Echo-1 The Whale

37: Boarding Party

Mox asked if the scout was ready to go. I told him other than the two remaining iron clamps, dangling metal fibers, and part of a spacecraft, the Blue Hand scout was fully operational. 

He closed his eyes for a second and I heard his voice in my mind. 

"Cuttlefish net 4, now." 

I looked to Mox, not sure what was going on. Then I heard Uzi's mental response. 

"Confirmed, we are a go." 

Mox opened his eyes and spoke out loud.

"We're going to board the Magus and hunt down the professor or the sisters, whichever we find first. We'll need one of them to crack this virus." 

In the meantime, we hoped X could keep them from getting into the Banga's computer room. 

Mox, the Sentinel, and I boarded the scout. Death stood outside the door. Mox turned around and addressed him before shutting the hatch. 

"You gonna be ok out there, big guy?" 

Death nodded. 

"Those women are slimy squids, you don't seem the type to have a fish fetish to me. Keep that in mind when they start flirting with you." 

Death nodded again with an intensely serious look on his face. Mox closed the hatch. 

"He thinks he has something to prove this time. We'll have to use that to our advantage. It's not going to be as easy as last time." 

All I could think was, there was nothing easy about last time. 

We closed the interior airlock door, opened the outer door, rushed into the Magus hallway, and the door closed behind us. I fired into the blast door down the hall and started a hole. I fired more making it big enough for us to fit and then rammed through. Death was right behind us. We rocketed down the hall. Alarms sounded and I started scanning. 

More than half the Mega Therion were missing. I was reading two thousand life forms onboard. A large group of them had boarded the Banga and the rest assumedly died in the battle or from the altered Hundred Year Life Span program. 

"We're going to have to find the lab and probably check that throne room again." 

Mox nodded in agreement. "Return to the scene of the crime, as they say." 

Blunt and Mox spent time discovering human expressions and they seemed to like using them. 

"Gitty up." Mox looked at me quizzically. 

I told him in Varan an expression that meant something like 'drive the beast on.' He loved this and laughed. 

The Magus shook violently. We crashed into the wall. 

"Blunt is out." 

The Brick blasted out of the hole it had made. 

"He's going to destroy this ship now. Could spell the end for the Vedma?" Mox paused for a moment of thought. "Or it will be the end of us?" 

Outside the Brick was getting some distance and some speed. Blunt cruised out to the tail end of the Banga and taking a wide turn came racing back at full speed. He connected with the top of the Magus and ripped right through. The upper section was torn clean off. The Brick was going so fast that it kept going to the front of the Banga before it could loop around for another pass. 

We made our way to the central passageway and when we got there, they were waiting for us. Two large cannons fired on us as soon as we turned the corner. The blasts were unavoidable. I couldn't see anything. I only had ten diamond missiles. I used two. The entire hallway exploded. The cannons were gone. We glided through the smoke using sensors.