Chapter 45. Spiked Barricade.


    Watkins could sense that the hacker trying to access the hatch in his shuttle bay was getting frustrated. The hacker was trying to barrage Watkins with various strategies, each of which he could easily thwart. Completely stopping the hack into his shuttle bay wasn’t the goal, the goal was to stall and delay. A look over the forces in the shuttle bay told Wakins it was time to open the spigot on enemy attackers.


    Red warning lights began to flash in the shuttle bay as the hatch slowly opened. Watkins wasn’t quite done yet and stopped it after it had only opened a few feet. That delay was only for two minutes as the hacker tried and was eventually allowed by Watkins to override the controls again. That one small delay meant another defender inside the training compartment.


    He now had five in there, and five more available command points to use. The available points would sadly increase as he began to take casualties. Both he and Lani knew little about the halfling ship, and he only estimate how many enemies were aboard it. He could deduce the number would be higher than the kobold ships he’d engaged, as the halfling ship attached to him was larger than both the Canon and the converted freighters the kobolds were using.


    A shrill howling was heard as the hatch fully opened. Watkins had expected a fight similar to what he experienced with the kobolds, but this time, there was no barrage of grenades leading the way. Instead, a veritable swarm of halflings charged in, howling and gnashing their teeth as they boarded Canon. Watkins ordered his MOBS to engage and the first volley of plasma bolts from the defenders in the cargo hold lashed out.


    The halfling attack ground to a sudden halt, not because of the fire they had taken, which resulted in eight dead or wounded attackers. Instead, the halflings halted as the realized the defenders weren’t kobolds or some other species, they were also halflings. For a moment, Watkins thought there might be some way to work out a deal if they figured his ship was one of theirs, and had his troops hold their fire.


    Watkins used the pause to get a better look at these halflings. Like his MOBS and the kobolds, they were all fitted with shipsuits but lacked any additional armor. As far as ranged weapons, each held a pistol of some sort in one hand, and a melee weapon in the other. Large knives that reminded Watkins of a butcher knife were the most common, though several of the halflings held what looked like meat cleavers.


    Unlike his MOBS, these halflings were filthy, though their shipsuits looked to have been in good repair. Dried gore covered their mouths, giving them a fearsome appearance, and their hands, along with the melee weapons they were holding, also held a disgusting level of dried remains on them. To his horror, Watkins realized that not all the weapons held dried gore, and more than a few knives and cleavers dripped with fresh blood.


    Instead of opening negotiations, the crowd of halfling attackers that were stacking up just inside his shuttle bay suddenly dropped their weapons and charged forward, foaming drool leaking from their oversized, tooth-filled maws. The MOBS immediately responded, firing the second charge of their plasma rifles then drawing their pistols to continue laying down fire on the horde.


    “That wasn’t what I expected,” Watkins said.


    “Indeed, it seems that the sight of their supposed kin has worked them into a berserker rage of some sort. The lead ranks have lost their minds and even dropped their weapons,” Lani pointed out.


    Far more halflings were pouring aboard than Watkins had expected. His MOBS were firing their pistols as fast as they could, but even with five shots in each weapon, it seemed like the tide of enemies was being barely whittled down. With the last shots fired, the MOBS drew melee weapons and waited for the enemy to close.


    The barricades should have stalled them, but the halflings didn’t try to go around them. Instead, they leaped over the shoulder height barrier and onto the startled defenders. Unfeeling of any pain, his defending MOBS didn’t stop trying to deal as much damage as they could, lasing out with their melee weapons or even biting with their own formidable set of teeth.


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    “Now that’s just wrong,” Watkins said with disgust as the halfling attackers swarmed and held down his MOBS. Instead of a fatal blow, the halflings holding down the MOBS began to feast. Their oversized and shark tooth filled mouths sliced through the shipsuits to tear large gobbets of flesh from his MOBS.


    “At least our crew didn’t do too badly, despite their grisly end,” Watkins commented as they looked at the aftermath of the fight inside the shuttle bay. His MOBS had taken down the enemy at better than three to one, but the flood of attackers continued. Around fifty of them were inside the shuttle bay, though half of those were still more intent eating his MOBS than pressing the attack.


    “I’m beginning to realize why the kobolds detonated their ship rather than be captured by the halflings,” Lani said, reminding Watkins of the space battle they had witnessed not that long ago.


    “We’ll be doing nothing of the sort, and its time for me to get more actively involved,” Watkins said as the flow of enemy troops into the shuttle bay finally began to abate, there were close to seventy halflings aboard, and most were content to join in the feast. Those that had eaten their fill picked up any dropped weapons and waited for orders.


    Watkins ordered the six barricades in the room to slowly retract into the deck. There was the chance that an enemy could be pinched between the barricade and the deck, but the halflings were carful enough to avoid that. Once retracted, Watkins waited for the horde to disperse, their sheer numbers forcing several halflings to stand over the retracted barricades.


    At his command, the recent modifications that he’d had his drones install went to work. One the surface of the barricade, several metal spikes extended. These only caught the feet of two halflings, but what happened next was more successful. Each barricade slammed back into place, the spikes impaling several of the halflings that had stood too closely.


    A total of eight halflings had been killed or seriously wounded by the surprise trap, and every easy kill he could make with a barricade would relieve the pressure on the rest of his MOBS. As the barricades retracted into the floor once again, Watkins noticed the halflings gave them wide berth. Several howls sounded from the pack of halflings, and they began to charge out of the shuttle bay and into the main passageway.


    The trio of defenders at the bow end of the passageway began to fire, drawing the attention of most of the horde. Unlike the wide-open shuttle bay, the passageway was a tighter fit and his barricades would keep any enemy from flanking them. To prevent the enemy leaping directly onto his troops, Watkins had the defenders move several steps back from the barricade itself.


    Since the attackers already knew about them, Watkins also had the spikes extend on the barricade. If they wanted to press in close, they would push their fellow halflings positioned at the front of the pack into the waiting spikes. Rifles empty, his trio of defenders were peppering the charging halflings with their pistols. These three had the last of the laser pistols that they had taken from the kobolds. Once these defenders were overrun, his MOBS would only have the more primitive single-shot plasma pistols that his core had researched.


    This time, the lead halflings fired as they charged the barricade. They were shooting from the hip and not taking careful aim, but with so many shots flying out, one of his MOBS took a headshot and collapsed in a heap. His troops, though much fewer in number, were much more accurate, and each shot into the crowded passageway resulted in a hit. It was almost impossible to miss given the press of bodies charging toward them.


    Watkins now ordered the pair of MOBS hiding in the galley to attack. They peered around the open galley hatch and began to fire into the few stragglers that were moving to inspect the open compartments that seemed undefended. With one standing and the other kneeling, his MOBS were both able to engage the foe without exposing much of their bodies to the inevitable reaction to their attack.


    The two MOBS in the galley only had a total of three shots, two from their rifles, and one from their pistols. After emptying their weapons, a half dozen invaders charged them, with a few more from the main pack peeling off to join in the fun. There wasn’t going to be enough time for their plasma weapons to recharge, but the narrow hatchway should hamper the attackers and prevent his defenders from being swarmed too quickly.


    It was too bad that he didn’t have enough time to install a few more of the spiked barricades in the main passageway, they could have done a number on the charging attackers. Back toward the bow of the ship, the two surviving defenders struggled against several halflings that had scampered over the top of the barricade. Watkins ordered the barricades to retrack quickly, then slam open again, causing the bulk of the enemy pack to pause, and catching one hapless invader on the spikes.


    Watkins was running out of defenders, and though the training room was now filled with a total of nine MOBS, the production wasn’t keeping up with his losses. These halflings were pressing the attack more aggressively than he expected. To make matters worse, several new figures appeared in the shuttle bay, it looked like his foes were bringing reinforcements aboard.