Sweet Venom Arc 03 Ch. 10

OH SHIT!

Moments later her damaged arm had gone numb. The last remaining strands of muscle, tissue and skin tore and peeled away, and the limb fell from her body with a wet thud as it hit the floor. Her laser cannon clattered to the ground with it. For once, she was left utterly speechless.

M-MY ARM...! FUCK!

She ducked down with a yelp as the sound of the vulcan rife rang out again. She fumbled on her belt for her medi-spray, and quickly and generously sprayed over the oozing wound, halting the relentless flow of blood and goo from the shredded muscle.

The station was shaking again, and Leech lost her balance this time. She fell back against the wall, her eyes transfixed at the site of her twitching, severed arm, splattering across the floor. Words continued to fail to find a way to her mouth.

Their needles cut through bone... which means my carapace and armour won't protect me... SHIT! I'll never make it to the labs if I keep hitting pockets of guards!

"~MOLTEZZ, YOU NEED TO PULL MORE OF THEM!~"

*

Evangeline and a refreshed crew of escorts quickly pushed their way through the station, marching underside towards the lifeboats.

Every few steps they took were accompanied with an explosive shudder. The dragoness winced at every one as she pictured the damage to her station, to her people. The distant cackle of their assailant seemed to follow them, no matter how far across the station they went.

Their march was barely short of running, and it didn't take them too long to reach the lifeboat dock. The lifeboats were dark, sleek, well armoured spacecrafts, designed to hold and protect around a couple of hundred people each. They made the most out of every inch of space within them, so they felt a little cramped inside, but it was a small price to pay for the safety they provided. Five of them were docked ready to be fired - literally - from the station when required. Evangline was immediately led towards the biggest, centremost one. Moments later, she was being pushed down into a comfy, if snug chair, and several safety belts strung across her body. She blinked rapidly as her eyes adjusted the surprisingly dim interior of the lifeboat.

"Your orders, Ma'am?"

"We don't launch until we absolutely need to." Evangeline fought hard against the panic rising in her chest and her voice remained calm, if a little louder than usual. "Show me the intruders."

Several holo-screens flickered on around her, projected from the ceiling of the lifeboat.

The first showed a stumbling XITD guard in one of the many, many white corridors on the station.

A bullet slammed into his shoulder, knocking his rifle out of his hands. Several more shots followed in rapid succession, thumping hard against his armour. They didn't penetrate the metallic scales of his suit, and only succeeded in making him fall over as he desperately reached for his weapon.

"Where is that?"

"Server room door, ma'am."

Several more shots collided with him, each one sure to leave a bruise, but none of them causing any real injury to his body. The data feeds indicated that he was alone down there.

The gunfire halted and the guard tried to pick himself up, clutching at the many points of impact when a new figure stomped into view, taking up most of the camera's view, her long, numerous tentacles licking at the walls as she stomped towards the guard. Evangeline's eye twitched slightly as she stared at the thick, black trails dripping down her walls by the intruder.

She tossed an oversized handgun to the ground and reached down to grab the guard instead, who went for a knife on his thigh but fumbled as the czarite hauled him up in the air, and immediately slammed him down into the floor, repeatedly. The crack of shattering bone and screaming sounded through the lifeboat's speakers with a disturbing clarity. The sound was only drowned by an annoyed growl from the alien as she pulverised him in several, clumsy slams, reducing the poor man to near liquid in his armour. His body had fallen limp after the second pound but she continued to pulverise him, denting the floors with his face.

Such violence... my poor guards. Ugh, I don't want to watch this anymore.

She swiped at the screen, scrolling through her CCTV feeds until she landed on a distant shot of another czarite, who seemed to be stripping down her laser cannon with a single arm, a tool of some kind gripped between her teeth. She watched the czarite intently for a few moments, when something else caught her eye, staring back at the camera directly with its two beady little eyes.

Evangeline shivered in her seat.

I-Is that a head?! Mounted on a spider drone architectu- WHAT THE ABSOLUTE FUCK IS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW?! At least someone shot this one's arm off, with any luck she'll just bleed out now.

"W-Where is this one?" Evangline asked, desperately trying to mask her growing anxiety.

"Below the E-labs, Ma'am."

"Below? Didn't she board at the comms centre?! Did we scramble the signage around the station?"

"As per standard procedure, Ma'am."

This can't be a coincidence. How did she know where to go so precisely? Has someone been feeding them information? Have... they..?

Evangeline paused, lost in thought for a few seconds before swiping through the rest of the cameras, all of which were blank.

"What's happened to these?"

"Destroyed, Ma'am. We can't get a good visual on the other intruder. We think she's right in the middle of the station, likely heading to the reactor."

"Reinforce the reactor immediately; we're still evacuating." Evangeline commanded. "I want as many people off this station as possible."

As she spoke, more XITD personnel began to shuffle their way onto the lifeboat, strapping themselves into seats around her. She couldn't help but notice a particular agent sitting down right next to her, pulling the straps across his milky white body...

"Scyler."

"Evangeline."

They sat for a few brief, silent seconds as he clicked the straps into their locks.

"This had better not have anything to do with you, Scyler."

*

"~Are you moving again, Leech?~" Moltezz asked, flinging another scattered handful of firebolts down the empty corridor behind her.

"~Y-Yeah. I've, uh, had to remodel my weapon - only just fucking built the damn thing too - but I'm on route to the E-labs. There were guards ahead of me but they've moved, I think they're heading towards the reactor."

"~Good, then my rouse has worked. I'll reduce them to slag. Now, we're on the clock so get your butt moving, darling.~"

The firebolts bounced repeatedly off the walls, up and down the corridor, leaving scorch marks with every impact. There was no getting past, the corridor had become an impassable wall of bouncy fire, threatening to melt the skin off anyone who dared approach.

Despite the carnage around her, Moltezz was keenly in-tune with her surroundings, feeling the body-heat of the various soldiers close by, cowering in choke points as they waited for their turn to face the molten mistress. She strode down the corridor and stopped in front of a closed set of blast doors. She could feel an abundance of heat from inside.

There must be at least fifty guards in there... Wonderful! Hmm... What is this place, then?

She looked up at the sign above the door, but its electronic lettering was scrambled.

Hmm. Based on that Node's memories, I believe this is the lunch hall...?

It took only the briefest of moments for her to confirm.

It is! There's only the emergency life bay behind it, nothing too important... So vastly irritating that I must stride a narrow line between killing enough personnel to draw their attention, but not too many as to truly piss the DA off... Well, I can think of no finer way to dispose of these mutts in tune with their surroundings.

She pressed the unarmoured palm of her hand against the door, the curve of her grin rising in time with the clicking and warp of the metal as it began to glow a bright orange.

It started with a single scream, muffled behind the door, then suddenly a chorus of kindred agony erupted from the other side. Several bursts of needles shot through the walls fruitlessly, either missing and punching into the wall behind her, or melting away before even coming close to her.

She pumped more heat into the room. The door sagged in its frame, coming away from the wall in sloppy chunks. The volleys of desperate retaliatory vulcan fire began to die off, followed by many, many muffled thumps.

After a few more seconds later the door gave out completely, collapsing into the mess hall as molten slag, taking most of its ruined frame with it. Moltezz briefly peered inside. The air was wavey and painfully dry. The soldiers were gone, slumped over their makeshift cover, stone still. Their faces were wet with their own melting flesh.

She turned and continued on down the corridor, satisfied.

Not too long into Moltezz's continuing rampage, she felt the warmth of another large group of guards somewhere ahead, seemingly waiting in ambush. She could hear the faint hum of their environmental shields.

She was half way down another blank corridor when a guard jumped out at her. The guard was wielding a pressurised sprayer and wearing a gas mask over her face, to protect herself from whatever she was carrying inside the tank of milky blue fluid on her back.

She pulled the trigger and unleashed a thick jet of icey fluid, which collided with Moltezz's heat shield to create a massive blast of billowing steam with a furious hiss. The corridor was immediately blanketed in a cloud of steam. A second guard, equipped with the same gear, jumped out from behind and followed suit.

The steam made it impossible for Moltezz to see, but she could hear more guards arriving to help, their eyes landing on her, kneeling beside their allies and firing their own jets at her, the room was thick and heavy with water vapour as a stormy haze was unleashed around her.

Through the steam, Moltezz's heat shield flickered. A jagged hole appeared at around her knee height, visible to the guards even through the fog. It closed after just a second, but more sprayers quickly arrived, now fully surrounding the mistress on both sides.

"KEEP FIRING! WE NEED MORE TANKS! HER SHIELD IS FAILING!"

More jets sprayed at her and the hole appeared again. Like a bullet hole in glass, new ones began to open up, as her shield appeared to be cracking.

*CLACK-CLACK-CLACK-CLACK*

Several Vulcan pistols opened fire through the fog, but their needles still burned away, unable to harm the giant alien but getting closer to Moltezz than before.

"STILL NOT ENOUGH! WE NEED MORE! QUICKLY!"

But just as the soldiers seemed to be getting the upper hand, just as they seemed to be holding an edge over their pursuer... the steam began to swirl.

A sudden, ominous buzz drowned out the hiss that had filled the soldier's ears since their cryo ambush, and a black orb materialised, as if from nowhere, between them and the mistress. It started sucking the steam into it faster than the cryo jets could fire, and as the fog began to pull away, the guards could see the alien's armoured hands hovering around the orb, almost cradling it.

"A valiant attempt... scum."

The orb suddenly collapsed with a deafening *BURRRR* and a beam of nightmarish energy erupted from it in a brilliant black flash. In the blink of an eye, the guards in its way were just... gone, nothing but some scattered remnants in the air and over the floor, barely more than a whisper of ash. It was as if they'd never existed in the first place, but the blackened walls and angry clouds of copper vapour erupting from the cracks in them was evidence enough of her assault.

The guards behind her stumbled backwards, their cryo jets still honed on her in sheer desperation.

"You still won't yield? Please. You're thoroughly out-classed here. Allow me to show you."

She raised her hand up, her palm facing towards them.

"Just don't run. Commit to your decision."

Searing heat began to encroach down the corridor, battling with the jets of icey fluid. As the fluid impacted the wall of heat, it hissed violently into superheated steam.

The guards looked on in horror as the wall of steam approached them slowly, creeping down the corridor inch by inch.

"Hold your ground! We need to buy time!"

The wall crept closer, completely concealing Moltezz from view, but still the soldiers kept their sprayers up, increasing the flow as their tanks quickly drained, but it did nothing to impede the creeping fog wall.

The most forward member of the squad, kneeling at the front, shuffled backwards slightly as the wall of steam licked at her boots.

"Hold!"

The wall pushed forward again, and it swallowed the girl in front, her environmental shield cracking and failing with a blue flash as soon as her silhouette was eaten.

Through her lenses, all she could see was red hell.

"HOLD!"

The rest of the squad were slowly consumed by the fog, their weapons spluttering to a stop as the cryo fluid now hissed from the nozzle as steam. The girl in the front began to desperately flail, clawing at the tanks on her back as the metal began to glow, the rubber of her mask ran down her armour in thick black lines. She pulled the emergency release strap on her equipment, hoping the tank would fall to the ground, but it remained fixed to her - fused to her skin. A jet of gas erupted from the tank with a rising squeal, the glass cracking as her screams began to battle with the horrendous cacophony of noise to be heard.

The other squad members made to copy her, and pulled their emergency release straps, but their suffering was cut short as the girl's tank exploded, showering her team with hot, molten shrapnel, cutting through them like hot coal through paper. In the spots where they were killed, their boots remained fused to the floor.

The entire corridor was left sagging and melting. Moltezz remained where she was stood, palm up and grinning as the ceiling began to drip onto the floor. Her shield was already back to full integrity.

She spun around on her toes and continued her journey as if nothing had happened, slamming her gauntlets together with a sharp metallic *crack* and scattering more firebolts into the surrounding corridors as the station's blaring sirens began to warp and pitch shift, her grin wider than ever.

*

"Ma'am! There is a new ship on approach, a DA hyper fighter; we think it's parked up at your office!"

The lifeboat was now full of XITD staff, all of them strapped in and clearly shaken. Evangeline sat at the front, with some room to command her staff.

"Oh, fantastic! This is great! Someone else wants a piece of us?! Forget them! How many people are left on the station?!"

"We still have a sizable amount of staff left aboard, but they cannot proceed. The psyker has left traps that they cannot pass, and she's destroyed key sections of the middle deck that leaves other routes impossible. The cafeteria is still showing an internal temperature of over a thousand degrees, so we cannot get any staff through there. That only leaves the maintenance pathways to the side, which have severely limited through-put."

"Well get them through there! We're on the clock! She's going for the reactor!"

"Ma'am, we can't, we-"

"Wait. Wait... Why is she going for the reactor...?"

The guard's response drained away as Evangeline contemplated her own words.

"Ma'am?"

"Assailants will usually only attack the reactor if they lack the bombardment capabilities to destroy their target outright, but she clearly has the firepower to destroy us... Why would she board us, to then threaten us all with a reactor attack? It's like boarding to plant a bomb when you have a damned psyonic missile battery ready to fire! Just fire the missiles! They have exposed themselves for a reason." The dragoness spun around in her seat to face Scyler. "Why do I feel like this has something to do with you?! This isn't a random attack at all is it?!" Her temper rose sharply as she addressed him.

The guards around her looked at her as if she was going insane, but the cogs in Evangeline's head were spinning, putting the pieces together.

"That ultra-class psyker on Barru-X, what did she look like!? Is this her?!"

"I-I haven't seen... Big, red czarite?"

"Yes! Big! Red! Amber eyes with white rings!"

"Sounds like her!" Scyler nodded, cautiously. He'd never seen Evangeline lose her temper before, and he wasn't sure what to expect.

Evangeline leaned over, pulling at the belts strapped over her until she was right up in Scyler's face, a growl audible in her breath.

"WHY IS SHE ON MY STATION, SCYLER?!" Evangeline screamed. Her voice reached even the personnel at the back of the lifeboat, over the blaring alarms in the background.

"I-I don't know!" He yelped back, squirming in his seat.

"DID YOU LEAVE ANYTHING THAT COULD BE TRACED TO US?!?"

"N-Nothing!"

"You mark my fucking words, Scyler, I KNOW this had something to do with you and that damned student!" She jabbed a finger into his chest, hard. "The dorm ships are destroyed and ninety percent of my staff are going to die, melted to the fucking floor by some hell-bitch who you have a personal history with!"

"Evangeline, I swear to you, I don't know why she's here!" Scyler pleaded, genuinely upset and a little bit fearful.

Evangeline was screaming at the top of her lungs, her claws digging into the armrest of her chair. "IT'S BEEN LESS THAN A WEEK SINCE MOOKI WAS CORRUPTED! We've had nothing for six months! But only days after you shove your beak in, they're here, knocking down our door!"