Nyx had planned on four drops. That was the limit for her crew, before the most sensitive people began suffering the first symptoms of jump sickness. Four stops at four ports, even taking time to space them out, should have taken only a couple of days at most, with little risk to her crew's health.
That had been before the Hunter showed up and started tailing them.The first stop had been Hyphos. After Jumping from the port of Twin Cairns on Hyphos, to the Redwater Port of Phaenna, Pickle had discovered the blip that hovered just outside Phaen voidspace. The same marker was then found just minutes after Falling above Ceurul.
With her hackles up and feeling cornered, she halted all normal routines and business. They were forced to watch the clock and wait out that long hour of recharge. Time seemed to slow, ticking second by second, before they were finally able to Jump again. Nyx was in a position she detested. This was their fourth jump in a dreadfully short period of time. They'd jumped to Akumini's keep, Twin Cairns, Redwater Port, then to Ceurul without any down time. Falling this time would bring a wave of sickness that she was not anticipating.
Half of her exhausted crew took to their bunks as soon as they entered jump, the other half combing through the ship for signs of a tracker. This was their fourth jump. Several of her more sensitive members, the ones already dosed up on anti-nausea meds, had packed their bags and were ready to jettison to the surface as soon as they fell. They'd be picked up to recover at the Letigion embassy on Ceurul, but it would leave her short-staffed.
And she could only hope that her tail would keep pursuing her rather than pick off her fleeing crewmembers.
She would be pushing her crew. She was counting on a lot of factors going her way. They had one last chance to jump before things truly began to get dangerous.
If they couldn’t jump clear – and it was painfully clear that was not yet an option – they were going to have to improvise. To be honest, though, they'd already tried nearly everything in their bag-o-tricks, aside from engaging.
That was ill-advised.
When they fell, Nyx rushed the last drop. Her fleeing crew climbed into the same shuttle as the cargo to be delivered and collapsed into their seats. She watched as a red-eyed Troache inspected the shuttle and waved off the remaining tired, slouching crew. He'd caught a couple hours of shut-eye while they were in jump, but even he was toeing his limits. After seeing the shuttle off, they rejoined the ongoing effort of locating the tracker.
"Ey, cap'm. Jot dinger be slink on the ring. Lit wully leftin' with 'is drum all buckets." Light bless the boy, but Rheed's unrestrained slang and tired accent were near impossible to understand. But that was the reason he was making the announcement through the ship com. After spending six months with the two, she understood just barely enough. Rheed was using his special Deseit street slang to tell her that the Hunter was back, picked up by the scanners, and he was just sitting out in the dark. He was still just a blip, far enough away that had her crew been negligible, he would have been unnoticed.
Her crew was far from negligible, however.
"How we doing on the scan, guys?" Nyx called out over the shared secure channel. Rheed's voice continued to talk nonsense as the rest of the crew added actual language to the conversation.
"We still got a lot to go, boss. This is slow business." Bubba replied from somewhere in Rheeds realm, according to the mechanical feedback in the background. They'd already been at it for a little over an hour.
"An' we be looking for literally anythin'. Usin' any frequency." Creed grumbled. "Fuck, this is SO fun."
"Could be worse." Reeza echoed across the line, there was a tremble to her voice.
"An' how, pray tell, do you s'ppose it'd get worse?" Her words were accompanied by grunts and a bang, followed by a drawl-thick string of curses. "Son of a slag-lickin' Dark-stained piece of rotten dog spawn!" Melaine had requested that Creed not curse so much. She was working on it, in her own strange way. As for her state of ire, Nyx had assigned Creed to the duct shafts.
"Could be workin' the exterior panels." Reeza's voice echoed the tremble in her hands as the cold bit at her.
Nyx's head shot up and smacked against the unforgiving metal in the close quarters as she checked every square inch of the shuttle in the landing bay. Oh, I know I did not hear that right. Nyx thought.
"Repeat that?" she demanded, already considering a casualty onboard.
"Uhhh," The teen drawled. "Which part?"
"Ey, Za-za…" Rheed interjected, switching to the shared channel. "Whatcha doin' out there, dingus?"
"Cheese and crackers…" She crawled out from under the shuttle, rubbing at the bump forming on her head. "Get your ass back inside the fucking ship. And Creece? You'd better find one hell of a hidey-hole." She pointedly ignored the back-and-forth between the siblings as that escalated, descending into a heated gibberish that no sane person could rightly figure out.
Reeza was a thirteen year old girl, and Creece had put her in a vac-suit and sent her outside when they were targeted? Pissed was an understatement.
She stomped to the airlock and waited, watching the girl meander inside, anchor to the wall, and hit the seal. The seal had never closed so slowly in Nyx's life. It seemed to take an eternity to close out the expanse of space and trap the girl inside the ship. She watched as air rushed into the vacuum of the room. Then, when the pressure was stable, the red running lights along the bulkhead turned green. The girl peeled off the suit, set it into the disinfectant pod, and hit the panel to open the door.
Nyx shot forward, snatched the girl by her arm, and drug her through the ship.
"What the hells?" Reeza demanded, attempting to shake off Nyx's grasp and set her feet to pull to a halt. The girl, however, was neither heavy enough nor strong enough to break Nyx's stride or grip. "Hey! What the fuck is with you?!"
Nyx hit a control panel, because she couldn't allow herself to do so to the child, and the door to her personal quarters opened. She shoved Reeza in first and followed.
"What the fuck is wrong with me?" she stalked forward. "You really have to ask?"
"What," she snarled, pointing to the porthole "I went outside."
"Yes. You knew better." I will not kill a child, she thought. I will not kill a child.
"Better? I do know enough not to kill myself out there." This insolent little brat rolled her eyes! The poor thing would be learning a lot in the next few minutes.
"You disobeyed a direct order." The finger Nyx thrust in the smaller, younger female's face trembled in raw anger. "Do you know what happens to insubordinates in the Mavericks?"
"Everyone does it!" Reeza flung her arms to indicate the whole of the ship.
"They disobey suggestions, and there is a big difference between the two. The order that neither you nor your brother were to take walks? That was an order." So many things could go wrong in vacuum. When things did go wrong, they went wrong spectacularly. Only the most skilled would dare take a walk alone in such an unforgiving environment. Not to mention that had a sept leader or auditor been on board… Reeza would be in a world of hurt.
The girl had the audacity to roll her eyes again. "I've done it hundreds-"
The echo of the slap bounced off the hull and pierced the silence. Reeza's eyes widened as she slowly reached up to the stinging skin of her cheek.
"I know very damn well what you were doing before I picked you two up. I know very. damn. well." The last three words were emphasized with pure venom. The glare from both parties was electric. "Do not presume to be special, just because you drive on occasion. Did you not even turn on the heating system in the suit?"
Reeza's skin was still far too cold. Had Nyx been able, without fully losing her temper, she would have addressed the icy issue when she had first laid hands on the child.
"We never used the heaters. Too risky." Reeza shrugged, still glaring at Nyx. Looks like the Nyx would have to work on structure with the girl. "I don't know how to run it in these and there wasn't much time to ask."
Nyx closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and counted backwards from 10. Insubordination did not sit well with her already stripped nerves and patience.
"We are targeted. Do you understand that?" She had to force herself to remember that Reeza and Rheed were only six months into their new lives. They were still adjusting. It would take time for them to realize there were rules to follow, and these rules were not meant to be broken or bent. Their lawless days as cheap labor and expendable larcenists were over. well, sort of. The Mavericks had more morals and looked after their own. Also, they paid better.
"We've been followed since Hyphos. What's new?" Reeza lowered her hand from her cheek and gestured about the ship. "It's not the first time." That was true. But they'd been able to match and overpower the only other encounter Reeza had been part of. This one was too risky. The Hunter was not something to play around with. There was a reason they were built solely for the Triad patrolling forces. This was not a fight she wanted. This was not a fight she could win. There was no one in the four systems that would come to her aid.
"Targeted is not the act of them following us. That's when we've been marked or tagged. Yes, they have somehow managed to tag us. There's no other explanation. But there is a very real difference between being tagged and being targeted, and I pray this lesson won't be your last. They have targeted us." Nyx held her palms up, trying to will the girl to understand. She closed her eyes again, not wanting to scare the girl. But Nyx could not protect her from the truth if she expected to keep Reeza on the crew. "They've locked on, if you will." Nyx opened her eyes to see realization flicker across Reeza's face. "Do you really want to be outside when shit starts flying?"
"Wait… 'when'?" The blood drained from her face, except for the pink handprint still glowing on her cheek. Her pale face made that stand out all the more.
"Unless a lot of things happen quickly and smoothly, yes. So," She leaned in close to the girl, wanting to smell the truth or lie. "Why were you outboard and not Creece?"
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"I traded the reclamation deck for the walk," she whispered, "And his Hot Cocoa for a week." Now the girl was looking properly ashamed.
"I GOT IT!!!!" Nyx and Reeza jumped as an echoing screech in Rheed's excited accent penetrated the walls and door of Nyx's private quarters.
"Finally." She breathed through a sigh of relief and engaged the intercom system again. "Rheed, do nothing with it, yet. Meet me at the helm."
"I uh… what 'bout if I already egged it in the-" He began, a sinking feeling settling in Nyx's stomach.
Nyx growled and nearly punched the com, "Please tell me you did not throw-"
"-We've got warning fire." Troache's deadpan voice interrupted her, sounding a bit like a bored infomercial actor. "Two shots"
"I egged- er threw- the thing in the 'cinerator…" Rheed timidly confirmed, ending the sentence with in a worried, squeaky voice.
"In the incinerator." Nyx went to the porthole, waiting for her section to make the rotation to view the trailing ship. "Of course."
As Troache turned the ship to acknowledge the warning, the gigantic globe of Ceurul rotated slowly. Her view gradually changed from a scenery of shades of brown and red, with wisps of clouds and slips of water, to the endless black of space. The blackness was filled with pinpricks of light and swirls of nebula. Against the backdrop of the open void, Ceurul's Bluish sun glinted off the sleek Hunter. It was much closer than it had been just moments before.
"Get to the controls." She stated to Reeza, entering that chaotic state of calm urgency. "And we will finish this later." As Reeza tore off through the door, boots echoing down the passageway, she engaged the intercom once again. "As you all know, the search is off and we have been warned-" The Hunter sent another shot across the bow. The shields crackled and glowed along its trajectory. Running lights along every foot of bulkhead began blinking red, in time to the low alarm. The asshat was getting a little close, wasn't he? Reluctantly, she gave the order she did not want to give. This was not an enemy she wanted to have. Unfortunately, they were Mavericks. Their flags and badges were illegal contraband and could land them all in prison or dead. The triad didn't release any of the Litigion septs to the RREC colonies. "Combat positions." It was her only choice.
There was a collective, echoing screech of 'Meatloaf!' as everyone scrambled to join stationed crewmen and get crosshairs in sight. Nyx followed suit as she ran to the brain of the ship. She slid to a halt just behind Reeza, who was once again geared up in her fluffy robe, socks, and cat-eared headphones.
"Objective?" Reeza asked, swinging the ship into a position that presented the most weapons to the target while keeping Ceurul's sun at her back. Before Nyx responded, she checked over the five others in the compartment, including Troache and Reeza. Counting the six of them, there were thirty lives on board. Even with the risk, she pointed to the inscribed passage over the helm door.
"Obliterate or escape. In the event one can not obliterate: escape, get a bigger gun, then obliterate."
"Obliterate it is." Reeza sing-songed.
"We're charged for jump." One of the three crewmen working forward systems informed Reeza. "Say the word."
"Very good, Pickle." Reeza confirmed, throwing a piece of candy at him. The man caught it by reflex and sighed, resigned to the nickname. He sat at his console and unwrapped the candy as discreetly as possible. The two had an odd friendship. His name was Lee Picke. His name badge read 'Picke, Lee'. Reeza, at first sight, had burst into laughter and had since called him Pickle. Others had even begun to picke up the name, as well.
Troache spoke into his headset as Nyx got settled. She couldn't make out what he was saying, but she could see his orders being carried out via the ships debcon. Blips were moving through the Boromis, changing colors as they reached destinations or received orders.
She felt a rumble through her chair and recited a mental prayer to her ancestors. The fight was on.
A few rounds of back and forth, and Nyx had a sinking suspicion that something was very wrong. The hunter ship was doing more evasion than actual targeting.
"Reeza? Report." Nyx barked, hearing an alarm chirp but not daring to switch views. Taking her eyes off the fight could prove fatal, even if their enemy wasn't as aggressive as she'd expect.
"I was ju~st about to let you know that PREDATOR was picking up some activity on the periphery." PREDATOR was a program created by a previous crew member with the acronym of PRDTR for PRimary Deadly Threat Response. Whenever PREDATOR alerted with such intensity, flashing the alert across all forward monitors, it was usually something that could not only defeat them, but stomp them to dust and smear their entrails across all four systems, leaving nothing identifiable in the aftermath. "Escape?" She hooked a thumb to the inscription behind her.
"You know it." Nyx growled, calling it quits with the small-fry shooters and swinging around the big, stupidly expensive cannon. She fired three rapid-fire shots just before Reeza could initiate the jump. One very big, very mean ship popped into their voidspace, directly behind the Hunter, just in time to catch the ill-aimed rounds. Just as those rounds detonated, her own ship shuddered. Her headset went dark, projecting the view from Jump.
The explosion had been pretty, as the after-image was still burned in her retinas. But Nyx wasn't sure the rounds had detonated on the shield or actually penetrated the hull. It all depended on whether there had been time for the shields to initiate.
That was the risk of Jumping to battle. Shields went down before Jump and took a few crucial moments before they came back online after Falling from a Jump. If shields were not cut off pre-jump, they would literally cook the ship to slag. Occupants stood no chance against the flash-boil.
The process started with the shields being overwhelmed by whatever Jumps do, and automatically diverting power from less important tasks at the time, such as key features of life support. Key features such as temperature regulation and user access terminal power, among others. While the loss of those features usually did not mean death, their loss was catastrophic during Jump. Despite trying to create a fail-safe or programming the systems to divert other energy stores, this was always the inevitable result. Without either power or temperature regulation, the shields would cook the ship from all sides.
In under five minutes the entire ship would be engulfed in temperatures roughly 120 degrees Celsius.
Jump times were a considerable mystery. Whether the straight-through, manual trip would take four minutes or four days, the jump completed in 20 minutes. Beyond the initial 108-hour straight-through trip, for every 108 hour block, an extra 45 minutes would be added for a continuous jump. But that was only for the people on-board. To everyone else, the travel was a few minutes shy of instantaneous. After exiting jump, the accumulators would take nearly an hour to recharge enough to Jump again.
After entering Jump, you were stuck there until the predefined coordinates were reached. There was no emergency exit. There was no 'undo' option. When things went bad during Jump, you had to deal with them. That was the drawback of this technology. When shields had been developed and added to the ships with Jump capabilities, the crews of those early years had been helpless.
It was unknown how high the temperatures actually reached during a shielded Jump. Recordings of those tragic events had only broadcast for five minutes before going dark. The charred remains of the occupants were few, according to the textbooks, and what was left had been encased in ash and slag from the melting ship. The slag indicated that some portions actually reached 2,000 degrees. Virtually everything beside the skeletal structure was ash and bubbling pools of melted metal.
Having seen the explosion before her ship shuddered into Jump, she was reminded how utterly dependent on the technology they were. Looking around, she realized just how old much of the equipment onboard the Boromis had become. Maybe there was something in Rheed's incessant pestering for upgrades. She may have to allow him to perform them while she was playing the flame-sodden hero on IcoMera.
But he would install upgrades on a different ship. The Boromis was done. Too many high-profile enemies had marked her.
"Where did you take us?" Troache asked, removing his headset. He didn't bother checking the coordinates as he had damage reports to inspect.
"The outer satellite at Bahst." The girl responded, sitting back in her chair to enjoy the smooth ride of Jump. Nyx stood and watched as her people began their post-engagement procedures.
"Pickle, I need you to scan communications. Watch for an APB on us." Nyx turned to Reeza while the man grumbled, "Get us docked and see what's available. Troache, get the crew ready to move cargo." she pressed the button for the com. "Creed, report."
The echo of heavy boots preceded Creed to the helm, where she faced Troache and rapidly parroted the status of the ships integrity. It was a fail-safe to have both verbal, written, and system-generated damage reports. One could never tell when damage would prevent a readout from showing correctly.
"You two - " Nyx pointed between Reeza and Creed, "Get Rheed and go through the list of replacements. Choose wisely."
"No pressure…" Reeza grumbled, pulling up the Bahst inventory list and calling her brother to the helm. A few minutes later, gibberish assaulted Nyx as she returned, carrying a tray of food for the crews in the control room.
"I'm be a frogged sodbuster do you tally this… this bulked kettle…" Disgust was etched into Rheed's face and thick in his words. "T'aint teed-off to this'un propes-er!" Even given the time she had invested in learning Rheed's preferred 'tongue', Nyx had absolutely no idea what he was trying to say. It was clear, though, that he was frustrated.
"Be a sodden frogged sodbuster, ya murk-kissed clod. That'un aint a lick teed-off to a casket." Reeza said the last word with disgust, flicking her fingers at her brother before continuing. "Scanty play for keepin'! Gots us thirty morts hereabouts, an' ya yankin to skunk us spread? Spray then that this'un 'bulked kettle' right just kin to that'un!"
"What in the four systems are they saying?" Nyx wondered aloud. Her brows were furrowed with the effort of trying to track their fast dialogue and make any sort of sense of it.
"Rheed's whantin' this slimmer ship," Creed began, indicating a pointy, narrow ship hovering in the air above the console. She pointed to another, just below the sleeker ship that housed much more space. "He's claimin' the other has a lot of wasted space an' it'll affect its performance… ya know, requirin' more power for lights and air and whatnot. Reeza disagrees that the space is wasted with thirty people livin' aboard, an' that Rheed's pick is too small, like a casket." Creed held her hands close together. "She thinks the two ships are a match at specks, an' likes the bigger one." Creed smiled knowingly at Nyx and winked. "Though, I've no idea what a frogged sodbuster be. That'un's new" Turning back to the two she highlighted yet another ship and added her own bit of gibberish to the mix. Creed went into the conversation with a wide grin, and Nyx couldn't help but think that the woman was happy for a chance to converse in her- for lack of better term- native language.
After nearly two more hours of bickering and a wholly unintelligible heated discussion torn three ways, they finally agreed on a ship and a new shuttle. The three parted ways and blessed silence fell over the helm. Nyx could hear several people sigh and saw more remove ear pods. Then their whispers rose as they began chatting amongst themselves, absent the need to yell to be heard. Nyx liked her crew, having hand-picked them all and tested them before accepting their contracts.
The 2 minute warning for Fall sounded just as Rheeza returned from fetching a new hot cocoa. Rheeza took her seat just in time to witness Fall and start the 'handshake' between the Boromis and the Bahst guidance tower. Everyone else activated weapons to watch the periphery or manned communications.
Reeza ended the handshake and was cleared to enter the Bahstin satellite. It was only then that Nyx released the breath she'd been holding. Thank the Fires of Creation and all the suns of the four systems that she had followed her father with this friendship. This was one alliance the Surveau family had honored for decades. As long as she drew breath and had any power or leverage, she would continue to honor the Bahsts. That was, so long as the Bahstins held their end of the deal.
Nyx trusted Creed to give the younger and less experienced crewmen directions on what would happen before handing the ship over for slagging. The Boromis had been home for five years. Now they had to move and move fast. She went to her personal quarters and shoved everything she could into three trash bags and a single duffel. She dumped her belongings in the shuttle, among a mountain of other bags and boxes belonging to the crew.
She felt the almost imperceptible halt of the ship through the floor, and knew they had docked. The crew was split into three sections. The first would go to the market for supplies and personal shopping, toting lists from the other two crews. The second would begin dismembering the Boromis and salvaging what they could, under the watchful eye of Rheed. The third would begin to transfer the salvaged equipment to the new ship's hold.
This all excluded Nala. She would be on a barge back to Pterois and Nyx's maternal family. Nala would be subject to Nyx's sweet step-father, two naive fryling sisters, tyrannical mother, and her own younger, evil twin. Her core crew members, such as Pickle, Bubba, Reeza, Rheed, Creed, Creece, and the ever important Troache were required for another task.
She would enlist the people she trusted to watch her back. The people usually sitting in the shuttle under fire, right beside her. They were a tight unit, known by the sept as the Surveau Core. Even Rheed and Reeza had wormed their way into the Core.
It wasn't unusual for the Core to vanish for a few days. Especially during 'cool-down' time after an engagement. This time, though, it was just Nyx and Troache disappearing without a trace. The Core was informed of the most basic of details; Nyx and Troache were set to return within three weeks, as well as instructions on where the remaining crew were to go once they were ready to leave the station. The crew would have a substantial layover in Chartlett Station for vacation, where they could stay for the fun or get a charter to their respective homes. Reeza and Rheed were not to leave Creed's sight.
Nyx had an event to prepare for.
Not to mention questions about the chase with the Hunter.
Had she known the sheer chaos she was about to incur, she might have just stayed on Bahst, and Darkness take everything else.