A wall opened, and they entered a room with a long glass screen and a few strange consoles lining the walls, each with a Lanius manning it. It was close enough to a bridge to almost be comforting. The screen at the front of the bridge showed a highly magnified image of a Rebel frigate, the screen adding annotations over a few parts of the hull. Brant couldn't read any of the dense, angular writing, but her mind was filling in notes of its own as she studied the frigate's systems.
A mix of heavy and light laser batteries, with several stout missile launchers and a huge, red beam cannon. This was no trading vessel. She thought of the tables of Lanius in the other room, playing games and examining art, and guessed that this "culture-ship" was laughably outgunned in this engagement.
Translator shuffled over to a vacant seat toward the middle of the bridge. As he sat, the metal in the floor rippled and rose up, swiftly taking shape as a large hemisphere, its flat face three feet in diameter and facing the seated Lanius. She walked up to get a closer look, but Killer grabbed her arm and tugged her back.
The flat face of the hemisphere changed color, going suddenly from light gray to black without any noticeable change in the lighting. A few seconds passed, and then without warning, the black surface changed into a video feed of a Rebel officer.
"They've…answered, sir," said the Rebel. Brant could see her from the shoulders up, a young blonde woman with her hair pulled back tight. She stared back at Translator and his crude, cartoonish face with a look of almost total confusion. "Hello?"
"Big to greetings with," Translator said in a stilted monotone. "Peace. Peace."
"Well, that's refreshing," said the Rebel. "Do you understand me, then?"
"Hello. Greetings to with. Yes," Translator said. "How?"
From off-screen on the Rebel end, a male spoke. "Oh, for God's sake. I thought you said they could communicate!"
"That's what I heard!" the woman shouted back. "I hope this isn't what command actually meant."
"We are the extent. Peace peace sandwiches. Everybody," Translator said enthusiastically.
The man off screen sighed. "Fracking xenos…whatever, the Kestrel will be through here any time now, and we've got to get the mines ready. Get them out of here or we've got to light them up."
The woman nodded and turned back to Translator. "Uh, Lanius vessel! We mean you no harm, but we are expecting a violent confrontation with an enemy ship very shortly. We intend to deploy high-yield mines, and you are advised to leave the sector immediately."
Well, that wasn't good. If the culture-ship withdrew to another sector, they would almost certainly miss the Kestrel. Locating them again, especially with the Rebel fleet so close behind, would be next to impossible, and that was assuming the Kestrel survived the trap this frigate was laying – by no means a safe assumption.
Translator waved his hand at the screen; a small purple symbol appeared in the corner of it, and the noise of the Rebel bridge was muted. Then he slowly turned his neck over to Killer. His face remained the same simple drawing of a face, but the gesture looked concerned to her.
"They don't seem scared of you," Brant said bluntly.
Translator held one finger up at Brant as he kept his eyes on Killer. Apparently they were conversing. "No. They jumped in from further in the sector – advance scouts, I would guess, and they've most likely had contact with our kind already."
"What kind of weapons do you have on this thing?" Brant asked.
"We are not well-armed, I'm afraid. We would provide very little challenge for this human vessel."
"You guys have seen galactic civilizations rise and fall, and one Rebel frigate's going to give you trouble?" Brant asked, incredulous.
"We are scavengers, not conquerors. In our experience, the more you make other species feel threatened, the less likely they are to leave you alone, and we have no interest in…" He stopped, apparently responding to a harsh reminder from Killer to stay on topic. "Ship-to-ship combat is not a viable option for us. But Killer is…adamant that we not withdraw."
Brant looked over at the Lanius captain. "I appreciate that, but why do I think this has nothing to do with your compassion?"
Killer rocked back on her heels and clapped her hands together with a soft clang. Then she slowly strolled over to Translator.
"Captain Killer suggests it probably has something to do with her name," Translator said. "Now, I should warn you, what she's about to do is going to seem a little…"
As Killer approached Translator, she raised one hand, and Brant watched as the three fingers there grew long and needle-like. Then she slammed them into the back of Translator's head. He cried out, clearly expecting this but apparently unable to fully prepare himself. His head twitched. The red lights in Killer's eyes shifted to a cool blue, while Translator's shone bright orange.
Brant looked around on the Bridge. None of the other Lanius seemed bothered by this display; she guessed this was the sort of thing one simply put on a brave face for.
"Ah…" Translator said. His voice was different; it had grown slower and calmer, but significantly less comforting. "How you tolerate this insipid chattering, I will never know."
He turned back to the screen; the Rebel comm officer, who'd seen everything, was looking a little taken aback. Translator waved a hand and the purple mute symbol disappeared, and with Killer's hand still firmly lodged in the back of his head, he spoke imperiously to the Rebels.
"You are running out of time," said Translator.
The officer looked more out of her depth than terrified. "Excuse me? What are we…?"
"Since the first ape looked at the sky, since the first terrestrial creature stepped out of the sea, you have all been running out of time. Now you are come to the end of your history. We are the heralds of that end. We are the eaters of the dead.
"You meddle in our affairs here. Run, if you can. Fight, if it will comfort you. Turn your weapons on yourselves, if that suits you better. It makes little difference. You are all dead. Your bodies will mummify in the vacuum and dance in the solar wind."
The comm officer looked a little spooked at that, but not panicking. She looked over her shoulder, then a man shuffled over, the captain judging by his uniform, and sat down next to her. Everything about his face screamed "military," from the muscles in his neck to the buzz-cut hair to the cold, alert stare. He was smiling.
"Honest question: how often does this bit actually work?" he asked.
Killer and Translator stared at him.
"I'm not trying to put you down! It's a great bit! Scary ancient race appears out of nowhere, talking all death and horror – if I was a trader just minding my own business, I bet I'd be crapping my drawers right now. Do I look like I'm crapping my drawers to you, though?"
Killer and Translator stared. Brant didn't like where this was going.
"Well, who knows what I look like to you folks. No, anyway: we are not scared of you. For agents of the apocalypse, I've got to say that you have left me powerfully disappointed. We've fragged Lanius ships that were far more battle-ready than yours – so you're either trying to pick a fight, which makes you idiots given the circumstances, or you're trying to spook us off. So let me say this again, you stupid xeno trash: we have business here. Leave now, or we will wreck you."
Brant wasn't totally sure what she was doing when she walked forward toward the screen, but it felt like the right course. At the rate things were going, it couldn't very well make things any worse. She strode up next to Translator, put a hand on his shoulder, and looked at the Rebels with a friendly grin.
"Howdy," said Brant.
The captain raised an eyebrow. The comm officer's eyes went wide. The officer opened her mouth to say something, but no sound came out.
"Who the hell are you?" the captain asked, oblivious to his officer's reaction.
"Oh, come on. I know I'm catching you off guard, but how many one-eyed Fed officers with dangerous-yet-somehow-still-girlish good looks can there be out here?" Brant looked at the comm officer. "Well? Who the hell am I?"
The color drained out of the officer's face. She snapped herself out of it, her hands barely shaking at all as she typed on a console next to her and nodded at something off-screen – a dossier or intel report, probably. The captain looked at it, and that face that had looked so unshakeable when he'd been talking to a heavily-armed demon alien of legend now looked at her like a rabbit spotting a hawk.
"It's Charlotte Brant," whispered the officer.
"Charlotte Goddamn, Mother-Fracking Brant," Brant clarified.
The Rebel captain nodded slowly, and attempted to compose himself. "Jesus, I knew you supposed to be crazy, but I can't believe you'd…"
Brant cut him off. "Wait, wait – that's not my Academy pic in there, is it? I was super hung-over that day."
Neither of the Rebels seemed amused. The captain said, "This is the Rebellion warship Kingfisher-II. I am commanding officer Jason…"
"I don't give a runny crap who you are," said Brant. "This is all you need to know: if you run away from here right now, you might live. If you stay, you will die. You have no idea what you've stepped in here; you backed the Federation into a corner, and you radically underestimated how far we'd go to get out of it. Leave, or die – I really don't care which."
The captain slowly got up, his face shaking with disgust. "Get these obscenities off my screen."
The line went dead. Brant exhaled sharply, then looked around. "OK – uh, we think they're going to leave or fight?"
Translator began laughing, low and slow, the sound thoroughly chilling Brant. "Very good, savage. Very good."
Then Killer withdrew her hand from his head, and the laughing ended abruptly with a pained yelp.
"Missile fire inbound. Enabling cloak," Translator said, his voice higher, more frantic, and somehow more comforting.
"Crap," Brant hissed. "Sorry, that was the best intimidation I had."
Killer clapped her hand on Brant's shoulder and nodded, the fingers withdrawn to their normal size. The captain drew her phase axe and began walking to the end of the bridge.
"The captain says you did very well. This is the outcome she was hoping for. She asks that you please follow her to the transport room and…difficult to translate. An approximation of the meaning and tone would be 'Get your murder face on.'"
Brant jogged after Killer as she walked off the bridge and into the corridors beyond, Translator stumbling after.
"The frigate has three human crew," Translator said. "Killer has learned a good deal of the boarding tactics and counters of this cycle, and she notes that there is no recognizable medical bay aboard their vessel. She expects things to go smoothly."
"They'll be ready for us. It's our best bet, but it's sure as hell not going to be smooth," Brant said.
"Well, our captain is…handy," Translator said. "Though she is particularly eager to observe you in this combat."
Brant looked at Killer. "Seriously? That's your priority here?"
"You must remember that we are a culture-ship, Captain Charlotte Brant. Killer, like all of us, is a scholar first and foremost."
A section of corridor wall spread open, and the three of them hurried into a cramped room with two teleport platforms. Again, Brant was struck at how recognizable some of this tech was; if the Lanius had been around for millennia or longer, it seemed strange that they hadn't advanced beyond what current civilizations had achieved in a few hundred years of space travel. But that wasn't her primary concern:
"Only two of us?" she asked as she saw the platforms. "You're not coming? How the hell are we supposed to understand each other?"
"I will be in radio contact, and I assure you that I would only be a liability in combat," Translator said. "May I see your wrist unit? The ship has some ability to communicate through human channels, but it will help if I personally attune to your device."
Brant took the unit off and handed it to Translator. His fingers elongated just like Killer's had a few minutes ago, tapering off into fine wires that snaked into the unit. Translator's eyes dimmed briefly, then he slid his fingers out and handed the device back to Brant.
"That was quick," Brant said.
"It's not terribly complicated technology," Translator said. His mouth did not move this time, his voice broadcasting directly into her earpiece. "I trust you are receiving me?"
"Loud and clear," she said. Killer had walked onto one of the transport pads. Brant wondered if the Lanius captain was really staring at them with intense hostility and impatience or if that was just the way her jagged, crystalline face normally looked. This creature would not have been Brant's first pick for going into a desperate boarding action, but a capable fighter who she didn't entirely trust was better in some ways than someone like 78, who she trusted entirely and who couldn't fight worth a damn.
Killer had her phase axe in hand, looking now like just a short length of metal with a small wire sticking out of the top, waiting to be ignited. She gestured at the vacant pod next to her, and Brant was confident that she wasn't just imagining the angry impatience she saw in that gesture.
"The captain strongly urges haste. We can remain cloaked for longer than most current craft, but not indefinitely. You must conclude your business on the Rebel vessel quickly."
Brant hopped up on to the teleporter. "They've got no medbay. One way or the other, this'll be..."
Before she could get out "quick," Killer nodded her head, her eyes shimmering slightly, and everything got hazy for a second. Then they were in a brightly-lit, stark gray room of a human ship – the weapon control room, from the look of the panels and the targeting screen.
A crack of superheated air nearly blew out her eardrum as a laser round just missed her head, bursting a little divot into the wall in front of her. Brant spun to confront her attacker, but by the time she saw the Rebel poking out of cover behind them, Killer was closing with him like a striking serpent. The phase axe ignited, the wire at its head erupting in a fluorescent rainbow of energy, and Killer wove around the Rebel's shots to bury that rainbow in his side, entering his chest just below the armpit. The weapon made no sound except for a light thump as the metal haft of the axe tapped against his rib cage, and the Rebel only made a slight, shocked gasp as he fell to the ground.
A little bloody wedge of flesh, bone, and organ slid out of him where the phase axe had struck, zapping everything it touched momentarily out of phase with the universe. From the look of the cross-section, Brant guessed the axe had taken a chunk out of his heart.
He wore glasses. He had dark hair in a top knot and ill-advised, spotty facial hair. He could have been anywhere from a young twenty-three to an old sixteen, but anyway he was a kid. Brant took the hurt and horror that came with killing a young boy and threw it down the stairs to the cellar of her mind, where all the hurt and horror went. There was still a lot of room down there.
Then she whistled. "They don't call you Killer for nothing, do they?"
Killer deactivated the axe. She held up three talons to Brant, nodded at the man on the floor, and then curled one talon down.
Brant nodded. She checked her wrist unit, noting two lifeform blips heading from the bridge. She moved to take off the breather mask so she'd be able to see a little better, but her experience aboard the freighter came to mind. She checked her wrist unit, and to her surprise, she noted that the atmosphere in the room was plummeting. No way had small arms fire punctured the hull, and the blast doors for the room were still firmly shut. They could have deactivated life support, but that was a fool's gambit without a medbay to keep the crew alive.
"The captain says the next one is all yours. She awaits your direction," Translator said. That was odd. Brant couldn't help but feel like the Lanius captain wasn't quite taking their situation seriously, but then again, she had just executed a third of their opposition. Maybe the Lanius were just hard to read.
"We hold up here, then. I can still breathe, and they need to come in here to stop us from screwing with the weapons." Speaking of which, Brant ignited her power baton and started slamming down on the targeting console. Sparks flew up and tiny spurts of flame singed her hands, but on the console was only lightly dented for all that drama. Machinery like this was built to withstand ship-to-ship ordnance and remain operable, or at least reparable. It would take the two of them some time to fully disable the weapons, and the pair heading toward them now would not be giving them that.
Brant checked her wrist unit again to confirm this. The two Rebels were still making a beeline for them, yes, but she also noticed a power spike in one room.
"What the hell is that spike?" Brant asked. "I don't see a system I recognize. Do you?"
"Um…with respect, Captain Brant, I defer entirely to you in areas of human ship technology. Have you not been fighting the Rebels all this time?"
"Yeah, but…" Brant looked closer at the strange system. Every Federation soldier had heard rumors about the Rebel skunkworks teams and the nightmares they'd been cooking up, and Brant had read enough of their decrypted files to know the truth behind them. Were some of those projects finally ready for the field?
She gave the console one last strike, hopefully enough to have disrupted some of their weapon systems, then she charged the door. Company was coming.