Space Crusaders

Chapter 6: Are you a Warman?

"Okay boys and girls, it's our turn; squeeze your buttocks; in a moment we will be launched towards the alien ship!"

Sarge of the Squad Red announced through the radio, which resulted in enthusiastic cheers from all nine boarding torpedoes, each one being entombed in.

"Finally!" one of the battle brothers said and added:

"Sarge? How many baddies has Sguad Voilet taken out so far?"

"According to the camera report, just over seven hundred combatants set out towards them."

"f**k! They're pretty ahead of us now!" Battle Brother complained.

"Okay, relax; they definitely won't kill them all; probably many will surrender." One of the sisters reassured him.

"Surrender to Gina and her assholes? Sure... someone ‘might’ surrender, but we won't find out about it…" Another sister noted gloomily.

"Yeah... you're right. Damn, we're behind in the achievement chart!"

"Bro, this is literally only the first game!" someone commented.

"Exactly," Sarge agreed and then added, "the ball will be in your court soon. Squad Voilet had a head start, but there are only five of them; there are nine of us, so we have a whole ship to do. This is an alien corvette-class vessel, and according to Intel, the crew may even number over ten thousand.

"f**k yeah!! We'll beat these Violet cunts on points, fair and square!" one of the battle brothers shouted enthusiastically.

"Hey! That was sexist, don't you think?!" One of the sisters was outraged.

"Hey no! Come on!" The boy started to defend himself, and Stan smiled perfidiously, enjoying the troubles of his brother, who had previously accused him of homophobia.

"Karma comes back, asshole."

"f*****g misogynist!" another sister accused.

"You're part of the problem, man, a f*****g disgrace!" Stan added vindictively.

"f**k off Levinsky! You just want to bang Gina!" Battle Brother tried to defend himself, now attacked by all the girls in the squad and by Stan.

"Heh bro, you said yourself she's a bang," another battle brother reminded him

"Well, ok, sure, I really didn't mean anything bad; I'm sorry girls, I really am," the boy admitted in a contrite voice.

Sarge cleared her throat, slightly annoyed.

"As I said... crew may even number over ten thousand, but a significant portion of them may be non-combatants. Alien workfolk or eggheads who will genuinely want to surrender and whose surrender Red Squad will accept, have I made myself clear?"

"Yes, Sarge," they all replied in unison.

"Good, I'm happy to hear it. There may also be an unspecified number of prisoners or slaves—men, women, and even children—on board. Please pay attention to this and do not do collateral damage just for the sake of it. I know it is not our responsibility, but guys, just don't be d***s.

"Yes, Sarge," everyone agreed.

"Intel assumes that we still have about one and a half to two thousand hostiles left, and honestly, I think that is enough for us. Ok, if everything is clear, we will launch in eight..."

"Seven"

"Six..."

"Oh damn, sorry squad, that's it..."

The countdown was abruptly ended by the launch of their boarding torpedoes.

The engines exploded somewhere beneath Stan's feet, and the G-Force crushed the man into the seat.

Stan remembered something from the briefing: if it weren't for their augmentation, their bodies wouldn't have been able to survive the jerk that launched the torpedo into flight.

However, Stan was more concerned about whether he would be able to keep the lunch he had eaten before the mission in his stomach.

Stan had been eating rat-burgers, and now, after the battle brother's story about the fields where the rodents ate human bodies, Stan had the impression that the rats from the burgers he had eaten earlier might escape at any moment.

One side or the other.

"Inhale and exhale, and inhale and exhale..."

Stan tried to calm the gurgling in his stomach; his brain-implant was displaying data bars regarding the trajectory of his torpedo and so on, but the man was completely oblivious to it.

The only thing Stan could think about right now was...

"Don't let the rats out!"

Suddenly, the crusader was jerked forward with all its might as the torpedo hit its target with great force. One of the safety belts that held Stan in place broke, resulting in the man, clad in power armor, beginning to hit the walls of his capsule as it penetrated the alien ship.

"Don't... let... the rats o..."

The last safety belt broke instantly as the nose of the torpedo finally came to hit on something solid enough to stop its momentum, and Stan was thrown face-first into the wall.

Thus, the man lost his first fight of the day... to the rats—by vomiting his lunch inside his helmet.

Choking, the crusader unbuttoned his helmet and slid it off his head in disgust. The man tried to wipe the vomit from his face and hair, but it was not easy using his armored hands.

"I hate my life..."

Stan started swinging his helmet, trying to shake the puke out of it.

"Maybe it'll dry out..." he thought, turning the volume of the radio in his helmet all the way up and attaching it to his belt with a magnet-locker.

"Um... Levinski reports being in position." the man shouted towards the helmet. "

"Levinski, why the f**k are you so hard to hear?" The voice of one of his battle brothers rang out from within his helmet.

"Um, I had to take it off; it got damaged on landing." Stan lied.

"The f**k are you running around without a helmet? Are you f****d up? Do you think you're the f*****g main character and you have some plot armor that will protect you from getting shot in the head?"

Stan thought about it and put on his rugged helmet.

"Are you in contact with anyone else?" Stan asked. Their radio had limited communication in the field without any external network, but the transmitter in each armor acted as an amplifier, so the sufficiently long "line" of the crusaders allowed them to communicate even with those who were theoretically beyond their range.

"I just had Sarg at about seven o'clock, which is your twelfth o'clock, but it's probably quite hot there now."

"Okay," Stan acknowledged, "so everything goes according to plan A."

"Yeah, bro, ‘A’ like, follow the action."

"Roger that, bro, Levinski out."

Stan was very good in melee but quite average in shooting, so he was not equipped with anything major in this department, especially since the boarding torpedo did not leave much room.

The fight on the ship was to involve skirmishes in a tangled corridor where Levinski planned to rely on his chainsword.

His artillery was a.75-caliber bolt pistol. There were ten bolts in the clip, but Levinski had ten additional clips on him. This ammunition was designed to penetrate the target and then detonate.

Stan, like his brothers and sisters, spent a lot of time engraving insults on every single cartridge he owned.

The man planned to engrave ‘f**k you alien scum’ on each of his bolts. But he didn't have enough skill and precision to fit in a whole sentence, so he ended up settling for ‘f**k U’

After what had happened to Stan so far during this mission, the crusader wasn't even surprised that his capsule wouldn't open.

Stan activated his chainsword and began to dismantle one of the walls.

The man glanced at the periphery of his vision, where the passage of time was displayed.

"It's a pity it's not like in a computer game, and there's no ‘life bar’ of that f*****g wall..." thought Stan.

According to the clock, almost a minute had passed since his ‘successful penetration.’

"f**k, I'm probably behind everyone else in fragging lizards." Stan got angry and started sawing and kicking the wall with renewed ferocity.

15 seconds later, the wall finally gave way after the man delivered a particularly good kick to it. Stan emerged from the pod and into an avalanche of light.

An avalanche of light-shoots from the laser weapons or whatever those flashlights held in the hands of the green troopers shooting at him were.

"For the record, no one is willing to surrender," Stan sighed, moving forward energetically. Somewhere on the side of his vision, a panel was displayed showing some heat damage his power armor was taking, but the enemy's fire was so bright in the man's eyes that Stan really couldn't see much even if he paid attention to it.

However, when the glass in one of the eye sockets of his visors began to crackle, the young crusader could not disagree with the opinion that without a helmet on his head, he would probably be lost said head.

Literally.

Stan ran around, swinging the chainsaw left and right, and fired several shots. Forty yards away and five seconds later, the corridor was clear of living, firing enemies.

Since they stopped shooting at him, Stan was able to glance back. The path he just ran through was now thickly covered with the cut green armores, and bodies inside them.

On some intellectual level, Stan must have known that there were as many dead bodies as there were living ones before, but since many of them were now in many parts, the battlefield looked more spectacular visually.

And Stan was okay with that.

Levisnky was now standing at the fork of a classic T-junction. The Crusader grabbed the nearest relatively complete corpse by the head and held it up like a puppet.

The dead lizard stormtrooper was only about six feet tall, so Stan could have easily stuck it around the corner of the trough and pretended the corpse was standing.

Almost immediately, the corpse was shot with volleys of colored light-shots from the left side of the corridor.

"Fine," said Stan, and activating the chainsword, he rushed into the left corridor.

"These flashlights can really do quite a lot of damage over time and in large amounts, but damn, these guys are slow," Stan noted a dozen or so seconds later, peeling the armor off the stormtrooper's corpse like an onion, looking for a piece of cloth with which he could wipe his visor, which was completely splattered with some innards.

Suddenly, his radio crackled.

"Levinski? Great to finally have you in range." Sarge said in a slightly breathless voice.

"What's up, Sarge? You sound busy; need help?"

"Well, let's just say that our intel was a bit wishy-washy about enemy numbers. But naah, I am fine here; I need you to run one of our objectives since I see you are in the right area of the ship."

For the first time, Stan actually looked at the tactical map, which was irritating him with its constant blinking of red.

"I heard you had some kind of helmet failure, and I thought maybe that was causing your tactical map error," the sergeant's voice explained.

Stan bit his lip, feeling like an i***t.

"Yeah, must be that, Sarge!"

***

Resigned, Mokarah Mokhebaresh buried her face in her long, snake-fingered hands in frustration.

"The ship's propulsion system has been compromised. We are dead in the void."

Vasileiah, who was kneeling next to her, put her hand on her back. The Voidling felt her friend's concern and general fear and anxiety.

Mokarah was also a little afraid at this moment, but common sense told her that she and, through association, her friend should feel rather safe.

"Well, I am the only part of this ship that cannot be simply repaired or easily replaced. Therefore, hundreds, or even thousands, of pirates will defend us. Even if the enemy wins, I am one of the most important loot."

Mokarah turned and grabbed Vasileiah's hand.

"In such a case, it is most likely that the enemy also wants the entire ship, so no one may even enter here; I will simply find out who my new owner is through communication."

"What if they destroy the ship?" Vasileiah asked.

"They will still want to rob it, so they will open this door and take me captive to sell me or use me on another ship of theirs."

Mokarah felt her friend's relief but also obvious anxiety. Understanding what this meant, the Voidling quickly added:

"It's a general rule of thumb to keep the navigator happy, so they shouldn't try to separate us. I'll tell them you're my t****l, and they won't try to hurt you.

Vasileiah nodded and even smiled slightly. The Feymen female rested her forehead against the Voidling's. Mokarah felt her friend calm down a bit, but she also felt her pain at now being a slave. Mokarah was aware that Vasileiah was only upset about the general injustice and had no envious thoughts toward the Voidling herself.

It would be hard for Mokarah to disagree, even though her own race existed only to always live in a similar cell on some ship.

Suddenly, Vasileiah raised her head.

"But what if they're not pirates?"

Mokarah bit her lip.

"I did not think about it..."

***

Stan had just gutted another swarm of enemies with his chainsword. The corridors in this place were so tight that the crusader kept damaging some cables and pipes on the walls by hitting them with his power armor or smashing some lamps with his helmet.

The corridor was blocked by a whole lot of aliens; apart from troopers cladded in green armor, there were also some others, without any armor and sometimes even almost without clothes.

Stan hoped it wasn't the "non-combatants" Sarge had mentioned.

"But if they weren't hostile, they wouldn't be blocking my path to my goal, right?" Stan reasoned, stabbing some Lizardmen with his chainsword and shooting at the nearest door with his other hand.

Stan noticed that even more of these poorly armored Lizardmen were pouring out of every door.

"Why are they running like that? Is this supposed to be some kind of spam attack? They probably want to slow me down."

So Stan preemptively shot every door he passed, just to be sure.

"They could always give up anyway," Stan reasoned, swinging his chainsword wildly through the corridor packed with huddled Lizardmen.

Suddenly Stan's legs left the ground as the artificial gravity stopped working, and a moment later the light went out as well.

"Oh.. come on!" Stan thought as he activated the electromagnet in his shoes and accelerated forward.

After a dozen or so seconds that seemed to last forever, the radio crackled in Stan's ears.

"I'm sorry, guys and girls, but our eggheads went a little too far with this cyberwarfare with which we were supposed to infect the alien ship. Even the life support systems went out for a moment."

"That's bad?" asked some battle brother on the radio.

"Well, yes, there are slaves and non-combatants on board," Sarge reminded her, then added: "I guess that's sorted out, plus we now have normal communications."

"f**k, do your snake boys also ask for mercy so funny?" asked one of the battle brothers on an open channel.

"Hey, don't laugh! These green stormtroopers are actually a bit funny when they offer slaves and so on, but the other inhabitants of the ship have a pretty shitty life," said Battle Sister on the same channel.

"Are they saying something?" Stan was surprised as he cut up another Lizardman.

"You haven't installed their language via a chip? How do you know if someone wants to surrender?" someone asked.

Stan thought about it.

"It wasn't mandatory," he defended himself.

"Lol"

"Lamao"

"Lol"

"Well, Stan is right that it wasn't mandatory because there is a translator in the helmet and subtitles should be displayed," Sarge explained.

Stan bit his lip.

"I have to read...?"

***

Mokarah was really starting to get scared. It seemed that hundreds of people on the ship died in just a few minutes.

"But from what? There was no invasion of the ship. Some small ballistic missiles. Who uses ballistic missiles? So what is it? A plague? Did these little missiles carry some kind of plague? Or maybe a poison?" Mokarah wondered.

The Voidling managed to obtain some information through her console and navigator privileges, but soon the local network stopped working, and Mokarah could only ‘spy’ on the superficial thoughts of those somewhere near her sanctuary.

One thing was certain: She was surrounded by fear.

Suddenly the light went out, and the Voidling felt herself floating.

"Some global power outages, light, artificial gravity. By the stars!—life support!" Vasileiah shouted.

"Keep calm; the secondary generators should start up soon." Mokarah tried to calm not only her friend but also herself.

"Only if the secondary generators aren't destroyed and whoever is attacking the ship doesn't just want to destroy it and all of us with it!"

Mokarah felt the weight of her body again and suddenly fell several feet to the ground. The fall wasn't pleasant, of course, but due to her snake-like limbs, the Voidling didn't break any bones.

Vasileiah was less fortunate; the Feymen woman fell badly on her knee.

Mokarah crawled on her snake limbs to her friend. The Voidling helped the injured woman get into a more comfortable position, but moving Vasileiah somewhere else without first immobilizing her leg was out of the question.

So Mokarah stayed with Vasileiah on the floor, where she fell.

Death itself also had its own 'spirit', because the Voidling was now sensing hundreds of dead crewmen in a very short time.

It was strange because Mokarah felt the fear and pain of those who were dying, but she did not feel the hatred of those who would kill them. That's why the Voidling increasingly believed that there was some plague or chemical weapon on the ship or something like that.

Or at least that's what she thought until she started to see what the victims who were now dying nearby were afraid of.

Minds, of course, were distorting facts under the influence of subjective feelings and experiences. Mokarah saw both twelve-foot-long beasts breathing fire and the specters covered with leaking blood with fiery swords in taloned claws.

The Voidling felt the terror of people dying by the dozens in every single second.

“But if some terrifying monsters were attacking them..."

"Devils; they call them devils when they beg for mercy that never comes."

"Why can't I feel the presence of those devils themselves?"

Each being had emotions that could be felt. Right, Mokarah was a navigator, not a sorcerer, and that wasn't her specialty, but someone who was now murdering a ship's crew by the hundreds should feel something.

"Anger? Hate? Bloodlust? It's impossible that I feel all this death, and I don't sense who or what is doing it."

Mokarah was interrupted from her thoughts by the creak of the hydraulic door to her cell.

"What!? I didn't even feel it! He's several feet away, and I feel absolutely nothing! There's always someone standing there... There.. was always someone standing there! Some life, anything..." her terrified mind screamed.

The hydraulic lock creaked.

Vasileiah began to cry, and Mokarah squeezed her hand.

"Take it easy; there's no one there," Mokarah repeated.

"There's no one there! I can't feel anyone! It's impossible!" her thoughts howled.

Bang

Terrible shot

the grinding sound of rotating blades...

"Saw...?!"

The two women hugged each other, screaming in fear, as the giant door fell inward.

It has arrived.

It really was huge.

It wasn't just dripping with blood... whole slabs of flesh were dripping from his armor.

"Or maybe it was his armor? Maybe it was a golem made of the dead flesh of its victims?"

In its right claw was a large mechanical device bristling with moving blades, and in its left paw it held a gigantic firearm that the Lizardman trooper would probably have to hold in two hands.

"The devil is here."

Mokarah saw him with her own eyes. Even when, according to her Cursed Gift apart from her and Vasileiah, there was absolutely no one else around.

***

"I f*****g hate quests like this. I hate quests in general; I don't even do them for level grinding; I prefer to kill the mobs all the way," Stan complained about his fate, smashing the door.

When the last obstacle in his "quest" finally subsided, the crusader triumphantly entered the room.

The man immediately saw two screaming figures and immediately realized that they were girls.

"Big-titty Elven girl and... even more-titty... something something girl."

"Oh, hi!" Stan waved his chainsword enthusiastically at the girls, causing it to splatter blood from his latest victims. A large part of it fell on the girls, who started screaming even more.

"f**k, I better start reading the subtitles. Can't skip this dialog option with those sweet birds," thought the man, and began to haphazardly put together the letters displayed in front of his eyes.

Stan managed to read ‘she… m… slave…plea…d…n't…urt…’

“Blah blah blah…”

The slightly irritated man simply took off his helmet.

"Guess it's logical that if someone doesn't have a f*****g lizard face, he's OK, right? " the man reasoned. Stan knew that this whole navigator person was around here somewhere, but this side-quest with chicks totally consumed him right now.

The women started screaming even more, but after a while the elf spoke in her own language, which Stan understood because everyone now had to know Fey speech, and Levinski downloaded it into his head along with the other mandatory updates.

"W…wait... are… are you a… Warman?"