Out of Space 4 Boarded

"Damage report?" Captain Blake called out.

"Unknown at the moment, Sir!" Ford replied as he checked each status on his screen. "I think they hit the engine block."

"Get on the comms! Warn Engineering that they might have trouble and alert the marines."

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Chief Engineer Matt Peterson ended the call from Bridge and turned around to his team. "We got some hitchhikers on our tail! Open the arms locker and get armed. Inform the Marines guards." The engineers look at each other with frightened faces. "Chief are we gonna fight too?" Someone yelled. "I didn't sign up for this!"

"So you wanna roll over and die? If those swarm things get in here, everyone is fish food for them! Now stop your whining or I swear to god I'll space you guys instead and save the swarm the trouble of eating you!" Chief Engineer Matt bellowed at his crew.

"Sir! Heard that you have some trouble?" Marine Sgt Collins of Section Four entered Engineering B with his team of six other Marines.

"Yes, those Swarm seems to have boarded by the engine block. We need to hold them off. If they destroy the engines, we ain't going nowhere!" CE Matt replied. "I assign some guys to you to guide you around the engineering passages." He turned and yelled at the guys. " You and you! Yes, you! Grab a weapon and join the Sarge here! You are their guide. Go!"

"Jenkins, Royce, and Dean. you three stay and guard the main hatch. The rest on me, move out." Sgt Collins led the rest of the section following behind the 2 engineering crews deeper into Engineering B.

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Marine CO of UNS Singapore, 2nd Lt Frank Lee standing outside the Bridge hatch, flips out his readout, glances at it and returned it back to his pouch. "Staff, you fought these things before right?" He asks Staff Pike softly.

"Yea, fought them several times, on Himpra, same as the Cap, and two fleet boarding actions." Staff Pike replied while checking his gear.

"What is it like?" Lt Frank asked curiously. All he knew is from videos and training simulations. He just got this posting after finishing officer cadet school, Command sent him here to learn how to command a platoon in the rear lines.

"Bad, really bad, don't let them get near you. Their claws can rip your MK XI Armor into shreds, not to mention other than armor piercing rounds, or large caliber weapons can pen their carapace. They are almost impossible to stop." He dug out a magazine from his ammo pouch containing the ceramic rounds and shook it. "These? It's not gonna do much to them. But the trick is to shoot them when they get near you and open their mouths." He loaded his rifle and slung it. "Sir, you need to show the troops that you are confident." He reached out and stops Frank from opening his pouch to take out his readout. "That's the 11th time you took it out, Sir. Keep calm, don't show your fear out."

Great. How am I going to do that? Thought Frank. He caught himself reaching for his readout again and instead force his hand back and gripped his rifle instead. "You think they boarded?"

"Sure as hell. These things, they don't stop. They feed on you so they can create more of themselves. If we don't fight them, sooner or later, mankind is gonna be extinct." He braced himself against the bulkhead with one hand as the ship groaned and shook from the maneuverings. "They are coming. I can feel it." He looks at the rest of the troops milling outside the reactor room. "We have to make sure they do not get past us if Collins and his section fails."

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The narrow service corridors lined with pipes and cables only allowed Collins's section to advance in a single file. "Keep some distance, don't cluster fuck together!" Collins comms his men as they followed the lead crewman to where the ship computers detected the intrusion.

Pvt Leeds was following the techie in front of him, he looked at his readout and pulled the techie to a stop. "Wait, we are about 30 m away from the target." The techie dressed in a white environment suit with a blue strip indicating him from Engineering looked frightened. He raised his weapon, a compact personal defense weapon chambered in 5 mm, and nervously fingered the trigger.

"Hey techie, what's your name?" Leeds asked as he signaled the men behind him to stop and hold.

"Lawrence, Spaceman apprentice of engi- ARGH!" A scythe-like blade suddenly burst out of his chest turning his white suit red as he turned to reply to Leeds.

"Shit! Contact!" Pvt Leeds yelled as blood splattered onto his visor. He scrambled back and fell on his back as he watched Lawrence twitching in agony and a creature from nightmares appeared.

The warrior drone lifted Lawrence towards its maw and bit down, severing the head and part of the shoulder of Lawrence and chewed.

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Pvt Drake grew up in a sprawling metro hub on the outskirts of LA. The war had started and with the new law stating that young men had to enlist. He decided on the Marines. Travel to exotic planets, find aliens and kill them the Marine recruiters said. Complete your term of enlistment and get a nice pension. He grew up playing CoD XV and other shooters, fancying himself a pro shooter. Yet despite all the time in VR games, it is different in reality as he went through four months of grueling training in death worlds and airless moons. And he really wanted to kill some aliens.

And now one of the aliens stood over his section buddy and snacking on the techie that brought them here. He flicked his safety off and fired at the warrior drone. Reddish puffs of smoke erupted over the head carapace of the drone as it lowered its head to protect itself. A couple of shots blew what reminds of the techie into a bloody mess. He watched his rounds impacting uselessly on the armored torso of the alien and decided to pull back instead. Grabbing Leeds's harness at the grip bar at the back neck of his armor with one hand while the other kept firing at the creature. "Back! Get back!"

Leeds kicked his heels as fast as he can to scramble back as the drone discarded the gory remains and dropped into a crouch. He brought up his M7A1 and fired point blank at the drone while he felt someone grabbing his harness and pulled him back just in time as two scythes slammed down where he was at a second ago, gouging the steel deck.

"Shoot the mouth!" Someone shouted in the rear. "Get back! It's too narrow here!"

"Fuck!" Drake cursed. Shoot the mouth? Easier said than done! I got my hands full trying to pull Leeds back. I can't even aim straight! Fuck! He swore. "Leeds you fucking owe me one! Shoot that scum's mouth!"

Drake dropped his rifle which the rifle sling automatically retracted back to his harness. Using both hands he dragged Leeds all the way back.

"Die mutha fucker! Die!" Leeds screamed as he unloaded his whole magazine onto the drone. Several shots due to his firing angle punched through the razor-sharp teeth and tearing apart the soft tissue within the drone. Taking critical internal damage, the drone jerked and vomited a mass of bloody gore and purplish ichor before collapsing.

"More incoming!" Leeds yelled as he noticed shadowy shapes behind the corpse of the first drone.

Chapter end