703: 703 Clearance

703 Clearance

Now that the boss had all of his weapons ready, Max led the way toward the front of the ship, where he detected the majority of the remaining Klem. The Station Boss's thoughts were entertaining him as they advanced, with the Valkia eagerly looking around for targets so that he could try out the weapons that he had just realized he was equipped with.  0

Max didn't have the heart to tell him that the two pistols, which he was very proud of, were basically children's toys in comparison to the Ion Blasters that the Archangel Exoskeleton was equipped with, but he would learn that on his own soon enough. 

Max could hear the skittering of spiked legs across metal floor tiles up ahead, and it didn't sound small enough to be a Swarm Bug. 

Max signalled the approaching danger, and the Valkia spread his wings so that he could bring all four of the suit's weapons to bear on anything that came down the hallway. 

Max prepared to open the door on the right side of the hallway where the noise was coming from, and the Station Boss tensed up for action. With one swift kick, Max broke the door in and moved forward, blasting the Klem Warrior that was behind it and then one more in the middle of the room. A third made a dash for the exit, where a sizzling barrage of firepower vaporized it in an instant. 

"You know, you don't have to shoot it that much. Once you blow a hole in the head, they're pretty much dead." Max joked. 

"Humans have a strange idea of how much firepower is appropriate, don't they?" The Valkia laughed, hiding his shock at the appearance of the vicious bipedal insect with huge spiked forelimbs. 

"What exactly did those things evolve to kill?" He asked after shooting the Warrior one more time, just to be sure it was dead. 

"They have specialized in fighting a species of Giants that we have in our Galaxy known as the Narsians, as well as the Light Mecha of the human military forces. Those spikes will cut through nearly anything." Max informed him. 

The boss gave the Warrior's corpse a closer inspection and then noticed the gouge in the alloy floor where it had fallen. The tips of the forelimb spikes had dug into the durable metal as if it were soft wood, even without the creature forcing them. 

"The barrier will hold up against that, right? I'm not a coward, but those things aren't normal." He asked. 

"Not a problem. It will take multiple hits from a Klem Warrior before depleting the power pack. Just be sure to kill it before that happens. There should be a spare power cell in the flat space as an emergency backup if your charge runs low." Max explained. 

That was enough to assure the Valkia of his relative safety, and the duo began to move forward again, checking every room that they passed for any signs of the Klem and marking the sealed doors with a paint marker after they had searched them. 

Having a visual aid helped them tell where they had searched already, and the power to the doors was cut, so unless the Klem learned to operate the override, they wouldn't be able to close them again after they forced them open, making it obvious if they had missed something. 

The sound of banging and laughing echoed down the corridor behind them, and Max smirked at the happy thoughts Nico was sending out as she found the few Klem who was hiding at the rear of the ship and eliminated them so that the cargo extraction could be completed as soon as possible. 

Annabelle was on door guard duty, which she was convinced was one of the most vital duties among any of the crew. After all, it was the heavily injured door guard they had met at the start who had kept the Klem from escaping the ship in the first place, so someone had to take over his position. 

With Nico there, nobody actually needed to physically do the job, but it kept her at the door and out of trouble, with her curiosity restrained by a sense of duty to protect the crew. They had avoided telling her that the crew was unloading a huge number of crates full of illicit narcotics for the Black Market, but the sentiment was the same. 

Max cleared an empty room on the left side of the corridor while the Valkia blasted a group of Klem Swarm bugs in a food storage room on the right, then moved in to see how they got in. 

"The ventilation system. The smaller bugs can get through it. We should likely purge this room as well, in case they've set up those damnable pods somewhere in the pantry." The Valkia suggested. 

"That works." Max agreed and gave the room a wide dispersion blast from his Disruptor, breaking everything into single molecules that landed like piles of dust on the floor. 

They moved forward to the next door, and Max realized that they had reached the bridge. So far, they had only come across a small sample of Klem and nearly no bodies other than the ones in the Cargo Hold by the exit, so he hoped that there was some sort of additional data stored here that would give them a clue about the Klem which wasn't included in the ship's logs. 

The door was physically blocked from the other side, and wouldn't open with the control pad, so Max crouched to try to force it open with his boot, using the decorative ridges for leverage. 

"Prepare to shoot when it starts to open. We don't know what's inside, but it might not be friendly." Max reminded his temporary partner and began to push with all his might. 

The door creaked but didn't budge, making both Max and the Valkia curse. 

"They've welded it shut. There must be crew members on the other side of that door." The Station Boss decided. 

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