BANG!!

The echo of a shot rings out as the shooter lowers her pistol. The jell body, riddled with slowly repairing holes, steams with the latest shot to its torso.

“Lookin’ good—”

“—Dee!”

A pair of voices announce behind her as she puts the new pistol she had just appropriated from her new commanding officer, into a synth-leather shoulder holster. As if on cue, she flex’s all of the mechanical joints in her upgraded arm, feeling out all of the various clicks, screws, and bolts as they expand and contract to her neural pathways being synced to the arm before picking up the other pistol sitting on the table before her.

Placing it into the other holster, she turns around. The heavy weight of her steel prosthetic leg thuds as she turns, marking the floor with her presence as any well abled person of distinction did. Her body is traced with a network of faint scars, the lasting legacy of the Third World War. A ring, a simple band of etched agate. A multicolored circle of reflective light as the lazy fluorescent lights beamed their gaze across the top of her bosom. It seemed such a diminutive thing when compared to the rest of her ensemble.

The mechanical fingers of her right hand twitched, almost in anticipation of what she wished would happen. Smooth, black metal eased out of her bright red crop top as she turned around, showing her face to the twins that had come to join her.

Each of them dressed in the trappings of the resident Alliance colors, dull grey and pitch black. Each sporting the symbol of squad leader of a resident Spacer Squadron. The left had her specialization of ‘air-to-ground support’ while the right specialized in ‘space defense’.

Eyeing both of them quickly, she smiles, a half hideous streak of lips contorted in an unnatural rictus. The right side of her twisted visage had been burned, a swirl of flesh permanently changed as her facial muscles were contorted so that whenever she grinned it elicited differing emotions from any who approached. Stretching up into her eye, it forced her to wear a simple black eye patch to cover the damage. All that remained of her eyesight was a single gem of a dancing, unnatural gold eye.

She was a striking ebony beauty to be sure. Even her gait seemed to say, ‘this is my territory, don’t mess with it’. Despite all of her irregularities, she had no trouble gaining favor from everyone she met. She just had this air about her that enticed others to come around and play.

“Baybel, Baybee, time to go I take it?” she rasps, the swaying of her dreadlocks held tight in a loose ponytail as she turns from side to side.

“Yup! Cap says to join him—”

—aboard the Eudora.” The blonde on the left states before being finished by her twin on the right.

“Well then, let’s not keep him waiting, ladies!” Dee states before walking past them with hands in her pockets.

The three chat about everything going on aboard Ramaeus Station. All the latest gossip, where to find a good bar, where the latest assignments were being doled out to those who decided to participate in the Alliance military.

It doesn’t take them long to navigate the corridors of the Ramaeus. Each twist and winding turn of the halls painstakingly covered with a hasty patchwork of bolted metal plates.

“Oi, Dee!” a man's voice echoes out from a nearby hallway.

Not stopping their movement, they wait for the man in question to join them as they head for the lifts. Coming out of the darkness, a man joins the trio holding a tablet in one hand and a stylus in the other.

“Aren’t you supposed to be assisting the Cap on the Eudora, Leon?” Dee asks the man.

“I was, until I figured out where we were goin and wanted to give you a heads up! It’s something big, like really big for us Spacers!” Leon says with a grin.

A pause comes between the two as the man named Leon takes his time mulling it over in his mind.

“What do you mean something big? You gonna tell us or are you gonna leave us hanging?” Dee grumbles.

“Alright, alright, alright! So I heard from my little hidey holes that the Eudora is making a trip into the Wilds!”

“Through which entrance?”

“Cap was told ‘enter through the Roilla System’.”

“Why would we be going there?” Baybel asks.

“No idea. But that doesn’t stop the fact that we would be the first Spacers to make a trip outside the system!”

A small silence grows at the end of his sentence, punctuated loudly by the soft thuds of booted feet on steel plate.

“Well that would certainly make it interesting now wouldn’t it?” Dee says before leading the group round the next corner. With the lifts in sight, all of them pile in and promptly make their way up the shafts toward the Eudora.

“What do ya think we’ll find there Leon?” Baybee asks.

“Artefacts? New Species? I don’t know. What I do know is that it should be exciting given the fact that we should be the only ship leaving the Sol system!” Leon says, his hands almost jittering from the excitement.

“Alright hotshot, try not to blow a pipe in that brain of yours.” Dee smirks. The lift slows to a stop on their level, before promptly opening them to the oil filled air of docking bay A135.

The group gazes up at the Eudora as the flurry of engineers and technicians make their final checks on the outside before heading inside to make the other system checks. Twinkles could still be found in Dee’s eye as she silently marvels at the sleek ship.

The ASC Eudora was a cruiser. A little on the small side but still relegated to the exploration missions that it had been designed for. It was also an old vessel. A vessel no longer in active service and only used for training purposes. Despite that, the Eudora had a history of outperforming many of its newer brethren. Although that did little in the face of ever increasing technological advancements that were boasted by the younger ships.

It was shaped like a massive teardrop. A long prow jutted into the void through the shields that held the pressure within the bay. There were rows of military hardware being grafted onto the hull, most notably the drone pods being slotted into the sides of the main cannon.

Steel in color, its original designers didn’t wish for it to be burdened by paint jobs and other useless aesthetics. She was a ship built solely for exploration, even in its limited capacity in other areas.

“Where’s the rest of the Rippers?” Dee asks, her eye peering through the throng of people. With the group foraging through the sea of specialists, they came upon a group of fellow frequent fliers all huddled around a stack of munitions crates.

What they were doing, was nothing short of what any bored fighter pilot would do when given the chance. Gamble. What lay between the seemingly random assortment of raucous behavior of the many men and women as they went about placing bets on the mascot of the moment.

The mascots in question, two tottering drones that had been stolen and retrofitted to act as proxies for the various fighter wings participating. As for the current bout, the flamboyant spray painted logos of the Red Grease Rippers and the White Skull Sliders danced across the floor as the patch-worked drones’ batter their opponents into submission.

“Hey Tai! Get your ass out here!” Leon shouts over the clamor. In response, a figure starts moving from within the crowd.

“Oi, oi, oi! The match is about to end!” a fidgety middle-aged woman responds. The woman in question had the distinct edge of a sobering alcoholic. Graying blond hair stood on end as if in a permanent electrified state while her messy field-technician’s ensemble did little in the way of ingratiating herself to those around her. “Unless you have a good—”

“It’s time Taibera.” Dee chuckles, half out of amusement, half out of mocking grandeur. “Besides, games like these are small time compared to the games I play.”

The once clamoring crowd of fighter jockeys slows to a halt as they all listen to the gravelly voice of the woman standing to the back of the fighting pit.

“Then would you be so kind as to divine us an outcome using that Innate Skill of yours?” a new voice chuckles, knowing all too well what would happen should she do so. The surrounding jockeys knew that she had a skill of some kind but couldn’t understand what it was.

“Very well,” Dee chuckles quietly, her eye downturned.

A flash of a warm golden glow peals out from her being. The glow suffuses everyone in its embrace for but a moment, lingering in their midst like a warm fog. Just as suddenly as she had ‘seen’ the outcome of the battle of the warring drones, she sucks back in her aura of energy.

“The Red Grease Rippers will win with a clawed pincer through the fuel tank of the White Skull Sliders drone.” Her voice, once raspy in its entirety, shifted to an altogether different tone. One most in the room had known from their officers and direct superiors.

Despite the collective cheers and groans of the jockey’s, and the various exchanging of purses, the voice that had asked her to find an answer to the problem once again appears to the larger crowd.

“All hands prepare for final systems check. Pilots, report to the briefing room immediately. Head Technicians, I want this bird off station within the next twenty minutes.”

The jocks finish their gambling, the technicians and mechanics haul their gear away, and the bystanders start heading back to the lifts. Dee’s small gathering disperses, leaving her alone to look up at the Eudora.

“Not what you expected is it Specialist?” the voice asks. Dee didn’t even bother turning. She knew who he was. Captain James Castor.

The barrel-chested man coupled his already large frame with antique pieces of cyberware and personal armor. Long and gangly legs poked their way through the ad hoc uniform he pieced together under his armor. A decorated veteran going by what the intranet stated. A bona fide war hero.

“I thought she’d be…bigger.” She responded, feeling him swaddle up to stand beside her on his clinking feet.

“Hahahahaha. Oh, she can get bigger alright!”

And consequently, a massive pervert.

“Please tell me you did not just say—”

“I did and I own it!”

“You do know that I’m taken, right?”

“Doesn’t stop me from tryin!”

What the hell did I do to deserve this posting? She thinks as she starts making her way into the belly of the beast. Before she could get far however, a single line interrupts her stride.

“You think I’ll ever meet this lover of yours?”

She stops. Taking the time to think it over despite the number of rushing technicians rolling to and fro with their equipment, she would have been hard pressed not to retort what she first thought.

“I think so. If anything, you’ll hear about him before you see him.”

“Huff, huff, huff…” a young girl races through the underbrush of a forest. A tattered piece of loincloth clings to her small frame, making her already frightened and young appearance even more prominent.

Racing through the forests of Terra was not something that she was accustomed to. It was hot, humid, and downright overbearing for a being like her. Considering her circumstances, one would wonder why she was even there to begin with.

A tiny ash white tip of a tail poked its way out from underneath her ‘clothes’ despite being wrapped around her as she sprinted on all fours. Long canine ears with similarly white tufts poke out from underneath the mess of gray hair streaming behind her. She was humanoid in appearance, yet for some reason she felt utterly… alien.

Her surroundings could at least attest to that. Everywhere she ran, all forest creatures would flee. Whether that was an effect of her bumbling through a forest on an unknown world, or her existence itself, she didn’t know. She was too young to be bumbling around in a foreign forest much less leaving the confines of her pack's embrace.

Even so, here she was. Alone, and desperate. Despite this, all she could think about was her mother’s last words.

‘Mama, please!’

‘I can’t… Siha…’

‘I-I can’t go out there! What if the Soft Skins follow?! They will know that I am gone and punish everyone else!’

‘Everyone… agrees. If there is… to be any hope… for our pack… you need to flee, pup.’

‘But… but…’

‘Now...’

“GO! Find the youngling! We can’t move on till we find her!” a Soft Skin shouts.

She could already hear the clamor of their beasts. Wild eyed and small compared to the honorable Aamai, yet that didn’t stop the fact that they were all magik users. She had seen the use of the Soft Skins magiks. Each one more terrible than the last.

A perversion of the natural world was what she and the tribe called it. That didn’t stop them from burning their homes, slaughtering their mates, and dragging them from Naatai to this place called, Terha.

She could still feel the heavy chains of her manacles as they clinked away in her hands and feet. Each limb feeling more and more heavier as she ran. She ran and ran and ran. She couldn’t help it. She was given a purpose by the rest of her pack despite being the youngest pup amongst them.

She could smell the hounds before she heard them. Despite being downwind and having a head start on the slavers, she could feel the hounds and their Soft Skin magikers racing towards her. It was all she could do to not panic even more as her pulse raced.

She tried testing the winds for a chance, anything she could to hold onto that slim glimmer of hope that she had been entrusted with. And there it was. A faint yet noticeably present rushing of cold air. Every Aamai knew what this meant.

Water!

Bounding forwards once again, she heads toward the water hoping fervently that it was a wide enough stream or river that she could lose her pursuers. Yet before she could get very far, a single sentence curdled the blood in her veins.

“There she is! All units, converge on my location!”