"Dicia, please tell me we have more than this." Rowan's voice echoed in the military depot as he poured over the inventory. "We're going to need way more androids to make this a fair fight.
"I'm sorry Rowan," Dicia said through his implant. "The republic wanted to ensure the station was cleared of enough war material to make it an unattractive target for pirates. It's Pax Orbis, not Belli Orbis."
"Okay, remember your training. Improvise, adapt, attack." He started to pace in front of his girlfriends Carmen and Indigo, who had tagged along.
Indigo shrugged, "If we could get into contact with the lycans and set up an encrypted channel with them, we might be able to have them coordinate their attacks with the station's security systems."
"Yes, we'll need help from everyone, slimes, mantisoids, nictids, the tentacle guys, and those weird floating brains down on Z-deck. But the only ones with weapons are the graxlians and our meager supply." He shook his head. "Asking them to fight right now would be suicide. They need to shelter in place until we can get them armed."
Carmen interrupted, "It's a shame that the human section has all this space but there's nothing in it we can use to fight back. The human section is huge but it's empty."
Rowan stopped pacing and looked at Carmen. She looked nervously at him. She winced and said, "Did I say something wrong?"
He walked up to her and kissed her on the lips. "That's exactly what you did. But you just may have saved us. Dicia, do we have any forges and industrial 3d printers?"
"I can bring four online in the next five hours, ten in the next day."
Rowan pumped his fist, and yelled, "Perfect! Please grant Carmen and Indigo security access to see everything I'm going to request. Now bring up a holographic schematic of the human section. Highlight the auxiliary power systems."
A chaotic mass of spheres, walkways, habitats, and structural supports appeared above Dicia's projector. A blue network of nodes showed brighter like a chaotic spider web.
Rowan walked around the hologram. "Dicia, how much juice do we have in the human section?"
"The modules have degraded over the centuries, but currently we have the batteries charged to provide around a thousand gigawatt hours. It can power a fully populated human section for about a week. With just you, you would die of old age before the batteries drained."
"Dicia do you remember the old war movies? What was that primitive plasma rifle they used all the time?"
"Oh, the M1X Fulminea, but they got rid of them as the gun burnt itself out after a few months of use. And we don't have any."
"If we're still fighting after a few months we're dead anyway. Dicia, I want you to vent the atmosphere of the human section except for this deck and the habitat where we live. I want the maintenance bots to start using the 3d printers to start constructing more androids. We'll cannibalize the station as fast as we can for raw materials to make M1X's and androids. Every type we have schematics on. The maintenance bots can also rip out some of the autocannons we've been repairing. They're much more useful to our forces than as stationary turrets. We don't want the graxlians to get them either."
"We can print the parts, Rowan, but we don't have the chips. The androids won't have any brains."
"Dicia, the station is riddled with industrial controls keeping the station running, they're all the same model. We can repurpose them to be the brains of the robots. We'll program the controllers with security bot software and install them in our printed soldiers. They won't be super killers, but if we have enough, we might be able to overwhelm the graxlian positions."
"Holy shit," Indigo muttered. "That just might work. And spacing most of the section will let us defend ourselves easier."
Dicia replaced the station schematic with her own image. "I'll get started right away, but there's something you need to see. The graxlians are attacking the limusinian section. I won't explain."
Rowan, Indigo, and Carmen looked up at the projector's new video feed. Carmen's mouth dropped open before gasping and holding her mouth. She hid her face by hugging Rowan.
….
Sergeant Zilroz held aloft his slug gun and squeezed off a round to get a group of slimes to stop talking. It ricocheted off the ceiling leaving a deep pockmark. The vibrating blobs froze.
"The graxlian regime has determined that all non-graxlian civilians will be moved onto shuttles and escorted to the surface of Avior 7. Any attempt to resist will be seen as an act of resistance and will be punished, do I make myself clear."
A larger blob came to the front. "Avior 7 is a deserted planet, we won't be able to live there for long."
"We have contacted your government to come with civilian transports to send you back to your nearest colony."
"Very well." The blob leader buzzed.
"I love compliance." The lizard flashed his teeth. "Move along! First transport is at airlock 190!"
The lizardmen pointed their guns and yelled and the gelatinous aliens moved through the public section of the station to the nearest airlock. One older slime moved slowly and a young graxlian pointed his gun at them.
"Move you glob!" He gave the slime a kick. Instead of hurting the blob he simply buried his foot in it and stumbled. The lizard started to squeal and fall to the ground.
The slime buzzed. "Sorry, sorry. That's a reflex of being attacked. One second, if you stop moving I can release you."
"Fuck you!" The soldier pointed his slug gun at the old slime and fired. The large bolt of tungsten entered the slime and cavitated a huge hole in the viscous flesh. The slime lost its cohesion and liquified, splashing on the metal grating. The remaining slimes screamed.
The sergeant ran over the private and kicked him in the side. "Fool, don't you know you can't kick a slime? Don't waste your ammo."
"Yes, sergeant." The lizard got back up and swished its tail. "I shall not make the same mistake."
"The next time you will feel what tungsten is like in your own belly."
The graxlians pointed their guns at the remaining slimes and coaxed them to go the remaining distance to the airlock. A window on the giant door showed there was a sparse shuttlecraft cargo bay connected to the station.
"Get your slimy asses onboard that ship!" The private screeched. "We need to get the rest of you off this blasted station." The blobs rolled in and the airlock shut behind them.
The sergeant pressed a button to the side of the airlock door and spoke into the panel. "Civilian slimes, please remain calm while the shuttle prepares for departure. There will be food and fresh water on the surface at the landing site."
A slime called back over the speaker. "Sir! I just looked at this rust bucket. It's purely a vacuum transit ship. It can't handle reentry!"
"Thank you for your compliance."
"You graxlian bastard! I hope you die in a fire!"
"You first." He pushed the airlock clamp release and the shuttle drifted from the station. Now the soldiers looking through the window could see that the ship was nothing more than a metal box with some maneuvering thrusters on it. The small rockets fired and the cargo crate accelerated towards the surface at a deadly angle.
"Crackle, crackle, dear friends." The sergeant wiggled his fingers at the spacecraft as it burned up in reentry.
A series of loud cracking sounds rang out near the airlock and the sergeant looked to see flashes coming from a side corridor. Several members of his platoon were either wounded or half splattered against the walls.
"Open fire!" The sergeant yelled and tried to level his slug gun on his foe. His eyes widened for a moment when his arm came into his field of view. Instead of a hand, the sergeant found his blood spraying from the stump of his arm. His limb had been shot off. The leader took his combat knife from his leg scabbard and sprinted to the weapons fire. Low velocity slugs whizzed by his ears and the lizardeen graxlian's heart exulted in the thrill of battle. Knowing he only had two minutes of life left in him he wanted to make one last kill for his dear mistress Z'boa who was back on the home world.
He let out a battlecry as he launched himself in the air to tackle whoever was firing from the darkness. Zilroz brought up his legs and falcon kicked where he thought the target might be. He missed the timing by a fraction of a second, and instead of killing his target he simply knocked the opponent on his back.
He heard the sliding of a rifle along the metal flooring and laughed. "Whoever is there is unarmed, I see you now, I see your heat." He pointed to pits in his snout. "I'm not familiar with the smell, but I'm sure you'll taste just the same. I only have another minute to live, so why not treat myself?"
"Hey scumbag!" The corridor lights turned on showing Carmen standing in front of Rowan who had been knocked down. Indigo ran from the light switch to the slug rifle.
"Stupid bitch!" The graxlian raised his blade. As he did so the cyborg rocked her leg back and then executed a vertical round house kick, sending her heel straight into the jaw of the alien and tearing it half off. He slammed into the ground.
"Don't touch my Darling!" She brought her foot down again on the dead creature's throat with a splat.
Indigo yelled out as she laid down covering fire. "We have to fall back to where we have functional autocannons, there's too many of the bastards here!"
Rowan stood up and cursed himself. "Damn, I really wish I spent more time on target practice. Let's go, I need to talk to Dicia."
…
Ten minutes later every speaker on Pax Orbis crackled before Dicia's voice came through in an even tone. "Attention, attention. Graxlian soldiers have been seen executing civilians. There is no indication graxlian soldiers will let captives live. We recommend complete resistance to the terrorist forces attempting to take control of the station. Please make all efforts to create makeshift weapons and give no quarter to graxlian forces. Blockade all hallways with heavy equipment to slow their progress. That is all for now."