Tag, you're it.
Polian Gunship, Ze-Fuye System
The jump drive controls proved elusive as power fluctuated through the alien systems as the self repair systems continued to work. Slowly the ship recovered from its ordeal at the Lex's hands. Lauren rubbed her hands, sitting in the awkward control chair, her hand perched on the controls, stroking them to guide the ship, the outriggers adjusted as the gravitic drive pulled the nimble ship around by its own mass.
The ship stalked in the wake of the ominous Imperial battleship, her new commander sitting uncomfortably through the long night in the alien command compartment. It was almost as if the ship could feel her commander's apprehension and shared it, the ship responded empathically, reassuring in its own way that sit would obey, and fight well once the time came.
Lauren hurt like hell, every nerve ending in her body screamed out like they were on fire, and she closed her eyes against it, willing the pain to just stop, telling herself that it was all in her head. She was alive, she'd eaten, but her body craved proper sleep after all they had been through. trying not to dwell as the night stretched on, on all the dark knife-like memories, sharp and clear, in her minds eye, holding her awake like the always did.
Her enemy sat darkly in the centre of the HUD labouring to preparing himself to carry out his God's will. His new weapons mounts, stripped off of the Polian vessel were nearly finished, and once they were he would engage his jump drives and far-step to Arcanis to finish his task.
She stared for a long while at the bright flares of the Lex Talionis's ion drives as he cruised close to a couple of moons that circled around a large, barren world. Lex knew the gunship still followed him, but for reasons known only to him, decided to allow them to watch, they posed no threat to him. The gunship was unarmed, it's crew battered after their ordeal with him. And he had nothing to hide from them.
Lauren shifted in her seat, hoping that Firlotte was making headway in figuring out the Polian command interface, it was giving her a headache trying to remember her own limited conversational Polian lessons back when she had taken a tour aboard an Orion Tradeliner through Polian territory. But was of little help, data scrolled down floating displays, a language so alien that she was sure that the Polians revelled in making things as complicated as possible.
"What I couldn't give for a Polian to English dictionary," she grumbled, rubbing her head, feeling her stomach grumble. Though they were off of the Lex Talionis, there was still no real resolution to their food problem, they had the two backpacks of rations that James had recovered from the dropship, but how long would they have to rely upon that food? As yet they still hadn't found what passed for a mess hall on the Polian vessel, and considering the ship was designed for beings with three hands, opening doors was a two-person affair, slowing the exploration even further.
Lauren closed his eyes, 'reaction instead of action', she could almost hear Darien's voice speaking the warning.
"Easy for you to say," She cursed, "I could really use one of your plans right about now."
She turned as Sergeant Hobbes ambled through and into the bridge, he'd stripped out of the hot space suit and walked about in his small clothes, his TAC-vest slung on for good measure as he rested his hands on his Pulse Rifle. As close to relaxed as the Veteran would allow himself to get. He leaned down to peer through one of the observation windows out at the dead system they were passing through, chewing his lip as he turned back to her.
"Firlotte found a stash of Kill'a'ma'jigs and a bunch of Boomsticks tucked in what he thinks is a weapons locker." Hobbes reported tightly, "I had him issue them to the crew, least we're all armed now..."
"Oh?" Lauren replied dryly, "Should I drive slowly while they shoot out of the windows?"
Hobbes turned his head, surprised at her reaction, "Sorry Ma'am..."
"No," she shook her head at the middle-aged man, smiling weakly, "Just tired, and this chair is..." she shifted again.
"I getcha. Built for an alien at least three feet taller than you who has a perchance for Sadomasochism." Hobbes nodded to the chair, "Need to rest a spell? Stretch your legs?"
Lauren stared again back at the Lex Talionis, knowing that they were in a race, but while Lex had a clear goal, what was she doing? What could she hope to accomplish? She needed to think, standing and surrendering the chair to the Sergeant who took it, positioning his hand on the control orb on the arm of the chair.
She rested a hand on her service automatic, rubbing her neck under the tee shirt, the sweat stained space suit had been crushed into a ball and tossed aside a long time ago. The Polians liked it warm, and they were all sweating.
She walked back through the ship. Wiping the sweat from her face, she didn't have her pills; the last of her supply had been left in her fatigues on the Lex Talionis. Without them sleep would be impossible. Without them s. But she was tough girl, she'd deal with that problem in turn. Sleep would be impossible. But she was tough girl, she'd deal with that problem in turn.
The Polian gunship was not a large vessel, with five decks and measured two hundred feet from bow to stern. Directly behind the bridge was the conference room, and behind that the large Polian organic computer core, glowing a pale shade of violet casting the rooms around it in a surreal light. She glanced at it as she descended the small elevator to the deck below, crew cabins filled most of the second and third decks, while a large aft cargo bay spanned both decks and extended into the tail of the ship.
The ship reminded her of a whale in shape, with a flat arrowhead tail and out riggers all bedecked in black and red scorpion plates crisscrossing the hull. Inside it was almost like being inside the belly of a beast. Bone like protrusions held the separate crew chambers apart, beating as translucent tubes carried lifeblood too and fro through the ship.
The lower two decks were mostly uninhabitable and filled with techno-organic machinery, including the cylindrical zero-point reactor. There were rooms which may have been workshops or labs are one time but had been stripped clean. Lex finding better usage for the alien equipment, no doubt taking anything that wasn't bolted down and whisking it away for some maniacal purpose or another.
She yawned again, poking her head through open doors, finding a room that had been temporarily deemed the sickbay, a couple of slabs that could have been tables had the injured ordinance crewmen being tended to by Crewman Steves, one of the gunners mates. He was doing the best he could, but without access to proper medical facilities all he could do was patch them to the limits of his basic first aid training.
Lauren gave Steves a weak smile before she carried on through the ship. Maybe Firlotte could give her some hope. She was about willing to take anything at that point, maybe if they hurried up and erected a shrine to the immortal Emperor she'd offer a quick prayer, at that point she could use just about anything.
He was down on the lower decks examining, with some confusion, an open panel with a crisscrossed network of translucent crystal fibers all linked into Peligian crystals, glowing with ancient symbols. The technician looked up tiredly.
"I'm not a genius," Firlotte grumbled as he wrestled with his makeshift tools, trying to figure out what did what in the alien configuration. It was so strange to him that he couldn't make head nor tails out of the device. How Elias had figured the stuff out was beyond Firlotte, part of his gift for machinery probably. But that didn't really help as Firlotte tried to figure out where the jump drive was, if it was anywhere.
If he had a few weeks and a full engineering staff, he might be able to pull something off, but they were stuck. It didn't help that everyone that had been stranded on the Lex Talionis had been weapons techs or ordinance monkeys. This left a poorly beleaguered Petty Officer Firlotte to figure out how to make it all work on his own.
"I'm not Matthew 'I'm a fucking genius' Elias!" Firlotte murmured, pulling out one of the crystals and watching it go dark, before replacing it, trial and error seemed his only recourse.
"No one expects you to be, Petty Officer," Lauren hovered, over his shoulder, looking over the maze of alien technology, knowing they were screwed, "Just make your best attempt, you're a professional, we all have faith in you."
He sighed again sitting up closing the panel, "The only reason this ship is flying at all is because She's got some kind of self-repair system that is keeping her functional, but without a technical crew, I couldn't even begin to guess what does what... and unless the Polian's keep technical manuals like the Amsus do... I'm sorry Commander."
"Well physics are still physics, right?" Lauren asked looking down the various service corridors around them, "If this was an Imperial ship where would the Jump pods be?"
"That's the thing," Firlotte said shaking his head, "This ship doesn't seem to have any, least none that I can find yet. You know there's always the possibility that the Lex Talionis stripped out the gunship's jump drive."
Lauren didn't like that thought, she crossed her arms and looked about her, "Keep looking, I'm going to see if there's any kind of diagnostic system we can use to figure out what's missing."
"Yes ma'am." Firlotte nodded as he flipped open another panel, gaping in disgust at the beating organ surrounded by a network of support cables. It pulsed and quivered and released a thick oily substance that coated everything as Firlotte pushed the panel back on and hoped he hadn't broken what ever that was.
Lauren set her jaw, making her way up to the cargo bay, if there was any equipment left behind, that would be where it would be. Drawing close, she heard a steady and rhythmic thumping coming from the over sized chamber. Instinctively her hand dropped to her thigh holster, drawing her pistol in a single, smooth motion, as she swept up and into the room, her finger curling around the trigger.
James somersaulted through the air, lading on the edge of one of the large crates, balancing a moment before he back-flipped to another. His soft shoes thumping lightly onto the top as he swept forward, arcing through the air a third time to land lightly on his feet. Looking back at her, his eyes flicked to the weapon in her hands and back up to her face.
Something in his eyes said he'd just contemplated killing her, a bone-chilling look that had been the cold assessment of a man bred to kill on command. His instincts guiding him as he had weighed what it would take to kill her before she pulled the trigger. At range, him with only his knives, she was certain that she held the advantage. However something in the light smile that darted across his face made her doubt her own assessment of the situation.
"What are you doing?" She asked, slipping the gun away.
"Practicing." James replied calmly, turning and walking across the cargo bay, bounding lightly off of a wall and up onto a crate. Making the motion look effortless. "I practice every day I can." He met her eyes, "I have to know the limits of what I am capable of. I cannot serve the Aga-khan if I die needlessly."
"Do you ever... fall?" she asked him her mind racing.
James paused stretching before he took a running jump, sailing over her head to land on a far crate, bounding off of that onto a next higher one, then sideways across a small gap, clutching onto a rail that he slid down to land beside her. "I fall a lot." He replied simply, "But I get up again. The trick is knowing how far, or how high to jump, and when." He returned to his athletic work out, ignoring her. And she had the sense that he had said all he wanted to say. Leaving her to wonder as she walked back through the ship heading towards the bridge.
She was madly pursuing the Lex Talionis in a broken, alien ship. Without weaponry, with injured crew, through enemy territory. It was suicide; she had just been so consumed with... what? A false sense of nobility? Was that what James was trying to tell her? That she couldn't stop the Lex Talionis alone. She wasn't Ahab, she couldn't ask her crew to die hunting down a white whale.
She walked out onto the bridge, as the warning trill from a screen springing to life behind the Sarge had him sitting up in his seat, getting up to check it he swore.
"Incoming!" He bellowed up through the ship, returning to the pilot's chair and rolling the gunship away from the Amsus Raptor Patrol that had entered the system, with the majority of the Amsus war fleet descending upon the Sentinel Jump Nexus, patrols were rare, but the Amsus patrolling in Polian territory either something had gone drastically wrong for the Polian Alliance, or they were becoming dependant on their allies for defence. Either way, it didn't bode well for the crippled Polian gunship.
Lauren rested her hand on the Sarge's shoulder. Hobbes glancing up, his hands on the controls, knowing she was the better pilot and knowing that she was right he relinquished them to her.
"Two Raptors inbound," He gestured to port, "From their approach I don't think they've spotted Lex yet... they're coming after us."
Lauren slipped into the uncomfortable chair as she licked her lips, "They probably think we're smugglers," She assessed, looking about her at the Polian gunship, there had to be an IFF system, something that would identify them as being on the same side, "Ideas?"
"Run like hell?" Hobbes suggested gripping onto one of the safety bars mounted on the wall and pointing towards the outer system.
"Commencing operation: run like hell," Lauren replied, pouring power into the gunship's main drives as the small craft angled and bolted like a startled jackrabbit.
"Uh oh!" Hobbes said looking at the sensor display.
"Uh oh isn't exactly the kind of useful information we need right now, Sarge," Lauren bit back, "Maybe something with a few more syllables?"
"The biggest bastard in known space has spotted the Amsus..." Hobbes reported indicating the Lex Talionis.
"Well let's hope he's in the mood to play," Lauren commented, glancing back at the sensor display, watching the real time data fed to the system. The Polian sensors were capable of scanning great distances and compiling the data at FTL speeds. The Lex Talionis had engaged its stealth mode, powering down and slipping into the shadow of the moon ahead, maintaining a low profile and leaving the Gunship to deal with the Amsus alone.
"So much for his help," Hobbes murmured, looking up again and out of the window of the bridge, "Can we make a burn for the planet?"
Lauren shook her head tensely, "The Raptor's are approaching over the azimuth of the planet, they'd cut us off if we tried, as it is they'll run us down in..." she looked over the instruments, "Ten minutes."
"Providing the engines hold up," Firlotte clambered up to the bridge and hurried to a display that sprang to life, his fingers sliding over it, trying to make some kind of sense out of the readings he was seeing. Figuring he had something he could use he turned to leave again, "I'm gonna try to give us a boost...."
"Jump drives?" Hobbes asked looking back at the wiry technician.
"Yeah, keep dreaming," Firlotte replied shaking his head as he sprinted back up towards the engine crawl spaces on the lower two decks.
Lauren smiled after the young man, wishing, with a pang of regret, wishing that Elias was there to pull off one of his engineering marvels, or maybe Darien with one of his crazed ideas... that left her, on her own, to somehow pull their bacon out of the fire.
"I'm going to put us on a direct course for the Lex Talionis." She said calmly.
"With respect's ma'am, are you out of your bloody mind?" Hobbes gaped down at her.
"I have one of Darien's plans," Lauren reassured leaning down to look over her controls, "Our advantage over a Raptor is our manoeuvrability, right?"
"They have speed, and firepower." Hobbes nodded, "But the Gunship has gravitic drives, we also have better sensors..." He paused nervously, "But I'd like to remind you that that is a psychotic Battleship..."
"Exactly," Lauren smiled calmly, "We're going to play chicken."
"With an Imperial capital ship..." Hobbes said shaking his head as she tapped in the new course, he was used to Darien's unusual tactics, and Lauren mirrored his typical manic grin on her features that the skipper had whenever he had a moment of pure insanity that was either going to get them all killed, or would save their lives.
The gunship's gravitic drives pulled in tight against her body as they flared, boosting the ship along its ballistic course, shrieking into the shadow of the moon, behind it, the two Raptor's hot on the heels of their prey began to open fire with their primary auto-cannons.
"What, no polite request to haul over?" Hobbes chimed up from where he stood, "I'm beginning to think they don't like us."
"It's typical of interdiction missions." Lauren replied moving her hand across the displays, trying to get a view of the engine gauges, to have some idea of how they were doing "The fact that we turned and ran is evidence that we're guilty of something..." The Farstrider bucked from a lucky shot, a flicker of sparks from the communications console flared as the Polian equivalent of fuses blew, the lights flaring as electricity arced through it, burning it out in a series of pops and hisses.
Hobbes turned his head to look at the smouldering communications gear, "great..."
"It gets worse," Lauren said leaning around, as the gunship rounded the horizon of the moon, the Lex Talionis rising up from the shadows, like a titanic creature from a nightmare, it's drones buzzing and whirling as they deployed to protect the heavily armoured warship from the imminent attack.
Lauren felt an instinctual quiver of fear run through her, a sensation she buried down with the pain of her ordeal. The gunship shook again from another impact...
"There go the lateral stabilizers!" Firlotte yelled running back into the bridge, as the gunship began to spiral screaming down towards the black metal plates of Kardiac's warship.
"Well fix them!" Lauren bellowed back, staring at the sensor masts and the blister of point defence weapons, thankfully out of ammunition.
"I can't fix..." The ship rocked again from another impact, "What's no longer there!" Firlotte sounded pissed, "and for the record, that was our primary power plant being torn apart by explosive rounds..."
The Raptors crested the edge of the planet, finally coming into visual range of the Imperial battleship, the two small frigates realizing their error, as they careened along opposite vectors trying to get away from the cloud of drones streaking after them.
The ships swarmed around the gunship, as one of the drones flew up to the bridge observation window, firing its own engines to fly in tandem, the photoreceptors glowing blue as they rotated, studying the faces of the crew, the small gatling laser spiralling up. At that range, it would shatter the observation window and kill them all.
Lauren descended from the command chair and stood, breathing heavily, face to face with the drone, knowing that her image was being relayed back to the main computer. That she was face to face with the Lex Talionis.
"The drones are engaging the Raptors..." Hobbes called from behind her.
Lauren nodded standing with just a thin piece of Plexiglas between her and the drone, "your move," She said straight to the drone, knowing that Lex would be able to read her lips, translating what she was saying.
"He's assessing our threat level." Hobbes said from behind her, sliding into the pilot's seat,
His fingers brushing over controls, searching for something, anything that could be a Nav computer. Triggering something that looked vaguely familiar, Firlotte's eyes widening as he ran across to kneel beside the chair, examining the new hovering screen, poking in what he figured were jump calculations.
"We're an unarmed gunship crewed by an ordinance team, technicians, and us..." Lauren smiled shaking her head, "No, he's gauging my intentions. He's assessing my threat level."
"Egotistical much?" Firlotte fired back looking up, a glint in his eyes showed Lauren that the jump coordinates were set.
Lauren raised her hand and moved it slowly to the right, like a fish in a tank, the drone followed the hand. "He wants to know why I'm chasing after him instead of going back to Excalibur."
"Raptor One was just kamikazed by a flight of drones..." Hobbes reeled off, "Raptor Two is still trying to out run his pursuers."
"Engage jump drives," Lauren motioned, "He knows we can't stay, and he's giving us a chance to leave in peace."
Firlotte shook his head, finally glad they had located the control interface for the elusive jump drives, engaging them with a short prayer, the gunship shifting into hyperspace and down into a busily active system.
It was such a difference that it took Lauren a moment to realize how far they had jumped, leaping away from the deserted outlands and into the more populated systems. The buzz of the Dreknar patrol ships winging their way through freighter traffic... The Denver holographic billboard that was being assembled on the main approach to the single luscious green world.
"Welcome to Cairo," Firlotte announced, "On the Orion border so it's actually declared neutral space..."
Lauren turned her head, "You brought us to populated space?"
Firlotte turned to look back at the fried communication system, and over to the red lining engineering displays, "Unless you'd rather deal with that out in un-occupied territory, where I am pretty sure we don't have access to the parts needed to repair a Gunship."
Lauren stood before the windows looking out across the system, Orion freighters using it as a staging point to transit too and from Orion space, heading either into Taïrian space, the Amsus Hegemony, or beyond it to the Polian Alliance. One more ship, even a Polian Gunship, wasn't going to be noticed in that mess.
Hobbes steered it on an approach heading, making sure to follow the typical Orion emergency landing procedures for damaged communications equipment. The gunship dropping down over the brightly lit city that dominated a large peninsula on the eastern continent.
Lauren secured herself for a landing, noting absently that the sensors were registering a bright and warm day ahead of them.