RP: LSDF Akahar [Chapter 1.1] - Staring Back Again

Luca said:

Caught unawares, Shrie'Keng caught five bullets, two hit his legs and thigh, two struck him in the chest and the last one struck him through the jaw, shattering his bone and sending a red lashing through the air and staining the walls with red. His brain and head were intact, but his jawbone was shattered by the bullet.

Click to expand...

Merril spied crimson splatter across one side of her vision, and turned to see Mist fall.

"SHIT!" She snarled, snapping her head towards Bastion. "Cover me! I'm gonna drag him into better cover!"

Wildcat hoped that Bastion was on the ball, but didn't hesitate in her duties. She dove low, setting her rifle down next to the Fyuunen before grabbing Mist and dragging him behind a sturdy block of metal.

"Shit shit shit, why didn't you have your hood on, dumbass. . ." Merril growled, stripping him of his armor with one hand while applying pressure to the jaw wound with the other. Five hits in total. Two clearly punctured, the others deflected. She stripped off the leg armor where he took a bullet and began apply pressure with her own. She couldn't treat two wounds at once, so keeping her hands free to deal with one at a time was the best option. The jaw wound was the most severe, so that had to be dealt with first.

The medic pulled a first aid kit out and ditched her own hardsuit gloves, exchanging them for the medic vinyls. First things first, she applied an absorbent cloth to the wound, pressing it there while she grabbed a Nanomachine injector.

"Stay with me now. . ." she growled, injecting the nanoscopic robots into Mist's neck.

Merril did not have to tell Bastion what to do. Mars raised her rifle and aimed it at closest, bastard firing three quick shots at him. She them turned her firing mode to full auto and started providing covering fire. She shot controlled burts where enemy was hiding, while she herself moved to the closest console to get at least a bit of cover.

The needle went into the side of Shrie'keng's neck with grace as Merrill pushed the plunger down to eject the nanites. Individually, each nanite would reconstruct something by becoming a replacement and merging with the missing tissue. The syringe of nanites traveled to his jaw and Merrill could see the bleeding starting to stem before her eyes, assisted by the coagulants in the absorbent cloth.

Bastion's firing kept the pirates pinned to cover as bullets struck the consoles they were hiding behind and flew overhead, moving cautiously as she did so. Someone popped up into her line of sight and received three bullets in his ribcage as a hello. Some other bastard had his head just over cover and a lucky shot from Bastion scalped him. Two down, four left.

Pratima got a return message from AkahARIA. Behind her, there was an inactive sentry and repair drone that sparked to life and stood up on four spindly legs supporting a skeletal body. Given the nature of most Lorath engagements, it was always good to have your drones cover both bases. Chances were, if there was a problem, whatever was responsible for it was still there and it had to be dealt with accordingly.

The barrel of an energy weapon protruded from the front of the robot, in addition to two spindly arms with interchangeable tools hidden in its undercarriage. It stood at about two feet tall at the shoulder, like a giant spider or a small dog. If anything, it was the closest and perhaps the simplest thing Pratima could make use of without doing too much damage to the ship if things went tits up.

It bounced on its legs and skittered towards Pratima, looking up for guidance. The sound of its energy weapon powering up could be heard and it made an excited chirp. Some scratched lettering on its back gave it a name: 'TS-50'.

-

Keib started whimpering as he walked back towards the bridge. He had to deliver the news that nobody wanted to hear. Hakahn was gone, and as far as Keib knew he'd simply ditched the Akahar because the situation had become too fierce for him to handle.

The truth was much more nebulous, but Keib would never get the full picture. A simple case of pirates shouldn't have escalated this badly. It was almost as though they knew what was going on, when to strike and how the ship was laid out.

Keib cracked his knuckles as the doors opened to the bridge. The bridge bunnies turned around immediately - the door was supposed to remain closed against anyone except for Keib. "Sir! Thank the Goddess you're alive!" The Lmanel turned around in her seat while headset nearly fell off of her oversized ears.

"I have some bad news." Keib said as he moved towards the chair where Hakahn would sit and examined it for a moment. This chair wasn't sat in all that often since the Fyuunen preferred using his desk in his office. There was a layer of dust on the top cushion. Keib bent over and dusted it off before sitting down on it and placing one leg upon his knee. The long ears on his bunny slippers bobbing up and down as he worked his own rut into the untouched seat.

"He's gone."

He left the meaning up in the air without clarification. He could've meant that Hakahn was dead instead of just absent. Correction - he would die if Keib ever saw him again.

"Shall I-" The Fyuunen bridge bunny asked as she opened a view screen.

"No. Not yet. I want to tell them myself when this is over."

As Keib looked ahead and looked out into space, he could see someone sitting in his chair. He could see a tail dangling off to one side with an orange plume on it. Keib smiled, he knew exactly who that was, and he hadn't heard from him since this mess started. Greg turned around and acknowledged Keib by waving to him, smiling ear to ear.

He looked over to the left to another chair and found another tail poking out to one side of it. Different colour - white as snow itself. Keib's smile eased and became neutral.

At least his charges were accounted for.

"She's been here a while," The New Tur'lista bridge bunny said. "Smelt like blood, she seems to be physically fine though."

-

The captain's hand reached the pistol, and he wrapped his finger around the trigger, but Veronica held his flabby arm down. His hand squeezed and the gun fired into his desk, leaving a long black and grey scratch as the bullet ricocheted into the bulkhead.

Veronica's other hand bashed the captain in the nose. As she drew her hand back she was already watching a bruise develop in front of her, and wondered if she'd dislodged a tooth.

Hearing the gunshot, Rae moved in with her pistol pointed at the fat captain's larger midsection - it was harder to miss than his face.

Now that he was backed into a corner by two people who appeared to be hell bent on killing him, he decided that the best course of action to stay alive was to be quiet. He knew something they didn't, and if he was dead, they wouldn't know. "Now what are you going to do?" The fat captain asked with a snarl. "Space me?"

With Veronica having the Captain easily pinned Rae'lynn made her way up, pushing the pistol up against his stomach. "Spacing is too easy. We could put a round through his stomach, watch him bleed out for all that he has done..." came a snap reply from Rae.

Her anger was easy to read on her features. If she had it her way the captain would have already been dead, Veronica also seemed to be someone who would have killed the man by now as well if he was not part of her plan.

She kept her pistol pressed tight against his gut and gave quick look to Veronica, before focusing a bit more on keeping an ear out for any more movement from the elevator. The last thing they wanted was unexpected visitors to the Captain's room.

"Hmm... Tempting but boring. Though what you should be wondering is how to explain what we just heard. You've been making some deals with some rather official sounding shitheels. Getting all chummy with some birds have we?" Veronica grabbed the pistol away from him after the shot. Not letting him aim it at either of the women.

"You know I'm an impatient bitch. But I'm willing to let my sexy bird here get the knives out for some fun if you don't explain why we're chasing spectres instead of loot. And if you start spinning bullshit that doesn't involve the little phone call you just had... I'll be handing her the bigger tools." The fiery geshrin was likely not bluffing in letting Rae take her time to make him suffer if he didn't appease her.

Bastion smiled as her fire was effective. Then a problem happen. Her weapon frickled and jammed, sparks commin from where batteries were. "Darn!" She muttered tossing the gun at the closest pirate and jumping out of the cover. She needed to kill them as soon as possible. She was positive her WIND gave her good protection and even if not, she knew that it would need more then couple of bullets to bring her down.

She had to use the fact that the pirates were bunkered down from her initial cover fire. Now she needed to use that time to cross the distance, jump over their cover and kill them. With her bare-hands.

"Mars! Catch!" Merril called, swinging her free leg out to kick her gun from its former postion to Bastion's new one. Her foot caught the but, sending the My'hyz sliding towards her squadmate. Meanwhile, she noticed something about her charge that was not there before. . .

Blood was pooling beneath his leg. This didn't make sense, since the leg was covered, unless. . .

"Shit, it pierced the other side," the medic realized, grabbing her tweezers from the kit. She worked quickly, lifting his leg enough so that she could reach it. Swift hands pried the small metal object from the back of his leg, where it pierced Mist's body for the second time. Once it was in the clear, she plied antisceptic wipes to both wounds, then wrapped the wound in the nanomachine-treated bandages, made for such things.

She was in the clear now.

Merril unclipped her pistol from her belt, and popped above cover and unloaded its entire payload at the pirates.

The first thing that Pratima did was lovingly optimize the drone's code to make it smarter, faster, and more reactive. The way Pratima did it was simple, Pratima used one of it's 'drone helper programs' that it had in its library from the ship, replacing the drone's AI with a Freespacer one. This also gave the drone a rudimentary artificial intelligence and mild learning capabilities.

Pratima also pried a tertiary data device from the engineering computer that had no information and used it to give the Drone a reasonably large data storage capacity. Then it used a spray-paint equipped arm to airbrush a phoenix flying through space with a star-ship as the backdrop on the Drone's side with the name '01010010 01101111 01101111 01110011 01110100 01100101 01110010'

Pratima gave the drone a friendly pat and some scritchies to make sure it knew it was loved. Then Pratima attached a wireless antenna to the drone to keep in contact and sent it skittering into the maintenance network with instructions to find the enemy encampment that was being pressed by Mars and her other saviours, and turned on the Fire Suppression System at the enemies.

After that the drone would begin popping out of maintenance hatches in a demented game of whack-a-mole, shooting its somewhat puny laser at enemy weapons and other vulnerable points, whirring through the foam and chaos before ducking back into cover.

While it did this, Pratima tried to take control of the lighting system in the cargo bay where the battle was taking place and decided to set it to 'disco' to cause maximal chaos. A musical accompaniment to the impending chaos free for all also seemed fitting.

Bastion charged over the the computer console and started charging across the room towards the pirate as he was reloading. A pirate jumped up over with his rifle raised to try and intercept her as she was running across the room, but he was shot down by Merrill, taking two bullets in his side and one through his biceps, falling to the ground with a thud, firing his rifle into the ground on the way down.

Bastion leapt up and her knee connected with the pirate's chin, and she followed through with her momentum, finding herself on the other side of the cover, wrestling with the pirate and pinning him against the ground with a crunch as his jaw became further dislocated and his arm started to bend uncomfortably.

As she wrestled, two pirates who were also behind cover to Bastion's right turned around and levelled their rifles when the lights went started to flicker and change colour whilst jets of flame retardant foam covered the pirates. One of them fired and a burst narrowly missed Bastion and the other pirate, missing by a foot to the left too far and hitting the bulkhead.

Their eyes stung and their breathing was impeded. One stood up and stumbled over the console, landing face down on the floor and meeting four bullets from Merrill. Her remaining bullets sailed through the air and struck bulkheads and consoles, and the action remained open, wishing for a new magazine. Gough and Yar'Mak stood up when she ran out of ammo and continued laying down covering fire in Merrill's place. Buckshot pellets and rifle rounds filled the air and shattered against the bulkhead.

The arm Bastion was pinning with suddenly gave way with a crack and the pirate screamed. HIs shooting arm was now useless and he could be considered out of the fight. Pratima's drone darted through the maintenance hatches and started harassing the foamed pirate. It fired the laser weapon at it repeatedly until he stopped squirming, coughing, writhing and firing erratically in the direction the laser was coming from. The drone was darting back into the hatch when it had to dodge enemy fire.

It caught a stray bullet in one of its forelegs and it whirred in alarm as it fell forward unbalanced and landed on the floor. One of its other legs moved to compensate for the missing leg and it skittered back into the maintenance passage, closing behind it and locking itself from intrusion. It sent a message to Pratima as it stayed in the passage. There was only one pirate left, and he was fumbling with getting a fresh magazine into his rifle through the noise and confusion and lights before Bastion leapt on top of him, grabbed his rifle and started smashing his face into paste with the butt stock, cracking the outer shell of the rifle in the process and rendering it unusable as a firearm.

There were six, there was believed to be four, then it turned out to be five, and then there were none. An eerie silence fell over the engineering bay as the broken rifle was tossed away and clattered across the ground.

They were all dead.

Except for Shrie'Keng, whose leg and jaw were not bleeding nearly as profusely as before. He gargled in relief that the fighting was over.

-

Since his collaborator was gone, the pirate Captain counted on how outlandish the story was to get him through this slip. "We were looking for something big together and the little XO on that ship has figured it out how to get it better than anyone else." He held up his hands and waved. As he waved his hands, the fat on his arms roiled from side to side.

"I was gonna shoot my contact and make the XO my bitch to lead me to it, but he cut me out and ran. No idea why, something musta spooked him and he backed out!"

It was a mundane situation to him on paper, but he wasn't sure who had spooked him. The reality was much darker, and he was completely unaware of it.

With his piece said, he breathed slowly and steadily and waited for the girls' next moves.

-

The owner of the snow-white tail turned the chair around a little bit, peering with wide, pale eyes and, from what Keib could tell, a dejected but somewhat thoughtful expression.

"Hello, Mister Keib. I am sorry I left you, Mister Keib."

Keib raised his right hand and smiled only a little. "I'm just glad you and Greg are in one piece." Looking at him, you could see the sweat staining the singlet he was wearing, and the occasional red scrape and purple bruise. For the most part, unharmed but otherwise fine. It did not strike much of a contrast with Four-Six, who also sported quite a bit of blood. The red splotches on her otherwise pristine uniform were very distinct, but little of it touched her skin or fur. She had apparently made her way unscathed, except for those she had been scathing.

Looking at the blotches, Keib raised an eyebrow before looking at one of the dabs of red that wasn't his that was on his coat. He held up four fingers, indicating how many had died on his and Aiesu's course.

Four's tail curled, and she held up all five fingers. "Mister Keib, there is something you should know." He nodded in reply for her to continue.

"I saw someone come out of Captain Hakhan's quarters, Mister Keib."

Aiesu grimaced, fingers tightening into a slow fist at her side.

"Go on." Keib said, leaning in.

The small, white Helashio glanced around the bridge, then back, tail curling the other way uncertainly. It seemed to be the soldier's only readable expression; her face didn't so much as twitch, though her nose did scrunch a little. "Everything is over?"

Keib shook his head as he looked at a view screen showing the fighting going on in the engineering bay. Four, no, five dead pirates and the away team plus Gough and Yar'mak. Four-Six followed his gaze, then trailed it back to Keib's eyes.

A certain sort of reluctance became evident in the Helashio's tone. "It might not be nice to say in combat, Mister Keib."

"They might not get another chance to know."

Standing up, Four crossed to the Captain's chair and leaned down, whispering a name in Keib's ear. Then, she straightened, glancing over Aiesu dispassionately for a brief second before looking at the view screen with the combat again.

Notably, the fluffer had found an assault rifle somewhere, and wore it with the butt and grip bloody. Someone hadn't wanted to let it go.

Keib simply leaned back into his and crossed his arms, exhaling slowly and furrowing his brow. "Acknowledged, Soldier..." He looked at the view screen again and found that one of his soldiers was absent from the fray. Where could they be?

"Oh, did you hear?" The Lmanel bridge bunny looked over to Aiesu.

"Huh? Ah, sorry, I wasn't listening," she said, obviously in her world of her own. Whether what she said had anything to do with what the others were talking about, Aiesu honestly didn't know.

"The person the Away Team rescued turned out to be a Freespacer."

"Hence the handshake..." Aiesu mumbled. "Do you know where they are now?"

"They're in the engineering deck with the Away Team... and the pirates. AkahARIA has given her the rights to one of the troubleshooter drones." She looked over at the action on screen and winced as a pirate's skull was turned into a cup. "We're keeping a lid on her network activities until we know she's trustworthy."

"You're putting a lid on a spacer? That's..." Aiesu wrinkled her lip, trying no to laugh. "She could probably overpower the ship inside half an hour if she really wanted to."

She. Aiesu looked aside for a moment. Why had she assigned 'it' a gender?

"She did. We're trying to subtly direct her into help us." The Lmanel bridge bunny replied, making a whistle. "According to AkahARIA, 'she' has a vested interest in keeping the ship alive."

She? It really was a she? Aiesu felt a small victory of probability tingling between her ears. "Well yes, without the ship she'll..." Aiesu was saying rather obvious things now. "When things have calmed down a bit, tell her to come down to the med-bay."

The Lmanel shrugged and nodded in reply. She couldn't think of a reason not to. "Maybe after Keib gets everyone rounded up."

"Fine, fine." More waiting? Aiesu couldn't stand it.

The bridge bunny noticed how Aiesu was fidgeting quietly. "What are you thinking of doing...?" She left the last word to trail in the air.

Aiesu cleared her throat. "Just an evaluation. I'm an AI researcher by trade, so naturally this is quite an opportunity," she said, wiping her lip with her wrist in a rather uncouth way.

There was an awkward silence between the two of them.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" the construct grumbled.

"Trooper Bastion, this is bridge; status report." The Fyuunen bridge bunny asked the away team. "Keib, Aiesu, Four Six and Greg are unharmed and accounted for." In a manner of speaking, of course. "How's the Freespacer?"

"Yeah I don't care about your prospective cabin boys. Who exactly are 'they'? Military? And what the hell would they use you for in finding it?" Veronica's eyes narrowed, apparently the man didn't even have to try to shorten her patience, which likely was diminishing on its own, "You learned something about it, didn't you? What is it?" Veronica found herself a little disappointed that he was being cooperative. The fun that Rae and herself could have making this waste of skin suffer.

Merril shoved a cotton ball into Mist's mouth just for the sake of stopping him from swallowing too much blood before it finally clotted.

"Well, shit. Now there's blood everywhere."

She wandered over to the pirates' bodies, reloading her pistol in the process. Instead of checking for a pulse like any reasonable person, she instead turned one corpse over and raided the back pocket, snatching a wallet.

"Hm. . ." She grumbled, flipping through its contents. "This cheap bastard only has 5 DA on him. What a ripoff!"

“He thinks he has an edge with us, and I think he is stalling in hopes one of your former men show up to save the day,” Rae chimed in. Her next words where more addressed to the Captain himself.

“Stop being so vague or I will start helping you take that weight off in ways you wont like” Rae did not want to be stuck in this one place to long, and it really sounded like the Captain wanted to give them the run around.

Mars got up, there were a bits of bones and blood on her suit, but she did not care too much. Important was that apart from Mist, no one was hurt. She also had no idea what that drone thing was, but it obviously helped so that was good. She drew her Hand Cannon which she only now realised was in its holster.

"Good job everyone, Okay Merril, check the bodies," Mars started barking orders. "Gough, Yar-Mak secure the exits we don't want more surprises. How is Mist? Is he stabilised or do we need to get him to medbay asap?"

At this point Pratima wandered into the cargo bay. It waited at one of the vents until the drone came out, then began murmuring happily to it as Pratima repaired the damage done to it using their own toolkit.

"Hello," Pratima said to Mars, Merrill and the others as it worked. "Apologies for inability to help further, however this unit not designed for combat. Please being recover other-selves now?"

Pratima scritched the drone under the 'chin' and its leg began to thump the floor periodically.

While doing this, Pratima also returned to making benign attempts to re-establish connection to the ship's mind.

Mars looked at the Freespacer. She had to shake her head though. "Sorry, not yet." She said, but gave the large freespacer a pat on her shoulder. "We will need to make sure the ship is secure first, we don't want to take your people here while, there still might be danger. Just be patient, we will handle it soon."

Keib caught a flicker on the monitor and saw Al'ris. She was near the breach made by the pirate's ship and looking into the tetherway made by them with her rifle raised. "Al'ris." Keib commanded, leaning forward in his chair, glancing down at Four Six and frowning before

"Yes, Lieutenant?" She put a hand to her earpiece and lowered her rifle, still looking down the tetherway cautiously for any signs of activity. It was swaying precariously through the vacuum of space and undulating between the two ships, remaining structurally intact through clever materials, construction and riggings.

Being confrontational so soon would be counterproductive. "Investigate the enemy vessel, all pirates here are either dead, or sealed-" He opened a video feed to the stables down below and found Ross, the last Demon locked in his armour and forced to watch more Phoenix Man at full volume. Switching to thermal, he could see a body inside of the suit. It wasn't moving.

Keib's brow furrowed as he wondered who inflicted such a cruelty. It was fiendish, perhaps even downright vile. "Keiiib?" Al'ris asked again, noticing that Keib had gone quiet.

"Oh, right - I'll get one of the others to follow you." He then switched back to the Away Team's channel as a whole. "Merril, Yar'Mak, come to the Bridge with the Freespacer and Shrie'keng. Bastion, Gough, move towards Al'ris." Her location was marked inside Bastion's WIND visor. "You'll be going in together to aprehend anyone left alive for questioning. Bring 'em alive."

"Gotcha." Gough replied as he looked at Bastion. "Yar'mak, can I borrow a couple of flashbangs?" Yar'mak complied and passed Gough a pair of spherical grenades. He nodded and smiled in thanks and passed one of the grenades to Bastion.

-

The fat captain was running out of options. Cornered by two angry subordinates and on the business end of a pair of guns or flensing knives. It was all hanging on his head in the end, and not on his escaped partner, whoever they were.

"B-but that's just it! It's so simple!" The captain explained with haste in his voice, shivering and quaking. He was backed into a wall, despite the explanation given being so simple, there was something more to it that the mutineers wouldn't be able to glean alone with their nominal captain. "I was double-crossed!"

"Well, if he doesnt have anything, and doesnt know anything, he isnt very useful to us is he?" Rae said with a shrug, this was very quickly getting them nowhere, and using valuable time.

"Then you've got one last chance before we start injecting things that'll make your supposed 'victims' torture for you that much more agonizing. What do you know about what we're chasing?" Veronica warned dangerously. She knew exactly where the chemicals were since the pirates enjoyed using them on prisoners in a sort of cruel sport. She was at the last of her patience as well.

"It's a ship. It was a ship. It's been missing. Its last transmission before going AWOL was that it made a discovery." If Keib had heard that, there'd be an immediate contradiction. There was no record made of any discovery, just of picking up some scrap materials to patch the ship.

"All it did was pick up some scrap, but what it was is the interesting part, and that's what I was trying to get! We coulda been rich."

"So all of this was over salvage rights..." the simplicity and cool words she used did not reflect the rage she was feeling at the moment on the inside "Where is this jackpot you were searching for? Theres no chance someone like you would leave such a place to memory. A map? Perhaps a simple datapad?" She looked a moment to Veronica, not expecting the Captian to give it up so easy, but maybe her co-conspirator had a better idea.

"If you don't have that shit, what was the transmission? And the scrap? To have that sort of help means it's not just scrap you're getting, is it?" Veronica kept her pistol pointed at him, but also slowly pulled a syringe out of her pocket, filled with a reddish liquid. There was a cap on, but her meaning was clear enough that it wouldn't stay on if he didn't keep it up with spilling it.

He pursed his lips and looked at the fluid. He recognised it. "You could say there were other perks." He stated plainly as he tapped his foot. "Pardons, a hideaway, retirement."

"And you believed them. You really think the Lorath Military would give pirate scum pardons?" she shook her head at the stupidty. "Also, I would be wondering just how many people they promised you they would pardon, what half the crew? Just yourself? There is no chance they wouldnt keep someone to hang." Rae re-adjusted the grip on her pistol, it would be so easy just to squeeze the trigger and end his babbling.

The cap came off of the syringe, and Veronica tapped it with the side of her pistol. "You aren't answering my questions, ya fat fuck. Think I'll rip an arm off after I give you this . You'll live long enough for the others to have fun with you." She wasn't smiling. She wasn't kidding. And with her cybernetic muscles, she was utterly capable of backing up her words.

-

Keib leaned back in his chair. He contemplated the rammifications of Hakahn going absent.

"Bridge, remind me, what happens if the CO goes AWOL?" He knew the answer, but he wanted to be rhetorical.

"The second-highest takes command of the ship in his absence." The Llmanel bridge bunny replied. It took her a moment to realise the rammifications of this. "Wait, does that mean-"

"Yep..." Keib sighed. "Guess I'm commanding." He crossed his arms and realised an additional fact: "Officially." The New Tur'lista bridge bunny laughed out loud before covering her mouth. Keib tried to muster a smile, but found it inappropriate.

"Guess history repeats itself." Keib mumbled under his breath towards Aiesu. He smiled grimly as the old memories started to stir in his mind.

-

"...Oers'tad, you'll be leading the charge from the north. Vier'bik takes the southern charge."

"Keib, you're in charge of disrupting their supplies internally. Time to double-cross those bootlicking sons-of-bitches."

In Keib's case, it was more like a triple cross. There was him and Mel'an who both wanted nothing to do with this pointless war and to escape together, the Occhestian resistance who Keib was infiltrating, and the LSDF that didn't trust Keib's cover. Tonight was the night where it all came to crossroads.

That night was a festival of egos and ideologies coming to clash against each other. Those feasting for ego would all come away hungry while ideologies crashed like waves against rocks on the calm shores of Lake Ae'rys whipped into a tsunami.

Mel'an stood by Keib and held his hand as the rebels were addressed. She looked at him, and their eyes met. She squeezed Keib's hand, and Keib squeezed back.

-

"Sir?" The Fyuunen bridge bunny asked. Keib snapped his head up and blinked a few times. "What will we do with the others once they get here?"

Keib. "I guess we'll stay put until we get something to interrogate from Mars, Gough and Al'ris." He then looked at the Freespacer with Merril, Yar'Mak and Shrie'keng. He then looked at Aiesu. "And meet our new guest, of course."

He looked at a computer console and noticed Pratima's new user account logging into the network and having the same level of access as an average soldier unconnected to anything vital or important, but still able to monitor the ship's systems or activate emergency measures if need be.

To Bastion's "check the bodies" order, Merril just laughed.

"Whaddya think I was doing?These bums are a poor excuse for pirates, seriously. So broke!"

A minute later, all the corpses were pronounced dead, to the surprise of nobody. Wildcat gave a shrug after the affair, counting the paltry amount of cash she scavenged.

"I basically got enough for a few candy bars from a vending machine," she sighed, flipping the bills.

Bastion took the grenade and strapped it onto her belt. "Roger that sir," she responded to Keib via comms and moved fast towards Al'ris. She knew Gough well enough to know he will follow her without saying. It would not be their first rodeo.

It will be simple, she and Gough will go in first and Al'ris will cover the rear. If you wanted to catch someone alive, Al'ris was the worst possible soldier to do so. She was professional normally, but if she got angry she started to loose self-control. That was always a bit of a problem.

Mars ran up to Al'ris. "Yo," she said with a wave. She held her hand-cannon as her rifle was a goner. It was okay though, the big revolver was good enough for her. "Time to go in. Al'ris cover our back!" She said and started walking in with her gun raised.

Four settled her feet against the lower paneling on the console she occupied. The screens flickered around with numbers and letters that she did not particularly recognize as important. Other crew's screens seemed more important. Next to her, Greg looked nervous. Four could tell; he shook.

Behind them both, Keib did not seem to be himself. Four did not know Keib very well, just like she did not know anyone else very well, but after some time in his company she felt that, perhaps, she knew him well enough that her guess could be correct.

"Mister Keib." Four quietly interrupted him.

Keib's mind drifted back to now, after the Bridge crew and Four had gotten his attention at last. "Yes, Soldier?"

Four left her chair in favor of joining Keib. She stood off to the side of the commander's chair, folding her hands together in the small of her back, just above the base of her pale white tail, watching him carefully.

"Are you okay?"

Greg swivelled around in his chair, cross legged with his tail curled about himself, as though he wanted to hear the mental state of his Master too. He'd watched him sleep. "No." Keib said quietly. He looked down into his knees and the floor beneath his feet. This whole ship was now his, and all of the people on it were officially his responsibility. He sighed and sniffed.

Gingerly, Four reached out and touched him on the shoulder. Keib reached up and grabbed her hand gently.

"I think it will be all right, Mister Keib."

"What makes you say that?" He asked as he turned around to look at her face. Her wet nose was directly in front of him. His head leaned towards hers and his forehead touched hers as his breathing became sharper and more phlegmatic. His face was clenching.

"I did, Mister Keib."

For Keib and amongst many other New Tur'Lista, the question 'What makes you say that?' was used to ask for a general summary of evidence and motives that lead to a given conclusion or outcome. Given their academic backgrounds and bookish natures, this seemed perfectly fine amongst themselves. Now probably wasn't the appropriate time for academic jargon.

But through the physical contact, Keib could see what the helashio meant. There did not seem to be any other reason except for a peculiar sort of faith. In her mind, the road progressed in only one direction; nothing could be worse than the past.

"I guess..." Keib kept his forehead against hers for a few more moments in concentration and then disengaged. His hand remained upon hers softly, "I guess that's just fine." Greg leaned in with his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands and with a smile on his face.

Freespacers saw the world differently. They saw a world of contradictions everywhere they looked. Inside themselves and the worlds they walked. Yamataians seemed to have it in for them, genocide and subsequent inadequate reparations proving that that they couldn't keep consistent. Kill, or subjugate? Nepleslians seemed to stress both duty to the home country and personal freedom simultaneously, usually ending messily.

Everywhere they looked, there was a distinct push-me-pull-you dichotomy running through each of the cultures of the world. There was, however, one world that was as foreign as an ocean or space. The digital world.

And the digital world of the Akahar was tiny compared to other places Pratima had seen.

Pratima began poking around in the Akahar's tiny wading pool of a digital world with some dissatisfaction. "Hello? Anyone? We don't like trading, it makes it hard to communicate."Small" "Claustrophobic" "uncomfortable" "alone" echoed under the primary message.

Meanwhile Pratima's unit began to make its way to the bridge with the assistance of the drone's mapping routines, as had been requested.

The little drone knew the ship's main passages all to easily. Though, upon Pratima's map she could see the nooks, crannies, maintenance tunnels and side passages underlaid on the map.

Pratima would duck into one of the maintenance passages, taking them where it's unit could fit... Just in case there were still pirates or other threats on the ship.

The drone started relaying a message. A speaker on it buzzed and a stream of garble could be heard before a clear, understandable message in Freespacer binary could be heard. "Good afternoon," Keib was speaking into a microphone by the chair whilst looking at what the Drone was seeing through a viewscreen. "My name is Keib, I am the current Commanding Officer of the Akahar. I hope its not too cozy here."

"That was some back to chapter one stuff you did when those pirates went aggro." Pratima would respond, exploring the passageways. "You need a systems upgrade, ten cycles ago. This place is tiny. How do you live in a place this small?"

Keib laughed. "We improvise. We make little retrofits from scrap and salvage, the stuff that the higher ups won't notice goes missing." Indeed, the digital landscape that Pratima was seeing would occasionally flicker or misrender.

"Higher... ups? What are those, some sort of mythological demon?"

"They're a colossal pain in the ass." Keib replied.

"How does a damaged posterior keep you from upgrading your systems?"

"Figure of speech. They withhold the technology required because they don't trust me." Unfortunately for him and his ship, they were right.

"Oh. Well, we could help you with that. We can help upgrade your systems. They're very patchy. We can fix that. This is our speciality. Then you don't have to depend on this not trusting thing. Meet mistrust with mistrust."

Keib rubbed his chin, and the drone used one of its forelegs to scrape some grit from its 'face'. "I was only taking precautions, but you have proven to be trustworthy."

"Of course... will you be rescuing the rest of the Pratima unit? It's very lonely without our other bodies."

"Once I can confirm that all hostiles are neutralised and its safe to proceed. That's a promise." He then paused for a moment. "Speaking of which, I want you to head towards the Bridge. It's safe here."

He would then hear a banging from an air vent just above him. "This unit got stuck. Please open exterior vent for unit?" The drone skittered down and opened a hatch to release the vent. Keib then realised where the noise was coming from and looked up, frowning.

Pratima would tumble down directly in front of Kieb's chair, its half ton robotic body landing somewhat heavily. Several arms grasped Kieb in an an approximation of a hug, lifting Keib out of his chair and into the air. "Hello." There was a new dent in the floor. The drone jumped out of the vent and landed in the crater Pratima had made.

"...pleased to meet you." Keib said as he tried to conserve his breath. The arms around him were rather strong, and he writhed in discomfort.

"... Oh right, organics need to regularly fill and empty their oxygen-carbon dioxide recycling bags." Pratima gently released Keib, then patted the poor man on the head. "Your bridge is very strange. Where is the forum for debates? Where are the lava lamps? Why is there no cyber weave? Where are your druids? Also not enough redundancy, and spacings are uncomfortably even."

The onslaught of questions from the Freespacer baffled Keib. He did travel to the Nepleslias once or twice, and only had a passing familiarity with Freespacer heraldry and paraphernalia. He didn't know what a cyber weave was, he had a lava lamp - in his office somewhere, he didn't get the idea of a Druid - approximating to a religious Llmanel instead. "I'll... I'll get back to you on that."

"You need a druid. No wonder your cyber space is so poor. We hearby appoint ourselves your druid! ...at least one of us is one."

Keib looked at Four incredulously, before trading glances with Aiesu, who appeared to be rapt in delight with seeing a freespacer face to 'face'.

"AH! Another wirehead!" Pratima said, noticing Aiesu's wifi signal. "There are too many meatsacks on this ship" it whispered conspiratorially to Aiesu, before begining to explore the bridge. "Can I take this apart? Your specs show that it's redundant, and I can increase the response time of your weapons network by 0.15% using it..." it asked, poking a currently unmanned secondary control station.

"Can I shoot it, Mister Keib?" asked the albino helashio near his elbow, who had, until now, stood fascinated with her white ears back.

Keib shook his head. He was obeying the unwritten laws of hospitality.

"Cutey ears!" Pratima poked the helashio's ears playfully.

Recoiling, bouncing back on the balls of her feet, Four reminded, "It is trying to examine military equipment, Mister Keib."

Keib replied by shrugging in her direction. "I've done worse than examine. Trust me."

"Is this what you are using as personal arms these days?" Pratima asked, reaching for the gun in four's holster. Keib's arm shot in and grabbed her wrist... well, one of them. Four, on the other hand, reached the drop-holstered gun first - by dint of long practice.

Pratima stared at the gun that had been pulled on it. "There's no power lines. how does it work without electricity?"

-

"Heya Bastion." Al'ris turned around and waved to the Trooper and Gough, who was right behind her. "Yeah, we're going into a pirate ship. Just us it seems." She looked out onto the tetherway that was made and kept watching it undulate and swing in place. "I'll take point."

She stepped out onto the tetherway with Bastion and Gough. If the world were a less sophisticated place, it was like standing upon two old merchant brigs, and someone had put a rope bridge between them rather than opting to swing from the rigging to the other ship. Eventually, they found themselves stepping upon a foreign deck. The smell of burnt meat hung thick in the air.

Al'ris continued taking point, weapon raised, safety off. "I know this ship. I've been on one before. The captain's room should be above us." She continued walking until she paused to inspect the fried corpse of the engineer on the ground.

"HR dispute?" Gough guessed as he touched the corpse with his boot, just to confirm that it was definitely dead. Al'ris grinned before moving towards the elevator. Gough was about to open the elevator, when she pointed out the stairs. Gough shrugged and the trio advanced up the stairs.

Their bootsteps could be heard through the corridors before the trio stopped at the door to the Captain's room. Al'ris pointed at Bastion to make first contact, and she and Gough positioned themselves to either side of the door, ready for Bastion's call. Gough had a flash bang in his off hand.

They had orders to take whoever was in there alive for questioning.

-

Meanwhile, back at the bridge, as Pratima was poking around with Keib's systems, he wondered where his medic had gone. "Merrill, where are you?"

Yar'mak was waiting for her, tapping a heavy foot against the ground. "When you're ready..." He asked, rolling his eyes as the wildcat counted the crumpled paper money and bent coins from the pirates. He moved towards her and tapped her on the shoulder to see if she got the message.

"Yeah, yeah! Coming! Piss-poor pirates. . ." Merril grumbled, turning around and walking past Yar'mak. Leaving him behind. After all the waiting he did for her.

Somewhat of a jerk move. His heavy bootsteps could be heard following close behind her. It didn't take him long to catch up despite his portly frame. Eventually they reached the doors to the bridge, which emitted a chime and opened. A freespacer was standing over Keib and Four in childlike curiosity as Aiesu looked on, fascinated at the freespacer's movements and thought patterns. Keib appeared to be in control of the situation. Maybe.

Yar'mak lowered his rifle and exchanged an incredulous glance with Merrill. "Yeah, its definitely a Thursday."

"What, can't get the hang of Thursdays or something?" the Medic asked, looking about the room. "Anybody hurt? Hate to actually have to do my job."

Unfortunately for her, most of the damage here was psychological, or just little cuts, scrapes and bruises that you could walk off. Nothing too important. Nothing they'd encountered would have been able to produce a worthwhile wound for the medic to fix, as they would've likely died a moment later.