Chapter 21: Belly of the Beast

A second later, Howard found himself upon the Invader Mothership, exactly where he had planned himself to be right now: in a remote cargo hold filled with crates and containers of all sizes, marked in the strange Invader language. There was only a minimum of security guards. With his pistols drawn, he approached them, trying hard not to make a noise. However he did not notice a small crate in front of his left foot, and kicked it accidentally, causing it to slide over the ground with an abnormal loud scratching sound. This off course caused the guards to turn around with their weapons drawn and open fire upon him.

Quickly he dived behind one of the large crates, focused on the positions of the guards as he remembered them, jumped up, and fired.

Howard was outnumbered, literally five to one. He had only one advantage: these Invaders didn't have the slightest idea who they were dealing with, and so they treated him like an average fighter.

One of the Invaders slid down the floor, firing his weapon through the open corridor between several crates, attempting to hit Howard. Howard jumped up just in time, fired his trusted pistols once, and penetrated his opponents' natural armour with just one dual shot, hitting him in the head. The wounds were small, but fatal. The Invaders brain was squashed on the inside, and dead on impact.

Quickly Howard changed his position, moving erratically through the various cargo containers. However, he was on their territory, and two of them eventually managed to trap him in a small corridor between a few enormous crates, slowly closing on him from both sides with their guns drawn.

Howard's brain worked like lightning, examining possible solutions, playing scenarios, and within a few seconds he knew what to do.

As he got ready, the world seemed to slow down to a state of slow-motion. He threw his pistols towards the first Invader, who was surprised, and in a reflex tried to catch them and thereby dropping his gun. Howard took a dive for the gun, grabbed it and fired at the second Invader. The gun was heavy for the Plexxan. Invaders had much more body strength, and they had the advantage of a second pair of arms. This gun was off course especially constructed to accommodate for that biological feature. It had two handles, one on top, and one facing down. Both had a trigger-like button which fired the device. Both had to be used at the same time to make the weapon be activated. Howard had to use both his hands to fire the weapon.

He pressed the buttons with all his force, and an all destructive beam of energy hurled towards its target, which was firing a similar gun towards the Captain.

The shockwave that the gun produced threw the old Plexxan backwards with great force, knocking over his second enemy. The Invader hit by the beam was catapulted towards the stack of crates behind him. When he hit the crates, his massive body mass and the force of the beam caused him to crash right through the bottom box. With one of its sides completely gone, the crate collapsed under the weight of the other crates on top of it, causing the Invader to be crushed under the weight.

In the mean time Howard had managed to get up, grab the gun again and was slinging it at the first Invader, who was desperately trying to work the Plexxan pistols. The gun hit him, handle first, against his neck. Although the Invader body is completely covered in strong natural armour and the skin underneath has incredible strength, the neck, especially the sides, is vulnerable.

The handle crashed into the neck plating, piercing it as if it was a piece of paper, and dug deep into the flesh, thereby severing several arteries. This caused massive internal bleeding, while that the handle kept going further, smashing into the vertebrae of the neck, completely shattering them on impact. The Invader fell down, life slowly fading out of his body.

Howard grabbed his pistols and went to find the other two guards. One of them had climbed upon the crates and tried to ambush him by jumping down as Howard moved right underneath him. Unfortunately, whether it was due to lack of brainpower or just sheer underestimation of his opponent, the guard had not thought of the possibility that Howard had fast reflexes.

And that was just the case, despite of his much advanced years - he was old, very old for Plexxan standards: 136 Terran years, and that while most Plexxans rarely live beyond 140 - but his reflexes were still quite rapid, even though strongly affected by his advanced age.

As the guard jumped down, Howard rolled forward and turned around, just in time to see the guard come crashing down. As his opponent desperately tried to get back on his feat, Howard pulled the trigger on his pistols, and hit the alien body five times before he was sure that he was dead.

The last guard proved tough, but Howard eventually managed to smoke him out of his hiding, and suddenly had the guard storming at him at full speed. Then Howard noticed that he stood right in front of a communication console. Years of studying the Invaders had resulted in a rather advanced knowledge of both their language and the working of their systems. He quickly opened a channel to the bridge of the ship, which opened in an instant. Bob answered agitated: "Yes?"

Then, on the bridge the speakers were suddenly filled with the voice of the old Plexxan: "Knock, knock!". Before Bob could respond at all, all heard some muffled noises, indicating that someone fell or had quickly jumped onto one of the smaller crates, and then a huge bang deafened the crew on the bridge. After that, nothing but static: the Invader guard had crashed into the communication console.

Howard was amazed by the sheer amount of blood that had forced its way out of the head of the Invader. His entire uniform was covered in the yellow-brown coloured and rather smelly liquid.

The wall had been redecorated in the same colour, and finished off with pieces of flesh, brain and muscle dripping off the wall. The entire view was disgusting.

Howard quickly made his way out of the cargo hold, leaving a small battlefield behind, and started making his way to the bridge. He knew that he had to move fast now that Bob knew that he was on the ship, and that he had a location from where he had started moving. But Howard had always enjoyed a good challenge.

Bob immediately ordered his ships security personnel to start searching for the intruder and to bring him to him. His explanation - not surprisingly - was that he "wanted to deal with that old pest personally, once and for all".

Howard moved fast, and quickly ran into some of the crew, who were startled and amazed at his presence, but were not able to resist his weapons fire. Unfortunately, the Mothership was large, and housed many crewmen, and it seemed that a large portion of the crew managed to locate themselves on the route the President was taking. This caused his ammunition supply to run low quite rapidly, and soon he found himself with empty pistols facing a security team.

The Invaders were quite a bit taller then the Plexxan.

They approached slowly, and gave their prey thereby the time to arm himself with his Battleswords.

The metal of the swords was shining bright in the hallway lights. Howard slowly positioned himself into a good position, making sure that he was not cornered. Then, the first one took a shot at attacking him. Unfortunately, Howard did not carry his swords with him at all time without a reason: he was much more adept at the subtle arts of sword fighting then he was a gunman. The Invader was struck by a strong blow to the left shoulder, cracking his strong outer armour and causing him to bend through his knees somewhat. The second sword came crashing into his right side, just between the both of his right arms, cutting deep into his flesh. As the first attacker fell to the floor, feeling pains he had never felt before, the others attacked. Guns were fired, but all shots missed their target. To the large Invaders, whose body structure did not allow them to be as agile as their opponent, the intruder was lightning-fast. Howard struck with strong blows, had his swords dive deep into his opponents, spilling their blood all over the hallway.

Soon he was the only one standing, with four neutralized enemies unconscious, seriously wounded or dying at his feet.

Quickly he moved further through the ship, avoiding the crew as much as possible. However, the ship was large, and several times something very similar happened, each time with pretty much the same outcome.

The Plexxan forced his way through the halls, leaving a trail of corpses. The Invaders seemed to be no match for him and his weapons. He slit their throats, pierced their bodies and even snapped their necks between a column and the floor by applying his full weight upon them, while being jumped by another Invader.