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Hearth Star: System Broadcast

By Psion

A Hearth Star Story

All Rights Reserved

The Hearth Star, a massive space ship the size of a small planet plodding long in the endless blackness of space. Ruled by the Wuffs, notorious space pirates known and feared across the galaxy, this sprawling weaponized starliner had become infamous for being a mobile port of call for marauders across the galaxy. Yet not everyone aboard the ship was evil. In the labyrinth lower levels of the Star, largely abandoned by the ship's lupine masters, small communities of escaped slaves and survivors managed to eke out a meager existence. Humans kidnapped from a ravaged Earth and stranded civilians and colonists of the technologically advanced Galactic Republic inhabited these lower levels. Recently some of the Republic's stout defenders had also found their way aboard the Star, putting things in a very precarious position…

Lieutenant Jerky of the Republic Star Corps had plenty of reasons to be satisfied with the progress his squad and their IPA cohorts had made over the last few weeks. Infiltrate the Hearth Star, gather information that will be sent back to their respective agencies, and set up a foothold for an eventual takeover of the massive world ship. There had been many unexpected developments of course, not in the least was the discovery of what appeared to be an entire pre-stellar civilization abducted from their homeworld by the Wuffs. But regardless the mission went on, a base of sorts had been established aboard the Hearth Star, a venerable treasure trove of information about the ship, its layout, and the people who lived on it was collected; now came the most crucial part of their initial mission, sending a message back to their superiors to send a full battalion of Star Corps troopers to take over the ship. For the rotund armored elephant, that task was proving to be much more difficult then it first appeared.

In the encampment of Freeman's Hold, a small town the humans had established in one of the Star's larger storage rooms, Jerky sat in conference with Freeman's Hold's mayor and founder, Jonathan Freeman. As the two male's sat alone, the heavy-weight space marine could tell by the absence of the rest of the civilian council and by the look on the human's face that this meeting was not going to go well.

Jonathan made a show of exhaling and leaning back into the prefabricated plastic chair at the conference table, finding something very interesting about the roughly welded alloy table and tapping his thumbs together. “Well, I suppose this is the part where you ask us to help you send a message home…" He sighed, finally looking the other male in the eye.

“Yes. But where are the others, I thought I gave plenty of notice."

“You did. I never told them because I already know how it would go." The human mayor replied, suddenly looking very tired to the Corps trooper's eye. Without waiting for him to respond, Freeman continued. “You would say your bit and it would come down a vote. Cinnamon and the Guilder holdouts would vote yes, I would abstain, and the other human governors would vote no almost immediately. Majority rules, the motion dies right then and there. Then the yelling and bickering would start… And then the fragile balance I worked so hard to put together would crumble like a house of cards."

“Why?" Jerky asked.

Jonathan laughed and shook his head. “We're both soldiers Jerky, what's going to happen once your fellow Corpsmen come in riding like the mythical cavalry of old Earth cinema and take control of the Hearth Star away from the Wuffs?"

“We'll make sure the Wuffs and other pirates are punished for crimes against sapient life and send everyone else home. The Guilders, the humans-"

“What home Jerky?" The human governor replied abruptly, placing particular emphasis on the word “home." The olive-clad Jerky was briefly silent as he started to understand the human's issue.

“What happened to Earth?"

“Don't know and that's what scares us. It would be one thing if we knew for certain but we don't. We don't even know where it is relative to things like the Republic. Maybe it's nearby, maybe it's not. Maybe everything's fine back home and life continues to go on though I doubt it. Maybe the planet had been bombed into irradiated rubble which is entirely possible given how the Wuffs said hello and how we told them to go fuck off in turn." Freeman snorted.

“First time your species makes contact with a star-faring civilization and it's the Wuffs, that could not have ended well."

“No kidding. The whole western hemisphere of my planet woke up one morning and Earth suddenly has a second moon, then suddenly the new moon is flinging small asteroids the size of tram cars at us, each one hitting the surface with the force of a small nuke. So we answered back with our own nukes. Every country on the planet that had them fired them, the entire planet's stockpile of atomic weapons spent in a fireworks display that lasted thirty minutes and the Hearth Star shrugged it all off like it was nothing. We had enough bombs to vaporize every last man, woman, and child on the planet several times over and it still barely scratched the Star's paint job… and then the drone fighters and landing parties were sent out. The rest, as they say, is history. As far as anyone on the ship knows, all that's left of humanity is either here on the Star or sold to some alien brothel somewhere. Whether we like it or not, the Star is all we have left that can be called home. If the Republic takes full control of the ship then that leaves us with a very uncertain future. I mean come on, none of the members of this council is a stranger to how utterly stupid politics can get. If you win, odds are good that we're either going to get evicted or fight over the spoils because no one smart is going to trust any one group with a massive battleship capable of turning an entire planet's surface to volcanic glass, which leaves us in a very unpleasant limbo unless you discover Earth really quickly or have a spare habitable planet we can colonize. For most of the council, the idea of losing the ship to you is worse then losing the ship to the Wuffs, which we probably will at the rate things are going."

“What do you mean?"

Jonathan shook his head. “In the short term, we're doing okay. Defenses are holding, supplies will last us a few weeks of constant siege if it comes to it. But long term… I've been trying to keep a running tally of every Wuff killed in every fight we've had with them and compare it against what we believe to be the average birth and recruitment rates. Assuming the rates are correct, for every Wuff we killed up until you arrived and started drastically upping the body count, five take his place. Since you arrived, that number has dropped down to three. Even at that rate, I give us three, maybe four months before we're reduced to fighting them with pieces of pipe and harsh language. So now you probably understand our problem; we're dead if we don't help you, odds are pretty good we'll be homeless if we do help you. If given the choice between the two, the others would rather die regardless of what I feel on the matter."

Jerky opened his mouth to protest, to try and convince the human to help him persuade the others, but Freeman cut him off. “As for me… I'm a soldier of my people, same as you, veteran of two bush wars on my planet and I'm tired. Tired of fighting. Which why I'm trying to help you under the table. I've spoken to some of my scouts and a few folks I know I can trust and they're already looking. Been looking since you helped Claire in that fight outside the massive Verm nest on the Waste Storage levels a couple days ago… which reminds me, Claire claims she encountered a big guy in pumpkin orange plate mail and carrying around a weird trident jabbering something about Medivos earlier in that same run. Know anything about that?"

“Medivos? That's a planet the Republic had signed a treaty with a few decades ago, home to several warrior brotherhoods of space knights. Militant, very pompous, like to eat their foes; if one of their knights are on board then it's almost certain that there are several. They've talked about launching a crusade against the Wuffs for a few standard years now, I suppose this means they finally got around to being more then talk."

“Eat their foes… please tell me you're joking. If not, well I hope the Wuffs don't give them indigestion then." The human's reaction did not surprise Jerky in the slightest, most civilized species tended to balk at the notion of eating other sapient life.

“You probably shouldn't be worried. They're rather slow and ungainly thanks to their constant gluttony and far too concerned about honor and glory to pick a fight with a nearly extinct species."

“Gee thanks for the reassurance, I think." Freeman replied sarcastically as the meeting came to a close.

Claire Lockhart was silent as she slowly walked down the darken hallways of the underdecks of the Hearth Star, her journey taking her close to the edge of the mapped parts of the ship. Off the tram at Bernie's Station, Claire hated Bernie's Station. Founded by, of course, a man named Bernie, it was a small settlement of about twenty humans that never got along with the GalRep refugees so instead they struck out on their own and managed a meager existence in a converted tram station far away from the rest of the inhabited parts of the lower levels. The local inhabitants glared at her, the “alien sympathizer," and she glared right back before heading towards the edge of the station. The retaining strap on her pistol holster hung open as she walked past a few of Bernie's tougher enforcers and out into the rundown corridors beyond, her patrol beginning in earnest. Soon she'd have to start updating the map herself and little by little, the colossal space ship will be fully explored. Maybe then the humans would finally have an advantage over the Wuffs.

Lights flickered above her head ominously as the slender warrior woman cradled her trusty shotgun and walked past dismounted wall panels, the conduits and wiring behind them dangerously exposed. The Wuffs never did much when it came to basic maintenance, most of the time it was up to the stranded humans and Guilders. Wild Verm and the faint stench of animal dung told her no one had been to this part of the ship in ages. Taking a right turn at a promising intersection and marking the way she came with a piece of white chalk, Claire swept the unexplored hallway with a quick glance. Two, four, six doors that opened to places that weren't on the map, any one of them could contain the object Freeman asked her to keep an eye out for or none of them could. Even with a vague idea of what they were looking for thanks to Alex, it was an absolute dice roll whether or not they could find a node for the ship's ansible network that the Jerky and Cayenne could hack to send a report to their superiors.

A message to someone off of the ship… the human gunwoman wasn't entirely sure how she felt about that idea as she stopped in front of the first door and figured out a way to carefully pry it open without alerting anything that may be nesting on the other side. The idea created too many questions she'd rather not think about at the moment but it was something that was bound to happen sooner or later. She couldn't imagine Jerky wanting to just sit and twiddle his thumbs like the rest of them stuck on this damn ship.

Jerky… now there was another thing to think about. One she wouldn't mind thinking about if it didn't eventually force her to contemplate some of the other things on her mind. The woman shook her head as she found purchase on the door with her gloved hands and was able to slowly coax it open. With people born and dying every day, it was inevitable someone would be having their wedding on the day the world ended. Still, that didn't lessen the sting of it being her wedding that happened to fall on the day the Wuffs attacked… As for Jerky himself, that was a very interesting question. For all his effort he wasn't quite subtle enough to hide that he at least had an interest in her. That much was clear. What wasn't clear was how she felt about the idea of an inter-species romance or if she was even ready to move on for that matter.

Slamming her fist into the metal wall, she stared angrily into the empty janitorial closet, as alone in her thoughts as she was in her search for the ship's damn comm. relay. Why couldn't everything be as easy as fighting Wuffs? That was simple, straightforward, and easy to focus on. Deciding what she wanted to do with her life beyond that was decidedly less so.

The sound of insect mandibles clicking together from somewhere further down the corridor brought her back to the present with a jolt. On reflex she checked her sheathed power sword and tightened her grip on her shotgun. Insect chattering aboard the Hearth Star was a new sound; new sounds usually meant something she hadn't seen before, usually that meant something new was trying to kill her…

Alex smiled to himself as he explored a level below Claire, flashlight piercing the inky blackness where the ship's own lighting system had gone offline, occasionally looking down to update a notebook map with a well-chewed pencil. The green-eyed techie was happy to help Freeman find a communications array; his explorations were already taking him closer and closer to the edge of the explored parts of the ship anyway. The instant the mayor had told him what he wanted the black-haired young man to find, Alex immediately thought of Wrench, the blue-furred lapine tech-smith he frequently collaborated with. The red-haired female had been bothered by something and Alex thought finding this machine would be a good way to cheer her up. He liked seeing Wrench smile; it was one of the few things he still had left that made him happy…

Collapsed pipes and other debris meant it was slowly going through the corridor, one long hallway unbroken by doorways or maintenance hatches. The human scrounger could hear the hum of the electromagnetic tram rails reverberating through the metal wall to his right. What lay on the other side of the wall to his left was a mystery, had to be something big to be this unbroken without a door, probably fuel, coolant, or some other bulk reservoir of supplies.

The chitterling of insects from somewhere further down the dark hallway made the slender male freeze in fear. Alex never liked insects and one of the few upsides to being stranded in a purely artificial environment was that there weren't many bugs even with all the filth the Wuffs kept laying around. Or so the human gearhead thought at least. Turning his flashlight further down the hallway and bathing the far end in a pool of light, Alex saw what waited for him. Gazing upon the compound eyes of his worst fears made reality, the human allowed himself to scream…

Meanwhile, in the Gud Times Mead Brewery up in the recreational levels of the Mead Hall, the largest supplier of honeyed space mead was a whirl of activity, drones and slaves struggling to keep thirsty privateers and marauders partying in the rest of the leisure decks supplied with hard alcohol. Machinery and pipes hissed and bubbled as the brewery's Wuff supervisors argued amongst themselves in the office.

Daisy, one of the rare female Wuffs seen outside of the residential levels the lupine space pirates normally kept the female half of their species consigned to, sighed and leaned back into her well-cushioned chair to help take the weight of her considerable breasts and enormous belly off of her spine. Only a month standard and already she looked as overstuffed as a Star Corps trooper after a buffet crawl, fortunately for her this wasn't her first pregnancy as already she could tell this was going to be a big one. Shame her brother's attitude wasn't doing much to make handling this litter any easier…

“Our supply of honey's fine!" Bloodletter fumed furiously as she brought up the harvest schedule.

“You haven't gone down and harvested any for three weeks!" She argued back, whether their supply was fine or not, it would not be good to fall behind on this particular chore.

“Because our tanks are fine, they're good for another week at least!" He continued. Typical Blood, loved to drink mead and get into fights, horribly lazy when it came to the business of making mead.

“But that means no one's gone and harvested honey for at least a month! You remember the last time we got behind on our harvest schedule!" Daisy countered with a twang of remembrance, she definitely did.

“Yeah, me and the fellahs had to dump a bunch of the producers on a fatass GalRep agri-world we were passing by because they bred too fast. You're still worrying too much, focus on your litter woman." He replied dismissively before walking out of the office in a huff.

Daisy shook her head but let it go. Her brother was typical of a Wuff male, hot-blooded and shortsighted. One of these days they would enrage the wrong alien culture, if they hadn’t already. She just wished she knew whether or not it would come to haunt only them or the species as a whole…

Space bugs, Claire somehow should have suspected that there would be space bugs on the Hearth Star. Still, to see them now, she wished she had time to wonder how no one managed to notice these things yet. Big, bulbous ant-like creatures with massively bloated transparent abdomens that wobbled about with some kind of jelly, they were hard to miss. Harder still if they managed to overrun a station which was possible given how many of them were starting to swarm her right now, over two dozen seemed to squeeze out of doorways and side corridors. Gunfire echoed from a level below her, clearly someone else was in the area and had also encountered these fat things. More worrying was the sound coming from Bernie's Station, a massive reverberating thud of metal slamming on metal echoing through the corridor in response to the repeated sound of a handgun firing. There was only one thing that could be, the emergency release on the main bulkhead doors being activated and the gates being sealed shut. Hard to not be angry about hearing that noise, it meant Claire was now on the wrong side of an impervious thirteen-ton duralloy barrier.

Firing off another shell from her shotgun, the brunette woman went into a fighting retreat, racing down the dim metal tunnels with the chitinous aliens hot on her heels. Left turn, right turn, straight through, the huntress did her best to feel her way to the long, straight corridor she knew ran parallel with the tramway. Needed to keep moving, keep moving and try not to think about the unknown explorer somewhere below her that was likely going to die. Then again, she might stand a chance herself …

“This is Claire Lockhart!" She barked into the short-wave radio on her shoulder, keeping it to a frequency she knew everyone would hear. “I'm being chased by some kind of space bugs outside of Bernie's Station, Bernie and his people have locked themselves up tight, have to try and make my way to Blackman's Junction on foot! Damn it Jon, I and whoever else you have out here on the far end of the map need some backup!" She shouted, quickly getting out of breath from having to flat out run from the creatures still on her heels, odds were good no one would be able to respond in time but at the rate things were going it wouldn't hurt to ask.

“Message received Lockhart, we're on our way. We can access Blackman's Junction from the tram, correct?" Lt. Jerky replied.

“Hail milady, do you need assistance?" Another voice called in heavily accented Universal on the same frequency. Claire ignored him, now was not a good time for idiots playing practical jokes.

Lockhart was too focused on fighting back against the numerous alien bugs to respond at first, nearly shooting Alex by mistake when he frantically climbed out of a maintenance conduit and fired a few rounds from his handgun in a blind panic at something crawling up after him. Things were getting out of hand; they needed to get out of the corridors before the two of them get overrun.

“Yes, Blackman's the second to last station on the Underworks tramway." She answered at last as the two humans started running again. One of these days she just knew her number was going to come up and there wouldn't be anything anyone could do about it…

Blackman's Junction was an abandoned settlement, a monument to how fragile the human's hold on the Hearth Star really was. Originally founded by a man named Gabriel Blackman, Blackman's Junction had potential to be the heart of the refugees' efforts to survive in spite of their situation. Plenty of space, access to a water purifier the Wuffs couldn't tamper with, and there was even a weird species of edible fungus growing in abundance nearby in one of the sewer cisterns. If Freeman's Hold was a town, the Junction had the potential to be practically a city. And then it found mysteriously abandoned about four months ago.

As far as anyone Claire talked to knew, Blackman's Junction was just found abandoned one day. The people there stopped talking to the other enclaves, stopped trading goods back and forth, and when a Ranger patrol from Freeman's Hold went to investigate, they found everyone gone. Not dead, just gone. There had been some evidence of a massive struggle but no bodies, no blood, no real evidence to tell what had happened other then it was sudden and violent. Beds were unmade, lunches were left half-eaten on the table, and the floor of the north entrance to the settlement was littered with shell casings for the crudely made submachineguns the local militia liked. If there was an attack it had happened too fast for Blackman's Junction to radio a warning or send out a runner. After it was found abandoned, no one was particularly interested in resettling, fearing the area was cursed. Originally the Wuffs were the suspected culprit but now, with what looked like honey ants spawned from the bowels of hell started to gain on them, Claire was much less sure.

Running into Blackman's Junction, Claire looked at the abandoned community and considered her options. The Junction was originally a large plaza built adjacent to the Underworks tramway, likely serving as a main thoroughfare through the levels housing the ship's vital systems. When Gabriel Blackman and his settlers arrived, they assembled a small, reasonably well-constructed shantytown that befitted Blackman's original background as a civil engineer. Even months after the place was abandoned, the buildings and barricades were still as sturdy as the day they were made.

It was behind one such barricade, built to provide some measure of protection to the town guard when there were still townspeople to guard, that the brown-haired gunwoman ducked behind and quickly went through the motions of reloading her shotgun. Not expecting more then some Verm or a patrolling Wuff warband, Claire had packed relatively light on ammunition and as such her bandolier of shells was almost empty.

Beside her, Alex had lain down prone onto the cold metal floor and unfolded a small bipod he had fastened to his Star Corps rifle. The massive, bulky assault rifle still had way too much kick for the slender human lightweight but Alex still fought to come up with a way to counter it. One of the reasons why Claire and Jonathan found the nerdy engineering student endearing despite being skittish in a firefight and apparently really disliking bugs of unusual size, he never let an engineering problem slow him down. Still, he couldn't have many bullets left for that thing. At least not any more then she had for her shotgun. Help needed to get to them soon, they couldn't run much further without calling up a tram or risk getting lost in poorly explored corridors where they would both invariably be ambushed…

Lt. Jerky checked the magazine of his Big Fracking Rifle as he sat with the rest of his squad in a monorail car currently speeding towards the station Claire had called “Blackman's Junction." Given how comfortably he and the rest of his team of portly space marines were sitting in benches built for broad figures, whoever built this ship originally wasn't built like a Wuff. However there wasn't time to dwell on that right now.

“Alright squad, about ten minutes ago we received a distress call from Claire Lockhart, one of the individuals Freeman asked to help us search for an access port to the ship's hyperspace ansible network. She has encountered some sort of insect-like creature and retreated to the abandoned settlement Blackman's Junction. We're going to help her and anyone else exploring the area that managed to hole up with her then continue exploring where they left off. With any luck, we'll find what we need somewhere around the Junction sooner or later. Also, there was a second reply heard to her distress call. We do not know who this person is but hopefully their assistance is not required." Jerky briefed quickly, noticing the tram starting to slow down thanks to a gradual lurch that wobbled his considerable paunch. “Is everyone ready?" He asked.

No one said a word, instead letting the sounds of ammo magazines click into place and rounds being chambered doing the talking for them. Donut, Vodka, and Chunky were all ready. And not a moment too soon as the tram deposited the four portly space troopers at Blackman's Junction just as the Jelli-Bugs attempted to mob the firing line humans Claire and Alex had set up just ahead of them.

Jerky felt his eyebrows rise as he automatically raised his BFR and opened fire at the massive ravenous insects attempting to push their way through the broad corridor. The last time he saw Jelli-Bugs was on Verda-4 back when he was still fairly fresh from Basic Training. To say the giant anthropods with their massive, wobbling, almost transparent abdomens full of sweet jelly and crimson compound eyes looked out of place in the grungy metal corridors of the Hearth Star was an understatement. Regardless, if they were here on the Star then they needed their numbers culled less they started attacking the settlements. Heavy, rocket-propelled metal slugs tore into bloated bugs as Jerky and Chunky provided covering fire for Donut to bring her minigun to bear and for Vodka to find a good position to line up a few piercing shots.

Translucent jelly splattered over the walls and floor as the four lumbering Star Corps troopers joined in quelling the oncoming mob of Jelli-Bugs. Ravenous, simple-minded creatures attempted to cram themselves through a bulkhead door wide enough that even the stout Troopers could easily walk through standing shoulder to shoulder or squeeze themselves through duct work barely big enough for them to fit through. Consumed by hunger, the bugs still alive turned on their wounded fellows and devoured them with an unnerving efficiency, Jerky noticed it was with no small amount of fear that both humans were forced to set down their rifles and switch to handguns. Still, the delay bought the six defenders time to shoot and mop up the survivors, whittling a swarm numbering in the dozens to a few too grossly engorged to even move. With their human cohorts long out of ammo, Jerky gave the order for his own troops to stop shooting. Donut, Vodka, and Chunky all smiled and complied. The order to remove their helmets and draw their Omni-Forks was more formality then anything else, Jelli-Bug jelly was a relatively rare treat in the Galactic Republic. The four made quick work of the last of the Jelli-Bugs, devouring them with STOUT-enhanced stomachs.

Claire watched Jerky and his team eat the still-living space bugs, Alex turning around and finding a corner to quietly compose himself. From nearly getting killed by honey ants from another planet to fighting back against them to seeing four people start to savagely eat them like they were made of candy, the techie had mentally endured a lot. The human huntress was less shocked by this behavior, she had heard of similar and much smaller creatures existing in remote parts of Earth where the locals regarded them as a sweet delicacy. Watching the four fatfur space marines cut out and eat juicy chunks of bug meat or drink up the spilling honey wasn't much different. Though damn were they efficient at it. Not even five minutes and all three of the immobilized bugs were completely devoured. Fortunately for any that might still be lingering in the darkened hallways, that trio had done an excellent job filling up the Star Corps marines, making them appear noticeably bloated and sluggish. Still, there was something about this whole thing that was nagging Lockhart. How did a bunch of giant honey ants get aboard a relatively sterile space ship? More importantly, why hadn't a bunch of insects so ravenous as to cannibalize their own kind already overrun the entire Underworks already? There was only one big possibility…

Walking up towards the engorged Corps Troopers, Claire ran a finger against Jerky's syrup covered cheek and pulled it away sticky. The flavor that hit her tongue when she gave her index finger an experimental lick was sweet but clean, like purified cane sugar, not like molasses like Earth honeys or sickeningly sweet and thick like corn syrup.

Jerky stared back at her, trying hard to not blush in front of his troops, a task made somewhat easier by the fact that the petite human had the undivided attention of all four anthros, the wheels visibly turning in her head as a glint of recognition flickered in her eyes.

“You like it? Jelli-Bug jelly is considered a delicacy by most of the fighting arms of the Galactic Republic. I don't imagine your species has much experience with it though." Chunky offered helpfully.

Claire seemed to ignore him, completely lost in silent contemplation. Finally she spoke. “I think we have more experience with the flavor then you think. Yes, ferment it for a couple weeks to give it that bitter burn of alcohol and I can definitely see it."

“See what?" Donut asked, now even the smug heavy weapons sergeant was curious.

“Once I drank an entire can of Wuff mead on a dare. This was back in the early days, a few weeks after the blackout that allowed us to escape the prison. Back then we weren't sure if we could get any nutrition from Wuff food or even eat it without poisoning ourselves. So it became a game among some of us, I was given a can of mead and wagered a magazine of ammo I could drink it… I'd definitely know for sure if we had some more to hand off to a brewer but I think the Wuffs are using these things to provide the honey for their mead." Claire explained.

Jerky cleaned the rest of the jelly from his face and frowned. “That would explain a lot actually if you're correct, Jelly Bug infestations had occurred on multiple worlds in the Republic but no one could figure out how they were moving from one planet to another. The Star Corps lost more then a few good troopers on pest control runs. The Wuffs will have a lot to answer for if this turns out to be true." The armored elephant contemplated darkly as he licked the jelly from his hand.

“Well if we find that comm. array you're looking for, you can make sure to add that to the list of things to bring up with your bosses."

“Speaking of which, what progress have you made on that end?"

“Not a lot, I had just started searching when I was distracted by those things. Alex probably didn't get much further along then I did before the bugs rattled him good, unfortunately I think he would have more of an idea exactly what the two of us are supposed to be looking for then I do. I can show you what we mapped so far, then take Alex back to Freeman's Hold and restock. I'll be back and help you look once I get more ammo but I think this is enough for one day for Alex."

“Not much guts for combat with that one eh?" Donut asked smugly.

“He's often a nervous wreck after a fight yes but he still puts up a mean fight when it counts like say, about five minutes ago." Claire defended as she pulled out her paper map and set it on an empty metal crate, cleaning the bug jelly off of her hand and gesturing to her progress with a clean finger as the four troopers put their helmets back on. “I started here at Bernie's Station. It's a small station populated by humans that split from the main colonies because they didn't like that we were dealing with the Guilders. They went into lockdown shortly after the fighting starts and probably still are. I managed to map out here, here, and here before I was chased through the unexplored trying to get here." She explained, tracing her route through the blank parts of the map the best she could. “Alex joined up with me at some point in here after climbing up through a maintenance conduit."

“Given how much space even a small nest of Jelly Bugs would take, that cannot be the only multilevel access point in that area. There's probably a large storage area that takes up multiple decks somewhere in there." Jerky mused, suppressing a belch as he followed along, the mapping software in his helmet's HUD automatically updating based on scanning the crude paper map the human had sketched out.

“That would make sense given how many of them there just were." Claire replied with a sigh, folding up the map before taking her leave of the troopers. “If you want to get started without us, you're more then welcome to. I'll be back once I had a chance to get resupplied." The hardened huntress added over her shoulder as she left to collect Alex and return back to Freeman's Hold.

Jerky and the other troopers waited until the two humans had taken off on the return tram to their settlement before turning to look at the bulkhead open to the dark, jelly splattered hallway beyond and move out. Time to start looking for a way to send a message off of the ship; a nice lumbering walk was good for digestion anyway. With weapons reloaded and helmet visors switched to a light amplification mode, the bloated space marines waddled off.

Alex was silent as the two of them rode back to Freeman's Hold, finding something very interesting about the tramcar's metal floor as he sat in quiet contemplation. Claire shook her head as she watched him from the other side of the car. “You did well Alex."

“We didn't find the machine that would allow them to send a message through subspace."

“So? We didn't expect to get nearly molested by giant alien bugs. We're lucky that ignorance didn't get us killed; we can try again another time."

“What am I going to tell Wrench, finding the array would make her happy. She'd be able to go home." He replied glumly.

Claire resisted the urge to say the first thing that came to her mind, 'what about the rest of us?' That question wasn't the best to ask given his current state of mind. Alex had been slowly spiraling into depression for awhile and she couldn't blame him, his father died in the invasion, his mother and sister were found mutilated about a week before BoomBoom brought Jerky, Cayenne, and their friends aboard the Hearth Star. Almost everyone he knew was either dead or betrayed him in some way… And then there was Wrench, a blue-furred rabbit alien that worked for the Guilders as a mechanic. Alex liked Wrench but didn't know how to break the ice, Wrench liked Alex as well but thought he was too depressed to return her affections. And Claire, cursed to be aware of both sides of this drama, just wanted to scream at the sheer absurdity of it all.

“Why don't you ask her to go to the Steam Pits with you?" Lockhart suggested instead, referring to a place near the Hold where the locals vented a controlled amount of waste heat and steam from the ship to form a crude sauna. It was primitive but it did wonders for relaxation. And of course, there were rumors of encounters of a different kind of steamy going on all the time there.

Alex stared blankly at her in disbelief like he expected that idea to end in spectacular failure. “But she's so upset…"

Claire sighed and shook her head a second time. “Just trust me on this. When we get back to Freeman's Hold, ask if she wants to go to the Steam Pits with you. Just trust me."

“O-okay." Alex nodded, looking like he wasn't fully sure if he believed her but probably would try anyway.

Claire managed to smile in spite of herself as the monorail finally stopped at Freeman's Hold. If only her own life was as easy to straighten out…

The dim metal corridors echoed with the weighty footfalls of Jerky and the rest of his heavily armored Troopers. Cartoonishly oversized weapons were held in a ready position as they advanced cautiously down the hallway. Audio pickups in the elephant's helmet picked up the faint clicking of insect mandibles off in the distance. There was no question as to whether or not there were more Jelly Bugs on the Hearth Star, there were many, many more. Almost certainly more then they could hope to take with what they had at the moment. Motioning quietly to the others, Jerky ordered they take a turn away from the nest at the next intersection and attempt to go around the Jelly Bugs. When they were far enough away, Donut finally trusted herself to speak loud enough to be heard.

“Sir, shouldn't we have seized that Alex punk's BFR? Even if he didn't acquire it illegally, the BFR isn't made for such a scrawny being. Especially one that's such a pussy he runs away from a few Jelly Bugs." The elephant heavy-weapon specialist asked pointedly.

“Negative sergeant, I'm not about to take weapons from an anti-Wuff resistance movement. Besides, his BFR went dry in that fight. Remember how he switched to his sidearm about halfway through the fight? Unless he has more gyro-jet bullets stashed somewhere, his BFR is a paperweight. As for his state of mind, I have to agree with Claire's assessment. We've only been here a few weeks; they've all been trapped on this decaying junk heap for at least several months standard. Constantly harassed by lupine marauders with gravity defying hairstyles and testosterone poisoning? I'm surprised they all haven't gone completely bug-fuck yet."

Donut laughed at that, causing her large belly and breasts to wobble ever so slightly inside her Motorized BDU body armor. For a female, she exemplified the Star Corps machismo better then some male troopers and always had for as long as Jerky knew her. “You really think this place can grind us down? We're Star Corps!"

“Let's find a way to splice into the ship's communication array and hopefully we won't have to find out sergeant." Jerky replied, motioning for them to continue outward.

The search continued on, through corridors and rooms with stale air and flickering lights, around sections of the ship that had become exposed to the vacuum of space, and through hallways choked with debris left from previous battles or shoddy maintenance. STOUT-augmented muscles allowed the four troopers to shove aside heavy rubble as they continued to laboriously lumber along, exploring the sector room by room. Storerooms, workshops, equipment rooms, cantinas, and machine rooms, all in various states of disrepair, Jerky was convinced that this sector alone was big enough to an entire field army of Star Corps and still had room left over for a large town. All it needed were custodians more competent then the Wuffs to make it livable.

Finally, near the Star's outer hull, the Troopers found a console PFC Chunky identified as the auxiliary controls for the ship's communications array. With the primary controls located on the bridge deep in the Wuff controlled parts of the ship, this auxiliary would have to do. Fortunately it was more then capable of allowing them to transmit data back to Corps HQ. Not one to take things at face value, Jerky took a moment to discreetly scout around while the cheetah combat mechanic examined the array console. It would be nice to have such a crucial task conclude without a hitch.

At first his search turned up nothing but more empty corridors and rooms, at first it looked like they might actually be able to send a message without interference. But then the Corps officer discovered the elevator at the end of the hallway. Bringing up the holographic display with no small amount of trepidation, Jerky felt his heart sink as the elevator's electronics came to life without fuss. An express elevator, one with several connections to where the Wuffs made their home on the ship, and bearing the signs of regular maintenance, these were not good signs.

Returning to his squad, Jerky shook his head. “Drop everything people, there's an express access lift down the hall, Wuffs use it regularly. We're going to have to leave and come back."

There was some grumbling at this but the others complied, leaving the console alone and unpowered and heading back to the tram station at Blackman's Junction just as Claire returned with a fresh bandolier. “Any luck?" The brown-haired woman asked as she cradled her shotgun.

“Yes, we found it but we need to head back first. The auxiliary control system is near an elevator connected to the residential levels, the Wuffs would be on us in a flash if we don't figure out what we want to send beforehand." Jerky replied.

“So you left it alone because playing with it too much would light up something where the Wuffs would see it, going home to put together everything you want to send to your bosses in one go, come back and send it, then run before the Wuffs try to shut you down." Claire stated.

“Exactly." Jerky smiled; there was a reason why he liked this human. “Would you like to come back with us and join us for dinner?"

Claire clearly expected him to do something to distract her in case she was inclined to tamper with the machine but didn't expect that, appearing taken aback by his offer. Jerky was also painfully aware of all three of his troopers looking at him with raised eyebrows or bewildered expressions. Inviting a local to share chow time with the Star Corps was hardly against protocol but he had to admit his motives couldn't have appeared murkier, even to himself. No, he knew what he was doing, he just couldn't afford to blindly trust her with the relative location of the array controls before he had a chance to send a message out, that was all. At least, he hoped that was all.

“Alright, there's still plenty I could tell you about the ship." Claire said at last, accepting his invitation after a long moment of contemplation. Shouldering her shotgun, she joined the four space marines in getting aboard the tram back to their home base. One problem solved but it left many more struggling to be worked out in Jerky's mind…

Fort Pork Barrel, Star Corps HQ, a few hours later…

The matter brought to his attention the instant the origin of the data burst was verified, General Carbloat gulped down his second sandwich and wheeled his armored hover-sofa into the communications room. The mammoth rhino grimaced as the display screen came alive with the spherical visage of Chief Bertha Hughes, leader of the Intergalactic Police Agency… and Carbloat's ex-wife. A second later, Admiral Bargebottom of Space Fleet joined the ansible conversation. Instantaneous communication between his ex-wife and his service rival despite all of them being separated by a few light years, GalRep technology at its finest. All three participants stared sullenly at each other wordlessly as the screens were joined by a fourth image, Lt. Jerky.

“Hello sir and ladies, by now you will have all independently verified that this message was sent by the Hearth Star. I hope no one has tried talking over this recording because I unfortunately do not have much time. First, the joint Corps-IPA mission to infiltrate the Hearth Star was partially successful. We boarded the ship but not without being discovered; our contact, the Vux smuggler Boom Boom, neglected to mention that she had been arming a resistance movement of escaped slaves." Jerky began and then exhaled. “And now comes the part that I wish I could explain in detail… Shortly after landing, we made first contact with a previously undiscovered sapient species, call themselves 'humans.' From talking to these humans and GalRep civvies hiding with them, we have come to believe that the Wuffs encountered them during the time the Hearth Star disappeared from known space for the past several months. Homeworld location is unknown, even to them, and status is unknown, presumed destroyed. Attached to this burst is a complete copy of GAS scientist Dr. Cinnamon Soufee's research notes on the humans and linguistic data translating several of their languages into Universal as well as deck maps that I can personally attest to the accuracy of. That is all esteemed sir and ladies, I know I should explain more but I can't risk having the Wuffs corrupt the map data or Dr. Soufee's research notes. Thank you…" The armored elephant nodded as the message concluded.

After the message finished, Carbloat's screen began to cycle through deck maps and research data the GAS scientist managed to gather about the humans. Curious creatures, the general mused as he gave the information a quick glance; fur and hairless primate-descendents unlike anything in the Galactic Republic, yet quite adaptive judging by the testimonies to how quickly they learned to use alien technology.

“Well, so much for this being a quick slam-dunk victory for your troopers Carl." Bertha Hughes chortled briefly, ribbing her ex-husband before her fat face became serious again. “Did I ever mention how much I hate the Hearth Star?"

“Many times Bertha, almost as many times as you told me you hated the way I snored." Carbloat replied without even looking up from his reading of Jerky's report.

Bargebottom shook her head. “If you two are quite done, perhaps we should focus on how we're going to handle this new information? Saints alive, how is it that a species so stupid can cause such a headache? And I was having such a good day until my aide notified me about this. An entire species pressed into slavery, the Wuffs are probably selling them to any two-bit outlaw and criminal empire with credits to burn. At the very least I'm going to have to brief all Space Fleet officers at Commander rank and above about these new developments." The feline Space Fleet admiral groaned and drummed her fingers on her prodigious belly as she joined the others in reviewing the data.

The Star Corps general couldn't help but agree with his rival's sentiment. No matter how much planning he did before hand, anything involving the Hearth Star always became complicated quickly. Even then, this particular complication definitely topped any he encountered before in dealing with the marauding Wuffs….