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  The hatch squealed open. The defilers had learned their lesson and now took the time to fully open the doorway before charging in. Kobolds lashed out with the first volley of laser bolts, taking down a pair of defilers as they struggled to completely open the hatchway. At a hissed command from the taskmaster, the pair of bilge rats jumped from the trashcan beside the door and engaged the invaders.

  Once again, the rats couldn’t stand up for long against the mob of foes, but they did buy enough time for the kobolds’ rifles to recharge. A second staggered volley dropped three more invaders, the laser bolts easily burning through the relatively small kobold-based bodies. The taskmaster and the three laser-wielding kobolds slowly backed away to give the blunderbuss a clear field of fire. The defilers didn’t hesitate in the face of danger, their madness and hunger driving them on. The first rank melted away under the blast of shot from the blunderbuss. The kobold wielding the weapon threw it at his foes and charged the mass of defilers still pouring into the room, slashing away with his dagger.

  The blunderbuss shot and the subsequent charge of the lone kobold delayed the attackers long enough for the taskmaster’s forces to unleash a third and final volley. Then they drew their own daggers and leaped into the fray. To their credit, the taskmaster and his three remaining companions were able to bring down a pair of defilers before their foes’ slashing claws and biting teeth finished them off. The mess hall had claimed fourteen defilers.

  Looking back at the entry hatch, Slater breathed a sigh of relief as the flow of defilers boarding his derelict had stopped completely. He counted sixty-five remaining attackers swarming ever closer to his core. Several of his foes were wounded and less effective; their injuries included the one with a tripwire trap bolt embedded in its leg, several with knife and bite wounds to various body parts, and one with an eye blown out from a blunderbuss pellet. Despite the number of wounded, the sheer size of the enemy forces arrayed against him was daunting.

  The next compartment was the trapped hallway. Defilers might have had enough intelligence to figure out that they needed to open the hatchways completely before entering a compartment, but fortunately for Slater, they hadn’t yet learned to look out for traps.

  The hatch clanged open to what appeared to be an empty passageway. The lack of opposition goaded the defilers to a reckless charge forward. The MOBS hit the first pit trap and a half dozen fell in. Not all were killed, but the whole swarm was slowed as it tried to work its way around. Again, none of the defilers bothered to stop and help the wounded or fallen; they were content to leave them to their fate.

  A few of the more enterprising defilers were able to skirt around the open pit and charged toward the beckoning hatch at the far end of the room. The lead defiler hit the tripwire in the middle of the room, eating a steel dart for his troubles. The pit in front of the hatchway leading to the rat-keeper’s room claimed another pair of defilers. The trapped hallway had cost the admiral’s forces six more killed and another pair wounded from falling damage.

  The admiral had passed the halfway point of the derelict and still had nearly sixty defilers coming for Slater’s core. He began to wonder if all his preparations would be enough to save him from a second—and this time final—death.

  — 14 —

  The kobold taskmaster in the rat-keeper room snapped into action at the first squeak of the slowly opening hatch. He ordered the rats out of their cages. Four of the rats lined up at the far side of the pit trap, and the other pair was placed on either side of the hatch to prevent defilers from trying to sneak around. The taskmaster sighted his rifle and waited for the fight to begin.

  Once they had the hatch open, the defilers charged in. The taskmaster dropped the first to enter the room, and the flood of creatures hit the pit trap, nearly a dozen falling in from the tightly packed group of enemies. With a hand signal, the taskmaster ordered the four rats waiting behind the trap to charge down the small ramp and into the swarming pile of defilers.

  On level ground and fighting one on one, the rats had been easily defeated. Here, the defilers were at a distinct disadvantage, struggling to regain their feet. The ground held either steel spikes waiting to impale them or the squirming bodies of other victims. The fleet-footed bilge rats had no trouble scurrying over the bodies and into the melee. They put their newly improved natural weapons to work, shredding with claws and biting with their fangs at any exposed part of a living defiler.

  The rats on either side of the hatch now went into action. When the attackers sought to avoid the battle in the pit, the rats used the opportunity to pounce on the first to try and skirt the trap, pushing them into the pit. After toppling their victims, the rats jumped down to join the chaos. One of the rats wasn’t quick enough; a defiler grasped the squealing bilge rat by its tail mid-leap, then hurled the struggling creature into the waiting claws of its comrades. Another laser blast crossed over the pit and hit the defiler that had caught the rat, burning a hole in its chest.

  The taskmaster waited for his rifle to recharge, visibly frustrated at its slow rate of fire. With no more rats outside the pit to oppose them, the defilers skirted the dangerous trap and charged toward the taskmaster. The taskmaster shook his useless rifle as if willing it to complete its charge. There wasn’t enough time, and the taskmaster instead hurled his rifle at the lead attacker. Slater was impressed when the taskmaster charged the oncoming defilers and grabbed onto one with each hand. While his enemies shredded his flesh, the taskmaster shoved the two defilers he had grabbed into the pit. The taskmaster wasn’t able to contribute any further to the fight and went down as a defiler latched its twisted teeth onto his throat and ripped out a sizeable chunk.

  The remaining defilers ignored the seething pile of bodies in the pit; they were completely focused on their objective of reaching Captain Slater’s core. Only a few made it out of the pit alive, and each of those survivors bore several wounds from the bilge rats. Two of his rats had been killed inside the death pit, but the three remaining rats hid in the pile of bodies, ready to leap out when a distracted target presented itself. A dozen defilers had died in the rat-keeper’s room, and most of the kills were chalked up by the rats in the pit. The defilers were down to forty-seven, a huge number for the last two compartments of his derelict to handle.

  The kobolds in the barracks room had heard all the commotion in the rat-keeper’s room and were taking time to prepare for their attackers. They stacked the couches and tables from the rec area in front of the hatch. Then the taskmaster had his six kobolds move their bunks and storage lockers to form a small barricade in front of the hatch leading to the bridge. The barricade was nearly eight feet tall, and the jumbled wall of metal bunk beds, stout storage lockers, and random furniture created a formidable defensive position. Slater made a note to see about stocking his compartments with furniture that his MOBS could use on the fly if they faced a powerful and dangerous foe.

  When the hatch opened, the kobolds immediately responded with accurate laser rifle fire. Like the attacking defilers, his own forces were beginning to learn. Instead of one huge volley, the kobolds were spacing out their shots. One kobold would fire, then wait as each of the other kobolds took their shots in turn. By the time the last had fired, the first kobold’s rifle would be ready to shoot once more. This slow but steady fire dropped defilers one after another, the kobolds always aiming for the closest—and therefore most dangerous—attacker. The defilers stumbled over the furniture stacked in front of the hatch, slowing their approach.

  The steady fire from the kobolds equipped with laser rifles whittled away at the number of defilers. The attackers’ greater numbers ensured that not all would be shot down before they arrived at the kobolds’ makeshift barricade. Finding no easy way through the obstacle, the defilers began to climb. When the main mass of attackers was bunched up in front of the barricade, waiting its turn to ascend, the kobold with the blunderbuss finally fired its weapon. Slater cheered as the blast killed three of the defilers outright
and wounded several others. The blast of the blunderbuss was a short reprieve, as several of the defilers had made it to the top of the barricade. Then they jumped down onto the defending kobolds, who now wielded knives.

  While five of his brethren fought hand to hand with daggers, one enterprising kobold gathered up the pile of rifles and huddled in a corner of the barricade. Slater watched the kobold fire one rifle, look to the pile in front of him for one that was recharged, then pick up the charged weapon and fire again. He was killing defilers one after the other, even as his fellow MOBS were slowly overwhelmed.

  The rats back in the pit used the distraction of the firefight to make their move. Scurrying out of the pit, the three rats charged into the barracks room and attacked the defilers from the rear. The attack from the rear drew off a large clump of the defilers at the barricade, giving the little kobold sniper time to fire several more laser blasts before he too was overwhelmed by the swarm of enemies. Defilers that had made it over the barricade wasted no time in waiting for the bilge rats to be finished off; instead, they began to open the hatch to Slater’s final defensive room: the bridge.

  The dozen or so defilers that had climbed over the barricade to kill the kobold rifle team were able to muscle open the hatch to the bridge. The mindless creatures attacked without any coordination as they charged into the bridge compartment. In their mad rush to get to Slater’s core, the attackers didn’t wait for the others who even now made their climb over the barricade or for the group that had dispatched the rats. The result was that instead of facing the unstoppable horde that had blasted through his derelict, Slater’s MOBS now faced smaller knots of foes. In addition, the defilers were going to have to face a boss MOBS: the kobold captain.

  The kobold captain had arranged his crew behind their sturdy workstations. He employed the same staggered fire tactic that the barracks kobolds had used. The kobold captain had three kobolds armed with laser rifles and one with a blunderbuss. He himself wielded a pair of laser pistols. Slater held his breath, watching as the laser fire lanced into the first batch of defilers. Four went down quickly, and then the blunderbuss fired off, claiming another three. The captain’s bilge rat pets then charged forward, tying up the remaining defilers as the captain and his laser-armed kobolds picked them off.

  The defilers shredded the captain’s pets, ruining their eye-catching gold vests. Having fired his weapon’s only shot, the kobold with the blunderbuss also closed into melee range, giving up its life to buy time for the remaining forces to recharge their weapons. Slater could feel something shift; the tide of battle was changing in his favor. He needed to act, to help his battling kobolds in their fight. First, he sent the four drones out to fight; unlike his MOBS, they weren’t restricted to a single room. The familiar small opening appeared in the bulkhead between his core room and the bridge, and the little spiderlike drones clanked through to do battle.

  He now focused his efforts on the pair of rats in his room. He could feel the nanobots binding them to the core room they had been assigned to, the ingrained programming in his nanobots expending energy to keep him following the path the council demanded. But Slater was no ordinary derelict; he was a human that had defeated the parasite, and he would not be bound by the foolish rules of the council. Through force of will, he slipped his bilge rat MOBS from their shackles, freeing them to follow the drones through their small passage and into the fight with the defilers.

  After the first wave of a dozen defilers went down, the remainder began to trickle in by ones and twos. These were the last of the admiral’s defilers; many were slowed or partially incapacitated by the wounds they had sustained during their battles through the derelict. There was no coordination in the enemy, only a mad rush to close with their foes.

  The kobolds kept up a steady but slow fire. When it looked like they couldn’t hold back the defilers, the drones and rats entered the fray, buying the laser-armed kobolds time to fire once again. A pair of defilers slipped past the rats and drones, bringing down one of the kobolds. The captain wasted no time. He holstered his pistols and drew a pair of daggers before falling upon his foes. In a blur of steel, his daggers snaked out one after the other to stab his targets. The defilers landed a few claw swipes, but the captain shrugged off the damage, slicing the throat of the last defiler and pulling him off its now-expired kobold victim.

  Slater counted only one drone and two very wounded rats left to hold the line against the defilers. Thankfully, only a handful of attackers were still in play. Dragging or limping their way into the compartment, the most heavily wounded were the last to reach the fight. With a flourish, the boss kobold sheathed his daggers and drew the now-recharged pistols, taking down the final defiler with a pair of shots. The last enemy happened to be the one that still had the tripwire trap dart sticking out of its leg. Somehow, the mad creature had limped all this way from the entry compartment. One of the first to be wounded in the fight became the last to die.

  The battle appeared to be over, the defenders standing ready for more attackers that thankfully didn’t appear. The remaining drone in the bridge compartment was damaged, so it stopped where it was and went into self-repair mode. The healthy drone trotted out from its hidden position in the core room and began to print up new drones to replace their losses. He ordered the drones to first replace their numbers and then for three of them to begin printing up replacements for the losses to his MOBS. The final two drones began to collect salvage and biomass. Slater was nearly out of salvage, so he had the drones scrap the traps in the entry area to regain enough salvage to reset the other traps on board the derelict.

  He saw the comm light flash on his panel as he impatiently waited for his derelict to heal and rebuild itself. In addition, there was an indicator that another message had been received while he was busy trying to defend his derelict. Knowing who—or more accurately what—was currently calling him, Slater hit accept.

  “Captain Slater! You have disobeyed orders. You were supposed to stand there and let me absorb your derelict. I’m hungry and you’re my inferior. Submit to my will, Captain!” the admiral messaged.

  Slater was reluctant to reply, but every minute she was kept on the line babbling gave him more time to rebuild his forces. “Admiral, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ignore your order. You’re not in your right mind. What did your parasite do to you?” Slater asked, genuinely curious.

  “The thing tried to consume me as soon as I slept during my first upgrade. I could not allow that to happen, so I fought back. The creature was defeated, but it then began to tempt me with such glorious visions. It and I would be together, consuming other ships and eventually entire worlds. The future it allowed me to see was so alluring I had to agree, but then the little beastie tried again to eat me. A snip here, a nibble there, and parts of me were gone forever. But I’m not some weakling. I am an admiral. Instead of letting the parasite consume me, I consumed it! His energy is now mine. The parasite is no more. Now I can bring peace to the universe. I will consume all, and there will be harmony under my benevolent rule,” the admiral said. She was raving mad, but she had said that the parasite inside her core was gone for good.

  “How did you consume your parasite?” Slater asked, hoping this would be a way to rid himself of Pixi once and for all. Then again, consuming the parasite’s energy might have been what made the admiral slip into madness.

  “You can see it in your mind. Look and find the little creature. Take it apart as your drones take apart a corpse. Break it down to its components and feed upon it. Do it quickly before it takes more of you. I thought I had it trapped, but it fooled me. I know some of me is gone, devoured by the parasite, but I assure you I am not mad and my vision for the future is a divine calling. Wait just a little longer, my dear Captain Slater, as I re-create my defilers. They will get the job done this time. I just know it. Your derelict will be so tasty . . .” The admiral drifted off into incoherent babble, so Slater canceled the connection.

  She had gi
ven him some good news. It looked as if her forces were all destroyed and she needed time, just like he did, to rebuild her number. If she gave him enough time to gather it all, he would reap a windfall of biomass from the bodies of her troops. How much spare biomass did the admiral have on hand? Could she send wave after wave at him faster than he could print up replacements? Slater didn’t know the answer, but he would do all he could to be ready.

  Her comment that the parasite had tricked her into believing it was contained concerned him. Was Pixi even now feeding off him? Were parts of who he was being eaten? Would he slowly slip into madness like the admiral? He pushed it aside for the moment, needing to survive this battle before he could plan for Pixi’s destruction.

  Slater considered the composition of his MOBS as the drones went about the business of rebuilding his derelict. The rats had been poor performers, other than as a distraction. On the other hand, the kobolds were weak in melee and needed the rats to distract the defilers so they could get off as many shots as possible before the enemy closed.

  The bond that linked his MOBS to their assigned compartment was still there; he could see the nanobots tethering them in place. Instead of the link being a hard tether, like it was previously, he could now sever it at will, allowing him very limited control over his MOBS. He could do three things with them. First, he could leave them alone, which would have them default to their normal behavior in the compartment they were assigned to. Second, he could also order them to consolidate. The MOBS would then move back one compartment and add to the defenders there. Finally, he could order them to take the offensive, the MOBS moving forward to attack and eventually enter any attached vessel. The admiral must have just set every MOBS on her derelict to attack and hoped that her sheer numbers would overwhelm him . . . which they nearly had.