Chapter 47. Grinding Down the Foe.
“The rat people aren’t the concern now, timing our counterattack is,” Lani said, bringing Watson’s focus back to the ongoing battle. His sixth MOBS unit was now gathered in the fabrication compartment, and the seventh was about halfway through production.
His defenders in the training compartment were down to eight, but they had also whittled down some of the attacking halflings. Watkins gave the remaining attackers a quick count. There were 39 remaining, and that didn’t count the halflings guarding the rat people that were still gathering up the corpses.
So far, the halfling guards watching over the harvesting of fallen bodies seemed to ignore the boarding action and were focussed on their task of managing the efforts of the scraggly rat people. Another pair of defenders in the fabrication compartment fell, and the halflings looked like they were finally ready to make a push. Watkins was left with only six defenders in there, but he ordered his troops to gather the weapons of the fallen, which gave these last defenders a chance to fire uninterrupted save for the need to switch out an empty weapon with a charged one.
“I think we need to begin the counterattack now. After our counterattack commences, we’ll start to divide the reinforcements, alternating them between the training compartment and the counterattack force,” Watkins said. He gave the order for his drones to drop the false wall, and the MOBS in the counterattack force, now numbering seven, to charge out of the hatchway.
The counterattacking troops ran into the main passageway, ignoring the invaders as they all took positions behind the hatches left open to all the compartments on the port side of the ship. One remained inside the fabrication compartment and took up a firing position there. Watkins also had the two drones that had dropped the false wall position themselves over the fabrication compartment hatchway, ready to attack if any halflings pushed past Watkins’ troops.
In the passageway was a single halfling guard, that his MOBS shot down before it could react. The injured rat man and another of his kin stood there in terror at the appearance of the MOBS. Watkins ordered one of his MOBS to wave the pair of rat people inside the galley. They seemed to understand the simple hand motions and were content to get out of the line of fire and into the relative safety of the compartment.
If they decided to cause trouble, Watkins could always lock them in and trap them inside the galley. Without tools or weapons, the rat people would be unable to do anything to escape. Given their rather emaciated condition, Watkins wondered if they would even want to escape the galley, which he powered up for them.
The pair of rat people seemed shocked when the food and drink fabricator hummed to life, and Watkins ordered it create a small variety if dishes. He had left six bricks of biomass loaded inside the galley fabricator, and that would be more than enough to feed a whole crew, and more than sufficient for a pair of half-starved prisoners.
As the first dish appeared, any thoughts of escape were forgotten as the pair dug into the hamburger and French fries that Watkins had chosen as the meal. After all, could he really trust anyone who didn’t like a hamburger and fries? The fight in the passageway was going strong as Watkins safely sealed the rat people in the galley.
His counterattacking troops had achieved the surprise that he had hoped for and had gunned down at least ten of the attackers. The enemy had piled up at the hatchway leading into the training compartment, making them easy targets. The others had finally gotten their act together and were returning fire while several tried to rush his defenders. With weapons now running dry, Watkins’ troops had to engage in melee.
Having the partial cover of the hatchways helped to protect his MOBS from the pistol fire of the halflings, and once they closed into melee range, his troops proved a match for the enemy. The attackers were more skilled than his level one MOBS, but Watkins’ MOBS didn’t feel pain or fear, ignoring deadly wounds to dish them out in return. In addition, Watkins’ troops had some armor attached to their shipsuits, which was pretty much useless against the lasers, but did a decent job to protect them against melee weapons.
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His remaining troops inside the training center also stepped up their rate of fire, their numbers bolstered by a fresh replacement. They picked off a pair of distracted halflings before the others all pulled back behind the hatchway. Not wanting to miss the opportunity to do some damage, Watkins ordered the MOBS in the training compartment to go on the attack, charging the hatchway.
One by one, his counterattacking troops were being taken down, but they were also killing invaders as they fell. Lani provided him with a fresh count of the enemy, they were now down to only 21 halflings, but Watkins only had three MOBS still alive from the counter attacking force. There were five in the training compartment, and they were tearing into the shocked halflings there that hadn’t expected them to suddenly become the aggressors.
Any fresh reinforcements were ordered to take up defensive positions both in the training compartment, and at the hatchway to the fabrication compartment. His MOBS that had positioned themselves in the CIC and Research Lab compartments were hacked down by the invaders, but they, in turn, killed a halfling each. Now, Watkins only had two defenders protecting the hatch leading to the fabrication compartment, but one of those had just arrived with loaded weapons.
He ordered his troops counterattacking from the training compartment to fall back to the final barricade. All but two had been killed, but another replacement was already behind the barricade to provide them cover as they fell back. In the shuttle bay, the surviving halfling guards herded the other rat people back aboard their ship, two of them taking up defensive positions at their end of the boarding tube.
Watkins’ vision didn’t extend too far past the boarding tube, but he was able see that the halflings had erected their own defensive barricade, which the two guards left behind to defend, were hiding behind. The other attackers, now down to 15 in total, were mostly still positioned at the training compartment hatch. Four had taken up position to hold off Watkins’ troops defending the fabrication compartment, but they weren’t trying to press their attack at this time.
“They’re stalled out, I’m happy to say,” Watkins said as he watched the stalemate unfold.
“Let’s hope it stays that way for a while,” Lani said, as they both watched the next MOBS slow production journey down the fabrication machine. Both sides were content to take pot shots at each other, though Watkins could see the halflings were becoming more agitated each time a new defender moved into position.
Even with the occasional MOBS being picked off, Watkins numbers were growing and there didn’t seem to be any additional troops coming aboard to reinforce the enemy. Their numbers dropped to ten, and Watkins’ had climbed to twelve, when the enemy made a final, desperate attack.
They all funneled toward the open, yet well defended hatchway to the fabrication compartment, not wanting to face both the defenders and the barricade traps that waited for them in the training area. One by one, the enemy were gunned down, but Watkins’ troops had their weapons run dry before half the enemy were killed. A brutal melee battle occurred just inside the fabrication compartment, and he even had to call in a few drones to reinforce his troops before the last foe was killed.
Quiet resumed in the ship, with the only sounds being his troops carefully checking to make sure the enemy were all dead. He also had them gather up the halfling laser pistols, which were the same design as the ones he’d liberated from the kobolds aboard the station. Each of his MOBS, once his numbers were fully restored, would have a rifle, one of the five-shot laser pistols, and a melee weapon.
With the enemy cleared from his ship, Watkins’ drones got to work, hauling away the dead for reprocessing, and gathering any weapons from the fallen. With so many casualties on both sides, Watkins didn’t have to waste the fabricators time printing up new gear, and he could just concentrate on replacing his MOBS and the few drones that had fallen.
He wanted to send some drones out to begin repairs on the exterior of his ship, but for now, the only access point was through the shuttle bay which was plugged up with the boarding tube. Another entry point for his drones was needed, and he found that there was no additional research needed for his drones to create a simple airlock leading from the engine compartment out onto the deck. It was small, only big enough for his drones to pass through, which would help prevent its detection and limit access for anyone that did manage to spot it.
It would take time for the drones to work, as he could only assign two to the task. For now, they seemed to have the time, since the halflings didn’t seem keen on immediately renewing their assault. Watkins was content with a stalemate, at least until he had all his MOBS fabricated and ready for the fight. Once that happened, it would be time to make his move and take the halfling ship.