Sean-Michael Argo - Carrion Duty

The pilot walked through the corridors of the commune, standing aside for others as they rushed this way and that, maintaining a calm that only those comfortable with violence could achieve.

Fiat Lux had never needed to go to full battle stations before, being ravagers, they knew that attack was a possibility so there were monthly drills. Yellow warning lights filled the chambers and corridors, and they would remain lit until either the commune fended off the attack or died in the attempt.

Not only were they a Red List community with none of the basic human rights to life and liberty enjoyed by corporate citizens, they were also bloody handed raiders. Every man, woman, and child was on deck for the defense of the community. They all knew everyone would be treated with equal brutality by whatever enemy sought to take a piece of them. Most of the people on Fiat Lux would be carrying small arms and preparing to repel boarders, while the seasoned warriors of the community would be crewing the weaponized debris field or launching counter attacks from the Fatalis .

Sokol entered the prime hangar bay and swept his gaze across it, taking in the sight of several ships in dry dock in addition to Swift Hammer and Ogre One. With Gregory dead and gone there was no pilot available who could take Swift Hammer into combat.

While Sokol was certainly capable of operating the mech warrior, its armaments and size made it less effective for the mission Sokol had been given. He and Ogre One were to remain on Fiat Lux and defend it against boarding parties. The Coyote class mech was well suited for conflict in the tight confines of the commune, at least in most of the areas, and what he couldn’t reach while in the mech was the purview of the other defenders. Swift Hammer would have to sit this one out.

The ships docked in the bay were mostly chop jobs in one stage of being dismantled or another, as their vital systems were cannibalized for use in the commune or to help keep Fatalis flying. What couldn’t be used by Fatalis or the commune itself went into the debris field. That field was the commune’s primary defense, and no doubt the enemy would be making contact soon.

Sokol walked past the slave ship and something about it made him shiver for a moment. He recognized it right away as a Tasca cartel cutter, as had Kochi, which is why the captain insisted on seizing it and hauling the ship back to Fiat Lux. While most corporate citizens throughout the universe were relatively ignorant about slavery and the massive criminal empire that controlled it, the desperate folk whose names were on the Red List knew ships like this all too well. Red List slaves were low grade and so were not often hunted intentionally by cartel operatives, though most lister ships and communities were such easy targets that slavers didn’t pass up the opportunity to take them. The cutters tended to prowl the same lonely places that listers did, and so these chance encounters were not uncommon.

The Tasca ship was a great prize, and Kochi had insisted that it be refurbished and brought back to life. The ship was well suited to small unit raiding, or could be outfitted to be a security frigate just outside the debris field, and such a valuable ship could not be left next to the corpse of Andromeda. Perhaps the enemy had used some tracker on board the ship to lead them to Fiat Lux, though nothing of the sort had been found aboard. Sokol did not know how he knew, but he had a sense of certainty that this ship had been involved with something much worse than slavery. He’d have slagged it at the station.

The pilot shrugged off his sense of dread about the ship and climbed into Ogre One, allowing the cold metal embrace of his mech to drive away all thoughts but those of war. The mech’s grindcore spun up and as information flooded Sokol’s awareness he both shuddered from the pain of the joining and exulted in the pleasure of becoming more than a man. Regardless of how the next few hours unfolded, Sokol Targe and Ogre One would conduct themselves in a manner befitting the war machine that they became together.

Instantly, Sokol’s vision swam with information as data from Thunder Walks and Fatalis poured into his systems. On the heads up display he could see a cascading stream of details about the battle that was unfolding on the edge of the debris field. As planned, Thunder Walks had been positioned on the exterior of the asteroid in which Fiat Lux had been built, as it was far too large to defend it from within. Angron’s job was to eliminate as many troop transports, assault pods, gun drones, or whatever else the enemy might hurl at the commune. His weapons were not powerful enough to be of consequence in a ship-to-ship conflict, though they would be plenty devastating against smaller incoming targets.

The warship Fatalis prowled just outside the debris field, and Kochi the Deathless had defended that perimeter as long as he could. From what Sokol saw in his data feed, the battle had already been titanic, and soon the violence would reach the commune as enemy ships plowed into the debris field.

“They are coming, Sokol. Good hunting,” boomed the voice of Angron, suddenly, in Sokol’s headset as the pilot activated Ogre One’s communications array. “I am the Storm that shatters the Walls!”

“I am the Beast that stalks the fields,” responded Sokol as he used his claws to climb up the sheer wall of the hangar bay towards his chosen vantage point.

Kochi drew in a labored breath, wincing at the searing pain in his weary lungs as the precious mixture of compressed atmosphere fed his brain with oxygen. Like his time ravaged body, the warship Fatalis was living out its final moments. The discomforts of his physical form were mirrored by the wounded vessel.

The captain glanced at his launch bay monitors and watched as elite warriors from the Merchants Militant walked over the bodies of Lelani Ursa and her deck crew. He was unsure what these mercs called themselves, but he had known with absolute certainty once the first of their assault pods tore into the ship’s hull that the Fatalis was done.

Gage and the majority of his stormers were even now desperately defending the debris field, and had they been aboard it would have only delayed the inevitable. Time, that blessing and curse which he had endured for so long now, was short, and yet he found himself clinging to every second he could squeeze from his body and his ship. The Fatalis might be battered and bloody, but it was not beaten, Kochi was not beaten.

The captain commanded the remaining guns to track on the nearest cor-sec frigate in range, ignited the backup thrusters and pushed them to max throttle while setting a collision course with the Reaper tug.

No sooner had they arrived home with Andromeda’s life support system in the hold and a valuable Tasca slave cutter in tow then he had noticed the drive signatures of several ships on an intercept course. The sensors aboard Fatalis were outdated by a century, and though Kochi’s personal experience and skill made up for their age, an updated system would have picked up on the tailing enemy much sooner. Little good it would have done, thought Kochi as he divided his mind between the firefight with the cor-sec frigate and the mercenaries sweeping through the interior of his ship.

Fiat Lux had barely a day to prepare, and they had done what they could. The weaponized debris field had been brought up to full combat crew, and there was a gun in the hand of every person defending the commune itself, not to mention the mighty presence of Thunder Walks and Ogre One. The Fatalis was too large to maneuver inside the debris field once the minefields were in place, and so there had been nothing else for Kochi do to but attack the enemy.