Space Crusaders

Chapter 5: This is no mine

"These whole 'huge fertile fields' mean what? Minefields? Are these pirates wanting our land mines?" Stan asked aloud the question that was on the minds of many members of his squad as they waited in position, entombed inside the individual boarding torpedoes. Inside each of these missiles, which were to be fired hundreds of thousands of miles and penetrate the alien ship, there was only room for one crusader, and it was so cramped that he or she couldn't even move very much.

So Squad Red was killing time by listening to the radio.

And all they had to listen to was the information that the large transmitter at their "bait mining station" was broadcasting for light years—some wild stories about the 'riches' of the Sol System and so on.

"Sure thing, bro! Before I enlisted, I worked near a field like this, five hundred miles in every direction, filled with anti-personnel mines, and although most of the mines had to be at least a few hundred years old, every now and then someone would get blown up. If someone didn't die, then he could only lie there and scream until he fainted because there was no way to approach him due to other explosives. But the rats were too small to activate the mines, at least usually, so they fed on the corpses. After each explosion, they ran like crazy. For them, it was a real buffet, you know? So before the big-titty elven ladies came, we all lived on these fat rats, so I guess that's what these 'huge fertile fields' are about.” One of his battle brothers answered him on their radio chat channel.

Stan raised an eyebrow

"Bro... have you eaten rats that grew fat on people’s flesh?"

"Hey, change your tone, Levinsky!" The battle brother got upset.

"Hey, sorry, bro, those were tough times," Stan admitted.

"You're damn right, so don't try to judge me."

"I bet Gina ate people," another battle brother chimed in. A few people burst out laughing over the radio.

"What you mean 'ate'? As she doesn't anymore?"

This resulted in another burst of laughter.

"Ok guys, stop slandering the sergeant of the Violet Squad, especially in the presence of another officer, because I'm still in the same chat." Sarge soldered them.

"Sorry, Sarge," they all replied in unison, but Sarge wasn't done yet.

"I'm sure you can ask Sergeant Jinx about all this yourself next time you get the chance," their own sergeant suggested, and when no one responded, then the woman added,

"I know you're all unhappy that Violet Squad will draw first blood, but our task is much more important; we will penetrate the pirate voidship and capture it for the eggheads so they can figure out how it moves faster than light."

"Oh, let's just penetrate them already! I can't stand this tightness anymore," Stan complained over the radio.

For some reason, many brothers and sisters started laughing until the sergeant cleared her throat expressively.

“Yeah... Levinski I think everyone knows this, but back to your question: Personally, I don't think it's about minefields, just fields full of food," shared the Sergeant.

"Well, our fields were kind of full of food too, at least for the rats..." The battle brother from earlier started, but Sarge interrupted him.

"No, it's about the fields where food grows."

"Like a food factory?"

"Yes, I think so."

"There is such a thing?"

"And how should I know, brother? I'm a crusader like you. But the entire script of this broadcast was generated by our eggheads using AI. To put it simply, this is a list of everything we don't have, because according to the information from the Feymen, what we have is the opposite of what the pirates would want." The sergeant explained, and everyone nodded.

All except one battle brother.

"Damn, that's a shame. I thought at least that mention about our women wanting to find men for themselves outside of Earth was true."

"What the f**k?!" shouted the rest of the squad before they finally let the originator explain himself.

"I thought at least Gina would leave me alone."

"Okay, I'm done." Sarge sighed and tuned out of the radio band on which this conversation was taking place.

The conversation only heated up.

"What's wrong with you? Gina may be crazy, but she's definitely a bang." Stan voiced his opinion, and most of the boys agreed.

"Bro, for you, every girl is a bang," his interlocutor noted.

"Damn right! what? Are you gay or something?" Stan asked, not expecting an answer.

"Actually, I am, you homophobe!" the battle brother came out indignantly.

"Levinski, are you a homophobe? You should be ashamed of yourself, man!" said someone over the radio.

"Levinski, you are a disgrace!" said the other.

"Hey! How was I supposed to know?" Stan started to defend himself.

"You assumed his orientation!" accused one of the battle brothers.

"Okay, you idiots, shut up. First of all, Gina is gay too." The bored voice of one of the battle sisters joined the conversation.

"Really? Then why did she tell me all these things...?"

"Because it's Gina! She probably just wanted to torment you for shits and giggles."

"Did Gina know he was gay?" Stan interjected.

"Everyone knew he was gay except you, Levinski, you homophobe."

"I'm not a homophobe! I love all people! Gays too!"

"Yeah, you love Gina."

At this, everyone (except Stan) burst out laughing, and after a little longer, the discussion moved to a different topic.

***

Yotzpak stood at the very front of the ramp of their boarding shuttle as it approached the extensive mining refinery station in orbit of the dwarf planet on the outskirts of this so-called Sol System. The installation itself didn't look particularly impressive, apart from the fact that it was actually quite large, which is why the pirates decided to send not one but five boarding shuttles towards it, all the ones they had, a total of over half a thousand pirates. Of course, the lifeboats could accommodate many more people, but the pirates wanted to take the loot from there. According to the information they intercepted from those stupid Earthlings, there were several thousand civilian personnel on this one station.

"Mostly women and no soldiers, no patrol ships, nothing." Yotzpak smiled in his thoughts.

"But what could you expect from such peripheral, backwater species?" This entire Sol System was so distant that many members of the 'Unrefusable Offer' crew joked that in this shithole, stars probably revolved around planets.

Honestly? No matter how idiotically unscientific such a thing sounded, Yotzpak personally wouldn't be surprised if it were true. It had been almost half a century since he hatched from the egg, and the pirate had never been so far from civilization, even as a criminal who deliberately avoided it.

But how exotic and strange this part of the galaxy was didn't really matter much to Yotzpak. The only thing that mattered was the vision of the loot. Food, minerals, slaves...

These were the only things that really mattered, and an additional bonus was the fun of the raid itself. Yotzpak personally liked the lamentations of the females the most; it was just his thing.

Yotzpak led a group of over a hundred stormtroopers who crowded behind him. His men were excited, and Yotzpak could feel it in the air. The pirates have smelled their prey, and now nothing can stop them.

As their shuttle approached the pathetic Earthlings installation, many of the pirates burst into laughter as someone pointed out the window at some clearly inoperative guns on the station.

"I can't believe it! Look at that barrel! It's f*****g projectile artillery! What the f**k is that? Stone Age?"

"Be careful, guys, because the local girls will throw stones at you!" One of the pirates shouted, and everyone laughed even harder.

"Soon, instead of carrying stones, they will carry the eggs that they will lay me!" another promised, which resulted in another round of laughter.

Yotzpak laughed too, but the guns intrigued him a bit.

"It was supposed to be a completely pacifist race of mostly females, so why did they even try to build any guns?" The pirate corporal thought to himself and reflexively adjusted the holster of his blaster on his thigh. In addition to the gun, Yotzpak had a vibrosword and a whip, like most of his men. Just like them, he was dressed in dark green plastoid armor with a texture resembling reptile scales.

Although most man-like species referred to his race as the Lizardmen, not all Kadrus actually had ‘lizard’ faces. The use of a standardized helmet design styled after the dragon head solved this problem and gave the pirate forces a uniform and menacing appearance. Most pirates (at least in Yotzpak's assault force here) were between five and six feet tall. This was definitely on the higher end of the galactic scale, with only a few men-like races being taller.

Their ship finally reached the dock of the mining refinery station. This mine was apparently the most remote point in that pathetic planetary system these Earthlings called Sol.

"The first of many loots. We will plunder their mines, their food, e*****e their people, their females will give birth to a new generation of our eggs, from which will hatch even more pirates. Or slaves. We will take from them everything that can be taken and destroy all that cannot, so it will be of no use to anyone else." Yotzpak smiled at his thoughts as he sealed his helmet and was the first to jump off the ramp onto the floor of the station dock.

"Forward! Raiders of Yotzpak! spoils shall be taken! Prey shall be slaughtered! A hunt day! A red day! As we raid! Raid now! raid now! Raid! Raid for spoils and the joy of murdering!"

With this charismatic call, Yotzpak roused his men, and a horde of over a hundred armed pirates ran down the long corridor of the space mining station.

Four other groups like this now dock elsewhere in this primitive but still vast mining refinery. Of course, they all belonged to the same warband, but... well... they were pirates after all, and everyone thought first and foremost about their own personal loot.

The long tunnel where the pirates were running was laid with tracks, but Yotzpak's stormtroopers saw no wagons, no vehicles, or anyone at all; so far, the place looked empty.

"It's a huge station; probably these silly girls finally realized that they're about to be captured and decided to hide; it won't do them any good, heh heh," Yotzpak reasoned in his mind, running quickly through another bend in the wide corridor.

"And they call it a mine? Pathetic," one of the pirates running next to him mocked.

It was hard to disagree; this whole mining station looked rather miserable by galactic standards.

"Well, this is a peripheral refinery for these Earthlings, so backwater even for them—a shithole of a shithole itself," Yotzpak explained to himself as the light at the end of the tunnel went out.

"This is no mine." The words were heavily accented but were spoken in the pirates' native language, from somewhere above his head. The tone of the voice was heavily distorted but it seemed feminine

Before Yotzpak could reach his helmet to activate the flashlight, his ears registered a loud thump somewhere next to him and the terrible screech of the plastoid breaking.

The pirate corporal immediately turned in that direction, blaster aimed.

And then something froze, and it took his mind a little more than a fraction of a moment to understand what his own eyes were seeing.

Yotzpak saw one of his men, a pirate who had just been standing next to him, laughing at the place they were. The pirate's body hung in the air in two parts in front of Yotzpak. The pirate's head was bent back unnaturally and hung limply only on the skin. His stormtrooper was split in two from his right shoulder to his left hip. Not cut, not chopped up, just... torn apart...

Yotzpak's eyes began to register more, the man now noticing that the body of the pirate (who had literally been standing next to him a heartbeat ago!) was not hanging in the air but was being held by two gigantic armored hands. Behind the gap between the two halves of the pirate, from which his insides were still pouring out, you could see something... someone…

It must have been some kind of robot, a mechanical monster, the creature had a humanoid shape but was probably over seven feet tall! No man-like race known to Yotzpak was this huge, power armor or not.

"It just tore it apart in the blink of an eye! It came out of nowhere, so quickly and so stealthily! Something that big shouldn't be moving so quietly or so quickly!!" Yotzpak's mind screamed.

The pirate corporal's dismay actually lasted maybe less than two seconds, and the man immediately opened fire with his blaster right at the place where the mechanical monster should have had a face.

Yotzpak fired again and again, and in the process, he shot part of his dismembered trooper's body. The commander was not alone, and around him, there were screams and screams from his men and volleys of blaster fire.

The monster threw the pirate's body away and jumped to the side. Yotzpak blinked as the huge figure literally disappeared from his sight.

"So fast!"

The desperate screams of his men mixed with the catatonia of gunshots and powerful blunt blows that smashed the pirates' armor into pieces and their flesh and bones into pulp.

And that mechanical, strangely feminine laugh of the monster.

"Hah! This is no mine, you fuckers! It's your tomb!"