Repaired helmet in place, Ryal sprinted down the hallway, then dropped down the ladder. . The word echoed in her ear, but it was the look on the elf’s face that stayed at the front of her mind. She’d seen that look before. When she was nine.

  “RY! Get your head in the plaking game!” Clara barked, causing her to stop on the ladder. She realized she had passed their floor and was now behind her sister as they climbed off the ladder. Clara punched in the access code and was then through the hatch, Ryal followed.

  There were only 4 guards, and they died quickly.

  The cell floor was not like the rest of the ship: the halls were well lit with no decorations. It was sterile, cold, with stasis fields on the open cells.

  “Prisoner 1267….got it, this one” Clara placed a small charge on the door. One tiny pop and the field was down. Ry slipped in, her arm cannons set to stun. Their employer had implied that the target may not want to be rescued.

  Sitting in the middle of a bare cell was a member of a race believed extinct for 2000 years. Flesh and hair a soft glowing green that seemed to permeate the air and floor around it. A being of matter and the Ether swirling together so intricately that it was hard to see where flesh and magic ended. The more powerful the Fae, the more a part of the Ether they appeared. And their sources had told them that this Fae was very powerful indeed. And also very insane.

  But, as it turned out, it was apparently the “good” kind of insane. Green, pupiless eyes opened to regard her, and the Fae’s face split into a child-like grin, “ You came!” She hopped up and skipped over to the door, “I’m ready! We should really get to the docking bay!”

  Prepared to have to drag a reluctant psychopath from the cell, the sisters looked at each other for a moment before turning back to her “Ok but the docking bay is probably not the best place for us- we have a ship waiting back–”

  The Fae giggled again and flicked the end of Ryal’s nose, “We can’t go that way silly. She is mad at you, and not waiting on back up.”

  Ryal was about to ask what the plake that meant when alarms started blaring and the whole deck shook as blue lightning shot out of the maintenance tube, followed a second later by the Elf she had left tied in her room. She had taken the time to put on clothes and armor- thank the Smith for that- and had a hatchet in one hand and a coiled, barbed whip in the other. And she had plaking lightning shooting out of her plaking eye balls. “BY ORDER OF THE IMPERIAL NAVY,” she roared and by the Armorer lightning came out of her mouth to strike the walls, “Power down your weapons and surrender or die!”

  Ryal did not need to see it to know that Clara had taken the Fae’s hand and the two were running- skipping in the latter’s case- down the hallway. She launched a mage buster rocket at the Elf with one hand and a burst of incendiary rounds with the other, “Seriously though how much lightning is inside your body?” as if to answer the question, a bolt punched into her shoulder. Her armor absorbed it but it still hurt.

  The mage sprinted left to dodge the rounds and her whip snaked out to knock the Ether cursed missile into a bulk head, “You’ll never leave here alive, Runeling!”

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  Ryal was not able to answer right away because the mage closed, whip and hatchet flashing. This bitch was

  She sent via her suits telepathic link as she parried and counter struck with her armored fists.

  No time to deploy her blades. They whirled round and round, metal flashing, strikes bouncing off each other. The bitch was good, but Ryal and grown up making a living with her fists and with her father’s hand crafted armor covering them there was nothing better in close quarters. She waited until she had her back from where her sister and their target ran, “At this point I am just glad dismemberment is off the table. Is it off the table?” her assailant snarled and flicked her whip toward Ryal's eye.

  She grabbed the end of the whip and wrapped it around her arm with a quick twist. Lightning crackled up the length and through her arm. She grunted but did not let go, “I’m going to take that as a maybe.” Using the whip, she pulled the Elf forward and blocked the hatchet strike aimed at her knee. “I know this might not be the best time but you really do have the most beautiful eyes. When they're not, you know… filled with electricity.” She needed to keep her angry, and Ryal knew from experience that hitting on females in the wrong situation made them really angry.

  Her opponent snarled and kicked her in the chest. Ryal went with the blow, flying backwards into the maintenance tube. The ship's artificial gravity took her and she hurtled away from the prison floor, lightning crackling after her. She wasn't sure how long the ship wide alarm had been sounding.

  “Simon, now would be a good time for that escape route,” she yelled as she used her suit’s thrusters to speed up.

  “That maintenance tube runs the vertical length of the ship, terminating near an engine exhaust vent.” Their ship’s AI replied, “ I am remote piloting your skip nearby. Your suit should withstand the heat long enough for you to get to it. ETA, 1 minute.”

  A barbed length of whip snaked around her boot and she snapped to a halt, pain jolting through her leg, “yeah, I don't have that kind of time.”

  She could feel the mage’s magic, and this close she didn't need to look back to know where the attack was coming from. She engaged her mag boots and dove against the nearest wall as the Elf swept down upon her. Only her armor kept her leg from buckling. She took a hatchet strike to her head and sent an elbow into the Elf’s gut. She could have sworn it was a good shot but the only indication she had connected at all was that the lightning spluttered for a second, then returned full force and blasted into her.

  Her nerves screamed as the electricity coursed through her body, but she could feel her Runes gathering the power to them and automatically healing her leg, “Thanks for that.”

  “Do you ever shut up, abomination,” The mage snarled from her perch on the level above Ryal.

  Ryal grinned, even though her opponent could not see it, “Ok well, this has been a lot of fun, hope we can do it again. I really did mean it about your eyes.” And then Simon crashed the Skip into the maintenance tube about 1 meter below her and she was sucked out into space.

  Clara's Skip was waiting for her outside the breach made by her own. Ryal sent a silent thanks to the Smith. She would never have heard the end of it if it was her sister’s that exploded. Being in a relationship with a computer made Clara very protective of anything with an electric current.

  She laid down and locked her feet and hands in. Skips were named so because riding one was a pretty good way to get yourself killed. Her ride was a length of metal in the shape of a Y with the main booster also serving as the frame.

  Ryal looked over her shoulder to make sure she was not about to get electrocuted. A containment field was already in place over the breach, and from the other side the Elf watched her. She waved, then spun away with the asteroid belt.