“Another mission already? Suns, they’re running you guys ragged with all this. You’ve barely been back from that crummy mine a week,” Becky said as Lus sat with her at breakfast–a breakfast he hadn’t had to make for the first time since getting back now that he was on regular duty again, and Lbrvr was back to doing her share of the cooking.
Lusac shrugged as he took a bite of undercooked scrambled eggs. Maybe he should be full-time chef if this was the best Lbrvr could do after all these months as breakfast cook.
“It’s only going to be a day or so at the most, unlike the past few. We’ll take a shuttle directly down to the planet, grab the artifact from the ship, and then be back by dinner,” Lusac said, trying to sound light-hearted about it. After what happened back on Aschir Alpha, he knew better than to trust that it would be that easy, but he hoped he was wrong about that.
“If this artifact is so easy, why didn’t we get it earlier?” Becky questioned.
“It took a long time to track down where this one ended up. The ship that was carrying it went down, so finding out which planet and then making sure no one else had looted it took weeks of research,” Lus answered, using the information he’d been given in his briefing the evening before.
“When do you leave?”
“In half an hour. Can you check on Avil if you get the chance today? He gets lonely if he’s left alone too long,” Lus requested.
“I thought this was a short mission,” Becky replied with a grin.
“It is.”
“Ah, so you just spoil him.”
She and Lus both laughed as they finished up their meal. He took his last swig of coffee to wash down his final bite of egg. They walked together to drop off their trays for the golem to worry about later. The cafeteria was full as the entire day shift crammed in to get something solid in them before they started work, and Lusac was happy to leave it behind for the less crowded corridors. Becky waved as she turned towards Systems Control, leaving Lus standing there, unsure what to do.
There was an awkward amount of time left before he needed to be in the hangar with the others, leaving him too little time to do anything, but making it too early for him to show up there already. Nippy was running this one again, and Lus wanted to see the second-in-command as little as possible, especially during unstructured time when the Kremel would try to “chat” with him.
Now that Lus had revealed his system, all Nippy ever wanted to do was give him pointers and tell him that he was doing everything wrong if he ever wanted to amount to anything. Not to mention that Nippy asked a lot of questions, and Lusac struggled to keep his answers vague enough as to not draw suspicion to the origins of his powers. Keeping Leviathan secret remained one of his paramount goals, especially now that there was a corrupt COPS officer on his trail.
In the end, Lusac decided to drop by medical and see what news there was about Yonnex-Quniwel who had yet to wake from his coma. Apparently taking an all-in cutter to the eye did a little more brain damage than Lus had intended.
He walked into the bay and instantly regretted his choice when he saw the orange-scaled Nemarian sitting up in his bed, his remaining eye staring straight at the doorway where Lus stood.
“Oh, uh, hi, Yonnex-Quniwel. How are you feeling? I’m glad to see you’re awake,” he said with a forced smile. Would it be too cruel if he just turned around and left? Surely the Nemarian didn’t want to see him.
“L-lusac,” Quniwel stammered quietly.
“Yeah,” he replied emphatically. Who knew? Maybe the Nemarian had forgotten everything that transpired on the planet. That would make things less awkward between them.
“K-killer.” Yonnex-Quniwel’s face turned angry, at least as angry as the bandages wound around a third of his head would allow.
“What? No. That’s not what happened,” Lus said. “It’s not like that at all, Quniwel.”
“KILLER!” The Nemarian screamed it at the top of his lungs, lurching forwards in the bed as if he meant to grab Lusac.
The noise summoned the doctor who sprinted into the room. She grabbed Quniwel and forced him to sit back again.
“No, Yonnex-Quniwel. Remain still,” Tremt-Fusi said in a soothing tone. She looked over her shoulder at Lus. “Get out of here, Lusac. What were you thinking coming in here like this and disrupting him? Haven’t you done enough already?”
“I’m sorry.” He swiftly turned around and walked back out, a lump in his throat as he thought of his friend. Former friend. Yonnex-Quniwel would never forgive him, and honestly, Lus couldn’t blame him.
No longer caring about being too early, Lus went directly to the shuttle bay. He was already in his mission suit, and any gear he would need was down with the shuttle so they could all double check their bags together.
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This was going to be his first mission in nearly a year that hadn’t included Wsr since she was still on injury leave for her shoulder, and the idea of going anywhere remotely dangerous without her made him nervous. She’d always been like an aunt to him.
It turned out that the rest of the team had nowhere else to be either that morning since Lusac was the last one to arrive while still being there ten minutes before their scheduled meeting. Nippy was talking with Zer-Dasht while Hlnwr stood to the side, his eyes trained on the floor.
Lus didn’t know Hlnwr all too well. The main reason was because the Kremel worked in the cargo division alongside Relf so in general Lus avoided him. He was big, even bigger than Nippy, with rippling muscles that came from the fact that he spent almost all of his freetime in the gym, lifting weights. Apparently the Captain thought they would need muscles for this mission, not brains, since Hlnwr also had a reputation of being among the most gullible of the crew.
“Lusac,” Nippy said as soon as he entered. “You’re actually on time for once.”
He rolled his eyes. Yrqw had obviously been complaining again.
“I’m actually early. What are you guys all doing here already? I thought I’d be the first,” Lus said as he walked up to the Kremel.
“Some of us like to be prepared before we go on missions, Lus. We don’t all have fancy [Chef] classes to back us up,” Zer-Dasht replied, a note of jealousy in his voice. He’d hardly spoken to Lus since returning from the trip from Aschir Alpha.
“You’re just jealous you don’t have a system,” Nippy responded. “But between Lus and I, this mission will be a piece of cake.”
“Uh-huh,” the Nemarian said. “Since we are all here, maybe we should do our final pack checks now so we can get down to the planet a little sooner.”
“Good thinking.” Nippy turned and motioned to Hlnwr. “Come on, Hlnwr. Let’s do this thing.”
The large Kremel lumbered up to the trio, his orange eyes strangely void of any kind of emotion. Nippy then gestured to where four backpacks waited, two Kremel sized, and two Human/Nemarian sized. They all walked over there with him.
“Alright. I think everyone here is familiar with all the gear, but if you have any questions, go ahead and ask.” Nippy read off the list of items they should have one by one, and they all searched through their bags to confirm each one was there. It was a pretty standard set of equipment, with an anchor, cutter, rations, heavy duty winter gear, and ropes.
“Great. Now for the final item, guns,” Nippy said with a grin. He then motioned to the weapons rack behind them. “Dasht will take his usual rifle. Hlnwr, you’ll get a pistol and an ax. I’m going to take a sword. Lus,” the Kremel smiled at him, “you get dual pistols, courtesy of Cewi-Bano. She upgraded, so she was kind enough to donate her old set since you managed to blow your original gun up.”
Lus chuckled weakly, trying his best not to remember his time in the mine shaft with an insane Yonnex-Quniwel. It’d been an effect of the Shaquine that had actually caused the weapon to malfunction though, not an error on his part.
They each took the weapons as Nippy handed them out. The pistol for Hlnwr was extra large so as to fit his meaty hands, and the ax was strapped to his back. Nippy’s sword was at his side and he also took a set of valer chips which would allow him to charge the swords with different energy patterns to make it useful in a variety of situations. Lus had even heard stories of people using their charged weapons as welding tools in a pinch.
Zer-Dasht took his finely crafted rifle and slung it on his shoulder as Lus fitted the double holster belt around himself, a little nervous about trying to use two weapons at once. He was a poor shot with one pistol, and he didn’t think adding in a second one was going to do much, but he took both weapons from Nippy anyway.
They were beautiful and well-cared for despite their obvious excessive use. The grips were rewrapped in some kind of leather, and the hold was different than what Lus was used to since these were designed for the webbed-hands of Nemarians, but it felt nice to hold something of such high quality.
“Stop gaping, and put them away. We’ve got places to be Loser,” Zer-Dashter snapped at him.
A little embarrassed everyone saw him admiring the blasters so close, Lus quickly holstered them and grabbed his pack. He noticed that it was heavier than he expected, so he swung it to his front and looked inside to discover that it contained double the amount of rations it should.
Nippy smacked him on the back. “I added some extra weight to yours to help beef up your [Strength] next time you level up.”
“Oh, thanks,” Lusac said with a fake smile. Nippy was determined to turn him into a Human version of himself, mega-[Strength] and all. Lus had spent a lot of time at the gym over the past few weeks, and he was already at 7 [Strength] so he was sort of thinking about working on other things like his [Speed] or [Health] for the next level up, which he was actually getting close to, but he didn’t dare express that to Nippy who disregarded his opinion on anything relating to system stuff.
He only needed [200 XP] more to level up, and he had [1300 Current XP] which meant he could even buy a new [Skill] or a new [Recipe] if he wanted. He was just waiting until he hit [Level 6] to see if any new options in either department would show up. It was hard work earning all that [XP].
Lus readjusted the backpack to sit squarely on his shoulders and then followed the Kremel into the shuttle where Zer-Dasht sat at the helm, prepping for launch. It was one of the small ones which barely fit the four of them, but it was only for the quick trip down to the planet and back.
“Oh man. Can’t we get a real pilot in here?” Lusac teased as he took his seat.
“Well given that you nearly killed one of them, no,” Zer-Dasht said flatly.
Lus frowned. “Well I think I’d still take a one-eyed Yonnex-Quniwel over you, Dasht.”
“If you’d like to fly, Loser, you’re more than welcome to,” the Nemarian said, sliding away from the controls.
“Oaty has been promising to teach me for a while,” Lusac replied. “Maybe I’ll get some early practice in.” He stood up, and Zer-Dasht immediately latched himself onto the wheel.
“As if. We need to get there in one piece,” he muttered as Lusac sat back down with a grin. He didn’t mind teaching Dasht a lesson or two when he could.
“Everyone buckle up. Dasht, get us out of here. I want to be home in time for dinner,” Nippy declared as he settled into his front seat with the co-pilot controls.
The Nemarian continued to murmur complaints under his breath as he started the engines and closed the rear door. The shuttle jolted upwards before slowly gliding forwards and out the bay doors into the black void of space.