Ali had risen to her feet alongside Rodrigue. Together, they would fight the monster who guffawed loudly in the middle of the growing carnage: “Kumo Raïda, the great explorer Bellescharettes, and what looks like Xiao’s bane and Hemingwests’ Scourge… A fine lineup to protect that beans-whoring Van Hoorn!” After snapping his claws, Osborn was handed the Admiral of the Galactic Trade Company’s head by his second in command. Then, to the laughter of his lieutenants, he bit into it like you would do with a Twinkie. “Refreshing…” he concluded before putting back its almond-shaped visor.

Rarely intimidated, my partner stood guard with a new sword in hand. She was immediately imitated by the Commodore who said in a quavering voice: “Lady Ali, our paths cross but never embrace. This fight is not yours and I shall ask you to leave.”

“As if!” she huffed.

Rodrigue shyly smiled before turning to me: “Monsieur Lee? Gather the survivors with Monsieur Kumo Raïda. Clear the way to the last monopods. That is an absolute ordinance!”

I would never follow orders in my life. But Rodrigue was an inspired suggestions-giver and I decided to comply. Grabbing a blade, I fought my way through the melee, saving as many defenders as I could. Behind me, the duel was on with Osborn. The pirate captain was wielding an axe even larger than himself.

“Raï!” I shouted.

Bursting my helmet, a mortar’s fragment dug a hole in my left cheek, shattering half my teeth. Meanwhile, a head exploded in front of me. Behind stood the unperturbed samurai, the dō-maru covered with blood and oil.

“We have to get Ali and Rodrigue… with the last survivors!” I gasped. The air had already practically all been sucked by the void. “We have to… abandon the cruiser by any means possible! The ship… the ship is going to blow up!”

My friend nodded and whistled, gathering the gunners.

A tremendous shock threw most of us to the ground. According to the alerts displayed by the last undamaged screens, the Marco Polo had just hit the right side of a burning supercargo.

Among the first to stand between the floating dead and wrecks, I saw Ali struggling with Osborn. Despite her skills as a swordswoman, she broke her weapon against her opponent’s visor—which she shattered—and was knocked to the floor by his tail. I immediately leaped back across the main deck, shoving everything I could. Raï had tried to grab me back, but in vain. Holding a curse, he ran towards danger with me for Osborn was lifting my sapiens at arm’s length. She was hitting him in the face to make him let go, yet unsuccessfully. The Freak laughed before biting her over her shoulder, crushing her rib cage.

Witness of the scene and as horrified as me, Raï unloaded his .44 in the side of the giant reptile which didn’t bend. This one then faced us, spitting my partner out of his muscular jaws. “A traitor alongside a Kumo Raïda?” Laughing, the pirate finally put me down with a monumental slap, breaking the steel neck of my host.

Pain ran through the wires and I let out a mewl. My vision was blurry and sizzling. I could no longer hold the link. Between the static that gangrened the bionic eyes of my borrowed body, I saw Osborn, deprived of his helmet, confronting Rodrigue before the video stream stopped.

“Hell! The connection’s broken!” I screamed through my feline lungs. I was back in the Swallow and was greeted by Satori’s backside, kneeling on the control panel on my right. Removing the glasses linked to the computer, a taste of blood appeared in the back of my throat. “What’s going on?” I asked, still fairly numb. All the alerts on the dashboard were activated without the slightest exception.

“Look around you!” the techie cried, trying to patch the air leaks on the front window with brown hardening gel and Duct Tape. “We’ve stayed too long anchored to the Polo! We’ve been stapled!”

“Where’s Ada?”

Satori didn’t reply. Instead, he turned back at me, his eyes lost over my shoulders. Ada was in the pilot’s seat. Lifeless.

This was the kind of blow that the brain couldn’t take and decided to shun it, or risk an emotional emergency stop.

“We—we’ll find a medic… among the G.T.C. survivors…” I stuttered through the smoke coming out of the air-conditioner. “We have to go back to the Marco Polo—help evacuate! Ali’s fighting Osborne with Rodrigue—can we move?”

“The turbine and the reactor are fine—Blue’s almost empty, though,” Satori replied, cleaning some hardening gel off his face.

Migraine-ridden, I jumped on Ada’s knees and browsed the computer, taking stock of the equipment that was still operational. “We’re out of ammo and the railgun’s OA.”

“We’re toast!”

I glanced out the cracks in the cockpit openings. The battlefield was gradually turning into a graveyard. “So does half the fleet!”

“Alright! Let’s bone out to the Polo!” But strapping himself in the copilot’s chair, Satori froze before tapping my shoulder. The sun appeared behind the stained windows. It was the first time that it was shining so brightly in the Outer System.

Something was off.

“Can you check the oxygen levels,” I said, glancing at the left side terminal. “I feel like I’m seeing spots. Or is it because of the hacking that my vision is so sensitive?”

“You’re not intoxicated nor blind, my friend…” Big Brain quavered. “Those are ships.”

A new pebble-shaped vessel did indeed emerge more clearly from the tiny solar disk. It was followed by several of its equally similar companions.

“The Technos are late!” I exploded. The radar gave an alert. According to the instruments, this curious squadron of speeding chrome ships was ready for battle and target-locking every entity in the area. “It’s the Marine, right?”

“Nope. This is Player 3…”

“What? Who?”

“I don’t know!” Satori yelled. “How the fuck would I know? That saucer over there is straight out of V or some Star Trek shenanigans!”

Blinding us, a solar beam suddenly cut in half a G.T.C. battleship and a light frigate that had accompanied Osborn in his offensive. A rainbow of molten gas and metal set the cosmos ablaze, throwing death into the stars.

“Chikushō…” Satori whispered.

Despite the astonishment, however, it wasn’t the time to contemplate our incoming doom. Without hesitation, I twirled the Kitty right into battle. The G.T.C, deprived of a general staff, was maneuvering around the T.M.S. Yosemite, which had barely survived the assault.

“The Calamity is breaking down,” Satori told me. “All our biggest ships are out!”

“The chrome pancakes are ejecting strange UAVs all over the sector,” I noted as I witnessed the curious ballet of light.

“Bambi’s here!”

The Kitty docked with difficulty against one of the Marco Polo’s monopod airlocks. The emergency capsule was gone; only a transparent polythene porthole remained. On the other side, Raï was miraculously still alive. With Ali on his shoulders, he waved at us before firing at the plastic wall. He wanted to jump and I opened our airlock.

“Where is Rodrigue?” I shouted from the cockpit as Satori took control.

Panting, Raï rushed into the hold but didn’t answer. Judging from the fervor with which my associate was trying to get back to the man-o’-war, Rodrigue must have been still dueling with Osborn. “Will you stop!” the samurai barked through the deafening hiss of the depressurization. “Damn the Koviràns for stubbornly wanting to die!” Both ducked when bullets suddenly ricocheted inside the Swallow.

“Who’s shooting at us?” asked Satori as I jumped towards the warrior and helped him closing the Kitty’s airlock.

We got some semblance of an answer when chrome beings emerged from the hull and metal floor of the G.T.C. vessel. At first liquid, these new assailants slowly took on a humanoid form. Not as large as the last generation of MK androids, they still had the same heavy gait.

“I’ve seen these guys before!” I confided. “They were accompanying an Arch-Baron of the Ankh in an auction house on Ceres!”

These curious mechanical soldiers, however, were better worked than the God’s escort met with Zéphyr. That day, they looked like those old classical statues and adorn engraved Gallic helmets fused to their metal skin. It was unexpectedly that the chrome guards opened fire again on everything still moving inside the G.T.C. ship, pirates and sailors alike.

“A Lunar fleet?” Satori gasped. “Kuso! What would they be doing here? And why would they attack our convoy? We’re supposed to be on the same side!”

“We will ask them later!” Raï shouted, losing control of Ali. “We have to reach the Yosemite and leave the area!”

“Not without Rodrigue!” cried my partner, making her way out of the samurai’s arms despite her broken bones.

“The Marquis has fallen!” Raï insisted as Satori ordered us to take a seat.

“Go to Hell! I refuse to believe it!” Ali exploded. “Where’s Ada? Together, we will zero those fuckers—Lunar bots and motherfucking dinosaurs!”

“Ali…” I intervened. “Ada’s dead...”

In shock, my partner collapsed. Her bloody forehead against the airlock, she slowly slid to the floor as the Swallow left. I had the right to a silent caress before she lost consciousness. Her pink suit was shredded from Osborn’s bite and her wounds were even worse than I thought.

“Where is the Yosemite?” Raï asked as he hardly climbed the ladder despite the acceleration. “The girl needs g-surgery or she will die!”

“It blew up,” Satori answered—first in Japanese. “Another beam wrecked it alongside two Trade ships.”

“What? This is insane!” I reacted.

“Take this as a warning of your enemy’s power!” the bounty hunter grumbled. Removing his mask, he cleaned the sweat that bubbled from his forehead with a handkerchief.

“But why do this?”

“Who knows? I’ve seen my share of these displays of force during the Red Uprising,” Raï went on. “No one is supposed to survive this assault. The Moon wants us all dead. This is a good thing! As of today, the Kitty is a ghost!”

Satori drew on the last of the Kitty’s resources. When the photon cannon cut the Marco Polo and Osborn’s black ship in half with one shot, the Swallow got propelled to the edge of the battlefield, blown away outside the ecliptic by the destruction of the man-o’-war which set the firmament ablaze.

Back to business…

Thanks for reading!

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