“So you admit you know who we are, yet you still try to bluff your way out of this? You must have been hit very hard in the head indeed,” Wispy said, still chortling.
“I know who he is,” Jason said, nodding slightly towards Corenntal. “Nobody gives a shit about you.” Wispy was right, however. He was trying to bluff his way out of his current predicament. While they may have been petty thugs, they were at least smart enough to put him in a location with enough shielding to block his tracking signal. Corenntal stopped laughing and walked up to punch Jason in the solar plexus as hard as he could. Jason hunched forward against the restraints and struggled to get a breath in through his damaged airways.
“Don’t insult my brother,” Corenntal said ominously.
“Brother?” Jason said doubtfully through fits of gasping. He opened his mouth for another clever insult, but thought better of it. Besides, he wasn’t sure if this species even had mothers. “Last chance, bud. Walk away and this will just be a horrible misunderstanding.” This again elicited bouts of laughter from the two and even from the other thugs that were just beyond the door, listening in. Jason could count four distinct voices out there. The laughter was loud enough that he almost missed the subsonic hum that was building in intensity. By the time they stopped and began to take notice of the sound, it had grown into an all-too-familiar rumble that was shaking fixtures and could be felt through the floor.
“Too late,” Jason said with a grim smile.
“What—” Before Corenntal could finish his thought, there was a muted explosion somewhere in the building and the power failed completely, plunging the facility into darkness. “Get down there and find out what happened!” he yelled. Two of the hallway dwellers jogged off at his command, bumping into the walls and each other as they went.
BOOM!
A sizable section of the ceiling in the corridor outside of the room collapsed. The passageway was filled with choking dust and debris as Corenntal’s underlings tried to get a light source to see what had happened.
“I think I found an emergency light,” someone called down the adjacent corridor, just as there was a loud whump from where the ceiling had collapsed. As Corenntal and Wispy peered into the gloom, faintly illuminated by the weak light streaming through the hole, two crimson orbs ignited from within the dust cloud and the loud whine of weapons charging could be clearly heard.
An enormous battlesynth burst from the dust and debris with blinding speed, firing his arm-mounted plasma cannons down the corridor as he made short work of the guards in the passageway. A second dark shape dropped through the hole in the ceiling and strode directly towards the still-open door with heavy footfalls. Corenntal and Wispy were so fixated on the battlesynth they didn’t see it.
The emergency lighting kicked on just in time for the pair of criminals to see Crusher filling the entire doorway, his face a mask of unmitigated rage. When he looked down and saw Jason chained to the chair and beaten to a pulp, he leapt across the room with a deafening roar and smashed a closed fist into Wispy’s head. The alien was dead before he hit the far wall. Corenntal was struggling with a small blaster when Crusher grabbed his arm and twisted it around, breaking it in several places.
“Wait!” Jason struggled to get out, the dust clotting up all the blood and making it hard to breathe or talk. “He’s the one we’re after. Don’t kill him.” Crusher lifted Corenntal up by the neck until he was at eye level and let out a rumbling snarl as he seemed to debate on whether or not to do as his captain had asked.
“Lucky!” Crusher bellowed down the corridor. “Get in here!”
A moment later, the battlesynth shouldered in through the doorway. Between him and Crusher the small room now seemed even smaller as Jason fought down waves of vertigo.
“Captain,” Lucky said crisply. “Please do not move.” A whine and sizzle let Jason know that his friend was using a cutting laser to remove his restraints. When the arm chains let go he nearly pitched forward onto his face, and was only stopped by a gentle but firm metal hand on his shoulder to catch him. He could not feel or move his arms as they’d been cinched tightly behind him for days, and they now hung uselessly at his sides.
“I’m taking this sack of shit to the ship,” Crusher said. “I’ll be back to help you with him.” With a yank the Galvetic warrior hefted Corenntal off the floor and carried him back through the doorway by the neck. Corenntal was in so much pain from the shattered arm he barely made a whimper. “Phoenix, I’m coming up the beam with the primary objective. Stand by,” Crusher said into the com as he stomped back to their ingress point.