the mission.
If he did not clear the area of enemy, all of them were in mortal danger. The same adrenaline that had driven him when he’d leapt into his jet as the sirens had gone off on the tarmac drove him now. He tied the two shirt arms around his neck to create a sling and tugged on Kohei’s tentacles to urge him down into the sling. Then grabbed his weapons. He didn't even know how to fire the alien gun, but once he got the children to a safe place, he'd figure it out. These assholes would regret invading his ship.
Then Max would figure out what the fuck Rick was doing with his security that they could wander around the ship without any alarms going off. Max was starting to think that Rick had a few screws loose in the old head sack.
Max checked the corridor before he dashed for the lift. The lift would be the most dangerous part of this. If the doors opened onto a pair of aliens, he would have almost no ability to defend himself. He was confident he could take at least one with a good solid hook to the bottom of their body mass. Now that he had killed one that way, he knew how much force it would take to pierce that skin and do a lot of internal damage.
But that would give the second one time to counterattack. But, if Max tried to use the service corridor doors that he had found during his explorations, it might take too long. He would have to make more stops to keep the children wet and that gave the enemy far too much time to find their fallen comrade.
Max tucked the alien gun into his waistband and prayed that the thing had a safety. He needed both hands to grip the maintenance hook. He forced himself to breathe and steadied his nerves as the lift doors opened on the pool level. Empty corridor. “Thank God,” he whispered. And then he ran as quietly as he could for the pool room.
The pool took up most of this level, so the invaders should have dismissed it from their minds as soon as they believed they had everyone captured. Aliens might have had great technology, but they couldn't tactically think their way out of a wet paper bag. He planned to take full advantage of that blind spot.
The pool room was dark when he went in, the illumination set to half power. “James?” Max let the door slide shut behind him, and he inched into the room. He was met with an anxious round of blurbles and burps and whale song.
“Max. You returned. Query brothers? Max. Query Rick? Query...” The translator failed, leaving ugly burping. Either James was practicing profanity or that was the name of their invaders. Max spotted James on the edge of the pool, his tentacles all curled up under him. Max hurried to the edge and let the shirt sling down into the water so that Xander and Kohei could soak themselves.
“You're going downstairs to the small pool room. I will find Rick,” Max said.
All James’s tentacles waved madly. “Max. Danger.” James added a warbling cry the translator missed. He had a whole new set of experiences to program into the damn thing, just as soon as Max finished killing all the motherfuckers.
Xander countered with a long string of whale song that the translator was inadequate to handle. Out of the entire soliloquy, the translator only picked up “Max,” “Rick,” “maintenance hook,” and “wet.” However, with those clues, Max had a pretty good idea of what Xander was explaining. He was just glad the children hadn’t seen the killing. It was bad enough they had heard it. If they didn't need therapy, Max would for exposing children to that kind of shit. The one thing he had always hated about shows like The Tomorrow People and Buffy the Vampire Slayer was how children were pushed into a fight that they were far too young to understand or emotionally cope with.
Max didn’t care what Rick said about them being adults, they weren't. They might have the cognitive abilities of an adult, but they did not have the wealth of experience. A strong foundation in love and honor added to a long history of family support would help blunt the sharp edges of death. The children didn’t have that yet.
Max went to his knees next to the pool. “Come on, we need to run.”