Slev Torrent- Cormag One – Mining Vein

  Slev pulled out the handcuffs that he honestly used far too infrequently and slapped them onto the wrists of the surrendered pirate. He carefully patted the armored form down and pulled an absolute array of knives and pistols from the figure's armor. Then he pulled out a large canvas bag that was neatly folded into the bottom of his snack fanny pack and began to stuff all the unused pirate weapons into it.

  The captive figure was quite as it marched ahead of Slev back up the tunnels. Obediently pausing and waiting for him as he rooted through the remains of their comrades, to stuff even more guns into the bag. Slev wasn't planning to use any of them. Most of them were pretty basic fare meant for more normal aliens and really lacked that kick that Slev preferred. It didn't matter if everyone wore armor if your idea of small arms was the armor maker's idea of a tank cannon.

  As they neared the end of the branching tunnels to the surface, Slev and his captive both froze as a humming whoosh loudly sounded somewhere near the exit. Slev cursed inwardly. He knew they had grav vehicles; he just really fucking hoped he wouldn’t have to deal with them.

  Slev turned to his captive. "Alright, what kind of bullshit cobbled together monstrosities did you guys bring down here with you?"

  The pirate seemed almost eager to help. "We have one ghost-class hover bike that has an auto-tracking anti-air cannon, it's also got these really, really dope auto-ejecting burst pods, a reactive shield, and an insane onboard overlay that we pulled off a pro racing fighter.” They finished almost breathless in their excitement to talk about it.

  Slev stiffened. “Why the fuck do you have all that on a hover bike!?”

  “I really, really like tinkering with fast stuff. Also, that's just the scout vehicle. We have a fire support one out there too.” They sounded a bit embarrassed.

  Slev choked on his own spit. “Please do tell, whats your idea of a fire support vehicle, if the fucking auto-targeting, shielded, abomination is just the scout vehicle.”

  Reaper intejected “I call dibs on being put into the fire support vehicle, sir! Imagine the beautiful carnage I could wreak upo..” Slev hit the Reaper mute button, cutting him off before his rant could really start.

  The pirate chuckled nervously. "We salvaged the wreck of one of the human tanks. I have no idea the what or how behind its acquisition, but it looked like someone used an orbital weapon to kill the thing. I got it running again, slapped a few extra guns on it to make up for damage to its drone systems, oh, and used its disgustingly oversized power plant to put some ship-class shields on it.

  Slev looked at the pirate hard for a moment. “If I die when we get out of this tunnel, I'm making sure I take you with me. How in the world did you manage to get a tank that was made by a rare species, and hit by an orbital strike running again?"

  “It's just a hobby," the pirate squeaked out.

  “If we survive, I'm introducing you to Otto before I decide what to do with you.”

  "What's an Otto?" The pirate inquired

  "You, but with more arms.” Slev said and made his way for the tunnel entrance. “A lot is going to happen very fast. "I'm going to give you one chance to hop onto the grav bike after I jack it. If you don't, I'm going to shoot you. Do you understand?” The pirate nodded silently.

  Slev peeked around the corner of the tunnel entrance to see what clusterfuck awaited him. One beautiful grey and white hoverbike made of sweeping lines resembling a falcon mid-dive. Hovered ominiously twenty feet from the tunnel entrance. The garish modifications stood out like a sore thumb, all of them crudley painted red with little stylized skulls stenciled on as well. The massive barrel of its anti-air and vehicle weapon was pointed roughly towards the cave entrance, and its pilot appeared to be intensely interacting with a holographic display just above the throttle handles. The human tank that had been coaxed back into life was, disconcertingly, not in sight.

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  Slev braced himself against a metal support on the wall and grasped a large hunk of the gun drone wreck with his magnetics. With a full body heave, he lifted it twenty feet above the hoverbike and let it drop. The automatic targeting did exactly what Slev hoped it would, whirling upwards away from the tunnel entrance and utterly anhillating the piece of scrap falling towards it. Slev sprinted as fast as he could straight at the hoverbike, ending his sprint with a savage flying tackle that ripped the poor pilot from his seat. He didn't even see it coming; he was busy looking up at the scrap his turret was busy defending him from. They hit the ground a couple of feet from the bike, Slev's shoulder driving his full weight into the man. There was a very unhealthy crunching sound. Slev rolled away from the remains of the man, skidded to a stop, and pulled himself into the hoverbike seat.

  “Get on now!” Slev barked at the pirate tinkerer.

  With only a moment of hesitation, the tinkerer threw themselves onto the gravbike and held on for dear life. Slev looked at the controls, and a smile crept across his face. It operated just like a motorcycle, except one of the foot pedals controlled pitch. He almost immediately killed them both, pulling the throttle back halfway and sending them towards the mouth of the valley at hundreds of miles per hour. Slev wildly attempted to pull up, accidentally sending them skidding off the valley floor before getting the input right and shooting upwards far higher than he meant to.

  He eased the throttle back and began a smooth cruising loop back to ground level. Halfway through his descent, the pirate tank floated out from behind the very same hill he had used to snipe into the valley. Probably summoned by all the damn noise he had just made. It was somehow worse than he had even imagined; the rough shape of a Terren standard hovertank was there. But it was covered in so many uneven layers of metal plates and an aggressively mismatched bundle of guns slapped onto where the main cannon should be. If Slev hadn't known it started as a tank, he would have guessed the whole thing had been built from a scrap pile.

  The cacophony that was a half-dozen guns immediately opened fire on Slev as he slammed open the throttle on the hover bike again. The pure burst of speed made the first dozen shots slam into a rock spire far behind him, turning it into molten glass. The second dozen was shockingly accurate; the auto turret managed to knock out two of the largest projectiles while a shimmering blue shield erupted from a circling emitter next to him. The shield ate the rest of the shots but not all of the impact. The hover bike slid sideways, nearly fifty feet, destroying his momentum.

  Slev sped onward, a readout on the dash screaming at him that the shields were 70 percent depleted.

  “What the fuck kind of guns are on that tank!?” Slev snarled to his passenger. Then he juked the bike harshly to the left, dipping precariously close to a rock spire and barely, avoiding both another spire and the deluge of death that zipped past them.

  “Just don't get hit!” The pirate said while fiddling with a control panel on Slevs left. “Push the red holo button for the boost!”

  Slev pushed the flashing red boost button, and the world around him seemed to compress. The fearsome roar of a rocket mere feet away from him deafened him to the sound of whipping wind and gunfire. The hoverbike, which was already frighteningly fast, screamed ahead, bursting through the sound barrier in a series of cracks, shattering stone spires as they screamed by. Slev wasn't even worried about the tank anymore, all of his focus for the next thirty seconds was on not turning himself into paste. Mercifully, the booster ran out of fuel, ejecting itself with a dull, thumping explosion. Slev was shocked to find himself decelerating with his ship already in sight.

  Slev coasted the hoverbike into the charnel house that was his cargo bay. There were the remains of two pirates strewn across every surface in the hold.

  “Goddamit Chitters,” Slev sighed. He wasn't excited to see what the rest of the ship looked like.

  Chitters – Cormag Starsector – Pirate fleet Command Vessel

  Chitters was having a very bad afternoon. He had been hiding in the vents of the not-friends ship for hours before it had landed into a massive ship that chitters did not recognize. But he could tell everyone here was just like the men that had attacked his home, and he had no idea where home or his father were.

  It had taken hours for the noise around the ship to indicate he was alone after they landed. He took his chance and snuck out, finding himself in a massive room. Filled with other small ships, a few men scurrying around in the distance, tending to those ships. Chittters stood still in a dark corner, blending into his surroundings, thinking. Chitters decided that he was going to be enough of a problem that these people would have to find his father for him. Chitters slinked into a nearby vent, he needed to get acquainted with his new hunting ground.