Chapter 31: Healer’s Discourse — Part 10
“Shit.” Didi said. “I can’t take much more of that.”
“He has more.” Shadow warned. She’d managed to keep her blasters, and fired one round after the other straight at the Tech Leader, aiming, apparently, for his chest and head.
Didi panted, moving away from Shadow so the two wouldn’t be as easy to target. “I never saw it myself, but Tech Leaders are rumored to have forced smaller Vodian cities into military slavery, using the cities to produce and export raw materials, much like prisoner colonies are forced to export materials back to Earth.”
“I saw it.” Shadow said, catching the leader in the head with a lucky blast.
For the most part, the tech leader’s pulse deflectors held against Shadow’s blasts, and he rushed her, missiles flying out in all directions to precede his assault. Didi did her best to shield Shadow, who had been singularly targeted by the missiles and the attack.
“I can’t get a grip, he’s got some kind of psionic protection.” Didi said.
Unable to affect the missiles, or create a blocking field without atmosphere, Didi threw her body at the missiles, drawing them to her, and keeping the majority of them from targeting Shadow. The missiles blew up all around her, her deflector coils whining in complaint. She lay dazed in space for a moment, turning slowly to catch Shadow’s first contact with the Tech Leader.
Shadow struck out, but the Tech Leader blocked the pallet bar, and then ripped it from Shadow’s arm.
“Bastard.” She kicked out at him, splitting the armor across his shin with the box spike on her left foot.
Her left arm aching and possibly broken, but her blaster still in hand, Shadow fired into the breach in the Tech Lord’s armor. The blaster round hit home, blowing the shin completely open, even as the Tech Leader swung out, catching her in the head. Shadow spun out and away from the tech leader, dazed by the blow. The blow had been well focused, and had dented in the K-loader’s impact bar and head shielding armor.
“Don’t move.” Didi said as she passed Shadow, who was already readying herself for another round.
The urgency in her voice, combined with a distracted sense of pain made Shadow listen. Didi rocketed past, a mix of rage and concern driving her on. Launching herself in front of Shadow and straight into the cyborg’s head, Didi caught the Tech Lord from the blind side. Her pallet bar hit home with a sickening wail of metal piercing metal, mixed in with the sound of flesh and bone collapsing and giving way. Dust and smoke spewed everywhere, electricity sparked and sizzled from hundreds of gashes, Didi and the Tech Leader were matching each other blow for blow. Didi grappled with the cyborg, forcing six inches of her pallet bar into his skull. Blood spewed into space. The cyborg flailed while Didi worked her advantage. She slammed her knee and foot spikes into his metal-shielded face, then worked her way down his body.
Shadow cut her thrusters and lay perfectly still in space. Something urgent in Didi’s voice, and the severe focus she had in fighting the Tech kept Shadow completely still, despite the fact that Didi’s life was no match for the vicious cyborg. Her systems were on-line, but her sensor net was damaged, and she that vague feeling of pain, coming from somewhere on her body, was growing more pronounced. She couldn’t feel her body the way she should, though the K-loader could still respond to her brain. Even as Shadow lay still, watching hopefully as Didi worked over the Tech Leader, something deep inside of her told her that she might be in more trouble than she had at first thought she might be. Didi came back around, spinning hard with an already warped pallet bar, catching the Tech Leader hard in the chest and ripping him completely open in the process. The bar remained planted squarely in the Tech Leader’s chest destroying its central AI processors. Even as the Tech went limp, Didi rushed back to Shadow, pulling back her pallet bars so she could work on Shadow’s suit.
“Thank Goodness you listened.” Didi twisted a piece of metal out of Shadow’s throat shield, and Shadow felt her senses slowly return to her body. “Had you moved I think you’d have slit yourself wide.” Didi said.
“I can move now, right?” Shadow half asked.
“Yeah.” Didi said.
With lightning speed, Shadow drew her blaster and fired three shots. The Tech Leader fell back violently. First his arm, then his leg, and finally his head ripped loose from his body. The leader had auxiliary computers that Didi, not being familiar with the Chran model, would not have been familiar with. Another second and both Didi and Shadow would have been torn from their K-loaders by the automated killing machine. Shadow put a hole through the Tech Leader’s chest, then headed straight in toward the enemy ships, Didi close behind.
“We’re pretty fucked up Shadow. If your pressure seal breaks -”
“Fights not over until we stop breathing — or the enemy does.” Shadow said.
Xeti had long ago burrowed his way into a lead ship, and the other ships had helped destroy it as they tried to shoot Xeti from its side. They would have eventually hit him, however, if Shadow and Didi hadn’t moved in to finish them. The three intact ships were scattered, caught off guard by Shadow’s offensive strategy. Xeti’s ship exploded unexpectedly, the blast of energy sending shrapnel on the edge of a plasma shock wave.
“Oh shit.” Shadow said, shielding Didi instinctively.
Like grains of sand in a storm, Didi and Shadow were spun around and knocked outward, debris bouncing of their armor. The plasma hit a millisecond later, and Shadow expected to die. If it weren’t for Didi’s psionic shield, pulling together and holding millions of ship’s remains between them and the blast, both of them would have been dead. Two of the four remaining ships had been crippled in the blast; one had some how been left out of the damage entirely.
“I guess we’ve done our job.” Didi said.
“Ferret, you get that ship turned around?” Shadow asked.
In answer, an indiscernible number of rounds completely decimated the remaining ship. Before self-destructing, the remaining ship launched off a series of missiles, all of them striking the Mercy violently. The Mercy shook in space, drifting as if dead, and then recovered its trajectory. Shadow looked around for Xeti, found him, looking relatively uninjured, lying limp in what little remained of his k-loader. Shadow rushed him into the airlock, terrified that he might be dead. Ferret began working on him instantly. His body had survived the exposure, and there was no evidence of brain damage. Though he should have been dead, Ferret was optimistic of a full recovery. The Gray genetics had saved him yet again.
