---Hangar---
---Brunhilda’s perspective---
What I ordered Twila to do to get this information… was a crime.
Unlikely that the Revanchists are gonna report me but that doesn’t mean bigot birb isn’t going to file it away to trot out in front of Parliament!
OK Samus!
Can’t be worrying about that now!
We need our friends back and this was the only way I could see that had a hope of doing that!
If I need to go back to prison for it, I consider that a price worth paying!
The really frustrating thing is that even asking Twila to commit this crime for us (to insert a malware beacon into the gene map code she sent) didn’t get us a definitive location!
They’ve apparently got quite advanced cybersecurity given their distaste for full AIs so the beacon was scattered out to hundreds of false locations the instant it was activated!
Twila and the other techies were able to do some witchcraft to narrow it down to four locations that seemed most likely (something they probably wouldn’t’ve been able to without one of them being an AI).
Tymancha and the spies are heading to one, the Vrakhand girls to another and the majority of the Twigg to the third…
That leaves me, Xon and Tuun to check this place… a derelict shuttle hanger on the outskirts of the city.
A sparkling sea of artificial lights line the low hills to our right, mirroring the stars above.
To our left is a well manicured forest of orange leafed trees, their colour visible by the starlight.
Not having my assault rifle makes me feel a little nude… but it’s definitely for the best.
Unlike the pulse rifle I’m holding, that weapon is absolutely not a less than lethal and, unlike in the movies, there are very few places in your body where you can get shot and have minimal risk of death!
I give a swift kick to the front entrance of the building that neither of my (much taller but much skinnier and less substantial) companions would have been able to match, causing the once sliding door to sheer free of its moorings and clatter to the floor.
Seven guns snap up to cover all our angles.
As soon as we’ve established the grungy reception area to be clear, I lead the way to the corridor that gives access to the hangars.
On my left, Tuun’s eyes and her top two hands are pointed forward while her bottom two are pointed at the floor behind her, to her left and right, (all four wielding pistols) and her long ears swish about for anyone who might be sneaking up on us.
Xon, being right handed, has her right pistol extended in front of her, her left pointed at the ceiling, just behind her head.
Hangar 9 is clear.
Hangar 8, clear.
Hangars 7, 6, 5, 4, 3…
Just as I’m on the point of giving up on finding anything in this place, my gun snaps around the corner of Hangar 2 and… I see the showiest spacecraft I’ve ever seen!… Including the Bright Plume!
Imagine Emperor Palpatine having a bratty teenaged daughter who insisted that matte grey was sooooo out of fashion after the Battle of Yavin and that his Lambda-class shuttle simply had to be redecorated in glossy purples and you’ve got some idea of what this crime against good taste looks like(!)
I immediately pull us back behind cover, just to minimise the chances of us being sniped.
They probably already know we’re here.
First thing I’d’ve done if I was doing what they are is put up monitoring devices around this place to warn me when I was being closed in on.
If they’re as competent as taking out Thran and Cuddles suggests they are, they already know we’re here.
I open a comm channel to Twila, using eye tracking on my helmet’s visor.
“We’ve got something on our end…” I say in an (as explained) probably unnecessary whisper “…instruct the other teams to converge on this location, assuming they’ve found nothing themselves.”
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“Roger that, sit tight.” answers Twila, moderating her volume down without whispering.
“Negative. We’re going in now.”
She doesn’t make me explain that every second we delay here is one where they could be getting either more prepared for us or more desperate and stupid, nor that, if this ship is genuinely one in use by some irrelevant smuggler or some shit, the quicker we confirm that and call off the order to converge on our location, the better.
She simply answers “Understood. Good luck.”
Once she’s off the line, I turn to Tuun and Xon and order “On three, we break for the ship. Maintain your relative positions but fan out so they can’t concentrate fire on us. You guys keep pace with me so we don’t get picked off one by one as we get aboard. Clear?”
“Understood.” answers the dualwielding Tshwane soldier.
“Understood.” answers the quadwielding Elven space Viking.
“Alright. One… two… three!” I bark the last word, sprinting out to take the centre and beelining it to the gaudy ship’s open loading ramp.
Xon takes our right.
Like me, she’s decked out in armour, though, unlike mine, her suit includes fully armoured sleeves, meaning she doesn’t have to worry about getting shot in the arms.
Neither of us have much to worry about from tranqs, though, my sleeves being made of material thick and durable enough to repel or break any needle shot at them.
Tuun isn’t armoured.
Because her main assets are speed and manoeuvrability, heavy armour would hinder more than help her.
She’s better off dodging out of the way of whatever’s being shot at her than tanking it, head on.
Though I suppose, because the only exposed parts of her, not covered by her suit, are her hands and head, that probably means that (if they have tranqs that’d even work on her) they’ll take longer to have an effect, being shot into connective tissue, than they would if they could target her muscle masses.
The two of them match their pace to my (much slower) one, as we sprint through the open space, meeting at the foot of the ramp and storming up it.
The cargo bay we find ourselves in is deceptively large.
The ship looked like a dinky little thing in the massive open roofed hangar but this empty space is around 6m tall, 12 wide and maybe 25 long and, from the two doors at the other end, seems like it only takes up part of the ship.
I’m guessing the lower door leads to the engine and cockpit… The upper door, in the middle of a wraparound balcony that encloses the cargo bay at a height of 3m, I think’d probably be living space.
Neither of them have any labels so I can’t be sure!
The three of us sweep up the space, scanning for any kind of countermeasures.
Boarding like this was a gamble, I know.
If it turns out that they’ve got even a few heavies other than the two we’re here for, it’s going to be bad news for us!
It might be bad news for us just trying to bring in those two without killing them!
Still!
This is no time to second guess myself!
Gotta trust my gut, just like Cuddles’d say!
We’re about halfway down the bay when the top door slides open and the three of us whip our seven guns in that direction.
A head of copper hair comes dangerously close to brushing the top of the door frame as a large, blank faced man comes out and takes position on the right of the rearward facing portion of the walkway (our left).
Victor is followed out by an explosion of coarse, frizzy orange hair on top of a broad, deep, short woman who once broke my back without even trying to…
Thran takes position on our right.
Following those two, a third person emerges from the dark… doing a…*sigh*… a slowclap(!)
She looks like she just got back from an audition to play the villainess in a live action kids’ Hallowe’en special(!)… Strong notes of both witch and vampire!
“Brava! Brava! Brava!…” smirks the purple clad woman, smugly, through a fanged mouth “…You three…!”
That’s as far as she gets before I scream “OPEN FIRE!” and all three of us let loose on her.
The instant I give the order, purple fire bursts to life in both of her hands, spreads to form a shield and completely obscures her from the front.
Well… that explains how she got Cuddles and Thran!
Airborne nanites!
Our pulses are harmlessly clanging against a field, generated by what has to be billions of microscopic machines that she seemed to just pull out of thin air!
I’d never really thought about it but I guess I just assumed making them airborne wasn’t possible!
I’ve only ever seen nanites in a nanoforge!
This kidnapper only needed to sweet talk them for a few minutes to distract them both from noticing the reforging of eachother’s translators!
My pulserifle is 25% of the way to needing time to recharge when I order “CEASE FIRE!”
The resounding *dong*s of our kinetics meeting her nanite generated field fall silent as Tuun, Xon and me all stop firing but keep our guns pointed at her.
She doesn’t drop the shield.
Instead, her swarm of machines, so tiny and numerous they look more like a fog, reforms around her, giving the appearance of bulking out her slender body as they form a mass of purple smouldering smoke around her, enclosed by a humanoid shaped layer of shimmering, kineticproof field.
She clears the nanites from between her face and the surface of her shield to say “*tsktsktsktsk*! Such rude houseguests you are(!) Not even allowing your hostess the opportunity to properly greet you before attacking her in her home(!?)” in a sultry, sensuous halfwhisper.
“We’re not your guests, bitch!” I snarl, keeping my gun aimed squarely between her eyes for the moment she drops the shield “We’re here to get back the friends you kidnapped, the sample you made them steal and then bring you in… Alive only if feasible!… What part of our motivation here makes you think we’ve got any interest in giving you a chance to fucking monologue at us?!”
She places the glowing, blue skinned fingers of a right hand made of purple fire and smoke against her chest, the field humming louder at the points where its surfaces touch, and makes a face… acting like she’s genuinely wounded by my words.
“Well…! If that’s truly how you feel?… I suppose we needn’t dally any further!… Thran dear… kill these two!…” she orders, indicating me and Xon “…Victor, sweetheart, restrain the Elf but don’t kill her… I’ve got a special someone for whom she’ll make the perfect little present when we get back to Bastion around Christmas… He’s wanted one like her for a while…”
Cuddles and Thran each vault the railing and drop to the floor at the end of the cargo bay.
Then, they start making their way towards us, Thran heading for me and Xon, Victor going for Tuun.