Salvage and Souvenirs was not what Rain had expected. Truth be told, he wasn’t sure what he had expected. He didn’t have much experience with storefronts or businesses, after all. In his mind’s eye, he had pictured a junkyard, filled with scrap and the rusted carcasses of burnt-out Frames, maybe run by a crazy old man with unkempt hair and a crazed smile.
He supposed in some way it was a junkyard, though that certainly did it no justice. A massive open space, bound by a tall fence, overflowing with merchandise and wares. The entrance was guarded by an antique of a Frame, a Heron, standing directly over the entrance. Rain looked over his shoulder at the massive exposed reactor visible from where he stood, inside the shop proper.
“Didn’t think any of the pre-war machines were still around…” He said to himself, arms crossed over his chest.
“That's a good eye,” said the proprietor of the yard as he exited a small building at the rear. The ADMIN sign over the door told Rain it was probably just the man’s office, but this was the first he was seeing the man since he had arrived a few minutes ago.
“Is it an actual Heron, or just a replica?” Rain asked, his curiosity getting the better of him.
“A very good eye. Not many Herons are left, even fewer in the Jovian sphere. I think this is one of three left in our neck of the woods!” He said, somewhat excited.
They stood for a moment and admired the machine together. Rain broke out of it first and pulled up the list of parts and supplies on his pad.
“I’m here on business actually. I need to confirm delivery for the Speak Softly, in cradle three.” He showed the information to the man, who hummed under his breath as he looked.
“Ah, Edmund did say he was sending someone else. Always keeping busy that one.” Rain murmured in assent. He’d never seen Edmund not doing something with his hands.
He idly noted an unassuming-looking man enter the yard while he was talking with the owner.
“Looks good to me. I’ve got a hauler already loaded and ready to deliver. Total comes out too...750,000 credits.”
Rain winced but pulled the payment card Alexandria had given him and handed it over.
The rest of the transaction passed amicably enough. Confirmation of payment was sent off, Rain sent a message to Edmund telling him to expect delivery, and he shook hands with the owner of the yard and set off.
He also hadn’t missed the other customer edging closer to them while browsing the racks of discarded technology. It was surreptitious enough; He would pick up a part, inspect it, shake his head, and move on to the next stack. So as Rain left, he walked at a steady pace, unconcerned and unworried. The crowded dockside market eventually gave way to a run-down residential district, full of dilapidated apartment buildings.
Still, the man followed, only a few blocks back. Rain ignored the people seated on their porches and stoops, ignored the children in ratty clothes who scattered as he picked up the pace. The man followed, his pace matching Rain’s.
Rain ducked through an alley, interrupting some kind of illicit deal as he went. He ignored their shouts of alarm as he exited the alley on the other side, only to see the man following him turn the corner to his right. He looked to the left, only to see a second man turn that corner and lock eyes with him.
“Who are these guys?” Rain muttered to himself as the two men yelled and started running for him. Rain took off, tearing down the street with two unknown elements hot on his trail. He ducked into another alley, only for it to bend and spit him back out onto the same street, far too close to his pursuers.
One, the brown-haired man from the salvage yard, tried to grab him. The second man, a tall blond, tried to grab him from the other side as well. In response, Rain went down, sliding between the first man’s legs. He ignored the sudden shouts of pain as they headbutted each other, instead jumping to his feet and taking off back the way he had come.
The sound of feet on concrete told him that his pursuers hadn’t been inconvenienced for any appreciable amount of time.
“This is fine, I’m fine…” Rain muttered as he ran. The streets were remarkably empty now, he thought, the people he’d seen before likely having ducked back into their homes at the first sign of trouble. Rain couldn’t exactly blame them, these people had their own problems to worry about.
He’d only been running in a straight line for a few minutes, slowly putting some space between his followers, when he glanced to his left to see an abandoned construction site, the skeleton of an unfinished building surrounded by scaffolding and empty equipment.
“Better than just running, I guess.” Rain said to himself as he turned suddenly, dashing towards the fencing that separated the site from the rest of the buildings around him. The men behind him shouted in alarm, and he heard one of them slam into the other one as they tried to keep pace with him. Rain jumped, catching the fencing halfway up, and scrambled over the rest of it. He jumped and caught himself in a roll on the other side. He weaved between the scaffolding, coming to rest behind an abandoned excavator.
He heard two thumps as his followers landed in a much less dignified heap. Muffled curses came from them as he looked around, looking for a way out.
“Alright fucker, where the hell are you!” One of them shouted, though Rain ignored him. He could practically feel them coming closer to his hiding spot, so he knew he had to act fast.
“You’re lucky Mr. Slate wants you alive, you little shit!” Called the other one. If he judged their voices right, they were splitting up to go around each end of his little sanctum. A classic pincer maneuver, Rain had to give them credit for thinking at least slightly tactically.
He smiled slightly as he laid eyes on his salvation. One hundred meters away, maybe? He could make that, easy. He reached down and hefted a loose brick. He’d just need to make some breathing room first.
Lucky for him, the idiots following him had loudly announced their relative positions to him. Mr. Slate clearly needed to up his hiring standards. Rain burst forward, spun around, and hurled the brick with all his might at the blond pursuer coming up on his right. He even adjusted for the spin of the station, to make sure it landed exactly where he wanted it.
Breath left the larger man’s body in a great huff as the mass of synthetic building material impacted his solar plexus, and he crumpled over himself in a heap as he desperately tried to catch his breath.
Rain picked up the pace after he confirmed his projectile had found its mark, but unfortunately for him that second of delay cost him. The first man, the brunette, impacted him in a classic tackle, taking them both down to the ground in a tumble. Rain hacked as the impact punched the air from his lungs, but had enough presence of mind to move his head away from the wild punch his opponent swung at him.
The offending fist impacted the ground, resulting in a hiss of pain from the man above him. Rain took the chance this offered him, grabbed the offending limb, and levered himself around, throwing the other man to the ground. He punched him in the face once, before pushing off and running away, towards what he had seen earlier.
A construction Frame, not dissimilar to his destroyed loader Frame, sat idle next to a small pile of steel beams. He picked up the pace as he heard the man who had tackled him curse and stumble to his feet.
The blond man was still in a heap on the ground, struggling to breathe. Rain ignored them and pushed through the burning in his lungs as he raced for the construction Frame in the distance. He spun, suddenly, just in time to dodge a chunk of iron rebar that was dangerously close to taking his head off.
“Did the fucking Feddies send you?! Is that who ‘Mr. Slate’ is?” Rain shouted as he turned to run again, sprinting ever faster, adrenaline pushing him on even as his lungs screamed.
No response came, but it didn’t matter. His pursuer had taken too much time finding a projectile, giving Rain the lead that he needed. The canopy of the squat machine was open, which let Rain practically dive into the pilot seat. The controls were familiar enough, the standardized layout common to civilian use machines. He hit the familiar power sequence, closed the canopy, and brought the machine to life.
“Batteries good...they even left the thrusters on it, how nice.” He murmured as he brought it to a standing position. Idly, he caught his brunette foe in the manipulator arm. Why he hadn’t stopped chasing him as soon as he got into a machine, Rain wouldn’t know. Weren’t they told what he was?
The blond one had gotten to his feet and was scrambling over the fence they’d originally lept over, so at least one of them had a survival instinct.
“You stupid fuck!” the external mic picked up from his captive, “You think we’re the only ones Slate sent? You-”
“Who the hell is Slate? Is he with the Federation?” Rain asked, interrupting the man’s angry tirade. There hadn’t been anyone named Slate involved in that project, but Rain hadn’t learned the name of every researcher and officer involved. If even one of them had survived, was still pursuing him…
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“The Feds? You think we’re with the fucking Feds?” The man, who Rain decided to just call Bastard, struggled in the iron grip of the machine’s massive claw. He got nowhere, of course. A squishy human struggling out of a grip designed for heavy construction work just wasn’t going to happen.
“Fine, then who the hell is he?” Rain hid his sigh of relief. If it wasn’t the Federation, then things got a lot easier for him.
“What, did they find you on a moon somewhere? He runs the criminal element here, everywhere really. And when he found out the white-hats wanted your whole crew, how could anyone pass that up!”
“The white-hats? Fuck!” Rain cursed and tossed Bastard aside. He rolled against the ground but managed to pick himself up and start limping away from Rain and his machine.
He should have known, should have seen it coming. They’d been in the ass-end of nowhere, in orbit over one of Jupiter’s least popular moons, when they had fought that Confederate ship, and in a truly absurd Fujikawa particle field at the time. They shouldn’t have been able to get any messages through that mess, hell, local comms had been spotty!
But that wasn’t the only way for a warship to communicate. Federation ships were equipped with communications probes that could ferry data and communications in the event of a total comm blackout, so it wasn’t absurd to think Confederate ships had the same thing. And it would be so easy for a probe to outpace an entire ship, a probe doesn’t need to worry about pulping its crew with excessive g-forces!
“Wait, the entire crew...shit.” Rain turned the machine and pushed it towards the skeleton of a building that reached up into the sky of the colony. His boss and Eletta had gone for a meeting with a benefactor that they had not named to him, and Rain would bet his jacket that they were meeting with this enigmatic Slate.
Luckily they had at least left a record of where they would be on everyone’s datapad, a common safety tip that would pay dividends now. Unluckily, Rain thought as he tapped his pad into the Frame’s system to bring said data up, it was on the opposite end of the colony, in a business district only reachable by tram and bullet train from his current location.
However, whoever had run this construction site hadn’t seen a reason to empty or remove the thruster pack on this construction machine. He slammed its manipulators into the building, and slowly started to haul himself to the top. He had a shortcut in mind.
He made it to the top of the structure, several stories above street level. The lack of emergency response didn’t surprise Rain. A neighborhood like this, on an out-of-the-way colony like this? It was sad, but it just gave him room to do what he needed to do.
So he hurled his machine off the edge of the roof and fired his thrusters up and against the spin of the colony.
“This could go so fucking poorly.” He said as he screamed over buildings and parks.
----
It had been years since Alexandria had been in this situation. Two large men, both of them totally clean-shaven and moving in that self-assured way that said they had very large guns on their person, flanked her and Eletta. They marched them through halls decorated with stone pillars and water features, up an elevator lined with what Alex thought was real, actual wood, and finally to a set of wooden double doors.
They swung open unbidden as they approached, and she couldn’t hold back a comment as they entered the truly massive room beyond.
“You’ve upgraded since I saw you last, Marshall,” she said as her eyes took in the surroundings.
The wall opposite them was one giant window, an entire two stories tall. The view of the colony outside it was truly breathtaking, she had to admit. A large desk, made of a wood that Alex once heard called ‘mahogany’ sat in front of said window, with a plush chair behind it and two chairs in front of it. Several stone pillars were placed evenly down the sides of the rooms, and beyond them were water features and fanciful plants.
But none of that was important. All of her attention was on the man behind the desk, watching them.
He wore a velvet suit a deep purple in color, over a simple white shirt that plunged deep to expose his well-toned chest. His strong jawline was emphasized by a neatly trimmed goatee, and his salt and pepper hair was closely and professionally cropped.
Four members of his security detail stood behind him. Marshall Slate smiled at her and gestured to the chairs in front of his desk as he sat in his own plush chair.
“I’ve had much good fortune for the past ten years, Captain Valentina.” He said as they both sat.
“But, war is quite profitable for men in my business, after all. And the past two years? Record profits my dear.” He continued an easy smile across his face.
Alex was keenly aware of the large man that still stood behind her as she leaned forward. Eletta was tense in her peripheral vision. Alex could hardly blame her, this was more than even she had expected. He hadn’t had nearly this many security guards at any one time the last time she had seen him.
“I remember. We refitted my ship several times over off of the missions we ran for you.” She said a smile on her face as well. She hoped it wasn’t as shaky as she felt inside.
“Ah yes, I remember. You made deliveries for me back when it was...Captain Gaillard in charge, I think?” It sounded like a question, but Alex knew it wasn’t.
She also knew what ‘deliveries’ meant. During the war, Slate had made his first fortune smuggling rationed goods to buyers across the Confederacy. Of course, Slate hadn’t done a bit of the actual smuggling himself. Instead, he had commissioned ships to do the smuggling and took most of the profits for himself. Low risk, high reward. That was his style.
Which is why she and her crew broke away as soon as the ship belonged to her. Rather than voice that thought, she moved on.
“I do have to thank you for responding to my request so quickly. I had assumed you would be too busy to see me on such short notice.” She said, putting a more polite spin on her actual feelings.
Why had he set up a meeting so damn fast, anyways? It didn’t make any sense.
“How could I wait? Your return represents an...incredible opportunity for my organization!” Slate responded, a slick smile on his face. The way he said opportunity worried Alexandria.
Her stomach sank as she got the distinct impression that coming here had been an incredible mistake. It must have shown on her face, because Slate’s smile became distinctly predatory, and his eyes seemed to glint as he snapped his fingers.
“Sadly, you weren’t the first person to get a message to me.” He said, and Alex heard the doors behind them open. She heard muffled curses, and she turned in her seat to look behind her. Eletta followed suit, and Alex felt her heart drop as she took in who had entered.
“You son of a bitch-” started Eletta as she tried to rise from her seat, only to be struck across the face by the security guard behind her. Alex couldn’t blame her.
Her away team was brought in, hands bound behind their back and their mouths gagged. Matt was bleeding from several cuts on his face, one of Kenneth's eyes was swelling shut, and Darlene was passed out and held roughly like a particularly naughty dog.
But worst of all? Worst of all was who was at the head of this little party.
Noa Light stood, unbound, ungagged, and uninjured, his hands folded easily behind his back. The look in his eyes as they met hers was...dark.
“Noa? What the hell are you doing?” She asked, a furious timbre in her voice. It wasn’t Noa that answered her.
Slate spoke up, and she whirled around to meet his gaze. “Sadly, the military got here first. They wanted you, your crew, and your ship so very badly that, when I got your message...well.” He leaned over his desk and smiled his shark's smile again.
“I’ll make more money handing you and your ship over to them than I ever would having you run deliveries.”
Alex ignored the heavy hand that landed on her shoulder and roughly pulled her up, her mind short-circuiting for a moment.
Eletta spoke up for her. “Noa, you fucking bastard, what do you get out of this?” She struggled in the grips of the man who had struck her, enough to put real strain on the man's face.
Noa sighed, and looked past them, out the window. “What should I have done, Eletta?”
“You should have shown some fucking loyalty, that's what!” Eletta shouted at him. Another security guard came up behind, a length of material in his hands clearly meant as a gag, but Noa held up a hand and the man stopped.
“Loyalty? You want to talk about loyalty! We both served Eletta, and yet you were perfectly fine with keeping classified military equipment and destroying a Confederate ship? How could--” He stopped suddenly, a confused look across his face.
“What the fuck is-” He said, a hand up to point out the window before a great crash of glass and stone silenced him.
A machine crashed through the glass and pulped two of Slate’s security guards where they stood. It missed Slate as it tumbled end over end, striking his desk instead and sending it flying. Somehow, Alex and Eletta managed to duck out of their captor's grasp, and the desk only flattened the two large men who had been holding them. The machine, clearly a construction Frame of some kind, went on to plow through several stone pillars before it came to rest on its back.
She coughed as dust filled the room, though it was swiftly whipped out of the room by the wind. She watched as Slate was rushed out a discrete side door by two of his remaining guards. Good riddance, she said.
One of the two remaining men dropped Darlene to the ground, drew his sidearm, and approached the downed Frame.
Then, like a fool, he decided to climb on top and look directly down through the canopy. Alex winced at the sound of explosive bolts firing and watched the several centimeter-thick canopy cave the man’s head in as it was propelled up and away from the machine.
There was a second loud bang, and she turned to see Eletta, a smoking pistol in hand. Behind her, the last security guard, who had helped roughly throw her away team at her feet, fell to the ground with a neat little hole in his forehead.
Rather than dwell on the sudden and vicious death around, she rushed forward and started freeing her crew.
“Where the fuck did Noa run off too!” Eletta yelled, anger and hurt in her voice. Alex felt for her, she really did, but now wasn’t the fucking time.
“We don’t have time! Find out who was in that Frame, we have to get the hell out of here!”
Eletta hissed, but she went to the downed Frame nonetheless.
And pulled someone very familiar out of the cockpit.
“Rain?” She yelled, in worry and concern. Alex spun to look and saw a shaky Rain leaning against Eletta. He smiled.
“No rest for the wicked, right Captain?” He said.