The stomach cramps had finally given in and Buzz was in an extremely good mood, cramming down pancake upon pancake as fast as they could make them in Soggy's Pancakes and Waffles house. Still, Gramps approached him warily as the bearer of bad news. Buzz smiled a toothy and pancake'ie smile at him.
"Mwhlo Gramps."
"Hi Buzz, how are the pancakes?"
Buzz didn't answer but merely gave a thumbs-up in reply before attacking a new one like a cash strapped pirate attacking a moth XC. Gramps sat down next to him and ordered coffee, extra black and caffeine enriched. He would supply the shot of Mists from his hip flask, half and half the way he liked it.
"Buzz, I need you to do something for me."
"Shure, chomp chomp, whatever I can do to help."
Gramps cringed, waited a bit while the coffee was put on the table, remembered to smile at the waitress as she left before spiking it. He tasted it, ah Verasi Blue, and perfectly roasted. Buzz had fininshed his pancakes and was slowly wiping his mouth, his appearance somewhat puzzled. Gramps decided that now was a good time as ever.
"I need you to go apologise to the dock hand that you shot in the knee, and do it publicly. Then he dumps all charges."
Gramps quickly lifted his cup and sipped the elixir, as good an excuse as any to avoid Buzz's glare.
"Sure, I mean it would only be appropriate. After all, I did shoot him, right?"
Gramps swallowed slowly, surely this was too easy.
"So, shall we go?"
"Ehm, right, sure, let me finish this."
###
NP hit enter, and the programme started to crack down the last barrier of his opponent. There, a series of 0's and 1's that held the information he needed. He looked at his companion and entered the data into his database as a query. A name popped up, and NP looked in surprise at it. Now there was a person he didn't expect. He exchanged a shocked look with his partner, and sent the information to Surbius and Miexon. This was...well interesting.
Now he had the original name of their attacker he could make his own attack on the person that had raped his mind. No longer would he have to be subtle, now he could attack with everything he had. He made a package and sent it forth.
###
Tokash Oricu was nervous. He had checked and double checked the feed cables to his heavy gatling canon, he had run preliminary target packages on it, he had co-ordinated a battle plan with the pilot, everything checked out. Still, he was always nervous when the heavy moth he was a gunner on was crossing the Latos/Sedina wormhole, the single most pirate infested transit point in space. This was his nineteenth crossing, and after the next one his contract was over. Twenty runs, and the bonus of 35.000 credits would allow him to marry Tirina. The moth transited the space anomaly, the usual five seconds of dead time passing too slowly.
"Tok, multiple bogeys. Lead has been destroyed. Quadrant 4-2 distance 283 metres. Single fighter, Centurion."
Tokash turned his gatling towards the centurion and started hosing the sky with plasma bolts. His actions were rewarded with a stream of blue, accelerated positrons and green neutrons that tore xithricite armour plating off like a polar bear through a cardboard building. He tried to track the centurion as it spun and twisted, gave it the lead he knew that type of ship needed to have to be hit, and depressed the firing stud. The ship exploded, but unfortunately for Tokash, it was his ship. The other centurion, bright pink in colour had arrived from the belly side and torn all the armour away before hitting the power cells and rupturing the ship. The twin life support bubbles slowly spun as they were exited from the ship, carrying the pilot and gunner. Retractile ignored them as he scanned the cargo. 120 gyroscopes, valued at 191 credits a pop.
"What a crap load Az, these aren't even worth the effort of transporting them."
"Nah, but at least we got some kills."
They flew back to over-watch with Swag Man and Tramshed, and kept an eye out for the XX salvage service that would be here shortly to pick up the rescue bubbles. They were not going to kill those ships, but they were going o make sure that all the pilots and gunners were taken back. They were after all pirates second, but pilots first.
The wormhole lit up like a candle once more, indicating multiple inbound ships. The pirates got ready to intercept the convoy and destroy it, but the ships that arrived were all combat ships, all with the label [KAOS]. The pirates relaxed slightly, KAOS were not friends, but not exactly enemies either.
Ahriman opened a radio link to local space.
"We have come for the pilot named Azumi. Come peacefully and nobody gets hurt."
The CLM members s one turned their engines to full power and started evasive patterns.
"I told you before asshole, it is not gonna happen."
Retractile fired a long string of positrons and neutrons at the EC-107 carrying the commander of KAOS, impacting and reducing the armour to 30%. And with that, the furball was started.
###
Hortan dropped into his command seat, checking everything was in place as it should be. He counted out his pills and dry-swallowed them, taking two extra happy pills. He checked the cargo, yep he was sure this was what was on the most wanted list of Dau Womans Weekly, and in copious amounts. He touched his magic furry dices that were suspended from the manual ejection handle. He checked the EAPRS and ensured that its control lamp glowed a calm green. He saw the note blink on his screen and saw that it was from Moda. Probably another fine tune to some system or other. It could wait, he was in a hurry. He ignored the message. The usual fluttering in his stomach had arrived, but he felt good with them right now. Actually he felt very good with everything right now. After the drop, he would go to Daltas Hold and find that shop that sold the extremely rare John Eldritch action figure where he stands with a blaster in each hand a woman at his feet looking adoringly at him, even though it was expensive. And then he would ask Ms. Chi for pancakes at Soggy's. Yeah, and apply for council in TGFT. Nothing in the World he couldn't handle now!
He was ejected from the station and immediately boosted at max speed towards the 3k mark. Why was this ship so slow?
