Azumi docked with too much speed as usual and applied the forward thrusters with full power to bring the ship to a halt. She had, however, forgotten that the Wraith handled slightly differently than her usual Centurion Rev C. Especially when said Wraith had a full cargo hold. The resulting crash crushed the nose of the Wraith completely and pushed Azumi hard against restraints while hammering her head into the chainglass HUD at roughly the same time William came flying through the cockpit and slammed against the cockpit visor before landing on Azumi's lap. She looked down at the widely grinning face.
"Janice."
"Listen hun, I don't know who this Janice is okay?"
A drop of her blood dripped onto his cheek. She raised a finger to the tip of her nose to see how badly she had been hurt. A gentle prodding off the nose told her that it wasn't broken. She tried to breathe deeply through her nose and immediately noticed the smell of unwashed body, alcohol, blood, vomit and worse coming from the person in her lap. Swallowing the bile that tried to force its way up through her neck she pushed William away and opened the canopy.
"..the fuck do you think you are crashing into my docking cradle like that? I'll have your hide for this, I'll rip your arms off and beat you over the head with the bleeding stumps.."
The dock master was in his usual cheerful mood outside and Azumi stuck her head out to let him know that now was probably a good time to shut up. He didn't recognise her and didn't.
"I should have known it was a woman flying in such a crappy way. I'll make sure your pilot's licence is revoked in all of known space you worthless piece of...."
He stopped his tirade. Azumi had lifted the heavy pistol that was holstered inside the Wraith's cockpit and aimed it at the dock master.
"What the hell do you think you are doing? Don't you know who I am? Don't you know this is a CLM protected station? Are you so fragging insane or just so lamely stupid that you have..."
A whip-like crack cut through the bay and silenced the stream of insults from the dock master. Azumi had lost her patience with the dock master and shot him with a single round in the belly. She crawled out of the Wraith, walked over to the dock master and placed a single high-heeled boot on his chest while aiming directly at his groin with the pistol.
"Yes little man-ling. I am perfectly aware of all this and more. Now, I need for you to decide something for me. Are you going to behave nicely from now on or are you going to be sitting down while peeing for the rest of your miserable short life?"
Azumi never got the answer. From the corridor that led directly to the CLM headquarters, noise in the form of boots running on deck plates could be heard and a single high pitched whine from a gauss rifle that powered up made her look in that direction. Physhi, in full impact vest although slightly too big and helmet was aiming at her with an Ineubis high-powered gauss assault rifle.
"Drop your weapon."
"Can it Physhi. I am not in the mood. Besides, I have a guest with me."
The whine of the compressor chamber's engine died as Physhi engaged the safety switch. He took his helmet off and grinned sheepishly.
"Azumi-chan. Didn't know it was you. You look good as a blonde."
The other docking bay received an incoming ship and they both turned to see Tramshed's Warthog nestle safely in the cradle. The force field around the cradle collapsed and along with the crack of rushing air, an extremely loud rhythmic noise assaulted their ears, worsening as Tramshed opened the canopy. Tramshed touched a single button and the music died, leaving naught but a ringing sound.
"Physhi, contact yoda and tell him I need him down here. In the meantime I'll get my passenger out of the Wraith with Trammie's help."
Physhi nodded and started back into CLM HQ, helmet under arm. Azumi turned to the approaching and wickedly grinning Tramshed.
"That was some landing. You know that ships have retro thrusters, right?"
"Shaddup. It must be full of something. I am not used to flying cargo ships, you know that."
"Whatever. Who is the passenger?"
###
Surbius Bondevo, second in command of TGFT, Dark Master of Forms, Epic level Puppeteer and extreme control aficionado wished the maker of the sandwich he was eating a slow and painful death. He decidedly remembered that he had asked for a sandwich without soy-gherkins and yet here the ineffable proof of their failure lay in his lap slowly soaking his tunic pants with it’s disgusting juices. Slowly he put the offending sandwich on the table, grabbed the soy-gherkin and placed it on the side of his plate with a disgusted look before he slowly unfolded his napkin and wiped his fingers and mouth. Only then did he answer the call that had made him drop the soy-gherkin.
"Lieutenant Bondevo."
The person in the other end was breathing very deeply and didn't respond. With the patience born of countless hours of filing paperwork according to The Masterplan Surbius once more responded.
"Hello, this is Lieutenant Bondevo."
The person in the other replied with something that was absolute gibberish. Surbius ticked the persons off that had this number and came up with three persons that had a history of being as drunk as to be incoherent. He put a tracer on the call and with no little mental effort concentrated on getting any information out of the caller. After another painful minute it became clear that the caller was John Eldritch. Which was incidentally Surbius' first guess anyway.
"Councillor Eldritch, you need to speak slower. Why did you call me?"
The trace came up with a location, Daltas hold. Once more Surbius was not surprised. The station was infamous as a place for partying with no holds barred and had been the favourite haunt for many TGFT pilots.
"Myeaw sjiep hraz bjen stjowen. Wij ajdi tju. Yai trued de giet haome"
Surbius let the babble run through his vodecoder, enabled the decryption function and waited with the infinite patience of a basalt statue for the result. Ah.
"Let me understand this correctly. Your ship has been stolen along with your id? What does the goat have to do with it? Never mind, I'll send someone to get you."
Surbius hung up and clasped his hands together, fingers lightly splayed out, and brought them up in front of his face. Who to send, who to send. Ah, yes.
###
Tomahawk and Cat went through the wormhole to Odia some two thousand metres before the convoy arrived at the jump zone. Their light fighters were better suited to scouting than the three Warthog TD's that brought up the rear of the convoy and together the five ships would provide security for their six Behemoth class transports against everything but the most dedicated and concentrated assault. A quick scan only showed a single Atlas class and Cat turned towards it to investigate. Tomahawk, being the leader of the flight, sent the all-clear and the Behemoths started traversing the flaw in space that allowed for near instantaneous movement between systems light-years apart. Cat came within effective range of her targeting radar and pinged the Atlas. It came up with a PA IFF. Cat almost sent a friendly signal when she noticed the heavy scarring on the side of the ship. She flew closer and hailed the ship.
"This is pilot Cat of the KAOS guild. Do not interfere with this convoy and fly safe."
The response was a flare hammered directly at her Vulture along with a string of energy bolts flung from a gauss turret. At the same time twelve rings of exotic matter heralded twelve fighters that had just exited from inter-system jumps. Cat stomped her left foot and rotated safely out of the cone of gauss bolts but was not fast enough to avoid the flare. The simple proximity fuse exploded and sent extremely hot shrapnel into her ship, damaging it slightly but more annoying, affected her controls. Cat immediately cut all flight assistance and started pushing her controls in semi-random movements to defeat the auto aim on the gauss turret. She managed to avoid most of the bolts and tried to get a targeting solution. Failing, she aimed dead-eye and fired a long string of neutrons at the Atlas hitting it several times. She used her vastly more manoeuvrable ship to stay inside the arming range of the flares while scoring hit after hit on the Atlas. With smoke streaming from its sides, the pilot of the Atlas started tossing flares around as fast as he could but it made no difference. Cat hammered through the remaining armour easily and was tossed away from the damaged ship by the resulting explosion like a child's toy. The damages to her ship were not too bad and she immediately turned to the other fighters that had assaulted them. This was not going to be easy.
