its path. Unfortunately, the Pulse Cannon proved equally devastating to the reinforced columns, carving out large chunks of metal wherever the laser bolts hit. One was chopped in half, Rachel's indiscriminate fire striking it with several shots that blew the pillar apart.

After suppressing the Kirrix fire, she snatched a glance at him and grinned, a look of elation on her face. "I know what Dana's getting me for my birthday!" she gushed, glancing down at the huge gun in her arms.

John laughed then pointed to the disemboweled column. "Better be careful with the collateral damage. Shooting too many of them might cause a cave-in that takes us with it!"

She nodded, taking a deep breath and reining in her wild enthusiasm. When Rachel resumed her fire, she was much more careful this time, aiming short controlled bursts between the pillars. John took aim again, but ignored the smaller Kirrix soldiers and searched for one of the much larger creatures instead. They were at least triple the size of an overseer, making them much too large to fit between the columns and join in the gunfight. Instead, they ignored it and continued plodding towards the fortress.

He started tracking one of the hulking six-limbed monsters, watching the reticle predict its path with the targeting assist that Dana had incorporated into the armour's HUD. Waiting patiently for the creature to clear one of the pillars, John kept the reticle centred on its enormous abdomen and gently squeezed the trigger. The Quantum rifle barked, launching the round at incredible velocity towards his target. There was a gout of green blood as the slug punched into the beast's hide, but it didn't even flinch at the impact.

Tashana noticed his shot and when she turned and saw the look of surprise on his face, she shouted over to him, "I've tried too! I hit one of them eight times and the bastard's still going!"

The hail of neutron bolts from the Kirrix intensified, peppering the side of the train and making the carriage vibrate with scores of hits. One of those sickly-green energy blasts hit Rachel in the chest, or at least it would have done if her shield hadn't flared a bright blue, causing the defensive bubble to ripple with the impact. She ducked back down below the window ledge and crouched beside the seat.

"Thank you, Dana," she said with a grin, completely unscathed by the hit.

John was about to reply, when a deafening explosion rocked the carriage, the train squealing as the right side was lifted clear of the magnetic rails. He only just managed to grab the window frame in time, clamping hold with his left hand to avoid being thrown backwards. Rachel was knocked from her feet, skidding across the carriage and barely managing to hang onto the Pulse Cannon. Tashana staggered back a couple of steps but was able to retain her balance, steadying herself by the doorframe as she threw a frantic glance at her sister. The train righted itself with a booming crash, landing on the rails again and sending bone-rattling tremors through the carriages.

"What the fuck was that?!" Dana cried out, staring wild-eyed over her shoulder at her passengers.

Doing his best to ignore the barrage of neutron bolts being fired up at them from the pillar-lined passageway across the gorge, John quickly searched through the heaving mass of insectoid creatures. A few seconds later there was a whistling sound and another missile raced overhead, leaving a billowing grey plume behind it. The heavy thump of an explosion followed shortly afterwards as the missile struck the ceiling. He followed that trail back to its source and spotted a burly overseer with a broad-muzzled heavy weapon on its shoulder.

"Bigger ones with missile launchers!" he yelled, pointing frantically towards the tunnel across the ravine. "Not at the ledge, a few metres back!"

Rachel and Tashana nodded, taking up firing positions at the windows again. John lined up a shot on the Overseer he'd spotted, knowing a solid hit at centre mass might not kill it outright, but would definitely stop it shooting at them. A millisecond before he pulled the trigger, it was hit twice in the thorax, the rounds from Tashana's twin pistols striking it at the same time. Smashing dinner-plate sized holes through its torso, the Overseer crumpled in on itself, its upper body utterly destroyed.

Sorely missing Alyssa's uncanny ability to coordinate the girls' target selection, John quickly found another of the oversized Kirrix troopers. He wasted no time in snapping off a couple of rounds, caving in the Overseer's head and splattering the surrounding troops in green blood. Pausing for a second to study the nearby soldiers, he couldn't see any obvious signs of distress or confusion, which seemed to debunk Rachel's theory.

As the train surged closer to their destination, the three of them continued to pick off any Kirrix equipped with missile launchers that they could see. The train was being struck by a storm of neutron bolts now, some of which would have struck John's armour if not for its protective field. He fired back at another target and his rifle's ammo-counter display beeped, warning him he was out of ammo. Ducking back behind the wall he took the opportunity to glance at his HUD, checking the shield-strength indicator and saw that it'd changed status from green to yellow. He ejected his spent magazine then slapped in a fresh one, reloading for the first time this mission. Knowing this might be a long haul, he'd been very sparing with his shooting, sticking to single, well-aimed shots so far.

The sound of another huge explosion echoed through the carriage, but this blast sounded much less severe than the first, only causing the carriage to vibrate this time. John relaxed, thinking that the missile must have sailed wide and hit the opposite wall. That explosion was shortly followed by a second, then a third, the vibration effect on the carriage getting more severe with each one, until the train started swaying ominously.

Dana suddenly burst through to their carriage, her face white as a sheet as she screamed, "They're shooting out the bridge!"

There was another thunderous explosion and a violent jolt, then John's stomach lurched as the train rushed headlong off the collapsing causeway. They toppled over the edge of the shattered bridge, the train plunging headlong towards the lake of molten lava below.

***

The Valkyrie barrelled down the avenue, the ground trembling with each pounding footfall. Sakura focused intently on the active scan results superimposed over the Kirrix hive ship, looking for a very specific location on its bloated hull. Aiming at a bulbous section towards the rear of the vessel, she locked on with her targeting reticle, then clenched her trigger fingers, opening fire with the full set of quad Photon Lasers.

Fully aware of the destruction the Invictus was wreaking on the Kirrix ships in the system, the hive ship had its shields up as a precaution. That did them little good against the blazing ferocity of the Valkyrie's assault. The four pulsed beams blew out their shields in an instant, then lashed into the ochre armour, shearing off the port power distributor and leaving nothing behind except a glowing disc on the side of the vessel. That side of the hive ship was plunged into darkness as all power was cut, also knocking out the searchlights pointed at the streets.