City of IF

[sparta12]

Virtual
Chapter 4: Collateral Damage
*Warning: This Chapter contains coarse language and violent*
The Zoraxian bodyguard stared intently at the humans as the unarmed ship moved slowly towards the Freedom Cruiser. Humans… They fight so feebly. The mercenary thought to himself as he stared into the half-conscious eyes of Vincent and looked at the computer implanted in his right arm to see how close the ship was getting to the human cruiser.
“Hey… Hey Gumby Green!” Vincent shouted over to the Zoraxian Bodyguard
“What is it human?” the Zoraxian responded to the disorientated pilot
“I hope they tear your organshh out and crushhh it into pile of crapsh when we get on board,” Vincent threatened, incorrectly pronouncing some words in his speech
“You know human I could do that with my one hand?” The Zoraxian replied with an evil grin on his face while Vincent just grinned back at the mercenary.


“The ship’s current status is set to Yellow. All non-armed personnel are to get to their battle stations. All armed personnel are to report to Airlock Five immediately, repeat: all armed personnel are to report to Airlock Five immediately! Alpha squad of “The Flying Phoenix” squadron are to fall in at airlock two immediately. All other pilots are to report to Airlock Five.” A voice echoed through the speakers and throughout the whole ship. Tiredly the crewmembers of the Freedom cruiser sprinted around the narrow halls of the cruiser.
“Zoraxians? When did they get here?” Anne asked as she walked across the hangar deck towards her fighter
“Apparently they came in with us. We only found out they were here a few minutes ago,” Jack informed her, walking with one of the best pilots in his squadron
“Why does that not surprise me?” Anne muttered back to her commanding officer.
“Yeah, tell me about it. Also Anne when we get back we have to fight in the virtual room!” The Lieutenant Commander shouted out as Anne climbed up the ladders and into the cockpit of her fighter.



“Keep the safety on people! Don’t fire unless fired upon!” The Captain yelled out to his Platoon of Marines that had taken cover in Airlock Five. The marines had their Sub-Machine-Guns at the ready with pilots next to them with side arms.
“Airlock opening in Ten seconds!” a voice yelled over the speakerphone behind the company of marines and pilots.
The Marines immediately placed their oxygen masks on their mouths and waited patiently as the grey airlock doors began to open in front of them. As it opened they could see a large ship, looked like a large 3D square with wings but with no weapons and by the looks of it, it was an X-Ray class ship. As it slowly backed up into the airlock and then landed in the centre so it could open its hatch for them to see that they were surrounded by Armed-Humans. The Admiral walked up to the hatch unarmed but with two marines covering him as bodyguards. The large hatch fell open and the three captured pilots were pushed out and slid across the airlock deck with masks on their faces luckily enough. The two marines drew out their sub-machine-guns and aimed for the darkness of the large hatch while a few more marines with a medic sprinted forwards to grab the pilots. Six Zoraxians came out but Admiral could easily identify who was who. There were two pilots, two bodyguards and the two ambassadors he would talk to privately later on.



“Damn it!” Gunnery Sergeant Paul Thoria yelled out over the radio in annoyance
“What is it?” Jack asked his comrade as he turned his head left to see if there was anything wrong with the pilot’s ship
“Fuel… Those bastards forgot to give my baby juice!” he chuckled over the radio as he informed his comrade
“Ha, ha, ha. Okay return to the cruiser and get whoever’s next on the roster to get out here.” Jack ordered
“Rogeo-dadeo,” the cocky pilot responded, broke off from the squad’s formation and flew back through the nebula.



Bah! Humans! They’re weak… It is certainly an honour to have to destroy them! The Zoraxian bodyguard thought in his mind with utter disgust of the human species. The humans had created a human corridor by surrounding the Zoraxians and staring at them endlessly. Swiftly the Zoraxian slipped through the crowd surrounding them in the hangar deck and began approaching one of the fighters
This should prove to me if he isn’t lying about these demolition charges Barich thought as he planted a round hand-sized demolitions charge. Immediately the Zoraxian bodyguard snuck back through the crowds and gave the ambassadors a reasonable answer for his absence.
“ I must admit you gave us quite a scare when we opened the hatch,” One of the ambassadors informed the admiral
“I’m sorry for that but we just want to be safe. Our ship is badly damaged and we just wanted to make sure you weren’t going to board us,” Admiral Magnus informed them as they walked through the security checkpoint and the lasers in the doorframe scanned them for any sharp or dangerous objects.




“Jesus the ship looks really fucked up from here,” Gunnery Sergeant Steven Halloway said as he drove his fighter into formation and caught a glimpse of the damaged cruiser
“Yeah. It’s always strange how it doesn’t seem so damage from the inside but on the outside it looks like it’s gone through hell,” Anne answered the pilot while decreasing her throttle. The cruiser had been severely damaged and through the nebula they could see flashing lights that indicated the areas that were damaged. “There’s something I don’t like about those Zoraxians… Why did they choose to help us instead of hunting us down like the others to collect on their bounty? It’s peculiar,” Steven said speaking his mind once more
“Steven I don’t know. Maybe someone’s looking out for us, maybe they’re helping us because they find Anne attractive or maybe their captain is a saint? Who gives a shit? As long as they’re helping us I ain’t complaining!” Jack answered the pilot who was starting to get on this nerves with how much he spoke his mind. Jack looked back to his radar screen and saw two inbound fighters approaching his squad
“We got bogey’s! Get into attack formation now!” Jack yelled out to his squad over the radio and immediately increased his speed.
“Looks like a couple of Boragnian scouts!” Anne said giving an obvious analysis of the situation.
“David report this back to the cruiser. Let’s get them before they jump back out!” Jack ordered one of his squad members and quickly approached the enemy fighters with his team members beside his fighter. Jack lifted his head up from the radar to see the two fighters coming out of the clouds of the nebula and into his field of vision. Jack immediately pulled the trigger on his joystick, releasing a small burst of laser rounds from his fighter and sped towards the enemy fighter he was aiming for. The Lieutenant Commander watched intently and smiled as the laser rounds smashed into the fighter but didn’t cause it to implode.
Instead a large piece of its body had been shot off and the Boragnian inside would have very little oxygen to go on in his suit. In reaction the fighter broke off from its partner, initiated it’s forward thrusters, did a flip and headed back in his foe’s direction firing it’s laser rounds wildly.
Jack battled with his joystick, attempting to get a shot in while avoiding the cluster of laser rounds soaring at him but the alien bastard got a lucky shot in and shot the nose of his fighter. Before going into a vortex of a stall Jack pulled the trigger once more releasing an ongoing wave of laser rounds heading towards his opponent. The Boragnian made an attempt to avoid the lasers but made a too late reaction as the lasers impacted all over the fighter and thus causing it to implode in on the alien occupant.
“Yeah! Eat shit you alien bastard!” Jack yelled out in triumph as he caught a glimpse of the wreckage.
“Jack look to your three o’ clock now!” Anne’s voice crackled over his radio, immediately Jack did so but only to see the second coming at him and lining up to get him while Anne’s fighter was frantically firing laser rounds at him from behind. “Shit!” Jack said in reaction and flicked the lever to full throttle so he could get out of the way before Anne could blow the Boragnian to bits. Finally Anne got the right aim and the laser rounds entered the Boragnian engines, causing a fire inside the fighter but one of the rounds from that burst smashed into Jack’s wing, leaving a tiny hole.
“Hey friendly fire!” Jack laughed as he looked at the tiny whole in his right wing
“Okay people let’s get back to Freedom!” Jack ordered shortly after chuckling to himself and quickly the squad formed up on him.
“Did you see that shot I got in on that guy! Right on the wing!” Steven bragged as they slowly headed back to the cruiser for debriefing on their patrol.
“Yeah I did that was a nice shot. You forced him to do a barrel roll!” Anne complimented to the gunny.

“What the hell!” The gunny suddenly shouted out randomly
“I’m losing control of my fighter! Thrusters are shutting down… Losing navigational computer! Something’s wrong!” Steven shouted out over the radio. Anne looked over to check on the Gunnery Sergeant and immediately saw that his cockpit had lost all power along with his engine. The gunny was drifting into the nebula
“Gunny listen to me! I need you to get out of your cockpit! We’ll tow your fighter back. Just do as I say!” Anne ordered the gunny as she broke formation and hovered over his fighter. Slowly Jack and Anne watched the pilot manually open up the canopy and drifted out into space in his suit.

The gunny looked pulled out the oxygen monitor
“Oh shit! I left this thing on! I’ve only got five minutes of oxygen left!” the gunny screamed over the radio
“Just hang on Gunny we’ll get you out of there!”
“Gunny listen to me. I’m swinging by you right now. When I come around I want you to grab onto my rudder and grab it tight!” Jack yelled out to the gunny over the radio. The gunnery sergeant turned his head to the right and could see Jack’s damaged ship moving at 5 knots towards him. Steven put his arms out nervously, ready to grab the rudder of the damaged ship while Anne started moving into a position to tow the fighter.
“Son of a bitch!” Anne’s voice cried out over the radio. Steven suddenly felt as though he was being sucked into a vacuum and in confusion Steven looked down to see that his fighter was imploding in on itself unexpectedly with Anne’s fighter also being sucked in.
“Help me!” Steven cried out in terror
“Gunny grab on!” Jack’s voice yelled over the radio, immediately Steven turned around and grabbed onto the hunk of metal in front of him.
“Anne go full throttle now!” Jack yelled out to Anne as he soared out into the nebula with his comrade David beside him.





“Freedom cruiser this is Lieutenant Commander Jack Art I need to use the emergency landing bay now!” Jack yelled over the radio as he lowered the gear and flew his ship towards the cruiser in front of him that grew larger as he got closer to the cruiser.
“Roger that Lieutenant Commander. What is the reason?” a calm voice answered over the radio. Suddenly Jack’s cockpit started flashing and in reaction he looked down at his radar and it was showing the schematics of his fighter. There was a fire in the nose of his fighter. However he could only control the flames with the fire extinguishers inside the fighter for a certain amount of time so he needed to be grease lightning and get the hell out of the nebula.
“I have a fire in the nose of my fighter and it is severely damaged!” he answered, turning on the fire extinguishers and toggling the landing gear. He turned back to his crosshairs to see that the emergency landing bay door was opening but the only problem now was that Jack was coming into fast and would crash when he got in. I must be nuts! He thought to himself as he lowered the ship onto the ground, slid across the long bay with his front thrusters going off and brakes on.
“Gunny hold on whatever you do hold on! We’re coming in fast!” Jack yelled over the radio, pulling up to help decrease his speed. Jack pressed his foot on the right pedal hard and immediately the ship turned right and impacted into the wall of the Freedom cruiser’s emergency landing bay with minor damage. He opened up the cockpit immediately and looked at his rudder to see Gunnery Sergeant Steven Morris had disappeared. Jack looked all around the bay and saw the gunny’s body on the ground against the wall but he was still moving. Slowly Steven raised his right arm and gave the Lieutenant Commander a thumbs up before falling unconscious.


Barich came out of his guest quarters, walked along the hall of C Deck onboard the Freedom cruiser. They will regret giving me the privilege to walk around freely he thought deviously as he headed towards an empty elevator an immediately pulled up the schematics on his implanted computer. He looked back at the elevator buttons and pressed the one for D deck.
He walked through the hallway with security personnel occasionally staring at him as though he were a zombie or some kind of monster. He turned right at the second hall and stopped in front of two guards guarding the surveillance room
“I have permission to look at your surveillance system from the admiral,” he explained, holding up a piece of paper but the guards gave him a look but once they saw he was bluffing they let him in.
Impressive he thought as he looked around the large room. The humans inside were monitoring sections of the desk with computers and working on other security measures like civilians who were carrying contraband items. Barich looked around for a good 10 minutes before he decided that it was time to get to work. He walked over to one of the private rooms, opened the door, closed it and inserted a seven inch blade into the person’s spinal chord so he couldn’t make a sound or make a mess for when Barich left. Immediately he got to work and jammed all feed from Section B on C deck and Section E on F deck.


Section B (The locker room), C Deck of the Freedom cruiser:
“So what happened out there Rodriguez?” one of the security guards asked as he put on his Kevlar vest
“Well we flew out there without a hitch. Everything was fine when one of the engines started to go. So Vincent turned the ship around and tried to fly back when the second engine went out. So then they pulled us in with a tractor beam but Vincent and Matthew didn’t want to give up. So they nailed a couple of Zoraxians before they got us.” Paul informed him as he closed his locker door
“Wow. But did you see anything on board the ship?” the guard asked once more
“No we were unconscious at that time so-” suddenly the cruisers started rumbling uncontrollably for some reason. All the personnel inside fell to the ground but quickly got back up on his feet. Paul turned around to get out of the locker room and find out what was happening when he saw one of the Zoraxians that came on board standing there at the door.
“Excuse me sir you’re not suppose to be here! Please go back to your-” the security guard in front of him said but for some reason he stopped in mid-sentence, make a hiccup noise and fell to the ground with blood exiting his body.
“Oh my god!” Paul said in reaction but everyone else stared at the body when the Zoraxian screamed and inserted a knife into one of the pilot’s chest.
“Take him down!” one of the security guards screamed as he tried to get his side arm out of his holster and simultaneously the other guards did the same. However the Zoraxian was too fast, sprinted towards anyone in the room and slit their necks with his knife. It wasn’t too long before all the guards were dead and the pilots along with the other personnel were trying to get out of the room. The Zoraxian had them cornered
Oh please don’t do this! Please don’t do this, please don’t do this, please don’t do this, please don’t do this, please don’t do this
Pleasedontdothispleasedontdothispleasedontdothis
And thus Paul Rodriguez was the only one left in the room and was surrounded by the bodies of his colleagues
“It is for your species own good!” the Zoraxian said to him. Paul just stood there, eyes open, sweating and preparing. The Zoraxian jumped on him unexpectedly and stabbed Rodriguez multiple times in the chest before he delivered the finishing blow.
The Zoraxian got back up, turned around to see a marine standing there with a sub-machine-gun
“You son of a bitch!” He screamed at him before pulling the trigger, releasing all 30 rounds into the Zoraxian.


To be continued…

_________________