Why Humans Make Bad Pets!

What did I do to piss God or whoever off so badly II

The search and destroy parties had been an absolute failure, and YecTal had lost 15 good men because of his foolishness. He'd basically split his men into serving sizes! Now his men were fighting a defensive battle, digging into strategic fighting ground or choke points.

"I can hear it in the hall outside." PitRuk, YecTal's tactical officer, said over the bridge's speakers. "What was that? Did you hear that sound? Did he just rip a door off it's hinges or something"? Normally that would be a joke. It wasn't funny this time. The sound of the door opening could be faintly heard, accompanied by PitRuk's shout.

"Open fire! s**t, someone draw a bead on him! f**k, hold still! Friendly fire friendly fire watch you're aiming! Don't aim at where he was you idiots! Ha! Take that yo- crap he's still up! Someone take him down take hi-" PitRuk's yell was cut off mid-word. His radio continued transmitting, but other than a few shots and a quickly stifled yell, there wasn't much more to hear.

The remaining bridge crew had all turned a garish shade of grey, even though their skin was green. YecTal hoped he didn't look the same. Making his voice as confident as possible, he shouted for no other reason than to snap the bridge out of its collective trance. "Well? What are you all staring at? It's coming from the starboard side of the ship! We know which door he's coming through." The bridge had four doors, two leading to opposite sides of the ship, the other two leading to the halls where you could access the escape pods. It spoke of the valor of this crew that none of them even glanced at either of those two doors. "Find your cover and prepare to deal with this abomination which thinks it can cross a Robalin crew and live to talk about it!"

As the bridge crew began setting itself up, YecTal surreptitiously began entering his command code into his captains wrist-console, readying the automated self-destruct, setting it to the voice activation setting of the shortest countdown available: one hoc (2 minutes 30 seconds). If this creature was going to kill him, which seemed likely, the least he could do would be to drag it down with him.

After the common lounge I hit the engine room, at least that's what I assumed. A massive glowing tube stood in the center of the room, making the sound that eminated through the ship as it propelled it in speeds defying rational thought. There were also a total of 15 lizard-ants arrayed around the room, all too far apart to score a multikill on any of them. The moment I entered the room they opened fire, and I did the exact same thing I'd done in the last room. I did my best impression of a Mexican jumping bean. I actually don't know what those look like, or what they even are, but the words form a picture of little kidney bean wearing a sombrero bouncing around like an entire bag of unpopped popcorn contained in one bean, and I figured that's pretty much what I looked like, minus the sombrero.

I was actually getting really tired, but I jumped my little heart out. The number of pulses coming my way was ridiculous, and I had to be careful I didn't jump into any. As it was I was hit multiple times by smaller pulses, but I was mainly just avoiding the big ones. There seemed to be three lizard-ants with anti-tank ray guns, and they were the first I went for. Flying past one I scored a slice across his face. Leaping down to another I bore him to the ground as the lava sword stabbed down through the crown of his head. The last guy was on the other side of the room, so I decided to take a roundabout way of getting to him. Wrong move. Halfway through my first leap one of his shots hit me. Well, half hit me, but it was enough to drive my breath away and fling me off course. I hit a wall of consoles and fell to the ground.

I rolled - see there's that move again - and the wall behind me was obliterated in a shower of sparks and debris as it was assaulted by 12 heavy ray guns and an anti-tank ray gun. I sprang to my feet and made a jagged bee-line for Tanko-the-crazy-demolition-lizard. He missed on his next few shots, and his failure to score a successful hit on his fourth shot lost him the privilege of taking a fifth. And to keep his life. After Tanko it was relatively simple to get through the rest. I think I was so bruised that I wasn't even noticing the heavy-pulses anymore, although if I lived this, which was looking more and more likely, I was going to wake up in some serious pain the next morning. Thankfully my abuse of alcohol had made me very accustomed to pain in the morning.

Once I was finished with engineering I looked around. The FTL drive had stopped humming. I guess shooting out all the consoles in engineering affected it or something asinine like that. Whatever it had been, we weren't moving again any time soon. Counting up in my head I figured out how many I'd gone through so far. 60. d**k you lying little w***e!

Letting my rage fuel my flagging limbs, I set off to the last pair of doors ahead which I hoped would be the last room.

In a desperate ploy YecTal had ordered the bridge door's sealed. He had felt a moment of hope until a Fusion Blade suddenly appeared through the door and began melting it down. Oh. right. The thing had a Fusion Blade, because that's all YecTal needed. It seemed life heard how disgruntled he was with it and suddenly decided to throw him a bone. The Fusion Blade shorted.

+That's why they aren't supposed to be used to cut through bulkheads+ YecTal thought smugly. Then the door shook in its frame and a massive dent appeared in the door.

+*Are you f*****g kidding me!*+ he shouted in his mind, but outwardly he set his jaw and waited for the door to buckle. It didn't take long. One of the storage crates kept in engineering suddenly burst through the door. It looked like the thing had used it as a battering ram, which wasn't an encouraging thought since those crates were extremely heavy. The crate flew into the room and fell on YecTal's chief science officer who had been crouching too close to the doorway. The creature flew into the room a second later. It literally flew, soaring in a dive and tackling a hapless lieutenant.

The bridge crew opened fire, but it was just as PitRuk's one sided shouting match had indicated, the thing was too fast. It would jump to one officer, crush his neck, steal his gun, and then throw the gun at it's next victim. The throws were insanely powerful, and YecTal watched in amazement as it's throws were shown to be just as deadly as it was, which didn't help as most of the projectiles hit him. His personal security field, able to block solid objects, was overwhelmed after two hits. Soon YecTal, bloodied and firing with only one arm, the other two broken, and Ensign BecMeq were the only two alive. The Ensign didn't fare any better than his crew mates, but to his credit he continued firing until the end. He did offer one thing to YecTal that the others hadn't, however. An opportunity. The creature was slowing down. Ha! It had taken on 67 Robalin warriors alone with just a Fusion Blade and it was tired! Apparently 68 was one too many. Killing BecMeq, it stood still a moment longer than it should have and YecTal finally found his aim.