Unless of course she was an HLF sympathizer, then that would change things, a lot.
“This the part where you tell me not to walk the same path of the Hashmedai Empress?” he said.
She lowered her holo pad. “This is the part where I tell you we need a leader that isn’t going to stray from the mission, especially if we don’t get the Captain back—”
“I did it, Commander,” EVE’s voice interrupted.
The wormhole in the center of the room began to power on and established a connection with another wormhole someplace else in the cosmos. Williams slowly looked away from Rivera and to the wormhole with a frightened look on his face and his eyes wide open. “You did . . . what?”
“You said ‘open it up’ so I did,” EVE said. “The wormhole is connecting to its most recent destination now.”
Williams stepped away from the wormhole quickly, worried at what might come through. “Oh, no, no, I didn’t mean that literally, EVE!”
The center of the wormhole glistened, flashed, and transformed into what appeared to be the inside of a ship. Distressed and tattered people wearing robes were seen in the distance while armored alien soldiers marched out from the doors behind. Other armored aliens that had been resting on the floor for some spaced-out reason rose up to their feet and pointed arm-mounted weapons at Williams and Rivera.
It was the sight of weapons that got Williams to dive for cover behind the nearby terminal and reach for his ePistol. “EVE, if you can close it, now would be a good time!”
“Attempting to—”
Static. Their connection to the Carl Sagan was lost again due to the storm. “EVE? EVE?”
Rivera hunkered down in her spot next to the opened wall control panel as her hands frantically interacted with her holo pad. “It’s the storm, Commander. Again, gimme time to find a better spot for the probe.”
Williams peeked over his cover and saw the robed people flee through the wormhole, many of them had been chained up and struggled to move quickly. Some tripped over and nearly got trampled, other’s handed children off to those that had been ahead of their escape. None of them looked hostile to him, just insanely scared and running for their lives as the hostile armored aliens behind began to open fire with their laser weapons. Williams saw four robed people fall over dead with blackened, burning wounds to their backs and arms.
“Dom?” A familiar voice called out from inside of the wormhole.
Williams peeked up above his cover and saw Foster amongst the fleeing robed people. It looked as though she was trying to get them all to flee.
“Becca?” He called out to her.
Rivera saw the good news before them. “Captain!”
“What are you doing there?” Williams said.
Foster ducked from a blast of laser fire. “No time to explain!”
Robed people are good, armored ones are not, Williams thought as he aimed his pistol forward to lay down covering fire for the fleeing people. His magnetically accelerated bullets created enough noise for the armored aliens to focus their attacks on him and less on everyone else.
Most of the fleeing robed people had left the ship through the wormhole. All that remained was Foster, and one other who was pinned down behind a crate, plus the hostile aliens up front making it impossible for her to exit without getting shot up like several dead robed people on the floor. Williams ducked behind his cover, escaping from a barrage of laser fire that flew over his head. Looking back, he saw Tolukei on the floor unmoving, passed out he hoped.
“Tolukei!” he cried out to him. “Tolukei, get up, we need your assistance!”
“This just gets better and better doesn’t it, Commander?” Rivera shouted to him.
Williams’ pistol alone wasn’t going to get Foster out to safety. Rivera not firing hers wasn’t helping the problem. “This is Commander Williams to any UNE navy personnel,” he began to transmit. “We are under attack and require evac!”
“No use, Commander, unless someone is close by, this storm is gonna muck up our com lines,” Rivera said.
Several laser-wielding grunts managed to limp through the wormhole and slowly began to close the gap between them and Williams and Rivera. Williams held on to his weapon, cleared his mind of all unnecessary thoughts, then sprung up to continue to play his role in the battle. The grunts had no shields, which was good. But they also kept on standing despite Williams putting six holes through their bodies. It only added to the anxiety he was trying to keep suppressed since he lost track of where Foster was, nor had he heard her voice recently.
“Commander!” Rivera shouted. “Give me your piece.”
Whatever Rivera had planned he hoped it would get them out of this mess quickly. He tossed his pistol through the air, she caught it only to throw her pistol back toward him. A quick three-second look at her pistol revealed that some quick modifications had been made to it.
This better be worth it, he thought, and returned to the battle. The modified pistol roared rapidly, putting more holes in his targets at a faster rate, and eventually bringing some of them down to the floor. “Impressive work, Chief!”
“I’m recalibrating the computer of the pistol, making it fire shots in a more rapid succession.” Rivera’s handiwork turned the pistol into an SMG. Williams fired more shots rapidly, it caused their advancing adversaries to think twice about their actions. “It won’t last for long, the heat sinks aren’t big enough to sustain that type of firepower,” Rivera said.
“I was just going to say why don’t all our pistols work like that?”
“Rifles have the size needed for large heat sinks, pistols don’t!” Rivera slid Williams' original pistol across the floor to him.
He held onto both pistols and grinned as his dual wielding SMGs dropped three more armored aliens. He lowered himself behind his cover as reinforcements from their ship entered spraying laser fire all over the place.
As much as Williams enjoyed the extra heat he was packing, it left Rivera defenseless. “Two? What are you gonna use?” He asked her.
“Remember my Zen thing?”
“Chief, this isn’t the time for nonviolent pacifist stuff!”
“I prefer not to personally use violence against a force that we didn’t try to speak to.”
“They’re shooting at us, and you wanna talk?” More laser fire flew over his head.
“This could be a misunderstanding.”
He sighed, and sarcastically said. “OK, go on and talk, I’ll wait you’re also multilingual.”
“Oh, um well . . .”
“What was that, Chief? Sorry, can’t hear you over the noise of these Star Wars lasers zipping over my head. Something tells me these assholes are in the exact same position! So, now that we’ve determined that talking ain’t gonna do shit, why don’t you help me out here?”
An overlord alien armed with a spear stepped next to Tolukei examining him. It quickly ran back to the rest of its kind speaking to them in a shocked manner. Williams curiously watched them from his cover, wondering why Tolukei’s presence got them so worked up and eventually forced them to retreat back through the wormhole, shooting toward Williams and Rivera in the process.
Williams with his dual might rose up from the chaos to let loose another wave of weapons fire when suddenly the wormhole shut off. “Oh, what the hell?”
“Commander, I have shut down the gate as per your request,” EVE’s stable voice revealed.
“Chief?” Williams asked as he began to look for Foster amongst the dead bodies and robed people.
“I got the probe in a stable position,” Rivera said. “I didn’t think she was going to shut it down so fast.”
Williams double-checked the bodies on the floor and the crowd of terrorized people that escaped the ship. Foster was not among them to his anger, she never made it off the ship. The only silver lining was at least she wasn’t one of the dead bodies below him.