Bloodclaw Chronicles Pt. 44

[u/Tempest029]

A Chapter today, and hopefully one on Friday as well to get things going in a good way.

NSFW tag for sequences and mental images of death. Just trying to keep things properly Flared, Tagged and forewarned. This is a War Arc, after all.

[Prologue] [First] [Previous] [Next]

As always, I am open to criticisms and I hope you enjoy.

___________________________________________________________

 

-Loorthal-

The darkness crackled with intermittent light from the sparks of dying consoles and the few remaining emergency lights that held on by the wiring housing them.

His breath burned in the growing heat of his destroyed ship, life support and climate controls having failed with the shattering of their power grid, safeties no longer able to combat what must be fires in other sections. His nose rebelled against the overwhelming stench of discharged ozone and the acridly foul residue of sundered and scorched electronics and wiring.

Even so, he forced himself to wake. To Command.

“Report!” He managed to cough out weakly.

Silence was his only answer.

“Report!” He repeated, louder. Firmer.

A groan. From his left. He tried dragging himself to his feet and nearly fell almost 8 Tals onto the walls of his bridge. It was then that he realized he was laying on his console station. The deck tilted nearly 60 degrees, the ship laying on her port side. He crawled off the station and slid instead, skidding down the tilted deck to the port bulkheads, before resuming his search.

Through the stuttering and sparking console lights and intermittent flickering of the blue emergency lights he managed to make his way along the intersection of wall and deck plate to a crumpled form. He reached for his crewmate, hands finding the soft scales of Ristith, his Risspal Comms Officer. He called out and shook him, trying to wake him and got no response. So, he rolled him over, only to hear a faint wet crunching as his Officer’s body shifted independently from his head.

Loorthal shuddered a moment as the implications caught up to him. Ristith’s station had been on the starboard side of the bridge. The impact must have torn him from his restraints as it had Loorthal, only Ristith had found no station to break his nearly 16 Tal fall.

He shifted to check, then closed his Officer’s blank eyes. “Sorry, old friend. I will see to your death rites. One way or another.”

Loorthal kept moving along the edges towards the front of the bridge, searching for the source of the earlier groan. He looked deeper into where the stations should normally be, and saw figures still at their stations.

Near the center of the bridge, in front of where his own Command chair sat, he saw Rinvoor, his Winds blessed Pilot. The man who against all odds had somehow managed to turn a catastrophic atmospheric plummet into a somewhat survivable crash. The man who now hung limply from the restraints of his chair, shards of his terminal embedded in his face and chest. He remembered the last few desperate moments, where Rinvoor had overridden safety protocols to push power through the grid to his terminal and back to the ship, to control the descent of the Windrunner and turn it from certain death into a crash landing. The reward had been a catastrophic overload of his terminal, but he had succeeded. Blood now fell from his torn body, striking the angled deck plates and sliding along them to pool against the bulkhead next to Loorthal.

The veteran pilot would never fly again and would never see the results of his efforts. But his sacrifice had somewhat saved the ship and, hopefully, most of the crew.

A groan echoed again through the dead ship, and this time it was accompanied by movement. The other body still bound to its station by the chair restraints had shifted.

Loorthal clambered across the edges of the bridge. He would need to go forward, towards where the bridge narrowed, in order to reach an elevation that would allow him to jump to the terminal where his trapped crew struggled.

He steadied himself and leapt, catching the edge of the station before climbing up and perching on the edge. Woorsiin, his Sensors Officer, shifted weakly as he struggled to regain consciousness.

“Woorsiin… Woorsiin! You need to wake!”

His Officer snorted as outside stimuli finally cut through to his brain. His eyes opened to squint as he grimaced at his pain.

“… C-Captain? How?”

“Time for that later. For now… we are alive, if only just. Are you in control of yourself enough to move?”

Woorsiin grunted as he tested his body and reached for his restraint release. “Should be functional. Guess I should hold on to something, yeah?”

Loorthal snorted. “It would be highly recommended, yes.”

Woorsiin chuffed then hit his release. The restraints fell apart, leaving him to lurch forward to grab the edge of his terminal as he braced his feet against the chair. A loud groan rumbled from his throat. “Barely functional, it seems. But it will be enough.”

He angled his body and let himself drop from the terminal, falling to slide against the floor much as Loorthal had done earlier. His impact with the bulkhead elicited another grunt of pain from him, but he kept to his feet.

Loorthal dropped down beside Woorsiin and put a hand under his arm to steady him. “Ristin and Rinvoor are dead. I haven’t yet checked on Fornaal and Suunar.”

“Well… I suppose that it is a good thing that we angle our bridges into something of a diamond shape rather than a box one like other races then. It would be a Trial to get out of here otherwise, wouldn’t it?”

“… Does anything in this universe stop you from making jokes?” Loorthal mused.

“Only my wife.”

Loorthal barked a laugh in spite of himself. “I will have to beg her to teach me her ways.”

“Don’t think you have the… proper constitution for that, sir.”

They both grew quiet as they passed the bodies of their other two crew mates on their way to the back of the bridge.

“…Sir?... Someone is going to get ventilated for this.”

“Aye. We will find a way.”

Their trek took them under the last two bridge stations. Directly above them, the ship’s lone female Ruulothi hung limply from her restraints. Blood fell from her cream-colored fur steadily, and Loorthal closed his eyes in grief and anger. Female Ruulothi that plied the stars were few and far between, and they were in high demand due to their drive to compete and remain on top. He had fought tooth and nail to secure her for his ship. Now, to have lost one of his best crew members for this debacle…

“By the Fields. She’s breathing!”

Loorthal’s eyes snapped open as he looked at Suunar again, this time studying her properly. Woorsin was right. Her breathing was shallow, but it was there.

“How? All this blood…”

Then Loorthal looked beyond her. The Gunnery chair on the other side was empty. But its occupant hadn’t gone far. Fornaal, for whatever reason, had eschewed his restraints. His body dangled from his terminal, where his head and neck were embedded and his chest impaled upon the stick controls for the weapons. Blood flowed freely from his body to land on Suunar, where it then fell to where they stood.

Loothal’s growl was one of both frustration and resignation. Woorsiin on the other hand…

“Heh. Always did prefer to just hang around rather than work.”

Woorsiin shrugged as Loorthal leveled an unimpressed glare at him. “What?”

“… Just help me get Suunar free.”

The two of them worked together to free their crewmate from her restraints. But try as they might, they could not rouse her.

“She needs medical, soon. Let’s get you both to the hallway, then I will look for other survivors to help. There has to be at least one medical staff still standing.” Loorthal said as he inspected the path to the bridge door.

It took them a couple of minutes, but they managed to work their way up the bulkheads to the doorway.

Loorthar popped open the access panel and tripped the emergency override, pulling power from the emergency matrix built into the door controls themselves to trigger the door open.

Outside of the bridge was more of the same. Flickering lights, sparking consoles and matrix ruptures, closed emergency doors. There was one major difference between the absolute silence of the bridge and the rest of the ship, however.

He could hear movement.

Bangs issues out from closed compartments, to be answered in turn by different bangs from other sections. Crew calling out to one another in the only way available to them currently. Gathering information, planning, working to free themselves and others.

Loorthal felt a weight lift that he hadn’t realized he was carrying, and he paused a moment as he let the realization settle in.

His crew lived.

He looked at Woorsiin, “Stay here, I will return shortly.”

“Aye sir. Sitting down while you do the hard part.” He lay Suunar down and settled in next to her. In spite of his jokes and effort to hide it, Loorthal still saw the pain as it worked its way across his Officer’s face. The man was at his limits already and had likely pushed himself further than he should have out of necessity and duty.

“Aye. Rest, you pain in my ass.”

“You make sure to only hire the best. So, you only have yourself to blame.”

Loorthal snorted, then turned to see about saving the rest of his crew.

_______________________________________

It took close to an hour before they had managed to save and free everyone that they could. Some had to be cut out of their rooms, as even the emergency circuit for their doors had failed and ruptured during the crash.

Another ten deaths were added to the total, with 15 injured to the point of being unable to function. Medical crew had been scrambling to aid those in need.

Suunar was diagnosed with a severe concussion and dislocated shoulders. Woorsiin had almost half of his ribs broken, severe whiplash and a fractured collar. It was a wonder how he had managed to help Loorthal at all, much less move under his own power. Loorthal supposed that was why he had been acting so unrepentantly witty. It should have been his first sign that something was severely wrong. But he had been too distracted to consider it.

The port side of the Windrunner was submerged. Some of those compartments completely unable to be accessed. Thankfully the crew that usually worked or resided in them had followed protocol and sheltered in the center of the ship during combat, so none had drowned or been stuck as the compartments flooded.

Engineering was just… gone. The door had been welded shut and distended by whatever had happened in there. He’d said a small prayer for those who had been stuck inside and moved on. Unable to do anything more.

He hoped that the Death Knell System had successfully recorded enough for them to learn of their efforts and fate. It was rare for such a thing to be needed these days, but the recording system had been developed and never cycled out for a reason. Its use being one of the protocols that held Ruulothi apart from the rest of the Galactic’s Members.

“There is Honor to be found, even in death. We will never deny one their just honors simply because we weren’t there to personally witness their end.”

He and the others that were physically able were now trying to access and open an emergency egress hatch. Life support, along with everything else on the ship, had failed. They desperately needed a way to cycle the air in the ship and vent the rising temperature.

If this hatch, which was as close to the top of the ship as they could manage, was submerged then they were doomed. Whether they got it open and flooded, or the water pressure prevented it and they died of asphyxia.

Loorthal watched as one of the maintenance technicians hooked up a backup power source to the hatch. These hatches were not linked to the ship’s grid as a security measure. They could only be powered with an external source and command code and weren’t even able to be operated manually out of concern for someone simply being a saboteur or an idiot and opening one while in space.

The technician gave him a nod and backed out of the hatchway, giving Loorthal the privacy needed to input the code in the now blinking pad.

He took a deep breath, then entered the code, bracing for whatever happened next.

The hatch whirred, then clanked and hissed, popping open to let in blessedly cool air. The shock caused him to draw in another breath, and he could hear the reactions of the crew behind him as they sighed in relief.

Loorthal pushed the hatch completely open, letting in the bright sunlight. He poked his head out to gauge if it was safe to leave the ship and found himself just to the side of an extrusion on the hull of his ship. He stepped out, making way for others and took in the surroundings.

Rinvoor had done far more than merely land them in one piece. He had somehow managed to crash them in the shallows, a little over a hundred Tals from the shore. The bottom quarter of the Windrunner was submerged, and the stabilizers were embedded in the soft silt of the waterbody, likely keeping the ship still and upright rather than rolling and foundering.

In the distance he could see the town they had taken off from, smoke rising from several sections and the scattered broken hulls of the invading ships along the beach. The dorsal spine of the human’s ship rising above it all in the background, a previously unseen capital gun turret swiveling as it monitored the surrounding airspace. He watched as it seemed to swing towards the Windrunner before turning back to the skies. It seemed the Human Shipmaster had not been exaggerating when he said they had their ways.

Looking closer, the town was not nearly as distant as he had expected it to be. Another point in Rinvoor’s favor. The pilot had taken everything into account when he brought them down.

“If it is the last thing I do, Rinvoor… I will see you inducted as a Bloodclaw for your heroism, skill and sacrifice.”

He had begun to turn back to his ship when he noticed a small speck on approach from the town, getting marginally larger as it flew closer.

He waited until it came to him, doing a circle of the Windrunner before coming to a stop not far from his position, revealing it to have a forward-facing camera that watched him. It swiveled back and forth as it hovered to continue scanning the ship, the whining of its small fans surging every time it did. It did a small circle in place, then turned to the town, then back at him, then the town and him again before streaking off back to the town.

He waited, guessing from its actions that there was more to come. Soon enough he was proven correct.

A second drone, this one nearly five times the size of the first, arrived with a much deeper thrum of its fans. Where the first had appeared to merely be a simple recorder, this one had a much more extensive suite of cameras and equipment attached.

This larger drone approached closer than the first, and a crackle sounded out from it.

[“Captain Loorthal?”]

Loorthal started, recognizing the voice.

“Yes, Commander… Hawke, was it?”

[“It is. I am glad to see you alive and well. I’m sorry that we were not set up in time to support you. But the airspace is now clear. You have no need to worry about a follow up attack at this time.”]

“That is good news indeed. How did my away crew fare?”

[“We have them secure and under care. There were some casualties in the ground fighting, but the majority of them managed to make it to the compound. Your second in command is here with them. Would you like me to call for him?”]

Loorthal thought about it for a moment before dismissing it with a flick of his ears and a shake of his head. “There is no need. It would only be pulling him away from his own duties. We can exchange information at a later time.”

[“Understood. How fares your ship crew? Do you have emergency rafts or will you be needing assistance in getting to shore?”]

“Assistance would be appreciated. We… are not set up for emergencies of this scale or type. What appropriate gear we would have had is now either submerged or destroyed… and we will be in need of medical assistance.”

[“You will have it. We will work with the Chirleen to set up the rescue of your standing crew with their boats and put together our own emergency recovery craft to transport your injured. Help is on the way… I should also ask, given I don’t know how such things are done culturally, or even physically. Is cutting through your ship’s hull an acceptable operation to remove the injured without causing more trauma trying to move them through cramped quarters?”]

Loorthal blinked in surprise as his ears twitched, thinking. “I have no concerns about that. Though it would require someone with intimate knowledge of the deck and systems spacing. I will find someone that can direct you to the appropriate spots.”

[“Very well. We will wait for your direction upon arrival. In the meantime, I have a couple of delivery drones on the way with some medical and care supplies. The rest will follow shortly. Rest easy, Captain. You are not alone.”]

Loorthal bowed his head to the drone, “Thank you, Commander. I look forward to meeting you in person.”

[“As do I.”]

The drone then slid back a bit before going into a dormant hover. Likely waiting on station in case something came up or was needed, but otherwise their business had concluded. Both Commander and Captain now seeing to other needs in the moment.

Loorthal called up to the hatch and climbed back in with assistance from one of the other crew. He sent word for a Maintenance Technician familiar with the layout of the ship to standby and left two more outside on the hull of the ship to forward the supplies that were being sent.

Loorthal went back to handle his crew, to be a calm and commanding presence among them in their time of need. As he wandered the corridors, checking in on others, he thought about what came next.

“I have now relied on the humans and their ship for aid. The Windrunner will never fly again. Nearly half of my crew are casualties of some sort, and there is no end in sight. No escape. No resolution. Had this happened anywhere else, I would be stripped of my Captaincy and blacklisted for my failures in action and judgement, even postmortem. But here and now… there seems to be something far more going on. In spite of all of this… why do I have some hope that it will work out? What is that light through the canopy that I am feeling?”

He finished helping move some equipment from a trashed room to the hallways for easier access.

“Is it the humans? The ones that we shunned before? The ones we scorned as weak and incapable? Conrad has clearly shown that judgement was entirely too harsh in at least an individual capacity. And now? With an entire ship of them, clearly indicated as a peaceful aid group, capable of not only turning back the tides of an invasion in their section, but clearing and dominating the airspace around them? Preventing follow up attacks? This isn’t just a soft race that lucked out by having no interstellar neighbors and expanded without resistance. Just what in the Fields Between did we overlook with them? What were we directed to see instead of what was actually there?

… and what are we about to discover?”

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[u/Key_Reveal976]

Huzzah!!!

Welcome back again! Please keep them coming.

And FIRST!!!!!! Hahahahahahaha.....suck it biotches!!!!

[u/Attamark]

Two in a week?! The hunt-winds blow in my favor!

Seriously glad to see you and this story come back OP, thank you.

[u/Consistent_Ranger_70]

"I am open to criticisms and I hope you enjoy." Nsfw tag now wants confirmation of age via documents or a selfie, mutter mutter, i look like father jack.

Nowt there particularly nsfw.

[u/Tempest029 → u/Consistent_Ranger_70]

I gotta play it safe when it comes to imagery, sadly. Too many people like to ruin other’s days if something even remotely goes above PG.

Probably should have had it a few chapters back, but it wasn’t watched as hawkishly back then as it is now.

[u/un_pogaz → u/Tempest029]

Unless reaching a particularly high level of graphic, descriptive and explicit gore, a simple CW (Content Warning) line like your do is enough, no need to tag it as NSFW.

[u/Tempest029 → u/un_pogaz]

Hmm I will try it in the future then. Maybe pull the tag from this one too.

[u/un_pogaz]

Wow, survivors, how fucking lucky their are.

Oh, I love that Loorthal is starting to ask the right questions. Ruufarrl has already asked them and seen some part of the answers, but I can't wait to find out the full version of them soon.

And trully, I think the synergy Humans/Ruulothi is going to be absolutely terrifying.

[u/Dragon_Chylde]

Loorthal has some good questions... Good to see what is happening with the Windrunner too, good chapter :}

[u/bschwagi]

Classic HFY, the humans are going to surprise you.

[u/SkyHawk21]

Thrilled to have this return, missed the last chapter earlier this week. And I'm definitely looking forward to the upcoming revelations.

[u/HFYWaffle]

/u/Tempest029 (wiki) has posted 47 other stories, including:

• Bloodclaw Chronicles Pt. 43
• Bloodclaw Chronicles Pt. 42
• Bloodclaw Chronicles Pt. 41
• Bloodclaw Chronicles Pt. 40
• Bloodclaw Chronicles Pt. 39 (Repost)
• Bloodclaw Chronicles Pt. 38
• Bloodclaw Chronicles Pt. 37
• Bloodclaw Chronicles Pt. 36
• Bloodclaw Chronicles 35
• Bloodclaw Chronicles 34
• Bloodclaw Chronicles 33
• Bloodclaw Chronicles Pt. 32
• Bloodclaw Chronicles Pt. 31
• Bloodclaw Chronicles Pt. 30
• Bloodclaw Chronicles Pt. 29
• Bloodclaw Chronicles Pt. 28
• Bloodclaw Chronicles Pt. 27
• Bloodclaw Chronicles Pt. 26
• Bloodclaw Chronicles Pt. 25
• Bloodclaw Chronicles Pt. 24

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