Chapter 46. Casualties.
“What are those things?” Watkins asked as they watched a fresh team of humanoids enter the shuttle bay from the halfling ship.
“Prisoners of some sort, I’m not familiar with the species. Chalk it up to yet another thing that we’ll have to wait to find out about once our database is fully restored. It does appear that our halfling attackers are keen on retaining the fallen, both ours and theirs,” Lani said.
“Whoever, or whatever, these prisoners are, the halflings aren’t taking any chances with them,” Watkins said as he counted around twenty of the new humanoids, and a half dozen armed halfling guards. The new humanoids were scrawny, and just a bit taller than the halfling guards. With long muzzles, scraggly fur covering their bodies, and teeth that resembled a rat, they weren’t the most appealing to look at.
“They look half-starved, and terrified of their captors,” Lani said as the rat-like humanoids began to collect the fallen and carry them back to the halfling ship. Clanging at the hatch between the passageway and the training compartment returned his attention to the threat at hand. The trio of defenders at the barricade were all down, and the halflings there were trying to force open the hatch leading to the training center.
So far, the halflings were going about it in a foolish manner, no amount of pounding with fists or pistol butts was going to force the hatch open. The press of attackers there left them little room to stand back and consider their options. With the path forward blocked, more of the horde shifted their attention to the open compartments on the port side of the ship.
He was glad to see that the halflings didn’t suspect the presence of any of the hatches he had tasked his drones with concealing earlier. The two MOBS at the entrance to the galley were holding their own, but it was only a matter of time before the increasing numbers of halflings trying to get at them through the hatchway took them down.
His defenders in the galley had already killed three of the attackers in melee, and several other halflings were nursing wounds. While the halflings tried to figure out how to break into the hatchway leading to the training center, Watkins used the time to get a better count of what he was up against.
They had inflicted horrendous casualties on the halflings, but there were still 51 of them aboard his ship. Replacements for Watkins’ losses were still arriving, and his training compartment now had eleven defenders ready to fight, with the twelfth walking its way there from the fabrication compartment. The defenses in the oversized compartment consisted of three rows of barricades, each row capable of holding eight or so defenders without them getting too crowded.
Watkins had been distributing the defenders among the three rows of barricades, and a half-dozen drones were also in the compartment, installing new barricade panels as traps. One in particular was placed directly in front of the hatch. It was positioned to slam into the lead attackers, impaling them on the retractable spikes. Any foe entering the compartment would have to time their entrance well or risk getting swatted down by the barricade.
“There go the last of the defenders in the galley,” Lani lamented. The pair of MOBS stationed there had done an excellent job. Both had emptied their rifles and pistols into the horde of attackers, and after slaying several with weapon fire, they had killed four others in melee. Even better, they helped to delay the horde, which bought Watkins more time to manufacture reinforcements.
A pair of halflings caught his eye, they ran from the hatch blocking the training center and back onto their ship. The runners soon returned pushing a cart loaded with some serious-looking tools. Given their proclivity for boarding operations, Watkins suspected the halflings had kept the means to breach secured hatches nearby when on the attack. It took the invaders only a couple of minutes to fire up a pair of cutting torches and pass out several prybars to those waiting to resume the slaughter.
By the time the first torch cut through the armored hatch, Watkins had fourteen defenders in the training compartment. At this point, he cut off further reinforcements at this location, instead having his newly created MOBS remain in the fabrication compartment, ready to pop out the hidden hatchway and launch a counterattack.
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“They’re almost through,” Lani announced. The halflings had cut around the spot where the hinges for the hatch were placed and they now had teams trying to pry open the hatch. With a metallic creaking sound, the hatch was slowly bent back, finally popping clear and clanging to the deck. A pair of pre-positioned drones went to work, hauling the fallen hatch out of the way of the barricade trap he’d prepared.
The first two halfling leaped over the hatchway, intent on using their prybars as weapons. Before they could be gunned down by the defending MOBS, the barricade trap snapped forward, impaling both before retracting back into the deck. As the trap retracted, the rest of the halflings spilled inside.
Initial shots from the defenders lanced into the lead halflings, who returned fire with their pistols and tried to close the distance with the first rank of defenders. Watkins had ordered the first rank of defenders to empty all their weapons into the attackers, then stand by with melee weapons. The defenders in the second and third row were to wait until the first rank were done firing, then they were to take turns to keep up a steady, withering fire on any of the attackers trying to enter through the hatchway.
Watkins had positioned six defenders at the first barricade and four each at the second and third. The press of attackers at the hatchway allowed his trap to activate a second time, catching one of the halflings jumping over the threshold and causing the others to pause their attacks until the barricade trap retracted into the deck once more. This short pause allowed his defenders in the rear two lines of defense to thin out the attackers, giving his defenders at the first line of defense a numerical advantage over the few halflings that managed to reach their position.
When the flood of attackers resumed, Watkins ordered the defenders in the first line to retreat to the second. He also retracted the first line of barricades, leaving the threat of their reactivation as an encouragement to stall the enemy advance. The next phase of his defense began in earnest. In between printing up new MOBS earlier in the fight, Watkins had ordered the fabricator to print extra rifles.
Behind the second line of defense a fresh batch of rifles waited, enough for all the defenders that manned that position. It had slowed the production time of new MOBS, and Watkins still wasn’t sure which was more efficient, taking time to make extra weapons, or using that time to manufacture reinforcements. This fight was going to be a test of the two options.
Disciplined firing resumed, and having his core able to issue firing orders directly to his MOBS allowed Watkins to maximize the effect of his barrage. The halfling attack stalled, but there were only two MOBS ready to counterattack in the fabrication room. He needed more before he would be comfortable with revealing the fake bulkhead and allowing another entry point into his critical compartments.
There was now a stalemate, the halflings had given up on rushing the defenders, and instead were content to pile up around the breached hatchway and exchange shots with the MOBS. While the halflings weren’t any more accurate than Watkins’ MOBS, they did have the advantage of laser pistols similar to the ones that the kobolds had been using. That gave his foes five shots stored in their magazines, and Watkins’ troops had to wait an agonizing minute for a shot in their rifles or pistols to recharge.
There was more activity back in the shuttle bay. The rat-like slaves were still working on clearing out the fallen, but a few of them were being led deeper into the ship. A single guard accompanied this trio of workers, and the guard pointed toward the fallen halflings littering the passageway and hanging out of the galley hatch.
One of the workers, who was nursing a wounded hand with half his fingers severed off, sniffed loudly as he collected the fallen in the passageway. Strong, the rat-like slave of the halflings hauled two corpses over his shoulder, but paused on his return to sniff the hidden hatch leading to the fabrication compartment.
From his actions, Watkins was sure the creature had sensed the MOBS waiting on the other side. Instead of informing his guard, the rat-like creature grinned menacingly and continued about his task.
“It looks like the rat guy isn’t going to, uh well, rat us out,” Watkins said awkwardly.
“That was bad, and you made fun of my sense of humor earlier,” Lani replied with a groan.
“At least we’re holding the enemy back,” Watkins said.
Inside the training compartment, he had only lost two defenders so far, and a quick count of the fallen enemies in and around the compartment showed that they’d killed eleven of their foes. The odds were a bit more even in the sniping war that the fight had devolved into. His minions had better cover, but the halflings had the firepower advantage. They were trading casualties in equal numbers now, which the halflings seemed excited about.
The casualties mounted, but his were slowly being replaced. Five MOBS stood ready to counterattack now, and a sixth was just about done with production. That injured rat guy returned, picking up more of the fallen near the galley, and chuckling as he passed the hidden hatch. It must have been the defenders he smelled, as the prisoner gave no indication that he knew about the other hidden hatch further toward the bow that led to the reprocessor compartment.
“Yes, we’ll have to figure out how we want to deal with these rat people once we win this fight,” Watkins said. Were these slave-like captives potential allies, or another threat he was going to have to deal with?