Chapter 275: Fighting Aliens 2 [Edited]
The lower reactor deck felt less like a machine room and more like the inside of a living, decaying beast.
Thick bio-cables, some as wide as tree trunks, snaked across the grated metal floor, leaking glowing purple fluid into the dark trenches below. The air was hot and suffocating, filled with a low, wet heartbeat that vibrated through their boots.
At the center of the chamber, suspended beneath the sub-light drive manifold, hung the source of the heartbeat.
It was a massive, grotesque bio-construct—the automated secondary brain of the vessel. Over thirty feet tall, it looked like a giant mass of fused neural tissue covered in chitinous plates and shifting optic clusters. Dozens of thick conduits connected it to the ship’s power grid, feeding raw plague energy into its core.
Surrounding the central platform was a swarm of smaller defense drones. The disk-shaped machines hovered silently, their forward blasters crackling with purple plasma.
"It’s not just an engine monitor," Selena said, pressing her back against a steel support pillar as she raised her sidearm. Her voice was steady, though her grip tightened around the weapon. "That thing is an organic processing unit. It’s controlling the lockdown across the ship. If we don’t destroy it, those doors will keep us trapped until the air runs out."
"Then we take it down," Nectron rumbled, stepping onto the open catwalk.
His massive shoulders rolled as a deep hum built in his chest. He cracked his knuckles and planted his feet firmly on the metal floor.
"I’ll draw the drones," Nectron said. "Zero, find an opening and take out the central neural cluster."
"Agreed," Zero replied calmly.
Zero stood at the edge of the lower catwalk, one hand resting on the hilt of his longsword. He closed his eyes for a moment and took a slow breath.
The ship’s plague energy was thick enough to overwhelm an ordinary human. Zero didn’t resist it. Instead, he opened his internal pathways and allowed the purple gemstone embedded in the base of his sword to act as a bridge.
HUMMM.
The gemstone flared with brilliant light.
Rather than being corrupted by the alien energy, the ancient stone refined it into pure, concentrated Qi. A silver-white aura spread along Zero’s blade, cutting through the purple haze of the chamber.
The bio-construct shrieked, its deafening cry echoing through the ship. The central brain pulsed violently and sent a command to the drones.
Dozens of them turned toward Zero and opened fire.
"Not on my watch!" Nectron roared.
Nectron slammed his palms together, creating a strong gravitational field. The air in front of the catwalk warped into a barrier that caught the incoming plasma bolts, absorbing their force before sending the heat into the floor.
Without stopping, Nectron pushed both hands downward and widened the gravitational field.
"Get grouped up, you floating tin cans!" Nectron bellowed.
A powerful gravity vortex formed above the central pit. Loose pieces of metal, severed bio-cables, and every defense drone within fifty yards were dragged toward it.
The drones fired their thrusters desperately, but they couldn’t escape. One after another, they were pulled together until dozens of armored machines were crushed into a single sphere of twisted metal and sparking circuits.
"Zero! Now!" Nectron shouted, holding the mass suspended in the air with tremendous effort.
Zero moved.
He didn’t run. He blurred.
Refined Qi surged through his legs as he launched himself from the catwalk, crossing fifty feet of open space above the reactor pit.
Midair, Zero drew his longsword in one smooth motion.
The blade blazed with celestial light as he released its full power and brought it down in a sweeping arc.
SHIIIING!
A sixty-foot-wide crescent of purified Qi tore through the air.
It sliced through the crushed drones first, cutting through the metal before continuing straight into the pulsating core of the ship’s sub-brain.
The bio-construct barely had time to raise its chitinous shields.
The wave tore through the outer plates, severed the main neural conduits, and split the central brain cleanly in two.
For one breathless second, the chamber went silent.
Then the massive construct exploded.
BOOM!
Acidic fluid, shattered chitin, and blue sparks burst across the reactor deck. The conduits connecting the brain to the ceiling snapped apart, sending the smoking halves of the creature crashing into the darkness below.
Zero landed on the opposite catwalk and flicked the remaining energy from his blade before sheathing it across his back.
Nectron released his gravity field with an exhausted gasp, letting the crushed drones fall onto the deck.
"Well... that handles the coordinator."
The red emergency lights immediately went out, replaced by the dull green glow of the backup systems. Across the deck, the security bulkheads groaned as the lockdown ended and slid open, clearing the way through the ship.
"The lockdown is down," Selena said, checking her tablet as the ship’s internal systems stabilized. "The path to the main hangar deck is clear."
"Then we don’t linger," Zero said, turning toward the central lift. "The ship’s systems are failing. Once the core destabilizes, the failsafes will trigger a total purge."
The main hangar deck was enormous, stretching across the entire lower front section of the dreadnought. Massive cargo clamps and empty launch bays disappeared into the darkness, with the black bedrock of the underground cavern visible beyond them.
Nicholas, Vixen, and Julie were already standing near the main entrance when the heavy doors at the far end of the hangar opened.
Nicholas looked up as Zero, Selena, and Nectron jogged into the staging bay. He gave a quick nod, his dark blue eyes checking that none of them were seriously injured.
"You took your time," Nicholas noted calmly.
"We ran into the ship’s brain," Nectron replied with a tired grin, wiping a smear of dark drone grease from his forehead. "Zero gave it a haircut."
"Did you secure the parchment?" Selena asked immediately, looking at Nicholas and Vixen.
Selena patted the sealed containment case attached to her belt. "The note is safe. Every coordinate is intact."
Before anyone could discuss what to do next, a deep, bone-rattling rumble shook the entire hangar.
It wasn’t an explosion from inside the ship.
The vibration came from the ancient bedrock around them. The massive black-stone pillars supporting the cavern groaned under the shifting weight. Fine streams of gray desert sand began falling from the ceiling, followed by huge chunks of stone crashing onto the vessel’s hull.
"The structure is collapsing," Vixen said, her green eyes widening as she pointed upward. "Without the core and the sub-brain regulating the gravity dampeners, the weight of the Sahara is caving in on the cavern!"
CRACK.
A stone pillar the size of an office building snapped in half fifty yards away and crashed against the hangar’s outer ramp, sending a wave of dust and air through the bay.
"The whole ruin is coming down!" Julie shrieked, clutching her camera as she practically jumped into Nicholas’s shadow. "We’re going to be buried under fifty million tons of sand! This is the worst vacation of my entire life!"
"Move for the rovers!" Selena ordered over the growing thunder of falling stone. "Out! Now!"
Nicholas didn’t waste a second. He grabbed Julie by the back of her harness with one hand, lifting her off her feet as he accelerated toward the exit.
Beside him, Nectron, Zero, and Vixen sprinted across the collapsing hangar threshold, making it through the gateway just as the main vault doors groaned and began their final descent into the darkness beneath the earth.