Chapter 49. Turning the Tables.


    “I think we have an agreement, Skitterbach. I’ll help your people and give them a place to live and work aboard my ship, providing you with food and safety. In return, your people will help me with information on the halfling ship, and serve as my crew,” Watkins said, summarizing and finalizing their deal.


    “Agreed. Skitterbach now tell-speak all he knows,” Skitterbach said. He proceeded, in his odd version of the common language, to outline what he knew of the halfling ship. Apparently, Skitterbach was a sort of leader to the surviving verminkin who were nothing more than a living larder for the halfling foodstuffs.


    Skitterbach didn’t know every detail of the enemy ship, as his access was restricted in some areas, like the bridge, where slave labor wasn’t likely to be needed. What he did know was going to prove to be very helpful. First off, as Watkins had suspected, there was a mechanism to explosively detach the boarding collar. While he didn’t know the exact location, Watkins’ drones should have little trouble finding and neutralizing it.


    Even now, his hatchway from the engine room was almost complete, and a team of four drones was ordered to seek out and deactivate the device. Since their ships were now connected, his drones would also move about the halfling vessel to seek out and deactivate the railgun hidden somewhere on the ship’s hull. Watkins wanted that weapon in his arsenal.


    Skitterbach didn’t have an exact count on the halfling crew, but his estimate put their total crew at just over a hundred. Given the casualties that they’d taken, and the estimated size of the crew, Watkins figured there were probably less than a score of halflings remained aboard. Some would be standing guard over the verminkin, and some would undoubtedly be on the bridge, which left only a handful of defenders to resist his coming attack.


    The pair of halflings at the other end of the boarding tube hadn’t been reinforced, and seemed reluctant to even peek their heads over the barricade to look toward Watkins’s ship. His troops were finally back up to a full complement of MOBS. He held them back for the moment, giving his drones time to complete their task and locate the explosives around the boarding tube.


    “What do you think they’re waiting for? If they know you’re about to attack, why don’t they just blow the tube now?” Lani asked.


    “If I had to guess, they’re waiting to see what happens aboard our ship. Without any way to watch, they have no idea if some of their troops are still on the attack. For all they know, the forces in my cargo bay might be the last of our troops and the enemy is slowly taking the rest of the ship,” Watkins surmised. There was no real way to know what they were thinking, as the halflings weren’t exactly a known quantity.


    Skitterbach could only give his opinion on their behavior and merely shrugged when asked what the halflings were up to. The verminkin had never seen the halfling crew on the losing end of an engagement, so this was new territory for him as well. At least Watkins confirmed, after reprocessing several, that the halflings lacked any kind of transponder or similar device in their shipsuits.


    The only technology integrated into their shipsuits was the automated deployment module for the head protection in the event of decompression. That left the enemy as blind about what was going on with Watkins’ vessel as he was of theirs. Through his drone connection, he watched the four assigned to find the explosives as they crossed over the exterior of the boarding tube and onto the halfling ship, where they quickly found their target.


    It was simply a thick ring of a synthetic explosive, which reminded Watkins of C4 from his human world. Safe once the electrical connections that triggered the detonation were removed, Watkins had his drones harvest the explosives. He had plenty of uses for it and wanted the sample to see if it was easy enough to replicate, or if it was going to take a bit of time in the research module.


    “Can Skitterbach, watch-join the attack? I want-need to feel a halfling die to my bite,” Skitterbach said in a bloodthirsty growl. Watkins didn’t fully trust them yet, but with only two verminkin aboard, arming them and sending them in after his troops was a reasonable request. He’d try to keep them out of danger, as he would probably need Skitterbach to get his people under control once the fighting was over.


    “You can, I’ll get you some fresh shipsuits, armor and weapons. Just hold tight for a minute as my troops clear the enemy cargo hold,” Watkins said, having his fabricator print up new gear for the pair of verminkin. They were close in size to the halflings, so the minor adjustments needed to fit their bodies were quick enough for Watkins to analyze and implement.


    From Skitterbach’s description, the boarding tube led to a large cargo hold, similar in size to the shuttle bay on Watkins’ ship. Inside the main cargo hold, a single passageway led to compartments consisting of the barracks for the halfling crew, engineering spaces, the armory, a mess hall, and a smaller, secondary cargo hold, which was where the verminkin were held. Their bridge was positioned near the aft of the ship, which was odd, and the bow was mostly storage and the like.


    Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.


    At one time, more of the verminkin had been housed in some of the bow compartments, but it seems the halfling voyage was a long one, and they had eaten into their supply of verminkin, leaving just Skitterbach’s group as living prey. Skitterbach claimed he had nineteen members of his clan that were still alive when he boarded the Canon.


    “Ah, what have we here?” Watkins said as one the drones examining the exterior hull of the halfling ship discovered a damaged, and only partially retracted hatch.


    A peek inside by his drone revealed it was a damaged pop-up turret that housed a small railgun. He assigned a pair of drones to disassemble it and return it to the Canon so he could examine it further. There would no doubt need to be some time spent using a research module to fully replicate it, but he had found that having a sample to reprocess would speed up the research time.


    Watkins watched the drones take apart the turret with a small portion of his focus, and shifted the rest to the boarding hatch, where he gave the command for his troops to begin the attack. In the galley, Skitterbach and his comrade, who they didn’t have the name of yet, were getting into their gear and examining the weapons Watkins had provided. They were only going to be issued a one-shot plasma pistol, and a long dagger to defend themselves with. Watkins didn’t expect them to be in combat, and didn’t want to give them too much firepower before he had more trust in them.


    “That was fast,” Lani said as his MOBS overran the two halfling defenders guarding the boarding tube. His troops spilled into the cargo hold and broke into three teams. One team, the largest, headed toward the bridge, while another team went to secure the engine room. The final team headed directly toward the smaller cargo hold that housed the verminkin. A drone followed each of the teams, ready to open any sealed hatches they might run into.


    They met no resistance until they neared the bridge, where a small group of halflings charged out of the compartment and led a wild attack toward his troops. Skitterbach had warned about this, the halflings were fearless and blood crazed. It was hopefully going to work in Watkins’ favor since they weren’t the type to seal themselves in and delay the battle, they were far too aggressive for that.


    The charging halflings seemed to support Skitterbach’s estimation of their overly aggressive tactics. Catching the enemy in the open, his MOBS had little trouble cutting down the five halflings that had led the assault. After those five were killed, his troops stormed onto the bridge. It was a larger sized compartment than Watkins had expected, and another four halflings waited for them inside.


    One wore some more elaborate body armor and wielded two laser pistols. This must have been their captain based on Skitterbach’s description of him. The halfling was deadly, quickly blasting down three of Watkins’ MOBS before being peppered by return fire. The halfling captain’s armor was good, but it couldn’t hold up to the barrage of laser and plasma blasts his MOBS unleashed.


    The captain was the last enemy on the bridge to fall, but by the end of the skirmish, only five of the MOBS assigned to take the bridge survived the encounter. Another deadly fight was brewing in the secondary cargo hold, which had a sealed hatch. His drone had quickly overridden the primitive security software, and the hatch swung open, revealing a horrifying scene.


    Four halfling guards were tearing into and biting a group of cowering verminkin. The halflings’ faces were covered in gore as they tore chunks out of their victims, chewing rapidly as if they wanted to eat as much as they could before Watkins’ MOBS killed them. The ghoulish halflings didn’t even try to defend themselves, continuing to gorge themselves even as they were blasted with laser fire.


    The surviving verminkin cowered in fear, as terrified of Watkins’ halfling MOBS as they were of their former captors.


    “Skitterbach, we need you to talk to your people,” Watkins said as his MOBS made sure the enemy were all killed. It turned out one halfling was still alive, though paralyzed from the neck down due to a laser blast hitting its spine. Skitterbach and his companion charged into the cargo hold turned abattoir.


    “This one lives, and it’s yours to do with as you wish,” Watkins said through the drone assigned to this team, using it to point toward the still-living halfling.


    “Look my people,” Skitterbach shouted. His appearance had drawn the attention of all the surviving verminkin. “We are no longer prey; we are no longer the food-meat for the halflings. Watch as I show you our new place in this world,” Skitterbach then reached down and began to choke the halfling. It still tried to snap its oversized jaws at Skitterbach, but it couldn’t move enough to reach him.


    Just before life faded from the halfling, Skitterbach’s head shot forward, the jagged and misshapen teeth in his rodent-like snout dug deep into the throat of the halfling, tearing a chunk out. Instead of eating it, Skitterbach spit the flesh out in disgust. He stood from his victim, turning toward his verminkin people.


    “I lead-command the verminkin now. Skitterbach has arranged alliance-help from Captain Watkins. Do not fear his hungry ones, they are merely servants, not the hungry-crazed things we were prisoner-slave to. Follow-obey me, and I lead you to cheeseburger-food and a new future-chance,” Skitterbach said.


    Wary and skittish, the surviving verminkin stood. A few were injured from the vicious bites of the halflings, and Watkins doubted they survive for long without treatment. He had the schematic for a med pod in his database, unlocking it when he had reprocessed the damaged device in his own med bay.


    He ordered four of them to be built, all that would easily fit in his rather small med bay. Every available drone was put on the task and should have them completed rather quickly.


    “Captain Watkins, where should my people go-live?” Skitterbach asked.


    “We’ll bring them aboard the Canon soon. For now, do what you can for the wounded, I have a medical pod being constructed that should help keep them heal, but it will take time to construct,” Watkins said.


    “No, Skitterbach not lead-guide people, Kritch will be lead-master over verminkin,” Skitterbach’s companion said as he discharged his plasma pistol into Skitterbach’s back.