Thomas was already making headway towards one of the estimated entry points that the Andromedan Marauders would attempt to board from. Unlike his previous and rather embarrassing display of his inability to navigate complex structures that he had never before explored without a map, he now had a very good idea of where he was needed.

Ok, ok. Maybe given the fact that he had never explored the ship beforehand his lack of accurate navigation could be seen in a better light, but he had still neglected, or perhaps refused, to bring up a map during the whole thing. Maybe that was something to be humiliated over, but Thomas did not see it that way. If anything, his unintended trip to the main reactor with Axton had ultimately led the two of them to be in a pretty decent position to respond to the incoming threat before it even had been noticed by the ship and its crew.

Not that he knew it was coming, of course. No, this actually was, as Bob Ross would have said, a true ‘Happy little accident’. But with that out of the way, it was time to get back to what was going on. Thomas was actually quite miffed about one thing. Axton had, before logging off, asked the crew to prepare a few death traps in a certain section of the ship.

He had no idea why he had asked for that to be done, but he had asked for it regardless. Maybe it was foreknowledge of this event, maybe it was that he wanted to have fun with anyone they captured. Either way, it didn’t matter, because those Marauders were going to have a very ‘Saw-ful’ time. Man, that pun was bad…

Anyway, he was nearly at one of the places where the Marauders were set to board. He had arrived just moments before a few NPC crewmen arrived, all armed with some decent weapons for their levels and wearing some nice lightweight low-level armor. Thomas did not know if that armor would protect them, but he knew that they likely would die to a few good hits. As such, it was time to make full use of his own Infantry Class and Build.

Thomas withdrew his favorite gun from his Inventory along with a large, heavy metal club that was studded with black, rubber-like attachments along its length. He held the melee weapon in his right hand, while his left held the repeatedly modified rotary double-barrel sawed-off automatic shotgun in a somewhat loose grip. Resting the massive studded bat on his shoulder, Thomas walked forward with the swagger of a man who thought that bullets were a joke and that grenades were nothing more than firecrackers.

His new armor was made from numerous pieces looted from that last massive battle and heavily modified by Players who had the skills to do so. Thomas had the money, and despite promising to play the same as Axton, he had occasionally used his funds to hire some people to do some work for him in-game.

Then again, he technically wasn’t using the in-game monetary systems seeing as he was hiring these people outside of the game itself. He had no guarantees that they would do what he wanted, but he had the cash to not care about it either way. As it turned out, his name held more weight than he’d expected, especially after publicly backing and fighting alongside a ragtag gathering of so-called ‘plebs’ against that asshole Donovan Blythe.

With his new kit, he was even more of a walking tank than ever before. Hell, even that nearly unarmored ‘Spider Can’ War Suit that Axton had made all that time ago would be able to take more than a few good hits even if they fully penetrated, he was simply that durable now. Of course, this was still the early days of Heavy Metal Dawn, so his personal armor would not amount to much protection in a few weeks.

But he was, right now, ignoring all of that, and waiting patiently for the beam cutters of the Marauders’ transports to punch through the side of the ship. Heedless to the incoming kinetic blast that would turn the interior wall of the ship into a mass of shrapnel, Thomas strode forward with the gait of a person so utterly confident in their own invincibility that nothing and no one could convince them otherwise.

Eventually, the wall exploded, and a hail of blaster bolts erupted from the interior of the transport as the ramp fell down. Thomas, though, stood stock still as bolts of energy hit him all over. He had been especially cocky as of late, and ein this current fight he was not even wearing a helmet or any form of eye protection. A few blaster bolts smacked him straight in his face, but Thomas did not budge a single inch.

Instead, he slowly raised his shotgun and held down the trigger.

A shot-lived wall of buckshot was sent downrange, hitting everything in its ‘cone of death’ with enough small metal pellets to render the shabby armor of the Marauders ultimately unfit for any further use down the line. By the time to smoke that the boarding craft had emitted had vanished, there was nothing left of the boarding party except a mass of dead men just lying on the ground in various states of dismemberment.

Thomas, though, had already moved on, following the map and the sounds of gunfire as he made his way to another section of the ship, eventually reaching that area and introducing an unfortunate Marauder’s chest to the Kinetic Repulsor Club he still held in his main hand. The oversized bat never made complete contact with their intended target, the studs embedded within the bat projecting the field around the main body of the weapon like a bubble.

As if the man was hit with a Gravity Hammer, the poor sob was sent ragdolling through the air, ultimately smashing headfirst into a metal pipe and falling lifeless to the ground. Thomas’ entry into the firefight had proven to be a shock to both sides, and while the gunfire stopped temporarily, it quickly resumed with more of the Marauders trying to take down Thomas as he smacked them around like toddlers facing a major league slugger with acute ‘roid rage.

With his combination of decent armor, sheer durability and precise mix of specialized stat distribution and Infantry Class selection, Thom as shrugged off shot after shit like it was mere raindrops. Well, raindrops that stung like a bitch, but raindrops nonetheless. By the time Axton had finished dealing with the boarders on his end, Thomas had nearly finished turning the Marauders in his area into a pile of dead men.

However, he was running low on battery charge for his melee weapon, and it was a bit of a pain to reload his favorite gun, so he decided to take a more… hands-on approach. For the last man before him, he bull rushed towards him, body slamming him hard enough to knock him backwards into a wall. When the shock of that impact had worn off, the Marauder found himself being lifted into the air by the armored hand of very irritable giant of a man, his face held in a single-handed grip.

Thomas had, all this time, remained utterly silent and stone faced. Now, though, he felt like having a bit more fun than usual. He had played the character of a big, tough, unthinking and unemotional brute up- till now, at least during this battle, but now was the time to break character and let the people that he knew were on the other end have a bit of a scare.

“I know that you’re watching through this insufferable, microcephalic oaf’s eyes.” He said in as high-class an accent as he could pull off. He didn’t actually know that someone was watching, but he had a decent idea that someone might be. “Please, don’t interfere with my enjoyment again. I can and will use my many, many connections to deal with you if you do. Ah, and tell The Lady that I’ll be looking forward to meeting her under more… appealing circumstances.”

At that, he slammed the Marauder’s head down onto the floor with enough force to dent it.

“Uhh… Are you actually..?” asked a crewman.

Thomas merely looked at him as he brought his foot down on the dead man’s face and laughed out a simple retort.

“Fuck no! Can’t a man throw a spanner in their works with a bit of acting? Well, If I convinced you, then morons like them would easily fall for it!”