+ Reid +
Reid coughed awake on stale air, rife with the smell of sweat and piss.
He was in a cramped cage welded to the floor. Slivers of light filtered in through a series of vent holes, with the majority of the glow coming through a sliding metal window on the face of the door that had been left open. Through it, he could see stacks of metallic cubes running floor to ceiling, secured to each other. They groaned and tilted as the ship snapped sideways, and Reid’s elbow ached as it slammed into the cage wall.
Unintelligible, panicked yells filtered in and down to him. They were barely audible over the creaks and groans of flexing metal, and a deep thrum that pulsed somewhere nearby. A chain linked a tight metal collar around Reid’s neck to the floor of the cage. He could feel an alternating pattern of soft spots and hard metal where a leather pad, once meant for comfort or to prevent injury, had worn through. A similarly worn cloth frock covered his body, and his arm was wrapped in layers of an odd latticed plastic.
He’d lost the fight.
Reid was still confident he could’ve damaged the alien in a straight brawl, or maybe if he'd had the energy to grow any of his bone armor. Probably would've won if he wasn't starving and weak.
But there were also tricks and technology at play that he didn’t yet understand. Reid internalized it as a lesson to always stay aware of what the people around him were doing. He didn't want to get knocked out by a pen that was actually some sleeping dart gun, or something else as ridiculous as a baton that made concussive blasts.
Another abrupt maneuver slammed Reid’s back into the ceiling of the cage, and he fell hard to the floor, letting out a yelp as the broken bones in his forearm grated on each other. He slid backwards a few inches as the ship decelerated – and was yanked forwards and to his left when the deceleration turned into a sharp accelerating turn. Or he had his orientation backwards. That part didn’t really matter.
There were only two important things right now – first, nobody would drive or fly a ship like this one was maneuvering now unless they were chasing something or being chased.
Second, that if they were being chased, there was a chance whatever passed for a local authority was investigating the kidnapping and would soon have Thad in custody, and then Reid could be reunited with his family - or whatever was left of them. A memory flashed to mind. When Reid had been diagnosed with the cancer, he told Susan he wanted her to find happiness again in her lifetime after she was done grieving. He very selfishly hoped her morning period had lasted however long he'd been gone.
A shift caused his arm to grate against itself and Reid swore.
There was a third important thing. He felt a bit of his energy pool had returned while he was unconscious - which meant this time right now, while he was alone, was a perfect opportunity to heal his arm.
He closed his eyes to concentrate, took a deep breath, and added a fourth thing to his list while he gagged on the putrid stale air. He really needed to find some nose plugs.
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<]]) Thad ([[>
Thad screamed and punched his thigh. “Damn. Stupid. Hero. Go home! Go away!”
The local enforcer had hailed him just as he passed into cloud cover, with the bullshit story about crossing the heritage zone barrier. HE hadn't done that. Not during the crash nor after. The only thing that made sense was the beatnik in the cargo hold had wandered into the zone during his naked trek through the woods.
Regardless of the reason for the misunderstanding, Thad did what he always did for the local law. He offered to donate a small gift to this year’s planetary enforcer budget. When that didn’t work, he offered a large, personal gift - but the fract still gave him boarding orders.
Well, there was no hair on that cat, and Thad pushed his engines to full power to get the hell off the planet and outside the local’s authorized zone. It was a good plan. Mostly because nobody ever wanted to do the paperwork, or explain to a Croc why they were fishing in someone else’s pond.
Authority zones and jurisdictional transfer - and the overwhelming bureaucracy they subjected a person to - were a long and beautiful tradition that mostly prevented local lords from trying to muscle in on shipping lanes and interplanetary space.
If a local enforcer did bag someone outside of their territory, they’d have a review by the Cross Cosmic Enforcer assigned to their sector. Most of the locals Thad knew would never survive a review without getting themselves thrown in prison. Or without getting their lord thrown in prison. There just wasn’t any wiggle room with a Croc.
So, getting to interplanetary space was usually the same as getting away safely. Push your reactor hard for a big burst of acceleration, and bam, you’re out of the clutches of the law. Except this time, the moron following him continued into Thad’s safe zone, and he wasn’t letting up. Thad had tried whipping around shipping lane traffic, then doubling back and forth past asteroids and a local moon, but this loaf was persistent.
Thad’s next best bet was to direct more power to the engines and see if he could flat outrun the bastard, but the ever-useless street rat was having trouble working through the chase because he 'didn't have mag boots'. Little idiot even tried to stop working after he broke a finger during a hard corkscrew. Safety shoes were for babies, and the kid had other fingers he could use.
Thad leaned his head back and roared towards the reactor. “I swear to the all-god, if you don’t finish your damn job in the next 30 seconds, I’m gonna dump you out the airlock to slow this loaf down!”
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Ten seconds later, the kid’s voice called out that he was done. Thad smiled at himself. People just needed the right kind of motivation to work hard. Dumping the kid would’ve been a decent idea to escape, too, if the airlock was actually powered and working. No way this loaf would leave a person to die like that.
Thad rolled out of the way of a heat beam, and the torque of the movement stressed the Wheathop’s aging frame. The metal sang its pained tune, but the pitch told Thad he hadn’t reached the limit of what his old ship could do. He came out of the roll into a steep climb, pulling out of the dwarf planet's gravity well. It was time to end this chase.
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+ Reid +
Reid swore as his work was undone again. The break in his arm wasn’t clean, so reattaching fragments of bone to each other took up most of his initial work. It was tedious, and he was getting aggravated. His efforts were set back almost every time the ship lurched or rolled, as impacts and force aggravated or re-broke parts of his arm. It didn't help that his energy was behaving differently than usual. It was both more potent and faster, and it made the kind of detail work he was doing difficult.
The entire experience felt like his arm was being stabbed and beaten with bats at the same time, and it was also unbearably itchy.
He was close now, just a few splintered pieces and the main break. He braced himself against the top left and bottom right corners of the cage with his legs and healthy arm. His skin indented as he pushed into the metal to secure himself, and concentrated.
In addition to the less-than-ideal situation, and the trouble with his energy, Reid was now even more parched, hungry, and exhausted because of the work it took just to get this far along. Stopping to refuel himself simply wasn't possible, and he didn't want to sleep here without finishing, so he forced himself onward.
Bits of bone reached out to one another from each side of the break, tiny stalactites and stalagmites of living calcification that connected and solidified and grew in sequence to mend him. Reid didn't try for a full regrowth of the lattice or reinforcements his arm should've had - that would take too much time and energy to accomplish. Instead, he set his arm back in place with enough of a fix to make it a functional bone.
Reid collapsed onto the floor of the cage and panted. His head pounded, he felt like he had mosquito bites inside his arm that he needed to scratch, his mouth was dry and his stomach ached, but he was whole again. Reid flexed his hand and twisted his wrist, satisfied with the results of his work. He'd started to get a bit more familiar with the new feeling of his energy during the process - and decided the best way to describe it was that everything felt more abundant and potent at the same time. Like he was controlling a river of deep ocean water during his healing, instead of guiding a creek.
Arm fixed. Next was escape – and nose plugs. Still needed those.
Reid rose to his knees inside the crate and moved towards the open slot in front of him. The slack in the chain around his neck was meant to stop his face from actually touching the door, though his arms could both reach.
That was fine. He just needed to see outside, just a bit, to figure out how he could open the door. From there, he could rest and recover, then make something out of bone to turn a handle, or pick a lock. With a bit of rest, he’d be able to bone-guyver his way out of this situation.
Reid chuckled at his pun - and realized he might have reached that point of exhaustion where he got a bit loopy.
He braced both hands on the links of chain closest to his collar. A good pull and he’d be able to see outside.
Reid flexed and strained to get his head forward to the slot. The chain pulled taut, and something behind the back wall clicked three times before a massive electric current coursed through the chain, the collar, and into Reid. He spasmed violently as his muscles all locked. The shock and strain quickly knocked him unconscious.
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<~\ Walt /~>
Walt let out a breath through pursed lips and made sure his sensors were all recording. The ship he was pursuing was known to be used for petty crimes, and in any normal circumstances, he would’ve already passed responsibility for the chase onto his Sector’s CCE. But these were far from normal circumstances. His quarry had violated a protected heritage zone’s barrier. Disturbing a heritage zone was a serious offense, and they’d doubled the issue by imposing on Earth’s first, and arguably most important protected site. One that also happened to be his childhood home, where he'd lost his brother.
His initial readings of the area showed a rather targeted plot. The criminals, led by a bit of scum that called himself Thad, had pretended to crash land near the site. They must’ve entered on foot, then either destroyed or stole the statue of the Progenitor's father from the center of the area. The disgusting animals had even smeared some sick on the dedication obelisk.
Earth had certainly made enemies over the years, but normally the backing of the Blasdej Consortium stopped things like this from boiling over. Damaging the heritage site that Blasdej had sponsored was akin to attacking them directly, and Walt had to think nobody was really dumb enough to do that. But, the stupidity of criminals never ceased to amaze him.
This Thad was scum, but also a surprisingly competent pilot. Flitting between inhabited solar bodies and public traffic zones had stopped Walt from engaging with proper weaponry. The few times he was clear to fire a heat pulse at the ship’s engines, the old transport ship had violently rolled out of the way or dodged. He winced at the thought of damaging a ship’s frame with haphazard moves like that.
The ship had changed tactics a few seconds ago, from flitting between bits of cover to a steep climb directly away from the gravity well they were both in. He’d been doing this job long enough to recognize someone trying to do a charged jump, and could already see the engines pulsing themselves ready.
There was only one response to that. He couldn’t copy the move. It was highly illegal - primarily because it released a violent and unpredictable pulse of wild mana. If any lifeform nearby wasn’t properly shielded, they could suffer permanent mutations to their biology – or even worse, their skills. He recalled an information packet that even claimed an instance where an uncommon stoneworking skill had morphed into one that only functioned when the mason worked with his feet instead of his hands.
Anything to do with wild mana was highly regulated and unquestionably stopped unless it happened in a laboratory setting. It was why, in recent years, the official response to a charged jump was set as a full lethal destruction. Having a mandate to destroy the ship wasn’t usually an issue for Walt – but if Thad did have the statue of the Progenitor’s father in their hold, Walt would also be destroying a piece of Earth’s history.
He shook the thought, and spoke aloud to the microphone near his console. “Enforcer Walter Anderson, noting this incident per statute one-seven-theta. Fleeing criminal Thadden Wheatnick of the Wheathop is considered guilty of breaching and damaging a protected heritage site on Earth, planet A39245ULD94. Subject is pulsing engines consistent with the build up to a charged jump, recorded in this log by my ship’s sensors. We are in international space, quadrant also recorded by sensors. This sector is the jurisdiction of Fozzune Hoimchal, and this recording and data packet will be sent to him at the conclusion of this incident. Now deploying high explosive ordinance in accordance with jump response procedure."
Walt's fingers tapped a pair of screens, and his vessel shook.
"Missiles away.”