Rise of the Kirin 32 & 33

[Cmdr Wyvern]

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Chapter 32 (The machine waits)
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It waited, motionless. Standing like some ancient alien totem as the stars turned lazily around it. It had watched the station burst into flame and crash from orbit like a falling angel taking a myriad of thargoid ships with it. It stood impassively as reinforcements arrived on the far left flank of the original line. Finally matching the Thargoids ship for ship and slowly whittled them down like drift wood. It had viewed the opportunistic commanders arrive late for the battle, scoop and leave as true fighters, fought for their lives against a relentless and fearless adversary.

The machine itself stood on three tree trunk like squat legs, its four toed feet partially buried in the settling asteroid dust. The hulking armored waist, capable of 360 degrees of rotation, glittered in the star light. Arms sprang from the angled box like upper body like branches. The retractable fine manipulators were impatiently crossed across the lower chest, larger side utility arms with a cornucopia of adaptions and attachments were folded neatly under the upper hulking cargo manipulating claws that hung by its sides. The two barrels from the rotating shoulder mounted heavy weapons stuck vertically up like snub nose chimney stacks.

Behind it and half a life time away so it seemed, the Hammer of Sorrow lay, wreathed in white vapor-stasis. The ships nose was inelegantly languishing in the asteroids dust. A humanoid figure was slowly approaching from this direction. The machine turned, in front of it sat a smug radar dome and solar array. Its form whizzed and buzzed efficiently performing the two functions given to it. Jam any cloaking device in system and deflect any long range scans of this system from the outside. The optic eye of the machine narrowed regarded the array with a cool calm annoyance. Firing stabilizing spikes into the ground, the 7 foot tall Cargo-Combat-Reclamation Mec spun up and charged it's left shoulder weapon. Within seconds the rail-gun was spitting explosive pellets into and through the dome and array. Shards of solar cell spun gently round the now destroyed facility like snow in a snow globe.

"Seems like a bit of a waste." Orburn Zorr commented as the machine emptied the rest of its clip into the already shredded and ruined dome.

"Of course, I could have dissected it" Udian retorted from inside his metal sarcophagus. "Deciphered the particular twisted arm of physics that enabled Cheem to inhibit all cloaking devices and render Tibecia practically invisible to all the militaries long range scanners. But some times when you've had a really bad day, you just need a big fat satisfying, all be it disappointingly silent, bang. If you know what I mean?"

Zorr's eyes drank in the destruction "and two thirds of the Thargoid fleet wasn't a big enough bang for you?"

Shulth attempted to shrug. "I was too busy bleeding to death to fully enjoy the moment unfortunately" he rotated his new body to look directly at Zorr. "Whilst I would love to flatter my ego into thinking your just out here to watch me get some small measure of pay back. I assume you have news?"

"Of course, the Kirin, crew, Mima and a good company of rescued marines are on route."

Udian managed a mechanical chuckle, "That commander doesn't just pull it out of the fire, he pulls it out of the fire with a fanfare."

"One small problem boss," Zorr replied. "They lost Cheem, he stole the Dragon."

The machine flexed its fine manipulators, "Unfortunate, you know the container we had in safe keeping for the commander? Fill three instead, one of each type. It won't buy him a new ship but still, the kirin should make reasonable reparations for his loss on that score. It is after all the least we can do."

"what about Cheem?" Zorr questioned.

Udian was silent for a moment "Someone will catch up with him eventually, if he's anything like his father any thoughts other than personal safety would have left his mind the moment he realized he'd lost control for the situation."

"I hope your right" Orburn replied, "we're in no state to take on a pissed off rock hermit, let alone an iron-ass Dragon with an inflatable vendetta for a pilot."

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Chapter 33 (mixed fortunes)
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Sweat stung General Senior Gouglass vor Cheem eyes as he piloted the stolen Lady Tiamat through the last of the Thargoid fighters. He had exhausted almost half the fuel tanks bouncing off the atmosphere, dodging and weaving through the seemingly never ending wave of Thargoid ships converging on the station. The cabin although not uncomfortably hot, was more humid than he was used to. The pilots seat made him look like a dwarf and his right hand was weeping from the minor plasma burns that the lizard had caused him on the station.

Several pieces of good fortune had transpired to make this situation far from unsalvageable however. He had scraped out of the hangar bay by the skin of his teeth, the demolition charges had done their work trapping the kirin and its crew on the station. It had warmed his soul to think of that reptile and his freak crew being torn limb from limb by a swarm of Thargoid warriors. A thought that was cut short by the unexpected sky fall of the station. It didn't matter, torn apart or burned to death; dead was dead.

Next had been the timely arrival of the attacking Galcorp force providing a closing envelope of targets in between him and what was left of the Thargoids. Now there was nothing but clear space in front of him. There was no sign of Shulth and even if he had survived Mima was dead, that would be revenge enough for now. Just one more loose end to tie up then he could comfortably fly back to Secom and make up any story he wanted. The jamming station had to be destroyed. It was the only thing left linking him to the battle.

Turning, he made best speed towards the slowly spinning speck that was Tibecia-beta 44. An uninhabited 5 kilometer wide irregular asteroid subtly circling the system just outside the outer witch-point nav beacon.

Clean up, go home. What could be easier?

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Buried within the equipment section of the stolen Dragon, something malevolent began to stir. Resting in a small metal canister, lay the very heart and soul of the lady Tiomat. The positronic neural net that resided there was seething, or as close to anger as an artificial intelligence can get. Unfamiliar hands were at her flight console. No input came from her tech station. She came to the only logical conclusion: She was pirated. This would not do. As programmed by her legal Master, she began slowly making herself as close to inoperable as possible.

Reaching out into her systems, she began scrambling weapons controls, retuning the injectors, locking the fail safes on the ECM and the energy bomb. She dangerously over clocked the Torus drive and began to slowly parboil the witch drive coils by starving them of coolant. She rendered the shields next to useless by deliberately burning out the power links to the shield arrays. Like a cancer she ripped though herself. Slowly, insidiously, she started to die around the hated nameless thief that had taken her. Turrets locked in place, lasers were allowed to fall out of alignment warping their housings. Gradually the temperature of her living quarters began to drop as she vented the heat into the unforgiving void of space. She informed Galcorp central command that she and she alone was responsible for over a thousand police deaths in a hundred different systems. She watched with cool satisfaction as her legal rating went from clean, to offender, to fugitive and the clock on her bounty span out of control.

[_ds_]

Arms sprang from the angled box like upper body like branches.

It took a little while to work that one out due to the lack of hyphenation, but I think that you meant "arms sprang like branches from the angled box-like upper body"…

Anyway, I've added these chapters and made a few more tweaks than I'd like to have made. Oh well; so long as everybody's happy with it…