The Brawl with the Nightmare

The beast swiftly dealt with the defenders of the station and moved after the scent of the escapees. On it's way it left a path of destruction, making sure it's long limbs dealt as much damage as possible to everything, smashing screens, consoles, ripping the doors apart, poking holes in some of the walls, leaving exposed wires. It looked like a tank rolled through this entire prison complex. But then it arrived in the hangar. The walls in here were much thicker so it couldn't rip its way there, it had to squeeze through the normal, mortal entrance.

Their scent there was strong. Two individuals, both stinking of heavy emotions, both stinking of… They should be both splurging the scent of fear, but it was barely detectable. Weird. Uncommon.

Strange.

It was like these two wanted to face it.

Right when the beasts tentacles with a foot long, metallic claw ending squeezed the walls to help the rest of it’s body push through into the hangar, it heard a noise. And then a huge weight smashed into it, knocking it backwards, towards the wall.

“Hello, ugly”

Mark greeted the beast. The monster could see his enemy. The human, male, was suspended in some sort of skeletal machine, connected to it. The mech didn’t have any armour plates and left the human exposed, but the beast could see easily that the several foot long arms and long, pneumatic legs were an obstacle to overcome before getting to that opponent.

It only couldn’t locate the other scent that led it here. It got lost somewhere. Monster tried to sniff it, but then another machine flew towards it, but this time it’s reflexes managed to raise it’s massive arm to parry the hit and crash the incoming shuttle into the wall. The small explosion followed, but the beast paid no attention to it, solely focused on his enemy.

Mark did his best to just stay calm, collected, cool even. His racing heart was urging him to panic and flee, but he remembered the stress test situations from the past, when he got carried through the long hours of danger just using his will alone. He was still connected to four shuttles, all floating now in the air neart the beast, and he planned to use every one of them.

“Identity unknown. Species human.” The monster spoke in a slow voice that was coming from the depths of it’s throat. Mark’s translator still managed to pick up on it’s language.

“Name’s Mark Veers. What about you, ugly?”

Mark smiled and waited.

“This vessel does not pos…”

The beast didn’t finish, as it was hit with a shuttle, a clean hit. The monster’s face, the bloated sack of bones, teeth and flesh looked stunned for a second, but right after it removed the annoyance and finished it’s sentence.

“This vessel does not possess a name given by it’s holy creators. But the name it heard from it’s opponents is The Nightmare. It fits the purpose.”

Without any warning the beast lunged forward, towards Mark, but he was ready. Through his implant he instantly ordered two more of the shuttles to smash into the enemy, one from the front, other from the back, trapping it for just a few seconds. And it was enough.

With a jump towards the beast, Mark smashed his fist through the shuttle and straight into the Nightmare’s throat, retreating instantly as it began to flail it’s arms, and ripping the small ships to shreds. Mark jumped away and observed the beast.

“Kaliasi, how much longer?”

Mark asked when smashing the Nightmare with his last shuttle, slowing it down again, but being ultimately ineffective.

He didn’t get any answer.

“That freaking woman…”

He said several more curses much more quietly and then raised the mech arms, standing in like a combat, boxing position.

The Nightmare finally got free from the destroyed remnants of the shuttles and stood there, clearly planning the next move.

“Mark Veers proves to be the best enemy this vessel ever had. After your ****, this fight shall be recorded for future assessment of errors and optimization calibrations.”

“You’ll have to kill me first.”

“It will not be difficult.”

The beast, once more, lunged forward, no warning, no change in muscles, nothing symbolizing the sudden attack. And yet Mark’s trained instincts didn’t fail him, his reaction was to dodge to the side, roll away, and he did it.

Almost perfectly.

The Nightmare managed to hack away at the mech’s right arm, leaving Mark a bit short handed.

Veers looked at what happened. The wires were sticking out of the metallic skeleton that was enveloping him, but the enemy just missed his hand. The Nightmare’s claws were clearly capable of destroying the mech easily, which meant Mark needed a new solution to deal with the enemy, and he needed it fast, as it was coming back to it’s feet, ready to strike again.

Behind him there was a huge, sealed hangar door, and behind that the cold vastness of space. Aside of them two there was a ship that Kaliasi entered and some cargo crates, nothing really useful. Except… He noticed something. A few blinking lights coming from the side, and a message on his implant.

Mark quickly leapt away as soon as the beast charged towards him, the pneumatic mech legs helped him greatly there.

“Mark Veers should stop running and embrace the holy end.”

The human turned around and responded:

“You talk too much.”

He said when slowly walking backwards.

“This vessel agrees. Die.”