The Hibernator Part 2: Space Pirates

“Tell me again why we’re taking this job?” The bored voice crackled over the comms, half-drowned by the hum of old tech that held the spaceship together.

“Because,” Captain Vex replied with an exerted effort to sound patient, “Council contracts pay triple. And we want the cash.”

Lieutenant Dresh leaned against the ship’s grimy viewport, scratching at the stubble on his grubby grey neck. Outside, the planet’s concreted surface sprawled in jagged grays and glowing yellows – far from the lush hunting grounds the Council’s briefing had promised. “Triple pay for a glorified pest control job,” he muttered. “Either they’re lying, or this bear’s got a hell of a resume. Apparently it destroyed a whole bunch of their robots and they want payback!”

Vex sighed. “It’s something to do with the PTRI or 59 or something. Obviously they think it’s important or they wouldn’t pay us to come here, would they?”

Then up ahead the patch of green – home of The Hibernator (cyborg bear extraordinaire) – entered the viewport. The three ships descended in loose formation, their hulls a patchwork of scavenged plating and stolen tech. The Ironslug, Vex’s vessel, led the way, its thrusters coughing blue flames and belching filthy smoke. It was a solid spaceship that looked vaguely like a giant pixelated beetle. The Ironslug was flanked on one side by the Screeched Lurg – a repurposed pleasure yacht that must once have looked like a beautiful gleaming white sail but was now grimy and unbalanced with a myriad of missile pods bolted rather haphazardly to its sides – and the old rattling tub that comprised the box-like Desperate Dowg on the other.

The landing struts of the Ironslug hit the cracked earth with a humungous metallic groan which was, quite frankly, asking for trouble given the area’s sole occupant tended to get very, very angry when woken from its sleep. Dust billowed up in slow, lazy spirals. Vex unbuckled himself, the harness straps snapping back like irritated serpents, and hissing rather like angry serpents too, such was the tired state of the seat belt’s retractors. “Alright, listen up,” he barked into the comms. “We hit hard, hit fast. This thing’s got artillery-grade implants, so no heroics. Just fill it with enough plasma to-”

“Ok, Cap’n Doogie! Let’s boogie woogie!”

Vex cringed. He hated it when his subordinates used his silly nickname and he hated it even more when they used it in moronic phrases that rhymed but offered nothing of any semantic value.

A low, grinding roar stopped his scathing retort before it began. It was organic but interwined with something mechanical. The vibration grew, the kind that traveled up through your boots and settled in your molars. The Screeched Lurg‘s crew were already piling out, their boots kicking up loose shale as they jumped from the gangplank that had extended out the reinfored underbelly of their ship.

Suddenly, a grove of twisted ironwood trees fifty meters ahead exploded outward. The Hibernator emerged in a storm of splintered wood and uprooted earth, its LED eye optics burning crimson through the settling debris. Its shoulder-mounted cannon whined as it cycled up to full charge – a sound like a chainsaw biting into sheet metal and the source of the unnatural noise Vex had noted earlier.

Vex barely had time to shout “Scatter!” down his microphone before the first blast hit the Screeched Slug dead-centre. The converted yacht’s decorative stained-glass viewport – a holdover from its days as some rich dude’s plaything – melted instantly. The laser cannon’s blast ricoched along the rest of the ship’s hull in a massive fireball that sent the emerging space pirates cartwheeling through the air, their limbs trailing smoke. The Desperate Dowg was still engaged in landing nearby when the engines decided to give up. Its hull listed sideways into the blast radius. The resulting explosion lit up the grove like a new sunrise, casting long, jagged shadows of fleeing mercenaries across the suffering shrubbery.

The Hibernator’s optics flickered with predatory satisfaction as the Desperate Dowg‘s fuel reserves ignited, its rusted hulk fracturing and separating before painting the sky in streaks of molten shrapnel. Captain Vex’s remaining crew – those who were with him on the Ironslug and those who were outside but hadn’t been vaporized in the explosions – dove behind the smoking remnants of charred bushes. One pirate, a wiry woman with huge black eyes bulging from her smooth pink head clutching her laser rifle in white-knuckled hands, made the mistake of peering over the top. The cyborg bear’s cannon barrel rotated with a hydraulic hiss, and her torso was blasted backwards into the undergrowth.

“Fall back to the Ironslug!” Vex bellowed into the microphone, his voice tense. This hunt was not going anything like he had planned. The interior of his ship was a mess of flickering emergency lights and spilled coolant and the chances of them earning the money for a much needed refurbishment were looking less and less likely by the minute. He didn’t wait to see if anyone followed his command, noticing with alarm that the ship’s ramp was still down, waiting for the now cowering crew to disembark. He lunged for the pilot’s controls, fingers stabbing at the ignition sequence. The engines coughed, sputtered and then roared to life as he frantically pulled the lever to draw back the exit ramp.

 

The Ironslug’s engines screamed as the ship lurched upward awkwardly. Inside the hold, crates of scavenged tech, half-empty liquor bottles and cowering crew all slid violently across the floor, smashing against the bulkheads. Captain Vex’s green fingers (not an idiom; he has green skin) gripped the controls, his big bug eyes wide with panic. “Where is it?” he started, then the entire ship shuddered as something massive collided with the retracting ramp.

The Hibernator’s claws tore into the metal flooring of the ramp like foil, its robotic arm gripping the siderail. As the ramp retracted, the giant cyborg bear was pulled into the airlock. One of the pirates, a goofy grey with an evil squint, punched the control to seal the airlock to keep the dangerous beast outside. But he was too slow. The bear’s cannon swung up with a pneumatic hiss and let loose. The plasma bolt hit the pirate square in the chest, reducing his body to an unpleasant stain across the ceiling. The cyborg bear lumbered into the spaceship as the airlock closed behind it. Its optics cast a hellish glow across the smoke-filled corridor as it turned its blaster cannon on the fleeing pirates.  They scattered, but there was nowhere to go. The bear’s immense roar, fury given form, shook the ship’s framework.

Up in the cockpit, Vex didn’t bother waiting for status reports. The Ironslug breached the atmosphere in a streak of fire, its hull groaning under the strain. He risked a glance at the rear camera feed – just in time to see The Hibernator pause mid-rampage, its optics flickering as it registered the view through one of the viewports. The planet along with its grove and its den was now a shrinking grey disc, far out of reach. Its muzzle wrinkled in a soggy snarl as it realised it could not readily return to bed, and it unleashed a roar that rattled the ship’s remaining intact systems. The pirates had woken it from hibernation. Now they’d stranded it in the void.

Then The Hibernator was in the cockpit. Its gaze settled on the Ironslug‘s control console where Captain ‘Doogie’ Vex was still frantically at work. The monstrous bear’s optics narrowed. Its claws flexed, digging into the deck plating as it lumbered toward the panicking pilot’s chair. Vex barely had time to unbuckle before The Hibernator seized him by the throat and flung him bodily through the cockpit door. The captain’s scream cut off abruptly as he hit the far wall with a sickening splatch, and slid into unconsciousness.

The cyborg bear examined the controls with surprising deliberation. Its massive paws weren’t built for the finesse of flying, but in this dumpster of a spaceship it didn’t really need precision. A claw tapped experimentally at the nav screen, scrolling through star charts until it found the Galactic Council’s central hub world. The Hibernator’s growl deepened. The plan was simple – go and complain in the only way it knew how about the plague of pests that had disturbed its slumber. It plonked its laser cannon down beside the control panel and turned instead to the controls for the ship’s forward guns. The Ironslug‘s targeting systems chirped as they synced with The Hibernator’s cyborg optics – a perfect, terrible marriage of enraged beast and deadly machine. The Hibernator was piloting the ship as it plotted a course straight for the heart of the intergalactic Council.

Suddenly the ship vibrated with a sound nobody had ever heard before. The Hibernator was laughing. A deep, reverberating, grinding, mechanical sound that sent shivers down the spines of any surviving pirates hiding in the hold.

Outside, the stars blurred into streaks as the ship jumped to hyperspace. The Hibernator settled back in the pilot’s chair – its chair – and flexed its mighty cybernetically enhanced claws. Sleep was over. Intergalactic carnage was just about to begin.