Mayeda checked the sight of his pulsar shotgun for the fifth time as the launch hurtled towards the alien station, trying not to clench his teeth with nerves. The boarding galley was packed with a heavily armed and armoured security detachment from the Cobra, carrying the most potent personal weapons in the armoury.

He was under no illusions about what they might be walking into, however, no matter how powerful their weapons might have been. Everything he'd seen aboard the wreck of the Manticore, and the ravaged colony of Myrr Idol, made it clear that their weapons were sickeningly ineffective.

Right now, though, they didn't have a choice.

A team of twelve deck guards from the Cobra's security contingent checked their own weapons – shotguns, heavy boarding rifles, and even a tripod-mounted breach cannon, lugged along by a towering bear of a man named Mosley.

"Launch-6 to command," he said as their ship passed under into the great maw of the landing bay, "closing on target. Deployment in two minutes."

"Copy, Launch-6," Commander Clay replied. "Priority is safe extraction of the away team. Once you've secured friendlies you are to withdraw. Is that clear?"

"Absolutely, ma'am," Mayeda assured her.

"Then good hunting. Clay out."

He breathed deep through his nose and nodded to himself.

"The hell you think we're gonna find over there, sir?" asked one of the deck guards, a younger man whose strained voice betrayed his nerves.

"I don't know," he replied flatly, keeping his eyes to the front. "And I don't care. You heard the commander. Our priority is getting the away team out safely. That's all."

"But... I mean they boarded-,"

"I know everything that you know, Mr. Holloway." Mayeda turned sharply on the man. "We have our orders. You will carry them out."

"I... yes, sir." Holloway gulped. The woman beside him gave him a light clip around the back of the helmet.

"Too late to change your drawers now," she chuckled. A scattered laugh passed through the rest of the boarding team. Even Holloway himself managed a faint smile.

"Everyone just stick tight and remember your training," Mayeda told them. "We go in fast, we secure the friendlies and we get the hell out. Watch each other's backs and we'll all be back on the Cobra in time for dinner."

"Wouldn't want to miss that," Mosley put in, patting the long, javelin-like barrel of the breach cannon he was carrying.

"Thirty seconds!" shouted the pilot.

"Copy." Mayeda made a spinning motion with one finger. "Lock your helmets. Hardseal and comm check."

Fastening his own blast helmet into place, he checked its seals then fired up the internal communications network. The checks from the other deck guards rattled through his earpiece in quick succession, their voices encapsulating varying degrees of nervousness.

Then they were in. He felt the bump of the ship touching down, and then the boarding ramps to the left and right of the rear compartment sprang open. Mayeda led the way, sliding down the low-friction surface. A faint jolt at the base of the ramp popped him up onto his feet as he executed the speed-boarding manoeuvre, landing neatly and locking his shotgun to his shoulder.

He scurried forward as the other members of the boarding team followed him down, springing up and spreading out into formation. The Narvorian shuttles were scattered around them, their own ramps already open and emptied.

It didn't take long for him to hear the noise as they started moving towards the bay that had held the human bodies, deep drum-like banging, the distant crackle of weapon fire and the roaring orders of Narvorian soldiers. The splurge of tunnels ahead made it all roll together in a ghostly cocktail, seemingly coming from all directions at one.

Swallowing hard, Mayeda stuffed his nerves down into his stomach and forced himself onward, his faux confidence dragging the rest of the boarding team with him. The deck guards surged onwards until they reached the holding chamber, where Whitlock and the away team had been stationed.

"Shit," Mayeda breathed as he slowed, scanning the room. The pods along the wall were empty now, and he could see discarded equipment scattered in all directions.

"Sir," Holloway breathed. "Got blood."

He turned, and saw the other guard's torch light illuminating a shining crimson smear across the floor.

"Damn it." He darted over, inspecting the stain, forcing himself to think. His eyes followed the direction of the blood smear, and he fixed his gaze on a connecting passage. "On me!"

Mayeda set off at a run, his soldiers clattering along behind him. They plunged onward into the half-light as he opened his radio up onto the wider-band.

"This is Officer Mayeda to away team," he barked. "Anyone on this frequency please respond. I repeat, please respond."

For a moment he thought he heard something, a ghost of a voice, but it was badly garbled.

"Whitlock?" He gave his helmet a gentle thump. "Whitlock is that you?"

"Scrubbed to shit, sir," on of his troopers muttered grimly.

"Keep moving." 

They scurried deeper into the warren, moving from corner to corner covering each other. Mayeda led them on, with Mosley hauling the breach cannon along at the rear of the column.

With anxiety beginning to gnaw at him, he moved as quickly as he dared through the dim halls, sweeping the barrel of his gun back and forth. Then he swung around a sharp right turn, and a group of shapes suddenly appeared in his vision, illuminated by his helmet torch. Mayeda jerked back instinctively, finger curling around the trigger of his shotgun.

"Wait, wait, WAIT!"

The screech came just in time and Mayeda stopped himself from firing. Standing just a couple of meters in front of him, Chief Petty Officer Whitlock screwed her eyes shut, her hands up, as though expecting to be blown away. He gasped and ;et the barrel of his shotgun drop, clicking the release of his helmet's hardseal. The reinforced face-plate retracted into the housing, exposing him to the strange copper-sweet smell on the station's interior.

"Gods," Mayeda exclaimed. "Are you trying to get yourself shot?!"

"Oh, yeah, it's great to see you too!" Whitlock let out a sigh as she sagged against the wall, clutching her hair in her hands. Behind her, he saw Ensign Zellars and a handful of other survivors almost deflate with the relief of seeing friendly faces. From a head count he guessed they were missing three quarters of the away team.

"The others?" he asked, not really wanting to know the answer.

Whitlock shook her head. "Gone... dead, taken – I'm not sure. But there's nothing we can do."

Mayeda pressed his lips together tightly. "You're sure?"

"I'm telling you, if there was any chance we could go get them, I'd be first in line, but those things..." She dragged her hands down her face, as though raking the memories away. "I've never seen anything like it."

"You actually saw one?"

"We all did," Zellars told them in a quaking voice, the young ensign battling back tears.

"What are they-,"

He broke off sharply as his earpiece fizzed and crackled with static. He twisted around, looking to the closest deck guards and tapping the side of his helmet, giving them a confused look. Through their face plates he could see them talking, but all that came through the helmet speakers was more static. He could here the muffled blur of voices behind the armoured glass, but that was all.

"That's them!" Whitlock blurted. "They give off some kind of interference! Same as that bloody ship we've been chasing half way across the galaxy."

Mayeda made a washing motion back and forth in front of his face, signalling his squad to open their hardseals. Faceplates retracted, and the men and women of the Cobra's deck guards exchanged nervous glances. He opened his mouth to speak, but before he could give any orders, the sound of deep, quick thumping began reverberating through the passage.

He turned around, his brow furrowing in confusion.

"Shit, shit!" Whitlock looked at him with horror. "That's one of them – it's coming! It's right on top of us!"

Mayeda's reaction was instant, his training overriding any thoughts of self preservation to dictate their next course of action.

"Alright, go – go!" He shoved Whitlock in the direction of their ship. "The way's clear for now. Get back to the main bay and get your people aboard the launch!"

"What?! Mayeda, you can't-,"

"Shut up and get out of here!" Mayeda shouted. "We'll be right behind you."

Whitlock's face screwed up with indecision, before Ensign Zellars grabbed her arm.

"Ma'am, let's go!" the young technician screamed, yanking her superior officer down the passage.

With a final curse, Whitlock turned and ran, leaving Mayeda and his comrades to face down the devil. The cacophony of banging swelled and swelled and swelled, and then the monster emerged from the dark.

"Defensive positions!" Mayeda gestured frantically to the other deck guards who scrambled for cover, tucking themselves against the walls and corners. Further back down the passage, Mosley unfolded the tripod of the breach cannon, sinking to one knee and aiming down the sight, just as their target exploded into view.

Just the sight of the thing was enough to make him hesitate for an instant.

It lumbered around the corner like an ungainly, drunken animal, propelled along on a trio of tree-trunk sized limbs, each with a bulbous, roughly-spherical 'foot' at the end. They thumped like hammers as the thing approached, and his mind flashed back to the interior of the Manticore. The strange rounded dents in the deck plates matched up with whatever this creature was.

Mayeda couldn't really tell if it was actually a living thing or some kind of machine. It was easily more than ten feet tall, covered in some kind of rough grey hide, with its legs arching out from a central sphere that looked like a boulder. He couldn't see any eyes, nose or mouth, or anything else that might let the thing interact with the outside world, but that didn't stop it thundering down the passage towards them.

"Suppressing fire!" he roared, sliding to the right and down to one knee as he let rip with his shotgun.

Its bulky muzzle flared and spat a scattershot of crackling plasma right into the alien's centre section. The thing barely slowed its wild charge, before the rest of the boarding team opened fire. The smaller guns crackled ineffectively off the monster's outer shell, and Mayeda braced himself, ready to spring as the alien loomed larger and larger.

Then the breach cannon fired.

A heavy clank echoed through the passage weapon discharged, letting off a flare of light and propelling a hyper-accelerated slug of solid titanium right at their foe. There was an ear-splitting crack as the round found its mark dead centre, and the lumbering alien went spinning, smashing into one of the walls and collapsing to the floor in a heap.

Mayeda's eyes widened at the sight of the fissure that had been driven into its mid-section, the ragged fault line leaking some kind of gluey fluid. Exhaling the breath he'd been holding, he pumped the shotgun and rose from his crouch.

"Hold positions," he hissed, keeping his shotgun aimed as he edged forward.

Then the thing stirred. Mayeda stopped dead, his mouth opening in shock as the alien's limbs began slithering for purchase against the ground. On some level, he'd already known these creatures – whatever they were – would be hard to kill, but this was another order of magnitude.

The breach cannons were designed for blasting into the most heavily armoured enemy ships, capable of punching through the thickest bulkheads with ease. They were rarely deployed in any kind of defensive action, as an errant shot could easily core a hole clean through several decks of a vessel from within.

Used on an individual target, it ought to have atomised the alien.

And yet, he was watching it get up.

"Hit it again!" he bellowed skittering backwards. "Fire, fire, fire!"

Pulse shotguns battered the wounded alien as it levered itself upright again, swaying unsteadily for a moment, before a second shot from the cannon slammed into it. This time their adversary went straight backwards, crashing to the ground under a hail of gunfire. Again, it levered itself upright.

It took a third shot from the cannon to finally bring it down for good.

In a haze of smoke, the deck guards slowly emerged from cover, staring at the dead alien. Sticky, clear liquid seeped out onto the floor from the wounds inflicted by the breach cannon, and the central sphere was now a spiderweb of cracks. It was still twitching faintly – maybe some kind of residual nerve action. Maybe it could even be saved by its peers if it wasn't actually dead.

"Nice shooting," Mayeda murmured, shaking his head in amazement.

"What is that thing?" Mosley asked, his voice trembling.

"The enemy." He started forward to take a closer look, but stopped when he heard the dim echo of banging footsteps. Mayeda snapped up his shotgun to aim at the corner.

"Sir, friendlies are away," Holloway blurted. "Think we can call this one and get the hell out of here?"

"I think so." He spun away and shoved the younger soldier back the way they'd came. "Fall back, and double time. We are leaving!"