RAGNAR’S ROCK [PLANET]: NEW ANGUS INTERNMENT CAMP - TE’RANNI CORPO-SPACE
03/07/320 SG [STARBOUND GALAXY]: 5:38 NT [NOVA TERRA]
THE BLOCK 27 CREW:
LUKE [HE/XE]-[ANDROID - VOX-04]: BREACH OF CONTRACT [RSK 04]LYRA BIRD [SHE/HER]-[PARAHUMAN - TIRNANESE]: MURDER-1 [RSK 02]PIXT BLIC [SHE/THEY]-[PARAHUMAN - ASTEROI]: HERESY [RSK 03]QUIN FREY [THEY/THEM]-[PARAHUMAN - LOHKIN]: DEBT [RSK 01]URMN OGH PEMN [HE/HIM]-[XENO - “JACKALOPE”]: ECO TERRORISM [RSK 02]
“Where in tarnation is Urmn?” Lyra hissed through the comms. “Runnin’ real low on kinetics.” Her ears twitched, as her cybernetics folded into a spider-like crouch. She motioned Quin behind the corner, as heavy boots cnked in the dark. Sighing, she clicked on her final magazin, and fired. Thud.
“Give him a minute.” Pixt chirped between chews of bubblegum, as she crept out of the Warden’s office. “Just make a left. No, your other left! Caluxa vi!” The pings on her wrist converged. A flicker of green. A keycard in hand.
“Tell him we need that distraction,” With a final charge, mane of peach flying, Quin cracked open the stairwell door. “Fucking now!” Their dark eyes hardened, arm torn, as crimson smeared over the punctured aluminum.
“Please refrain from swearing on my network,” Luke sighed, monitors jittering with lines of blue. “I am having trouble enough trying to concen… there we go. Filk yeah!” With a pixel eyed smirk he initiated lockdown, and overloaded the arms.
“You rang?” The synthesized voice of the Jackalope creaked, followed by a furry snail-like face, peeking from a vent. “Seriously though, kiddos. We need to high tail it. Like now.” Psma bolts lit the dark. A trio of guards charged, rifles raised and visors drawn. The Lohkin wrenched an interface panel free, gritting their teeth as the psma warped the gss and steel to reddened sg.
“What did you do—” Pixt turned a corner, scooped into Quin’s blistered hand, as old Urmn dangled from the other. Pixt yelped. Lyra’s scrap-gun ruptured the skulls of two assaints, and Quin’s forehead crumpled the ribs of the third.
“We set the core reactor to criticality,” His twin voices hummed, as his hexapod limbs rummaged around a canvas pack. “Now The Blocks should be A-okay. Everything else will be in a real bad shape sometime in, let's say, fifteen minutes.”
“Then we should probably be on our way,” Luke replied as xe held open the door. “The Warden’s secondary vessel should be located on ptform C-7.” Pixt was tossed into his arms like an indigo hackysack as the group charged past.
The prisoners of Block 27 ran. The satellite dotted sky, their only soce, as they crossed the foot-packed sands of New Angus. Pixt and Lyra’s eyes scanned the rocky horizon, steller violet and nocturnal silver, as pale mechanical lights bobbed ever closer.
They made it to the electrified gate of Port C as the first rays of orange crested the barren ridge. Just beyond the net of steel they could see it, a row of eclectic Te’ranni ships. And at the end, a private vessel, painted a vender sheen; Her sturdy hull and twin engines, fit for a crew of five or so. She was a way out of New Angus. A way off the Gia forsaken rock. A way home.
What’s one more crime?
Though a good foot or so shorter than their partner, Quin picked up the Tirnanese gunner with ease, vaulting Lyra over the eight foot fence. A silver widow, she nded soundless on the asphalt. Yet, her ears twitched. As a moment ter, a voice cut through the ticking quiet.
“Now what do we have here?” Rough and stern, Warden Khanh tisked, a low chuckle escaping her lips. “An entertaining attempt. I’ll give you that.” Bck cattleman hat, cybernetic arm, and leather jacket. She looked much more the part of a Te’ranni spacer from The Fringe than a middle manager. Though her drawn pistols made her standing clear.
“N’yxti xo Gia,” Pixt muttered in Sagittarian, as her bubble burst. She seemed to sink into her pink stared jacket, as her eyes shimmered a verdant hue.
“Well,” Lyra dispassionately sighed. “Yah can’t bme a girl for tryin’, now can yah.” Her firearm, bulky yet sleek, was aimed between the Warden’s eyes. Hungry face steeled in spite of the hollow chamber.
“I actually can,” She chuckled. “Considering how many of my boys and girls you sent to the void… well, you’re gonna be here a long while yet.” They could all hear it now, the low rumble of maglev and treds. Yet, a creeping of indigo hair and ruddy furr pinged on the android’s sensors.
“I would have to decline,” He replied with a thumbs down and a wink. “That would not bode well for the health of my patients.” Xer patchwork coat, embroidered with a blue star, fluttered like a cape as he posed.
“I’m not asking, Pinoccio,” The Warden growled as she pressed a barrel to the android’s temple. “Or your friends. The idiot troll who crashed a freighter, the hick elf who shot her husband, the dirt worshiping gnome, or that oil rig bombing slugra—” A fsh of twisting green came from behind.
Her knees buckled forward, with a popping crack, as her ankles hooked backwards. A blur of cartiginous antlers and psionic force. Luke twisted to his right, as a bullet sparked off the side of his repted chest. In a moment not much was left of the Warden, but a smoldering corpse, a sparking limb, and a well-signed hat.
“Nice work,” Quin nodded to a proud Urmn and Luke, and trembling Pixt. The dawn-haired Lohkin dusted and donned the half-burned hat. “Now let's get the blinking shit out of here.”
With the tap of a keycard they entered the hull. Spreading into the ship, they took to their stations. Quin, Pixt, and Luke manned the cockpit, while Urmn squeezed into the bowels, and Lyra plugged into the starboard gunport. As the fusion reactor sparked to life, Quin took to the helm. A wild grin cut across their face, as their bloodied fingers gripped the wheel. With a mad ugh the little starship pulled upwards, and flew.
The hull rattled as psma gnced against shielding. The vender ketch threaded between a mountainous outcropping, as the assaints fell behind her cerulean jets. “Where are we on that jump?” Quin questioned, as with a grating of teeth the ship sped further. The Ragnarish wastes of the mining pnet, faded below. Leaving only the threat of the corporate satellites and starships, soulless behemoths of the ecumenopolis, as they loomed ever closer.
“Frey,” Pixt called out as the nav spun around her. “We have a problem . . . the upsilon-drive won’t start.” Trapped in a frantic concentration, they ran over the hyperspace calcutions. A muttering torrent, broken only by a bubble cracking from her lips.
“We’re dandy here,” Urmn’s voices creaked between cngs. “Hyperdrive is operational. Something near you kiddos is busted.”
Sparks shot from the panel. “Caluxtii zi’xo blix,” The Asteroi mented. “We’ve got corrosion on a conduit.” Pale energy flickered through a festering crack.
“Then get me a damn insutor,” Quin shouted. “And hold on tight.” Tipping their hat they howled like the tempests of Yggdrasill - 4, and wrenched the ship into a corkscrew; As a pulse of superheated psma seared past the ship, and lit the exosphere in a blistering aurora.
“Y’all better hurry real quick,” The gunner trilled through the comms link. “Nother wave incomin’.” Raising the shields, she wrenched the ship’s kinetic rail. And fired. Spindles of titanium tore through the satellite swarm as fire pierced the void.
“Pardon me sis,” Luke replied as he pulled the pink bubble from Pixt’s mouth. “I give this a low chance of success.” He spped the gum onto the conduit. He gave only a thumbs up to the fbbergasted navigator. Who pressed enter.
For a second it was as though the ship had entered a freefall. Gravity loosened its hold and inertia slowed to a crawl. The crew all held their breaths, or internal fans, as the ship began to vibrate a whining keen. Until, with a snap and a pulse of violet light, the ship shot between the closing swarm. Leaving a hanging silence, as they slipped below the veil and into the Sea of Stars. The Everdark. Hyperspace.
“So,” Pixt breached the quiet of, the soon to be named, Bubblegum. “Where do we go from here?”
