Chaos Rising

8

Hael tore up the maintenance ladder like he was on XLR8. The sight of the loading drone crashing through the wall was replaying in his mind. Metal bars and rubble had fallen everywhere as the massive blue-grey drone had charged into the corridor, only metres away from where Hael had fallen. 

The machine had been little more than an oversized, walking forklift; Hael knew it didn't have the capacity to know that the Gnarl were a threat. Someone must have interfered with its programming. As Hael had pulled himself to his feet, grabbed the Hemorrhage and bolted for the maintenance shaft, the drone had stood in the middle of the corridor, swinging its bulky, two-pronged arms around, as the Gnarl leapt for its spherical sensor array. The memory of the screeching sound of the drone's arms scratching the metal walls was still making Hael's teeth grit. He silently thanked whoever had programmed the drone to help him.

Reaching the top of the ladder, he pushed the panel off the wall and rolled onto a hard white floor, the Hemorrhage clattering down beside him. Hael's instincts helped him recover from the roll and sweep the gun back into his grasp, while keeping low to the ground. Settling himself against a cabinet for cover, he tentatively looked around.

Two pairs of worried eyes stared back from the other cabinet next to him. A wiry, dark-skinned Human in a ruffled medical outfit and another taller, pale-skinned Human in a dark combat suit were crouched down low just like Hael. They looked like passengers. The paler one's fingers seemed to dance in the air and a cloud of dark red particles gathered around them, while the doctor stared nervously at Hael's gun. Hael looked down and lowered the weapon, realising he was dressed like the pirates.

"Stand down," Hael hissed. "I work in Stores. My name is Hael." He pulled out his staff card and sent it skittering towards the doctor.

"This is him," the doctor told the other.

"I know," the pale one replied.

Hael watched as the misty cloud disappeared into nothingness. "So, a psychic?" he asked, creeping closer to the other two. Hael had seen this sort of thing before, but only in combat zones. The Human United Defence Force seemed to be trying to keep a lid on the existence of human psychics. Hael doubted whether the other races could ever really be duped by such a bureaucratic nightmare like the UDF.

The psychic only responded with a glare.

"You're a barrel of laughs," Hael smirked. "So, what's the situation?"

The doctor looked confused.

"The pirates have already cleared this ward," the psychic said quietly. "But they've got a guard of five or six of them outside. They are looking for stragglers. We're trying to get to the extended care ward, but they're in the way."

"Can't you do to them whatever it was you were going to do to me?" Hael asked, taking a peek over the cabinet to see three or so shabbily-dressed thugs behind the glass wall at the end of the room.

"Six-on-one is risky," the psychic replied, like he was repeated something he'd been told. "Five-on-one is only a little better."

"What about the doctor?" Hael asked, nodding at the weaker-looking man.

"He has about as much idea of battle as a star whelk," the psychic replied, taking a look over the cabinet. Star whelks were large interstellar parasites with metre-thick shells that latched themselves to the sides of passing asteroids and space ships. Regardless of all the news reports saying that they were actually quite smart, Hael only knew them as a pest. Short of being blasted by pulse laser fire, plasma torpedoes or MAC slugs, they were nearly impossible to remove.

"Hmm..." Hael nodded.

"You were a soldier," the psychic said, rather than asked. "Winter, can you patch Hael into our comm channel?"