They looked thin, wiry, but something in that hard expression said that the body's looks were deceiving. When the pirates tried to cause trouble for the colony, she only gave them ONE warning "I am a Marine". They learned the hard way what that meant. -- Fighting Fit
The pirate ship cruised in to the small colonial spaceport like they owned the place. For all anyone knew, they intended to own it shortly. They were arrogant in general and presumptive of their superiority. Swaggering in their power armour through the streets of the growing settlement.
Until they saw the skinny old guy standing in the middle of the street.
He wore denim, and had a small knife strapped to his belt. He stood like he was the immovable object, and could stay there all day.
"The flakk is this?" scoffed the leader of the sortie. "You the welcome wagon, shorty?"
"I'm the unwelcome wagon," said the skinny old guy. "You got an entire minute to turn your asses around and fuck off my planet. Otherwise, I'm taking your armour and your ship for scrap. I might also feed your asses to my pigs. Depends on your nutritional content."
They laughed, of course.
"And what are you going to do against us? We have power armour. You have a little itty bitty knife."
"It's all I need," said the skinny old guy. Then he bolted straight between the leader's power-armoured legs.
The thing about power armour is that it's made to help its pilot survive a heavy bombardment situation and to overcome most battlefield obstacles. They are not made to combat small, fast threats at ground level. They can intercept drones. They can counter-attack incoming missiles. They can certainly blow up any tanks or heavy ground fortifications. The best they can do against a ground-level creature is to step on it, but they have no targetting systems for that eventuality.
Because who in their right mind would be on a battlefield without power armour?
Short answer - this one skinny old guy. Who apparently studied as an acrobat, as he was bouncing from suit to suit, knife flashing between the chinks in their plating. He bounced between each of them in the formation, from armoured knee to armoured knee. Then clambered up on the last of them and stabbed an apparatus on their back.
Before one of their fellows could stop him - realising in the attempt that the skinny old guy had disabled their ability to walk - he was on another pirate's back. Cutting the power to the suit that protected them.
Then he popped open the leader's helmet and showed them the gleam of his blade. "You still have time to press the 'evac' button and scoot while you can. I used to be a Marine who protected places like this from people like you. Haven't lost a damn thing."
The leader came to a very alarming realisation closely related to a Universal truth - Beware an old cogniscent from an occupation where cogniscents die young.
They hit the 'evac' button and did their best to pilot their reserve livesuit for the ship's open bay door. The rest of the sortie followed suit within seconds. All things considered, they were lucky to get out of there alive.
Another universal truth is, It's not the size of the weapon, it's the strategy employed in its use.
[Photo by Saif71.com on Unsplash]
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