The First Nova I See Tonight by Jason Kilgore (best ereader for pdf and epub TXT) 📗

LEDs in the ceiling flickered several times and went out. Red emergency lighting blinked on.

Klaxons echoed through the corridors beyond the brig door. Voices shouted.

Yiorgos raised his saber and brought it down with a sweep, cleanly cutting through the lock, and they were out.

Dirken pointed to Eow's door as the brig bulkhead was unlatched from the other side. Many voices were shouting outside the door. He raised his fists in a ready stance and stood to the side of the door. "I'll hold them off."

Another metallic clang as Eow's lock was cut through.

Dirken braced himself as the door swung open.

There was the brief sight of pirates on the other side, then Dirken was knocked aside as a lavender blur flashed past him. Eow released a banshee cry as she leapt into the pirates, claws outstretched. One was kicked in the chest, his blaster shooting up at the ceiling. She swiped her claws across a Proximan's face, ripping out an entire side of his radial head, blue blood splattering across the other pirates. She turned back to the first pirate.

Dirken blinked in surprise, then jumped into the fight, hitting a Rigellian in his slack jaw, then into his belly flaps, doubling the alien over.

Yiorgos joined, too, slicing through the chest of a human, then, dodging a punch, he stabbed into the red-painted belly folds of a molting Reptiloc. Her eyes rolled as she yelled something in her hiss-like language, then died before her green, scaly head hit the deck.

Eow let out another yowl, twisted into a stance, and punched a Pleiadean, hitting the man in the throat. As he gasped for breath, she grabbed his horns and slammed his face into the wall, then broke his neck with a well-placed kick.

A Rigellian fired his rifle twice, nicking Dirken's arm. Dirken jumped and launched himself off the wall and into the Rigellian, grabbing one of his flaps and pulling him to the ground, then stomped on the line of eyes on his head. He wailed an ear-splitting "Eeeeeeeee!" firing the rifle at the ceiling. Dirken disarmed him, then shot him in both of his hearts.

In seconds it was over. Pirates lay on the floor, dead or critically injured.

"Six pirates down," Dirken said. "Grab their blasters." He picked up the Pleiadean's, which was a combination of parts from two different models.

"I know where the safebox is," both Dirken and Eow said at the same time, bumping into each other as they both tried to take the lead down the corridor. They looked at each other in annoyance.

"Ladies first," Dirken said, waving his blaster toward the hall.

She flashed a sidelong smile, spots of blue blood spattered across her face. "I'm a warrior, not a lady." Then she slapped his ass and bounded down the corridor.

"Just your type!" Yiorgos said as he ran past. "Don't trust her."

Dirken followed, and the three of them came to an open chamber, an instrument repair room with rusting machine parts around the sides and a chain-and-pulley systems hanging from the ceiling. Across the room was the interrogation chamber.

Four pirates stood in the center of the room, the safebox on the floor behind them. Grendel grinned at them, flexing his arms, as Mom put a hand on the big Oranchian's back. "I was hoping you'd do somethin' stupid like this, maggot!" he said to Dirken.

To Mom's left stood a Rigellian with a pulse rifle in his long, flap-like arms. To Grendel's right a tall, pale Tau Cetian brandished a blaster in both of his six-fingered hands.

One of those blasters was Dirken's Gree-tech pulse emitter.

Eow wailed again, ran forward, dodged left as the Tau Cetian opened fire, then leapt upon Grendel in a bear hug across the Oranchian's chest. Grendel's eyes went wide in surprise, then turned to shock and pain as Eow flexed.

Scores of ebony spikes shot out from her chest and back, giving her a porcupine appearance.

The Oranchian wailed in pain as the spikes penetrated his torso. He tried to rip her off, but the claws on her hands and feet were dug in. Then she sank her teeth into his broad neck and shook her head, ripping the skin apart.

For a long moment everyone watched in shock, then they snapped out of it as one.

Dirken and Yiorgos fired on the others, and everyone took cover around the machinery. Plasma bolts and laser fire flashed across the middle of the room and over the safebox.

Dirken took careful aim and fired as the Tau Cetian popped up. The shot went cleanly through the narrow oval of his head and he fell to the floor, light pink blood and brain matter spilling out.

But he had exposed himself. Mom fired his laser pistol. It cut through the air, narrowly missing Dirken's face and slicing through the blaster. The gun exploded in his hand as the power pack perforated. Dirken fell backward behind the machinery, his right palm and fingers red and blistered. He gritted his teeth and sucked in air against the pain.

Across the room, Yiorgos ducked behind a machine as the Rigellian's pulse rifle pounded the far side.

Eow leaped off the bloody Oranchian, her spikes retracted. Grendel stared lifelessly up at the ceiling as his flamingo pink-colored blood pooled around him.

Mom turned to attack Eow. Dirken sprinted at him. Mom turned in time to get a fist in his face, knocking him back.

The pirate raised his laser pistol, but Dirken chopped his wrist and the gun clattered to the floor.

Dirken ducked as Mom swung a roundhouse. The pirate recovered with a right hook to Dirken's chin, knocking him back.

Dirken grabbed Mom by the head with both hands and at first shoved him back. When the pirate overcompensated by leaning forward, Dirken used the momentum in a judo move to pull his head down, then brought a knee up into the pirate's gut, doubling him over. Dirken uppercut into Mom's face. His red cap flew off his head. Blood poured from his nose as the pirate fell to his knees, dazed.

Dirken finished