Key Item
It was immediately obvious why the vault conveyance for normal items wasn't working as well.... the entire place was crawling with Tekanoids.
"Nand!" Less commanded her to handle the situation... She created a spatial distortion cone and pushed it through the crowded space knocking all the little tekanoids on their backs, but not hurting them much.
Tekanoids were not intentionally harmful to anyone but their mere presence was a concern. Their entire interest was new technology. They were the carrion eaters of deep space and showed up after every battle looking for things to take. And often they showed up DURING the battle if the battle scenario seemed already tidally locked.
They looked like little shiny silver metallic children with a rounded head hunched over something like a metal lipstick cover for a body... Their hands and feet were metallic black. The face was a smooth round glass surface like a vid screen that would project facial expressions like usually blue eyes and below a speaker for making noises and from their mouth sometimes extended a long soft metallic prehensile tongue. Actually they looked like little salt shakers that came to life and waddled all over the place.
When not being bowled over by a minor spatial distortion cone, they liked to look at things and especially feel for technology... In this room every button, every junction box and every wire had been certainly fondled by Tekanoids as the chit chatted about the quality and vintage of their finds.
And the "pat pat" process with the hands was not just a ritual... they were sharing information with other castes, bigger and scarier customers that would start lasering off the good stuff and hauling it to their salvage craft.
That meant the rest of the vault would soon be broken into and Lester's prize would be lost forever if he did not act.
As Tekanoids recovered their faces flashed with red disapproving eyes and they made a clicking noise. It was their way of saying "This is our stuff"..... their giant tongues swayed back and forth pointing at the things Lester and his crew and that was a way of saying "something bigger is going to come and you're going to get it.
Critter went wild and jumped from tekanoid to tekanoid yanking tongues and knocking them down again and occasionally he summoned his inner ancestor and beat his chest like he was powering up to go super gorilla.... that seemed to put them in disarray.
Xor stepped up to give them a point blast taste of plasma cannon which would have settled the issue and wrecked the room, but before he could unleash hell's inferno Nand stopped him violently... The two rolled around on the floor fighting each other. In one case they flattened a couple tekanoids which further increased the Tekanoids’ agitation.
It was quite the chaotic mess, but adequate for Lester's needs. Whether the Tekanoiids would leave or not was no matter as long as they stayed out of his way.
Lester started to approach the console, he entered his credentials and summoned biological artifact IM-RY3 . The vault seemed to be working fine which was a relief. Lester assumed some connection to the conveyance was the reason he couldn't receive his personal item since the vault itself was completely intact.
In a moment a hatch opened and up ascended IM-RY3 in the form of a standard storage cube for a cryogenic biological component... that meant it contained technology to keep its contents alive in some sort of cryogenic hibernation. Lester grabbed the container . It required two hands to hold and was about the width of his torso.
Lester then used the console to summon a few items to assist in the getaway.
The tekanoids were getting fed up and starting to leave. Less began the process of attaching floatation clamps to the cube so he nor his companions would be burdened with carrying it since they surely had other tricky challenges headed their way before they survived the flotilla dwindleing into chaos.
Just as he finished one of those challenges presented itself. A tight beamed red laser blast cut through the room zapping between Lester and his prize and hitting a cluster of piled up junk behind. The hit caused a huge explosion pushing Lester forward in a roll and knocking Lester's prize to the far corner.
The Tekanoids cheered and made a new clicking sound, running around with their hands in the air. Critter, now frightened, stopped his rampage and jumped to Lester to see if he was okay and Nand and Xor stopped fighting each other for a moment.
Something big had to be dealt with but to Lester the Tekanoids finally got too annoying. Lester merely said "Nand, let him" both bots knew what that meant.... Xor then stepped forward and without harassment released a small plasma blast into the Tekanoid crowd sending tekanoids careening in every direction.... when they bounced off the walls and came to rest on the floor none were killed but they certainly had too much and each in turn got up to scurry away.
Nand wasted no time while Xor shooed the small fry .... she was blocking the thing that had fired at Lester and ready for battle. It turned out the Tekanoids had summoned a Tekanoid rollie which had just laser drilled through the wall.
Rollies were long centipede like robots a little larger than a man... They had a powerful cutting and attacking laser in their mouth as well as chewing mandibles. Rollies shared a glass expression plate for their face and their exterior armor segments were made of smooth silvery metal exactly like the Tekanoid salt shakers themselves. Finally rollies could roll into a ball to protect all their softies making them a little hard to kill at times.
This Rollie was going to be a little tough, beyond Critters skill of head leaping and chest beating. The Warbots were going to have to throw down.
The Rollie was laying down a constant beam on Nand who was using a spatial disturbance field to dissipate energy.... the two countered each other in a slow clockwise move around the room. It was a game of attrition waiting to see who would run out of stamina first for both attack and defence of energy weapons consumed power.
A second Rollie slithered through the opening who Xor instantly blasted to bits. Then a third Rollie leapt through, but this one rolled into a ball and Xor's attack was ineffective
A fourth and a fifth rollie began to slither through.
Lester decided to end Nand's stalemate first. "Xor interrupt and Nand 'rang' him.. execute."
Xor then jumped in between Nand and the lasering Rollie interrupting the beam with his own distortion field while at the same time Nand released her boomerang which arced around all combatants and sliced the rollie in two between its segments then returned to Nand.
Lester lunged for his prize box, but was assailed by another Rollie whose mandibles were wide open and prepped to snip something off of Lester he might miss but the techno monster was foiled when Critter intercepted and held between them and with great strength held the mandibles at bay.
Lester shoved the weak beam emitter of his tac wrench right under the rollie's segment and gave a sustained blast. Smoke and a frying sound could be heard as well as what looked like some sort of soldiery goo started dripping out of the belly. Critter noticed the pressure being exerted by the mandibles began to weaken and then the Rollie just fell to the ground.
They were being quite a team, but more and more rollies kept coming through and the crack in the wall was getting bigger.
Lester grabbed his prize and started a fighting retreat back to the conveyance.
Then.... a small explosion was heard on the other side of the crack and the rollies stopped coming through.... as a matter of fact the rollies there decided to retreat.
Lester could hear the rollies hissing and clicking in the same way to protest the presence of some claim jumper but that didn't last long. Things were already escalated and it sounded like a barrage of laser blasts from the rollies had been unleashed early but they sounded all over the place and as if they couldn't get their target.
Lester winced at the sounds... there were clearly a lot more rollies on the other side than he had anticipated and if not for this lucky development escape may not have been possible.
Then for almost a moment a ruckus of bangs, scrapes and the satisfied sound of steel being sheared like a sharp knife cutting paper and things got much quieter.
Clearly there was at least one Rollie left ... he was still clicking and hissing but he was retreating back through the crevice and then BOOM! A much larger hole exploded into the anteroom spraying debris and parts of rollie everywhere.