Abduction - Devious Act
25 Jul 2024Jana Razeki
Thargoid-controlled spaceVicinity of Titan Raijin
"Come on, you big bastard! Put up a fight!"
The Basilisk roared as another of its hearts was ripped apart by shard cannon fire, leaving only one of the mechanisms active. I boosted past the Thargoid ship as it deployed its defensive shield again, and a fresh Thargon swarm, effectively replacing the previous one. I stripped away the Interceptor's shield with a beam laser before re-engaging, which had almost become a routine in dealing with them. Expose and knock off a heart, boost away and toggle flight assist off, maintain distance while removing the shield, repeat until it goes down, with occasional repairs and heat sink refilling. I strayed close enough that the Basilisk lit up yellow, getting ready to engage its 'lightning'.
"Oh, you wanna dance? Well, I'm ready!"
I kept my eyes focused on the Interceptor, rather than be distracted by the malfunctioning HUD as the excess energy affected random systems around the ship. Thrusters, luckily, remained active, as did all four weapons, and this Thargoid was going to feel it. The firing of the modified shard cannons reverberated through the ship, both in sound and vibration, exposing the single remaining heart in an instant, tearing it out just as quickly when all four were fired at the same time. My flight style was perhaps a little more aggressive than what certain anti-xeno pilots proclaimed was the best way to fight a Thargoid Interceptor, but I had the results - and scars on the ship's hull - to show for it. Baiting lightning was risky, certainly but there was no better way to shred a heart without getting shot back at. Unless the timing was just slightly off and the heart returned to nominal just prior to destruction, which could be rather inconvenient while staring down a Medusa or Hydra.
The Basilisk raised its shield one more time in a last-ditch effort, quickly resuming its standard cannon fire, rather than attempt to obtain a target lock for its caustic missiles. But its effort was in vain - the protective barrier dropped within a minute under the hailstorm of projectiles, while its own failed to find their target, and it wailed as the finishing blow struck, condemning it to be another wreck among the millions already created throughout the war. The Thargon swarm equally screeched in distraught manner, as it witnessed the imminent demise of its mothership.
'If you wanted me to feel sorry, you shouldn't have invaded our space.', I thought to myself, as I watched explosions ripple through the enemy craft, until it tore itself apart in a blast that much resembled a Titan's explosion, only at significantly smaller scale.
Yet I didn't feel accomplished about the act either. The pilot in me perhaps would feel some pride at the display of flight skill, or enough of it mixed in with just battering it until it went down, but I equally knew I was taking a life, and that, I neither could, nor would, enjoy. Joining the ranks of the bloodthirsty maniacs that screamed for blood whenever they saw a Thargoid, and would possibly turn those ill-placed urges on much more questionable targets than a Thargoid invasion fleet indiscriminately targeting anything in their path and abducting civilians as well as military personnel forced to abandon their ship, once the threat which the Titans posed no longer existed... I would put a bullet through my head before that.
But there was still enough of my sanity left to keep my brain from devolving into that kind of primal existence. Probably. I at least knew I would only fight Thargoids on defensive grounds within the Bubble, and nowhere else.
I checked the status of the ship - modules were mostly fine, because I hadn't taken any Thargon missile strikes, either avoiding them or keeping the swarm out of its agitated state in the first place. Hull integrity was down by about forty percent, between occasional fire from the Basilisk and getting zapped once or twice by it, plus a few Scouts until local defense forces drew them off, to keep my back clear.
I started off some repairs nonetheless - nothing that the AFMU or some repair limpets couldn't patch back up, yet, anyway - backing away from the expanding death cloud. I was intending to head for a spot in the system where the locals were engaging Thargoids to push them out of the system, until that Basilisk had tried to ruin someone's day. Only it'd interdicted the wrong pilot, but while that act of stopping to fight it had been intentional... I did want to have the ship in as good of a fighting condition as I could get it as well, for the actual intense combat elsewhere.
A couple of leaving FSD signatures popped up on sensors - the wing of locals that'd come to my assistance had to have finished their Scout business. And as long as I stayed moving, any Thargoids dropping in wouldn't find a target to attack, so I could join them in reinforcing one of the primary conflict zones. Except I didn't actually get to do that, because I suddenly started getting shot at. And not by Thargoids, because I would have noticed those on scanners long before they opened fire, unless they'd suddenly unleashed a stealth vessel on us. Naturally, I was a bit startled by this.
"What the ..." I began transmitting across an open channel. "Hey! Hold your fire! I'm not your enemy!"
No response. Other than clearly a railgun shot narrowly missing as I began moving - so, definitely set out to go after human ships specifically. No identification of my attacker possible by my ship's computer, either.
"Damn it."
That meant either an assassin, with some damn good spoofing, or worse. Didn't need to be said that I wouldn't be going out without some kind of a fight... even if I was facing a Fer-de-Lance, by the look of things. And those shard cannons packed a punch not just against Thargoid ships. So I got the hardpoints out again, barely even considering to just jump out of the system because, for better or for worse, this was one of those problems I made the quick decision to face head on.
At first, it looked like I was managing to put up a reasonably good fight, preventing the attacker from getting particularly good shots at the thrusters, also catching a few glimpses of their ship - painted jet black, much like a certain secret mercenary group used to, but that didn't have to mean it was one of them. Yet, when I was seemingly putting more than just a negligible dent into the FDL's shields, it rapidly turned from a one-on-one into a four-on-one. Much less favorable, especially when I was flying shieldless and they weren't.
Yet I wasn't obliterated on the spot. Something about their targeting was oddly held back and specific, not that I had much time to ponder it... beyond that the attackers probably only wanted my ship disabled. Now I was beginning to contemplate abandoning the fight and evading as best I could, but I'd only really developed skills against foolhardy pirates and Thargoids, not highly-skilled human pilots. And that idea was quickly knocked out of my head by external circumstances, anyway.
"Warning. Frame Shift Drive reboot."
"Oh, just great!"
Not many options... but there was still the caustic remnant of the dead Basilisk nearby. I began heading for that, knowing the caustic sink launcher would protect me, while hoping those people didn't have one... whoever they were. I tried my luck with a distress signal while flying right through it... and still under fire.
"Mayday, mayday! This is Jana Razeki in - " Another impact made me flinch. Bastards were just firing into the cloud from its edges. " - in Pegasi Sector KH-V c2-6! I'm under attack by hostile human ships with no identification, and require immediate assistance! I repeat, I need immediate assistance!"
I punched 'Send'.
"Alert. Signal jammer activity detected. Transmission quality may be compromised."
"Oh, for fu - ah!"
A jolt that went through the entire ship nearly threw me out of the seat. There went the thrusters. Which would of course send me drifting right out of the caustic cloud I tried to use for protection. My 'companions' made it a show to match my own drifting ship's momentum, and to slow it down with their own. The way they were flying, definitely not standard pirates.
"Oh, so you want to come in here? Fine, I can play that game too, fuckers."
I got up and out of my seat to get some weapons, and something better than a basic personal shield. If they wanted me alive, they'd have to fight for it... and I suspected they did want me alive, because I couldn't remember screwing anyone or any one faction over recently, in any way that would warrant them putting out a kill-on-sight hit.
The armory - so much as I could call it that - would also make for a reasonably good defensive spot, just one way in, or out, and not a lot of cover on the way into it. The intruder warning told me when to begin expecting my company... I'd take at least one of those bastards down, if I even could.
Saw one turn a corner after one or two tense minutes - it appeared to be a man, by stature, clad in pitch black suit and armor, plus a helmet that made it impossible to see the face. I rewarded him with a stream of bullets, but that was only enough to dent the shields... not even meaningfully. That one time I could have used military-grade foot gear, I found myself wishing for it. Those Pioneer weapons, good for scavengers, but not too much else.
"They're holed up in the armory!"
"Well, then, keep 'em pinned and get in there! Move up, one by one! Use those doorways for cover! There's only the pilot, so they can't hit more than one of us at a time!"
Unless I threw some grenades down that corridor. Which I did, after a shield disruptor, but I didn't do a great job of lobbing either, and got none of my targets. And with the shots coming back at me, little opportunity to shoot back... I pulled out a combat knife instead.
'First time for everything, I guess.', I thought, looking at it briefly, before dropping both a shield projector, at my feet, and in the direction of the shooters, a flashbang. Then I charged out at the bastard closest, lunging at them with a sort of war cry, and temporary disconnection of mag boots to really keep that momentum.
Man evidently didn't expect that, let alone that much mass behind, or rather in, my body. Got pulled right off the floor and into a wall from a corridor that ran adjacent, rather than parallel. A brief struggle occurred as he reached for a close combat weapon of his own and tried to break free, but my self-defense training ended up paying off, and then I stood near a corpse with a surprised look on the face, a knife in the chest... never had imagined killing someone else in such a scenario would be that 'easy', even with instincts taking over.
The next thing I felt was a distinct sting at around neck level, just as I turned around, and I felt control over my muscles fading. The only act I managed was to give the rest of those presumed mercs the finger, before everything turned dark.
"Is that her? Are we sure?", one of the commandos asked.
"Yeah, pretty sure.", another replied, trying to ignore the stink finger that remained pointed at them. "Face looks right, anyway."
"I guess it does, but I was expecting something, a little, less... large. Anyway, J - get that idiot into a pod. Big ass and chest won't save her today. M, get to the ship's computer and falsify the records. Make it look like the Thargoids ripped this ship to shreds, then set the whole thing to self-destruct and throw out the black box."
"Understood, Commander."
"Good. Everyone else, with me - we'll wait by the starboard airlock. And someone carry the dumbass that got stabbed back as well, would you?"
"I'd hate to hurry you, but we won't have much time before the Thargoids get here.", the pilot of the squad's transport called out.
"I'm not dumb. Haven't led this squad through a dozen missions in this Thargoid-infested space alive because I'm an idiot. If anyone's an idiot, it's those deserters that think they're safer by trying to lose us in the middle of some caustic stink bugs."
"Escort Bravo here. Picking up approaching Thargoid signals, will move to distract. Hurry up in there, or you'll be swimming in Thargoids in a minute."
"I got it, I got it. M, shitcan the self-destruct. Too complicated to get done in time, even for you. Just get that black box data altered and come back here."
"Are you sure, boss? You know that if she finds out - "
"I'm aware, but you're too valuable to lose here. And it was not a suggestion."
What wasn't being said between the two was that it, perhaps, was even preferable for a trail to be left behind - because taking a captive wouldn't be much use without it getting found out, alongside a trail to follow. The squadron quickly exfiltrated before the Thargoids sent a larger force after the killer of the Basilisk, floating in the near area as a dead carcass. And, thanks to the use of callsigns, alongside the face-obscuring helmets, it'd be harder to trace this back to anybody of them in particular.
The bait had been set - now it just needed to hook on.