The Rust, Main Docking Spine
The station's klaxons began a low, mournful wail. Red emergency lights strobed, painting the grimy corridors in pulses of blood.
Victor was frantically packing data-slates into a case. "The stabilizer formula, my notes on your father's work, the genetic baseline scans… take it all! Don't let them have it!"
Aelia moved with lethal efficiency. She tossed Kaine a fresh black bodysuit from a locker—lightweight, with basic kinetic webbing. "No armor. You need mobility. Your primary weapon will be surprise, and that… thing inside you." She handed him a heavy, blocky pistol. "Ion-burst sidearm. Short range, but it will scramble a Hound's sensors and servos for a few seconds. Use it to create an opening. Not to fight."
Kaine changed quickly, the suit syncing to his body heat. The pain was a constant backdrop, but the Stabilizer Victor had given him was holding the worst at bay. For now. He holstered the pistol. It felt alien in his hand. "What's the play? We can't outrun a corvette."
"We don't have to. We make him come to us, on our ground," Aelia said, pulling up a holo-schematic of The Rust. "The Hound will send a breaching team to the shuttle bay. Standard pacification protocol. We'll be here." She highlighted a large, cross-shaped junction in the central spine. "It's the main artery. He'll have to pass through to reach the lab core. We ambush the point team, cause enough chaos to mask our escape to the secondary hangar. I have a fast courier there."
"And the Lead Hound himself?"
"Victor will rig the primary life support regulator in that junction to overload when I give the signal. It will create a thermal blast and vent the atmosphere. It should delay him, maybe even damage his suit if he's close."
"Should. Maybe." Kaine nodded. It was a desperate, scrappy plan. He liked it already. "What's the signal?"
"You'll know it." Aelia's gaze was flint. "Don't hesitate when you see it. Run."
They took up positions. Kaine crouched behind a gutted atmospheric processor, its innards a maze of pipes that offered some cover. Aelia was across the junction, a shadow merged with a support column. The only light came from the strobing red alarms and the faint, sickly glow of emergency strips on the floor.
They didn't have to wait long.
With a resonant BOOM that shook the deck plates, the main airlock at the far end of the corridor was blown inwards. Smoke and frozen atmosphere billowed. Through it, three figures advanced. Two standard Hounds, rifles up. And between them, the Lead Hound. His armor was scarred from their previous encounter, but the plasma blade on his fist glowed with undiminished fury. He moved with a predator's confidence.
"Scanning. Multiple life signs converging. One matches the deviate, Kaine Lokison," his vox-voice boomed. "Priority Alpha target. All others, expendable. Advance and cleanse."
The two grunts fanned out. They moved well, covering each other, their sensors sweeping the corridor. They were heading right for Kaine's position.
Now.
Aelia didn't fire. She threw a small, spherical device that clattered to the deck between the two advancing Hounds. It emitted a piercing, multi-frequency shriek. The Hounds' sensor feeds would be flooded with garbage data for a crucial second.
Kaine moved. Not with the god-like burst from Mars, but with every ounce of speed his own mods and adrenaline could provide. He burst from cover, the ion pistol raised. He fired twice, point-blank, at the first Hound's torso.
CRACK-ZZORT! Twin bursts of blue energy enveloped the armor. The Hound staggered, his systems shorting out, his rifle drooping.
The second Hound was already turning, his rifle snapping towards Kaine. Time seemed to slow. Kaine saw the weapon's aperture glow. He saw the Lead Hound, still near the breach, begin to stride forward, unruffled.
He couldn't dodge. He was in the open.
Then, a single, precise gunshot rang out. Not from an energy weapon. A solid round, armor-piercing. It struck the second Hound's rifle at the magazine housing. The weapon didn't explode, but it sparked violently, wrenching from the Hound's grip.
Aelia. One shot, from the shadows. Impossible accuracy.
Kaine didn't waste the gift. He closed the last few feet to the disoriented first Hound. The compiler stirred in his mind, a hungry, pained presence. The Ares-code flickered. He didn't try to compile it fully—the thought of that agony now was terrifying. But he let a whisper of it, the barest echo of its battle-instinct, flood his nerves.
His fist, driven by every mod in his body and guided by that instinct, shot forward. He didn't aim for the thick chest plate. He aimed for the seam between the breastplate and the shoulder guard, a weakness his newly sharpened senses screamed was there.
The impact jarred his arm to the shoulder. The ceramite didn't break, but it buckled inward with a sickening crunch. The Hound emitted a gurgled, wet scream over the vox—internal damage, punctured lung. The giant toppled like a felled tree.
The second Hound, now unarmed, roared and charged, intending to crush Kaine with his bulk.
From her position, Aelia saw the Lead Hound raise his plasma blade. He was in range. It was time.
"Victor, now!" she yelled into her comms.
Nothing happened.
"Victor? Do it!"
Over the comms, Victor's voice came, choked with static and something else… fear. "Aelia… they're in the lab! They flanked us! I'm sorr—"
The transmission cut off in a burst of static and a final, truncated cry.
Aelia's blood ran cold. The plan was ash.
The charging Hound was almost on Kaine. The Lead Hound's plasma blade was raised, ready to throw, to impale Kaine where he stood.
And in that moment of utter catastrophe, a new, smooth, and utterly amused voice patched into the open channel. A woman's voice, laced with a lazy, dangerous confidence.
"Well, isn't this a delightful mess? Little bird trapped, puppy dog cornered. Tsk tsk. For a modest future consideration, I could… oh, say… open Bulkhead 7-Gamma right next to our overgrown canine friends? It leads directly to the lovely vacuum of space. Very… cleansing."
It was an offer. From a stranger. A lifeline made of pure, unadulterated risk.
Kaine, staring down the charging Hound and the glowing plasma blade, had a split second to decide. Trust the mysterious voice, or die.
He looked at Aelia, saw the calculation fail in her eyes, replaced by raw, human dread.
"DO IT!" Kaine roared to the void, to the mysterious voice, to anyone who was listening.