- - - - -
The tingle of the teleportation field faded and suddenly Chhk'Raskthon'ldl (or, as her crewmates called her, 'Rask') could taste the acrid stench of ozone on her mandibles. Something important was burning on this ship. She took in her surroundings at a glance, noticing that she appeared to be in a sensor room that had suffered at least one hit from the ion cannon, because all the screens were dark. The ozone tang was really very strong.
She didn't have time to think about it, though, as two fleshy humans in singed uniforms burst through the door to her right with weapons drawn. They immediately dove for cover behind a dark console and took aim at her much larger companion, Trinson Proudshale, his massive stony bulk slowly lumbering around to face the threat.
She skittered to the opposite corner of the room, went prone up against the wall, and scrambled to the ceiling with all six of her legs. She was fast. Fast enough that by the time her friend had begun his charge at the two meatbags (shrugging off several laser blasts as he did, it took more than hand weapons to seriously inconvenience a Rockman) she was already crawling towards the door.
She triggered the doors motion sensor with her mandible, shooting through the portal as it scythed open, and skittered up onto the slightly higher ceiling of what had to be the main weapons room. This was where the fire was, she could see the smoke and even hear the telltale hiss of a poorly sealed hull breach somewhere nearby. The main weapons console had four stations. Three of them were dark, two of the dark ones were actively on fire, and the only console still functioning was flickering with the blue sparks of ion damage.
The smoke was thick at floor level, but she could smell the oil and lubricant from what could only be an Engi down below, probably frantically trying to make repairs. She considered her options for a second. Trinson could handle the two meatbags in the sensor room, she had no doubt about that, she had seen him tear through six armed humans in his battle rage. If there was an Engi here, and two crewmen currently having the majority of their crunchy bones broken in the sensor room, there should be two more crewmen somewhere aboard.
She licked her mandibles and tasted the unmistakable scent of charred flesh for the first time. That meant there was a fresh corpse under the smoke as well. Probably the gunner who caught the blast when his console exploded. So that left one human unaccounted for.
She reoriented herself towards the bow of the ship and skittered across the ceiling towards another door. She paused at the door and laid her sensitive forelegs against the smooth metal. She could sense the vibrations of the ships engines, caughing and sputtering under the strain of battle damage. She could feel the strange null-vibration of an ion blast connecting with another part of the ship. But what excited her the most was the subtle speech vibrations coming through the metal of the door...
There was someone shouting. Not three meters from her.
She licked her mandibles in anticipation as she reared up (actually down, as she was still on the ceiling) and depressed the manual door control with a foreclaw. The door swooshed open and she dove through, opening her mandibles and claws wide in an attempt to tackle the human beyond.
The human glanced at the door, no doubt having heard it open, and Rask was gratified to hear a choked cry of surprise escape his throat before she was on him, tackling him to the floor and rolling him under her. She clamped down on his midsection with her footclaws, slashing her scythelike foreclaws in a frenzy, trying to cut through his fleshy hide and spill the precious fluid beneath. Her mandibles clacked with glee as an arm came off at he shoulder, spraying a fountain of delicious blood in her face. The humans' agonized scream was short lived as she ripped open his soft throat.
She watched the humans' life draining away through his many mortal wounds and felt the longing to feed, as her ancestors had, on the flesh of a dying enemy. But she didn't have time for that right now. She used her powerful mandibles to bite through her foes midsection, tearing out his heart. She stowed it, still bloody, in her thorax pack. She would feast later, but right now she had a job to finish before this ship exploded around her.
She disentangled herself from the still warm corpse of what had once been the captain of this vessel and made her way back into the weapons room. Where she found Trinson in the process of tearing the head off of the squealing, sparking Engi. She clacked her mandibles to get his attention.
"I made a bit of a messssss back there of the captain." She said. "That sssssssshould be everybody. I'll sssshut down the enginesss while you ssstart tearing assss much ssscrap assss you can from theessse panelsss."
"You do have a sidearm, you know." Rumbled the Rockman.
She chittered in amusement. "SSssso do you!" She gestured to the robotic Engi head still dangling from his massive hand.
Her stone friend just shrugged, dropping the topic. He never was one much for conversation. She made the all-clear call to her captain as she picked her way across the debris towards engineering.
She was in the engine room, waiting for the dying reactor to cool enough to continue running through its shutdown procedure, when she brought the heart of the former captain out of her pack, holding it high on both foreclaws, as was proper.
"To The Kessstral." She whispered to herself. "May all of our battlesss be thisss much fun!"
The heart tasted of fear and victory.
- - - - -
Just F.Y.I. The Kestral is the name of the first ship you can use in FTL. It's the closest thing the game has to a main protagonist, as literally every member of your crew is expendable (though not all at once, or you lose).
See you tomorrow, lovelies, where I may or may not have more FTL short fiction for you.
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