Eight watched the carnage unfold behind him on the view screen. It was not a pretty sight. On both ships bodies had piled up and in space a number of fighter crafts lay dead in space, their pilots exposed to the vacuum. Since the encounter had begun Eight had been running a recursive scan of the pirate ship. He had not recognized the configuration of it which bothered him but the outer design had to be completely unique. It was possible it was more standardized ship under all of that decoration.

Now amidst the carnage that scan was finally complete. Underneath the skull and cross bones it appeared the invading ship was a modified Thorium Class attack cruiser. The boarder anchors were from another type of vessel but according to Eight's scans the primary defenses of the main ship seemed undamaged and unaltered. That was very very dangerous. Eight frantically opened a comm link to the fighters outside the ship. "Attention, do not target the main ship with energy weapons." The Thorium vessels were designed at a time when the Xenovian system was at war. It was an antique by today's standards but the basic principles that it was founded on still applied to modern technologies. The Thorium Class ships personified the mantra 'a good defense makes the best offence'. The outer hull was designed with a type of composite plating that redirect and channel great amounts of energy. The Thorium ships had been designed to absorb energy weapons, then reverse their polarity before firing the same energy back at its attackers. It had gone out of style because the ship's capacitors could not maintain the energy they absorbed. The moment the enemy refused the fire on them the Thorium weapons became inoperable. 

"Cy, the energy being. The main ship is capable of reversing the charge of attacks aimed at it. If you target it and are hit in return the energy could react violently to your unique physiology." Eight was no expert on alien anatomy but he simple physics dictated that positives and negatives cancelled each other out and when high yield plasma was concerned that reaction could be disastrous. Not only for Cy but for anything in the immediate vicinity.

With that done Eight checked the Bablyon IV once more. Johanna Hawkins and Krull were doing a decent job keeping the pirates at bay. That was until they sent in a mechaniod battle drone. Eight used the Bablyon's internal censers to identify it. According to his records it was a Type 40 CFR Combat Mech. It was designed for all terrain battle but where ever the pirates had stolen it from it was not designed to be used on a ship or in such cramped quarters. However that was the only bit of good news. The Type 40 was designed to be ruthless. It would tear the ship apart before it let any of its programmed targets escape elimination and Eight had to assume that the crew of the Babylon plus their Starfire escort where on that list.

Eight glanced down at his tool kit. A plan had started to form in his mind. One he knew he would regret the moment he set it into motion. Eight got a couple of spar parts from the Babylon's engineering crew before he put together a small device. It was about six inches long, cylindrical and about an inch across. It had a glowing light strip in the center. With this device and his tool kit in hand Eight left his post at engineering and went to join his comrades. Luckily he still had a route to them though it was not exactly straight forward. It required extensive use of the ship's maintenance tubes before Eight popped out in the corridor where Johanna Hawkins and Krull was waging war. The tubes on a disposable ship where not large, even for Eight it had been a tight squeeze. There was no way one of those burly pirates could fit in one.

Johanna Hawkins had set up the crates for cover just as Eight had instructed. The Type 40 had crushed most of the pirates in the corridor, now it was just the metal beast that Johanna Hawkins and Krull were facing off against. "I am here to help." Eight said as he settled behind a crate next to Johanna Hawkins. The T-40 was getting closer. Eight took in a deep breath preparing himself for what was about to happen. Then he took his small device in hand a threw it like a grenade aiming for the section between the robots legs. The magnetic clamps locked into place as the device touched the metal. The light on the device switched from red to blue and a wave of energy blew out of it. As the energy touched Eight he collapsed to the ground. He didn't cry out or scream but pain was wracking up and down his body. He lay on the floor shivering, a cold sweet breaking out over his back.

Luckily he was not the only one to have collapsed. On the other side of the crates the T-40 had shut down. The small device had been an improvised EMP bomb. It disabled electronic equipment which unfortunately also included Eight's own. His technological make up was so unique that he was still functioning if painfully however Eight needed to return to his regeneration chamber within the next hour or his condition would worsen considerably. The ship's electronics were safeguarded against EMPs. It had been a popular raiding practice to disable a ship's systems with EMP waves before taking it some fifty years previously. Now it was mandated that all ship's systems be properly shielded. 

"Johanna Hawkins." Eight said, his voice labored but steady. "I have detonated an EMP. It disrupted the electrical signals the battle droid was operating on. However it has a redundancy system that will reboot it in six minutes and thirty eight seconds. Use the tools in my pack. You need to open up the maintenance cover on its back and disable its primary power stabilizers. I will walk you through it but you must hurry. If it comes back online it will detect tampering and initiate a self destruct sequence which will decompress this area of the ship.