Part 1

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          Wind whipped and tugged at my cloak as I lay prone atop the ridgeline, swirls of snow blowing over my body to hide me even more than I already was. The vibrant orange mass of Crusader hung low in the night sky, bathing everything in a dull light that threw long, faint shadows. Through my scope I watched as Mister Fields slunk through the debris, past the first set of bodies, toward the campfire, keeping the bulk of the shipping containers between him and the light. 

         The man at the campfire shifted uncomfortably and looked around, clearly wondering why his companions hadn’t yet returned. He shrugged and returned to staring into the fire.

         “Good.” I thought to myself. “Keep that night vision ruined. Stay huddled next to that crackling fire so you don’t hear anyone approaching.” 

         Mister Fields approached the shipping containers and gingerly tested a ramp leading up them, then swiftly moved up the ramp and over the top of the containers toward the flickering light, rolling his weight around the outer edges of his feet to keep himself planted securely but still able to move quickly. I knew from experience following him into battle that as quickly as he was moving he wasn’t making a sound. The howling wind and crackling fire would have helped to mask it anyway. 

         There was no hesitation as he neared the edge. 

         The long knife in his right hand flashed upward as he leapt from the containers, then disappeared downward in a plunge. Where others would have given a bloodcurdling scream as they attacked, Mister Fields was as silent as he’d been on the entire approach. 

         The two men fell into a tangled scuffle of flailing limbs and twisting bodies, each honed by a life of violence. For long seconds they rolled in a frosty mass, out of earshot, kicking close enough that at one point the fire flared, then spread as a burning log was dislodged and rolled free, tumbling several feet from the rest of the fire. After agonizing moments the man grew still and Mister Fields picked himself up, wiping the knife meticulously on the man’s pants before sheathing it. 

         “Alright, looks clear.” he said, his breath returning to normal.

         I shook my head. “Yeah, looks like it.” 

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         I put the finishing touches on my Demeco Light Machine Gun, slapped a fresh battery in the left side and grinned as it spun in place, vibrant shimmers of orange plasma bursting out through the viewports of the olive drab green weapon. Maintenance and cleaning wasn’t glamorous or entertaining, but I was alive where others weren’t and I’d witnessed the kind of issues a fouled weapon could get you into. 

         I placed it carefully back in its place next to my primary weapon, my FS-9, and set about cleaning up my mess when my Mobiglass began to vibrate on my wrist. I glanced down. “Mister Fields” was hailing me. 

         “‘Morning.” I croaked at him. 

         “‘Morning!” he replied, entirely too cheerfully. “How soon can you meet me?” 

         “Just need to put pants on, then I can be on my way.” I said, “What’s up?” 

         “Got a hot job, come packing.” 

         I nodded toward the camera on my wrist. “Sounds good- you know I need it.” 

         “See you in a bit!” he said, then disappeared as the blue tinged light swept back into the thin housing. 

         I hurriedly stripped off my shirt and instead of reaching for pants reached for a black, form-fitting undersuit. If I was going to “come packing” then I might as well do it right. Within minutes I was walking out of my hangar (I’d spent the night in the Cutlass- again) in full kit, fully armored with a backpack loaded with any supplies I was likely to need and weaponry strapped to my back and waist, a walking arsenal of planet-hopping for-hire on-demand justice… just so long as it didn’t sound too risky. 

         Somewhere else I might have drawn looks, but here? On ArcCorp? I was just another merc going about their day in the spaceport, going to or getting back from a job. No one gave me a second glance. I stopped by my favorite noodle stand and picked up a bowl of Teriyaki Udon to slurp down on the way, then pressed onward toward Mr. Fields’ hangar. 

         To the mass of the spaceport even the great ships were but ants, and the humans that crewed them nothing but specs, but I’d grown up here and felt right at home among the thronging crowds and incessant noise and could instantly pick out a visitor- they were the only ones craning their necks trying to see the ceiling lost far above. Even the Tevarin and Xi’an were common enough sights, the Tevarin integrating into UEE society well enough and the Xi’an hosting an embassy on the planet, so it wasn’t overly rare to see a member of either species come through the spaceport. Even a Banu trader wasn’t remarkably uncommon. 

         Mr. Fields’ hangar was an extremely tight fit for his luxury yacht, his Origin 890 Jump. It gleamed in polished white with onyx accents under the industrial grade, no-nonsense lighting in the hangar and made me grin every time I saw it. To experience an 890 Jump was to experience a taste of the good life, a glimpse of what life could have been like had you won the lottery, and despite handling like… well like a gigantic yacht, it remained THE status symbol of the affluent that wished to get around the galaxy. 

         On board it remained distinctly luxurious while still very clearly belonging to Mister Fields. Where others might have decorative, tasteful, artistic representations of weaponry, his decorations were fully functional. Where others reveled in absurd collections of gaudy displays of opulence in their weaponry, I knew the only such weapons on display here were obtained from fallen enemies. 

         I picked my way past a gold plated Custodian SMG (fingerprint magnet!) and lounged into the comfortable office chair in front of his desk. 

         “What’s the word today?” I asked. 

         He grinned. “How well do you know your history?” 

         I shrugged. “I was a solid B student.” 

         “Thought you were Academy?” he frowned quizzically.

         “I test well.” I brushed it off.

         “Ah,” he nodded in understanding, “well, you remember the Vess incident.”

         I nodded darkly. Flashes of memory flickered through my mind like an unwelcome slideshow on overdrive. A politician. A kidnapping. Delving into bunker after bunker. Bullets whizzing by my head. The taste of blood in my mouth. My basic combat training. The bruises on her body. The sunrise over Hurston. The messiest of divorces. 

“Tamara is running for office. Apparently an ancestor of hers did something stupidly heroic during the Second Tevarin War and got a medal for it.” Mister Fields tapped a few commands into the console in front of him and my Mobiglass vibrated. “That’s what it looks like.” 

I tapped on my wrist to pull up the picture. A pendant of metal spun slowly before me, tarnished bronze on the outside and a dusky gunmetal gray on the interior with the bold capital letters, “TEVARIN WAR” stamped vertically up its center.  

“Let me guess, we’re going to recover her ancestor’s medal?” I asked dryly.

“Her ancestor’s?” He snorted. “Oh hell no, that thing’s long gone. We’re going to find one of these things in pristine condition that she can pass off as her ancestor’s.” 

“So what, I start with the pawn shops on one side of town, you take the other or?....” I grinned, joking. 

“The war ended about 350 years ago, small chance of that.” He said, also grinning. “But our favorite friends are sitting on a stash of them and other goodies at what’s left of various outposts scattered across the moons of Crusader and the asteroid belt around Yela. We get our hands on one of these and the former Mrs. Vess will pay handsomely.”

“Huh.” I snorted. “Really would have thought she’d had enough of the spotlight.”  

He shrugged his shoulders. “Takes all types. If she wants to springboard off of that into politics I’m not going to stand in her way. Maybe she’ll be less slimy than her husband was.”

I spread my hands. “One can only hope. So what, we clean up the solar system and get paid a bunch of money if we find a trinket?” 

He dipped his head. “That’s the short version, yeah.”  

I thought for a few heartbeats. “Well, I’ve no qualms about taking out more 9 Tails, I’m in.” 

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Some ships slipped through the air like darts, leaving barely a wake behind them, gently slicing through the atmosphere in bladelike precision. Others powered through with brute force, displaying all the subtlety of a sledgehammer, roaring engines leaving streaks of exhaust plumes behind them as they brute forced their way through with pure muscle. My Cutlass Black was firmly in the second category, the designers at Drake having heard of aerodynamics and deciding that they wanted little to do with them. 

Twin engines sat high on either side of the healthy fuselage, flanking the rear loading ramp. They were mirrored by two vertical control surfaces that sprang from horizontal winglets coming from the cockpit up front, somehow blending together into a cohesive whole that looked like a predator mid pounce. It wasn’t a dainty fighter or a heavy freighter, but somewhere in between- a practical ship with enough storage to get the job done and enough maneuverability to get you out of (or into) whatever trouble you found. Rugged and reliable (or at least, easy to work on), they were a staple of the frontier, on both sides of the law. 

         My aftermarket upgrades had touched nearly every aspect of the ship by this point. Weapons, engines, fuel storage, coolant systems, avionics, you name it- some of it had been necessary after the crash on Hurston and the ensuing recovery. Some of it held a story, like my upgraded laser repeaters on the front. 

         As stock the Cutlass Black came armed with two laser repeaters and two ballistic gatlings. The gatlings were great for a lot of things but inevitably ran out of ammunition in any kind of a prolonged engagement. After a particularly fierce fight over Arial I brought down an enemy Cutlass Black in a surprisingly gentle manner- typically when a ship is destroyed it’s destroyed very thoroughly, but on this occasion it crash landed and split in two, sliding and rolling across the low gravity moon. My curiosity got the better of my judgment and I landed to investigate the wreckage. There were no survivors – our shooting (I was with Mister Fields) had eliminated the pilot and copilot, and it looked like the crash had taken care of the turret gunner – but the front end was remarkably intact. In particular the laser repeaters were recoverable. I worked for a few hours with the tools I already had on board to strip them off the stricken vessel and move them to my own. Back in my hangar I used them to refit my own ship and upon testing discovered that they were in perfect working order. 

         Upgrades like that left hardly a bolt unturned or a solder joint untouched on the ship, but it flew straight and true and kept me alive and coming back home at the end of the day. Her name was the Black Duchess, but she’d inherited the name from her previous owners and I was considering changing it. 

         Once again Mister Fields and I found ourselves idly flicking through our feeds on our mobiGlasses as the stars streaked by outside the plexi windscreen while we jumped from our previous spaceport, this time Lorville on Hurston, to the Crusader planetary system. As we approached my news feed changed to give me more local news about Crusader and I gave a little, “well what do you know?” when I saw the headline come across that Tamara Cline (Formerly Vess) had formally announced her bid for office. 

         “Approaching Crusader,” I said into ship comms as the creamsicle gas giant loomed large before me. I pulled up a map of known locations of derelict outposts held by 9 Tails, acquired from a disillusioned man attempting to start a new life before we parted ways, and reoriented my heading to point us to the moon of Yela. 

         Yela was familiar to me- a barely breathable atmosphere, below frigid temperatures, very low gravity, a white/blue ice ball pockmarked with eons of impact craters. I’d been there several times and had in fact recently been hijacked to it. At least this time I was going voluntarily. 

         We roared out of our quantum jump over the moon and I immediately began rolling the ship to point toward our first destination. We wouldn’t be able to jump directly to it but we could jump toward a point further away and cut out jump part way, getting close enough. With a well timed flick of a switch we were only 98.2 km out from the first derelict outpost. I threw full power to thrusters, pointed us at our target, toggled on cruise control, and settled back to watch the distance tick down. 

         At a little under 30 km I took manual control back and as we crossed the 10 km line I eased us back off thrusters, slowing us dramatically. I didn’t want to announce our presence prematurely and a ground approach would be much stealthier. Hugging the rugged terrain I swept forward until we were only about 2 km out, when I was about to run out of good cover. I gently sat the Cutlass Black down in a billow of snow and ice particles behind a small ridgeline provided by the end of a mountain range and powered down the ship. 

         The Tumbril Cyclone MT in the back of the Cutlass would be our chariot into and back out of battle for the day, an open frame 4 wheel drive vehicle with a large turret and 4 anti-whatever-they-were-pointed-at missiles loaded on the back of it. Sure it didn’t have much in the way of cargo space, but it more than made up for it in its offensive capabilities. 

         We loaded a railgun onto the Tumbril just to be on the safe side, then did a final check over our own gear before dropping the loading ramp- armor was sealed and tight, and we were each equipped with a suppressed P6-LR for distance work and a suppressed P4-AR for up close work (not to mention knives for closer work). Hemozol injectors sat strapped to our thighs next to med guns, opposite Greycat multitools with Truhold tractor beams equipped. In quick access slots around our waist sat more ammo, then more supplies of all of the above in our backpacks in addition to several meals worth of sustenance. In short, we were ready to take on anything we were likely to find, equipped with enough gear to get the job done but not so much that it would unduly slow us down. 

         I dropped the rear loading ramp while Mister Fields gently backed the Cyclone out of the ship, then closed it up and joined him. The rough terrain flew by rapidly under his expert control, keeping us tucked down behind craters and boulders as much as possible to shield us from our enemies. When we judged we could get no closer without the engine noise giving us away we killed the Cyclone and proceeded on foot, split by about 50 meters to avoid both of us being taken out by a single well placed mortar round.  

         We climbed one last ridge and saw the outpost below us, weirdly lit as the evening set, Crusader hanging high in the sky above, and saw the movement we’d anticipated- it looked like my map was good, at least for this outpost. Neither of us climbed over the ridge fully, silhouetting ourselves against the sky for the denizens of the outpost to spot, instead laying down in the snow and creeping forward as we crossed into view, exposing only enough of ourselves to get a look at what we’d be assaulting. 

         Before us lay a spread of ruins, covered in blown drifts of snow and lit by the flickers of two campfires. A crumbling tower of uncertain intent sat tucked up against the hillside to our left with the rest falling away to its right, the foundations and fallen walls of three buildings providing the rough campgrounds for the denizens of the rough settlement. Beyond the encampment sat two half-circle huts covered in crude half-roofs.  

         “Alright, I’m seeing 5… no, 6 down there…” I spoke into my mic, breaking our silence.

         “I’ve got a 7th in the shadows toward the ridgeline, this side of the crumbling tan wall with the graffiti.” Mister Fields replied. 

         “Is he shielded from the others?” I asked, seizing on the opportunity it sounded like this provided. 

         “Yeah.” He replied instantly.

         “Take him.” I said plainly. 

         I didn’t hear the suppressed shot or even see the movement, still searching for the man in the shadows. 

          “He’s down.” Said Mister Fields. 

         “I’m seeing clusters of them. Three by one campfire and now three by another, the last one just wandered in.” I said.

         “Yeah, seeing the same. Let’s see if he wanders back away.”

         “Sounds good.” I nodded even though he couldn’t see it. 

         For a short while we lay there, still, just watching the camp as the men conversed amongst themselves, until, as hoped, the wandering man got up to walk toward the other group. All were about 600 meters away according to the range finder built into my scope. 

         “Alright Rana, I’m going to take the one on the right, you go for the one on the left, got it?” 

         “Understood.” I replied, settling in and blinking a few times, then putting my crosshairs directly on the head of the man on the left. 

         “We fire on the word, ‘fire,’ ok?” 

         “Understood.” I repeated.

         “Alright. Ready?” 

          I took a deep breath and began to exhale. “Ready.” 

         I calmly but firmly exhaled the rest of the way, focusing on getting all the air from my lungs and slowing my heart rate. 

         “Three… Two… One… Fire!” he said crisply. 

         I didn’t have to adjust at that point, just squeeze. The rifle bucked back against my shoulder as a powerful “thump!” reported from it, suppressor or not. Nearly instantly I was back on target- the man on the right dropped like a puppet with his strings cut, but the man on the left leapt to his feet in alarm.

         I missed! Somehow I missed!

         As my crosshairs passed over the man once more I pulled the trigger, once again feeling the sharp recoil as the cartridge ignited and sent the bullet flying down the barrel. This time the man staggered, then fell to his knees and crumpled over, remaining still. I breathed a sigh of relief and instantly scanned for the other gangsters at the outpost- the wandering man was still sauntering over to the last group of three, who were still deep in conversation, so no alarm appeared to have been raised. 

         “Got him.” I muttered sheepishly into my mic. 

         “I saw. We’re good.” He replied without judgment. 

         We waited for a long while this time, until the wandering man got up again to wander back to the first group, then Mister Fields took him with a single shot as well. 

         This left three remaining around a fire, clearly talking amongst themselves. 

          My undersuit and armor insulated me from the brisk temperatures well but after several more minutes prone in the snow I couldn’t help but give a shiver. I ignored my discomfort and kept my focus on the camp below.

         The man facing away from us eventually picked his head up and looked around, then swung his arm and tapped the man to his left. He stiffened and looked around as well, then nodded and both got to their feet, motioning for the other man to relax as he started to his feet as well. Together they made their way around the shipping crates, away from the fire, toward the first group of men we took and toward us.

         “Alright, we’re only going to get one shot at this one,” Mister Fields’ voice said in my helmet, leaving the words unspoken, “we don’t have the luxury of a miss this time.”

         “On it.” I replied, “I’m on the one on the left.” This time my crosshairs came to rest on his center of mass, not his head. It was less of a chance of an instant kill but a better chance of a hit. I was immensely grateful for the ballistic targeting computer built into my scope- I was firing downhill, which changed the angle I needed to fire at, I was firing across the breeze, I was firing in low gravity, I was firing in freezing cold temperatures, and as much as I wanted to slow my heart rate and take my breathing out of the equation I knew I couldn’t. The computer instantly corrected for any variables and put my crosshairs where the projectile was going to go so I didn’t have to do the math.

         “On “fire” then,” he said. “Ready?”

         “Ready.” I confirmed.

         “Three… Two… One… Fire!” he said, and once again I squeezed on “Fire!”

         As before I felt the recoil kick back into my shoulder, but this time both targets crumpled in unison, one clutching at his chest for a second while the other just dropped. My scope instantly swung back up to the campfire in case the one clutching his chest made any noise to alert the remaining gangster, but it looked like we were in the clear.

         “Hey Rana…” said Mister Fields in a questionable tone, “I got an idea.”

         I grinned. “Oh yeah?”

         “Yeah. Cover me.”  

         I glanced over, shaking my head as I watched a blob of snow stand up and resolve itself into a man before it started trudging down the slope toward the mostly exterminated encampment. He cut across the hill, keeping to the deep shadows while I split my time between watching the man near the campfire through my scope or pulling my head up to reacquire Mister Fields as he made his way down.

The man by the campfire got up, stretched, and took a lap and a half around the fire before sitting back down opposite his old position, idly pulling up his Mobiglass. I relayed this information to Mister Fields, letting him know that his quarry now had his back to the shipping crates.

  By this point the gas giant of Crusader had moved low in the night sky, bathing the ruins in an alien orange light with long shadows.  

  Mister Fields approached the perimeter of the ruins swiftly, wasting little time out in the open where he would be easily spotted, then began picking his way through them keeping the shipping containers between the campfire and the remaining 9 Tails member and himself. As he approached he slung his rifle and drew his knife. I shook my head again, having an idea of where this was going. 

Silently he made his way up and over the debris and onto the containers, then over the top of the containers and instantly over the edge and onto the unsuspecting man by the fire. The polished blade flashed at me as it caught just enough light to do so on the way down, plunging toward the enemy. Together they rolled and struggled, kicking at the fire and snow, Mister Fields never giving up his position behind the man. It didn’t take long at all. As Mister Fields’ voice came back over comms with the all-clear signal I noted that he was barely winded. 

I took one last look through my scope, looking for movement, headlamps, or anything that would betray the presence of an enemy, then stumbled to my feet shaking off the dusting of snow that had accumulated on my prone form and began to make my way down the hill toward the encampment as well. We had bodies to search as well as the ruins themselves to go through, and the lighting situation wasn’t going to do us any favors. 

Halfway down the steep slope I lost my footing and slid another quarter of the way, rolling to a stop against a boulder, my head snapping back and smacking against it, my helmet saving my life and myself from any consequences greater than a headache. My rifle smacked into it first and I heard the sickening crunch of delicate electronics and optics turning into a pile of roughly housed garbage attached to a now-short-range rifle and knew I’d be assaulting the next camp, if it came to that. 

“You ok?” Mister Fields’ voice came over comms, concerned but also clearly struggling to hide laughter. 

“Yeah, I’m good.” I rolled my eyes at my clumsiness as I struggled back to my feet and unslung my rifle to inspect the damage. The optics were, as feared, little more than a squished mass bolted onto the rest of the deadly machine. “I’ll just be a bit shorter range than I was before.” 

I re-slung the rifle and continued on down to the ruins, approaching from the opposite side from where Mister Fields was currently searching, and walked up to the first body. After a quick search I determined that he didn’t have the Tevarin War Marker that we were looking for, so I moved on. Small blue crates, roughly half a meter to a side, lay haphazardly scattered around and were filled with random assortments of supplies, tools, food, waste, memorabilia, clothing, and the general accumulation of life. When I wasn’t searching a body I was rifling through one of them, trying to find that Marker. 

After roughly an hour we met in the middle of the camp, near the dying campfire, now the only source of light aside from the stars above, and agreed that the Tevarin War Marker wasn’t to be found here. Together we trudged back up the ridge and made our way back to the Cyclone, then retraced our tracks back to our waiting Cutlass Black. 

My beloved ship stood ready and waiting for me in the cold shadows of Yela, glistening under the starlight. We loaded up and were just powering up when my radar squawked and alarming, “Contact!” at me and a red dot appeared on my screen, approaching fast from our rear heading toward the ruins we’d come from. 

Shit!

If they were in radar range for us there was a damn good chance we were in radar range for them. I threw on my Master switch and flew through my power on sequence, powering up my systems and subsystems in well practiced order. Truthfully I’m confident that at this point, in my Cutlass Black I could have done it blindfolded. 

Mister Fields cussed as I heard the turret power up and swivel, but I didn’t bother responding, focusing on getting us airborne. A Cutlass Black may not have been the galaxy’s greatest fighter, but it punched above its class in the air… but on the ground it was nothing but target practice. 

With a lurch we broke free from gravity’s embrace and soared through the thin atmosphere of Yela, gaining as much of an energy advantage as possible for any coming fight. I spun to face whoever was approaching us, flagged as hostile as they were. 

“I’ve got them locked at about 8 kilometers out, another Cutlass Black.” said Mister Fields quickly, before I had a chance to target them myself. “Looks like they’re heading for the ruins. We fighting or running?” 

I thought for a split second. “Running. No reason to risk it.” 

If they were in a much lesser ship, perhaps it would have been a different story, but there was every chance that they were in just as capable a Cutlass Black as mine was and there was every chance they were just as skilled as we were- and we would gain nothing by engaging in a fight. 

I spun once more, putting them back on our tail and punched my throttle to full, opening my afterburner and toggling my quantum drive to start it spinning up. By the time we broke atmosphere I was already re-oriented toward OM-1 (Orbital Marker 1, directly over the North Pole) and had allowed it to calibrate to the jump point. In a few seconds I simply punched the jump button and reality warped around us, sending us careening at a significant fraction of the speed of light away from danger and toward the OM-1. 

“Well, that’s certainly one way to get out of there.” I commented dryly.

“Yeah, glad those reinforcements didn’t show up sooner.” Mister Fields replied. 

I pulled up my star map and looked for our next destination. “Yela is feeling a little sketchy to me, how do you feel about hitting a camp on Daymar while we’re in the neighborhood?” I proposed, scanning over to another moon of Crusader.

“Daymar? Hell yeah!” Mister Fields responded enthusiastically. 

“Alright, Daymar it is!” I chuckled. 

I reoriented the ship and once again performed a quantum jump, this time toward the desert moon of Daymar, then took a second to admire its rugged beauty as it spread out below me. 

Where Yela was a cold, frosted, white with light blue accented snow ball, Daymar was a rugged desert. Its tan sands gave way to rudy canyons and harsh mountains, jutting spires of rock and unexplored depths of caves dotted its fierce landscape. While Yela had a technically breathable atmosphere (as betrayed by the campfires) no such luxuries would be found here. Daymar was an untamed, rugged beauty all its own. 

I calculated my next jump (I’d need to cut it about three quarters of the way) and triggered it, then deftly killed the jump and reoriented as before with less than 50 kilometers left to travel- I was quite proud of that jump. 

As before we dove in fast, burning through the distance without caution at first, then landing in a sheltered crater and taking the Cyclone in for a closer look. We parked a safe-feeling distance from the camp and hiked in, again sticking to the high ground to look down into the encampment. 

This set of ruins was in much better shape than the last- four mostly standing walls and a partial roof marked one structure with four storage silos alongside it, tucked into a crater. Broken geodesic domes scattered around showed the remains of a farming attempt. A mostly intact prefabricated structure sat opposite the walls and roof, showing at least four rooms separated from the outside world with an airlock that may or may not have functioned, all perched on stubby stilts. At least 5 men wandered around the area. 

In place of my sniper rifle I carried my trusty (suppressed) FS-9 with a 4X optic. Lots of ammo, lots of damage, plenty of range, great for either picking people off or suppressing an area- it was my weapon of choice for most activities and it gave me a good view into the crater now, though not as good of course as Mister Fields had behind his rifle. 

“I’m seeing 5 but I’ve got a lot of blind spots, what are you seeing?” Mister Fields asked. 

“I’ve got the same here.” I said from my wider view. “I’ll slip around the outside of the crater to the other side, get a look from there.” 

“Alright, be careful.” he replied.

I nodded, then fell back several steps below the rim and began to pick my way around, keeping the edge over my right shoulder by a significant margin. 

I was approximately a quarter of the way around when my comms came to life, “Be advised, a 6th man just exited the airlock.” 

“Understood.” I responded. 

So. It was functional and we’d have to clear it up close and personal. Great.

I finished my journey and wedged myself in tight behind a boulder that gave me a great deal of protection while allowing an almost entirely unobstructed field of view of the crater. 

“Ready.” I reported, “I’m not seeing any more from this perspective.”  

“Alright, I’m going to start picking them off, cover and open fire when they start reacting, ok?” Mister Fields said. 

“Sounds like a plan!”

And with that a man at the far edge of my vision, just around the edge of the ruins with the partial roof, silently dropped to his knees and then to his face, remaining perfectly still. 

“One down.” I heard the calm report.

I looked for but saw no reaction from anyone else- no one saw or heard anything. A second later another man dropped with the same level of reaction. 

I grinned. “Four remaining.” 

“Four remaining that we see.” Mister Fields corrected. 

“Good point.” I refocused my attention on the airlock, watching a man walk toward it. “I’ve got a man about to enter the airlock- want me to take him?” I asked. 

“Go ahead, I don’t want to clear him out of there if I can help it either.” Mister Fields replied. 

I finished releasing my breath and squeezed my grip, feeling the frame kick back into my shoulder in a hard shudder as a small burst of fully automatic fire ripped out from my FS-9 and tore into the man’s torso and head. 

He dropped without issue, but two of the others picked up their heads and glanced in the direction of the airlock as he did, presumably hearing the impact of the bullets smacking into the hab unit as they over-penetrated. One swung his gun up suspiciously and began stalking toward the airlock. 

“Time for them to all go right now.” I said. 

“Ok, fire at will.” Mister Fields replied in a cheerful tone. 

I responded by removing the top half of the helmet of the man stalking toward the airlock with another short burst, his armor doing little in the face of my ammunition. As he crumpled I was already looking for my next target. 

I found him just in time to see him drop from Mister Fields’ shot, then was scanning for the last man I knew of, on the far side of the storage silos from where all the action had taken place, completely oblivious to the whole thing. As with the last one, I got him in my scope just in time to see him stumble and fall as I heard Mister Fields say, “One down.” once again. 

“Alright, need to clear that hab unit, want to cover me?” I asked. 

“Yeah, hold on, I’ll get into position.” he responded. 

I waited for Mister Fields’ signal, then stood and began cautiously approaching the hab unit, gun at the ready, making my way down from the lip of the crater, over the jagged boulders. I picked my way carefully down the slope, then strode quickly over the crater floor, smoothed and cleared as it had been for development, toward the prefabricated collection of dwelling units, past the broken domes and desiccated remains of plants. By the time I reached the stairs leading up to the airlock Mister Fields was behind me with his closer range weapon of choice, a P4-AR ready to go. 

We nodded at each other once, then I took two determined steps up toward the airlock when it began to hiss and cycle! The heavy doors parted and a man in heavy red armor with a large backpack (and an FS-9 himself) on stepped out, snapping, “Hey assholes, when I call I expect…” the words died as he froze, taking in the two of us, me on the steps and Mister Fields directly behind me.  

For a long heartbeat we all stood stock still, then the world exploded into action. I knew Mister Fields was behind my right shoulder so I threw myself to my left as the man in the red armor’s FS-9 swung up. I slammed into the railing and fell to the stairs, my own weapon pointed in roughly the correct direction, utterly unaware of what Mister Fields was doing behind me. And then all I could hear was the roar of unsuppressed gunfire as the man in red’s FS-9 opened up and began tearing through the close quarters, every muzzle blast nearly blinding me. 

I pointed my own FS-9 in his general direction and pulled the trigger, every thought of breath control, squeezing the stock, or other accuracy-inducing measures completely gone as I lay on the stairs. I could see my bullets’ impacts as they slammed into his legs and torso, or perhaps Mister Fields’ bullets, causing the man to stagger, but he didn’t go down. My gun leapt in my hands as it fired on full auto (as if it had any other option) tracing a staccato burst as it ripped up my target, too close to miss. 

The man bellowed like a bull as he stumbled back, his FS-9 swinging wildly to the side, still firing uncontrollably, spraying bullets that gouged chunks out of the metal stairs directly in front of me. His backpack slammed into the frame of the airlock, then he slowly growled as he hefted his weapon back into both hands and leaned forward. 

In a flash Mister Fields was up and past me, P4-AR held high, firing as he went, a solid burst straight into the man’s helmet, pouring unrelenting fire right through the facemask and not stopping until the the body slid to its knees and faceplanted unceremoniously on the landing at the top of the steps, utterly still. 

I swallowed heavily as I pulled myself to my feet. “Thank you.” 

“Don’t mention it. That guy was tough.” Mister Fields casually reloaded and kept twitching his head back and forth, looking for movement. 

“Well shit, they know we’re here now.” I kicked at the unsuppressed FS-9.

Mister Fields nodded. “Let’s make it quick. Before they have time to dig in.” 

“Sounds good. Ready?” My hand hovered over the “OPEN” pad on the airlock.

“Ready.” He confirmed. 

I pushed it and we were greeted with the familiar mechanical whir. Wordlessly we pushed in and cycled it, the most dangerous step- if there were enemies waiting for us, lining up on the other side of the airlock to ambush us was the ideal place to be. They could simply toss a grenade in and be done with us and there would be little we could do. Our only option was to come out guns blazing. 

The door cracked open and we swept out in a violent rush, me taking the lead and sweeping to the left while Mister Fields followed and turned hard to the right. Both of our views were thankfully clear, so we regrouped and, one by one, cleared the rooms of the hab unit. Much to my satisfaction (and I think to Mister Fields’ disappointment, but I couldn’t be sure) we didn’t find any further resistance. 

Then came the search for loot once more, the hunt for a pristine Tevarin War Marker, that medal pendant that Tamara Cline would part with so many credits for. I started searching the hab unit while Mister Fields started searching the bodies… and almost immediately hit pay dirt. 

“Hey Rana!” he said excitedly over comms, “Come check out El Jefe out here!”

“Alright, on my way.” I said, putting down a crate of what appeared to be someone’s wardrobe. 

I made my way back to the riddled body out front and found that Mister Fields had managed to extract the backpack and flip the body without smearing too much blood all over the “front porch” of the hab unit. Still, “too much” was a relative term, this guy was badly perforated. 

Dangling from a ribbon in Mister Fields’ hand swung our prize- a Tevarin War Marker, glistening in the Stanton sunlight, as pristine as the day it had been forged. If anything, it almost looked too clean, aside from the blood. 

“Sweet!” I declared. “Now let’s get the hell out of here before reinforcements show up like last time.”  

 Mister Fields gave a longing look at the backpack leaned up against the frame of the airlock, but it was riddled with bullet holes and covered with blood. “Shame.” he muttered, then turned to face me, “Agreed, time to make ourselves scarce!”

The trek back to the Cyclone was unremarkable, as was the drive back to the Cutlass Black. Already I was envisioning a fat payday at the end of a short flight. 

With the Cyclone parked and secured in the back and Mister Fields happily spinning about in the turret up top I flew through my startup procedures, moving with a purpose but not unduly so- not so fast that I had the chance of forgetting something or missing anything important. When it came to spaceflight, there was no such thing as something unimportant. The Cutlass Black sprang to life under my fingers and leapt into the air, the landing gear tucking in under the belly and nose, then the whole ship powered forward before tilting gently upwards in a smooth arc skywards, cutting a path into the still blue atmosphere. 

“Alright, pulling up the star map…” I said, relaxing as we started to leave the tethers of air behind and break into the void of space. I’d just begun to navigate my way toward Crusader on the map when my radar blared that familiar, “Contact!” followed immediately by another, “Contact!” 

I wasn’t immediately sent into a panic. When a ship is at the far edge of radar detection, sometimes it’ll flicker in and out of range and be detected multiple times in quick succession, resulting in multiple warnings. This sounded like one of those occasions. We already had what we came for. My immediate plan was to run, as I had before. I reached to toggle my starmap, to get it out of my way to instead make the first random jump I could out of the area when my comms came to life. 

“This is the Astrid Dawn. Power down your shields and weapons immediately and come to a halt. This is your only warning.” The man’s voice was confident and cold, crisp and uninterested in conversation. 

______________________________________________________________________

Part 2

______________________________________________________________________

“Contact!” My radar yelled at me once more, then again. 

  I glanced at my radar display- two red dots were right on top of me with a third and fourth some distance out! How did they get so close without detection? A chirping alarm and a red light on my control panel told me I’d been locked as a target. 

“Shit!” Mister Fields and I swore in unison. 

“Punch it!” He said, but I was already ahead of him, my left hand throwing my throttle fully open and triggering my afterburner while my right spun me away from the contacts and toggled my quantum drive. Immediately it began spooling up and I began searching for a jump point- any jump point- in range and pointed at the first one I came across. I honestly don’t even know which one it was.

“Bad decision.” came the voice over the comms calmly. “Surrender the Tevarin War Marker or die.” 

My mind spun. They wanted the Marker? I shook my head to rid myself of that train of thought.This wasn’t the time to ponder such things! 

I threw full capacitor power to shields as I watched the quantum drive spool up and calibrate to the jump point and I swear I’d never seen it take so long. The numbers crept up incrementally, slowly, as those red dots screamed in closer to us. 

Suddenly the ship shuddered and bright flashes of light appeared out of the cockpit as angry thuds smacked into the hull. “Shields under attack” the computer read out in a calm voice. I heard the turret up top open up as at least one of them came in range of Mister Fields. The chatter of rapid fire laser blasts sent little vibrations through the frame of the whole craft, but I kept us steady on our mark as calibration swept past 50%. 

“Nearly there!” I said, louder than I intended to. 

“They’re in Sabres!” Mister Fields responded. 

Ah, that’s why I didn’t see them until they were right on top of us- they’re in stealth fighters! I thought to myself.   

I didn’t have anything to say in response so I kept my mouth shut as I watched calibration tick past 65% and continue climbing. I couldn’t take evasive maneuvers, having to keep my nose locked onto the jump point, so I just kept us powering ahead as fast as I could, hoping to survive long enough to make the jump. Then…

A rapid beeping sounded, followed by, “Missile warning.”

My eyes darted down- the red symbols of 3 missiles sat on my HUD, each with a red circle around them that rapidly shrank to three quarters of a circle, then half, then a quarter as the missiles grew near. 

“Missiles!” I yelled, in case Mister Fields hadn’t heard the beeping, and began dumping countermeasures. Typically I’d take immediate hard evasive action but I was so close to making the jump and didn’t think I’d get another chance at it- would the countermeasures be enough? Could I decoy the missiles off? 

“On it!” he answered back, reorienting the turret to face our rear, trying desperately to shoot them down.

Another round of angry thuds traced across the top of our fuselage, unanswered- these pilots were good enough not to cross my nose where I could fire on them and Mister Fields was busy with the missiles. 

  Suddenly an explosion rocked the ship, hard, slamming me back in my seat and ripping my hands off my joysticks, sending the nose careening up and to the right, tearing it off the jump point. A secondary explosion sent us spinning for what felt like an eternity, but was probably only about a second and a half as the ship’s computers adjusted and regained steady flight. 

“You good?” I snapped as I fought for control, trying to align with another jump point, desperate to start the calibration process again. 

“Yeah, you?” Mister Fields snapped back. 

“Yeah- shields are down, we’ve taken some damage, got scratched there!” I said as red letters flared to life on my HUD- SHIELDS CRITICAL. 

Calibration began spinning back up as I settled in on another jump point, this time in the direction of Crusader, but now I was pointed perpendicular to the further two contacts that had been chasing us- if we didn’t make this jump quick we’d have four enemies to deal with instead of two. 

The two Sabres swarmed us, spiraling around in a double helix pattern and spraying my Cutlass with seemingly random blasts of laser fire, not allowing my shields a chance to recharge. I could do little but attempt to spin and give Mister Fields a continual field of fire on one of them at a time to try to drive them off, but by doing so I presented a consistent belly-shot to the other- I realized they were working well together and had us trapped. Our only hope was to make this jump. A passing thought wondered why more missiles hadn’t finished us off yet.

Calibration ticked up over 70% once more when all the sudden another set of bold red letters appeared on my HUD, this time at the top: QUANTUM DRIVE DISABLED. 

I swore heavily. “They’ve got a QED!” 

Mister Fields let loose a furiously colorful set of cursing himself, the turret only pausing in its firing to recharge the capacitors. 

My mind raced. 

Four of them. One of us. And they had a Quantum Enforcement Device on one of their ships, so we couldn’t jump away. We were trapped, and already damaged. We only had one shot, and it was risky as hell. 

“What’s got that QED?” I asked, pulling hard on the stick to whip us around to face the attackers flanking us. 

“Looks like… a Redeemer and a Mantis- it’s gotta be the Mantis!” Said Mister Fields, immediately grasping my thought process. 

“Shit, a Redeemer?” I said, as I started flipping through targets to lock onto the Mantis.

“Yeah, I know- doesn’t change the situation.” He replied, as calmly as possible under the circumstances. 

The Mantis was a highly maneuverable ship with one purpose- to pin ships in place with its QED while they got picked apart, and it was faster than nearly any other ship out there. If you were in the grasp of a Mantis there were generally only two ways out: surrender, or defeating the Mantis.  

We plunged forward at full speed toward the Mantis and Redeemer, leaving the Sabres behind momentarily in our unexpected turn, but we knew they’d be back on us shortly. 

The rapid beeping and “Missile Warning!” sounded again, but this time I had no reason not to take hard evasive maneuvers, dumping countermeasures and shaking them easily enough- but the dodge cost us time and energy, allowing the Sabres to catch back up to us. Still, two could play at that game. 

I toggled missile-mode and watched as the red circle around my target rapidly filled in, then turned green, mashing my “increase missile launch count” button as it did so to the maximum volley of four. As soon as I had a confirmed lock I launched with a “Missiles away!” sending all four of my missiles streaking out toward my target, hoping that at least some of them would disrupt the fragile Mantis. 

It broke hard to its right, peeling off the protection of the Redeemer and spitting bright bursts of countermeasures out behind it, and three of my missiles seemed to bite off onto those countermeasures, but at least one slammed into the flank of the Mantis, stripping its shields and sending it spinning. 

I pursued it relentlessly, knowing my only hope of survival lay in the elimination of the Mantis and then escape. But, it was faster and more maneuverable than I was, so I had few options in a straight up pursuit. It remained out of gun range, so I allowed my missile tubes to reload and prepared to fire another volley as it flipped and dove for Daymar, an unexpected direction. 

I turned and dove as best I could, trying to avoid the incoming fire from the Sabres, Mister Fields doing his best to hold them at bay, and tried desperately to get that missile lock to re-engage. For long seconds the red circle flickered in and out of existence, then finally it locked on hard, filled in, and flared green. I immediately punched my “launch missiles” button and watched the four streaks shoot out from around my cockpit. 

Again countermeasures shot from the back of the Mantis as it dove toward the sandy orb of Daymar, leading us down as a Redeemer gunship and two Sabre fighters converged on us from behind and the sides. 

“Hydrogen Fuel, 75%” the ship said calmly as we streaked down towards the moon’s surface. 

“Shut up, computer!” I responded testily. 

At least two of my missiles found their mark that time, but before I could take advantage of it I had more missiles (this time it must have been from the Redeemer, the Sabres were far too close) closing in on me and was peeling off hard once again. I reacquired the Mantis in my sites and plunged onward, closing the gap as black smoke billowed from the back of the Mantis in great plumes and I could visually tell that it wasn’t flying like it had been. 

Hope swelled in my chest!

The atmosphere screamed by outside the cockpit, and the controls responded sluggishly. As we approached the ground I had to be careful- I was going far, far faster than was comfortable, far faster than this ship was meant to be maneuverable at. I could point the nose, but it took some time for the rest of the ship to actually change the direction it was traveling. Speed was one thing, velocity (speed with a specific direction) was quite another. 

Jagged hills swept by in a blur underneath us as I struggled to keep us off the deck, trying to stay on the Mantis, but also trying to avoid the fighters. 

The Mantis rolled into a steady left hand bank that I could follow- it must have been wounded, I knew it was much more maneuverable than that- and just as I was coming around to line up a shot I realized what was going on. 

The Redeemer, the hulking brute of a ship bristling with guns, all significantly larger than the largest gun I had on my Cutlass, was sweeping around in a right hand bank that brought it head on with me. By following the Mantis I’d run directly into the teeth of the Redeemer. 

“Fields, Redeemer, dead ahead!” I yelled, yanking hard on the stick to try to pull up to dodge it. The Redeemer pulled up as well, bringing all its forward guns to bear, shredding the meager shields we had left in a heartbeat and ripping into my ship with concentrated laser fire. 

Time slowed down as alarms blared and emergency lighting flickered. A distant roaring was all I could make out audibly. I watched in semi-idle fascination as my port side forward stabilizer was shredded off my fuselage, then my windscreen shattered. If I hadn’t been wearing a helmet I wouldn’t have been able to see my ship status readout as it showed my port engine likewise blink out of existence. 

The Cutlass Black immediately rolled hard to port and spun to the left, utterly out of control, spinning like a top while the Redeemer peppered the carcass with unrelenting fire, punching random holes through it in every direction. 

I worked the pedals and sticks as hard as I could, trying to counteract the roll, but it was all I could do to try to maintain consciousness and hold onto the sticks at all with the G-forces at play. Smoke billowed through the cockpit and every alarm I had was either going off or too damaged to do so. 

“Brace!” I yelled, likely unnecessarily, pulling back on my throttle and slamming on my spacebrake, which engaged full retro thrusters at emergency levels. A great tearing, ripping, metallic screeching came from the starboard as my only remaining forward stabilizer sheared off and spun into oblivion.   

I could hardly make it out, but it looked like I saw more of Daymar and less of the sky with every spin, so I pulled hard back on the stick for what it was worth and was rewarded with a sluggish, bizarre nose behavior that still managed to get the nose up at least a bit- I had no idea how badly we were damaged at that point or which thrusters I still had under my control but it was clear that I wasn’t flying a significant part of the ship that I’d started with and that we were going in hard. 

The first impact was on the top of a hill and sent us careening and spinning uncontrollably for another second or so until we slammed into the downhill side of the next valley over. We slid and rolled down the slope, shedding our last remaining engine and existing only as the boxy core of the Cutlass Black, helpless to stop our sideways tumble over the boulders and dunes, skidding and sliding to a stop in the base of the valley leaving a trail of components and wreckage strewn behind us.

My world exploded into agony and I screamed, utterly unaware of my surroundings. The only thing running through my mind was the blinding, excruciating, all encompassing pain coming from my left ankle. 

For a second everything was bright and painful, then a dark moment of peace as a wave of unconsciousness overtook me. 

“Rana? Rana!?” Mister Fields’ voice came to me from a distance, extremely concerned, but weak. 

“Here.” I managed to croak. 

“Thank fuck.” His voice was all relief, but he didn’t sound good. 

It took everything I had to keep my mouth shut and not cry out further. I tried to take stock of myself but I couldn’t get past my screaming ankle. I risked a glance down. 

As we’d slammed into the ground my feet had slipped forward off the pedals, my left foot going between them. Then, the pedals had crossed. I was made of flesh and bone, they were made of metal. The metal had won. My ankle twisted unnaturally between the remains of the pedals, encased in my armor and boot. 

I nearly threw up inside my helmet. I looked away hastily. 

Sand poured in through the broken windscreen below a vibrant blue sky. We were more or less upright. I could see the rim of the valley we were in from my position and what looked like a cave ahead of us, down the valley. 

“I…” I started, then thought better of it. “What’s your condition?” 

It took a second for him to respond. “I’ve been shot. A couple times. My arm is broken. If we don’t seal my suit I’m going to die very soon.” 

“Can you get out of the turret?” I managed to gasp out.

“Been trying.” He struggled to reply. 

We both knew where the supplies were on the ship, medical and otherwise. If he could get to them, he would. 

I heard a thumping crash behind me and a groan over our comms. “Made it down.” 

“I’m trapped.” I said simply. My leg was pinned in place- there was little I could do from my seat. 

 “I’ll get there when I can.” He replied. 

I knew the unspoken words. “If I can.” I wasn’t going to say them either. 

Moments later I heard the clatter of a supply cabinet being unceremoniously opened by force, then the sound of tearing all-purpose tape.

“What’s your condition Rana?” He still sounded terrible. 

“I… I’m not sure but I don’t think anything is immediately life threatening.” I admitted. “My ankle is broken badly. It’s pinned in the wreckage.” I reached forward with both of my arms and winced hard as my right arm nearly failed, flaring in pain. “There’s something wrong with my right arm, but I’m not sure what.” 

“Alright, hold on.” 

I heard another supply cabinet opening, and the sound of medical supplies being sorted through. 

What seemed like many long minutes later he spoke again, sounding much better although speaking somewhat slower. “And now let’s take care of you.” 

Mister Fields’ helmeted head popped around my right hand side, taking in my situation. “Oh that’s… well shit.” he said. “Hold on.” 

“Oh, I was planning on going on a jog.” I grinned tightly. 

He ignored me and came back a second later with an injector full of black liquid. “This won’t take away all the pain. But you won’t care. Ok?” 

I had an idea what was in it, but at this point I didn’t care. “Hit me.”

A prick and some pressure later and he was right- I didn’t care much at all. Daymar and my surroundings took on a pinkish, purplish, bluish haze, and I couldn’t decide if I’d grown taller or was simply floating about a third of a meter above my seat. A sickly sweet taste filled my mouth as I realized that this was far better than anything I’d ever inhaled. Euphoria swept over and through me, blanketing the pain and dulling every other sense.  

Moments later I realized Mister Fields had been talking to me. “...and we need to move. Ready?” 

“What?” I said in a tone that made me instantly realize how very stoned I was. 

“Shit, maybe I gave you too much.” he sounded concerned, but I had a hard time making myself mind. “I said, they’ll be on us any second. We need to get you free and we need to move. Are you ready?” 

“Oh… uh… yeah, sure.” I said, melting into my seat, trying to bring my mind to bear and largely failing. “What do I do again?” 

“Oh man.” His tone was clipped and sober sounding despite almost certainly being on the same stuff I was. “I’m going to reach up and try to free your leg. This WILL hurt. Are you ready?” 

I tried to focus. “Ready.” 

Mister Fields slipped underneath and to the side of my pilot’s seat and took solid hold of my boot with his good arm, glancing back up at me one last time, then giving a firm but controlled shove forward and out from between the pedals. 

My ankle exploded in agony. I couldn’t help it. I screamed. The drugs weren’t THAT good. 

Slowly but surely my pulse pounding through my skull became the most pressing concern once again and my ankle’s throbbing mass of pain became just another input among the millions I was conglomerating into the cloud of pleasant haze I existed as. My breath slowed from a hyperventilation to a slow and controlled deep inhalation and exhalation. 

A thought occurred to me. “We need to get your arm taken care of.” 

“We can take the supplies with us, we need to move. Now.” Mister Fields’ voice was strained with concern. 

“I think I saw a cave ahead.” I offered. 

“Yeah, I saw it too- it’ll be a good place to hold up, but it’ll also be the first place they look for us.” he nodded. 

He crawled through the shot out cockpit first, then I passed him the medical cabinet we’d ripped from the wall, then crawled out myself into the brilliant daylight of Daymar. I couldn’t help but marvel at the raw, rugged beauty of the hills surrounding me, the vast gulleys of jagged stone, etched by wind and sand, the way the sun played off the dull spires of rock, the dramatic black shadows contrasting with the vibrant light of the sandy dunes, the…

“Hey, Rana, we don’t have time for you to admire the countryside. I know you’re on a good trip right now but we’ve got to move.” Mister Fields’ voice cut through once more. 

“Ah, right, sorry!” I said, somewhat climbing to my feet, keeping all of my weight on my right foot. 

Together, leaning on each other for support, we hobbled forward toward the cave in the distance, picking our way past the boulder strewn floor of the valley. 

I risked a glance back toward my beloved ship once before we got to the mouth of the cave. My poor Black Duchess lay like a butchered carcass, blackened and shattered, twisted and smoking, riddled with holes. Every piece of her that wasn’t the main fuselage was gone, stripped from her in the most violent manner, scattered across the wastes of Daymar. I felt my heart sink as the realization struck home, there will be no recovery this time. She’s truly gone. 

I felt frustration grow and slip out of my grasp as chemical euphoria overwhelmed all other senses again, bulldozing over what I knew should have been grief and righteous anger. 

A Sabre screamed overhead as we got to the mouth of the cave, a narrow but tall opening that presented a fantastic natural choke point. 

“Well, they found the wreck.” Muttered Mister Fields. 

I simply nodded. 

As we tied Mister Fields’ broken arm to his torso and bandaged his wounds as best we could (the laser blasts he’d taken were glancing shots, and cauterized the wounds on contact) the sound of more engines circled overhead. 

 “Still got that Tevarin War Marker?” I asked. 

“Still got it!” He said, pulling the pendant out of his pocket and swinging it back and forth a couple times before flipping it around his hand and slipping it back into its home. 

“Good!” I glanced back out through the mouth of the cave, to where the smoking red and white Mantis was now settling down near our own smoking wreckage. “We going to pop this guy?” 

I was running through the possibilities in my own head as I said it. On one hand I didn’t want to give away our position, but on the other, the cave was the obvious (and only) place for us to go, and we had suppressed weapons- firing from the cave wasn’t likely to give us away any more than we already were, and it would be nice to thin the herd as best as possible before any concentrated assault could happen. The flickers of an idea of flying out of here (or at least to the nearest spit of civilization) in a stolen Mantis began to kindle in the back of my addled mind. 

“I don’t see why not- but let’s wait and see what the others do first.” Mister Fields replied reasonably. 

I settled in, looping back and forth between admiring the view and remembering that I actually had a task at hand and needed to pay attention to it. 

The Mantis pilot climbed out and crept up to my cockpit cautiously, clearly holding a sidearm. With a swift lunge he popped around the edge of it and was aiming through the broken canopy into my deserted pilot’s seat, slowly fanning around, looking for any movement. Seeing none he relaxed and gave a theatrical shrug to the sky, then shook his head in the negative to whatever query he’d just received over comms. 

I idly slid my finger up and down the front of my trigger guard as I kept my crosshairs dancing on and around his head. At this distance I was confident that it would take a burst of shots to take him down, not a single clean trigger pull. 

More engine noise roared into my conscious mind as dust billowed from beneath one of the Sabres coming in for a landing right next to the Mantis, its tripod landing gear extended and expertly kissing the rough terrain. 

“See?” Said Mister Fields next to me, “Now we get to take two of them.” 

I grinned.  

The Sabre pilot exited their ship and walked over to the Mantis pilot without apparent concern, not drawing a sidearm of their own but glancing around at the horizon on a semi-regular basis, and occasionally at the cave. 

“Do we take them now or wait for more?” I asked. 

“Hold for the moment.” He said. “Nothing to be gained by jumping the gun and we might get more down there. We can take them before they get here either way.” 

The two of them wandered around the wreckage of my Black a couple times before crawling inside it. Engines and shadows passed overhead as the remaining two ships made slow hovering passes over the area, but aside from the glimpse of a wing here or there I never got a clear look at either of them.  

   What felt like a very long time passed as I lay in that cave, watching as the winds of Daymar blew twists of sand around the mouth and floor of the valley, coating the wreckage of my ship and the two predators perched like vultures at its carcass. I couldn’t be sure that I was accurately tracking time though, since I also idly wondered about the lattice structure inherent to the crystalline makeup of the glitters I saw in the cave and went on frequent un-sober flights of fancy that I had to reign myself back in from- despite the roaring pain of my ankle I was still high as a kite. 

Eventually the two re-emerged, shaking their heads. One gestured toward the cave. 

Outside, beyond visual range of the cave mouth, I heard the roar of engines as they came in for a landing and then their whine as they spun down- but overheard at least two engines still made passes- I guessed the last Sabre. 

“Looks like it might be time.” I said grimly. 

“Yep.” Mister Fields replied without inflection, shifting uncomfortably, looking through his scope as he held his rifle with his right hand and rested it on the pile of rocks in front of him, his broken left strapped against his chest. 

Tense moments passed, every second growing more tense as we knew they were preparing to come for us, just waiting for the opportune moment to burn our only advantage- that we could see them in the light while they couldn’t see us in the darkness of the cave. We’d get first-shot, but they held literally every other advantage and we had nowhere to run and no way to run in the first place. 

The two near the wreckage began to move toward the left and somewhat toward us, and would pass out of our field of view soon. It was decision time. 

“They’ll just regroup with the others and assault us anyway, they already know we’re here, do we take them now?” I asked, bludgeoning my way through my chemical haze to some degree of rationality. 

Mister Fields hesitated, then confirmed. “It’s time. On my mark, take the one on the left.” 

“On the left, got it.” I replied, shifting my crosshairs slightly and bringing all my focus to bear. 

“Three, two, one, fire!” his voice was just as crisp and commanding as it had been earlier despite the injuries and drugs that I knew impacted his system. 

I didn’t hesitate in any way, and I didn’t hold back. There was no “one or two taps” this time. A burst of muffled thumps rattled out of my FS-9 and tore into the Mantis pilot, in the lead of the two of them, sending him spinning and falling violently into the sand. Beside me at exactly the same time Mister Field’s P4-AR opened up and took out the trailing Sabre pilot with fewer well placed shots.

“Al!” A female voice screamed from directly outside the cave, then came the muffled sound of a scuffle and a struggle. 

Oh no! I thought privately- they were much, MUCH closer than we’d thought- than I’d thought anyway, much more ready to go. 

Black and silver cylinders arced into the light, clattering among the rocks and lodging themselves in front of us by a good 15 to 20 meters. Moments later they exploded with a violent crack and a puff of black smoke. 

Unrelenting gunfire immediately followed, from seemingly every angle around the mouth of the cave. 

“Rana!” Mister Fields snapped, “Fall back, now!” 

If there was one thing I’d learned in my time with Mister Fields it was to obey without question or hesitation when he gave an order. If successful there would be time for questions and answers afterword. If I took the time to indulge my curiosity, in most cases there would be no questions or answers ever again.

I spun immediately and began pushing deeper into the cave, snapping on my headlamp and hobbling on one foot, flipping on the safety and using my FS-9 as a makeshift cane. 

After a relatively brief entranceway the cave plunged downhill and to the left. I staggered down to the first corner, just until I could cover the entrance but tuck myself away and be entirely sheltered from it, and reported, “Good to go!” 

Mister Fields immediately stumbled up to his feet and spun to follow, moving much swifter than I had, swinging around me into position and bringing his rifle back up to cover with one hand in a smooth motion. I snapped off my headlamp.  

It wasn’t a moment too soon- the clatter of something sounded from up at the mouth of the cave, followed just a moment later by successive blasts that sent shards and ricochets pinging around and through the cave. I ducked instinctively, and picked my head back up just in time to see multiple silhouettes as they streamed through the mouth of the cave. Before I could even process this the concussive blasts of gunfire echoed through the cave and bullets began to slam into the rock walls around me. Splinters of stone peppered my armor as I cringed back from the onslaught, involuntarily pulling back into further cover away from the entrance. 

I logically knew that I needed to fire back, to push them back, but as I leaned out from my rock of choice I felt something tug at my left arm followed immediately by a hard slap in the side of the head as a bullet glanced off my helmet and sent me reeling. Beside me Mister Fields crouched and fired back furiously, though I wasn’t sure how. 

Trying to emulate him as best I could (and not remotely worrying about my ammunition, having an FS-9 and religiously carrying several spare drums) I poked my weapon around the corner, pointed it in roughly the correct direction, and let it rip blindly, sweeping back and forth in the vain hope of suppressing the enemy. I let the gun chatter for a couple seconds, gave it a rest, then let it chatter some more, spacing out my bursts instead of dumping my entire magazine in one go, trying to maintain temperatures. 

The harsh crack of a grenade sounded much closer and showered my back with reflected ricochets as the enemies pressed forward aggressively, knowing we were pinned down. 

Three rapid, firm taps hit my flank as Mister Fields reached out for me. “Rana! Fall back!” 

This time I couldn’t take the luxury of turning my FS-9 into a cane, instead flipping on the safety and using the sling to keep it looped around my arm as I scramble/crawled into the darkness, navigating by the strobes of flashing muzzle bursts behind me. If I’d had both legs I would have sprinted, but instead I speed-crawled for the next natural choke point, almost twice as far from the last as the first one had been from the entrance, but a straight shot as the ceiling dropped and would have forced me to my knees if I hadn’t been already. Every movement sent stabs of pain shooting through my ankle but adrenaline and the black liquid in my system kept me moving. My right arm screamed at me but functioned. 

“Ready!” I shouted in my mic as I spun and dropped prone, covering Mister Fields. He immediately broke off firing and sprinted for me, while I realized that I hadn’t been paying attention to my round count and needed to reload. As he approached he simply transitioned to a slide, getting most of the way under cover with me and firing several shots back toward the entrance for good measure. 

“Reloading!” we both shouted in unison.

“Shit!” I swore, my mostly-empty magazine already falling from my weapon. Another was already on its way up from my belt, snapping into place with a firm click.

“Good to go!” I reported as quickly as I could, sending a burst down range as confirmation and discouragement to our pursuers. 

Another sharp blast utterly filled the cave, a harsh, loud, crack that I felt in my chest. I jerked my head as shrapnel ripped through the air and slammed into my helmet, shattering and chipping the faceplate, sending spiderwebs of cracks across my view. 

Beside me Mister Fields gave an involuntary roar of pain, quickly suppressed. I snapped my head to the left, watching him roll to one side, but couldn’t see what was wrong in the split second glimpse I had through my ruined faceplate. 

One of the first lessons of battlefield medicine drilled through our heads was that you could not stop fighting to aid a wounded comrade until you eliminated the threat, despite every natural instinct in you driving you to do exactly that. If you did, you would just join them. I’d never before so strongly had to fight that urge as more bullets slammed into the rocks surrounding me and Mister Fields writhed beside me. 

I sent an answering thumping burst back toward the mouth of the cave but couldn’t see my targets at all, just pointing in the general direction of muzzle blasts and hoping for the best. 

“Fields!” I yelled, “Are you ok!?”

Strobing flares and ceaseless harsh thunderous blasts came from the direction of the mouth of the cave as blurs moved across my vision. I did my best to target them but could hardly make out a site picture in the first place. To my left I heard three successive thumps and saw one of the blurs jerk and fall, no longer producing those flares. 

I barely had time to register a faintly metallic clatter before another tremendous crack sounded, far louder than before. The blast caught me on my right side, ripping into my armor and flipping me over. I screamed as pain tore through me, fire ripping through my right arm and flank. I lost my grip on my FS-9 as I rolled, spinning towards Mister Fields, blood immediately pooling in my undersuit and armor, leaking out through the jagged tears. As precious, breathable, pressurized air escaped through those same holes it bubbled and foamed the blood, but I was writhing far too much to notice. 

“Rana!” I heard through my comms before something slammed into my left arm between my elbow and shoulder. 

Through the haze of pain, narcotics, and a shattered faceplate I tried to regain any sense of which way was even up. Ceaseless explosions sounded all around me, shattered bits of rock pelted at me from every angle, and I felt my eyes roll madly as I heard my own fiery blood squelch underneath me. 

I blindly reached for my FS-9, hoping to come across it by pure luck and roared as my left arm felt like it was being stabbed. I pushed through and kept reaching, knowing this was my only choice, but it was getting harder to see and reach by the second, a heavier, denser blackness closing in around me. 

 I pawed at the ground I could reach, hoping to come across the straight metal lines of my firearm, desperate to do anything I could to stay alive, but with every passing moment the hammering cracks of gunfire seemed to come from further away and it became harder to fight through the pressure waves that seemed to echo up and down my body, pulses of light-headed energy that followed my weakening heartbeat, each pulling me further down a darkenning path. 

I felt the metal slide back from my hand as I brushed against it and lunged, seizing the gun awkwardly and trying to feel my way over it to figure out which way it was oriented. As far as I could tell it was still pointed in vaguely the right direction. If only I could get my right arm to work! 

I heard the telltale clatter once again and spun toward the sound, but could see nothing. “Fields!” I yelled, “Grena…

______________________________________________________________________

Part 3

______________________________________________________________________

“Silas, stand down!” he bellowed, glowering over me, but I didn’t care.

“Shit Cam, we lost Al, we lost Tick, we lost Lim, and you’ve seen the rest of us!” I didn’t mind that my voice rose. I was pissed. 

He shifted in front of me, his jaw moving from one side to set firmly on the other. “You got something to say Silas?” 

“This was supposed to be easy! There was only two of them!” 

We stood face to face (ok, face to chest) in the upper deck of the Redeemer, mid quantum jump back toward Crusader. Wads of packaging from emergency medical supplies lay piled in the corners. 

“Yeah, well, sometimes what’s easy ain’t easy. You know the job. You saw what happened as well as I did.” He growled back. “They took a lot to put down.” 

I gestured at the empty jump seats behind me. “We making enough on this run for that? For that?” 

Cam flipped some trinket out of his pocket, some medal on the end of a ribbon with some writing printed on it that I couldn’t see in time. “You see this? This right here is a new Mantis, a new Mantis pilot, and more crew. We’re gonna be fine.” 

I lowered my voice. “And what about Tally?” 

“You leave Tally to me Silas. I mean it, you keep out of it.” Cam’s voice brooked no argument. 

“You know she’s taking it hard.” I glanced toward the stern, where she was parked in the upper turret. 

“I said stay out of it.” 

I set my jaw. “I will, but from here on we have got to figure a better way of doing this.” 

Cam glared. “That sounds dangerously like orders on my ship Silas.” 

“Yeah, well, maybe you need to start giving the right orders and maybe there’d be a few more of us still on this boat!” The words were past my lips before I processed the words. 

I didn’t see the fist coming, just felt the impact and then was sitting on my ass looking up at the big man standing over me. 

“That’ll be the last time you speak like that on my ship Silas. We finish this job and then you and I are going to resolve this. Get your ass in the chin turret.” He turned and strode toward the cockpit, to check on our progress. 

I swiped my hand across my mouth, checking to see if anything was more than just loosened, and then got back to my feet. He was right. When this was over we would be resolving this. 

I slid into the chin turret and wiggled it a little to ensure the motors were working, then settled in for the rest of the journey. It wouldn’t be long. 

Crusader slammed into existence before me like someone had nailed a great white-moldy orange to the sky and given me a closeup view of the damn thing. We spun to lock onto Orison and made our final jump. As we came in toward the floating lattice of structures high in Crusader’s atmosphere I idly targeted building after building and “strafed” them. We must have come in range of the spaceport because I heard our pilot hail ATC over comms, then again after a while, and then again more urgently when they still failed to respond. This struck me as extremely odd- Crusader has a reputation for being the goody-two-shoes of the galaxy, always on top of things, all clean and precise, all organized and… well… functional. But, our pilot must have received an answer because they started pulling us in a wide right hand bank to line up with a hanger I couldn’t yet identify. Flanking and trailing us, staying in formation, were the two remaining Sabres- one now flown by Rin “Charger” Casper instead of Tick. 

We hovered over the top of the hanger bay (much larger than expected!) for a moment and spun, orienting ourselves to one side of it while the Sabres lined up to our left, then we all descended more or less together into the hangar. Strangely I didn’t see any ground crew or security personnel like I’d normally expect- in fact I didn’t see anyone at all. 

I shrugged. They must be at lunch.

We trailed off the ships quietly, unsure of how to feel. On the one hand we’d just lost some of our comrades. Most of us were wounded, some of us badly so. On the other, we’d won. We’d secured the objective and were about to get paid. It was hard not to sense the elation despite the seriousness. Cam was the last off the ship, coming down and off the ramp while the rest of us were spread out between the ship and the elevators at one end of the hangar when a commanding voice rang out: 

“UEE Advocacy, Freeze!” 

Figures with guns popped up over crates and from around corners, sweeping out of the elevators we were headed to. I saw several- maybe as many as we were- in my immediate view, then was sliding for the cover of the front of the Redeemer as my gun came up. 

“Silas!” Someone screamed, then guns were roaring and I couldn’t hear anything. 

I cut down one with a well placed burst as he came around the corner from the main elevator and turned for the rear of the ship, where the loading ramp was still down. I saw our pilot go down hard as I spun, bullets pinging off the ship around me as I sprinted for it. 

Cam and I locked eyes once as I slid around the back and started up the ramp. His fury was palpable, though to be honest he looked furious at me. He charged up the ramp and through the ship, sliding into the pilot’s seat himself, while I ran directly for the upper turret, thinking it would do the most good. 

Above us the ponderous hangar doors began to creak shut. 

As I slid into position I saw one of our Sabres lift off and blast upward, slipping through the narrowing doors without any issue whatsoever. I suddenly grew heavier as we too lifted off, then pointed upwards and rocketed back out of our hangar, barely making it between the closing doors. 

“Who’s on board?” Cam asked over comms hurriedly, spinning to bring us onto course to follow the Sabre as it powered up and through the atmosphere as rapidly as possible, angling for the nearest jump point. 

“Silas,” I responded. 

“Yeah, no shit.” he replied, sounding unreasonably angry.

“Becca,” Came another voice, then, “Turk,” “Tanner,” and, “Sawyer.” 

“That’s it?” Cam sounded very disappointed. “God damnit Silas…” 

“What?” I demanded. 

“Why the hell did you shoot?” His voice was shaking with anger, though it may have just been the craft as it clawed its way through the air at full boost.

“What do you mean?” I asked, honestly confused. “That was an ambush…”

Cam exploded, “Silas when the UEE Advocacy says, “Freeze,” fucking freeze!” 

I sat in stunned silence. I had thought we were all about to be shot and thought I was returning fire, not firing first or anything. “Fine, next time I’ll just let you be shot!” I snapped. 

A louder, lower voice crackled to life over all our comms, “I have been authorized to scan your vehicle. Bring it to an immediate stop and…”

Everyone swore at once. I saw the world outside the turret twist and warp as we jumped. I didn’t know where to. 

______________________________________________________________________

My eyes slammed open and I gasped for a breath of air. 

Above me a digital screen had light blue blocky letters on a black background, informing me that my body had been regenerated following the expiration of my previous one and that the costs had been covered by the UEE. 

I cautiously raised my right arm, expecting to feel the pinching, stabbing pain in it, or the fiery burn of the shrapnel that had torn through my right side in general. Instead I felt… fine. In fact, better than I had in some time. 

I looked down to see my blue-gowned body, then at the room around me. I was in a white and light gray room with blue accents.  It had smooth corners and flowing lines, medical equipment built into the walls and ceiling, lighting integrated smoothly into the area above and around my bed toward the center of the room, and some comfortable looking, unoccupied chairs under a wide horizontal window to my right. To my left stood the sturdy looking door, framed by a slightly darker gray, and opposite me, across from my feet, sat what appeared to be storage built into the walls. 

I stirred and began to sit up and the digital display above my head automatically retracted, getting out of my way while the bed lowered down to a comfortable dismounting height. 

I slid off the bed and tested my legs. The gleaming gray floors felt cold under my bare feet, but I barely noticed. Standing was no issue at all- my broken ankle was utterly and completely intact. 

I stepped forward gingerly- I was fine. 

And with that, cold fury overwhelmed me. 

I was going to find the bastards that had killed me and I was going to kill them right back, only I didn’t plan on letting them get back up from it. I didn’t have a plan yet for how that was going to happen, but I’d heard of “wiping” or “ghosting” someone before- killing them in such a manner that regeneration was impossible. 

I stalked to the door and palmed it open, ignoring the fact that I was dressed in nothing more than a medical gown, and stormed into the hallway. 

Already I’d had enough time and enough of a look at my surroundings to figure out where I was- I’d been here before. This was Empire Health Services in Area 18, on ArcCorp. I was, “home.” Back to my regeneration point. 

Which meant… I paused a second… that Mister Fields was almost surely back at his- we’d never spoken about it but anyone of his financial caliber surely had a New Brentworth care plan and would be showing back up in New Babbage on microTech. I needed to get my hands on a MobiGlass as soon as I could and contact him to figure out next steps. 

I made my way through the hallway and to the elevator, not making eye contact with anyone on the way down. No one cared that you were wandering around in a medical gown on the 14th floor of a hospital. I drew a few more looks in the lobby, but really started to draw glances as I began to walk to the front door. 

Ultimately they made me check out before I could leave but that was a very brief, frictionless process- it wasn’t as if I wasn’t on file, they’d literally just regenerated me. 

The real looks came as I exited the hospital and pushed into the crowds around the Plaza, making my way to the Metro Center so that I could catch a ride to the spaceport. I no longer had any method of getting off planet, but I had an old-model MobiGlass floating around somewhere in my hangar that might still work after I charged it up. The idle thought of no longer having a way off the planet brought my Cutlass Black bubbling to the surface, but I pushed it back down. 

It wasn’t until I entered my now-barren hangar that the loss fully hit me. She was gone, and she wouldn’t be coming back. 

It felt like I’d lost a friend. I’d spent countless hours, days, weeks, and months on board that ship. Working on, in and around it, both as an employee and later as the owner. 

My Black Duchess… 

My fury returned and I kicked at an empty can of lubricant sitting on the ground, stubbing my toe. Death would be too kind for these assholes. 

I opened an old metal storage locker and pulled out some clothes. I didn’t have much in the way of clothing here, but I had enough to at least get out of the medical gown. Grease stained pants and a worn, equally stained, once-tan shirt were capped with boots and a gray hat. No one would question anyone that looked like that walking around in a hangar. In a drawer under my workbench I fished out my old MobiGlass. It had a broken clasp and sometimes had to be shaken just right to get the right half of the picture to display properly, but it still mostly worked. I just needed to charge it up. 

A few minutes later I was shaking the device and getting a flickering blue light to sweep from the housing. I navigated the menu and hailed Mister Fields, not expecting an answer yet. To my surprise he answered immediately. 

“Rana, you ready to go?” he snapped, his voice sharp and no-nonsense. 

I looked around. I had no ship, no weapons, a barely working MobiGlass, and barely any funds. “I’m with you in spirit but uh…” 

“What do you lack?” He asked, straight to the point. 

“Money,” I snorted, cracking a wry smile for the first time since before this ordeal began, “what else?” 

He paused and glared. “No. Not until they’re dead.” 

“What?” I asked. 

My MobiGlass vibrated. 

“Check your balance.” He said simply. 

I swallowed and toggled over to banking. “Holy shit.” I said. 

“That’s nothing, you understand? That’s not a problem. Not to be paid back. It’s an investment in getting what I want. Get what you need to be ready. Hurry. Where are you?” His voice was still rapid fire, still clipped and sharp. I could tell he was still furious, he was just compartmentalizing and processing. 

“Area 18.” I said simply. 

“I’m on my w… If you come near me with that teddy bear bullshit again I’m going to shove it down your throat and make your children watch as you choke on it, you understand me?! Good! I’m on my way.” 

“Enjoying New Brentworth?” I asked calmly. 

He just hung up. 

I quickly made my way back out to the main spaceport and took the tram again, this time back toward the Plaza to get some shopping done. After obtaining a new MobiGlass that worked consistently (and could receive the latest software updates) I made my way to Cubby Blast, an armorer and arms dealer just outside the Plaza apartments and kitted myself out once again, this time trading my previous light armor for heavy armor. While the maneuverability of the light armor had been nice, I felt that heavier armor may have withstood the punishment in the cave better and perhaps even have allowed me to have kept fighting. I don’t know if it would have made the crucial difference, but I knew that maneuverability didn’t. I had no idea what kind of a fight I’d be walking into next but I wanted to be as ready for it as I could be. 

With plenty left over from Mister Fields I went next door to the Casaba outlet and picked up some non-grease stained clothes as well as a couple bottles of Cruz Lux to keep me fueled and hydrated. Finally I stopped back by Empire Health Services and headed to the pharmacy, picking up any emergency medical supplies I was likely to need- the ones of the legal variety anyway. I had no idea where Mister Fields had obtained his injector of black liquid and I knew better than to ask. I knew that I could find it down the correct alley coming off of this Plaza, but also knew that I’d be as likely to get shot as I was likely to actually walk away with WiDoW considering it was… well… me trying to do a drug deal. I’d leave that to those that knew what they were doing. 

I made my way back to my hangar and dropped off any extra materials I didn’t need at the moment, then made my way back out to the main lobby of the spaceport to wait for Mister Fields. I didn’t have long to wait at all- within 15 minutes of people-watching my wrist began to vibrate and I was directed toward Hangar 14. 

Inside sat Mister Fields more rugged, secondary mobile base of operations, his, “exploration and expedition” focused Anvil Carrack. Where the 890 Jump was smooth lines that flowed together into aero and hydrodynamic smoothness that screamed grace and harmony, the Carrack was all brutal angles and harsh edges, hammered from a rough brick into a rough arrowhead shape but still retaining its original silhouette to a degree, mammoth in its proportions. I felt miniscule as I hurried beneath it toward the yawning front ramp. 

“Don’t bother with the ramp, just get in the turret.” Buzzed the intercom as I stepped off the ramp and into the expansive internal bay. Behind me hydraulics whirred and hissed as the ramp started to close, triggered from the cockpit. I hurriedly made my way to the elevator, then up to the technical deck, then forward to the command cabin and slung myself into the far right seat. 

“Good to go!” I announced, and immediately was pushed down in my seat as the Carrack lifted off. “Powering up the top turret.” I announced, my hands flying over the familiar controls. Moments later I punched the “Enter Remote Turret,” button and was greeted with the familiar sight of barrels on either side of my vision, pointing off into the distance with a crosshair reticle directly between them. “Ready for a fight.” I informed Mister Fields. 

By this time we were almost out of the hangar. 

Seconds later we had whipped around and were pointed up at roughly 45 degrees, the great engines roaring behind us, forcing us up and through ArcCorp’s polluted atmosphere. 

“Alright, heading for Crusader, Rana, pull up anything you can, try to see what we’re flying into.” 

“Will do.” I responded, exiting the turret and pulling up my MobiGlass, flicking over to my feed and tuning it to Crusader news. I idly flipped through for several minutes until something interesting caught my eye, a newscast about a shootout in a hanger between Crusader Security and UEE Advocacy forces on one side and what sounded like 9 Tails on the other. 

“...we go to our man on the ground. Gus?”

A man in a crisp blue button up shirt stood before a well lit elevator door criss-crossed with yellow and black, “POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS” holograms. 

“Thank you Sher. It was in this very hangar, just behind me, not more than two hours ago that our Crusader Security Forces, working in conjunction with the UEE Advocacy, attempted to make an arrest of a suspected 9 Tails kingpin. According to eyewitness reports the gangsters immediately opened fire on law enforcement personnel, killing two and wounding at least 8 more, blasting their way out of the hangar. I have with me here Special Agent Kershaw of the UEE Advocacy, who was here in the hangar as the arrest attempt was made. Agent Kershaw, what can you tell me about what happened in that hangar?” 

A microphone was shoved in the face of a man in crisp black armor with gold highlights, denoting his status as a special agent. 

“Well Gus,” the man replied, looking like he had a lot to do and all of it a higher priority than this interview, “Advocacy and Security personnel identified themselves to the suspects and, as you said, were immediately fired upon. Our men and women reacted immediately to eliminate the threat to civilian life here in Orison and bravely engaged. Unfortunately, two were struck down in the line of duty and 8 more were wounded, we’re waiting to hear back on their condition. Right now all our thoughts are with their families and with bringing the perpetrators to justice.” 

His voice was only slightly rushed, betraying only a hint of, “and I believe that covers all the points I need to hit?”

“Right,” Gus nodded, “And what can you tell me about the people you were here to apprehend? What was this operation all about?” 

“Well I can’t discuss everything about an ongoing investigation, obviously, but I can tell you that we had evidence that a leader of the 9 Tails criminal syndicate was in route to Orison as part of an ongoing operation. We moved to apprehend them as stated and you know the rest.” 

Gus nodded robotically. “I know at least some of it- I know that some of your officers were tragically killed and others were wounded, but can you tell me if any of the suspects were apprehended, killed, or wounded in this process?” 

Agent Kershaw dipped his head, then looked back up. “Several suspects were taken into custody after the shooting, but we can’t disclose at this time exactly how many. All are receiving appropriate medical attention.” 

Gus looked up sharply. “You’re telling me that every one of them was wounded?” 

Agent Kershaw looked exasperated for a second, then concealed it. “All attempts were made to avoid exactly that, but regrettably they chose to assault law enforcement personnel.” He shrugged, clearly feeling that this was a sufficient explanation. 

“Were any killed?” 

“No.” Agent Kershaw gave a sharp shake of his head, once, “Not as far as we know.” 

“I see,” Gus nodded, “and between those that were captured and those that escaped, do you believe you got your target? Did you get your man Agent Kershaw?” 

Agent Kershaw shook his head more slowly this time. “No, we have evidence that the leader escaped, but we’ll be conducting our investigation and interrogations as we can and proceeding from there. They won’t be gone for long.” 

“Can you give any kind of description of the ship or ships they escaped in so that any Citizens or Civilians can call them in if they see them?” 

Agent Kershaw looked relieved, as if this was the first question he’d actually wanted to answer. “Of course! We’re looking for a pair of ships, a dark gray Aegis Sabre and an Olive Drab Green Aegis Redeemer. Expect them to be armed, desperate, and dangerous, so please, keep your distance and call sightings in immediately!”

I looked up sharply. “Fields, you get any of this?” 

“Any of what?” he called from the pilot’s seat, a deck below me and forward. 

“I think I have a lead on our guys!” I said, “They just shot up a hangar in Orison and got chased off of Crusader.” 

“Well that’s the first bit of good news I’ve heard since… well… since shit started going sideways.” Mister Fields sounded inordinately pleased. “We’ve got a long jump ahead of us, care to show me?” 

“Sure!” I tugged off my restraints and took the elevator down to the lower command deck, where I rewound and played the newscast over again for Mister Fields. 

His eyes widened and he gave a low whistle. “Holy…” 

I nodded. “I know, right?” 

Mister Fields shook his head. “No, I mean Kersh. Er… Kershaw. Special Agent Kershaw. We served together. I know him.” 

I glanced over, “Think you can talk to him?” 

“I think I’m certainly going to try!” Mister Fields nodded. 

______________________________________________________________________

Crusader looked to me like an orange with its skin peeled off, all the white membrane still attached and swirling around it like a diaphanous veil of smoke. I guess I was just hungry. 

We came in for a landing without incident and made our way to the center of August Dunlow Spaceport, where it was blindingly obvious which hangar had law enforcement activity. A cluster of media surrounded the blocked off doorway while I recognized Special Agent Kershaw giving another interview to a woman in a magenta skirt and a white blouse. Mister Fields wandered in that direction while I casually made my way toward the shopping center- I had no intention of buying anything but I wanted to keep out of the way for two old friends to re-acquaint. 

A few hours later I was in Providence Station, browsing cooling systems in Cousin Crow’s and pretending I could afford any of them, when my MobiGlass vibrated and I glanced down to see Mister Fields hailing me once more. 

“Rana!” He said by way of greeting, “how soon can you get back here?” 

“On my way.” I announced, “Should be just a few minutes.” 

“Good! We’ve got a lot of work to do.” His voice was all excitement. I could tell he’d learned something. 

______________________________________________________________________

We stood in the cartography room aboard the Carrack, traveling back away from Crusader at top speed, both observing a blinking white dot in the otherwise blue hologram of the solar system, just sitting idly in the asteroid belt around Yela. I noisily slurped my noodles as Mister Fields filled me in on his meeting with his old friend and the information he’d learned. 

He leaned casually against the railing and gestured back toward Crusader. “I’m not supposed to know all this, so you’re definitely not supposed to know this, got it?” 

I nodded, swallowing. This wasn’t the first bit of knowledge that I didn’t know. 

“Second of all, if we pull this off we get the Tevarin War Marker. That was my deal with Kershaw.” 

I nodded. As much as I wanted revenge I still needed to get paid and still needed to eat. I hadn’t lost sight of the bigger picture. 

He continued. “We all know that Crusader’s got a crime problem. 9 Tails specifically. They’ve tried to clean it up on their own for years but…” He gestured about emphatically. 

I knew what he meant. Outpost after outpost on the moons of Crusader were openly overrun by 9 Tails and used as drug labs at best. The old Grand Imperial Housing Exchange was now Grim HEX, a pirate and outlaw base sitting within spitting distance of Crusader. It had definitely saved my ass more than once, but a haven for criminals of all sorts was unlikely to make the locals rest easy at night. 

“Well, 9 Tails goes well beyond Crusader territory and the Advocacy approached them with an operation they were running- a scheme to take out the local head honcho. They knew he collected Tevarin War artifacts and valuables but not much else about him. So, they made something no collector could resist- a perfect condition Tevarin War Marker, and made sure that fell into the 9 Tails hands. That would filter on up to the boss as the cream of the crop and something that no one but a collector would care about, and when they were ready, they could nab him.” 

I frowned. “I think I missed a step. How would him having a Tevarin War Marker help them “nab” him?”

“Normally, it wouldn’t. In this case, it’s got a quantum marker hidden inside of it. They were monitoring its every movement.” 

I nodded in understanding, mouth once again full. “So if…” I swallowed. “ ‘scuse me. So if they could track it why didn’t they do anything?” 

He shrugged. “Didn’t get to the boss, they thought.” 

I nodded in understanding. We certainly had only dealt with outposts and underlings. “So what was all that business about them thinking they had a boss in the hangar?” 

“Who else would travel with such a retinue?” Mister Fields grinned wickedly. “Those mercs were clearly 9 Tails, at least as far as Crusader Security and the Advocacy is concerned. I wasn’t going to dissuade them of such a notion.” 

I nodded again, the pieces starting to fall together. “So when they tracked that marker heading for Orison…” 

Mister Fields bobbed his head. “They panicked and ambushed them in the hangar.” 

I rubbed my neck. “I’m certainly not glad about what happened but at the same time I’m glad we didn’t sail on into Orison with that Marker.” 

“I know what you mean.” Mister Fields agreed. “Thankfully, we’re law abiding, justice seeking, bounty hunting, law enforcement aiding Citizens that happen to have a head start on everyone else- Agent Kershaw shared the marker’s frequency with me.” 

I felt my eyes light up. “We can track their beacon?” I spun to look at the white dot in Yela’s asteroid belt. “Wait, that’s them, isn’t it?”

Mister Fields nodded cooly. 

“Then what the fuck are we doing flying away from them?” I hollered, with more emotion than I intended. 

“We’re arming ourselves.” He responded plainly. 

I glanced back to him.

“We’re taking on a, as far as we know, fully crewed Redeemer and Sabre. That’s no joke. If we’re going to do it we’re going to need to do it right.” He sighed. “This is going to be expensive.” 

______________________________________________________________________

He was right. It was expensive. 

We started on Hurston, in the main, sprawling city of Lorevile. As pollution choked as it was it was home to one of the most expansive ship sales yards around- New Deal. Mister Fields didn’t even blink when he purchased two Drake Buccaneer interceptors. 

“Fly this damn well!” He said, pushing the keys into my hands for one of them.

I didn’t even know what to say.

The Buccaneer is little more than a cockpit surrounded by twin engines competing with space for forward facing guns, each engine sporting stubby wings. It was extremely fast and nimble, it had ridiculous amounts of forward firepower if configured correctly, and it had the constitution of tissue paper if struck consecutive times by anything studier than a sneeze. Our strategy became immediately obvious: pick them apart without getting touched ourselves. 

At Mister Fields’ urging I piloted my new Buccaneer to ArcCorp, to Area 18, while he brought his along as well. We stored them in our respective hangars and went shopping. 

Center Mass is a famous weapons dealer- whether you need to hit something 5 millimeters across or 50 meters across, they’ve got you covered. Mister Fields once again footed the bill (for which I thanked him profusely- and for which he responded, “you can thank me by shooting straight.”) to fully kit out our new ships- new CF-447 Rhino Laser Repeaters up on top, with twin NDB-30 Laser Repeaters complimenting them down below on the wingtips. To aid us in our dangerous mission we elected for twin Distortion Repeaters under the nose. These positions could only take the smallest of weapons in the first place, so it wasn’t like we were giving up much in the way of damage, and the distortion effect would be enormously handy in shutting off the enemy’s ship systems as we made contact with them.

Normally there’s a certain pride I take in doing as much of the work as possible on my own ship. It’s mine after all and I’m relying on it to know the work is done right. If I want it to work in a certain way, it’s up to no one but myself to make it so. In this case, Mister Fields paid extra to have a rush installation package included with the purchase of the weapons, so within the day we were already winging it back up and out of the atmosphere of Hurston and plotting a course back toward Crusader- not to engage in battle just yet, but for further upgrades. 

What we couldn’t buy at Area 18, we could buy at Cousin Crow’s. Thankfully the Buccaneer came stock with the JS-300 power plant- a phenomenal power plant that I had no intention of upgrading. Less fortunately, most other core components (the missile racks, the shields, the coolers, and the quantum drive) were not as high caliber and needed some love. 

The missiles were all outfitted to be electromagnetic seeking missiles, giving them the highest probability of detecting, hitting, and damaging a target- especially a stealth fighter. The shields were swapped out to far sturdier FR-66’s, the coolers were swapped to more efficient Glacier coolers, and the quantum drive was exchanged for the fuel hungry but very, very fast VK-00. As with the guns, Mister Fields insisted on immediate installation as part of the sales price, even if that drove it up (and nearly doubled it in this case!). 

With our ships finally upgraded all the way we hurried back to our hangars, consulted once more before the elevator doors before parting ways, then headed for our respective ships. 

I took a second to admire the Buccaneer in my hangar, as tiny and out of place as it seemed in a space normally occupied by a Cutlass Black. The Drake heritage and design language was familiar and present, even on the interceptor, a nod to function over form that some found crude and others found crudely beautiful. I was primarily in the latter camp. 

As I settled into my cockpit and heard the hiss of the canopy sealing over me I took a second to take a breath and focus myself. 

I was about to launch myself against a ship that we all agreed was vastly superior in every way except maneuverability, a ship that had already shot me down. Its turrets protruded from every angle, there was no blind spot that I was aware of, and it had the armor of a tank. Even if we could get past the guns, we still had to punch through the shields, then after that somehow get through the hyper durable armor to actually damage the internal components. Our distortion repeaters would help us to punch a bit above our weight class but at the end of the day we were still two light fighters against a gunship, two flies against an eagle. 

I steeled myself. I wouldn’t let doubts creep in and dissuade me. My fury still burned in my belly, undiminished. Mister Fields hadn’t spoken a word about it, which told me exactly how serious he was- if he’d cracked a joke or made an offhand comment I would have known everything was ok. That he’d compartmentalized it to the degree that he wouldn’t even acknowledge it while operating in other modes meant it was an angry-making subject to the degree that it would dangerously interfere with his decision making capabilities. 

That’s what made Mister Fields as dangerous as he was- his ability to compartmentalize. Lots of people could hit a target, or sneak silently, or think tactically. It took a very certain kind of person to compartmentalize, to really put their own feelings aside and address the situation as it needed to be addressed in the moment without undue outside interference. To, even in the heat of battle, be able to prioritize the mission over his own opinions and feelings to a degree I hadn’t seen in anyone else. That didn’t mean suicidal, slavish devotion to an outcome- that meant that he could look you in the eye and genuinely smile and wish you a good morning while he slaughtered someone else beside you, quite regardless of your relation to them. 

Compartmentalization. 

His plain, driven, unrelenting pursuit of these mercenaries went well beyond the scope of stealing our prize and hurting us- they’d killed us, and they’d destroyed my ship. They’d pay with their lives at the least, and I was fully on board with whatever horrors he had in store for them. Hell, I had the beginnings of a few inventive ideas myself. 

I shook my head and pushed my mic button, hailing Air Traffic Control and requesting takeoff. The Buccaneer lurched off the ground like it had been eagerly awaiting flight and soared through the hangar doors before they were even fully seated back in their recessed cavities. In moments I was blasting my way up through the atmosphere of Crusader, heading toward that magic altitude a little over 90,000 meters where you’re free enough of the gravity well and atmospheric drag that the quantum engine can kick in. 

“Comms check.” I heard in my ears over the roaring of the Hydrogen engines. 

“I read you.” I replied. “Can you hear me?” 

“Yeah, good. Let me know when you’re spun up and calibrated to Yela.” It sounded like he was a few moments ahead of me. 

I quickly cycled on my quantum drive to pull up my HUD and twisted in my seat to find the marker denoting Yela, just above the rim of Crusader. I whipped the ship around, admiring its maneuverability compared to nearly anything else I’d ever flown, and let Mister Fields know as my calibration ticked upwards to 100%. 

“Alright, jumping in 3, 2, 1….” he said, then we punched it. Crusader warped and ripped by underneath us like it got sucked through an invisible funnel beneath the ship. 

As Yela slammed into existence in front of us Mister Fields continued calmly, “Alright, just like we talked about. I’ll come in from the top and…”

“... and I’ll come in from the orbital plane, got it.” I finished, nodding to myself. I spun to face the white diamond marker on my HUD, just over 800 km away in the asteroid belt, and began calibrating again. 

Mister Fields meanwhile reoriented himself away from the asteroid belt and jumped up to OM1 above the North Pole of Yela, then turned and pointed himself downward, directing himself at the same point I was pointed at from the equator. 

“Ready?” He asked one final time. 

“Oh yeah!” I said, grinning. I wasn’t about to let this chance slip away. 

“Good, that’s what I wanted to hear!” he said. “Jump on my mark. 3, 2, 1… mark!”

I punched it and launched forward, hurtling toward the diamond on my HUD, rushing toward that asteroid belt at top speed. As my quantum jump came to an end and the asteroids popped into existence I took a split second to gauge my surroundings (not directly in front of an asteroid, for instance) and slammed my throttle forward. 35.6 KM to the marker, more or less, and I was determined not to make Mister Fields wait on me despite him having primarily clear space to fly through instead of a field of asteroids to navigate. 

I could visually see the asteroids easily enough, the star of Stanton was well positioned for this, but I tossed out a regular radar ping just in case anyway, to confirm that I hadn’t wildly under or overestimated the sizes of the floating rocks in the void. 

Part of the way to the marker was clear, but with about 26 km left to go I spun into a spiral, weaving tightly around an asteroid and getting immediately back on course, barely missing a beat. Three more dodges needed to be performed before I got within 12 km, where the marker blinked out of existence for a while, only to be replaced moments later with another marker in a more precise location as it updated, still only about 12 km out. 

“Alright, I’m approaching the targets.” I said, slowing dramatically to allow for greater maneuverability, even in the Buccaneer and switching my interceptor into missile mode, queueing up all 4 missiles. I knew I was only going to get one shot at this.  

“Same here.” came the reply. “Let me know when you have radar contacts but don’t lock them right away.” 

“Roger that.” I said cheerfully. 

As I crossed the 10 km line a red chevron blinked into existence before me, right at the white diamond on my HUD and the computer read out, “Contact!” in that singularly monotone, robotic voice. I resisted the instinctual urge to automatically lock it. I knew what it was already- it had to be the Redeemer. Moments later, as I crossed 8 km and was starting to feel itchy, the next contact appeared, right beside the first. 

“Got them both.” I announced. 

“Me too.” Mister Fields relayed a second later. 

“I don’t see any movement yet, they might not be at the helm and might not see us yet- ready to kick this party off?” I asked. 

“Very!” he replied. “Get ready to lock them.” 

I kept my crosshairs dancing over the second contact as best I could, my finger hovering over the “LCK TGT” switch. “Ready!” I reported. 

“Alright, got your missiles ready?” Mister Fields asked, double checking. 

“I do indeed!” I confirmed. 

“In that case… lock at will and we’ll fire on your mark.” he said. 

My finger plunged downward. Immediately a circle appeared around my target, a red circle with blocks that filled into place rapidly, then blinked green. 

“Target locked, ready to fire!” I announced, “Firing in 3, 2, 1, fire!” My thumb punched the firing stud and my little ship rocked as four streaks shot out from it, dead ahead toward the target now less than 6 km away. 

“Missiles away!” Mister Fields replied from somewhere above me in the asteroid field, moving as swiftly toward the enemy as I was. 

As we launched the enemy ships peeled apart from each other, obviously having realized that we were there and that they were under attack at that point. The red chevrons diverged, one peeling down and to the left while the Sabre we were targeting turned up and to the right from my perspective. Ahead of me the missiles still streaked toward it, curving slightly to adjust their trajectory to meet the Sabre, tracking perfectly at this distance- it was only much closer that he might be able to decoy them off with countermeasures or dodge them with a perfectly timed roll or something similar. 

Sure enough, as they got closer the Sabre began to twist and turn violently, trying to shake them, undoubtedly dumping every countermeasure he had, but he had 8 missiles coming at him from different directions and he reacted far too late to do much about it- I grinned as a rapid succession of fireballs blossomed in front of me in the distance, capped by the brilliant, violent azure disk–shaped explosion of plasma from the death of a ship. 

“Congratulations - Enemy Destroyed,” said the ship’s computer as the red chevron blinked from existence, leaving just one remaining. 

“Woohoo!” I cheered, “Got that bastard!” 

“Don’t celebrate yet, the work’s just getting started!” advised Mister Fields. 

“Got it.” I nodded, but inside I was still cheering. I pushed my joystick forward, lining up my crosshairs on the Redeemer and punching that “LCK TGT” button once again. Immediately one of my MFDs switched to a wireframe display of my target, a representation of a Redeemer in, in this case, perfect health, 3.5 km away, pointed away from me at the moment but turning to face me. 

“Looks like I’m bait first.” I called out.

“Understood.” came the swift reply. “Almost on top of them.” 

“Alright, 3 klicks out.” I snapped back. “I’m going to try to roll underneath them.” 

With that I threw my throttle all the way open and held on as I was thrown back in my seat, spinning to orient myself below the Redeemer, waiting until the crosshairs crossed into the green box that signaled that I was in range and… squeezed my trigger. 

My teeth rattled in my skull and my eyeballs felt as if they might pop out of my head. I felt every shot from my groin through my sternum. I’d purposefully opted not to gimbal my weapons, sacrificing the computer-aided accuracy for more firepower, and I felt every bit of that firepower now pulsing through my body from my toes to my scalp. Red blasts pulsed from the largest repeater over my head, white-purple bolts shot forth from under each wingtip, and blueish white bursts streaked from under my cockpit- quite the lights show! 

My shots, at least some of them, slammed into the Redeemer’s forward shields and immediately had an effect, causing them to flicker but not go down. 

Red-orange lines traced down from the Redeemer for me, each deadly dashed tendril able to shred through my shields in a matter of moments, while I had to get consistent shots on for an extended period of time to have any hope of doing any damage. 

I shot by underneath the gunship, sure that I could feel the heat of their laser bolts on my neck, as I heard Mister Fields say, “Hell yeah, good run over the top!” 

I was already pulling hard, trying to come around for another pass, head craning in my cockpit to not let them out of my sight. I saw the Redeemer twist, trying to get Mister Field’s lined up with most of its turrets but it was little use- he was already past and underneath them while I was already working on looping around and coming at them again from behind and above. 

I approached upside down with respect to them, gave a little roll to reorient, and opened up again as soon as I was within range, hammering into the back of their shields with good hits. I could see their shields diminish on my targeting display with every shot, but of course their rear turret began to sling laser bolts right back at me as well. I strafed upward and sideways gently while rolling, keeping my pip locked on the twin tail of the Redeemer, spiraling toward it in a manner that’s nearly impossible to pin down. With every gun at their disposal I’ve no doubt they would have shredded me, but with just one on me? I felt this was worth the risk. The entire time I kept pouring continuous laser and distortion fire into them, until I was forced to dip away to avoid flying directly into the ship itself. 

As I broke off my attack I saw more laser fire coming in from Mister Fields, pressing his attack. With the majority of the guns focused on him I spun quickly and came around for another pass, this time more from the head of the ship, again pouring everything I had into it. 

This got their attention off of Mister Fields and decidedly back onto me, so I re-accelerated and tried to present as small a target as I could to them, but definitely felt the ship shudder as at least two laser bolts struck my port wing, stripping away the shield and scoring the paint- I’d have to wait until I was back to see if they’d done any real damage, but they shook me harder than firing my own weapons had. I spun away, allowing my shields a chance to recharge, then dove back for the Redeemer, rolling to my right around a stream of fire and peppering the top of their ship with my own. 

Their shields flickered and fell with every pass, and their guns seemed to grow less effective, firing significantly less if at all- our distortion repeaters doing their dirty work of getting in there and shutting down their internal systems, but the shots they did get off were ever more accurate. 

Laser bolts slammed into the core of my Buccaneer, sending it reeling, my shields depleted, somehow not doing enough damage to actually destroy me. 

“Rana, you ok?” snapped Mister Fields. 

“Yeah, I’m scratched but I’m ok!” I yelled, again trying to gain enough distance to let my shields charge back up without fear of a stray shot impacting my exposed hull. I wanted to press the attack and keep their shields down and their systems offline, but not so much that I got shot out of the sky. 

“Almost…. almost…. yes!” Mister Fields yelled, “Rear shields are down! I’ve got shots on their tail!” 

I threw my ship around and powered ahead at full, racing back into the fight, spraying my laser and distortion bolts back into the Redeemer as it wallowed and came around, too slow to gets its nose on me and too turned off to do more than fire a few passing shots as I raced by. “Front shields are almost down!” I reported. 

“Get those shots on and get it down!” Mister Fields yelled encouragingly, with more emotion than I’d heard him display over a kill that I could recall. 

As I flipped hard to bring my nose around I saw his pass, drawing a line up from the nose to the tail, his first couple shots splashing against the shields at the front and shredding all that remained of them and every proceeding shot slamming into the hull itself, finishing by removing one of the distinctive rear stabilizers. 

A line of tracers shot forth from one of the turrets, on top of the ship and toward the rear, presumably just coming back online from being disabled from a distortion attack, and nicked the rear of his stubby fighter. I saw the shields flare as they went down, then the splashes of laser bolt against molten metal as they plowed into the body of the ship. Mister Fields cursed, twisting into a spin that should have brought him below the line of fire for the turret, but the Redeemer simply rotated in space, keeping the turret on him. 

I raced for the Redeemer at top speed, throttle pinned, and opened fire as I came into range, focusing on pouring everything I had into that turret- now stripped of a shield as it was. Chunks of shattered windscreen and twisted frame blasted into the void of space as my laser repeaters tore mercilessly into it, sending one of the great laser cannons from the turret spinning off the ship and the other exploding in a dramatic orange pop. As I soared over the top of the Redeemer I barrel rolled, getting a solid look at the damage- that turret wouldn’t bother us again. 

“You ok Fields?” I asked hurriedly. 

“Yeah, readout’s red but shields are coming back online- I can’t take another hit like that!” he responded. 

Our next pass was devastating- we focused on the core of the ship, just behind the cockpit, where three crew members are massed to control three different turrets. I watched as my bolts ripped holes through the stricken Redeemer’s hull and must have sprayed the interior, and if they could rip through the armor of a warship like the Redeemer then the squishy bodies of the crewmembers would pose little challenge to them. 

Mister Fields followed it up with a long slow curve focussing on their starboard main thruster, shredding it off the fuselage and sending the Redeemer into a clockwise spin. 

The turrets were silent at this point, only the occasional burst of fire coming from the nose, so we simply avoided the nose and continued to pick our prey apart, removing components with every pass, never giving any survivors a chance to recover, to catch their breaths, or plan a counter attack. 

We nearly luxuriously removed the remaining port thruster, rendering the Redeemer basically a tube that was somewhat pointy at both ends. Our last real pass sent blasts through the cockpit and shot out the canopy, sending the ship into a slow forward roll, end over end, utterly unresponsive and dark, seemingly dead.

Mister Fields and I gathered near the rear of the picked-apart ship and communicated over comms. 

“Alright, cover me.” I said, unbuckling my harness and depressurizing my cockpit, then unsealing my canopy. I gently launched myself upward and outward from my ship, not looking forward to this part at all. It was one thing to try to fight ship to ship. It was quite another to then try to board an enemy ship with them having unknown defensive capabilities. I used the jets on my armor to cross the distance between the floating ships, and approached the rear loading ramp from behind my FS-9, waiting for it to drop and for bullets to start flying. Instead, it remained stubbornly parked in the upward position. As I got closer I got a hint as to why- the power to the door was entirely out, the controls utterly dark. I tapped the “OPEN” button a few times but nothing happened. 

“Alright, moving around to the top-side.” I reported, giving Mister Fields plenty of time to adjust in his ship in case he needed to eliminate with big guns what I couldn’t with my FS-9. 

In the twisted wreckage of the turret I found what was left of a man- whoever had been operating it when I’d blown it apart. From the name badge on his jacket I got the impression his name was Silas, but a good chunk of his head and chest were missing. Thankfully his pockets were intact, so I quickly searched them. 

“Nope, nothing on this guy. And it doesn’t look like I can get past into the interior this way. I’m going to move around to the front.” I said.

“Alright, watch yourself on this one.” Mister Fields said. 

“Will do.” I replied. 

Again I took my time to ensure that Mister Fields had time to get into position, then swung myself around to the remains of the canopy. Inside sat a man clutching at his left chest with his right arm, left arm dangling into the darkness below his instrument cluster, head slumped forward, motionless. My FS-9 was right on him as I approached, just in case. 

As my shadow fell over him his head and arm jerked up and I had just enough time to register a pistol in his hand! My hand squeezed reflexively in fright and my FS-9 kicked hard in the vacuum of space, sending me back and up with each violent thump. My shots tore through him before his pistol could raise all the way and I saw a smear of blood explode on the inside of his facemask. In moments it was all over. 

“You good?!” Asked Mister Fields, as I heard the thrusters working to get a better angle on the situation.   

“Yeah, I’m good.” I said, breathing heavily. “He just took me by surprise.” 

I gingerly eased forward with my boosters until I was back within arm’s reach of the canopy again, then reached out and began tugging at the straps holding the man’s body in place in the seat. If I was to have any hope of clearing the Redeemer and searching for the Tevarin War Marker it would be through the canopy, past this guy. But, as I eased his body through the shot out canopy, I took the time to start patting him down, and in his left breast pocket found our prize! 

“Hey Fields,” I said, holding the blood-encrusted medal, watching it catch the sunlight and gleam, “go ahead and set up that appointment with Tamara Cline. Just uh… make sure that Kershaw knows the Marker isn’t on 9 Tails this time when it comes into Orison, yeah?” I grinned. 

“Hold on a bit.” Mister Fields said, “Something’s been bugging me.” 

“Oh?” I asked, spinning to face his ship. 

“Why were they after the Marker as well?”

______________________________________________________________________

“...so in the future, Ms. Cline, we’d appreciate it if we could avoid such miscommunications and messes and such by being the sole contractors for such activities.”

I smiled and nodded, not dropping my pleasant, warm, conversational demeanor. I found that a casual and relaxed approach in these situations was the best to begin with- something congenial like velvet that wrapped the rod of iron that actually mattered. 

We stood before her marble kitchen island, a grizzly array displayed in front of us. Lined up in perfect order were the heads (or what was left of them in two cases) of the crew of the Redeemer, each leaking fluids onto her otherwise spotless countertop under the pristine white lighting. To the far side sat the pristine Tevarin War Marker, cleansed of blood and other stains. 

A compounding look of horror kept echoing through her face as we ignored the smell of the puddle of vomit that came from her side of the island. 

“I… I’ll certainly keep that in mind for… future… services that may be required.” she stammered, her mouth clearly dry. 

“Excellent, I’m glad we’re on the same page!” I said warmly. “Now then, I believe we’ve fulfilled the terms of the contract on our end…”

______________________________________________________________________

The End

______________________________________________________________________

Epilogue:

______________________________________________________________________

There are far worse places to pretend to be rich than the bar in the Crusader Industries showroom at Orison. After Tamara’s money transfer cleared I purchased a change of clothes and met Mister Fields for a beer to celebrate our victory and to mourn the loss of the Black Duchess. The money would go a long way but it wouldn’t cover the cost of a new Black- between the loss of my Cutlass Black and Mister Fields’ purchase of twin Buccaneers we’d taken a significant loss on this job regardless of the payout. 

Still, it felt like a victory overall and I had a Buccaneer, which… well there were worse ships to have. Plus, I technically still did own the Merlin P-52 run about, though it wasn’t good for much without a quantum drive. 

The bar was an open affair, light wooden floors having no barrier between the bar and the hulking mass of the great C2 Hercules on display in the background. Tasteful glass accents with polished black backgrounds gave the thing an air of sophistication without seeming unapproachable, like something you could be equally at home at with a pair of khakis or a suit and tie. Few other patrons bothered the bartender at this hour (it was technically in the morning, local time) but we’d been up for a long while and it was definitely an appropriate time for a beer for us. 

I raised my brown bottle solemnly, “Here’s to the Black Duchess. She wasn’t always an honest ship but she flew straight and she saved my ass on a regular basis. I loved that ship.” 

Mister Fields raised his bottle in commiseration. “To the Black Duchess.” 

We both took a deep drink. I’d heard of pouring a drink out but that seemed like both a waste of good beer and like this wasn’t the bar to do that in. 

My mind spun as I set the bottle back down. I was in the hole, no doubts there. The Buccaneer was a great little interceptor but it had no way to carry a partner, a prisoner, cargo, a vehicle, loot, supplies, or anything else that I might need. It lacked the firepower necessary to really go toe to toe with much and while two of them could be a formidable force if flown well, as we’d shown, it wasn’t a replacement for my Black. 

“You know…” Mister Fields said, idly rolling the bottom of his bottle in a circle while keeping the neck upright in his right hand, “I think I might know of a way to get your ship back. Well… not your ship but… I think I might know of a Cutlass Black donation program.” 

I looked up. “What are you talking about?” 

“Think about it. Where do we run into Cutlass Blacks all the time? Where are we constantly fending them off from?” He raised an eyebrow. 

I paused, contemplating. “I think I see what you’re driving at…”

______________________________________________________________________

I unscrewed the suppressor from my FS-9 and placed it in my backpack, then re-slung my backpack, shaking my head the whole time. This seemed incredibly backwards. 

Behind us sat the squat, angular shape of Mister Fields’ C8R Pisces, a quick, agile little ambulance used for rapid ingress and egress nicknamed the “Bambulance.” Beside me Mister Fields made similar modifications to his weapons, prepping them for the coming assault. 

“Got the pistol?” He asked. 

I glanced down and tapped the pistol strapped to my belt. “Good to go. You ready for this?” 

He chuckled by way of response. 

I nodded, and we started over the dusty ridge toward the 9 Tails encampment. Before we crested the ridge we split, Mister Fields going to the left and me going to the right, circling around until we were 90 degrees offset from each other, then proceeded to poke our heads over the top and get a better look at what we’d be pushing into. 

Below us lay the ruins of a small settlement. Four half circle huts stood in formation to one side of the foundations of several buildings, all destroyed by some unknown event. A large, haphazard tower with a makeshift windmill spun idly in the wind over a domed structure near the center. A smattering of smaller outbuildings lay in various states of disrepair around the perimeter. As with everything on Daymar they took on the weathered, sand-tan color of their surroundings and nearly blended in with the jagged rocks and boulders of the slopes leading down to the settlement. To one side, in a cleared area, blinked the functional lights of a landing pad, still obviously  maintained to some degree. Between the buildings moved several men, armed and armored, going about their days. 

I crept over the boulders before me and began the laborious process of slinking down the well-lit hillside undetected, approaching that landing site. For hours I stalked down the hill, moving from shadow to shadow when everyone’s back was turned, checking in with Mister Fields as he approached from the other side, closing in on them as well. 

Finally I closed to within about 30 meters of it, roughly 50 meters from the nearest building, and had no more good cover between me and the men in the encampment. 

“Alright Fields, I’m in position.” I reported calmly. 

“Just got there myself.” He stated.

“Ready to call in some company?” I asked. 

“Let’s do this!” He replied enthusiastically. 

I took a deep breath. This would be something we definitely hadn’t tried before. 

When the opportunity to use a suppressor exists, it’s nearly always the right answer. This time, we were purposefully not using them. I lined up my shot on my first target and chose my second and third. 

“Ready to fire.” I muttered. 

“On you then.” He said back. 

“Right then.” I settled into my boulder a little better and exhaled, then decided there was little point in delaying further and squeezed. The FS-9 exploded in a sharp, deafening bark as flame blossomed from the barrel. Despite myself I was surprised by the volume and the violence, having grown accustomed to the suppressor. 

My first target, a man in teal armor carrying a P4-AR, dropped like a rock, utterly unaware. Everyone else in the camp spun toward the sound of my gunfire. 

Immediately Mister Fields opened up from his position, his field of fire complimenting mine and another 9 Tails member dropping as further sharp reports echoed from the hillsides. 

They scattered, racing for cover as I unleashed my LMG on full auto, spraying the ground they had to cover and mowing through two more of them without effort. By my count that only left two or three remaining, unless they’d been inside the whole time we approached. 

Return fire pelted the sand in front of my boulder and thudded into the front of it, but I felt relatively secure in my position, covered as I was. I gave an answering burst to keep them focused on me and heard Mister Fields fire again, a longer sustained burst.

“Got another one.” He said when it ended. 

“Great!” I said, “Are we going too fast?” 

“Should be fine.” He replied, “but give the last guy a bit.”

“Alright.” I agreed.

More bullets slammed into my boulder, chipping off chunks and sending splinters flying in all directions. 

“You got him? I can’t see him.” I said, risking a quick glance out from behind cover and earning another burst of gunfire for my trouble.

“Yeah, I’ve got a bead on him, stay covered, just making sure he’s made the call.” 

A faint roaring could be heard in the distance, coming from behind my right hand shoulder. I looked over and saw a faint black spec approaching from the clear blue sky. 

“Fields, he’s made the call, they’re on the way!” I yelled. 

“Alright, taking the shot.” He said smoothly as I heard three crisp reports from his side of the compound. “He’s down, get covered!” 

I tucked myself under the boulder as best I could, staying in the shadow, watching as the spec in the sky grew larger and resolved itself into a fuselage with 4 appendages, 2 rear engines and 2 forward stabilizers, painted a gaudy teal with a red stripe. 

The Cutlass Black made a low, sweeping pass over the settlement, circling it once before coming to hover over the landing pad and lowering in altitude quickly, dropping its landing gear and rear loading ramp at the same time. I was already in motion. 

Before it had touched down, before the ramp was down, I was sprinting across the open area between the last boulder and the landing pad, charging the Cutlass Black with single minded determination. As the ramp cleared the cargo bay I was skidding to a stop, my FS-9 sweeping up and to my shoulder, muzzle sweeping across the cargo bay, finger slipping into the trigger guard. 

The men in the back attempted to race out of the Cutlass with their guns at the ready but I was already attacking while they were still trying to get out of their seats, pouring unrelenting fire into the back of the Cutlass while I marched forward. Of the five in the back of the Cutlass, none got a shot off. 

I never stopped moving, dropping my FS-9 and letting the sling catch it, ripping my pistol from my belt as I threw myself forward, charging up the ramp and to the door to the ante-chamber to the cockpit, palming the open button, and taking the exactly 4 strides it takes to get behind and underneath the pilot’s seat from that position. 

Three well placed shots and the pilot slumped, his hands falling away from the self-destruct button just in time. 

I heard the hissing, humming noise of mechanical and hydraulic actuation behind me and spun just in time to see the turret gunner begin to extricate himself from his seat and bring up a P4-AR. We both fired at the same time, his shots slamming into the back of the copilot’s seat and mine catching him straight through the head. 

I exhaled and inhaled heavily, looking left and right. “I think I just got a Cutlass Black.”

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As much as I didn’t like Grim HEX, I had to admit it had its uses. Uses such as a haven for us to fly a ship flying 9 Tails colors into until I could give her a new splash of paint. 

Speaking of which…

I put down the paint roller and admired my handiwork. She gleamed handsomely in her new gunmetal gray and black color scheme, all stock as far as anyone could ever tell, not affiliated with any particular organization, criminal or otherwise. 

I had a lot of work to do to bring her remotely up to the level of the Black Duchess, but at least I had a Black. 

Beside me Mister Fields nodded approvingly. “What are you going to name her?” 

“Behold,” I said dramatically, “the Amphitrite!” 

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This is a work of fan fiction. All characters, places, events, ships, and ship designs, and other content originating from Star Citizen, Squadron 42, or other content produced or created by its publishers or developers, are the property of Cloud Imperium Rights LLC and Cloud Imperium Rights Limited.