Rise of the Kirin 27 & 28

[Cmdr Wyvern]

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Chapter 27 (Face-off)
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Roh'i had spotted a familiar figure crossing the hangar deck, heading towards the disabled Ferdy. Calling the Hanuris brothers to follow with stun rifles, he moved out to intercept the General and the prisoner.

Gouglass looked over the shot up frame of the little fighter. Cockpit holed, engine section badly damaged; the ship wasn't space worthy anymore, much less capable of flight. The scores of illegal weaponry bristling from the Kirin's hull had made a wreck of it. The snarling Ceerdans holding stun blasters on him from on top of the little craft were even less assuring. And to make things worse, a familiar deep growl came from behind him, "Game over, fat boy. Drop the gun and release the young lass, and maybe I'll go easy on you."

Gouglass turned, "Well played, Commander, well played." He pressed the pistol to Mima's head, "But you haven't won yet."

"Oh, but I have," the draconid rumbled. "Kill her, and I'll gut you...slowly. Then I'll leave what's left of you to your Bug buddies out there. And, my friends there will have you kissing the deck if you try shooting at me. There's no way out for you, General. Speaking of... You ok there, Miss?"

"I've had better days," Mima snorted.

"Yeah, I can imagine. Don't sweat it, lardarse has run out of options."

Gouglass had to admit to himself that Roh'i may be right. The deck was all but deserted of operational ships; every ship that could fly had scrambled, leaving the shot-up Ferdy, the Kirin, and across the deck, a gold and purple Dragon, Roh'i's /Lady Tiomat/. There was no clear path to the Kirin, Roh'i and the Ceerdans would be on him swiftly. But maybe... He tightened his finger on the trigger of the pistol.

With a growl, Roh'i drew his blaster and fired. The cyan bolt struck the General's gun. Gouglass cried out in pain, dropping the searing hot pistol, which Roh'i kicked away. "Not happening, you son of a bitch!" the draconid growled in his face. "Now I'm gonna kick yer arse!" In a panic, Gouglass ran for the Dragon, bolts from the Ceerdan's stun blasters whizzing around him.

"Enough! Let him go," Roh'i called to the brothers. "Let's get out of here. Miss Shulth, if you'll follow me, we'll get you home."

Outside, the first of the surviving Thargoid warships entered the station aegis and decelerated, heading towards the station. Panels on top of the alien ship opened, revealing cutting equipment.

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Chapter 28 (Resurrection man)
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"I can't see" Udians voice appeared to echo through the nothingness. The light of the energy bomb had long since faded leaving nothing but a deep penetrating black. He was cold, an almost wet like feeling crawled across his skin or at least that's what his nerve endings told him it was. "UDIAN SHULTH" the god like voice boomed around him, through him. Carrying his soul like a piece of drift wood on a sea of sound. "Yes?" He replied some what questioningly. "UDIAN SHULTH DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOU ARE?" More thunder. "Well there's the rational option and the hysterical religious option, as the latter renders me and any choices I make completely pointless, I'll cling to the one that grants me the the most control."

"YOU DIDN'T ANSWER MY QUESTION."

"True, I believe I'm currently floating, or to be more apt, what's left of me is floating in a resus tube. The reason your voice has no inflection and is quite frankly annoyingly loud, is your communicating directly to my brain via keyboard. To answer your question in the spirit of which it was asked. We are floating in a crippled ship, slap bang in the middle of a big embarrassing hole in the middle of the Thargoid fleet."

"AND YOUR OTHER POSSIBLE EXPLANATION OF YOUR CURRENT SITUATION IS?"

Udian shrugged "Oh, well that's easy, I'm dead. Your Giles and I've just insulted the creator of all things. Even for an ex-human bio-form like me that's a pretty good days work."

"OK, YEAH YOU GOT ME IT'S ORBURN HERE. GOOD TO SEE YOUR STILL WITH US BOSS."

Shulth moved his hand up to his face to rub the bridge of his nose in mild frustration. It went straight through. Not surprising really considering, still disconcerting none the less. "If it wouldn't be too much trouble can you turn the gain down on the neural interface jack? Its like trying to have a conversation with a public address system."

There was a pause "Is that any better?"

"Fantastic, now starting with me and moving outward from there, what exactly, is our current situation?"

Another pause, "Well, your about as mortally wounded as a non-dead person can get. Your damn lucky that none of that shrapnel shook hands with your brain, else you would be smart mouthing Giles now not me. It was touch and go there for a minute or two. We had to treble your personal nanite load in order to stabilize you, most of them are holding your veins and heart together as we pump in transmorphic blood, stem cells, vitamins and minerals. It is going to take weeks to completely rebuild you though, you really are shredded meat."

Udian thought for a second, "How long have I been out?"

"Since the bomb you mean? About 15 minutes, the Doc wanted to leave you out for a good few hours. Yeah, right like that was going to happen. You'd have crawled out of your tube and throttled the pair of us. Your running on some low level stimulants and a cocktail of lucid pain suppressants."

"Hmm, Get me an outside line. Hang on, Those are all self contained processes, oxygenate my float juice and I'm good to go." Udian felt the warm flow of information into his senses as Zorr connected his brain to the ships AI.

"That's very optimistic of you. Your in a bubble Udian, even with a line to the ship, your not really this years hot tip for the sky world methane surfing championship."

"I'll pop the core out of a C.C.R. Mec, I'm accessing the schematics now, rerouting a few repair units to perform the necessary work, oh dear, we are in a bad way aren't we? Still, I see we're headed in the right direction. Lets just hope that Roh'i is doing a little better than we are. Oh and Orburn?"

"Yes, Captain?"

"Thank you."

"That's what you pay me for Captain. Keeping you alive so you can try and get us all killed again. Now if you'll excuse me there's a slam patch and a stimujection gun that I fully intent to get slightly better acquainted with."

[ClymAngus]

Sorry about being so lax in getting these up (you always beat me to it). I'm some what occupied by vector maps of late.

If you want to add your 10 pence worth Mr W you know your more than welcome.

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