The Black Shark pirate assault team's vox-operator listened as the status reports in his earpiece began disappearing one by one, and his brows tightened.
He turned toward a burly man beside him whose shaved scalp was tattooed with a black shark totem and said in a low voice,
"Boss Torlo, the brothers up front seem to have run into real trouble. There might be some serious killers hidden among these lambs."
"How about we wait for the Darkstar boys and push together?"
Torlo swung his huge palm and smacked the vox-operator straight on the head, knocking him to his knees.
"The hell are you acting so scared for? Those Darkstar bastards are less reliable than rotten bolts. Their ship already ran, so if we can eat this meat ourselves, why let them stick their hands in too?"
Torlo's fury was simple enough to explain.
Even though Darkstar and Black Shark had agreed to split the cargo fifty-fifty, that only applied to whatever was in the cargo holds. Any loot taken from the other parts of the transport belonged to whoever seized it first.
In other words, if they waited for Darkstar to come back, then half of the coming spoils would go to them too.
They had hacked their way all the way here and barely seen any real resistance. And ahead lay the richest part of the upper deck.
As far as Torlo was concerned, even if there were one or two hard targets waiting ahead, that still was not enough reason to share this wonderful chance to get rich.
All that had happened so far was that a few scouting teams had been wiped out. A small hiccup like that was nowhere near enough to cool his greed.
"Move it, boys! With me!"
With a shout, he grinned coldly, hefted his one-handed bolt pistol and chainhammer, and charged straight down the long corridor.
Along the way, the remains of slaughtered transport guards were everywhere, while there were hardly any pirate corpses at all.
But that sight made Torlo even more cautious.
It meant their scouting teams had been steamrolling everything through the earlier sections.
So the point where they finally lost contact had to be somewhere ahead.
And that meant one thing.
There was a real problem waiting in front of them.
A highly skilled fighter? A trap laid in advance? Some kind of heavy weapon?
A wary glint flashed through Torlo's savage eyes.
But the caution only lasted a moment before it was replaced by a confident sneer.
As the assault captain of the Black Shark pirates, he had spent more than a decade fighting among the stars.
He had escaped death more than once, and had fought his way out of encirclements many times his own force's size.
Every time, he had broken through by sheer violent strength.
Whatever was waiting ahead, he was certain this would just be another victory for him.
"Help..."
A weak cry suddenly came from up ahead.
Torlo immediately stopped, raised his bolt pistol, and aimed toward the source of the sound.
With blood dripping onto the deck, a pirate with both arms torn off staggered into view, running with all the strength he had left as though trying to escape something unspeakably terrible.
His will to live had reached its peak. He was trying with every ounce of his being to survive.
But with massive wounds where both arms had been severed, and his frantic sprint driving his heart faster and faster, the blood loss had already become fatal.
After another two stumbling steps, a crushing wave of suffocating dizziness overwhelmed his ruined body, and he collapsed right in front of the other pirates.
Watching that, Torlo felt an intense danger rise from pure instinct.
The next moment, as if to confirm his fear, the corridor lights suddenly went out.
Then footsteps like crashing thunder erupted from ahead, closing the distance at an impossible speed.
"Fire! Fire!"
A dense storm of bullets, laser fire, and heavy bolts flooded forward.
In the glare of the tracer rounds, the body charging toward them with unstoppable force finally came into view.
The pirates had expected the target to be torn apart instantly by the dense kill zone.
Instead, it showed nearly inhuman mobility.
The figure leaped straight upward, shot toward the wall beside the corridor like a cannon shell, then kicked off and sprinted along it in a way no normal human should have been able to do, slipping around the fire zone in a three-dimensional zigzag.
Torlo felt a blast of wind hit his face, followed by the roar of a revving chainblade.
Relying on instincts honed through countless battles, he barely managed to raise the chainhammer in his right hand across his chest.
With a scream of metal on metal, a terrifying weight drove him flat onto the deck.
Torlo roared, dropped the bolt pistol in his left hand, grabbed the haft of the chainhammer with both hands, and fought with everything he had.
It took only a heartbeat for him to realize it was useless.
Under pressure like a hydraulic press, he watched helplessly as the haft of his chainhammer was cut clean through by the chainaxe in the enemy's hands.
Then, with a squealing scream, the ripping chain-teeth bit into his armor, jammed into the hardened shell and the flesh beneath it, kicked up a spray of blood, and tore him alive into two pieces.
Drip. Drip.
Blood hit the deck in steady drops.
In the terrified eyes of the pirates, that muscular figure, having carved straight through their captain while pushing headlong through their fire zone, slowly rose in the darkness.
A moment later, desperate gunfire and one scream after another began echoing through the corridor.
...
Solomon followed behind the shieldman carrying a portable augur, while Magos Lena's servo-skull floated nearby helping him finish off any pirates who were not quite dead yet.
He looked at the saw-like gouges carved into the walls and deck, streaked with fragments of armor and flesh, and at the pieces of pirates littering the floor, and could not help swallowing.
After another wide scan, Magos Lena said in a flat mechanical voice,
"Aside from the lift area, the upper deck no longer shows any large clusters of life signs. Preliminary assessment: secured."
Solomon nodded, stuck his head out to glance around, and after confirming there really was no danger, swaggered out from behind the shieldman and started walking proudly at the front.
Before long, they caught up to Gaia.
She was currently sitting atop a pile of pirate corpses, slowly calming the battle-blood still boiling inside her.
A little sweat appeared on Solomon's forehead. He stepped closer, rubbed his mustache, and said,
"The upper deck is clear for now, but there's still an assault team from the other pirate band active somewhere on the lower decks."
"We should head to the bridge first, meet the owners of this ship, and talk about payment while we're at it. Then we can make the next move."
Gaia looked at Solomon, whose grin was already threatening to break loose from his face, and knew perfectly well that what he really meant was that he was about to jack up the price.
She sighed, then slowly rose from the corpse pile, brushing bits of flesh off herself.
As she looked toward the bridge, a trace of confusion rose in her.
For some reason, she could feel that there was something over there resonating with her psychic sense.
And somehow, it felt as if it were calling to her.
...
"Captain! Captain! We've lost contact with Torlo's team!"
On the Blind Believer-class raider, which was still being chased around in circles by the Spear of Destiny's macro-cannon fire, the vox-operator gave a shrill shout.
The Black Shark pirates exploded into chaos.
"What? Torlo got taken out?"
At that moment, one pirate with astonishing intelligence roared,
"Damn it, I get it now. This has to be Darkstar's doing."
"They staged the whole thing. It looks like only one destroyer's boarding team, but the Darkstar boys are actually with them!"
"Torlo probably thought it was one against two, but it was really two against one, and he got stabbed in the back and died!"
"That explains it. I knew those bastards ran too fast after taking one hit. Damn it, they were putting on a show for us!"
Having lost their assault team, the Black Shark pirates cursed furiously, swore they would settle things with Darkstar later, and then, after dodging another salvo from the Spear of Destiny's macro-cannons, accelerated away.
Meanwhile, down on the transport's lower decks, the Darkstar pirates, having lost all contact with both raider ships, were completely dumbfounded.
What the hell?
Why did both ships run?
So how were they supposed to get back now?
(End of Chapter)
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