I lifted my Model 5 and sprayed the Gruvoldian Champion at full auto, but it was no use. He wheeled around and slapped Iktac and sent the stealthy Enforcer flying across the hangar. Iktac collided with a stack of civilian ration crates, knocking them over and spilling their contents all out onto the floor around him. I kept shooting. When the Gruvoldian Champion suddenly lunged forward to try and take my head off, I calmly ducked under the swing, pivoted three and hundred sixty degrees as he passed me, and kept laying it on.
Phaser beams violently ripped holes through the Champion's unarmored areas the size of grapefruits. Without stopping to consider my next move, I stepped towards him and grabbed the handle of the warsword jutting out of his back and wrenched it to the side like a lumberjack swinging at a tree. There was a disgusting, wet, tearing sound as the Gruvoldian Champion folded over sideways and collapsed.
Alvin shouted over the COMs, "Volryn! Come in!"
I could hear Iktac respond with incoherent groans and gasps as he tried to form words in his injured state. It didn't sound good. How bad, I didn't know, but I was already running as hard and fast as I could to help him either way. Before I got there, another blinking, mechanical door hissed open not ten feet from where my friend lay haphazardly between two fallen crates. Out bounded about half a dozen chrome-plated, fully automated Armed Defense Droids.
Fuck.
They saw me and forced me into cover with relentless phaser fire while moving to surround Iktac, and there didn't seem to be a damned thing I could do about it. They had me pinned. I leaned out from behind the short wall I was hiding behind and fired back, even though my shielding system wasn't fully recharged, and a green bolt blazed into one of my shoulder pauldrons. I didn't think about getting shot again even as it scorched through the metal. With all the extra armor I had on, it wasn't my safety I was concerned about.
Up ahead, the AD Droids were swarming over Iktac like a pack of wild dogs. I saw one of them flatten their hand into a blade and thrust down to where my friend lay helpless, and although I couldn't see due to the position of the supply crates and numerous white armored bodies blocking the view, the deed was confirmed by the sharp intake of breath I heard over the COMs.
At this point I was wondering where the hell Alvin and Sithandra were. I glanced over and saw them preoccupied with their own team of AD Droids. I reached back and attached Iktac's warsword to the magnetic holster on my back and reloaded my phaser rifle. That's when I heard him. He sounded like a very, very old man.
Between gasps, he managed to sputter, Fuh-f-finish...the...mission..."
A string of at least eight explosions overlapped each other in a popcorn like fashion. The AD Droids that had surrounded him all recoiled as the booming cacophony sent metal fragments hurtling through their armor and them through the air in many different directions. Iktac had been wearing a vest of full grenades and other gear. He must've pulled the pins on all of them. I lowered my head solemnly. If the AD Droid that had stabbed him wasn't enough, the grenades definitely finished the job. Norman pulled my attention away from what had just happened and back into the present.
"Sven! Set off those charges, now!"
Each of us had been assigned a task on this mission. Iktac was our scout. He'd slip silently into a room before we made our presence known and end the fight before it began. Alvin and Sithandra had to locate the high value targets that the Association sent us here to eliminate. Which they did, but it became very evident that my help would be required. As an EOD, I was tasked with following Iktac and neutralizing any potential bomb threats and arming C-80 plastic explosives all over the carrier. I placed one next to the reactor that, according to the synced timer in the bottom right corner of my heads up display read T minus, five minutes, eighteen seconds.
The smaller charges I was about to detonate wouldn't bring the ship down, but there were a lot and they would cause severe damage to the ship's interior. It would be enough for most of the hired guns that had helped hijack this civilian space vessel to scuttle the ship andensure they were able to spend the money they earned here. It would also force the high value targets out of the safe confines of their well-guarded quarters. We'd initially planned to wait near the escape pods and catch them before they boarded, but we hadn't counted on having a firefight with a small army in the hangar that would eat up ten whole minutes and cut our time extremely close to the wire. If we were still on board this vessel when the reactor bomb went off, we'd be toast.
I removed the detonator from a tactical hard case strapped to my other leg, looked over at both of my teammates, and clicked the trigger. I almost lost my footing when the ship suddenly lurched forward. The electricity in the hangar failed momentarily, then came back on. Only certain lights were working now. No longer a bright white, but now a dull red.
Emergency backup power, I surmised.
Sithandra was airborne again, working down the concentrated energy shielding of remaining AD Droids with her Model 5 while Norman dropped each unshielded one with a single blast from his Model 4 PF-32 Phaser Carbine. They finished off the last AD Droid just as I came running up.
"For Volryn," Alvin said, cold and vengeful.
"For Volryn" Sithandra and I agreed in unison.