Family from Beyond the Stars, Ch. 19 (Patreon)

CH. 19Breach

As soon as Nova had left, Kenny unbuckled himself.  He could not sit idle either while she went out to fight to protect them.  There had to be more he could do here.  

"Chandler!" he commanded.  "Take over the pilot's chair with me.  Phoebe, Joey, you handle the lower controls and whatever backup or auxiliary weapons your mother isn't directing.  Not even one gets close to her!"

His cubs yowled in unison and rushed to do as he instructed.  He jumped up into the pilot's seat, Chandler right beside him, and hooked himself in.  Once more, he saw the direct feed of the cameras flood across his field of vision as he looked out beyond their ship to the raging battle outside.  It was like a scene straight out of Hell.  Pieces of Dredges and various parts of the ships locked in brutal warfare drifted past them and towards the distant shape of the all-consuming black hole in the background.  

A sensor blared in his ears and he tore his gaze toward it.  He saw Nova was approaching the rear of the ship.  The music she had picked still blazed in his ears as he saw her, marching upright, almost as if in slow motion.  He had always thought of this song as something entirely different.

Now, all he could think of was how it somehow perfectly matched the fury and terror of the battlefield.  He had never seen someone as amazing as Nova.  As awe-inspiring.  Or anyone as badass as she looked right then.  He forced himself to concentrate.  With Nova in charge of the weapons, they would only have the boosters to help keep themselves, and Nova, safe.

He prayed that it would be enough.

***

Now nearing the rear of their vessel, Nova stood tall and strode slowly forwards, armored feet thudding between each step.  Cords and wires lifted on their own seemingly, like great serpents, as she gave them the command and hooked themselves onto the back of her armor with shuddering clicks.  As the systems booted up and she took direct control of the weapon systems, she cast her gaze around the battlefield, assessing the situation.

Things could not have been graver.  All around floated the detritus and debris of battle, slowly drawn in by the distant black hole’s gravitational pull.  Pieces and shreds of mangled, torched, and melted Dredge littered the air like shrapnel, but there too floated many warriors, their lights extinguished forever.  One of the Voyagers, sides bristling with soldiers, flashed past, still hammering away at all enemies within sight.

Before her eyes, she saw a wave of Dredges descend upon them, and while many were blasted away, numerous others emerged through the fire to latch onto the defenders.  One warrior hacked savagely through two at once before a blade emerged from his chest, followed by at least seven others as he was overwhelmed, fighting to the bitter end.  Another Female was plucked from her tethering cable with a silent scream, lifted up in the clutches of a dozen creatures to be torn apart.  The fallen were avenged but the fighting was depleting them all.

This had to end.  She was not their Queen but she was effectively their leader for this last great battle against the Destroyer.  She had the best weapons at her disposal, and she would not allow even one more murder of her kind to go unanswered for.  The whirl of her engines coming back to life, transformation matrixes given power once more, filled her heads-up display just as the Voyager peeled past again, giving her a mostly an unobstructed view of the enemy flagship through the hordes of Dredge and debris.

As she had done before, she lifted all four arms as if wielding a double brace of firearms in her armored paws.  She flexed each one, adjusting while her targeting display began flashing to life .  With a casual mental effort, she locked on her internal guidance monitors and tracking systems, attuning herself to the cannons once more.  They were true extensions of her will now, guided by her as if she still held the triggers in her paws as she brought them back online.

As they rose alongside her, ship coming to a dead stop facing the hellish spacescape before her and the thousands of flashes of gunfire, cannons, projectiles, explosions, and screams of fury, she roared at the top of her lungs through the battle-link.  Her allies, still in the line of fire, recognized what was about to happen.  All engines roared to life and they raced out of the way, many of them severely damaged, and leaving her with a clear line of sight.

Only Darken and his swarms of Dredges lay before her, converging upon her isolated position once more.  This time would be different.

Again, Nova unleashed hell.  Her arms shuddered with the pseudo-haptic recoil of each weapon as she unloaded all her anger, her terror, and her wrath upon the Dredges around her and beyond, firing directly upon and through them to attack the looming shadow of the distracted dreadnought that was piloted by her monstrous father.  

There was no room for the Dredges to maneuver that she could not see and adjust to.  They could not even get close enough to her to use their own weapons; their short-snubbed arm-mounted weaponry was efficient only at close range.  She rained death and furious righteousness upon the being that had haunted her dreams for so long and had taken everything from her people.

The void of space lit up once again as she directly guided her people's most advanced warfare weaponry to deal the most damage possible.  Nothing before her could stand up to that assault, now directly linked to her passion and fury.  It was as if the Light-Rage had bled into her weaponry now, as if her own ship was pouring everything it could, as she was, into this last, terrible, glorious battle, ready to avenge King and Creator.

Even so, there were still the hordes of Dredges.  As many as there were, the closest ones converged in their multitudes toward her en-masse.  She incinerated them with prejudice but as multiples began to fire from their own weapons, she knew there was no evading them as she was.  Projectile and plasma fire rained all around her, several even striking the dark plated hull beneath her paws.  A swarm of seeking shots descended then, filling her field of vision with light and fire.

The ship abruptly spun to the side, booster rockets coming to life and idling them just out of the spray of gunfire.  The crowd of the Dredges who had just missed screamed silently in rage before she turned her weapons on them too.  A voice came through her ear-mounted link.  'We have your back Nova!' cried Kenny.  The yowls and accompanying voices of their children followed.  'Give em' hell!'

Light, how she loved her family.  With Kenny and the cubs handling the engines to maneuver her out of the direct line of fire as much as they were able, she was able to concentrate all her attention on destroying everything within her line of sight.  Her true target, however, was not the swarms of undead members of her people, but the behemoth commanding them.  She just had to get through the waves of minions first.

Blinded by how many of them there were, she was unable to see the flock of Dredges that had crept around and drawn close enough and hover on the side of the ship opposite of her.  The first to securely attach itself to the hull inspected the ship before it with its x-ray vision.  It saw the tubes, the wiring, the tightly packed and compressed layer upon layer of armored plates and internal workings of the ship, sealed beneath magnetic shielding.  It would take time to cut through it.

Its chittering face clattered and hissed silently before it switched one arm from claws to a single-point laser emitter.  It focused the beam onto the side of the ship.  The heat of that beam, intense enough to melt metal, was still slow going to pierce the hull.  Likewise, its fellows all began to do the same, steadily working on cutting a way inside.

***

Kenny saw the alarms began to whirr.  Looking through the attached port-side cameras, he balked to see half a flock of the vile creatures clinging to the ship.  Each had its gangly, unnatural frame pressed close to the hull, a single arm apiece using some kind of tool to cut into the ship.  At first, he worried they were trying to damage the vessel, but realized the truth only a second or so later.  They were trying to breach their home.  Like burrowing beetles into the side of an oak, they cut away at the battle-scarred shielding and armored sides of the warship.

He growled aloud and grabbed for a separate control without needing to look for it.  “Oh no you don’t…” he snarled.

***

The Dredges were making slow progress when a startling whirl of motion and electronic signals drew one of their attention.  Before its vacant, empty but still seeing eyesockets, a panel opened directly ahead of it, followed immediately by a rounded dome.  Blazing light glowed as it locked onto the creature.  Recognizing the device for what it as, the Dredge had time only for a single, void-silenced shriek of alarm before the auxiliary cannon, one of the many that served as the ship’s backup defense system meant for boarding situations like these, let loose a scarlet stream of plasma.

It peeled the Dredge off the siding like a tic being expunged, half of its flank scorched and rapidly melted into slag.  Multiple other turrets erupted into view all around the saboteurs, frying and blasting them off underneath Kenny’s direct control.  Even so, he couldn’t get all of them, with his attention so scattered and the cubs having to work together to pilot the ship through the hellish battle and direct other weaponry to cover their mother’s blind spots.

One of the Dredges finally managed to cut through the very last layer of plating, forming a large enough breach to fit its head and collapsible shoulders through. It wasted no time squeezing its amorphous, gangly skeleton of a body inside like a burrowing worm.  Pressurized air rushed out around it before an unseen, emergency bulkhead plate resealed the hole.  It wormed its way into a duct, collapsing limbs and dislocating them at almost every joint before it began inching its way toward the nearest source of power that it could locate.

Its orders were clear:  Disable the ship.  Kill the pilots.  Retrieve the children.

Nova got the alert too late.  A flashing warning buzzed at the corner of her concentration, distracting her before she finally glanced down at a break in the waves.  Terror threatened to freeze her solid.  'Kenny!' she bellowed through the comms.  'One got through!'  She couldn't afford to focus on it however, despite the crippling fear that now seized at her limbs.  All she could do was keep fighting.  'Stop it before it reaches the core!' she cried at her Mate.

***

"Oh crap..." Kenny muttered in a panicked voice as he got Nova's message, just after dealing with the very last of the boarders.  Sure enough, when he glanced to the side, he saw a ship alarm going off.  He had missed one.  A bulkhead door had been deployed over the breach already but, even as he watched the feed of the hangar bay, a nightmarish black limb shoved itself through a grate before sliding back in.  Very slowly, the horrific head of a Dredge emerged from a hole that it had no business trying to squeeze through.  And it was slowly working its mangled body out, inch by inch.

"O-okay," he muttered.  He glanced at the cubs.  Their faces echoed his fear.  Indecision gnawed at him for a moment before, steeling himself, he made a decision.  "Chandler!"  He commanded.  "You keep using the boosters!  Keep us out of the main line of fire!  Joey, you take over handling the ones outside with the auxiliary cannons whenever Nova isn't directing them!"  He unhooked his suit from the pilot's chair.  "Phoebe, with me."

'Daddy?' the female Cub questioned, eyes wide and her bio-lights almost a solid wall of yellow and pink and red.  Her brothers shared her colorization and expression, equal parts shock and worry.

He gave her a fierce nod.  "You're a warrior, Phoebe.  Your brothers have their skills.  But you are your mother's daughter.  We can't let that thing get to the engines or the drive core.  You and I have to take it out."

Her eyes hardened at his resolve and she unhooked herself as well.  Chandler and Joey slid into the spots now freed up and took over more of the piloting and defense of their home.

"Keep us flying boys!" he told them and then he and Phoebe raced off from the cockpit, around the corner, and to the opening.  Down below, even distantly, he could hear the scraping, rattling sounds of the Dredge continuing to work its way free of the vent it had scrawled into.  He nodded at Phoebe.  "Nothing for it but to go for it!" he cried and, steeling himself, jumped from the ledge!

Phoebe gave an alarmed yowl.  Air whistled past his ears and cheeks, making them rattle as the ground rapidly rose up to meet him.  But Kenny had a plan.

Twisting his spine and aligning his feet with the other wall, he activated his boosters.  Like he had expected, he shot sideways while still falling.  His back slammed against the wall of the downwards corridor.  It absorbed some of the impact before he started to slide down and resume falling.  He twisted to the other side and repeated the process twice more, thoroughly bruising himself before he finally reached the bottom.  He landed flat on his face and chest, letting out a long groan of pain.

He didn't let it distract him though, hauling himself back up to his feet and stumbling down the hall towards the open hangar doors.  He heard a thud behind him and, glancing back, saw that Phoebe had just landed as well, although with much more grace and skill.  Together they peeked around the corner.  They saw it easily.

The Dredge had just completed pulling its unnatural body out of the now bent and warped vent opening and was now relimbering its multiple arms and body back into its unnatural, regular shape.  Its eyeless face scanned around the room before alighting on a panel.  Kenny knew that, through there, with enough cutting, the creature could reach the power lines and start actively sabotaging the ship.  They couldn't let that happen.

He looked down at his daughter.  "You ready?" he asked.  Phoebe blinked once, setting her face into a ferocious snarl.  Her claws flexed, tentacles extended and snapped multiple times, and she slowly rose up off her arms to stand, hunched over at the shoulder, with all four arms ready to fight.

They burst out from cover.  Kenny screamed at the top of his lungs, voice shrill and panicked.  The Dredge's head jerked around unnaturally at the neck while the rest of it remained stationary.  Its unhinged jaws hung open in a permanent gape, displaying dark fangs.  A rattling hissing shriek came from it and its gaze came to rest squarely on Phoebe.

It moved with a speed that defied all logic, bursting from a standstill to a bolt, right at them.  Four mangled metal arms flared out to the sides, clawed hands twisting and flipping into catch-claws on two of them, and knife-blade shaped cutting edges on the others.

Kenny primed his arm-cannon and slid to a stop even as Phoebe continued racing on at the monstrous nightmare thing.  The upgrade on his wrist unfolded and formed a physical, see-through barrel around his upraised fingers.  His eyesight narrowed around the sights, aiming squarely for the thing's chest.  He dialed back the power output, reducing the impact it would cause but also conserving ammo.  His thumb pulled the hammer for him and his arm shuddered as he fired.

The glowing bolt of energy sailed right over Phoebe as she ducked with crazy spatial battle awareness right at the last possible second while keeping up her speed and momentum.  The Dredge kept coming, unable to stop its ungainly, clattering body in enough time.

Even if it couldn't stop and avoid the blast, the Dredge still saw it coming towards it.  It took but a split second to react.  What it did though shocked and horried Kenny, even more than he was already seeing the thing so up close and inside their family home, their last safe place.

One arm, bearing a knife-blade, went straight out and stabbed into the metal flooring.  The limb went taut and the full weight of the monster fell behind and onto it.  Before his and Phoebe's eyes, it lifted up off its feet and twisted its metal frame in a tight spiral.  The blast sailed on and missed it, by what had to be bare centimeters, as it balanced itself solely on that one blade tip wedged into the floor.  Only once it had successfully dodged the attack did the thing twist and flip itself forward again, spinning limb over limb, right at the still rapidly approaching Phoebe.

A metal catch-claw clattered open and it snatched right at the warrior cub's skull with mechanically perfect timing.  No human would have been able to even process the complex and artistically planned maneuver.  The explosive speed and horrific grace of the Dredge was unbelievable.

Phoebe had barely a second to react, but that was all she needed.  She dropped to all six limbs and then slid along her back, twisting at the spine with her species' perfect flexibility and agility.  Her snarling face barely missed the horrific barbs and claws of the catch-limb as it clattered shut not an inch from her eye before she sped on passed and inside of its reach.

Her momentum halted just as she was underneath the thing's now wide open and planted lower limbs before she planted two paws below her and hammered straight up with her legs.  Her foot paws struck right in the Dredge's knee socket and the opposite hip, knocking it off balance and almost sending it toppling.

Kenny gritted his teeth, gripped his wrist and cranked on the pump-action slide that Phoebe's invention gave him.  Another round was automatically loaded into his weapon and energized before he fired again, this time right at the stumbling enemy.  Without the sure footing this time, this shot struck dead center, knocking it completely over and off its metal feet.

Phoebe had already finished her tumble and come out from underneath it right as its weight slammed into the hangar bay floor.  She made to leap at the downed Dredge but wisely instead leaped back and away as its limbs slashed out on all sides to prevent her attacking while it was prone.

Spine twisting and turning with no sense of natural cohesion, the Dredge's arms planted themselves on all sides and lifted itself back up, head lolling upside down.  It spun itself up on one arm and righted itself, again moving with a fluidity that defied its robotic, clunky appearance.  The smoking hole in its ribs, caused by the shot, dropped melted metal and sparks but the damage didn't seem to bother it in the slightest.

Kenny and his daughter began to pace around the thing as its head ratcheted back into a proper position, jaw clattering from side to side while still hanging permanently open in a rictus smile.  There had to be a way to flank this thing.  He primed another shot, sending Phoebe a nod.  She growled once in acknowledgement, not taking her eyes off of their enemy.  The Dredge spun to face Kenny then, catch claws clattering and bladed arms scraping the floor, producing ringing sounds that set his teeth on edge.  It started to advance, intending to kill him first.

He began to fall back, raising his weapon and aiming squarely at it again.  "Yeah, bring that pretty face closer," he snarled despite the gnawing terror in his gut.  He refused to let it overpower him though.  He was not about to let this thing, this servant of his family's greatest enemy, scare him into inaction.  He had to protect his cubs, his home, just as Nova was doing outside.

And then, despite everything, despite knowing the seriousness of it all, the battle being waged outside, the nearness of death being possible at any given second, Kenny realized something.  It was a startling and all-consuming epiphany, the singular chance of a lifetime that if he did not take advantage of it, he would forever regret it as a missed opportunity, if he did indeed survive the battle.  He stood straighter, gun-hand still poised to fire at a moment's notice, and faced the lumbering, terrifying vision of the alien-zombie-cyborg bearing its four rattling weapon-arms, and he smiled.

"Hello there," Kenny Sissom declared.  The Dredge cocked its head slightly to the side in confusion, but it lasted only a moment.  The euphoria of the reference however had Kenny completely giddy, if only for a second.  But it was a second well worth it.

Phoebe, rolling her eyes but grinning at her Daddy's nerdiness, skirted around even more to the Dredge's blind spot.  Then, with the barest clattering of her claws on the ground, she leaped for the thing's spine.  Her paws flared then and harsh bio-lights blazed along her finger tips and knuckles, leading up to her now extended claws.  The sharp curved tips lit up with sizzling energy, not unlike Nova's swords did.  Her bio-lights turned pure red and her lips pulled back in a ferocious preparation for a roar.

The Dredge had been waiting for that.  An arm shot straight out behind it, right as Phoebe came within reach.  The catch-claw snagged her around the throat, wrenching the cub out of the air.  She yowled in abrupt shock and then agony as the claw tightened its hold.

"Phoebe!" Kenny screamed.  His eyes narrowed and he started to actually charge, gun lifted.  "Get your claws off of her, you Skeletor reject!"  He aimed and fired again.

Spinning its spine to the side, the foul zombie-robot dodged his shot yet again.  He fired again, reloading already, but by now he realized the mistake he had made as the Dredge lunged toward him, hauling Phoebe along with it.

His only advantage had been his distance between him and it.  It was too fast.  He threw himself to the side, barely avoiding the scything blade of one arm as it almost took off his head.  He rolled and came back up to his feet but immediately had to jump back and drop again as the other catch-claw tried to snag him around the legs.

Kenny landed on his back from the roll he threw himself into, lifting his gun arm and drawing back the hammer, almost point blank with the Dredge.  "Eat this!" he yelled, thumb beginning to fall.  The Dredge struck in the space of a heartbeat with its other bladed arm.  His weapon never fired.  Kenny stared in shock as his hand fell to the ground beside him, severed neatly at the wrist.  The pain didn't register to him at first as he just stared at his still gun-shaped fingers, and then at the trunk of his now severed wrist.

Phoebe howled up above him in rage and denial.

Blood fountained from the wound and Kenny screamed.  The Dredge drew back the bladed arm, almost as if satisfied with itself.  The blade retracted into its wrist only to be replaced by a double-barrel of a firearm.  It aligned the new weapon with Kenny's face.  Brightness bloomed in the twin openings as death aimed squarely at his skull.  He was going to die.

His daughter, however, had other ideas.  Still hanging suspended from the catch-claw, Phoebe wormed and squirmed as much as she was able.  Her tentacles took tight grasps of the metal limb holding onto her, clawed grips taking firm holds of a pair of rivets that served as joints.  She hauled herself to the side with all her might, letting out a ferocious roar akin to her mother's, twisting in the opposite direction with her tentacles.  There was a high-pitched rending sound of metal and the arm abruptly gave way.  The Dredge jerked at the last second, gun arm wavering and blasting a hole right next to where Kenny's face was.

He scrambled back in amazement as Phoebe jerked herself and her oppressor again.  Her claws lit up again with energy and she sank them hard into the wrist and mechanisms of the grip still holding onto her.  Metal sizzled and melted before she tore herself free.  Even as she fell, she performed yet another midair twist of her spine and hammered her footpaws once more against the Dredge, knocking it forward and again off center.

Furious rasps emitted from the creature and it spun with a speed that was barely able to be followed by human eyes.  The mangled limb spun in a huge arc and smashed into Phoebe even as she was still hanging in midair, sending the cub flying off to the side.  She collided with the wall of the hangar and sank to the ground in a crumpled ball of dark fur and limbs, tentacles flopping down around her limply.

"NO!" Kenny cried.  "Phoebe!"

She didn't respond.

His eyes turned with a vengeance up to the Dredge who looked down at its half-melted, half torn-off limb, jostling it as if annoyed.  Heat and fury built up inside him and he hauled himself to his feet fully.  "You...son of a bitch..." he snarled in a rasp.

The head of the Dredge slowly turned to look at him through one empty eye socket.  Its jaws rattled in the pantomime of mocking laughter down at him.

"You hurt my little girl!"  Kenny's remaining hand shot to his side, gripping the device that Nova had made for him, just to have something in hand.  "I'm going to kill you for that!"

His hand folded around the instrument and it came up easily.  Crackling energy blazed along one edge and, looking down, he saw it open and distend.  Before his eyes, a single-edged sword, blade sizzling with pink and orange heat and light, unfolded.  It looked just like Nova's, if much smaller.  He whirled it around himself, making buzzing whirls as it sliced through the stagnant air.  It was so light.

Kenny's glowing eyes fell back upon the still unmoving Dredge.  He sank into a battle crouch, blade in hand, his wounded arm tucked against his belly.  The injury had been sealed over by the adaptive livesuit but there was no regrowing his hand.  He put that out of his mind.  He had a monster to kill and a daughter to save.

“Game on,” he growled, entire body feeling like it was filled with crackling static electricity and heat.  “Both of us are missing hands, and now the playing field’s even.  I got a lightsaber now.  What do you got?”

The Dredge turned very slowly, mechanically stiff, to face him fully, as if recognizing the danger his weapon posed, even if wielded by such a small and unassuming opponent.  Its own wounded arm hung at its side, barely still hanging on.  Its other three arms whirled around it, each sporting a blade of its own now.

“Fair enough,” he responded curtly, squaring himself off fully.  He was not a swordfighter, not a Jedi, not even a warrior.  He was just a garbageman from Earth with one hand up against a zombie-alien cyborg.  But he had something it didn’t: the anger of a Father who just saw his little girl hurt.

The Dredge prepared to lunge, but Kenny beat it to it, faster than he had ever been in his life.  He raced forward, unknown levels of rage and energy coursing through him.  It almost felt like a literal tidal wave had gathered behind him for the speed and force his charge produced.

A leonine roar echoed in his head and he voiced it audibly, the sound resounding off the walls and metal floor of his home.  He closed too fast for the Dredge to respond in time and he closed with it just as one of its knife arms slashed clumsily at his face.  He ducked, spinning on one knee while maintaining his speed, and swung hard.

His glowing sword blade hacked right through a section of the metal exoskeleton and took off one of the lower arms in one blow.  He continued his dash past it, turning his momentum into a roll and avoiding a back-handed slice from the thing as it spun to try and hit him in his exposed back.  He kept moving as he came again to his feet.  His feet left the hangar floor as he jumped, twisted in mid air and planting himself against the wall of the hangar.  Bracing himself on it while six feet up off the ground, he leaped forward again.  Boosters fired at his ankles and back, propelling him, now airborne, back toward his foe.

He roared aloud alongside that leonine voice that filled his mind, slashing again at the limb the Dredge raised to intercept him.  Again, his sizzling blade hacked into and through the black metal arm, cutting it off right at the double-jointed elbow.  The limb clattered to the ground, sparks and spraying fluids filling the air alongside its shrieking, undead cry.

This time he did not roll past it, coming again to his feet and lashing out still inside its reach at one of its legs, shearing through that as well at the double-jointed knee and sending it crashing down.  His arm swung out for its skull but a split second later jerked his head back, narrowly avoiding the creature’s last blade as it struck at his throat.  He slid back away a pace into another crouch, preparing to charge the crippled Dredge one final time.

The Dredge, now lamed and missing effectively three of its four arms, seemed to be weighing its options.  Its head swung back and forth between Kenny and the still unmoving Phoebe.  All it technically had to do was grab the cub and make its escape, but it no longer had speed as an advantage over this small, furious opponent.

He snarled audibly, drawing its attention.  He drew himself up straight, feeling taller and stronger than he ever had in his whole life.  He felt no pain or weariness.  The Light of his eyes blazed with such strength that he actually saw the Dredge flinch back, as if some part of it still understood the concept of impending death and destruction.

"You will never touch my daughter, or any of my children," he growled.  He began to walk forward, staring the thing right in the face.  He did not speak to it, however, but to the sadistic tyrant that was its master, directing it with his will from his bastion of a warship outside.  "Not ever again.  Now!"  He raised his sword and his boots began to hum as he primed another charge of the jumping boosters.  "GET!  OUT!  OF!  MY!  HOUSE!"

Kenny charged, blade drawn back and eyes set on his target, determined to end this.

The Dredge, moved mechanically, slowly, bladed arm dissembling and forming its double-barreled blaster once again.  The weapon lifted to bear on his skull as he charged straight at it, fractions of a second separating their speeds.  Time slowed to a crawl, heartbeats thudding in his ears alongside the thundering roar of the Light blazing inside of him.  Inch by inch, he drew closer, that weapon lifting ever nearer to drawing a bead upon him.  At this range, he would have no time to dodge.  He had to be faster.  For once in his life, Kenny had to be faster.

His blade smote the Dredge right underneath the curve of its cat-like chin, slashing up through its jaw, through the metal casing, and out the top.  Lights sparked, the sword blade hummed with a roar of its own, and the Dredge’s eyeless sockets actually went wide in shock as he delivered the final blow.  The entire black-metal skeleton shuddered, blaster aimed just a fraction of an inch past Kenny as he stood there, sword arm still lifted from his mighty last strike.

The Dredge, now with only half a head, severed neatly from the right jaw to the left temple, shuddered and fell backwards, arms splaying out wide like a spider’s limbs.  The blaster thudded onto the floor of the hangar with a final sounding clatter, and then it fired one last time.

Only then did Kenny realize where the weapon was aiming.  Right in front of the disposal doors that led to the outside.  His eyes went wide.  The Dredge’s unfortunately placed plasma shot sailed across the room and hit dead center on the controls.  Sparks flew and a rapid blaring alarm filled the room as the hangar bay doors rattled opened with a whooshing whirl of hydraulics.  The yawning darkness of space was revealed behind the flickering barrier that separated it from the inside of the ship.  Even before Kenny's eyes, however, the barrier dissipated.

There was a roaring sound as the pressurized air began to rush out into the vacuum of nothingness beyond.  Spare pieces of machinery and damaged items were immediately sucked out.  The Dredge vanished first, sucked out in a mangled, sizzling wreck of black metal and withered skin.  He saw it explode distantly as some random bit of scrap metal or perhaps an errant cannon blast struck it a second later.  It provided him little comfort.

Kenny tried to slide to a stop as he immediately started to be hauled toward the opening too but he had no way of anchoring himself.  He stabbed his blade into the floor, which at the very least prevented him from being sucked out into space right then and there.  Even so, the sizzling blade had no traction as it cut and warped everything it touched due to the heat and sharpness.  His feet slid forward toward the opening and the darkness beyond.

All his fears of exactly this screamed in his mind as it began to get hard to breathe.  He ducked over and over as he tried to avoid being struck with a random item as everything not nailed down to the floor was being savagely sucked out.  Alarms blazed mutedly all around his ears as his blade cut through the floor even more, costing him another six feet.  He was barely double that from the open hangar doors now and the blackness of the wartorn void beyond.  His feet were sliding with every second as if trying to get traction on ice.  He leaned back furiously to try and brace himself on the polished floor.

"It's.  Not.  Going.  To End.  This.  Way!" he yelled furiously.  He stared at the vastness of space as he felt his last dregs of stability and strength give way.  His feet left the floor and he hurtled toward the opening.

A paw caught his wrist just before he was sucked out.  He jerked to a stop, hanging there now suspended perfectly parallel with the floor.  He looked back in alarm and surprise at who could possibly have saved him at the last possible second.

"Phoebe!"

His daughter hung stoically onto a crossbeam with her three other arms, the fourth maintaining a solid grip on his one remaining hand.  'I have you Daddy!' she cried in his mind, audible even over the roar of the void.  'Just hang on!  Reach for me!'

"Sort of.  Hard.  To do!  Sweetie!" he called at her, unable to concentrate on sending back to her.  His vision was fading as he was running out of air.  He strained as hard as he could to reach up with his handless other arm for her.  Her paw grabbed for it but slipped on the blood-soaked wrist stump and he swayed more weightlessly.  His arm slid through her grasp a bit more and she frantically hauled back on him, trying to maintain her grip.  He knew the inevitable outcome of what was going to happen.  "I'm...proud...of you..." he gasped, voice not even audible to himself.

'No!' Phoebe cried, tears whipping from her eyes and falling past him.  'Family protects family!  You have to hold on, Daddy!  For me!  For Chandler and Joey!  For Momma!'

"Take care...of your...brothers..." he murmured, trying with all his strength to make his last sight be of her before she would eventually be forced to let go, whether she wanted to or not.  His hand slipped in her paw a bit more, now leaving her to hang only onto his fingers by the barest tips of her own, padded ones.  If he let go now...it would all be over.

She could recover and brace herself, maybe find a way to resist being sucked out too.  She could even survive in space for a while, longer than him anyway.  She could use her boosters, cling to the side of the ship using her paws, find a way back inside perhaps or get to her Mother on the rear.  She would be okay.

He sighed.  The adventure was well and truly over.  All he had to do to ease the inevitable was let go.  It wouldn't be her fault then, or at least he hoped she could find a way to learn to live with that.  He'd never been someone that people were afraid to lose before.  How much things had changed, and how amazing, and heartbreaking, to realize that here at the end.

'I'm sorry Nova...' he thought with a small sad smile.  His fingers relaxed slowly.  Maybe this wasn't such a scary way to die when it was truly his choice.

Just as Phoebe's grip faltered completely, accompanied by her frantic scream of denial, there was an abrupt whirring of lights.  A clattering of metal came a second later.  Kenny forced himself to look away from his daughter's face and toward where it was coming.  Even as he watched, a bulkhead door slammed over the opening, shutting it closed once more.

Immediately, gravity returned, wholly and automatically.  Kenny and Phoebe crashed to the floor, landing with grunts.  He lay there, gazing up at the ceiling in confusion and shock.  He was still lightheaded for a second or two before breathable air returned to his lungs.  He gasped and began to cough.  He blinked rapidly as his vision spun, flashing black and red, before finally returning to normal.

Phoebe's face appeared over him, filling his field of vision with her frantically worried and relieved expression.  She nuzzled and purred against him before, at his grunt, she helped him sit up.  He lacked the energy for much else right then.

His sword was gone, probably sucked out through into the void he himself had almost had been too.  His severed hand was as well.  In his half-choked and beleaguered mind, he felt really sad about that.  He realized why a second later.  "I lost your device, Pheebs," he said, glancing groggily at his daughter, voice hoarse.  "I'm sorry about that...what even happened?"

'That doesn't matter!' came his daughter's furiously emotional reply.  She nuzzled him harder.  'Bulkhead doors finally sealed the breach!' Phoebe explained as they rested there.  'The system took a while to repair the damage enough to do so.'  She huddled down against him, trembling all over.  'We need to get your injury tended to!'

He shook his head.  Feeling was slowly returning to him, allowing him to ignore the system alerts and warning signs his livesuit was trying to give him.  Strangely enough he was very  aware he was missing a hand.  He just didn't have the capacity to care right then.

"No..." he grunted.  "We need to get...back to the cockpit.  Your brothers are helping your mother in the fight as much as they can.  We have to...get back up there."

Phoebe growled and looked off to the side and across their utterly trashed living quarters.  She firmly butted him with her head and dashed off before returning a moment or so later.  Kenny had barely time to respond or even think before a sharp sting came at his neck, making him jerk.  A moment later, relief washed through him.  He saw Phoebe toss aside the now empty golden vial of bio-fuel she had injected him with.

Energy, air, and rejuvenating chemicals rushed through his entire body, removing the throb of pain and exhaustion temporarily.  He climbed slowly, still unsteady, to his feet and nodded at his daughter.  "Thanks, sweetie," he grinned.  He rubbed his one remaining hand across her cheek, which made her purr only slightly before they both set their eyes grimly forward.

They had a very long climb to make back up.