Slev Torrent- Tansental- Otto's Lost And Found

Slev utterly relished the Alien comfort of his sofa hammock for a good hour. just idly hanging from the tree in Otto's living room and considering his life choices. Until a sharp and raspy cough racked him, blossoming cold pain across his torso, yeah, fuck, he needed a doctor or at least some medical supplies to jumpstart the healing process on his ribs. He definitely didn’t have the money he needed for that.

Money was absolutely everything out among the stars.

Every wild fantasy humanity had ever thought of was reality on alien worlds. Cloning, limb regrowth, and cybernetics. Even age-reduction therapy all could be bought. For truly ludicrous sums of money. It wasn't much different than back home, where the poor lived among the squalor, fighting to survive, and the rich lived like nigh-immortal royalty.

Slev summoned over one of the terminals conveniently mounted on an articulating mount from against the side of the tree.

He pulled up his bank account and flinched a bit at the balance. Three hundred credits, give or take. His guild payment of nearly twenty thousand was due in just a few days now. So he flipped the tablet to his guild contract board and began browsing like his life depended on it.

The bounty guild didn’t just hunt people; it was actually more of a galaxy-wide, legal way for people to hire a mercenary. Slev, as a low-ranking new member of the guild, did not have the priority access to contracts his seniors did. So he had to sort through the chaff that more experienced members had passed on. Either too much of a hassle for the money or ludicrously dangerous.

Fourty minutes into scrolling, Slev had bookmarked a few on planet jobs. Just petty criminals with small bounty's a few thousand credits each. Those were not what he needed right now, but it wouldn’t hurt to make some side money later. There were plenty of pirate-hunting jobs.

Being in the heart of shipping lanes as he was and, those paid quite handsomely. But no, that would take far too long, and he didn’t fancy his chances in a space battle. Even with his new shiny toy sitting in the backyard. The pirates in this area who managed to stay alive long enough to get temptingly high bounty’s on them didn’t do it by sheer luck. They were cunning, merciless, and, most of all, often cruising around in stolen military ships.

His eyes alighted on a job that seemed very out of place among the scraps he was sorting through. Fourty-five thousand credits warp gate fees covered. Covering the transit alone was huge that could easily add up to tens of thousands. Just one gate jump and an acceleration array away... So maybe a week for the trip. He opened the job specifics, bracing himself for the downside. Recovery mission, okay that's not so bad, on a Deathworld jungle planet that corporations are fighting over. Ah, yeah, there it is.

Slev couldn't afford to be too choosy right now, so he kept reading. The gist was that this planet has barely been explored, and Cerberus manufacturing has a very expensive research post, planet side. That post has been out of contact for nearly a month now, and they want some sucker, like me. To go down to the planet. Survive the jungle and bring the station black box, which has all their precious research back ups, back to them. The biggest sticking point and surely why this job is still available. They have absolutely no idea who or what caused the station to go dark.

With a resigned expression, Slev pushed accept and leaned in for the tablet to scan his iris, confirming his identity. Slev struggled to push his battered body away from the relative comfort of the sofa. Eventually freeing himself to make his way back down the elevator. It's been a few hours now. It's quite possible that Otto has made some progress on my new ship. Slev smiled wistfully. Well, if he can't get us into that ship, it's all moot anyway. Three hundred credits isn't enough money to even cover the expenses necessary for the shuttle ride into orbit. Hell, he might have to ask Otto to lend him fuel for the ship if it's running on empty.

As Slev made his way out into the gray haze that covered Tansental, he wrinkled his nose at the artificial and acrid smells assailing his senses. Slev really wished he had thrown the armor back on. Hermetically sealed and filtered, it was an absolute godsend in this cesspool of an atmosphere. In the largest empty space in the back lot, Otto was manically waving his tendrils, trying to get Slev's attention.

Slev glanced over to see what Otto's excitement was about. Otto had taken multiple long lengths of copper-colored rods and had them hammered into the cargo bay control panel. The rods were also arcing incredibly lethal looking lightning off of them at regular intervals. Slev paused in absolute horror. As the manic little mad scientist skittered, between two bolts of lightening a mesh of some kind held above himself.

“Uhh...Otto..what...the hell are you doing to the ship?” Slev shouted from a safe distance.

Otto peered out from under his mesh shield amidst the arcing plasma “Otto break, door very good, can't hack." As he tossed another small rod onto the ground, all of the currents randomly arcing about found the perfect target, converging onto the scrap metal. Heating it almost immediately to a sizzling orange.

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Otto scampered back away from the deluge of energy. As Slev cautiously walked closer, he realized that the mesh Otto was holding was some kind of patchwork metal umbrella? With wires leading back to the metal rod on the ground.

“I not very conductive, Ships bits are!” Otto proudly declared, tossing the hastily made Faraday cage aside. He was still stubbornly only speaking in his broken Terran probably in an effort to make Slev feel more at home.

"Well, I'm glad you are good...but seriously..what is the point of all of that?" Slev just vaguely gestured in the direction of the light show ahead of them.

“Wait and see, ship off. Consoles only have so much power.”

Slev looked incredulously at him. “There has to be safer ways to drain the battery if that’s all you are doing.”

“safer? Yes, also much slower, watch." Mere moments passed before the eddy’s and currents of power slowed to a trickle. Then a few scattered sparks.

Otto cautiously made his way past the sand near the landing door. Edging around the pools of still-hardening glass, he pulled a prybar from somewhere within his tool belt. "Human, pry open. Locks should be off, just magnets.” Slev did as he was asked, fitting a pry bar carefully into the seam, and with a firm tug, the ramp door popped open slightly. Pulling it down the rest of the way, Slev marveled at his first look inside. It was dark, but he could vaguely see. A neat box-shaped room one wall covered with integrated storage shelves. The other side open with tie-down hooks built into the floor for cargo. The end of the room had a coffin-shaped doorway that looked like it was built for a species slightly larger than a human.

Slev whistled quietly as he walked up an inlaid staircase made of some near-transparent material.

The walls of the compact spiral staircase all had etchings in what almost looked like plates of silver inlaid into the walls, depicting savage fauna from unknown worlds. The main floor itself was black matte metal with touches of green trim and wooden carvings inlaid onto every unused inch of the walls.

“Okkayyyy....who the fuck and why?" Slev mumbled to himself. This main communal room had a large gold-rimmed holographic table set into the center and a compact array of plush green seating benches surrounding that. In the right wing of the ship, he found what looked like a small armory room. Glass display cases jutted from the walls, and empty stands sat ready to have armor hung from them. The armory room even had a small workbench set into the corner with multiple vices built into it.

The left wing of the ship held a small, simple cabin, obviously never used. A well-equipped cooking area and bathing room branched off from this hall as well. Slev wandered back to the cockpit itself. It was built like a star fighter's cockpit, practical and aggressive. But...more spacious.

Two seats in a line, front to back. Each seat had a set of manual physical controls arrayed at hand height and holographic displays flipping down from the ceiling at head height on each seat's right. But around the seats filling the rest of the cockpit, there was nothing. There was simply room to comfortably walk around the chair and right up to a rather generous canopy of glass that gave almost a full 180 degrees of visibility.

Slev stiffly sat in the front pilot's seat. He was incredibly concerned. This ship was amazing. The interior alone had to cost a fortune. Not to mention the extravagant styling and the very advanced electronics he had seen on everything. Hell, he didn't even know what it was capable of as an actual ship, performance-wise. Slev knew without a shadow of a doubt that whoever had commissioned this ship had never gotten it, and they sure as fuck would be looking for it.

After having Otto double-check multiple times, there were no active tracking beacons on the ship. Slev and Otto started up the craft itself with a mighty thrum a reactor somewhere near the engines spooled up.

"Alright, Otto, what kind of ship is this and does it have a name?”

Otto excitedly flipped through the readout he had navigated to in the co-pilot's seat. “No name. Custom, one of kind! Has weapons...lots”

Slev looked at Otto. This just kept getting better... “What weapons there isn’t a damn missile bay, or turret on this thing's hull?

"All hidden, pop out. No scans, that why big ship have small rooms.”

Slev couldn't believe his luck at that. At least he could fight back when some distant warlord came to get their horrifically expensive, custom-made death machine. Back from the idiot human who was decidedly keeping the damn thing. Not to mention hidden weapons would get him a whole lot farther on a lot of worlds. It was generally heavily frowned upon for unknown starfighters to land at population centers, without at least advance warning.

“Alright, Leave the weapons stowed for now. Last thing we need is a random corporate sweep seeing a turret pop out of this bad boy.”

Otto bobbed agreeablely. Then gestured for Slev to fill out the empty name designation. While Otto finished calling in some favors to get it officially registered to Slev. Slev would have been utterly up shits creek without Otto's help. Between the housing and the galactic finagling from the the Octopod Slev felt that he was deeply indebted to him.

Of course, Otto didn't feel that way. Slev had saved him from a rather grizzly fate a few months back. When the car Otto was slipping into turned out to still be quite occupied. The incredibly pissed alien had grabbed Otto and dangled him out the car window, while a few more of the alien's buddies had brought a sack to stuff Otto into. Slev, not really knowing what was going on other than three bipedal Komodo dragons, were trying to stuff a screaming, furry red octopus into a bag. Had jumped in to help.

Otto, after being saved by one of the “horrors from beyond the void,” as he put it. Was utterly ecstatic. Almost immediately after the incident, he offered Slev a place to stay, saying it was the least he could do. He continually insisted that having Slev live with him as a guard was worth far more than the small amount he spent on extra necessities. Slev wasn't in any position to refuse. Though he did at this point especially, feel like he was taking advantage of him.

Slev spent the rest of his day running through simulations on the ship's computer, getting a handle on its absurd maneuvering capability. In the early evening, he moved all of his gear into the cabin's quarters and armory. Then, with a last wave good-bye to Otto, Slev called the spire air control tower. "Tower, this is the Starfighter, Human Instinct, requesting permission to launch.”

Orima- Tansental

Orima lay back luxuriously in her guilded throne, a throaty cloud of smoke emanating from her bulbous lips. She was utterly pleased with herself. She looked deeply into the mirror next to her, held aloft by a serving drone. Brushing aside her artificial lashes, she pondered the day. She had done it she had tricked that awful monster not once but twice. First, he slew her bastard of a husband and that near-immortal bodyguard of his. With nothing more than a single shot from that obscene Terran rifle. She let out an oddly falsetto croak. Once again, she pulled up the camera feeds from the scrapyard, focusing in as the armored human placed his hand on that accursed ship.

Of course he had taken that one, it was the only logical choice for him. She knew beings like him they loved to feel like they had won. She was one of those beings herself, after all. So the human had strolled away feeling superior and towing an absolute death sentence behind him. Best of all none of this would lead back to her. Loradin's folly was dealt with and led straight to the hunter. She would use the absolute carnage that would follow when they found him. To further solidify her grasp of the fringe spire domains she now held.