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6 hours before.

Alarms screeched and sirens wailed as smoke and sparks filled the corridor. Another hit shook the ship, sending tremors through the hull and almost throwing Chi to the deck plating, barely recovering and maintaining her sprint. Her biocomputing systems were maxed out to overdrive, giving her full situational awareness on the siege, but causing stress and fatigue. She was headed to the auxiliary hanger in the aft of the ship, which had not been hit and contained some craft, that unlike the simple lifeboats, would be able to escape from the onslaught.

Pirates had ambushed the cruiseliner two days ago, and the captain set a course to the nearest planet with emergency speed, while launching distress beacons along the way. Unfortunately, the pirate ships were simply too fast and quickly gained on them, overtaking the liner just half a day out from the planet. Records showed that the planet was colonised by Homosapians, a unique bipedal race of hairless apes that developed spaceflight and colonized other worlds nearly 200 of their years ago. For some reason, they were labeled as a pariah and all communications with their race were to be discontinued, some 150 years before they achieved colonies, and strict punishments were handed out to whoever contacted them, to both the offenders and the humans. Well, she could worry about the consequences later, it was either punishment or death (or worse, enslavement). Chi and the crew of the passenger vessel had mostly all decided to take their chances with the government than these pirates.

Files of the planet showed the planet with one large landmass, with some seas and lakes dotted around the globe, giving the planet a barren desert look, with pockets of oases huddled around the seas. It was a dustbowel, with nearly twice her homeworlds gravity, but apparently to humans it was just a little over their own and comfortable. The atmosphere was also very thin to her standards, but apparently the humans liked it that way. She was just glad that they needed oxygen to breath too, it was one thing normal about them. Chi had taken a copy of all the data on these Humans and this planet called "Rye" and stored it in her datacoils, with hope that it would provide useful in making out of this alive.

Unfortunately, the Pirates did catch up, and blew apart the engines with long range fire, leaving the starliner unable to accelerate or decelerate. When they came in close, point defense turrets gave one of them a mauling, but the pirates had responded fiercely, peppering the ship with high explosive charges, rupturing the outer layers and killing a lot of the crew. Now they had boarded, and were systematically moving from bow to stern, capturing or killing anyone they found. Chi and four others of various species had been tasked to one of the chokepoints, and issued lightweight beam weapons from the armory.

Chi fought back the pain in her throat, the tears in her eyes, in her shame of the moment. The moment she turned tail and ran at the expense of her comrades. The pirates were reptilian-cyborg killing machines, with awful weapons infused into their flesh. Sonic Pulsars, Electric Arc Singers, and Neuro Incapacitation Nets are all horrible weapons, because they graphically mutilate targets on high-power settings, and can incapacitate others on lower power.

Her augmented hearing could pick up screams from other decks, not to mention the cameras that she spliced her way into. And when her chips decoded their chants and shouts, she knew she wasn't going to do this. She couldn't do this. So when they rounded the bend and charged their barricade, she turned and ran. This was a nightmare that she couldn't wake up from.

The ship shook and moaned again, this time more violent than the first, and the blast coming from the direction that Chi was running, in addition to the buckling floor, knocked her off all four feet. Flailing, she hit the ground front first, head and shoulder slamming against the plastics coated durtitanum tiles. She slid for a few feet before stopping, thankfully her spandex-like suit protecting against burns. Groaning, Chi shook her head and saw little stars in her eyes, and noticed that she had completely cracked her helmet in half. Gingerly, she unclasped the ruined helmet and then felt around for the bruised area, and pulled her hand away, with blood on the glove. Her chipset then rebooted, restoring her augmented vision and hearing. However, she didn't need a HUD to know that her path was now blocked, the bulkhead ahead of her had closed, the door warped and deformed, with the smell of burning electronics and plastics more pungent than they were before.

As Chi got up and walked towards the door, she could feel heat radiating out from it while still a few meters away. Not good, a new path would need to be found. After a few deep breaths, she realized that a damage assessment was needed. Her helmet was busted, but the filtration for the mouth was still salvageable, so she ripped that out and stowed it on her back. The light laser beam had clattered away, and she reattached it as well. Nothing else had shifted on her pack, and satisfied with that, moved on to her right shoulder.

It still wasn't hurting, but she couldn't tell if that was from all the adrenaline, or her augmented senses suppressing the pain for her. She willed her defenses down, then probingly poked it. That was a mistake, Chi thought, cringing in pain. Her right arm might be out of action for the next few days while her body repaired the damage, or she attended to it herself with some medical equipment. Sighing, Chi brought up the ship schematics and pondered how to get around this obstruction without backtracking. She immediately spied an engineering passageway, but then dismissed it, as it obviously was not made for someone of Chi's... bulk. Even though Chi was shorter than the average Aves Kyacinthotaurum, you can't fit a three and a half meter tall (and two meter wide in the haunches) anthropomorphic quadrupedal through a two by one meter opening.

Chi saw that she could back-track to a separate level, and continue on from there on the other side of the ship. Thankfully this large cruiseliner had multiple passages to get from one place to another. However, it also made it impossible to defend the multi-kilometer long vessel once boarded. Passing rooms and shops that she recalled stopping and visiting at only days or weeks before, Chi saw how depressing they looked, with lights off, doors ajar, and contents shaken and spilled everywhere on the floor. The lifts to the next floor were out of order, but Chi had a plan for that. Using her good left arm, she clenched one of the sliding doors, dug all four feet into the floor, and pulled. Slowly, and squealing with protest, the door yielded. Then, Chi reached in and found a red lever with hazard lines around it. She took a mental image, and her biochips compared that to the ships records that she had swiped. After less than a second, she had a match, it was a door release latch. Yanking it produced a click, and the doors parted before her as Chi forced her way into the lift tube.

Looking up, the hollow lift tube stretched up into the inky darkness, with dim orange panels providing not nearly enough illumination, just enough to see how wide the shaft was. "Don't look down. Can't look down" Chi thought, as her bio-computer proceeded to, rather unhelpfully, bring up a visual diagram showing where she was in the shaft, and how far it was to the bottom of it. Gulping, Chi used her good arm to grasp a pipe as her four toed talons secured her to the wall by grabbing either handle holds, pipes, or girders. Chi slowly worked her way up the pipe, hindered by not using her injured right arm. She used her left arm and two fore legs to secure herself to the wall, while her massively powerful hindquarters did the pushing. Once she almost lost grip with her right foreleg, and reflexively clamped her talons shut on her other handle holds, which caused her rear left foot to crush a pipe cluster it had perched on.

But she didn't fall, and continued more cautiously than before scaling the shaft the last few meters to the deck. There she grabbed the latch with was conveniently in the same spot as the one below, and Chi nudged the door open. But to her shock, she saw two of the pirates standing on the other side, who also seemed surprised to see her. The uttered throaty growls and raspy hisses, which her ear augments translated to "An Avkactaur?! Get her!" and "Don't cause too much damage to the pretty one."

"Eek!" peeped Chi, but as the cyborg reptilians raised their weapon arms, the ship jolted and shuttered again, causing both dischargers to miss Chi as she let go and dropped down the shaft which she climbed. Falling about three meters, she grabbed the wall again, using her massive hind legs with her large twin tail that split at the base to steady herself. Adrenaline pulsing through her body, her good left arm reached back and fumbled for the light beam rifle, and nearly dropped it. She hit the deploy button, and the colorful slim rectangle produced a stock, a handle, and a blunt circle at the opposite end of the stock. Shouldering it, she aimed the beam rifle up to where she dropped from. One of the reptilian heads appeared, and the laser fired, imminting a whine with a low tick-tick-tick sound and a faint beam stitched its way into the pirates face. He shrieked, and withdrew his head howling profanities. Then an arm appeared, and had some glowing energy rod attached to that. Chi quickly shot that too, and curses from the other pirate could be heard as well.

Realizing that this was the moment she needed, she leaped down again, falling a few meters before reaching her previous floor and catching herself. Then she lept through the door she had opened, and then sat on the ground trying to catch her breath, which was currently very shallow and panicky. As Chi got her breath under control, she heard a wail from the elevator shaft, "We got another one on the 9th floor, don't let her get away!"

Chi got her shaking under control, and then started running over to the engineering access pathway that she had dismissed before. After a minute sprint, she was back where she was before. The bulkhead and door seemed to be in worse condition than before, the whole wall glowing with liquid plastic puddles collecting on the floor, and paint curling and catching ablaze. The heat actually triggered her suits coolant systems to kick in.

Locating the panel that the passage lay behind, she practically ripped it off its hinges. Setting the pannet next to her, Chi saw that she was only going to fit if she crouched down and twisted her butt sideways. It was also lined with racks of electronics and filled with sounds of fans and beeps. Progress was going to be slow, and Chi didn't want them following her and capturing her in here, so she would have to reseal the passageway after her. Unfortunately, Chi's body was a little over two meters long, and her twin tail extended for another 4+ meters after that, so she couldn't easily just shut the door on her way out.

To gain extra clearance, Chi unlatched her pack, which was attached to the part of her back that was between her two hind legs but before her tail, and used her injured arm to hold it against her chest. Twisting her abdomen and rear pelvis 90 degrees, she guided her tail through the door, then shoved her butt into the doorway, barely squeezing it through. Thankfully it was a tad more roomy inside the passage than the doorway, but she could still feel both walls pressing against her top and bottom of her rear. Then she used her forelegs to push herself backwards, and used her good arm to place the panel back behind her. Then using her left arm and fore legs, Chi slid slowly down the narrow passage, thankful of her suit protecting her from the sharp edges and trying to ignore the tickling sensation that she was feeling on her rump as she pushed computers and cables out of her way. Once she was a good distance away from the door, she pulled out her gun again, and used low-power beams to wield the panel shut to the wall.

Relived that she was momentarily safe for now, Chi looked over her shoulder to see exactly where she was going. Even with her head up against the short ceiling, she couldn't see over her hips. And it was getting uncomfortable twisting her spine nearly 90 degrees to fit in here. Chi sighed, and activated her HUD again, but couldn't get a connection with the ships cameras. That was worrisome. Luckily, the maps showed that the passage only went on like this for twenty more meters, before it widened up to a little room that she could turn around in. After navigating a tricky bend where Chi almost got stuck, she popped out into the maintenance room. Rubbing her sore butt, she inspected the damage she had done reaching here. Behind her was a passageway of crumpled electronic boxes, shattered memory crystal sheets that jutted out too far, and unplugged cables draping down from above.

"Not my issue" Chi told herself, "the ship is basically wrecked anyways."

Her HUD told her that a panel in the room (same size as the previous one she moaned) lead out to another corridor leading to the auxiliary hanger bay. She couldn't bring the route up on cameras, so she couldn't know if it was occupied or not. Chi did a little ritual for luck, then slowly and quietly opened the panel.

Suddenly two large arms flew out and grabbed her by the arm and the neck, dragging her half way out and slamming her up against the wall. Chi screamed in terror. "Oh shut up you bitch." rasped a reptilian voice, as his arm released her neck and clamped her mouth shut.

"Pirate! Oh fuck, oh no, shit shit shit!" Chi thought, "I was so close! This isn't fair!" Disparing, Chi felt her stomach grow heavy and her eyes well up.

"Caught you now you little shit. You and your buddies will fetch us a pretty fortune, you know." wheezed the pirate. Chuckling, he released her muzzle and grabbed her left brain tail, rolling it in his hand before squeezing. Chi spasmed in pain, and collapsed on the deck when the pirate released her, withering and sobbing.

"How the hell did you fit in there anyways? Dumb bitch, you should know that you can't fit through this door!" rasped the pirate in his slithery speech. He went to work punching the wall, making a hole that he probably meant to fit the rest of her through. Under her chest, she could feel the impression of the rifle, folded up, when she dropped in surprise with the rest of her things. Stealthily, Chi tried probing under her breast with her hand but then froze when the pirate spoke with his harsh voice, "Don't try any funny business now, you hear?" His boot creaked as he placed his heel on the ground, sole raised, and positioned over the middle section of one of her brain tails. If he stepped down... she shivered, just the thought of it was painful enough to caused her stomach to do flips on itself.

He did a throaty laugh, "Ah, you are a smart one. Good girl". He turned back to punching the wall. Chi wanted to puke. Then, she got a different idea. She started watching his punches, counting his pattern, and positioned her left hind foot in the path that he would be taking, behind the wall. Ten more punches later, and she was trying her best to not visibly tense up for what was about to happen. She must of succeeded, for he did not expect a thing. As his fist hit and passed through the wall, she grabbed with with her waiting talon, crushing it as her foot wraped around it, and pulled. Hard. He grunted in surprise, and sailed into the wall, off his feet, as Chi lept to hers, hands grasped on the gun as it went through its deployment cycle. Chi clenched the gun, hands shaking, as it fired a beam and made a low ticking sound. The gun's computer tried to keep the beam straight, but her shaking hands were too much and caused the beam to crisscross over his back, causing chunks to peel off and flop to the floor, sizzling.

Roaring, he yanked his hand free and turned to face her. His arms started morphing, from powerful gauntlets to menacing looking barbs and barrels. Chi screamed and cowered, but kept up her beam. Now steadied, it cut into his gut and then worked back and forth. The pirate, whom was about to charge, howled in pain and dropped to his knees. As he died, his almost unlodged arm fired, a heat pulse into Chi's left rear haunch. The suit did what it was designed to do, and worked to dissipate the heat and stopped most of it from reaching her skin. Most wasn't enough for Chi. She, in turn, howled, dropping the gun, and the smell of singed fur and polymers adding to the stench of half cooked intestines.

Chi opened her eyes, and the view of the dead cybernetic reptilian with chunks of burning hide littering around the corpse. The pirate had died kneeling, arm caught in the wall holding him up, and intestines slowly oozing their way to the floor and collecting in a puddle of goo. Chi immediately vomited on the floor, and sobbed. "Oh god I killed him. Fuck. Fuck! FUCK! Why?" she moaned through her sobs. She drew in a ragged breath and wiped her mouth clean, spitting a few times to clear the acid. "Him or me. Him or me. Fuck, why did he have to die like this?" She blew her runny nose, then got up and started to free herself from the ruined wall. It was easier extracting herself than it was shoving her butt in, but this time was filled with pain as the burnt area on her hip had to be pulled through.

With a pop, Chi was freed, and she carefully but skillfully maneuvered her posterior around the mess, to not touch any of it. After gathering her scattered personal belongings and sealing the ones with ooze of them in baggies, Chi stood up and started to move. With a glance over her shoulder back at the dead cyborg, she was gone, down the hall to her objective: Off of this damn ship.