\Our Polar Sattelites are picking up another group of fighters jumping in on the far side of the gas giant\ Commander Varma relays from what should be a cold and dark sitting duck Frigate. Of course, when we were caught flat footed in an attempted raid two weeks ago, we stopped actually shutting down everything and just masked the true activity from long-range sensors.
/Thanks Commander. Kitty and I will jump over there and see whether I need to call in Kismet when I get eyes on/
“Alright girly, you ready for a shooting gallery?”
“Are we wasting time and effort just disabling them again?” Oof, I guess she is really tired of taking shots for this capture approach I’ve been adopting.
“Not today. They’ve had enough warning, and our big meeting is in three days. If we see anything bigger than a fighter we should try to identify who’s sponsored the ship before we scatter it. Anything fighter size we can just obliterate.”
“Yess! I like the way the pulse cannons feel on automatic. Whum, whump, whump.” It’s a strange experience to hear Kitty respond to me in my mind and via her avatar. Ever since she forced me to be her tool monkey in her surprisingly extensive repair list, she’s been using her avatar near constantly. She docks into a cubby in the back of the cockpit and melds her consciousness back into the larger data banks and I feel it surge back into the ship’s systems.
“Lets prepare for a series of quick jumps and to open fire as soon as our position stabilizes.” She chirps in my brain to confirm and coordinates our arrival with the ‘last seen’ satellite data.
We pop in about fifty kilometers away from a small mercenary gunboat and about a dozen mixed fighters and bombers. I guess they weren’t going for a capture today, unless all of that is meant for the moon base.
The pulse cannons erupt with light toward the fighters as I open a torpedo salvo against the gunship and plot a jump outward from the planet and downward from the equator to cross the firing solutions and hopefully get some splashback from any torpedoes they’re about to launch. Kitty highlights those launches as their energy weapons charge.
I trigger the jump and dive back into the ship’s systems to get a projection of when those weapons will go into seek mode and hope that the pilots are stupid enough not to have reverse course protection enabled. Kitty lets loose another salvo of plasma and in a few seconds some of the bombers’ payloads start cooking off. When Kitty picks up the mercenary’s torpedoes coming about toward the flashes of light and heat, I can’t keep the grin off my face.
“Kit, what’s the likelihood that gunboat survives that salvo that’s coming back?”
“The fighters have a decent chance, the Gunboat is going to have to lean on their targeting system to have a chance of survival.
Kitty then chats with Kip, who proceeds to inflate the compression ribs in my suit to help me stay conscious during her desired ripple drive maneuver. I close my eyes, dive a little deeper into Kitty’s sensors and clinch my everything as the universe lurches slantways at 12G’s.
Through Kip’s persistent efforts, my circulatory system now has some steady reinforcements and a weird pressurizer organ that evens out the pressure fluctuations of my heart and any rapid movelemt or position changes. It also delays bleeding out, which is a solid plus. My max G’s are around 15, but that’s full blackout, minor damage survivable, while 12 is still concentrated effort and tunnel vision.
As soon as the high g’s are over, Kitty kicks me out of our synch.
“The gunboat is currently boardable, so move your ass to the boarding gangway. I’ve alerted fire team 1.”
I stagger out of my seat and grab hold of the bulkhead to steady myself. A few hops and a limb shake later, I’m jogging down the corridor pulling my pulse repeating pistol and my ripple rifle from my dimensional storage and mount them on my suit with a few flash and electronic scramble grenades.
When I reach the breaching prep bay, I hear the whump of Kitty’s plasma cannons firing into the merc fleet.
“ROE Senior?” Corporal asks.
“Shoot anyone that looks armed. Tranq anyone that tries to surrender, taze if they’re in armor and trying to surrender. Make decisions at speed.”
“CQB raid with chems, can do Commodore.” I see him order some 100kV taze guns, and some tranq rifles and he spreads them out.
I ask one of the boys to hook up some spare battery packs to my back and summon my breaching weapon: a Phasing Plasma Cutlass. While Penny prefers the non-phasing Plasma Saber with a fixed blade instead of just a shield-constrained beam of plasma, I like the fixed bladed Cutlass that phases because I’m not some uncanny monster of space magic like her. I asked her to teach me [Gun-fu], and as much as I learned, it really wasn’t my style.
When I came out to the Frontier, Astoria wasn’t ready for Wardens yet, and money went pretty far in the Prospects at the time. I did a lot of boozing, brawling, and fucking before I got a message, years later, from Penny asking if I was still interested in the space sheriff/marshal idea. My time brawling and fighting on ships combined with [Gun-fu] during my ascension to tier 2 to give me [Swashbuckling]. Think what you want about the necessity of guns in space, but a shipboard brawling adaptation has served me very well since then.
“Oh shit! You fight with one of those?” A Marine asks as he see’s my sword.
“Yes, and an upgraded version, hence the additional battery packs.” He mumbles something I don’t catch before he backs away. Honestly makes sense, these things are dangerous.
Kitty starts the countdown in our HUDs and a loud whoosh and then an echoing bang issue from the boarding bridge before out hatch opens and I rush out into the impromptu corridor. We run against the breeze of a venting compartment and when I reach the open needle end of the breaching crown, I start laying pulse rounds toward the bridge and the Marine behind me starts sending ammo aft.
I jog down the passageway with my periphery scanning the map that Kitty pushed at us. Not a big ship, but it sure has enough doors to slow down a boarding party. I briefly interface with a locked panel and hotwire the door to seize open to where it will eventually burn itself out. I spam pulses down the passageway on the other side before the hatch opens wide enough for me to get through.
I’m five or so meters down the passage when I come to a ‘T’ and bullets come at me from each side. I duck back and then go back to take count of both corridors before retreating to warn my team. I signal three left, two right and that I am going left. I pop a few shots of distraction and wait for their conventional weapons to make reload noises. When that happens I shuck my cutlass down the corridor and take a few pot shots before pulling on the Aether tie I have to the blade.
My body immediately phases into a realm where grey is prominent and the representations from the other world aren’t necessarily solid. So, before the sword gets anywhere near the ground, just overhead of my attackers, I phase to my sword and ignite the plasma feature as the leather strapping slaps into my hand.
The suited defenders I phase behind have no idea what’s happening when I slash at one with superheated plasma and shoot the other just under the helmet plate with my pistol. Without thinking too hard, I catch the second set of meat-filled armor and carry it until I make it around the corner. I raise my pistol to get the guy that started running as soon as I threw my sword and nearly miss him with a searing graze across his thigh.
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
The man’s shouts are muffled in his helmet as he stumbles and I sprint to try to keep him from updating anyone. Not that this ship won’t have a competent life-support system, but I can hope that their technicians are idiots. The active autoturret as I round the next corner tells me that no matter what the crew is doing, the captain of this gunboat decided long ago that a backup plan is always the plan.
I too, like having options, so I hook my pistol to my thigh equipment anchors and search my compressed storage for answers. Grenades are always fun, but thermobaric explosives aren’t awesome in depressurized spaces, though it would nearly eliminate collateral damage. Micro A-M is also an option. Ooh! An open flare mine! A twirling mess of sticky flaming metal sounds like fun to watch, but not a good way to keep a ship. Boo, I’ve never gotten to use it.
Just roll a sensor spoofing distracto-nator down the hall and melt it with your pulse rifle. You have other things to do today.
Kip, thank you for helping. Also I hate you for ruining my fun. The distracto-nators are only capable of fooling two types of sensors at a time, so I have to use two to be sure the turret doesn’t call my bluff and shoot me anyway. Four second timers have the little balls of mischief firing off a few meters in front of the turret.
The ceiling-mounted gun unloads on the small orbs and I pie around the corner and send a charged shot at the dangerous robotic gun. The pulse doesn’t immediately melt it to slag, meaning the weapon had been made out of enhanced materials, or enchanted, but the burst is hot enough to cook off a few rounds in the belt that is feeding the gun, blowing holes in the belt and tweaking it into a jammed feed. I send a few more pulses into the weapon in case it has some auto-repair function and pick up my little life-savers.
I try another quick synch with the hatch control, but the security is tighter on the bridge. Now I’m wishing I’d brought a tazer with me like the Corporal did.
As loath as I am to act as a secretarial service, I will remind that your left glove has a taze function.
Well shit, thanks Kip. I forgot about that, and I’ve even used it before. Yikes, my hyperfocus gets worrying at times. I place my left palm over the controls and pump them full of unwelcome voltage. I see a dancing light show on the screen and see some vents pop open but in the end the heat is too much and I hear the electronic locks on the hatch click open. Since the hydraulic hand pump for manual operation is on the bridge side, this would usually be safe for the bridge crew even with the locks down. My skeleton key and my tier 3 re-entry suit claim otherwise.
Putting my cutlass on Plasma Overdrive, the glow turns blue and sinks into the enchanted steel hatch like a finger through gelatin. With the blade firmly buried I let it cool around the blade until it’s firmly in place and start pushing. I can barely move it, so I engage my ripple strips and have them help push until my bones creak. As it opens about a meter, shots come through the door and I’m suddenly faced with the fact that the door is going to slam shut. Not needing to hold the blade while my suit pushes, I grab my rifle and start welding the door to the top and bottom tracks as soon as I think a marine in armor can squeeze through.
The pulse rifle locks and opens its safety features, forcing me to drop it. Doesn’t look slagged so I kick it away from the door and start the plasma and overdrive functions on the cutlass again to take it out of the door. I was told in no uncertain terms that I should never leave one of these things behind. I give the blade a quick shake to ensure the metal is off and turn off the overdrive function. I only have the ripple sniper rifle left for long guns, so I can either sword and pistol, or double pistol.
Three of my Marines round the corner, telling me that whatever is in my hands is what goes in.
/I’m going to jump behind them again. Try not to hit me with pulse weapons./
I throw the blazing sword and there’s a brief moment when people shoot at it before they just watch if fly. Taking their eyes of me?! I am the star of this motherfuckin’ show! I start blasting gobsmacked douches as I jump in through the door. As soon as they start aiming at me again, I trigger the link between me and the cutlass and I get swept through a sepia-toned reality until my hand grabs the wrapping around my cutlass’ handle. I ask Kip to skim my thoughts to direct the ripple drive on my suit so we can just bust their little brains while I cut them to pieces.
I come back to colored reality about half a meter off the ground, start blasting at a few backs before Kip sends me down to contact the ground, energizing my mag boots for a bare moment to give me near infinite traction to dash into a saber lunge before executing a leg sweep spin to stagger his buddy while cutting up to slash an artery before shifting my weight and stabbing back into my lunge victim.
Kip runs a zip of current through my pistol arm, alerting me to shoot the damn thing and keep moving. Thanks buddy. The two burst shots break one assailant’s shields, causing him to stagger, but instead of finishing him off, I dash at him with a ripple assist, barrel him over and slash across my body at the person behind them and turn back to the man I barreled over to send more pulses into the shield less body.
A barrage of fire erupts from the door as my Marines make themselves known as I continue to take shots at the confused crew. The whole bridge battle takes less than two minutes and I’m covered in scorched blood. We’ve done this a few times so the team searches the bodies for cards, chips or other access materials that will get us full control of the ship.
/Kitty, honey, can you deploy the tow rig, so we can get this heap back to the moon base?/
\You know, if I didn’t insist on being in my Avatar, I would feel a lot like a freighter the way you ask me things.\
/A freighter with duckie pajamas maybe. I’m sorry you feel like that Kit, I need you to help me understand what you need though./
\I would like another day out. Hanging out with you and Mom on Astoria was nice. I don’t know if the other Ships feel this way, but I think Oren was a bad influence. He really likes the humanoid experience.\
I chuckle at the memory of how awed she was by Oren’s insight into enjoying the chassis, or Avatar. Her ‘lessons’ have actually been great in helping me synch properly with complex tech. That and I feel like I have this . . . adopted daughter that I didn’t have to work through the shits on everything phase.
I’m holding that for blackmail.
Dammit Kip! Stop skimming my thoughts now, combat’s over. I can still hear him chuckling in my brain.
/Sure thing. We’ll be traveling in a few months, but if you want to get out before that, you can play one of my guards in your avatar. Or shit, you could play some coquettish engenue out for a good time./
\I’ll think of something better than whatever circus you’d have me perform in.\
So she does want to dress up and go out, just not in the roles that I would have her play. Fine by me. I smirk in my helmet while trying to access the ship’s systems. I’ll be at a disadvantage until one of the spooks breaks in or my assault team finds a key or gets the info out of anyone we may not have killed. Heh, good luck with that Gents. May just have to get Kismet to brute force the damn thing.
Of course, one of the guys brought one of Kitty’s relay toys and she’s working on it as she’s deploying the tow harness. We only have half a gas giant to tow it around, we should be at the moon before I have to skip out to my meeting. Combat resolved, bad guys nearly in a can, what else could I possibly do with this?
You have some messages to process, but it . . . might be significant. You were close before this capture, and well, you killed several Users that had some measure of experience.
Ahh, fuck, Kip. I am not ready for T-3 right now. But if you’ve been sitting on this one since the last raid, then waiting to long might get me in mutation range. Damnit, Andromeda. And also you Kip, I don’t want to keep track for a reason. I got lost in this shit once upon a time. And I need this to happen some other time!
Pushing through Tier 3 would be a benefit for the meeting. Waiting to scavenge from the shapeshifter may help, but it could also cause a mutation. You’re skimming the unknown just as Penny did, not reading your messages for extended periods. Luckily Andromeda’s policies have changed on that front or you would have died from the surges multiple times over.
Alright buddy, we’re going to get a consult.
->M] Hey baby, Kip just warned me I’m on the cusp of T-3. Any tips? [<-
->P] Are you risking your life again? I don’t feel that strongly about Piracy, Mikki. Tier three though? Congrats! You should ask Kitty to fill the rejuvenation tub. Tier up in that and whatever your body wants to do, won’t be limited by power. [<-
->M] Well shit, love you too. I’ll ping her right away. Kitty really loves you know?[<-
->K] Me? Honey, that girl is begging to call one of us dad, so you could just let her. But she doesn’t want to offend you or presume too much. Trust me, this is the sixth teenage transition and hero worship I’ve had to deal with.[<-
->M] Ugh, I guess it’s not the worst thought in the world to have a badass, emo ship Kid as my ward. [<-
->K] Wow, that was the most awkward expression of love I’ve ever heard. You should do self-help speeches. Anyway, gotta jet. Some Matrix business I have to involve myself in. Have fun at your meeting! [<-
Oof, as parting shots go, that was a doozie, but my middles are still warm and cozy from just speaking with her. I am so twitterpated with that colossal dork.