Chapter 701 701 Cargo Hold
Name:Humanity's Greatest Mecha Warrior System Author:
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Max turned to the Station boss, who was quickly becoming enraged by the situation, and then to Annabelle, who was way too excited to try out her nonexistent sword-fighting skills on the Klem.
"If you can have someone guard the little one, we can breach the cargo hold on this ship and see what the situation is inside. It's in full lockdown, so even if they handled it inside, they can't get out or communicate with this side." Max suggested.
They were not alright on the other side, there were no sentient beings conscious or even dreaming on that entire ship, but Max was hoping to get the Valkia to unlock the doors so that they could deal with the Klem and look for signs of where they came from.
"This ship came from one of our trading outposts. They're not one of mine, but an independent merchant, so I don't know where all they have been, but I need to find out if they put other facilities at risk." The Valkia insisted.
"Then we're on the same page. Once we clear the first hold, the rest of the staff can start looking for clues in here while we check the ship's computer and search the rest of the vessel for any survivors or remaining documents."
"In that case, everyone take your positions. We are opening the doors in three, two, one."
The doors swung open with a hiss of flowing air as the station vented a bit of atmosphere into the lower-pressure cargo hold before its shields came up to stop the flow.
The opening doors brought a flurry of activity, and Max followed Nico through the breach with the Valkia right behind them. They cleared the door an instant before a pair of Klem Warriors were on them, meeting Nico's sword and a blast from Max's Disruptor Pistol before they could even react.
The first shots were followed up by a spread pattern of low-intensity shots to clear the small Klem on the floor without damaging the hardened cargo containers in the hold. The green blood of the Klem joined the red and black blood of the station staff and ship's crew that was sprayed all over the cargo hold, but no more targets came to join them.
The crew was about to move in behind them, but the doors suddenly slid shut, and Nico gave the Station Boss a wink.
"We will keep them out there for a moment. I think there are things on this ship that shouldn't be seen by outsiders. According to the logs, the last person to enter the bay was unrecorded and personally welcomed by the Captain of this vessel, whose transponder is currently on the bridge." She explained.
"It should also have a shipment for my market. I'm not sure which crates it is in, but it was never unloaded before the incident. You are right. We should clear this ship without any prying eyes getting in the way." The Boss replied, then spread his glossy black wings wide so he could lift into the air and get a good look around the bay from above.
"There is a breached door on the left, behind the cargo crates. It has been pushed toward the cargo bay. That should be the point of entry for the infestation, but the rest of the bay looks clear." He announced.
"My sensors agree. There are still Klem on the ship, but not in this room." Nico agreed and hopped up on the cargo crates to get a look for herself.
"I think I have found your goodies. Were you looking to import a large amount of narcotics? My scans show nearly a thousand tonnes of it in these crates. If my readings are right, it is in pill form, sorted by bulk bags, ten thousand to a package." Nico chuckled.
"Don't judge me. It's a prohibited medicine, the best painkiller that we have ever come across, and it's dirt cheap since there are no patent fees to pay on a black market drug." The Valkia replied with a smirk.
"Good answer. We wouldn't care either way, but drugs aren't the sort of product that might be related to a Klem infestation. If it had been genetic sequencing or other biological alteration products, there would be a chance that whoever brought them was trying to do something with the Klem. I guess we will have to keep looking for their origins and why they were on board." Max clarified.
He moved quickly through the destroyed door and out of the cargo hold with Nico covering his back and the Valkia coming up right behind him. The other side was a narrow hallway, painted in the bland green that all militaries and government institutions seemed to prefer for their walls, but the alloy walls had been deeply gouged, and there was a trail of Klem blood on the floor.
The cargo hold wasn't the first point in their battle, it was the last, but judging by the bodies, nobody had told the crew that was unloading the ship about what was going on.
The ones that they had found on the other side of the door hadn't even had time to retreat the few steps to safety before everything went wrong, so they must have realized that they were under attack when the Klem breached the security door.
"Do we have a layout of this maze?" Max asked Nico as he moved forward, following the trail of green blood back to its source.
"Right here. You can pull it up on your holographic display or the HUD in your helmet now."
That was much better. There wasn't much to this section. It was just a group of cargo holds and a few corridors. The main crew quarters were at the front of the ship, and the blood trail wasn't leading in that direction.
Max followed it to another cargo bay, where a hole was torn in the wall right at the corner of the bay.
"Do we risk the door, or do we follow the hole ripped in the wall?" Max asked, wanting to make sure that everyone was on the same page since their thoughts were so focused on making sure they weren't ambushed.
"The security in the bays is all offline, so we're going in blind, but I say we use the hole in the wall. If they were guarding it, they would have already noticed us, and I don't recall a time when the Klem were patient hunters." Nico decided.
"I will defer to your experience." The Valkia agreed.
"Alright, I will lead and peel left, Nico. You take a right. Archibald, hold the exit and don't let anything escape into the vessel."
Nobody ever called the Boss by his name, so it had taken Max a while to gather it from the Station Boss's thoughts, and the man seemed shocked to hear it spoken out loud.
"He reads minds. It's a handy skill, even if it does startle people now and then." Nico explained.
"It's rare that I hear it myself. Usually, everyone just calls me Boss. You know how it is, no real names in our line of work." He chuckled.
"Don't worry. I won't let it slip in public. Are we ready? Go."
Chapter 702 702 Point Of Origin
Name:Humanity's Greatest Mecha Warrior System Author:
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Max entered the bay and panned to the left, searching for any signs of Klem. The area appeared to be clear, but it was so heavily damaged that it was nearly impossible to tell. The bay had once been half full of cargo, but now everything was torn open, and there were signs of dozens of small Klem having gone through here and shards of at least three larger eggs that should have been Warriors.
That didn't account for all of the ones that they had seen on the ship, but Max hadn't searched much of the room yet.
A few steps further in, a Swarm-type Klem, their basic worker and biomass collection bugs, jumped out at his head, only to be crushed by his fist.
"I have contact. Klem Swarm. Watch for small bugs, roughly knee high or smaller." Max warned.
The crate that it had jumped out of had a warning label on the side, so Max double-checked it to make sure it wasn't going to be a danger to his suit. High Fructose Syrup. No wonder the Klem had multiplied in here. The cargo bay was full of drums of syrup. It was the perfect site for them to mass-produce Warriors since nothing larger would be able to navigate the hallways of the ship.
The distinctive buzz of a Disruptor caught Max's attention as Nico found a target, followed by a panicked squeak from the station boss before his pistol flashed in the dim light, and a small Klem exploded in front of him.
"They're fast. That thing just came out of nowhere," the Valkia muttered, making Nico giggle.
"Faster than you expect. You should be glad that this galaxy doesn't know about the Scourge. They are much faster and optimized for killing inside of ships." She agreed.
"What sort of Galaxy needs better predators than this?" The Station Boss complained as he fired twice more, eliminating another pair of Klem Swarm bugs.
"Oh, the Scourge isn't natural. They're the result of artificial intelligence-based android species running amok after its guidelines were set to only one word. Survive." Nico explained.
The Valkia shuddered, but Max was more interested in what seemed to be hiding in the corner of the room than the interaction between the other two.
"I think that I have found the source of the infestation. There are two more pods in here, and they're space pods, not the ones that they produce on the surface. This ship was transporting their interstellar pods, and one hatched." Max called Archibald.
"How many pods are we talking about?" the Valkia asked.
"I only see three in total. Two intact and one hatched. The rest were created by the occupants of the pod that hatched. If we gave them more time, this whole ship would be full of them. It looks like they're just beginning to wake up. Those space pods usually need an atmospheric entry to wake them up." Max explained.
Max took out the scanner from his flat space and checked the pods for any foreign matter that wasn't Klem in origin, and then vaporized them both before they could hatch and release something deadly into the ship.
That enraged the remaining Klem Swarm, and they rushed toward him, not caring at all about the blasts from the Disruptors in their hurry to kill the one who had dared to damage the pods.
The Disruptors had been created specifically for dealing with the Klem, though, and the small bugs were eliminated with extreme prejudice before Nico and Max began the work of sanitizing the cargo bay to make sure that there were no more small bugs or hidden pods left behind.
"I would like to put in a vote for simply throwing the whole ship into a star when we finish here. No matter how well we clean it, I'm not sure we will ever get all the Klem biomass out. We have a good lead as to how the infestation started now. We just need to find out where and why they picked the pods up.
The Valkia snorted in amusement and nodded his head. "I agree. Once we find out where these pods came from and what made them think that picking them up was a good idea, I will extract my share of the cargo, and then the ship can be decommissioned with a fiery farewell."
If there was one universal truth, it was that a Klem infestation was best dealt with using fire. Every species agreed that it was the best method, even if they didn't all accept that it would still be the best method even if they were still on the planet with the Klem.
"The bay is clear. Where to next?" Nico asked.
Max took a moment to search for thoughts in the vicinity, including the vague ones of the Klem and realized that there was only one cluster of them left, up in the front of the ship, near where the bridge should be.
No, that wasn't quite right. There were some still in the back cargo bay or near it.
"Nico, go back and clear the rear of the ship. There are more Klem near the cargo bay. Once the area is confirmed clear, have the station crew get the boss's cargo off the ship and make sure that Annabelle doesn't wander away or get herself injured looking for adventure. I will take the boss and go search the front of the ship for the rest of the Klem and any documents that we can recover.
Sort through the ship's records and travel log if you have time. It might tell us something.
"Not a problem. I have downloaded everything already, and I'm working on the linked handheld devices now. The ship's computer is incredibly slow. Be sure to check for the cause. I think it might have a memory-intense program running somewhere that I don't have access to." She replied.
The Station Boss took out a second pistol to go with the one in his hand, then realized that he was wearing a human-made exoskeleton and started to scroll through the menus in his helmet display until he found the weapon systems.
By Mecha standards, it wasn't much, but there were two high output Ion Blasters on the wings, as well as two light lasers. With those added to his pistols, he felt much more secure, and Max could see all of the ways that he was working to justify buying a number of these for the Valkia in his crew. They certainly wouldn't be cheap, with the firepower and shielding that they had, but they would totally be worth it to him.
Chapter 703 703 Clearance
Name:Humanity's Greatest Mecha Warrior System Author:
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Now that the boss had all of his weapons ready, Max led the way toward the front of the ship, where he detected the majority of the remaining Klem. The Station Boss's thoughts were entertaining him as they advanced, with the Valkia eagerly looking around for targets so that he could try out the weapons that he had just realized he was equipped with.
Max didn't have the heart to tell him that the two pistols, which he was very proud of, were basically children's toys in comparison to the Ion Blasters that the Archangel Exoskeleton was equipped with, but he would learn that on his own soon enough.
Max could hear the skittering of spiked legs across metal floor tiles up ahead, and it didn't sound small enough to be a Swarm Bug.
Max signalled the approaching danger, and the Valkia spread his wings so that he could bring all four of the suit's weapons to bear on anything that came down the hallway.
Max prepared to open the door on the right side of the hallway where the noise was coming from, and the Station Boss tensed up for action. With one swift kick, Max broke the door in and moved forward, blasting the Klem Warrior that was behind it and then one more in the middle of the room. A third made a dash for the exit, where a sizzling barrage of firepower vaporized it in an instant.
"You know, you don't have to shoot it that much. Once you blow a hole in the head, they're pretty much dead." Max joked.
"Humans have a strange idea of how much firepower is appropriate, don't they?" The Valkia laughed, hiding his shock at the appearance of the vicious bipedal insect with huge spiked forelimbs.
"What exactly did those things evolve to kill?" He asked after shooting the Warrior one more time, just to be sure it was dead.
"They have specialized in fighting a species of Giants that we have in our Galaxy known as the Narsians, as well as the Light Mecha of the human military forces. Those spikes will cut through nearly anything." Max informed him.
The boss gave the Warrior's corpse a closer inspection and then noticed the gouge in the alloy floor where it had fallen. The tips of the forelimb spikes had dug into the durable metal as if it were soft wood, even without the creature forcing them.
"The barrier will hold up against that, right? I'm not a coward, but those things aren't normal." He asked.
"Not a problem. It will take multiple hits from a Klem Warrior before depleting the power pack. Just be sure to kill it before that happens. There should be a spare power cell in the flat space as an emergency backup if your charge runs low." Max explained.
That was enough to assure the Valkia of his relative safety, and the duo began to move forward again, checking every room that they passed for any signs of the Klem and marking the sealed doors with a paint marker after they had searched them.
Having a visual aid helped them tell where they had searched already, and the power to the doors was cut, so unless the Klem learned to operate the override, they wouldn't be able to close them again after they forced them open, making it obvious if they had missed something.
The sound of banging and laughing echoed down the corridor behind them, and Max smirked at the happy thoughts Nico was sending out as she found the few Klem who was hiding at the rear of the ship and eliminated them so that the cargo extraction could be completed as soon as possible.
Annabelle was on door guard duty, which she was convinced was one of the most vital duties among any of the crew. After all, it was the heavily injured door guard they had met at the start who had kept the Klem from escaping the ship in the first place, so someone had to take over his position.
With Nico there, nobody actually needed to physically do the job, but it kept her at the door and out of trouble, with her curiosity restrained by a sense of duty to protect the crew. They had avoided telling her that the crew was unloading a huge number of crates full of illicit narcotics for the Black Market, but the sentiment was the same.
Max cleared an empty room on the left side of the corridor while the Valkia blasted a group of Klem Swarm bugs in a food storage room on the right, then moved in to see how they got in.
"The ventilation system. The smaller bugs can get through it. We should likely purge this room as well, in case they've set up those damnable pods somewhere in the pantry." The Valkia suggested.
"That works." Max agreed and gave the room a wide dispersion blast from his Disruptor, breaking everything into single molecules that landed like piles of dust on the floor.
They moved forward to the next door, and Max realized that they had reached the bridge. So far, they had only come across a small sample of Klem and nearly no bodies other than the ones in the Cargo Hold by the exit, so he hoped that there was some sort of additional data stored here that would give them a clue about the Klem which wasn't included in the ship's logs.
The door was physically blocked from the other side, and wouldn't open with the control pad, so Max crouched to try to force it open with his boot, using the decorative ridges for leverage.
"Prepare to shoot when it starts to open. We don't know what's inside, but it might not be friendly." Max reminded his temporary partner and began to push with all his might.
The door creaked but didn't budge, making both Max and the Valkia curse.
"They've welded it shut. There must be crew members on the other side of that door." The Station Boss decided.
Chapter 704 704 Not Enough Answers
Name:Humanity's Greatest Mecha Warrior System Author:
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Max didn't sense anyone, but they could be unconscious or even in stasis, depending on what had gone on before he arrived. The Alliance's top-tier medical pods put the patient into a long-term stasis state while they healed, so if the person inside had lost a limb, they might be in a healing pod and chemically unconscious.
"I have a tool for that. It's not pretty, but it will get us through the door.
No, scratch that. We have Nico. She will have a Tech Adept Harness with her, and it includes a cutting torch as well as tools to disassemble the door assembly. We will wait here until they have finished the job in the bays, and then she can join us for the last room." Max decided.
[Nico, once they clear everything out, come and join us at the front of the ship. Close the door behind them as well, and make sure that Annabelle is outside. There is a chance that there are more of the Klem Swarm here that we haven't detected hiding in the ventilation systems.] Max informed her.
[Got it. They are nearly done, and I have cameras from the station checking the entire exterior of this vessel to make sure that nothing passes from one vessel to the other.] She replied.
They only had to wait a few minutes until Max sensed that everyone was retreating from the ship, and their trusty little door guard was distracted by the promise of coffee in the staff room down the hallway after the doors were sealed.
At first, she was unsure of the proposition since Max and Nico were still inside with the big boss, but it was only three doors down the hall, so they could still see the bay from the employee lounge, and the assistant convinced her that she could still do her job from there if anything managed to break out of the contaminated vessel.
All of the cargo pods were sent for decontamination to be completely sure that nothing hazardous was brought onto the station except what they intended to, and Nico jogged up to join them at the door.
"This is your specialty. We suspect that they have welded the door shut for an unknown reason. We're still looking for where they picked up the Klem and where else they may have contaminated afterward." Max reminded her.
"I think I have the answer to that, but we can go over it afterward. I have camera feeds from inside." She replied with a smile.
The power was out in most of the ship, running only on the emergency backups after they cut everything to prevent the Klem from moving around as easily. Max checked her thoughts to see how she had still managed to get camera feeds after that and realized that she had rerouted a bit of emergency power to the security system's cameras, which weren't normally deemed essential.
They were on a related circuit to the electronic locks on the doors, though, so it only took her a few minutes to bypass and get everything working to her satisfaction, an idea that had slipped Max's mind, despite having the ability to do it himself.
He relied too much on his mind-reading sometimes, but with the Cameras, they could see that the other side of the door was much worse than this one. The whole bridge was full of Klem Pods, with a single Healing Pod in one corner smashed open and covered in blood.
The Swarm bugs had gotten into the barricaded bridge and had massacred the hiding crew members to use as biomass for their reproduction.
"What do you suggest?" Max asked.
"Let's bring the wireless network back online and see if any of the devices come online. It was offline when we got here, so I haven't been able to access them if any of them survived." Nico offered.
"If there were any hidden documents that you two haven't managed to get from the ship's computers, this would be where they are. We searched everywhere else, and there were no signs of any data tablets left behind in the crew quarters." The Station Boss agreed.
"Do it. Let's see what we can get. If we get the data that we need, we can be a bit less gentle with our clearance methods." Max added, bringing a happy smile to Nico's face.
She had a portable Fusion Flamer in her storage space that she hadn't gotten to test in a live fire situation yet, and this would be a perfect time, assuming that they could get the data from the portable devices.
Max sensed when the wireless connections came back online, and dozens of devices joined the network, all in one room. He did his best to download them all so he could sort them later and then started to go through them with keyword searches to look for any data about the Klem.
Ten minutes passed while the two tech-adept Reavers searched through the devices, and then Max found what he needed.
"I've got it. Commission for alien biomass, picked up three stops ago at another Alliance planet. They've been on the ship for nearly two months now and were supposed to be kept inert with gas in the storage room." He informed the others.
"So, what went wrong?" The Valkia asked.
"They're Klem. Two months is over a month longer than they would have needed to adapt to the gas and wake up to start preparing for the next stage in their infestation. Nobody noticed until they got here, and the Klem sensed new life forms on the ship, indicating that they were docked or on a planet, which was their trigger to attack.
"So there are two more stops that might be infested?" Max pondered out loud as he read through the data on the tablet.
"Three. Including the one that they picked the Klem up from. No, scratch that. That planet is on our intervention list. They're already facing a planet-wide invasion. Two possible and one confirmed. I have the contact information for the transfer. It's a biotech company that researches medical technology." Nico told them and sent the relevant data to both of the others' devices.
"Check the wireless logs. Are there any other devices unaccounted for?" Max asked.
"Twelve. All belong to minor crewmembers. They might be among the ones that were mangled in the rear cargo bay. Those devices didn't survive. The ones that were used by the senior officers are all safe in their storage cabinets within the bridge.
It looks like they were preparing to transfer to an escape pod but didn't have time before the Klem found them." Nico confirmed.
"There is no Escape Pod attached to the bridge of this vessel." The Valkia reminded her, somewhat confused.
"It is the escape pod. The bridge module is designed to survive heavy bombardment and the destruction of the vessel. They were preparing to detonate the forward sections and jettison themselves into space. With the ship destroyed, they could compensate you for damages if you came after them, but eventually, someone would come to rescue them from the flotsam of the explosion." Nico clarified.
"Pardon?" The Valkia asked, offended that someone would destroy even a portion of his station.
"If they overloaded the power conduits near the bridge, the ship would explode and break the bridge away from the main structure, which would remain mostly intact. It would look like a tragic failure of a power relay, and the destruction would likely be too heavy to prove otherwise."
"Let's finish here and send this ship to a fiery funeral for her crew. I've seen more than enough of these Klem things to last a lifetime." The Valkia announced, then turned to Nico for the solution.
"Oh, I am so glad you asked. Watch and learn. This is how you breach a door."
Chapter 705 705 Raid Kills Bugs Dead
Name:Humanity's Greatest Mecha Warrior System Author:
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Nico quickly equipped the Tech Adept Harness and aimed the cutting torch at the door. The plasma jet cut through the door in a matter of seconds, and then Nico took a handheld weapon out of her Flat Space while the torch moved quickly along the seam between the two halves of the sliding door.
"The doors will be open in five seconds. Get ready." She instructed as she moved the flexible arms of her suit to the slowly cooling metal.
The Klem on the other side of the barrier didn't seem to have noticed her interference at first, but now there was enough heat in the room that they couldn't ignore her attempts to breach the exit. The Swarm wasn't sure about what to do about the attack on their territory at first, but a larger pod was starting to open now, and they were making space for the newly hatched Warrior to deal with whatever was coming for them.
With a ping of metal falling, the last of the cuts was finished, and the arms of Nico's harness pulled the door wide while the Fusion Flamer filled the air in front of them with flames hot enough that the paint on the wall behind them began to peel.
The sizzle and pop of burning Klem filled the air, and the Warrior shrieked while it leaped at Nico, trying to save the other pods and eliminate the threat before it could be burnt to death.
Max stepped forward and met it with a kick to the torso that threw it back into the core of the Fusion Flamer's attack, then waited for Nico to finish sweeping the room to eliminate the Swarm bugs.
"Grab what we can, and let's get out of here. I will burn it all once we have what we need." Nico instructed.
The Station Boss rushed to a terminal to make his own copies of the data and grabbed a few partially melted handheld devices along the way. They were scattered all over the room, so there was no telling how many of them Nico had totally obliterated, other than the ones that went offline during the attack, but it didn't matter much.
They had gotten the device that they were after, and it led them to a solid source for where the Klem might have come from. Max moved smoothly through the room, shooting anything that looked like it might still be able to move and then moving on to put additional rounds into the pods so that they couldn't continue to develop. There were dozens of additional damaged devices lying on the ground that he threw into his storage to be analyzed later as well. Just because they didn't turn on or weren't turned on right now didn't mean that the tech wizards of the research and development department couldn't get the data that he needed out of them.
There was a lot more stored in this room than he had expected, but if they were going to use it as an escape pod, it made sense that they would save as much as they could in the few minutes they had between realizing that the Klem was active and everyone on board dying.
"I think that's it." He called when he reached the spot where the Station Boss was firing rounds into damaged pods. Nico nodded and moved for the door, with Max and the Valkia close behind her. As soon as they were through, she pulled the door closed and welded a few spots on them so that they wouldn't just slide open again later.
She was pretty sure that everything in there was dead or would be after she fired the Fusion Flamer at the full output through the remaining hole in the doors, but it was best to avoid any backlash that might damage their suits.
They had been extensively Combat Tested but not directly against the Fusion Flamers, and this wasn't really the time for it.
Max noticed that she still did the likely damage calculations in her head, but when she fired the Flamer, it was into a sealed room, which quickly became an inferno that made even the walls of the corridor begin to glow with the heat.
"Better stop before you breach the windows, and it becomes obvious that the ship is destroyed from the inside." Max reminded her.
They were still going to give it a fiery funeral after this, and it would be better for the Station if there wasn't footage from dozens of other ships detailing a battle inside the vessel, which they were going to claim had been decommissioned.
The station boss led the way to the back doors, still on high alert for anything else that might be moving inside the vessel. Max could sense that the man was likely going to have killer insect nightmares in the future, but at least he would have the knowledge that they had been destroyed properly this time and that he wouldn't have another infestation on his Station.
Max fully intended to look into the source of the first infestation since it wasn't the ship that they were clearing right now and might be more closely tied to the origin of the infestation. It could also be a secondary infestation caused by someone passing by a pod wave in space, as the Station suspected, but it was better to be safe than sorry.
"Give me fifteen seconds to initiate the disembarking procedure and set the automatic course for the ship. Then I will set security on the controls, and we can leave." Nico informed them as they reached the rear doors, which were currently sealed against the departure of the Klem infestation.
"Got it. Let's get out of here, and I will double-check the sensors and cameras to make sure that nothing breached the outer hull and got to the Station after this vessel arrived here." She declared with a smile under her helmet for the panic that she was causing the Boss.
Chapter 706 706 Disposal
Name:Humanity's Greatest Mecha Warrior System Author:
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As soon as the door opened, Annabelle came running over to hug Nico and then watched the doors nervously until they sealed shut again. Only once they were closed and sealed with the Station's safety barrier in place did anyone relax.
Only seconds later, a solid thump marked the docking clamps retracting, and the display on the wall showed the ship beginning to move away from the Station. It sent out a signal that it was decommissioned and not entirely under control as it moved away from the planet and toward the nearest star, reminding everyone to give it a wide berth so that no accidents could occur, and picked up speed as it went, using the orbital thrusters for the last time to propel it to its grave.
"It's a shame, really. If it wasn't for that infestation, it was still a very good ship, but I don't think it could ever be cleansed from that infestation. There are too many spots inside the structure that can't be sanitized but could have been compromised by the Klem." The Station Boss complained.
"You win some. You lose some." Max agreed, understanding that the Boss was actually more concerned about the potential lost profit from an ownerless ship under his jurisdiction. Cargo ships weren't cheap, and that one had a relatively good record as a legitimate transport, so it could be used for all sorts of transactions without any of the more discerning destinations refusing access.
The ship was picking up speed as it made its way toward the star and would arrive there within ten minutes at its current rate of acceleration when a ship on an intercept course dropped out of Warp and pulled in alongside it as if intending to board the decommissioned vessel.
[Warning unknown vessel, you are about to come into contact with a Class One Lethal biohazard. Per Alliance regulations, any vessel that breaches the quarantine must be held for decontamination.] The Station's broadcast warned them.
The message didn't deter the ship at all. Instead, they increased the rate at which they were closing with the infected vessel, intent on reaching it before anyone could stop them.
"Do you think that ship is associated with whoever paid them to bring the Klem to your region of space?" Max asked the Valkia Station Boss, who he hoped knew more about Alliance ship design than he did.
"I can almost guarantee it. The design is from the same system, the ship is unregistered, and I have no logs of their Warp Drive ever coming within sensor range of a Black Market location in the past.
Nico smiled at that answer. "Then, if the ship was to have a tragic accident, nobody would know anything about it, would they?"
Max raised an eyebrow at his randomly violent second in command, but she was still eagerly waiting for the response from the station boss.
"That is correct. The ship is unregistered, so there would be no records of it anywhere. The occupants could be traced, but if they were to suffer an incident, the chances are that there wouldn't be much left to identify." He agreed.
"Then this should work out very well. The last thing I did before we left was to set a failsafe so that the Warp Drives would go supercritical and destroy everything if there was a hull breach. It was to keep the Klem from finding a way outside of the ship and infesting another passing vessel, but opening an airlock or drilling a hole would work just as well." She explained.
"It's standard practice for invasive species where we come from," Max added with a wink for the Station Boss.
The Valkia smiled back at him. "You know, now that you mention it, I think it is a regular part of the decommissioning process for biohazardous vessels here as well. They can't say that we didn't warn them."
They all waited eagerly to see what the vessel was going to do, but they also refrained from having the Station send out any warning but the standard one to stay away from the biohazard, even after the second vessel clamped itself to the derelict freighter. It wasn't worth a confrontation, and in order to keep the presence of the Klem aboard the vessel from being broadcast to every ship within a hundred star systems, it was better to keep silent.
Importing aggressive foreign species without a permit was a rather serious matter in the Alliance, and it would tarnish the name of not only the company that did it but the deceased crew of the freighter as well. The part that worried the Boss the most was that someone might come looking to see if he had any sort of involvement with the incident, and then they would start asking questions about what the ship was unloading here at his cargo docks.
It wasn't like he could tell them that he bought a hundred tonnes of illicit drugs, even if they were medicinal. That would get a lot more people in trouble. So, they all just watched, and Nico bent down to whisper to Annabelle.
"Do you remember that planet we stopped at? I think we will get an even better show this time but in space."
The little Innu grinned up at her, while the bodyguard who had been watching over her while the team was clearing the ship hid their laughter behind a very fake-sounding cough.
"Do you need cough medicine? There was some in the medicine box." She asked helpfully.
"Thank you, little miss. I will be fine. Just a bit of dust or something."
Nico tapped their small companion on the shoulder to draw her attention back to the viewscreen on the wall just as the new arrivals forced an airlock door open. They had cautiously approached from an external airlock, letting it vent into space in case there was actually something hazardous right at the door, but before they could even go inside, the alarms of the Station began to blare, and the shields on every ship in the vicinity went up automatically.
The Warp drives on the infested ship exploded, creating a temporary star near the next planet in the system, and then multicoloured streaks raced away as the second ship exploded, and the parts of the two ships that weren't vaporized were sent flying away from the explosion.
What was left was a slowly spreading gas cloud, like a miniature nebula between the Station and the star, glowing in dozens of different colours as the light filtered through the various gases.
"Oh, you were right. That is pretty. I wonder if we can replicate that at home?"
Chapter 707 707 How Did They Know
Name:Humanity's Greatest Mecha Warrior System Author:
+ - Turn on Reset
In the aftermath of the explosion, Max focused all of his thoughts on trying the determine if anyone on the station knew more about the mysterious ship or the vessel that they had been decommissioning before it exploded.
They might have been busy with other things before, but now that both ships had been destroyed and every warning alarm within two planets was blaring, it was the perfect opportunity to look for spies and sailors who knew a bit more than they were letting on.
The obvious place to start was with the crews aboard the other ships along the docking rings since they had access to sensors and would have seen the ship leaving with enough time to get a warning out to bring in another ship to attempt to retrieve it.
The timing was a bit too coincidental for Max's liking. There was no way that anyone knew they were going to jettison that vessel into a star, and they had to either be very close or use a portal to get here on time.
Max's suspicion was that they were tipped off by another vessel and had come by portal to somewhere nearby and then made a quick Warp Jump to get close enough to try to do their extraction before anyone stopped them.
A quick scan of the thoughts of the workers aboard the vessels at the dock turned up all horror at what looked like a tragic accident, so Max moved to the people aboard the station.
That proved to be a bit harder to sort out. The crew with security clearances knew about the infestation on the ship, so the Klem infestation was in their thoughts, but Max didn't find any of them who weren't shocked by the incident with the other ship or any who seemed to know about the second vessel at all.
"Boss Archibald. Can you bring up the reports of anyone who had a sudden incident on board in the last hour? Deaths, unconsciousness, anything that would hide unwanted thoughts from an Illithid." Max asked as he continued to scan the minds of the people on the station.
"To avoid anyone learning that they had tipped off the pharmaceutical company? I will get right on it."
Both men frowned as they worked, while Nico's face was blank as she searched through the computer logs and sensor feeds of the ship for anything suspicious.
"I've got two." The Boss announced a few seconds later, only to be cut off by Nico.
"Make that three. There is a crew member passed out in the lounge next to the security office as well. He injected himself with something just after the ship started to move." She added.
It could be an addict, or it could be that someone did exactly what Max suspected and knocked themselves out to avoid mental examination in the immediate aftermath of their actions. The drugs would make things blurry during the moments before they took them, so once they woke up, their thoughts would be muddled and not about whatever information they had given.
It wasn't proof, but it was enough to put them on the suspect list.
The Boss was more upset that one of his workers was passed out high at work than about the chance that they might have taken a bribe to pass information, and Max knew that either way, the man was about to have a very bad day, so he focused on looking for more signs of unusual thoughts.
There was a small cluster of grief from the family of a dead staff member who had already learned that they had been killed in a cargo unloading incident today, but they weren't thinking of anything but that.
Then Max found a mind that was suspicious for its lack of concern and not for its worry. He focused more closely and found a hint of amusement at the whole situation and the "Med Corps," as his mind called them, getting killed in an accident.
"Floor 32, Room 173. Sitting drinking Rum. He knows who the second ship belongs to." Max informed the Station Boss and the others standing around them.
They didn't ask any questions, and Max sensed when the thoughts went vague as the room filled with sleeping agents. He had briefly considered an injection, but his thoughts faded too fast, and then Max could sense that security officers had entered the room and were grabbing him to take him into custody.
It was all very smooth and well practiced, and they made sure to strip him of anything potentially dangerous before moving him, including the small box containing a syringe which Max had sensed him trying to grab before he passed out.
They would determine what it was later, but for now, he was secure, and they could question him once he was conscious again.
Max didn't detect any more suspicious thoughts, and the four people who had been identified had all been taken into custody by Station Security, so he could finally breathe a sigh of relief and begin to relax a little in preparation for determining their next course of action.
This was a big clue as to how the Klem got into Alliance Territory, even if it was for research purposes and not an intentional spread of the infestation. For all he knew, they might have opened a Portal, and a wave of pods came through, so they panicked and shut their mouths about the whole incident.
Nearly anything was a possibility, but the way they had spread after arriving here was much more concerning, and he wasn't sure if this medical company was involved in that part or not. If it was an experiment gone wrong, or possibly right, depending on their intentions, it would be even more problematic than a simple nefarious plot to destroy a handful of worlds.
"Should we let them sweat for a while until we can get an Illithid here to question them, or would you prefer to do it the old-fashioned way?" The Valkia Black Market Boss asked with a smile once he got the confirmation that everything was in order.
"We can do one better. I can read minds almost as well as they can at close range. So, we can interrogate them the old-fashioned way while they can't lie to us."
Chapter 708 708 Unfortunate Souls
Name:Humanity's Greatest Mecha Warrior System Author:
+ - Turn on Reset
Nico smiled up at Max with her very best innocent pleading look, and he knew that she had something that would violate dozens of sentient beings' rights treaties in mind.
"Why don't we split up? If we all interrogate different targets, we can compile information much faster and hopefully get the drop on these troublemakers before they can do anything else?" She suggested with that innocent smile on her face.
Max could already sense that the Station Boss had fallen for her helpful act, and it would only hurt his credibility to call her out on her nonsense right now, so Max shrugged and went along with it.
"We all have interrogation skills, so I will take the one that is most likely to know something since he tried to inject himself to avoid detection, and you two can take the others." Max offered.
"That will be a wonderful time-saving technique. Do either of you require any specialized tools?" The Boss asked.
"I've got everything with me," Nico replied, indicating her Tech Adept Harness.
The bodyguards shuddered at the implication since the tentacles had a variety of clamps, snips, torches and tools available that could be used in any number of nefarious ways.
"Oh, on second thought, I do need something. Do you have any butter handy?" She asked with that deceptive smile on her face.
"Sure, the lunch room is right there. Someone grab Subcommander Nico a block of butter." The Valkia agreed without questioning what she needed it for.
Max knew. Oil on the skin transferred heat very well. So oiling the bottom of their feet and placing a torch near them would let you cook them until the bones fell out without killing the subject through dozens of hours of intense agony.
It probably wouldn't come to that. With all of the other ideas in her head, the burning feet would be the least of her subject's worries, and they would certainly give up their secrets in a reasonable timeframe.
"Oh, I have something that can be helpful." Annabelle giggled, then pulled a headband out of her flat space.
"And what might that be?" The Valkia asked.
"It's a VR headband, but instead of pulling you into a simulation, it broadcasts the signals it picks up from your brain onto a screen. It's like a remote camera that uses the eyes as its lens. But if you use it on dreaming people, you get all sorts of funky stuff. My mom was working on it a few weeks ago before she ran into the dream glitch." The girl explained.
Max gave her a direct look, wondering why she had it if her mom was the one working on it, and the little Innu went into immediate lockdown mode, singing along with a cartoon theme song in her head so he couldn't see her thoughts.
Not that he really needed to. He knew that she had stolen it from her mom's room. He would just add it to the list of transgressions that she would have to apologize for when she returned.
It wouldn't do Max any good, but it would be great for the Boss and his teams. He took it from her with a gentle pat to her head and passed the device off to one of his subordinates who would be holding an interrogation, then nodded to his Innu assistant, who stepped forward to escort Annabelle away.
"This sort of thing isn't for children or researchers. Nico is a special case since she's also a Mecha Pilot, but we should go have some Coffee. You can make it from your ship's replicator without one of them to unlock the code, right?" The technician asked hopefully.
"Of course. Commander Keres doesn't lock the replicator. He just bullies you and makes you do homework so much that you don't have time to sneak snacks outside of designated times." Annabelle replied.
The technician giggled at her pouting expression but let the little Innu lead her back to Santa Maria and the promise of Raspberry Lattes.
"You're not going to stop her from drinking stimulants in the middle of the day." The Boss asked.
"I'm also not going to ask you to send anyone with them. I'm not sure that any other species is truly prepared for what is about to happen inside that ship." Max laughed.
"I will send a few more Innu with more even temperaments to accompany them so that they don't get out of hand and make a mess of your ship." he agreed with a smirk.
The bodyguards led the way out of the room toward the holding cells where their prisoners were being kept, and Max focused on listening to the thoughts inside the cells as much as he could. Chances are they thought their minds were secure since the Illithid didn't have the numbers to be everywhere, and there were none recorded as being on board this station.
Max's target was the first in line, while Nico's was supposed to be second. He saw her stop just outside the door and tweak her morphable features to look more childish and innocent before she grabbed the medical cart that they had prepared for the interrogation and stepped inside the room.
Max ignored the fate of that unfortunate soul for the moment and turned his thoughts to the unconscious man in the room he had picked. Waking him up would be easy enough, but for the moment, Max stood outside and listened in on the man's dreams. It was all nonsense, so Max entered the room to wake him up and get this process started.
The prisoner came to just after Max entered. He struggled against his bonds for a moment and worked his jaw, attempting to crush a hidden poison capsule. Fortunately, the team who took him in had put a ring gag in his mouth, forcing it open for just that reason, and Max had plenty of time to find a set of curved forceps and practice his skills as an amateur dentist.
"Now that we understand each other, how about we start with what you know about the company that has been importing Klem into the Alliance."
Chapter 709 709 Questioning
Name:Humanity's Greatest Mecha Warrior System Author:
+ - Turn on Reset
The man strapped to the bed laughed at Max as he evaluated him. "If you thought that I would simply tell you everything that you wanted to know just because you asked, you're far too incompetent for this job. Have you considered being a janitor?"
"I will start off slow. How about the pharmaceutical Company? They didn't give you anything but an easy death. You don't owe them anything." Max asked.
The man's thoughts went to the large amount of money that they had provided him, as well as the experimental treatment for his subordinate's disease. It would almost be touching if he wasn't planning to kill the subordinate as soon as he returned to his ship. The mission had gone bad, and he was already planning to tie up all the loose ends.
"You have to be the worst interrogator in history. Seriously, you're going with the appeal to decency?"
Max smiled. "Of course not. I just thought that you might prefer a quick death, but if you want to draw this out, that's fine by me. I'm paid by the hour."
The man silently cursed the Niall Pharmaceutical Company in his head, and Max used Nico's skill to record everything that he heard, like a built-in transcriptionist. It reminded him of all the free flow of consciousness messages that he had gotten from her in the past, but he kept his attention on the target.
Before the man could speak again, the sound of a mournful scream sounded through the walls, making both of them look in the direction where Nico was working.
"What in the seven hells was that?"
"One of my coworkers is having a polite conversation with a child molester. It seems that the prisoner is feeling particularly regretful." Max replied with a shrug.
That scream had a mental attack aspect to it. The walls were completely soundproof, but both Max and the other man in the room had heard it. The prisoner didn't seem to be able to hear his thoughts, so it wasn't a matter of shared skills. It must be somehow related to the species of the other prisoner.
Nico's thoughts were more amused than anything else like she had found a fun new toy with unexpected features, so he left her alone to work.
"Now, where were we? Oh yes, Niall Pharmaceuticals. Why are they bringing in the Klem, and how did they end up spread all over this Galaxy?" Max continued.
The prisoner looked shocked that Max knew the name of the Company, and then his thoughts turned to resignation for an instant. If Max already knew that much, he would be in real trouble. The prisoner knew that there was a chance the Black-Market Boss had ordered him tortured on general principle since his employer had accidentally let the Klem they had been transporting infest the station twice in the course of a month, but he didn't know anything about the Klem being released anywhere else.
If the ships had let them infest other stations as well, the revelation that the Company had been transporting them would ruin a thousand-year-old legacy in a single day.
"It's just routine research. They have the appropriate permits. Look for yourself. There's no reason to be holding me here." The prisoner suggested.
Max shook his head. "We already checked. No hazardous species quarantine exceptions have been made. They didn't have a permit to take them, much less transport them anywhere. Now, how about you tell me why your employer has been targeting my station?"
The prisoner legitimately didn't know that the Klem had been placed under quarantine by the Alliance Authorities. The ship hadn't picked them up from a quarantine zone. They had been in storage in a corporate warehouse already.
But he didn't know how they had gotten to that warehouse, and he didn't have a good explanation for this strange pale-haired interrogator.
He hadn't seen a human before, and although they had a passing similarity to many other species, they still looked sufficiently alien that their appearance just gave off that nagging feeling of familiarity, but one that you couldn't quite place.
"If they perhaps purchased them from someone else, say an unauthorized dealer who faked the permits, my boss would really like to know." Max offered kindly.
His work was interrupted again by the mental scream, only this time it was begging for mercy from everyone from Nico to the mythical Gods to the prisoner's own mother.
"We need to work on that. It's really quite distracting." Max muttered while the man with him went a little pale.
"Are they going to torture him to death? I thought this station still respected Alliance Laws, at least on the surface. You can't just make people disappear." The Prisoner in Max's room pleaded.
"Of course, we're not going to kill him. That would be much too easy. I suspect that you might not have a very relaxing month here if he keeps screaming like that, though. If you can get me some real answers, I can ask that you are moved to a more distant room."
The man's thoughts played through all of the experiments that the Corporation was running with the Klem that they had obtained, but none of his knowledge included experiments on planets, as they were working on using the rapid growth genes in the Klem biology to try to develop an anti-aging serum.
That didn't match with the invasion of planets. They didn't need large amounts of Klem biomass for their experiments or for the product that they were working on producing. It wouldn't help their cause at all. There must be another company or party involved in setting the Klem loose.
Max tapped his chin as if he had been thinking deeply. "Do your bosses perhaps have enemies? Someone who would profit from setting them up for a fall by sabotaging their shipments and setting Klem loose on planets near their warehouses?"
Burgerstein Pharmaceuticals appeared in the man's thoughts. They had been at odds with each other for generations, and both companies had done some seriously underhanded things to each other in the past.
That was one more possibility for Max's list, but the prisoner remained closed-lipped.
"Fine. I will come back later and see if you're feeling more cooperative." Max shrugged, then turned for the door.
"Wait, water. Can I get some water?" The prisoner asked.
He still had hope that a secondary poison in his mouth would be activated by the water and wipe all of the sensitive memories of his employer before an Illithid could arrive and strip his thoughts.
"I will send for some." Max agreed, then stepped outside and sat down on a chair to dive deep into the man's thoughts, scraping out every little detail about his employer and their enemies. He had just finished compiling the data when a bodyguard came by with food for him, and Nico came out of her interrogation room whistling a jingle from the advertisement for a new video game that had been playing earlier.
Max looked at the bodyguard in front of him. "Give the prisoner in my room a glass of water. He has a drug that will activate with water and cleanse his short-term memory, as well as all memories of his employer. I've gotten everything relevant that has happened to him since his third birthday already, so we can let him mind scrub and leave without ever knowing that he gave up everything.
The best mole is the one that nobody will ever know was one."
Chapter 710 710 Broken Toys
Name:Humanity's Greatest Mecha Warrior System Author:
+ - Turn on Reset
Once the water was delivered and the thoughts faded from his subject, Max turned to Nico. "What exactly did you do to your prisoner? Even my subject could hear the mental scream through the walls."
Nico shrugged. "Did you know that on a Kyle, if you apply the appropriate dose of electricity to the reproductive organs, it makes every single pain receptor in their body fire at once? Even the ones in their brain that send out chemicals to numb the body are activated, but it doesn't dull the effect of consecutive applications of electricity."
"So, you tasered him in the testicles until his mind broke, and he began psychically screaming?"
Nico nodded happily. "I singlehandedly evolved his species. They have been on the verge of activating psychic abilities for a few millennia now but have never broken through. He can now communicate mentally with anyone he is in direct contact with. It took him a lot of work to make it that far, but I stopped when he finally managed to beg me."
The bodyguards that worked for the Black Market were all staring at Nico as if she was some sort of monster much more horrific than the Klem, and Max didn't fail to notice that they had all subtly crossed their legs or turned their hips away from her.
"Will he recover?" Max asked.
"Give it like two hours, three hours at the most, and the electrical charge will disperse from his body, and the pain will end. After that, he should be alright."
One of the bodyguards hesitantly stepped forward with a data tablet. "Did he know anything useful?"
"No. He was the one that mysteriously passed out at the same moment that the ship appeared to try to board the infested merchant vessel. It was pure coincidence. He was high out of his mind and overdosed a little, then collapsed in the hallway." She replied.
"And how far into the interrogation did you learn that?" The bodyguard asked, following his checklist.
"I knew that before we started, I found out from the security feed. My report also contains the name of the shopkeeper selling crappy drugs cut with mild painkillers and where his stash is."
The big four-armed man frowned. "If you knew he wasn't part of the incident, why did you continue to interrogate him?"
"You never know what people know until you ask properly."
The bodyguard sighed. "I will send someone to ground him and disperse the charge from his body. I don't think he will be getting high enough to pass out and risk getting arrested again in the near future."
The other interrogators weren't far behind, and each of them had managed to gain a small amount of useful information about the situation, as well as some unrelated information that the subjects thought they might want, in exchange for ending the questioning early.
All in all, it was a productive session, and once the electrical charge was dispersed from Nico's subject, he stopped screaming and shifted to simply whimpering and rocking in the corner.
"I think you broke him. What good is evolving his ability if he's completely useless afterward?" Max asked her, hoping to remind Nico that limits existed for a reason.
"You're right. I should go talk to him. I think it will help him recover." she announced, then opened the door to the interrogation room and snapped her fingers.
A young man with floppy hairless ears, like a hairless rabbit, crawled out of the room to sit by her feet.
"Good boy. Now, once we get back to the front hallway, you are going to stand up and remember that you are a sentient being. Do you understand?" She asked.
He nodded happily but remained sitting at her feet.
She walked down the hall, and he crawled along beside her, which earned Nico an envious look from one of the female Titans that Max couldn't help but notice.
Nico was hiding her thoughts from him again, but Max didn't need to be psychic to understand this one. She had put him in an immense amount of pain and used the opportunity to implant a series of subliminal commands, much like a pain-induced state of hypnosis.
"Are we going to need to find you a new hobby when you get back to the ship? You've been looking bored lately, and it's starting to affect your behaviour." Max teased his second in command.
"It's all good. I think I have made a breakthrough on the design problem that I was stuck on. Once we finish up the investigation and get back, I will be busy with the design team."
That wasn't entirely reassuring. Perhaps he should get her a pet dog or something.
They reached the main hallways, and the man's eyes went vacant before he got to his feet and turned a horrified look at Nico before running away and being caught by one of the bodyguards.
"Please, you don't understand. That's not a person. She's a monster. I will never break the law again. I swear it. Just please, don't let her get me." He begged.
Nico smirked at the man, which made him whimper and hide behind the big Titan, who was doing his best not to laugh at the situation.
[One addict rehabilitated. Go ME! Yay, yay, you're so benevolent, Miss Nico.] She thought as the man cowered behind the big bodyguard.
[You could have done the same thing without the public humiliation.] Max reminded her silently.
[Well yeah, but where is the fun in that? Besides, have you forgotten that we have a ship full of coffee-enhanced Innu to deal with once we are finished here? Today's fun is far from over.]
She had a good point.
"Should we compile the data now, or would you prefer to do it later?" Max asked the Station Boss, intending to delay the inevitable barrage of hyper thoughts that he was doing his best to ignore at the moment.
"Give the data tablets to my associates, and they will compile them for us. I'm sure the Commander of a Reaver Company has more important things to do than analyze the interrogation data from a bunch of low-level employees."
Damn. Well, he tried.