chapter 50
The pirate was walking in like he was the last boss. Now I don’t know how much his gear cost and weighed, but the way he was walking would have fitted in so nicely in some movie climax that was shown in slow motion.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t walking in slow motion, and even before he reached the point where I could shoot him, he started to pre-fire his minigun.
Those bullets started to scream out, carving a literal trench into the wall that was slowly getting closer and closer to our barrier. We all crouched behind our own barriers to give us just that little bit more protection.
From my revolver, I took out one bullet, replacing it with the atomic bullet. The cylinder itself I turned in a way that I would be firing three bullets before the atomic one would be fired.
Perhaps they had someone who could do something about bullets, but I also wanted to test out how these electric discharge bullets worked against shields. Because technically, they should be able to work even against shields.
“You have permission from the station,” Lola informed me, and I could hear the worry in her voice.
The barriers held a bit longer, but even that he was cutting in half with his weapon.
As quickly as possible, I peeked out, aimed the revolver, and started to fire. Three shots were fired out in quick succession. I aimed directly at the shield of the minigun user. The fourth one, I aimed to fire past him and past all the pirates to hit the wall behind them so it would be as far away as possible from our current location as it hit.
The pirate immediately focused on my location. I was barely able to get into cover.
His gunfire sputtered out as the electric discharge bullets hit. Of course, the shield did its job, stopping the bullet, but electricity has its way of finding a way to its target, and while most of it was headed toward the metal of the hallway, some of it arced across to hit the pirate, causing him to seize up just a bit.
The next two bullets did the same, but he managed to recover in just moments. I imagined his face was quite angry, but he would never get a chance to display that anger towards me.
Looking over at the other ship’s crew, they had huddled together, holding onto their own barrier. It seems that they were protecting their weakest member from radiation with their own bodies.
All the drones I had, I had sent flying as far away from here as possible, and then it happened.
The flash was incredible. Even with my eyelids closed, I could still see the skeletons of the other crew. We were all assaulted by strong EMP, but my body managed to handle it.
The blast wave came next. Our barriers buckled, but it passed so fast.
When I peeked towards the pirates, there was barely anything left. Most of the pirates seemed to have been vaporised, as they were so close to the epicentre of the blast. The radiation was tremendous, with the walls glowing from being melted. It was strange to watch the space outside the large hole that was at least the size of a bus.
Some of the pirates seemed to have survived, but everything had happened so fast that they didn’t have time to prepare for what was to come. I did note that my ability didn’t trigger.
With a hole to space, air started to rush out faster and faster. If we were in a small hallway or a room, it would have already evacuated with us barely noticing it, but the entirety of the security floor and the docks were connected. That air, so much of it, started to rush out ever faster.
In about 10 seconds, we were fighting against hurricane-scale winds. Then, all of a sudden, some sort of safety measure activated. Finaly the security doors shut closed all around the security floor.
We were now in a small room. Everything calmed down almost immediately as all the air was sucked out.
Now, I had no problem surviving in these types of conditions for a while, and thankfully, it seems that the other ship’s crew had their own ways of surviving without air, as they put on masks.
The crew member who said they were weak to radiation truly wasn’t lying. His skin was falling off. The other crew members used different types of injections to try to stabilise him.
In about a minute, the captain held up one finger, and I wondered what that meant. Just in case they needed some help, I connected to their communication devices and asked.
“Is he going to be okay? I don’t have a universal translator key for your body language.”
“Yeah, he survived the worst of it. It will take him a bit of time to recover, but he's going to be okay.”
“What are we going to do about the large hole?” I managed to get out before the hole started to close up, with large structural balls starting to form on top of each other. “Never mind.”
In a few more minutes, the hole was patched up, and a lot of the hallway that was heavily radiated was also covered by those balls, reducing the background radiation here quite a bit, making it a lot safer for everyone.
Taking stock, I had lost four drones, and currently I wasn’t in contact with anyone, as the doors that slammed shut seemed to have broken all contact.
Fortunately, from the vents, air started to be pumped in, so we could once again talk normally and not through our communication devices.
“Is every human as crazy as you?” the captain asked, and I couldn’t help but chuckle a bit.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“No, most are normal, but some of us go off the scales quite a bit.”
That got a bit of a laugh out of him, which was nice to hear, as it seemed that our species shared that particular expression.
“Where did you even get that bullet? Those things aren’t really sold, and most don’t know how that technology works.”
“We humans had that type of technology well before we joined the rest of the galaxy. It was invented by one of those crazy people who go off the scale.”
“Now that’s a story I would like to hear, and we have nothing else to do but wait.”
“Sure, but there isn’t much to tell. It was another large-scale war between groups of nations on my planet. The forward lines were broken, and thousands upon thousands of foreign soldiers pushed into a country they really shouldn’t have.”
“Of course, evacuation orders were given, but, well, humans can be really territorial—especially if we think of some place as our home. Well, this particular individual decided he would rather destroy his home than have it be destroyed by someone else.”
“I don’t know the original name of the place, but it's now known as the Valley of Death.”
“Almost 30,000 soldiers walked into that valley, and that man had made who knows how many of these bullets. He loaded them onto a belt that fed into a machine gun. The technology wasn’t really that refined, so quite a lot of those bullets didn’t explode, but enough of them did.”
“No one walked out of that valley that day.”
POV: Wefstrat, Commander of the Weratile Trade Station’s Security
I barely dodged the sniper bullet that headed my way, but he also exposed himself. My pistol barked as I fired back, once again killing that individual.
Their revivers were way too good. Who were they really, and what was going on?
Then I got the priority communication and pulled back to the cover of the wall to concentrate on it.
“Sir, the adventurer holding the south hallway is requesting permission to use atomics. They did specify it would be a smaller-scale one, but that it would also create a hole into space.”
If I hadn’t had the experience of 412 years of my life, I might have frozen up or denied that request without giving it any thought.
Their location would mean that, yes, a small atomic would definitely open that area to space. Hopefully, it is actually small, but I don’t think they would have a death wish that large.
Wait, shouldn’t that also trigger the doors?
“Yes. Give permission.”
But I bet they would have also done it without the permission if they were in such a desperate position to even think about using it.
“Everyone get out of the hallway!”
I gave an order to everyone who was still alive. All of them were too tired to even think of why we were abandoning our defensive position.
The pirates, of course, immediately tried to push, but then it happened.
The lights flickered. There was a shockwave that went through the metal, and then we felt it through the air.
A moment later, slowly, a wind picked up, but the doors were already closing, as this was the most important location.
The pirates were probably panicking. A few of them rushed toward us, but I aimed my pistol and started to fire.
One of them managed to jump through the closing doors, but all that met him was death.
Now I focused on the two battle droids. The adventurers were finally starting to look like they were getting tired, but they had also managed to damage the battle droids enough that I might be able to help them. They were moving so fast, but then I started to feel something that I had only heard about and sought for so long.
Openings started to appear, something that I should not be able to see. The melee was furious, but my first shot missed all my allies and hit a critical spot on one of the battle droids, causing it to seize up for just a moment, allowing one of the adventurers to slash deeply into one of its arms, making it go limp.
Like this, we slowly started to disable the battle droids, but then we all stopped, even the battle droids, as a huge vibration shook the entire station.
Then we heard mad cackling from one of the maintenance passages. The same person popped out who had informed me it would take an hour to get the station’s weapons operational. We still had 20 minutes to go until his deadline.
“I thought I would focus a bit more, so I got the triple cannons back online.”
What a brilliant young man. That would be enough. Those were large, triple-mounted railguns that were long enough to damage battleships, so the battle cruisers outside wouldn’t stand a chance.
The battle droids then made their move, rushing toward the maintenance tunnels.
I started to shoot the battle droids, using the last of my mana to empower every shot with my penetrating shot skill.
That slowed them down, and the adventurers started to truly hack these battle droids apart. Soon enough, they were nothing but a torso. The strongest of the adventurers cracked open their most protected area and pulled out the AI core, finally putting an end to this threat.
“Sir, two of their pirate battle cruisers have been destroyed. The third one has been disabled. The smaller ships are either trying to escape or are surrendering.”
“Give no quarter, as they would have not given us any.”
“Yes, sir.”
The pirates continued to put up a hell of a fight, but they were slowly whittled down, and within four hours, the battle was over, and we had won.
The command centre was quite damaged, but the adventurers who showed up to help, including a lot of the crew from the adventurer battlecruiser and the security forces who were healthy enough to stand all gathered here. It was time to give out loot.
Without the adventurers, we would have been overrun, and all of them knew it, but I didn’t mind giving them what they deserved. Fortunately, I didn’t have to handle this myself, as I had other people to do it.
“Now we come to the two battle droid AI cores. They need to be bonded, otherwise, we need to destroy them, or we would be breaking universal law.”
Everyone felt uncomfortable when that was said, but no one seemed to be coming up to claim the AI cores.
Then I saw the individual I had personally thanked for helping us. He was a mage captain of a ship called Forward Horizon. When I first saw him, I couldn’t help but compare his species to elves and dwarves. All three of them looked suspiciously similar, but I didn’t really care about that right now.
He walked up and seemed to put his fingers on each of the AI cores for a bit. Then he shook his head.
“Unfortunately, I can’t bond with them.”
And just like that, he walked back to his spot. That was curious. He had at least 100 drones. Perhaps he wasn’t a drone master, or maybe these battle droids were a bit too advanced and would take up too much of his capacity.
We waited a bit longer, but no one came forward. I gave the person in charge a sharp nod, and quickly, a person came and picked up the AI cores to take them to get destroyed. This was always sad to see happen, but these ones didn’t have proper hibernation protocols, and no one wanted to go against universal law.
Quest rewards were given out, and I made sure everyone got a decent chunk, especially the three main adventurer ships that gave the majority of the help.
All of them received quite a decent chunk of high-value metal, and I watched as the drone master let one of his drones pick it up. Apparently, that one’s name was Bob, a weird name, but he held the northern hallways, even taking a bit of damage, but he seemed to be alright in the end.
After that came a distribution of skill stones. That surprised me at first. Apparently, they had quite a lot of them on the three pirate battle cruisers. Why it no longer surprised me was because I now know what had happened.
This wasn't an isolated attack. Around this area, basically all the trade stations were hit by different pirates, even some trade centers were hit.
The current count was that only 6% of the stations managed to fight off the pirates. It was a recruitment drive and an initiation for new pirate crews to join the ranks of one of the Pirate Lords.
I still can’t believe that one of the ducal clans made a move. It seems that it’s time to get out of here. Fortunately, my shares were going to be worth a lot more than I thought, as we were now one of the only stations to survive the raids that happened.
“We will not be doing an auction for the skill stones. It would take too long and it would create too much bad blood. So all the skill stones will be distributed by random. Does everyone agree?”
My aide spoke, and while there was a bit of discontent at first, everyone eventually agreed. No one wanted to stick around here for too long.
The skills were distributed, but once again, the drone master spoke out.
“I have a water skill. Does anyone want to change it for a fire one?”
“Why would you want to change the skill?” I heard someone ask him.
“Well, I can’t use fire-type or water-type skills and finding a buyer would be much easier if all the skills were the same type.”
“Ha ha, the Pirate Pain is correct,” one of the adventurers who helped defeat those battle droids spoke up.
I closed my eyes just for a moment because I knew what was going to follow.
All of a sudden, the room was filled with yelling voices as everyone started the trade.
Pirate Pain was another nickname Remi Graves had gotten when his history had been revealed by someone. He truly seemed to have a way of messing with pirates, and while right now that name was said in jest, if he continued like that, that nickname might actually become a title.
It took hours, but eventually the room that was filled with hundreds of individuals started to clear out. One of the adventurers who I fought with approached me.
“So I’m guessing you’re not going to stay here for long?”
I gave a small nod.
“I noticed that you started to glimpse a truth. My captain said to give this to you. It's our current destination, if you want to join our crew, be there within a year. Or perhaps a bit longer if you’re lucky. The captain has made a deal with some of the other captains. We're going to form a small fleet, so it would be safer to travel even for us.”
“Anyways, that was a really nice fight. Thanks for that.”
I didn’t know what to say to that and just stayed silent as he left. In my hand was a small memory card, and I wondered if I should take up that invitation.