Three Square Meals Ch. 060

***

Shinatobe sat in the darkened room, watching the camera feeds from the dozens of tiny micro-cameras that the assassin had set up around the Invictus. The only major room that was not covered by the cameras was the bedroom, as the crew had all been sleeping in there when the furtive intruder was sneaking around the ship the previous night.

Still, it was nearly twelve o'clock now, and the crew had been up for nearly an hour. Shinatobe had counted five crew in the Officers' Lounge, which matched the crew count from the awards ceremony, and the primary target was in the room across the hall indulging in some kind of holo-simulation. Selecting the correct devices from the submenu, it only took a single blink to prime the ones in the key locations.

***

Yamamoto was really on the back foot now, as his student moved inexorably for the kill. John was moving as if possessed, calm and composed, yet gliding from one swift stroke and fluidly shifting to another. Yamamoto knew he was rapidly running out of time, so he finally sprang his trap, overextending slightly to the left on a parry, to encourage John to attack on his right.

He knew exactly what kind of attack was coming, a cross-slash from the upper-right which would neatly decapitate any lesser swordsman. However Yamamoto was no ordinary duellist, and he darted inside John's attack, rushing past him with incredibly fast footwork. His blade moved in a perfect backhand strike, and he grinned, knowing full well that John would soon hear the simulator declare that he had been decapitated.

John didn't react as Yamamoto expected though, and instead turned to the left, rather than trying to follow the wily swordmaster around to his right. His long Odachi swept up and behind his head, and the clang of steel on steel echoed throughout the dojo, as John neatly parried the cunning strike.

Yamamoto was astounded, but not nearly as shocked as when John span in place, his blade slashing around like a whirlwind, and neatly catching the swordmaster across the throat.

"You have been decapitated!" the simulator cheerfully announced, showing Yamamoto a slow motion replay of John neatly cleaving his head from his body.

He shook his head in stunned disbelief, and slowly turned to look at his victorious student. John was standing calmly, a victorious smile on his face, and he bowed deeply to Yamamoto. The older man was about to reply, when there was a ripple in the simulator behind John, and a black clad ninja appeared to materialise out of nowhere a pistol levelled at John's back.

Yamamoto felt terror gripping at his heart, flashbacks to the past threatening to overwhelm him. He shook them off and yelled, "John, look out!"

***

Shinatobe opened the door into the simulator room, finding the target in the midst of a duel with an older, vaguely familiar looking figure. The assassin crept closer to their unsuspecting quarry, while silently drawing a stubby pistol, and taking careful aim at the middle of the man's broad back.

At the last moment before engaging, Shinatobe glanced at the HUD menu, and triggered the devices.

Chaos erupted on the Invictus.

***

Alyssa was watching Calara, admiring the beautiful brunette as she leant over the bar to fetch a couple of bottles of wine. Suddenly a piercing scream of absolute despair and tortured agony filled her mind, reverberating with terrifying intensity. Alyssa stumbled backwards as her senses were overwhelmed by the anguished wail, and she collapsed onto a plush lounge chair, clutching at her head.

Calara glanced down behind the bar, arm reaching for a bottle of wine, and spotted a small package on the floor. "Hey, no one said we were doing presents!" she exclaimed with a grin, as she looked back at the girls around the dining table.

Suddenly her world turned upside down, as a thunderous series of explosions ripped through the Officers' Lounge. Her body was overwhelmed with searing pain, and she was sent sailing through the air, before slamming into a bulkhead, and succumbing to the darkness.

***

John smiled as he savoured his victory over Yamamoto, hardly able to believe he'd finally been able to defeat the exceptionally skilled swordsman. Tragically, several things all happened at once, which ruined any sense of satisfaction he might have been feeling.

Firstly he felt Alyssa react in shock to something, but before he could ask her what was wrong, he felt vibrations through his feet, instantly recognising the ominous aftershocks of explosives. A split-second afterwards the Invictus began to shake violently, and his eyes widened as he remembered the ship reacting this way to an interdiction, as they were violently yanked out of hyper-warp. He looked up in alarm, just as Yamamoto stared at him with a terrified expression, and cried out a warning.

He whirled around, and found himself staring at a black clad figure standing just inside the door to the simulator room. The assassin was pointing a strange looking pistol at him, and without even thinking about it he lashed out with his mind, slapping the pistol away. The gun flew out of the shadowy figure's hand, then skidded across the floor before coming to a stop by the wall.

Drawing two razor-sharp mono-edged swords, the ninja padded to the right, the matte black blades seeming to draw light in, rather than reflecting it like ordinary steel. The shadowy assailant suddenly darted over to the simulator and plunged a blade through the sophisticated machine, destroying the device in a shower of sparks.

The holo-simulation of the dojo ended in an instant, with Yamamoto banished from sight, and leaving John standing in a simple, unfurnished training room. He was left holding a blunt edged simulator blade in his hands, and the assassin stalked towards him, whirling the two deadly looking swords with an elaborate flourish.

His opponent was wiry, and a lot shorter than his own six-foot-two, probably standing at about five-foot-five. Clad from head to toe in a featureless black bodysuit made from some strange mesh type material, the ninja cut a sinister, mysterious figure.

*Alyssa!* he called out, as he backed away warily. *Are you alright? I heard explosions. What's happening?!*

His words were met with deathly silence, which made icy fingers of dread claw at his heart. The assassin gave him no respite, and came at him, blades flashing in a whirling display. John managed to deflect the attack, but he had to be careful parrying, angling his Odachi to avoid it being neatly sheared in half by the rapid slashes from the razor-sharp swords. He backed away, giving up ground as he blocked a dozen separate attacks.

*John, what's wrong?!* Edraele asked him in alarm. *Why are you so worried?*

John wanted to reply to her, but he had to devote his undivided attention to the assassin, who was lashing out at him with blindingly fast strikes. Edraele could hear his racing thoughts, and she stayed silent to avoid distracting him, although every fibre of her being was crying out in fear.

He tried to counterattack, but the black-clad opponent was very quick, neatly parrying with the right blade and readying a counterattack of its own with the left. As their blades locked, John's muscles surged, and he chopped down, taking advantage of his raw brute strength. The assassin was taken by surprise as the mono-blade flicked down, slashing across its left forearm, and spattering dark red blood across the training mat.

There was a strange humming sound, and the ninja back-flipped away, moving impossibly fast. The black-clad intruder glanced down at the wound on their arm, then seemed to freeze for a second before shifting stances. Suddenly the assassin burst into action again, charging forward with arms outstretched, pivoting and gliding inwards in a radically different fighting style. John's eyes widened as he stepped backwards and desperately parried the looping, arcing strikes.

He'd never seen anyone move so fast before, and the whirling blades caught him for several glancing hits on both arms. He hissed at the slash of pain, then recovered quickly and tried not to let the cuts distract him from his frantic defence. The assassin span away, then came to a stop, glancing down at the mono-blades as John's blood dripped off the end, pattering onto the mat.

Taking advantage of the momentary lull, John pushed out with his will, enveloping his sword in dancing lightning. At least that's what he tried to do, but without the Etherite crystals in his Crystal Alyssium blade to bond the electricity to his sword, the arcing lightning surged out wildly, and blasted into the ceiling.

The assassin flinched away from the uncontrolled lightning strike, then froze for another almost imperceptible moment. Shifting stances once more, and adopting a new one that John was much more familiar with, the ninja swept towards him, moving through the Kenjutsu Kata. He had no time to try another lightning attack, and was forced to move his sword in a blur, stepping back to avoid the flashing blades. He blocked and deflected the slashes at his head and chest, which were coming at him with neat, controlled thrusts and strikes.

He thought he was holding his own, until the Ninja attacked low and to the left, forcing a hurried parry. As the two blades met, he heard the odd humming sound again, and his opponent leapt upwards with an astounding burst of speed. The assassin's second sword scythed downwards, neatly shearing through the blade of his training Odachi, and leaving him completely defenceless.

John knew that he was a dead man unless he did something really crazy to try and turn the fight around. He dropped his sword hilt, and lunged forward, grabbing the startled Ninja by the Nanoweave tunic. Yanking the slight opponent towards him with a savage display of strength, he slammed his forehead into the wiry assassin's cloth masked face.

The bodysuit ripped away as the assassin was sent sprawling backwards, clutching at her battered face as she skidded across the floor. John blinked in surprise to see that he had just headbutted a sallow-skinned woman, her broken nose smearing a splash of crimson across her face. She had rolled with the impact, her astonishingly fast reflexes the only thing that saved her from having her head caved in by the crushing blow. Her angular dark-brown eyes looked into his own, but as their eyes met, he felt a shiver run down his spine. Those eyes were blank, dead things, utterly devoid of any spark of life.

As he stood there in shock, the assassin leapt to her feet and darted across the room in a flash, moving almost faster than his eyes could follow. He suddenly realised that she'd just been driving him backwards to give her an opportunity to retrieve her dropped gun. She dived for the pistol he'd knocked from her grasp, and fired wildly in his direction, not giving him a chance to upset her aim with another telekinetic attack. He rushed after her, but felt a couple of sharp stings in his chest, and then staggered drunkenly, before toppling face down on the mat.

***

Edraele felt John's inner voice go silent. His last thoughts were of the assassin firing the pistol at him, and his shock as he was hit in the chest. She let out a terrified scream, the thought that he was now wholly at the mercy of his deadly opponent was too horrible to contemplate.

When Luna burst into the room, she found Edraele curled up on the floor, hugging herself and weeping.

***

Faye was happily watching the long range scanners up on the Bridge, while glancing through her archived copy of the Raptor manual for the umpteenth time. Dana and Irillith had promised that they'd set up an upgraded link between the Invictus and the Raptor, which would allow her to remotely pilot the gunship from back here on the assault cruiser.

Her daydreams of flying John and his girls into battle were rudely interrupted by several explosions, and she looked up in shock as the Invictus began to vibrate ferociously as they were dumped out of hyper-warp. She frantically searched the long range scans in case she'd missing a marauding ship, but there were no ships anywhere near them on the Sector Map.

Fluttering over to Irillith's IntOps console, she activated the cam-feed footage, cycling through the images to find out what had happened. It seemed like there had been multiple explosions in two locations. The Drive Room was filled with smoke, and the Tachyon Drive was dark and lifeless, rendered completely inert. That explained the ship dropping out of hyper-warp, but Faye was far more worried about the carnage in the Officers' Lounge. There were several cameras in there, but two of them had been completely destroyed, while the last two showed glimpses of devastation between the clouds of acrid black smoke.

Faye felt fear grip her chest, and she cycled through all four hundred and fifty cameras onboard, desperate to find any signs of life. She knew the girls were preparing a party for Jade in the Officers' Lounge, as Alyssa had come up to the Bridge to tell Faye, Calara and Irillith all about it. She felt even more scared when she suddenly spotted John battling for his life against some unknown black-clad assailant.

She watched the two of them locked in a deadly dance, and gasped when she saw John receive a number of cuts as she witnessed the fight unfold. She moaned in horror when she saw him get shot, but she felt a slight sense of relief when she spotted the two darts sticking out of his chest, rather than gaping gunshot wounds.

The mysterious assassin strode over to his prone form, and began dragging him towards the door, possessing a strength unlikely in such a slight girl. A brief movement on cameras thirty-two and thirty-three caught Faye's eye, and Jade's tousled dark-green hair appeared from under the covers as she rolled over in her sleep.

Faye felt a surge of hope, and she called the bedroom on the internal comm, cranking the ringtone volume up to maximum. Jade sat bolt upright at the obnoxious sound, hands clamped over her ears, and she frowned at camera thirty-three. Now that she had thrown the duvet back, the pulses of light that were slowly radiating out from her slightly rounded tummy, were free to chase shadows across the ceiling.

"Faye, is that you?" the Nymph called out, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

"YES!" Faye blurted out. "We're under attack! Someone's got John!"

Jade leapt out of bed, her drowsiness gone in an instant. "Where?" she demanded, before shimmering in a verdant haze and shape-shifting into a huge green Tiger.

"Deck Three! His training Holo-suite," Faye replied immediately. She hesitated a moment, and then blurted out, "I think the girls are hurt! There was an explosion..."

Jade's furry head looked up at the camera, and she nodded once, before dashing out of the bedroom, claws scrabbling for purchase on the floor.

Faye flicked back to the corridor cameras on Deck Three, and watched aghast as the assassin hauled John's prone body out behind her. She suddenly had a brainwave, and activated the internal defences on that Deck, while being careful not to slam down the emergency bulkheads so that Jade could still come to the rescue. Two Gatling Lasers slid smoothly out of the walls, and she trained them on the black garbed intruder.

The two-metre-long barrels spun up with an ominous whir, and the woman pulling John looked up in surprise. Faye's tiny purple face took on a grim cast as she sent the command to fire a deadly hail of laser bolts at the assassin who was trying to abduct her friend. Except nothing happened. She received a flashing warning from the fire control interface, and stared at the "Permission-denied" message in anguish. Rendered utterly impotent, she was forced to watch helplessly as the ninja manoeuvred John into the corridor.

***

Jade fell into the smooth loping run of the Tiger, revelling in the effortless agility of this form. Familiar scents filled the air: those of the other girls, from John, and the ship, but there was one new one in the mix. It smelt musty, like an old suit left in a wardrobe for one too many years, but that wasn't all. There was an unpleasant stink of some kind of hydraulic oil intertwined with that scent, which made her nose wrinkle in distaste, curling her lips back and exposing her massive canines.

Bounding along the corridor on Deck Two, she reached the grav-tube, and was about to dive down to the lower deck, when she caught the acrid smell of smoke coming from the Officers' Lounge. Remembering Faye's frantic message about the girls, she half twisted, turning towards the double doors to go and help them. John was in danger though too, and she was torn with indecision, caught between an urgent desire to help all the people she cared about.

Although she knew John would want her to go and help the girls, her basic Nymph nature won out. As much as she loved Alyssa and the other girls, her purpose was to serve her Master, and he was in trouble. She dived into the grav-tube, floated down in the red glow, and then padded out onto the corridor on Deck Three.

The source of the stale stench was busy manhandling her Master, dragging him across the floor like a slab of beef, and Jade let out a blood curdling roar from deep in her chest. She sank low, prowling forward while lashing her tail with anger. Lightning burst out of her paws to shroud her six-inch-long claws with writhing electricity, and her lips curled back in a ferocious snarl as she stalked after her prey.

The assassin released her grasp on John, and calmly drew both swords from the sheaths across her back. The razor-sharp blades were well oiled, and slid free without a sound. Dropping into a defensive crouch, her weight was perfectly balanced on her feet, while her cold, dead eyes never left the Jade Tiger for a moment. She held one sword in front of her, horizontally across her chest, while the other was raised in the air behind her head running parallel to her shoulders.

Jade's big emerald eyes narrowed, and she charged in to attack, pouncing on this rank intruder. Her paws flashed out, the vicious claws catching and ripping flesh, and burning the half-dead creature with a sizzling bolt of electricity from her lightning sheathed limbs. The assassin tore free from Jade's grasp in a fountain of blood, and as Shinatobe rolled clear, the Nymph landed on her four heavy paws, then skidded to a halt. She twisted her body, turning around for another attack, when she suddenly felt a stabbing pain in her chest.

As fast as Jade was, Shinatobe had moved even faster, engaging her adrenal pump as soon as the Tiger had attacked. The cybernetic device hummed as it flooded her system with a potent adrenalin cocktail, letting her muscles surge into action with supernatural speed. As Jade sailed overhead, the assassin thrust upwards with her sword, accepting a grievous wound across her back and shoulder in exchange for a killing stroke.

Jade crouched low to the ground to get ready to pounce, but the pain in her torso intensified, becoming a lance of agony. Despite every fibre of her being urging her after the enemy who was trying to take John away from her, she sagged to the ground, flopping weakly onto her side. Her growl of rage came out as a weak, feeble whimper, and she was suddenly and painfully aware of the sword hilt sticking out of her chest, the blade driven straight through her body.

She could only lie on the floor, her breathing coming in uneven, ragged breaths as she stared at the black-clad woman who was watching her impassively. The assassin straightened, then reached down for John, hauling him away down the corridor with one arm, the other hanging limply at her side.

A tear formed in Jade's beautiful emerald eyes, splashing down on the floor as she watched her Master being carried away. Try as she might, she couldn't even move, her body weak and lifeless, refusing to respond, no matter her desperation. Jade forgot all about the agony from the blade driven through her chest, as she was overwhelmed with the soul crushing realisation that she had failed John when he needed her the most. She let out a broken sob as she closed her eyes for the last time.