Chapter 5 - Regroup and Rearm

"Lieutenant," Sergeant Nolan spoke slowly, her eyes aligned with the rifle's sights and the suddenly too close for comfort door to the infirmary reflected in the lenses of her golden eyes. "Permission to make a suggestion?"

"Granted." Sable's voice was as slow, and his aim on the same door. Somewhere there was the sound of metal being bent, it echoed distantly muffled by layers and echoing through ventilation.

"I suggest we change our destination to the station's armory. There are old makes of Valkyrie armor there." Sable knew from the logs, she was right. The infirmary had been their first choice to secure and assist any wounded 'neutrals' who might have been left behind. Given the evidence, that was still likely the plan, but they weren't going to be stupid about it. "I've got the rear, lead the way." It was his way of passing the baton of command to her completely. Playing ranks might have done to ease the tension, but not anymore.

Halum were serious business. One of the first races encountered pre-independence; the Halum had been the driving force behind the enhancement projects and augmentation research that crystallized into the Valkyrie project. There had been violent conflicts, yes, but the not of the lethal variety. Halum were hunters: by trade, by sport, by religion, by nature, by choice.  Every Halum spent some time of their adolescence not taking part in the yearly hunts on their homeworld, or the dozens of undeveloped 'game worlds' they controlled and preserved. 

Halum were a race that could hit as hard as a freighter full of iron and move with the grace of a space superiority fighter. The Valkyrie project hadn't been born to kill or defeat Halum, it was to bring them to the table of diplomacy. 

The Halum loved to hunt, and compete at it, and sought ever new challenge they could conjure. Any time a new species would be found on a world, it would be tracked, measured, and studied for its place in the ecosystem. If it past muster, there would be a hunt. 

Halum had high standards, and no small amount of pride.

Humans, despite the lack of physical prowess in 'baseline' variety, have an intelligence and determination that made them excellent hunting quarry. 
Halum, however, do not KILL people they hunt, with exceptions for the pursuit of villainous criminals, poachers, or matters of honor.
They do, more often, reward their quarry with a taste of Halum intimacy. 

Steps echoed in the hallway, and without their helmets the Valkyrie moved more naturally, but with no less poise. Doc had cleared the air in the next section as being, 'good enough' and the risk of being blindsided by a horny Halum wasn't a risk she wanted to permit. 

Sable, following from the back, had watched the chalk move together as a seamless unit, even with him pulling up the rear, he felt like he wasn't just 'tagging along'. There were the brief glances toward the back between sweeps, the short eye contact, and the affirming smiles. Some men might feel emasculated with so many women being concerned over them.

Sable was more concerned about the woman that was very likely hunting them, and quite possibly him specifically. 

The Halum and the Thilidin have a very, energetic friendship. When the two races had made first contact, more than a millennium ago, it had been over a planet the Thilidin were well into colonizing. It hosted an array of dangerous and deadly beasts on several of its smaller island continents. The Halum were concerned the Thilidin would ruin the environment, the Thilidin saw the strange beings and were terrified, but also intrigued. 

Tensions broke when a Halum standing guard outside the negotiation building, started up a conversation with a Thilidin soldier. The Thilidin had acquired a recent injury, but was still at his post. The Halum questioned, not why the soldier didn't abstain from duty, but rather how he'd been injured. 

As it so happens the Thilidin had been exploring a region of one of the continents the Halum prized, and his squad had been ambushed by a Zagatal beast. Eight meters of scaly flesh and carnivorous intentions, Zagatal are not on the top ten list of 'pets to buy your children', or even top one thousand.

The soldier had drawn the beast off to protect a member of his squad, who had been cornered, before leading the beast off into the unknown wilderness. It had been a week before he'd returned; carrying the creature's tail and some of its teeth. He had a dagger carved from one of the those trophy teeth.

The conversation didn't last much longer, and history marked it as the first confirmed Halum-Thilidin intercourse, as well as the first charges filed for public sex outside a permitted zone, unauthorized intercourse while on duty, and destruction of military property (two uniforms), for such a pairing.

Negotiations took a turn for a better, all the same; as a result, Thilidin were seen as being a race to 'enjoy' if the opportunity, and consent, allowed for it. Half Thilidin or not, Sable still 'smelled Thilidin' and 'tasted Thilidin' enough for the Halum woman he'd bedded during his academy years.

However a Halum in heat might zero in more on that, and less on the 'rules of engagement'. 

"Coming up on the security block." Nolan informed her squad.

"Already?" Hoss laughed, her voice low, "We've seen nothing but a bunch of empty storefronts and material shops."

"Worst. Station. Ever." Pix uttered.

"Needs more ontz." Doc Hona suggested.

"1/10 would not land here again." Sable added.

"Har, fucking, har har." Nolan rolled her eyes. "Security door, let's see of those lock picks you pulled still work, El-Tee." She held up a tablet and sent the set of codes over a short range wireless.

"If they don't, Darlling can just fuck the doors off its hinges." Sable smirked. The largest of the marines smiled and waggled her eyebrows, and there was at least one eye roll from Doc Hona.

"Codes work." Sergeant Nolan confirmed, but the doors were still closed.

"Sarge?" Verily nodded at the doors. Nolan was still looking at the tablet.

"Thought it was a good idea to look at what the cameras see inside before we go popping the seal."

"Ah." Verily shrugged, "That works."

"Eager to shoot something, Verily?" Nolan asked as she pushed the feed to Pix's arm tablet so she could put her training to use.

"Shoot? No." She shot a glance over her shoulder. "But if that Halum is all alone in here, why not give herself the run of the station. Break some shit, vent her frustration, grind up on a bulkhead, something?"

"Maybe she's growing dicks in the lab." Hoss joked, Verily and Darling laughed with her, but Doc Hona just nodded thoughtfully, and they paled.

"What?" The Doctor shrugged as Pix moved up to show something to the Sergeant, who motioned to the Lieutenant to join them. "It's not like it'd be that har-difficult to use a med lab's chemicals to make some seriously realistic imitations. If she knows what she's doing she could be fucking herself sane right now."

Pix, Sable, and Nolan looked at the feed from the camera, it showed the med bay, in tatters, at least one of the cameras into a section called the 'long term' wards was destroyed as was the interior sensor panel for a room in that ward.

"So she's probably in the ward, somewhere we can't see." There was a blur of movement, Pix sprang into action and told the camera to rotate and follow it. Nolan swore under her breath before she could stop the Cadet, and suddenly the camera cut out, revealing nothing. Within thirty seconds, a dozen more cameras and sensors were destroyed, or otherwise pulled offline.

"Well, she knows we can see through the cameras now." Sable stated, Nolan nodded and Pix slumped. Nolan put a hand on Pix's shoulder.
"Look at it this way, Rhokum don't bother with cameras so she isn't going to shoot us without actually looking at as first." The comment brought grim smiles to the Valkyries. "Security center is clear to enter, popping doors in three."

Two heartbeats later, the doors popped their seal and a smell like old air freshener filled their nostrils. 

"Ugh," Pix shook her head, "Gag me," 

"Maybe later," Sable whispered, not enough that any of the women didn't hear him, but enough to put a blush on Pix's face. Regulations and Conduct were out the window. The rules that kept them alive were all that mattered. Check, Clear, Check again, Communicate, Advance, Repeat.

"Like something out of a history vid." Hoss wondered at the set up around them. The consoles had all been refit, as part of the shut down procedure, most durable iteration available on the market, regardless of how slow or limited some of the technology might be. It could handle shock turbulence, electromagnetic foolery, and ambient radiation. "Analog as all hell."

It worked; so what, if you couldn't watch porn on it?

"I'll bring up the armory loadouts." Pix said from the commander's chair, claiming it as her seat of power, as it had the most modern, for the time, equipment still left in it. "All right, bad news, good news, or worse news?"

Nolan looked to Sable, and he squared his shoulders. "Bad news."

"The bad news, is we, and the Halum, are NOT the only things left on this station, multiple motion sensor pings in the upper habitation modules. Sensors are damaged, so the signals are too grey to put an exact number, three different sources, at least, though."

That was bad.

"The good news?" Nolan asked.

"The armory shows that the Valkyrie deck is fully charged and awaiting instructions. There's enough kit in there for all of us, save Sable, to be fully kitted up and ready to kill shit."

"Okay, so what's the worse news?" Specialist Felicity 'Dread Hoss' Roan asked, and the room grew quiet.

"According to the station's database, there are no viable launches; logs show them as being functional at the time of decommissioning, but now?" She shook her head."There's been a lot of improvements in lifeboats between these and ours, Sir."

The room was quiet, but for the spooling computers and databanks. 

"When I looked through the inventory, the only FTL parts on file were those inside the launches, which were all logged and coded for secure entry space. Everything else was valued as 'proprietary' since it would have our tags built into it. The only way we're getting off the station, is with whomever was with that Halum." Roan gave voice to the obvious.

The Valkyries are rearming, but Sable has to decide: where to next? Back to the Infirmary to make contact with the Halum inside? Or do they explore the station for the signal sources? Or maybe check the emergency launches, maybe between them, there's enough to rebuild the FTL system with the range to get them home?