“Two birds, one stone. Your mother will be happy to hear all about this I’m sure.” Hayward said, tutting his way to the front of the small storage area they were on. Ren couldn’t move, feeling the heat rising to his face while trying to reason with himself. He never saw them die, so it couldn’t happen. Deaths don’t happen that fast, right? He could feel himself breaking down inside, like he was beginning to see himself outside his own body. He wasn’t sure how long he sat there, dissociating from the moment as his ears popped from the pressure change.
“You killed them.” Ren said, turning to Hayward now who looked at him in surprise.
“Well, of course. They were pirates and Atmos fugitives. I was well within my rights and stature to execute them.” He looked at Ren with a leer now, daring him to do anything. “Now I’m going to go back and see to it that their friend is executed. No loose ends, everything in a lovely little knot.”
Ren was still outside his body when something clicked in his head. “Their friend?”
“The brother, I’ll need to have him extradited and executed but that shouldn’t be a problem.” Hayward was sizing Ren up now, seeing the kid, once tan but quickly paling under the Veil’s constant night. Ren couldn’t match him if he wanted to, there was no muscle on his body and this guy was jacked like he had been training for the Ark leagues.
Ren’s head was spinning now. How could he tell them? Was anyone alive to tell? There was at least Isshin, right? Ren’s mind was racing with everything he should do at once, he barely realized he had snapped back into his body when he raised his hand to strike at Hayward, who caught it easily.
“Oh, you’re not going anywhere like that. Now, we can do this the hard way if you want.” He flipped a switch on the wall, activating a small hum. Ren noticed no difference, but when Hayward walked away he felt like his feet were sealed to the ground. He tried again, still stuck. “Now, you can sit or stand there for the duration of the ascent but don’t think the mags are strong enough to break.”
Ren saw a chance, feeling his feet still sitting loose in the boots. He raised his hands, giving up as Hayward nodded and shut the switch off. Ren tried and was able to move his feet once more.
“Now, follow me up and we’ll get you situated for the ascent.” He said, turning to walk up a narrow flight of stairs. Ren stopped before following, wavering his first words that he had picked out very, very carefully.
“Surprised they didn’t kill him on sight based on what they told me.” He adopted the mask of posh indifference he had learned so well from his mother. Trying to appeal to Hayward to brag and spill something.
“Fortunately for him he was apprehended on a corporate contract. Avarice has him picking boxes on their factory ark. Though he’ll be set for trial and execution once we ascend.” Exactly what Ren wanted. Hayward kept going, bragging out how he had found the missing link they were looking for, “Someone only input this guy under one name, his LAST name, too. Nobody could find him when they looked so we just declared him dead. Until I decided to look on the labor rosters and who do I find on the biggest damn labor ark there is?”
Hayward turned back in time to see Ren pulling the emergency lever on the door, blasting it wide open with nothing but the sea and port below. He tried to see where his friends had been moments before, but saw only blood slowly washing off the port walk.
“No. No bodies.” He whispered, convincing himself to keep moving. Door open, he readied himself to leap from the ship but felt his boots anchored once more to the hard floor.
“You really thought it would be that easy?” Hayward shouts over the rushing wind, biting Ren to the bone as he raises his grapple, pointing it square at the man.
“You’re the one that monologued.” Ren said, flicking his wrist up and causing the small pressure chamber to eject the grapple. Hayward stared in shock as it pierced his shoulder, Ren then moving his wrist down and ducking from the path as he made Hayward zip forward from his non magnetized steps and fall through the doors. Ren wiggled from his loose boots, jumping from the ship as it took off further into the air, pilots unaware of the happenings below.
Ren pulled his glider the moment he was clear of the ship, knowing he didn’t have long before gravity gave him a mean punch against either the water or steel. The heavy winds almost immediately took control, spinning him in every direction as he struggled for control. He desperately reached out a hand, trying to stop his madcap spinning now going in all directions as the wind took him as high and low as it pleased.
He finally caught sight of the port, an empty space where people had once been surrounded by blood mixing with ocean spray. Ren extended his hand and fought against the crushing inertia to flick his wrist upward, failing twice before finally letting the grapple fly. He desperately hoped it would find a target as he waited for the line to grow taut. It caught, whether on the port or on a neighboring ship he didn’t know.
“Oh, thank hell,” he mumbled, flicking his wrist inward as Ash had showed him once day on the ship. It began reeling him in quickly. Too quickly. He started furiously flicking his wrist to the left, making a comical sight to most of the watchers on adjacent ports. It paid off and his descent slowed enough to not break him on impact when he fell, but it was still rough.
After a moment he stood up, pressing the button on his glider straps to reel it back in. After a few minutes of the mechanism correcting the tangled threads, it withdrew. He stood up and straightened himself out, surveying the scene. The Pigeon was still docked where it had been, no sign of anyone coming or going. Bloodspray stained the dock crimson as waves crashed against them, trying to wash away the already setting stains. He couldn’t see any sign of Hayward, whether on the dock or in the water. No time to waste worrying about him though.
“If they’re not here…” Ren muttered to himself, starting back toward the street they had originally come from. His socks picked up water as he went, desperately making him wish he had another pair of boots. He ripped them off his feet as he kept going, preferring whatever may wash over him than the feeling of wet socks.
He ran breathlessly through the streets, splashing through puddles and pedestrians indiscriminately as he made his way back to the small storefront, bursting in gasping.
“Isshin! Robin! Kit! Please be here…” He screamed, heading back toward the kitchen before someone ran forward, stopping him in his tracks while holding him in a bear hug.
“You’re here!!” Kit screamed, muffled into him. He took a minute to realize what was happening, processing the last few minutes before looking over to where Kit had run from, seeing Ash sitting in a booth where Robin was laying next to him, arm over her face. Isshin stood by the wall, resting against where Mugen no tengoku sat once more, cleaned of the blood previously staining it.
“Welcome back.” Isshin said, moving towards him and pulling up another chair, he walked past and locked the door. “Not a damn one of you thought it was a good idea to lock the door after being nearly murdered? What kind of stupid pirates are you?”
“Ones that get their asses kicked, obviously.” Ash groaned, crashing his head into the table.
“Where are Poe and Aeris?” Ren asked, immediately getting an answer upon hearing squawking and feathers ruffling from the kitchen. Curses in another language and Poe’s wheezing laugh followed as Aeris burst from the kitchen, holding a large fish in her beak. She was hopping away in a mad rush, flapping her wings and jumping every few steps until she saw Ren, dropping the fish and making a straight line for him.
As she ran into him he collapsed into the chair, her nuzzling against his chin. He ran a hand along her feathers as Poe came walking from the kitchen, plates in hand.
“Alright, me and the boys back there made food. Y’all eat up then we’ll hop out of here.” She said, setting plates down in front of Robin and Ash. Kit took their seat back and looked at the plate in front of them, looking then to Ren as Poe noticed him. “Holy shit, you made it out.”
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She smacked him on the shoulder before walking off back into the kitchen, shouting in Japanese as she did.
“No point in gettin’ on.” Robin muttered from under her hat. She briefly lifted it to peek at Ren, “Not that I ain’t happy to see you kid, but circumstances are pretty shit.”
“No, they’re not.” Ren said, earning a quick glare from Robin. “He’s alive.”
She was up and wincing immediately, Ash and Kit urging her to sit back down lest her wounds reopen. She looked at him fiercely, fire burning in her eyes that told him to tell the truth or stop fucking around. “How?”
“From that officer’s mouth directly. Said he’s on a manufacturing ark, Avarice was the company.” He was stumbling out every piece of information he had been repeating in his head since the ship, letting it all out in a torrential downpour before he forgot anything. “They said he’s still alive but they would have him executed when he got back.”
“So where is he now?” Isshin asked, stepping forward.
“I don’t know. Dead probably, I threw him out of that ship when I escaped.” Ren said, looking around at them. “I might have also grappled him through the shoulder to do it.”
“Holy shit dude.” Kit looked at him from across the table, surprise and admiration glowing. “That’s hardcore.”
He blushed a little as Robin continued to sit up, pushing Ash away as he tried to stop her, as if he could even hope to now that she knew Sunny was alive and they had been lied to.
“Alright, we start planning now. We don’t know if that officer is dead so we need to hit them quick…” She trailed off and began to sit back, slurring her words. Isshin came over and laid her back down.
“I told you to rest, dumbass. We’ll make the plans, not like you’re going anywhere.” Ash said, motioning her back down to the booth.
“They had you guys on the ground… I thought you were dead.” Ren shuddered, finally able to think about something else other than the news about Sunny and worrying about the others. He looking over to the crew. Kit nodded and pointed over to Aeris.
“Almost were. They weren’t watching the skies and Aeris took them by surprise. Cut the bastard that had me and distracted the other guy long enough for Ash to get him down and take the gun. They ran off in a little grunt ship with their wounded guy while Poe took shots at them.” Kit said, running a hand through Aeris’ feathers as she cooed in return.
“Then we ran back here to find out what happened to Robin. Isshin managed to get her fixed up pretty quick but she lost a decent amount of blood.” Ash finished up for her, shrugging. “Not sure how we’re all alive, but we made it.”
“Fuckin’ cheers to that I guess.” Isshin raised his glass, with Kit and Ash responding with theirs and Robin struggling to lift a middle finger to him. He quickly realized Ren didn’t have a drink and ran to get one, grumbling as he opened the cooler “One visit by his damn crew and I’m eaten out of business.”
He walks back, popping open the bottle and handing it to Ren, who gladly accepts and drinks deep, feeling a familiar burn from the alcohol he had tried a lot more of the past few days.
“Alright, so we’ve got an Avarice labor ark. Did he say any specific type?” Isshin began questioning Ren, pacing as he committed the information to memory and began preparing a mental list.
“Manufacturing, but he said something about shipping and packing too.” Ren gave back to him, replaying the conversation in his head. “Said it’s the largest one there is, so that’s gotta narrow it down right?”
“Okay, so Avarice manufacturing Ark, that’s gonna be above Veil. Probably at lower strat but wouldn’t be surprised if it’s just above Veil. Not like they’ve ever cared about safety standards.” Isshin looked to Kit now, “Can the ship cross the Veil?”
“Never had a need to but we’ll find out.” Kit responded, nodding to Ash who did the same.
“Fingers crossed. Now, I might have a plan but we have to play it close. We run it right, we can play some corporate sabotage while we’re at it.” He says, now moving over to a board with a menu scrawled on in marker. He uses a rag to erase most of it, instead drawing a crude diorama of the atmos and Veil dividing. “So, they put my idiot brother in a labor colony. Of course, nothing is too big for my brother so he went all out and ended up at Avarice.”
“They’re everywhere in the Strat. Provide most of the everyday stuff people on the ark use.” Ren added, to which Isshin nodded, drawing a massive ark just above the Veil and a crude version of them on the surface. “Not a whole lot of other options unless you order special from one of the boutique stations but those take forever since they go cross-Veil. More hazardous shipping so they only do them like once every three months.
“Hold captive from the people that need it, and exploit those that make it.” Isshin said, pointing over to Kit now. “Now, these production arks are basically slave labor camps, we all know that, so they get new shipments pretty often from private prisons and indentured contracters coming in, so that’s not going to be hard. Kit, Can you see where it might be right now?”
“Yeah, already looking into it.” Kit was punching buttons on their brace while shoveling food in simultaneously, barely stopping to breathe. “Looks like it’ll be crossing over Glaciertown in two days. Veil is pretty thin there, makes sense for a place to send any new prisoners up. We could slip through as they go by?”
“Perfect. Can we get there around the same time?” Isshin asked them back, “Because unless we’re there at the same time we might as well take the hard way.”
“Yeah, if I run the Pidge nonstop we can make it just in time.” Kit was running calculations and routes, comparing the routes in their mind and where the Pigeon could take them. “If we go through the Veil from here and head northeast we could hit it in a day along the trajectory they have.”
“Could the Pigeon make the crossing?” Ash interjected now, himself questioning. “I’ve never taken her through the Veil. I don’t know what’s in there.”
“I can’t promise a smooth ride, but I can promise we’ll make it. Ren fell through it on his own, how hard can it be to navigate up?” Kit asked back at them. “I mean he was probably going like… I don’t know, terminal velocity at that point? So it didn’t take nearly as long as it’ll take us.”
“Fantastic.” Isshin said, making his own note about the alternate route they could end up in. “Now, we’re talking Avarice here. Mega of the mega, these fuckers have a strangle on everything. I have to import my knives from the Blossoms. Shit gets expensive and it’s because they have a chokehold on it. The chokehold on their workers is even worse. Sunny told me about the last labor camp he was in and it was small scale. Beating prisoners, working them to death, not even stopping for basic bathrooms or hydration. Dystopian shit that’s been around since the dawn of time. So these people have been so starved and worked to a point where they’ll burn the fucker down at the slightest sniff but don’t want to be the ones to light the match.”
Everyone except Ren murmured agreement. Isshin continued.
“So, we light the match for them. One catches, the leak leads back to the source and everything goes up.” He continued, turning back to them, “We give the little friction it needs and it goes from there, we use that to slip out and away.”
“So we incite a rebellion and coup of a corporate labor ship?” Kit deadpanned. They looked around to the others, gauging their response to the situation, seeming satisfied, they shrugged. “Yeah, I’m down.”
“Kid, you know the layout of the arks?” Isshin looked at him, leveling his gaze. Ren felt everyone staring at him now, waiting on his answer.
“Most are on the same blueprint yeah, they have to have key areas in the same place for safety standards. I’ve only ever actually been on a manufacturing ark for school trips though, everything else I’ve just seen in pictures.” He said, not sure how to respond on the spot. Isshin nodded again.
“I’ll go in.” Robin said from her place on the booth, now laying back once more.
“Honey the only thing you need to go in is a hospital.” Kit said to her, patting a hand on her arm. “Let us take care of this one.”
“None of you know how labor arks work.” She shot back, silencing them. “I speak the language, I know the layout. I can find Sunny.”
“What if you die while sneaking in there because your wounds open? Then where are the rest of us at? Ash said, shrugging her off and stuffing food into his mouth. Poe eventually returned with more plates, finally setting herself down with the last one. Ren stared into the food in front of him, mouth watering.
“Nope. I’m going in with him.” Isshin said, writing his name and Ren’s alongside Sunny’s in the big square above the Veil. “We’re going to sneak in, meet up with Sunny, incite a riot and takeover, then bail before the big guns show up.”
“Wait why am I going in?” Ren wasn’t sure how they suddenly reached that agreement, but was he really up for a rescue mission on an ark for a, by all accounts, homicidal maniac? “I don’t know why you’d need me. I can show you the layout.”
“No, we work in pairs or we don’t work at all. Lone wolf shit is how he got himself there.” Isshin gave back to him, “I need eyes, but I promise to protect you from harm. You’ll guide and give intel on where to go.”
“Why not Ash? At least he knows how to fight?” Ren stammered, looking around.at the entire crew who were simply looking back at him, concerned.
“If they come at the Pigeon I have to be in the gun seat while Kit pilots. Otherwise this thing could get shot out of the sky. Then we’re in a whole other load of shit.” Ash offered up.
Ren hesitated, knowing he had to make the right decision here. “Okay, I’m in.”
“Okay, and us?” Kit asked, also finally digging into the food. Isshin nodded, rolling his eyes.
“You’ll be waiting to pick us up as soon as we’re ready to move.” He said, drawing a small dot just below the Veil, opposite the ark where he had situated himself and Ren. “We need you on standby for pickup as soon as possible. That ship will be swarmed by government dogs if we don’t get the hell out quick.”
“Then what, we just leave everyone there to deal with the mess?” Kit asked, butting in again. “We can’t just incite a revolt then leave without seeing it through.”
“Oh it probably won’t go through.” Isshin laughed, “You’ve never done time on a labor ark.”
“Can’t say I have.” Kit said, looking at him intensely. “Pretty fucked up to go in and start the riot when you won’t have to deal with the fallout if it doesn’t go through. Least you can do is help.”
“They’re hell in the air.” Isshin’s tone grew grim, voice somber. “Sunny was starved, beaten, given every kind of torture imaginable while he was in one before. They crush any hints of rebellion or uprising the moment it starts.”
“Oh, so you plan on going in and being the hint. That’s a fantastic idea.” Kit said, looking at him and setting silverware down, grinning. “Let’s get everyone fuckin’ killed I guess.”
“I’m not saying we’re going to hint at it, more that we’re going to… throw a rock and leave while they’re figuring it out.” Isshin shrugged at this, not really sure how to put it. “Look, uprisings happen all the time, they just get crushed quickly. This one won’t be any different, we’ll just get out before it’s crushed.”
“Seems pretty shitty, but okay.” Kit said, resigning to eating the food in front of them. “So why does Ren have to go along?”
“I told you, run in pairs, he knows the layout.” Isshin was looking to the skies for help now.
“You sure you aren’t just taking him to throw to the wolves while you and Sunny make a run?” Kit asked him, leveling an intense stare. Isshin simply nodded in return.
“Anyone got a better idea?” Isshin asked, looking around at all of them in turn. Nobody made any sign or offer of one.
“Good.” He grabbed Mugen no Tengoku from the wall and slid the blade into the scabbard hanging below, holding it at his side and looking to the rest. “Finish your food. We’re leaving.”
“Thought you weren’t a pirate?” Kit asked after him.
“No, but I’m a brother. Long as he’s alive at least.” Isshin spat back.
They all nodded and began to get up, gathering their belongings and supplies. Isshin walked toward the back shouting in Japanese again as boos echoed from the kitchen. He cursed again and they could hear clanging as pots were thrown. Isshin came walking back out, cursing behind him as he went.
“They’re going to clean and lockup. Told them they had free range of the bar when they’re done.” He said, looking at them and pulling on a jacket from behind the counter. Isshin paused for a moment, looking at them all staring in turn at him. “What?”
“Don’t think I’ve ever seen you outside this place.” Robin said, getting up and walking over to him, holding onto her side. “Welcome aboard.”
“More the merrier.” Ash said, taking Robin’s arm and supporting her as she walked. Poe took her arm from the other side, both trying to take as much strain off her as possible.
“You’re on bed rest.” Poe said to her. Robin only shook her head in disagreement. “Doctors order, you’ll die otherwise.”
“Fine.” Robin shot a glance at Isshin. “You better get him out though.”
Isshin smiled, hefting the sword over his shoulder and walking to the door, an uncertain and unexpected adventure laying ahead of them all.