[Story]Shadowrunning, Part 2

[Dartz]

Quattro isn't quite a Scott-series. She's a design that's been moved forward in terms of a generation or two, Agatha's best attempt at showing up her parents. From a meta standpoint, Quattro is the RPG villain who put all her CP's into her cyber-body, and her hacking/information warfare/mad science abilities. She's a bit of a munchkin really, and has the potential to become a very dangerous and insidious supervillain if left to run wild and free.

That's how we're writing her. That's how Jet is approaching her...
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--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

[Dartz]

Okay. This is about where it becomes obvious that neither of us are really used to handling multiple third-person perspectives at once. This is really something new for me, I'm used to handling one or two characters at once with a limited perspective, or First person. Is this reading alright?

A lot of this is supposed to be happening near simultaneously, and it's hard to do that without multi-threading becoming multi-tangled.

Hotaru ‘manned’ the weapons console on the bridge of the Nova. She held herself in her own private world, ignoring the tension around her. Her blue eyes stared, reflecting twin images of the TFT screen.

Authorisation ‘Silence Glaive’. Mode. Ground fire support. Switch to high resolution gun-camera mode. Overlay map. Target select. Laser rangefinder. System calculations. Compensate for relative velocity. Adjust for rotation. Adjust for engine coil magnetic effects. Firing solution input. Lock solution.

There was enough ECM going up to make using any sort of radar guided missile an exercise in futility. The Nova had coilguns; bog standard projectile weapons. The good thing about the coilgun was that, once they’d left the barrel, the bullets would only go in the one direction.

While computers could help, ultimately it was solely down to the skill and experience of the gunner to get them on target. Hotaru prided herself on being able to make the money shot. Hotaru prided herself on being able to fill in the blanks that the computers just couldn’t.

Her displays lit up green as the Nova’s targeting computer finally figured itself out, pulling something resembling a proper solution out of all the variables.

“Firing solution locked,” she said, to no-one in particular. She flicked up a translucent molly guard.

The command came back. “Fire!”

That little green button clicked as she pushed it in. Relays latched. Control circuits energised. Turrets tracked targets. Gun barrels adjusted themselves. The Nova had a pair of turrets, each with a pair of coilguns. Each turret tracked it’s own target.

A heartbeat after Hotaru’d pushed the button, the guns fired their first bursts. Moments later, they fell silent, re-aimed themselves, then fired again. Each burst shook the Nova’s frame, the recoil of the guns acting as thrusters.

Hotaru’d compensated for it. It was something that was hard to computerise. It required intuition. It required experience. It required a pilot who knew what she was doing to keep the ship on course.

Tracers lanced out into space.

The guns stopped, finishing their cycle. Hotaru’s panels flashed red. The capacitor banks were empty. Stupid things always took forever to recharge.

“Firing complete,” she reported.

She sounded almost disappointed.

----

Quattro wore a shark’s smirk in her lab, playing her own electronic symphony on her holographic keyboard. A wall of ECM kept the incoming ship from launching missiles. They didn’t even seem to be trying to fight back against it.

She adjusted her glasses. They were properly docked with the clips on the side of her skull, providing full wireless access and her own computer systems. This was her at her strongest, her most powerful, her most undefeatable.

A few keystrokes armed Nehallenia’s missile battery. They were a token effort, enough to discourage a single attacker, but not a full fleet. She might be able to take out the vanguard, but all that’d do was buy her time.

If GJ had any sort of competence, they’d be coming straight to her lab. The elite troops would come in first and hit hardest. Anything following would just be a mop-up.

Quattro cursed as she saw the target appear to discrete, five new contacts appearing under it. Missiles? Working with inhuman speed, she answered back with a hail of chaff and anti-missile countermeasures. She filled the void with shrapnel.

The missiles just dodged around. They weren’t just guided, they weren’t riding radar beams.There was an intelligence in there, anticipating, dodging, re-aiming. AI guided missiles. She smirked to herself, so GJ really did use them. She made a quick estimate of their impact time, before returning fire.

Cathy, still in her prison, could only gape as she saw four green markers move inevitably towards one large red one. The monitor cut out moments later, switching over to a text terminal.

Quattro turned back to her for a second. “I assume your AI friend is on that ship? Don’t worry, you will be joining it soon.”

Cathy did not answer... the Nova was a good ship, and the Stargazer had her own forcefield. Jet and the other Kunstlers were far more agile than anything Quattro had... they would manage to break this insane woman's defenses. They would rescue her... somehow.

She had to hope.

----

Hotaru’s panel lit up. Her stomach screwed itself into a know.

“Track four missiles. Inbound. Impact. Thirty seconds.”

“Confirmed.” Desmond said, stonefaced, upper lip properly stiff.

Mari thought quickly. “Corkscrew Port!”

A jerk hit the bridge as the Nova was suddenly thrown into a spiral rotation, inertial dampers overwhelmed. The ships’ structure creaked and groaned with the strain, threatening to tear itself apart. Strain gauges threw up warning lights as they went out of limits. Gunshot bangs rang through the frame as old welds gave way.

Mari was pinned painfully against her hardness, straps crushing into her body as g-forces tried to force her stomach out her mouth. Hotaru held on for dear life to a pair of worn grab-handles mounted to her panel, hair only held down by virtue of Brylcreem.

Desmond stood firm, the projection completely unaffected by the G-force until his projector began to buckle on its mountings.

Anything loose was thrown about the ship. Bedding, toys and books along with a mass of cutlery, food remains, a surprised mouse and some panelling that’d come loose where tossed around like lose change in a running washing machine, rattling and pattering and crashing against each other and the hull.

Linda was pinned against the ceiling of the battery compartment. In the engine room Andy Maion clung on to hand-holds, pressing himself against a sealed electrical panel. In the cargo-bay, the Stargazer lifted against its tie-downs. Cortana wondered about who was flying.

Carrie at the controls grunted and hung on, trusting the old Boskone rustbucket to hold itself together.

“Missiles still tracking. Ten seconds,” Hotaru called out.

“Collision!” Mari barked.

Linda braced herself with one hand, keying open the ships intercom. “Brace, Brace, Brace!”. Alarms began to chime throughout the ship. Pressure doors locked themselves shut.

“Reverse your turn,” Mari ordered. “Deploy countermeasures!”

Carrie hauled the Nova over, pulling the nose straight up. The forces on her body inverted, driving her down into the chair. Everything that’d taken flight during the dive crashed to the deck. It sounded like a car crash. Hotaru stabbed at a button on her panel.

Covers blew off the belly of the Nova, revealing packed rows of cartridges.They burst, filling the space behind the ship with a cloud of metallic foil, burning flares and radio signal generators. The hope was that it’d be good enough to confuse the missiles tracking systems while the Nova changed course.

Now, there was nothing left to do but hang on and hope that it’d be enough. Count the seconds. Count the heartbeats. Whisper a prayer. Hang on. Just keep hanging on. Glance at the screen. Estimate three seconds to impact. Hold your breath.

Two seconds. The longest two seconds imaginable.

One second. Maybe the last of a lifetime.

The first missile met the cloud of countermeasures. It burst into a hail of razor-sharp confetti. The second, followed suit. The third missile had its motor knocked out by a stray shard of shrapnel. It spiralled off into the black trailing smoke.

The fourth missile streaked straight on through the cloud of expanding debris, zeroing in on the plume blazing out of the Nova’s starboard engine nacelle.

Hotaru didn’t even get the chance to shout out “Missile inbound!” before it hit.

----

There were five of them, armed with an assortment of shotguns, stun-guns and handguns. They’d managed to set themselves up something of a barricade in a corridor somewhere between the residential area and the restricted section. It was made up of little more than crates loaded with food, a pair of old bulkhead doors and some bedding. It’d still stop bullets.

Edward inspected his work, brushing his hands together. “Well, nobody’s ain’t getting through that without a fight.”

“Why are we doing this?” Laura wondered, nervously rubbing her hands together. “These people are pro’s.”

“They’ll take us to prison,” Ebony said, babbling fearfully, clutching some old Makarov to her chest as if it was a shield. “I don’t want to go to Azkhaban, there’re real Zwilniks there,”

Himei was still giddy. The Remington she had was her first gun. It was her first real gun. Finger
on the trigger, ready to shoot at the first thing that came around the corner up ahead. Her whole body was just shaking, fear and adrenaline sparking and surging inside her.

Edward crouched down behind the barricade, making a point of keeping the barrel of his shotgun aimed away from the others.“Five of us from cover, I reckon that’ll make something of a defense. We can hold them up, make them cut a deal.”

Cob was quiet. Ebony was right. Going to Azkhaban with real criminals just wasn’t an option. They weren’t criminals, they were just.... well.... they were just idiots. Panicked, desperate idiots. Run to the launchbay, they’d be killed as soon as the doors were blown. Stay on the station, go to prison. Then die in prison or worse. Going to prison was bad. A cold place where no sun shines.

Maybe if they fought back, they might be able to negotiate something. This was their station after all. Cob checked his taser. Yeah... that might work.

----

Quattro switched the base defenses over to automatic. She herself didn’t even bother following the missiles once they were outbound, not especially caring whether they actually hit or not. It didn’t matter to her.

So long as it bought her more time. So long as the catgirl didn’t see them successfully evade.

If she was lucky, she’d blown it out of the sky. If not - most likely not - she’d still bought herself another few minutes while it circled around and came back for another pass to make a landing.

She did the maths in her mind. It worked out. Quattro rigged the system to write garbage over the disks first, overwriting files with random data..

Second, she set the encryption software to erase its own keys when the system powered down. What would be left on the disks would be little more than a chaotic smudge of bytes.

A high-powered AI might be able to crack it, eventually. What they’d get when they were done, would be a few minutes worth of output from a real random number source. They’d have wasted all that time with the decryption, to get nothing.

Well not nothing, she reminded herself bitterly, but even the good data that’d been stolen by that pest would be suspect thanks to the garbage she’d fed it.

It was much more satisfying to make them work for their failure, wasn’t it? She spared a half-second to check up on the attacking ship, getting no surprises, before dealing with the final piece of evidence standing in the Cat’s Cradle, whimpering.

The thought did occur to her to just shoot the thing, but a dead catgirl wouldn’t hold anyone up. It’d just be a body to be cleared up later. A live blank would have to be dealt with; it would have to be cared for. A live blank wouldn’t obviously be blank for quite some time.

She couldn’t destroy her systems until after she’d finished with the thing, but it’d take her five minutes to wipe it. It’d cost the enemy twice as long trying to deal with it. Spend five minutes she was sure she hand now to earn five extra minutes she would need later; it sounded like a bargain.

She turned around for the last time, “Well it’s been fun, but it’s time for you to go.” Her expression morphed into a mockery of glee, “Goodbye!”

She didn’t get the chance to start the sequence. With a metallic bang, the laboratory door slammed open, rebounding against the wall. Quattro spun on her heels to face the open door, drawing her stun-gun.

----

Naoko Sato pulled her car door shut behind her, while simultaneously starting the engine with her other hand. There had been no time to pack. Just run....

The engine stuttered to life. She slammed the fencar into gear. The gearbox started to whine as the magnetic generators came on line and she felt that a momentary wave of dizziness come over her as the car’s gravitational field established itself. The cabin switched over to internal life support with a thunk and a gaseous hiss, while the intruments did their usual disco-dance.

Time to run... again. It was a bitter reminder of how she felt that day when that bitch took everything from her.

It rose slowly up off the launchpad for a few moments as she tickled the throttle. The bay doors started to open. The atmosphere rushed out, punching them both clear off their hinges.

Fuck this world and everyone in it. They always take what I have.

Riding that thought, Naoko stomped on the gas and shot out into the void.

----

Jet was forging her way through through the rain of metal and fire. Shrapnel pattered off her armour as she jinked round a point defense missile that got a little too close for comfort. Jet just cursed and pushed on.

She saw four missiles shoot by, aimed at the Nova. The Nova’s own shots would hit any second now. One, two, three, four all five of them were chasing the projectiles in.

Five sets of explosions blossomed across the surface of the base, blowing holes in it’s structure. Atmosphere burst out, sending gouts of freezing mist into space, carrying twinkling shards of debris. Moments later, the base lights flickered and died. The rain of shrapnel ceased.

“Engel flight. Remember your objectives,” she broadcast.

Four acknowledgements came back, clear and crisp despite the electronic wall being thrown up by the stations.

“Proceed to targets,” she ordered.

They broke formation, taking individual paths down towards the base. Jet dove down towards a smoking hole, the point on the surface nearest to Quattros lab.

Jet caught a glimpse of a lemon yellow fencar shooting off away into the dark. She tracked it for a moment. It matched descriptions of Satos fencar. Jet swore privately. Sato was running free.

But fuck her. She wasn’t the main target here, not by a long shot. So long as Quattro wasn’t in that thing with her, the mission was still on.

So long as Quattro didn’t escape.

Jet tried once to hail the Nova, then a second time. There was no response.

Jet tried not to wonder what had happened to them, but couldn’t help but recall those missiles. Even one of them in the wrong place would be enough to turn the Nova into a puffball of expanding debris. Jet looked back, taking a moment to scan for the ship. She didn’t see her. She didn’t see a cloud of debris either. That was a mild relief.

She landed hard on the surface of the asteroid, kicking up a hail of regolith. There were scattered craters around her feet, where a few stray shots had ripped up the rock, leading straight up to a gaping hole in the wall. Beyond, was a corridor filled with debris, lit only by the dim orange glow of battery backed emergency lights.

The cyborg ran inside.

----

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--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

[Star Ranger4]

hrrrm. I'll need to take an addtional pass at this, but at the moment all I'm seeing are poor word choices that you need a human to pick up, the to, two, too sorta thing that will be the real breakthough in AI when they can pull it off without 'wave
Hear that thunder rolling till it seems to split the sky?
That's every ship in Grayson's Navy taking up the cry-
NO QUARTER!!!
-- "No Quarter", by Echo's Children

[Dartz]

Yeah. Caught a few of them. Went back over it and made some pretty significant changes. It's better than it was, but I'm still not certain about the order of things, expanding a lot of things. I'm forging into uncharted territory, and I'm still figuring out how to do things like this. Like I said, I normally don't write this style of story, and bringing all the threads together in Quattro's lab without tangling them up is harder than I thought it'd be.

Surprised at how close Quattro came to winning outright, actually. Now that I think about it, if she hadn't bothered to actively erase Copy-Cathy, and just shot her, Quattro would've gotten out in time.
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--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

[robkelk]

True, but that isn't her modus operandi. You've already established that she's smarter than is good for her - just shooting Vivio would have been out-of-character for her.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Dartz]

Right, Hubris. As long as it fits her personality, and isn't a grasping of the idiot ball. Meanwhile, Nova gets hit.

The final missile’s proximity detonator triggered.

A cloud of high speed shrapnel burst out, scything through the starboard engine pod and heatshield. Metal shards slashed through current carrying coils, instantly melting as Megaamps began to arc through them. Blue electric fire burned at temperatures hotter than the surface of the sun, melting the coils before blowing the conductive metal apart and contorting it through magnetic tangles.

In the engine room, Andy had just enough time to feel the impact before the circuit breakers snapped open with a bang, opening the circuit and blowing out the arc in the breaker with a blast of nitrogen gas.

It was all over inside a quarter of a second, before the force of the blast had even begun to throw the Nova into a spin. White hot gas spewed out of the smashed engine.

On the bridge, Hotaru was near thrown from her seat by the force of the impact, saved only by a too slack harness which crunched at her shoulder. She cried out in pain as alarms started to ring out across the bridge, panels switching to a dangerous read.

“The starboard nacelle has sustained a direct impact. We are venting drive plasma,” Desmond announced.

His steady voice was lost amongst the din of alarms and warnings.

“Shut down port! Shut down port!” Mari was yelling.

Carrie had leant right over, hauling all the control yoke, jamming the rudder pedals in as far as they could possibly go. With the starboard engine giving little or no thrust, and the port still running effectively at full throttle, the Nova wanted nothing more than to snap around in a wild spin.

“Got it, got it,” she grunted back through gritted teeth. “I can hold it,”

She reached over and pulled the engine throttle right back to the neutral position. The Nova snapped over, being pushed now by her own maneuvering thrusters.

“Hold it!” Mari barked.

“Don’t fight me. Don’t fight me,” Carrie snapped back at her.

“Starboard thrust, null it, null it out,”

Maneuvering jets machinegunned, shaking the ship’s frame. She bucked and rolled and creaked and groaned, threatening to just burst apart. Desmond was calling out something about attitude control and gimbal lock. Instruments on the pilots panels pegged themselves in the danger zones.

Miranda was trying to focus on the information coming through her earpiece, voices calling out damage and injury reports.

“I’ve got injuries all over the ship!”

The ship lurched once more as a damaged fuel tank burst open, spewing fuel gas like an extra thruster. Hotaru was thrown over, her skull making contact with a handrail. There was a red flash and she was gone, knocked clean unconscious by the cracking blow to her temple. That was all she knew of what happened to her.

Carrie hung on to the yoke. “We’re starting to roll. We’re rolling over right,”

Mari hung on to her panel. “Pitch and Roll! We’re pitching up. ’ll kill pitch. Kill the roll.”

The pair fought with the controls, thrusters firing. In the bay, Cortana’s straps snapped and lashed, denting the hull. The Stargazer slid forward, crashing into the shuttlebay doors before sliding back against the internal bulkhead, smashing equipment lockers and permanently severing her own connections to the Nova’s systems. Luka in the computer room hit the server racks, before being pelted with a shower of datapads and paper manuals.

The ship kicked back, welds popping under the damaged wing, panels blowing off the heatshield exposing the wing structure underneath. Debris, superheated engine parts and gas-ice spewed out behind the spacecraft.

Linda was thrown first against the ceiling, then down on top of the batteries’ cover, then back up again. There was a crunch of shattering bone and a scream of agony.

Carrie struggled with the yoke, “I’ve got her. I’ve got her.”

Focus on the HUD. Focus on the gyros. Focus on the instruments and not on what her inner ear was telling her. She could feel herself being flung around like loose change in a washing machine. Tumbling, spiral, bouncing. The stars out the windows were a whirl of light.

Mari was yelling “Fire you pigs,”

A thruster cluster had malfunctioned.

After a full minute of fighting, the ship came back under control, returning to steady flight. After the wildness of the last sixty seconds, it seemed positively strange to be moving steadily forward. Alarms were still sounding off; they began to die away slowly as they pushed buttons to finally acknowledge them.

“Main Bus B undervolt. Main Bus A undervolt. Starboard Three breaker trip. Starboard Two breaker trip,” Carrie read out. “Port hot shutdown. Thruster pack two fuel warning. Starboard fuel low pressure...” she paused. “Might be easier to get a list of things that are still working,”

Mari turned back, “Hotaru, anything still come....” The rest of that sentence just died in her throat when she saw Hotaru slumped in her harness, blood matting the hair on the right side of her head. “Miranda, get the medkit! Fuck!”

She brushed the sweat off her face using the cuff of her uniform, before fumbling with the catch on her belt. “And tell me where the hell we’ve ended up out here. I don’t want to survive the missile hit before flying up shit creek without a thruster.”

“I still have a fix on Nehallenia, the sun and our marker stars.” Desmond announced. “We’re passed the asteroid,”

Miranda fumbled with her belt straps, stumbling over the deckplates. The medkit was mounted beside an overhead porthole, strapped to the roof. It was enough for basic injuries. Right. Airway, breathing, circulation.... Hotaru seemed to be sitting up right. Airway clear. Breathing very shallow. Pulse was there, but barely.

“Dear sweet Serenity,” she breathed.

Her pupils were fully dilated. Nothing happened when she shone a light in them. Clear fluid trickled out of her ear, mingling with the blood. Thick, red blood pulsing out of the side of her head. Blood was smeared on the handrail where her skull had cracked against it.

“it’s a head injury,” she called back. “Bad one. Oh holy.... oh... It’s ….. “ Her tongue just tied itself into knots. It was obviously lethal, it was obviously going to be lethal very soon. Her skull had buckled in.

“Wave injector.” Mari ordered. “Now! Before she’s too far gone!”

----

Just think, if the Nova'd been more solidly put together it might've blown apart with the stress rather than just buckling and shifting and warping.
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--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

[Star Ranger4]

After the promised re read of the previous installment as well as this segment, the only thing that sticks out to me is during the Nova POV.

Hotaru didn’t even get the chance to shout out “Missile inbound!” before it hit

As the primary gunner, this wouldnt really be her job anyway, nor would there be any reason for her to NEED to report this. Nova is already QUITE aware they are under attack. They just fired off their full compliment of countermeasures, after all. IF there was anything that Hotaru should have been considering reporting aloud it would have been more along the lines of "LEAKER", that being the term normally used for missiles that have gotten past the anti missile defenses. Not that it would matter since the crew should already be bracing for a hit after the "Brace, brace brace" command already given.

Mari hung on to her panel. “Pitch and Roll! We’re pitching up. ’ll kill pitch. Kill the roll.”

possible editorial error here. would read better as "I'll kill the pitch, you kill the roll"

“I still have a fix on Nehallenia, the sun and our marker stars.” Desmond announced. “We’re passed the asteroid,”

Past, or "on the far side"

I'd make a horrible joke comparing Hotaru to Kenny from South Park, but...
Hear that thunder rolling till it seems to split the sky?
That's every ship in Grayson's Navy taking up the cry-
NO QUARTER!!!
-- "No Quarter", by Echo's Children

[Dartz]

Fixed 'em, thanks. And Linda was supposed to be in the battery compartment, not on comms. Taking bets on Hotaru's mod. Or will we take the David Weber approach?
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--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

[Black Aeronaut]

A girl named Hotaru, who is a Senshi, is about to cheat death. I would think that the wave would go and run with the whole Sailor Saturn motif. Think about it - it even comes with it's own quirks: she can lay waste to the biggest bad out there... but then she'll have to relive her childhood and adolescence. Ouch.

In fact, just for kicks, we can even say that she gets regressed to being a toddler here because she had to self-heal from a fatal injury. The fun part about this: by the time Mayonaka enters the picture the two should be close enough in age to be great playmates/foster-sisters/what-have-you. That and they can share a mutual understanding of both being older than what they are biologically. Although it'll be Hotaru that'll have to go through adolescence for the second time while it's Mayonaka's first time.

"So what's this PMS stuff I've heard about?"

"You're worst nightmare, Mayo."

[Dartz]

Snrk. I like that, though such a massive change in size/density/mass... all that's got to go somewhere.

Hmmm.... I like the regression idea. Hotaru regresses while healing up injuries, her body spending 'age' to undo damage, before recovering over the next few weeks or so. She's got pretty strong homeostasis, able to heal near everything within minutes, but the more severe the injury, the further it regresses her apparent age. She recovers healing power as she gets older, gaining a few months a day. Can be fun when Mayo first meets her as a toddler, then a few weeks later doesn't recognise her as an adult. Then a toddler again.

Adolescence kinda gets boring after the fifth time.
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--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

[Black Aeronaut]

Oh, you know this has gotta crop up somewhere...

"... Let me guess. Last raid didn't go according to plan?"

"Fucking micrometeorites. I swear in Her Name the universe has it out for me."
As for the mass, that's easy.  It gets converted into raw energy to fuel the regeneration.  Rejuvenating all the remaining cells in her body to that degree is gonna take a lotta juice.

To be fair to her, we can let her power react in proportion to the severity of the injury. Scrapes and scuffs won't trigger it while bruised or broken ribs will. Also, if you want her to stick around for a LONG time, we can make it so that she'll age until she's biologically in her mid-twenties... and then stays there as her healing power maintains equilibrium with the natural process of aging. Until she hurts herself again.

Should she be able to regenerate missing limbs? I figure the 'Highlander' style of immortality would work (just about anything lethal she'll bounce back from, but sever the head and she's done).

[Dartz]

Yeah, highlander-style would work. Though lost limbs probably earn an even bigger regression as he body has to regenerate all that mass. It probably looks just a little icky. Hitting an age-uquilibrium around 24, she becomes one of Fenspace' long-termers.

Though, with the wave around, you can never be too sure about decapitation. No shit, there I was, I heard this story from one of the guys involved. A Belter community got raided in 2013, and one of these guys, Eddie, got his head taken clean off by a piece of shrapnel. Thinking quick and desperate, his mates chucked the head into a bucket of wave. Eddie lived. As a head. Just a head.

Now his mates did the best they could to give him as normal a life as possible, but unfortunately, there's only so many things a head can do. So eventually, for his birthday they scratch up the cash to buy him a fully prosthetic body. the parties up and running, Eddie's having as good a time it's possible to have as a head, and you'd be surprised what a head can do, generally making the best of a bad situation, when his mates announce that, have they ever got the greatest surprise present imaginable.

Eddie says, "Not another fucking hat!"
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

[robkelk]

Snrk. I like that, though such a massive change in size/density/mass... all that's got to go somewhere.

From the precedent set when The Jason biomodded, there's going to be a big puddle of muscle, fat, skin, and bone on the floor when she wakes up.

Hmmm.... I like the regression idea. Hotaru regresses while healing up injuries, her body spending 'age' to undo damage, before recovering over the next few weeks or so. She's got pretty strong homeostasis, able to heal near everything within minutes, but the more severe the injury, the further it regresses her apparent age. She recovers healing power as she gets older, gaining a few months a day. Can be fun when Mayo first meets her as a toddler, then a few weeks later doesn't recognise her as an adult. Then a toddler again.

Adolescence kinda gets boring after the fifth time.

You are going to give Hotaru her own FenWiki page, right?

(Hmmmmm... the same people who call AC Peters "Sailor Mars" will call Hotaru "Sailor Saturn", of course...)

(Alas, Sailor Saturn is one of the two Senshi that I don't have a face morph for - yet - so the illustration will be a while coming.)

Oh, you know this has gotta crop up somewhere...
"... Let me guess. Last raid didn't go according to plan?"
"Fucking micrometeorites. I swear in Her Name the universe has it out for me."

"That's what you get for putting yourself into the Deep Black between Uranus and Neptune, Hotaru. The perversity of the inanimate is nothing compared to handwavium and narrative causality..."
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Star Ranger4]

Snrk. I like that, though such a massive change in size/density/mass... all that's got to go somewhere.

From the precedent set when The Jason biomodded, there's going to be a big puddle of muscle, fat, skin, and bone on the floor when she wakes up.

Hmmm.... I like the regression idea. Hotaru regresses while healing up injuries, her body spending 'age' to undo damage, before recovering over the next few weeks or so. She's got pretty strong homeostasis, able to heal near everything within minutes, but the more severe the injury, the further it regresses her apparent age. She recovers healing power as she gets older, gaining a few months a day. Can be fun when Mayo first meets her as a toddler, then a few weeks later doesn't recognise her as an adult. Then a toddler again.

Adolescence kinda gets boring after the fifth time.

You are going to give Hotaru her own FenWiki page, right?

(Hmmmmm... the same people who call AC Peters "Sailor Mars" will call Hotaru "Sailor Saturn", of course...)

(Alas, Sailor Saturn is one of the two Senshi that I don't have a face morph for - yet - so the illustration will be a while coming.)

Oh, you know this has gotta crop up somewhere...
"... Let me guess. Last raid didn't go according to plan?"
"Fucking micrometeorites. I swear in Her Name the universe has it out for me."

"That's what you get for putting yourself into the Deep Black between Uranus and Neptune, Hotaru. The perversity of the inanimate is nothing compared to handwavium and narrative causality..."

Weapon Authorization "Silence Glaive"??  They're ALREADY calling her Sailor Saturn.  Which makes what happens with the wave here even more apprapropriate especially if we go with the "biomodding canabilizes other parts for inital regen causing her to de-age" model  (and hence the Kenny jokes)
Hear that thunder rolling till it seems to split the sky?
That's every ship in Grayson's Navy taking up the cry-
NO QUARTER!!!
-- "No Quarter", by Echo's Children

[Dartz]

Oh yeah, it started as a sort of teasing joke among the Nova's crew, which is always in the back of her mind, which goes in to fuel the subconscious triggers that go into making the mod happen.
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--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

[Dartz]

You are going to give Hotaru her own FenWiki page, right?

Done!.... even if I never intended her to be more than a red-fuku to crank up the tension. Listed her as an Open Character, so the collective can be about furthering her career with the Sammies afterwards.
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--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

[HRogge]

Longer delay and longer piece of text. We started to change the order of unposted scenes and had to fill in gaps.

Like all doors on Nehalennia, since the computer system had crashed, the lab door had fail-safed to unlocked. It kept people being trapped by system failures and power outages. Ford readied her gun, chambering a round, then clicking the safety off.

She planned to go in ready to shoot.

Cathy didn’t need to be told to get the door, she had trained. Kick it open, get out of the way. Let Ford shoot first, disable Quattro fast. Whatever happened, Quattro had to go down, and down quickly.

Cathy knew from personal experience just how scary-fast that madgirl could be. She had to be some sort of biomod.

“Be careful,” she whispered.

Fords gaze was firm. “I have an idea.”

Cathy nodded to Ford. ‘Ready?’

Ford looked back and grinned. ‘Of course’.

Neither of them said a word. It was communication at a glance. Ford held her pistol at the ready, Cathy brought her foot round in a broad arc, making contact with the door.

It burst open.

----

How the hell did they get here so fast?

That thought sparked through Quattros mind in an instant as she whirled around to face the unknown intruder, drawing her stun-gun with her free hand. There’s should’ve been at least ten minutes left before anyone made it down this far.

In a fraction of a second she saw Cally and that catgirl Teela. Stupid Naoko. Well, they didn’t have long to live, did they? Another moment, and her body would’ve caught up with her mind.

Teela spilled in, ducking low and out of Cally's way. Quattro stared right at the courier, staring right back at her with her pistol already aimed, ready to shoot. The copy in the cradle was just beginning to catch up with what was going on. The copy started to scream.

Faster than any human would ever be able to, she brought her stun-gun to bare on Cally.

Callys pistol fired first.

It can’t possible kill me, Quattro thought, taking reassurance in her design specs. It was only a nine-millimetre.

----

Trapped in her prison, Cathy... copy Cathy... saw it all. She saw the door burst open hard enough to hit the wall with a metallic clang, before spring back to a half-closed position. She saw herself come rushing through the door, Ford chasing behind with pistol drawn.

Cathy screamed, There wasn’t anything else she could do. She wanted to yell out a warning, to let them know that Quattro wasn’t just a madgirl but something far more sinister. She wanted to help. She wanted to break free and go for that smug bitches through with claws and teeth.

But there she was. There she was, looking right at herself, running through the door. It couldn’t be anything else. It couldn’t be a trick. It couldn’t be anything but reality.

It took Ford a moment to get a bead on Quattro. It took Quattro a moment to draw her stunner, and spin round to face Ford.

She saw the gunshot, a sharp flash following a hard crack. She saw the stunner kick out of that bitches hand.

Cathy.... copy Cathy... started to sob.

----

It hit her in the hand.

Quattro felt the bullet bite through her fingers before bursting apart on the metal underneath. Reflexively, she snapped her hand back from the shock of it. An instant later, she tried to grasp at the stun gun, tried to pump the trigger.

The gun was falling. She grasped at it, but nothing happened. No touch, no feedback, just a sudden warning that three of her fingers were now missing.

A moment after that, the pain hit.

Quattro yelped, and spun around, shielding herself with her silver cape.

----

Ford felt a quick moment of elation as she saw the gun spring from Quattro’s hand. Her aunt Irene would be proud. Shooting a gun out of a persons hand was a myth, but shooting a persons hand almost invariably caused them to drop the gun they were holding.

Shooting off three fingers just made certain of it.

Quattro yelped with the pain, grabbing reflexively at her wounded hand.

Ford expected more blood, frankly. Perplexed for a heartbeat, it took her only a moment to notice the metal shining beneath torn skin. It didn’t take her much longer to start pumping the rest of her magazine into Quattros body.

A moment later, her mind caught up with the decision. If Quattro was a cyber like Jet... this was going to go bad real quick. Quattro had to go down fast.

----

Cathy had one advantage over Ford; she’d been in the lab before. It’d been dark, but the place still had a ghoulish familiarity to it. Shapes which had been little more than shadows were clearly visible, and no less incomprehensible. That catgirl, Vivio, was staring at her like she’d seen a ghost, in the middle of having a panic attack.

The door hammered against the wall, Cathy catching it as she slipped past it. The only thought running through her mind was to get out of Ford’s line of fire fast. Keep out of Ford’s line of fire.

Fords shot slapped painfully in her ear, but she forced herself to ignore it. Every moment of wasted time could be deadly. She pushed in. Get into the room.

She saw an opened crate which would make good cover and threw herself behind it. A stun-gun skittered against the wall nearby and she grabbed for it, taking it for herself. She hunkered down, scanning the room.

The catgirl in the tube was screaming at her. Ford pumped round after round into Quattro’s body, forcing Cathy to cover hear ears. Gunshots drilled through her eardrums. Quattro seemed to curl up under her cape, sparks splashing off the silver material.

More shooting didn’t seem to useful at the moment. Cathy decided to make a run for the catgirl.

----

It took Ford only a few moments to realise her shots weren’t having an effect. She still emptied near half a magazine into that cape before realising it was far more than just bullet resistant.

“Give it up!” she yelled. It was half a bluff, but it’d be enough. She still had eight rounds left.

The madgirl sneered at her from beneath her cape, before slowly slipping out. Golden eyes stared straight through her. There was something deeply unsettling about that gaze.

“Hands behind your head.” Ford ordered, “Nice and slow. Clasp them together.”

The madgirl was still staring contemptuously at her. Ford stiffened her stance, keeping her sights lined up at a point just above the bridge of Quattro’s nose. Her finger was tense on the trigger. She was ready to shoot.

Fluids trickled from Quattro’s broken fingers, forming pinkish rivulets snaking down her arm. Bare metal was exposed, beneath an obvious shroud of synthetic flesh. A cyber? An AI?

Quattro’s eyes flickered for a moment, and the madgirl smirked at her.

“You two are all alone here, and I shot your rescue party down. There’s no help coming.”

“Bullshit,” Ford spat back. “That’s why the whole base looks like an anthill that’s been knocked over, right?”

“They’re cowards.” Quattro assured her. “Nothing more. Human’s are such weak and pathetic little creatures like ants. No matter how many you kill, more will just keep being born. If you were going to shoot me dead, you would’ve done it by now,”

Ford snarled. “What makes you so sure I won’t?”

“You’re not a murderer, even though you tried to kill me. You’re not one of the five OF-8 troubleshooters, so you likely don’t have authorisation. In fact, I don’t think you’re even Great Justice... or you would’ve announced yourself. You’re something else....hmmm?”

Ford tried to keep stonefaced.

“If I was to guess, I’d say a bounty hunter. Which means, if you shoot me dead, you’re the one who goes to prison.” Quattro giggled, “Because, as you can see, I’m unarmed, and I don’t have a bounty on my head,”

Ford glared. “Cathy,” she called out. “You’d say it was self-defence, right?”

The catgirl looked back from the tube door with a smirk, “Of course.”

“Well,” said Ford. “That settles that. So, you’re going to stay right where you are, and when I tell you to, you’re going to walk with us. And if you make so much as a twitch in the wrong direction, I will shoot you down like a dog,”

Quattro gave no answer.

A distant rumble of thunder rocked the station. A moment later, the lights flickered once, then went out. Darkness fell, broken only by stray lights coming off the surrounding hardware. It took Ford a moment to realise she couldn’t see a damned thing.

The next thing she was aware of, was a brick wall smashing into her cyber arm, before she was thrown hard enough against the wall to knock the wind clean out of her.

-----

Cathy was busy with the door when the lights went out, stabbing at the plastic tape with a knife in the hopes it’d come loose. Vivio inside was banging on the plastic, claws gouging into it. It was a crazed maze of shallow scratches already.

What the hell was this stuff?

When the lights went out, it took her eyes only a moment to adjust. She heard Ford hit the wall with a heavy ‘oof’.

Have to free you later, Vivio. She spun round, readying her PPK. She scanned for Quattro.... a hunched shape loomed out of the gloom towards her. Instinctively, she fired once with a bang and a flash, dodging out of it’s way at the same time..

Something thumped her hard in the side, hard enough to sent a shock of pain run across her ribs, and she stumbled to the side. Panting with the pain, she stepped back.

“You can’t get away,” Quattro teased. “And I don’t have time to play nice!”

Quattro lunged again. Cathy was amazed at how it felt to just side-step and trip her up. Thank god for all this exhausting hours at Venus.

The battery backed emergency lights kicked in a moment later.

Copied Cathy watch the fight. She saw Quattro stumble hard against the wall, before recovering with a vicious snarl. She looked strong enough to rip a person’s arms clean off their body, but there was no control. Just brute, untrained force and speed.

Cathy rolled out of the way of the third attack. The catgirl found herself willing herself to stay ahead of that bitch. She didn’t want to watch herself die.

Ford slowly hauled herself back to her feet, swearing as something fell off her arm. The metal glinted in the light. A few artificial warnings intruded on her mind, letting her know just how bad the damage was. A blow like that to her other arm would’ve broken it.

The fingers of her real hand still clasped tightly around the grip of her pistol.

“I still have the gun!” she yelled.

“I’m going to kill you both,” Quattro promised. “I don’t have time to do this cleanly,”

Quattro lunged at Ford. Ford shot her again. The madgirl stumbled a little, catching the bullet somewhere in her chest. Quattro swung wild with her arm, trying to take the bounty hunter’s head from her shoulders.

Ford had little trouble dodging.

“She’s crap!” Cathy called over. “All strength. No training.”

But still bloody dangerous if she connected with anything.

“I’ll show you!” the madgirl screamed.

She was built by Agatha Clay. She was built to beat the best. Beyond human reaction. Beyond human intelligence. Beyond human strength and speed. She was the best. Better than all of this vermin.

Cathy sprang back out of the way, landing delicately.

Ford shot Quattro again. grazing the back of her leg. It did little more than rip open more of the artificial flesh. Quattro stumbled, before catching herself. It bit like a mite.

“Give up, you cannot win this” Ford yelled.

Quattro ran between both Ford and Cathy. Maybe they’d shoot themselves.

Ford held her fire. No use risking it. Cathy put another round into the madgirls back with the PPK.

----

Jet ran like hell through the corridors of Nehallennia. She ran faster than any human, flat linear electric actuators powering her along at speeds an athlete might only be able to dream off. Jet ran so hard, her feet were cracking the floor, throwing up spalling shards of rock.

Her footsteps made a sound like a rapid-fire hammer beating on solid steel, ringing off the walls

A pair of IR camera’s mounted to her helmet allowed her to see near perfectly, despite the gloom. Cybernetic hardware merged both digital image, Jets natural vision and a computer generated HUD into one image.

Patterns of hot and cold light revealed hidden details behind walls and underneath floor; details which washed through Jets mind, quickly acknowledged and unconsciously filled away.

The information flow through her mind was well beyond what was possible for a human being. It was still nothing compared to a full-speed tunnel run at rush-hour. She was rigged for speed. Reactions designed for Mach 1 flight, and honed dodging trucks and buildings at Mach One allowed Jet to move faster than any security system could keep up.

The trick to taking right turns fast was to not slow down. That wasted time braking, then getting back up to speed. Instead, Jet launched herself towards the wall at the last second, aiming for what she could see was a strong point in the wall.

Hitting with her foot, she sprang back off it with a flash of her engines and a spray of rubble, shooting forward down the next corridor, barely losing speed. The technique was jokingly referred to as ‘Gran Turismo’.

She met a zwilnik running in a wild panic, lost and crying out for her friends. Unnarmed, no threat. Jet had gone past her before she even realised Jet was there, blades glinting in the red light. A faceless, armoured death tearing passed her riding a was-and-steel-smelling draft.

The zwilnik fainted when she realised she was unharmed.

A few distant gunshots cackled in the distance, chased by a muffled explosion.

“Engel one, Engel four. Target Gamma secure.” Jash voice crackled in her ear. The metallic rock was playing havok with the comms.

“Four, One, acknowledged,” she barked back.

Jet wasn’t panting. Jet wasn’t even breathing. Life support systems were running on direct injection to meet the demand of her biological parts. Her power cells were pushing out maximum power.

Hardware generated estimates put her as less than a minute away from Quattros lab. The exact instantaneous figure was 56.5345 seconds. This was Jet going full bore.

She came to a T-junction. Her route map told her she had to make the turn-off. Ambush, her instincts warned, fractions of a second before she committed. No going around. No slowing down. Every lost second was a second extra for Quattro to escape.

She hugged the wall, in tight to the turn, before spring across to the far side, aiming for a point which would give her a straight shot down the next corridor. She launched herself into the air, engines spooling up on their starter motors.

She saw the barricade, before those behind the barricade saw her. One, two, three for and five, armed with shotguns and light pistols. She picked each one out in a heartbeat. There was no way through them without fighting them, no avoiding the encounter.

They seemed determined to make a fight of it.

-----

“It’s bulletproof” Ford yelled at her.

Cathy swore. Quattro lunged. Ford dodged out of the way. Just a fraction to slow. She yelped as she was cannonballed into the wall, taking the brunt of the impact on her back. She heard her pistol skitter across the floor.

“I’ve got you... I’ve got you!” Quattro squealed, with a savage grin on her face.

Ford brought her knee up to Quattro’s crotch. It was like hitting an anvil. It hurt like a sunovvabitch. The pain in her shoulders reached a peak as Quattro began to pull... raw, brute cybernetic strength.

“Get off!” Cathy screamed, coming it with a flying kick.

The force sent the pair of them tumbling. Cathy landed on her feet. Quattro kicked out. Cathy didn’t even have time to look before the blow caught her in the stomach. Her eyes seemed to bulge as she crumpled over into herself, flying backwards into a Quattro’s computer terminal.

The displays died in a moment. Cathy’s mind just swam as she braced herself, feeling like she was ready to throw up.

Ford was painting as she got to her feet. Quattro was between both of them. Christ all Friday that madgirl was strong. And she didn’t even seem tired.

Quattro turned to face her, a crack like lightning across the lens of one of her glasses.

How long can we keep this shit up?

----

They heard the footsteps hammering along the corridor.

“That’s not human,” Laura whispered, shrinking down as far as she could go.

Edward shushed her sharply. He crouched down, leaning his weapon on the top of the barricade. “Whatever comes around that corner,” he said. “We start shooting, and don’t stop until it’s dead.”

Ebony couldn’t help but feel he was being optimistic. She was shaking, she was visibly shaking. Her Makarov seemed to rattle in her grip as she aimed it at the corner.

Himei stood planted and firm and tall, Remington held down by her hip. Someone clearly thought they were an action star, and they were action ready.

Laura held an old Sig with armour piercing rounds. Good quality, it had been a gift some time ago. She never expected to be actually using it.

Cobs taser whined as it’s capacitors charged. A waved model, it could probably shoot lightning bolts enough to knock a man clean out unconscious. It was a not-quite-death ray. It was their best chance.

Ebony saw it coming, ricocheting against the far wall shattering the rock, before launching forward riding a turbine scream. Big, white armoured, faceless, with shining blades mounted to its forearms.

It seemed to be diving through the air towards her. It was halfway down the corridor before she even had time to blink and realise the clatter she’d heard was her Makarov hitting the floor.

“Shoot it, Shoot it now!” Edward bellowed.

It jinked out of his line of fire. Edwards gun boomed. Ebony swore she saw the slug spiral through the space the attacker had occupied an instant before.

Himei screamed. She was squeezing the trigger, pumping it with her finger. Nothing was happening. Himei never got the chance to realise she’d left the safety on.

Laura’s mind just locked up.

Cob screamed wordlessly as he fired of his taser. Two wires sprang out, lightning crackling and arcing between both bare cables. They skittered uselessly off a wall and missed.

Ebony hit the ground screaming, screwing her eyes tightly shut and hoping in the name of hope that whatever this thing was would just leave her alone.

She felt it pass over with a hot blast, chased by a wet crunch that reminded her of the time her younger brother had stood on her pet tarantula. Go away! Go away! she begged. Something hot and sticky sprayed across her body. She thought she heard Himei scream for a moment, before it was cut clean off. Something heavy and hard landed across her back, followed by something wet and soft and distinctly.... meaty.

Then nothing but her own whimpering, and the same hammering footfalls receding into the distance and the smell of a slaughterhouse lingering in the air.

“Idiots” she whimpered to herself. “Idiots,”

She opened her eyes.

What she saw, would linger in her nightmares for years.

----

50.2231 seconds.

Blood streamed off Jets blades as she ran. She ricocheted around another corner, dislodging a slab of steel off of the wall. Four down. One left behind, she’d thrown her gun down. No time to stop. No time to demand surrender. Blasting past, leaving them alive would just have given them a chance to shoot her in the back.

She confirmed with herself, it was justified.

Time was everything. Quattro was everything. Ford was everything. This mission was getting within a hairs breath of being a total bust. And where was Ford?

“One, Three,” Lenneth called over the comm, “Target Beta secure. No sign of Vidkun,”

“Three, One. Copy,” Jet responded. “If you can get control back, send our message,”

“One, Three, Wilco.”

Jet kept running.

[Dartz]

No. Jet is not intentionally making the quote. It will be remarked upon as things wrap up....

----

The injector was an oversized syringe filled with the traditional Green Goo. It was big, burly and almost comedic. It was designed to go right through the breastbone and into the heart. Miranda swallowed a sick lump, her guts still churning.

First, rip open Hotaru’s uniform, exposing her chest. She pressed the auto-injector against her flesh, positioning it right over her heart. Hotaru’s breathing was slow and shallow, she’d be dead within minutes.

Miranda put her full weight into it. Her hands were shaking, her palms slick with sweat. She swore as the syring slipped, popping up into the air. She grabbed at it, and sent it flying. It cracked off the panel before ricocheting back onto the deck.

“Dammit, dammit,”

Her own clumsiness would kill Hotaru far better than any head injury. She groped around the cockpit floor, finding it after what felt like an eternity of fumbling.

“What the hell you doing?” Mari snapped back at her. “Inject her now!”

“I.... I dropped it.” she answered back, stuttering. “I’ve got... I’ve got it now,”

I’ve never done this before, she didn’t say. She pressed the injector against Hotaru’s bare chest. The first button made it clamp down. It made her sick to feel it bite hard into the woman’s flesh. Hotaru’s body didn’t even flinch.

The second button punched the needle through into her body with a thump and a crack. Hotaru juddered, a tremble running through her limbs as the green stuff filled her body. Miranda swore she could see it darkening the veins across her chest already. Think happy thoughts.

“Done!” she announced, looking back towards the Captain.

“Good,” Mari said. “Now, get me a damage report. How bad are we hurt?”

Miranda’s mind was still spinning out of control while she pulled herself back over to the comm’s panel.

Below, in the engine room, both turbines were still spooling down to match the dropped demand. The acrid smell of seared plastics filled the compartment, insulation on some low voltage wiring having charred thanks to an arc somewhere in one of the panels.

Linda was flat on her back on the deck, panting. Her breathing was sharp and hard, a shudder of pain running through her body with each breath. She grimaced, biting down hard. Every breath was stabbing her in the chest.

She still remembered something hitting her like the kick of a cyborg... and then nothing. But she was breathing now. At least the pain meant she was alive. It was a good thought.

“How long?” she managed to get out.

“Dunno,” Andy barked back. “Hotaru’s been hurt on the bridge, she gets priority.”

It would have to be bad to take priority over Linda. The panel beside him crackled and fizzed, one of the wires having been knocked loose.

“How...” it cracked. “Can y... ...ve propulsi..?”

Andy decided not to bother with the thing. He opened the hatch and yelled up to the bridge. “Five minutes.”

“We don’t have that long!” Mari shouted back down to him.

“I don’t know what’s out on that wing. I still have to figure out what breakers tripped and why. If I reclose at full power on a damaged powerline with a fuel leak, we’ll lose the entire wing.”

“Get it back, as soon as you can,”

“Aye.”

He growled to himself, and couldn’t help but not that, if this had been a Trekkie ship, they might all have been dead now. Credit where it was due, at least the Boskone knew how to do power system protection.

With a bit of luck, maybe the disturbance recorders survived.

----

Ford was panting.

She took the blow on her metal arm, getting herself out of the way of the follow up which cracked the wall behind the space where her head had been.

Quattro had no skill. What she had was speed and strength, and inhuman endurance. She had time on her side, while Ford was only going to get tired. Her heart was pounding as she dodged out of the way.

She spun back around, using her cyber leg to return to favour. It send the android tumbling against a stack of equipment. Ford took the chance to make a desperate grab for her pistol on the floor.

Cathy was out of ideas. The damned .38 PPK was next to useless against Quattro. Thinking quickly, she remembered she’d taken the android’s stungun. It would be difficult at best, but she was out of ideas. If they didn’t end this now, Quattro would just wear them down.

Screaming, she launched herself at the madgirl. She aimed right at her face, hoping to jam the stun-gun right into her eyes. Blind the bitch, that was the only thought in her mind.

Quattro turned to face the screaming catgirl. The last possible moment before the prongs of the stunner made contact with her eyes. She started to duck, bringing her arm over in an arc to knock the furball clean out of the air. Bright electricity arced between the prongs, Cathy’s fangs glowing bright in the light.

Quattro actually felt fear. For one brief millisecond, she was actually frightened. Something scratched off her cheek, before penetrating her eye. She felt the warnings, a moment before she felt the lightning shoot through her body. She screamed.

Cathy was completely committed to the attack, compelled by her own momentum to keep moving forwards. Quattro caught her right in the chest with a crunching blow. She yelped, before crashing into a crate back first.

“My eye!” Quattro screamed. “My eye, you fucking bitch my eye!”

Fluids were leaking down her cheek as he tried to guard the wound with her good hand. She stumbled, her balance all shot to hell. Systems errors announced themselves in her mind, as stray currents had found their way through her body, cooking control chips as they went. But her mother had built her body tough. She’d make them pay... she’d make all of them pay.... little ants would be stepped on.

Cathy tried to reply with a combat quip, but settled instead for just throwing up. Her world was spinning, and her guts were tying themselves in knots. Something was wrong deep inside. It would heal, homeostasis was good that way.

It had been a good hit, it would give Ford a fighting chance. Cathy wasn’t sure how much longer she could go on like this. She staggered a little, and wondered where the stun gun had gone.

Ford finally felt the reassuring weight of her pistol in her hand. Quattro seemed to be stunned. Behind her, Cathy was stumbling on her feet and clutching at her gut. Her own hands were heavy.

“Give it up!” she yelled.

Quattro hissed and turned to face, her damaged eye appearing scorched and metallic behind the incongruously unharmed glasses. Ford slowly began to circle to her right, putting Cathy and Vivio out of the line of fire,

The android tracked her with her good eye. Her teeth were gritted into a vicious, dog-like snarl. There was fury and frustration. Ford had no idea how much effect a nine millimetre luger round would have on Quattro’s head, but hoped to hell that Quattro didn’t either.

“You think that thing will hurt me,” she sneered.

“You care to find out?”

There was stalemate. Ford considered just shooting her, but she really didn’t want to have to go through the bother of explaining herself.

Cathy just stared motionless at the two of them. She did not want to break the stalemate, every second to catch her breath seemed to be precious.

“Are we going to stay here until Great Justice arrives?” Quattro asked.

Ford smirked at her. “As long as it takes to keep you from escaping.”

“Seven more minutes?”

The door burst open. Everyone glanced back at it. Ford half expected an armed squad of Gliesbies coming through. Quattro recognised what it was first, and started moving. Cathy began to yell a warning. Ford’s gun fired with a sharp bang. She felt something heavy hitting her in the gut. Something pinged and fizzed.

Ford landed hard on her butt.

“Don’t move. Don’t fuckin’ move!”

Ford thought she recognised the voice. She looked up, to see Jet standing in the doorway, fully geared up, with blood streaked across her armour and dripping from her blades. That oversized handgun of hers was drawn and pointed right at a point just between her eyes. Jet’s helmet glanced down at her, then returned its faceless gaze to the android.

“Reinforcements arrived... game over.” Cathy whispered.

“Now I know what you’re thinking.” Jet said, her voice a hard snarl. “You’re thinking... she’s a cyber, and I’m an android. You know you’re faster than an ordinary human, but you don’t know if you’re faster than me.” she took a breath. “Truth is, I don’t know myself but given that I’m able to lift a car and could easily rip your head clean off, you’ve got to ask yourself one question, do you feel lucky?”

Quattro didn’t move. Thoughts raced through her cybernetic brain. The markings on the shoulder made it clear. A Panzerkunstler, a damned Panzerkunstler. She ran a quick calculation. It gave a probability of survival a fraction above zero. A very small fraction.

“But how?” she whined, “I was supposed to have six minutes left.”

The gun barrel was insistent. The bloodied blades backed it up. She wouldn’t have a chance in a fair fight. Quattro had this sudden image of herself screaming and running... but there was nowhere to run to.

“Great Justice, You’re under arrest,” the Kunstler said, sounding calm.

Ford saw Jet’s finger on the trigger. Ready to shoot.

“No!”... she fell back down... “I can’t lose. It’s not possible. Mother made sure of this. I will...”

She stopped, dead. Her eyes were wide.

“My orders are to capture you, dead or alive. I really don’t mind which one you choose.”

For the first time in her life Quattro felt as she wanted to break down and cry. Between being shot down or getting another chance on another day, the choice was obvious. Why did she still wanted to cry out?

Ford and Cathy were watching Quattro carefully. Neither of them said a single word.

Quattros shoulders dropped forward and she nodded slowly.

“I give up, do what you have to do.”

The hardsuit didn’t lower its weapon. “Ford,” she said. “You alright?”

Ford found herself gawking at the blood covering Jet. She nodded. “Just a little bruised,”

“Cathy?”

“I am fine,” said the Catgirl, “just give me a minute.”

The catgirl in the tank was crying softly to itself. It was staring at Jet.

“Jet,” it said. “Could you let me out?”

Jet looked over at her, just one word on her mind. How?

-----

________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

[Dartz]

A little bit more. Trying to finish quickly.

We have Vivio/Copy-Cathy just trying to get over it.
Ford and Jet.....
More catgirls.
Then Quattro pushes Jet's button... and Jet looses her temper.(Which eventually leads to Jet taking time off for the Highway Star). Hopefully it doesn't come across as stupid.

She had still trouble believing she had survived this insanity. She’d survived without being mind-wiped by that madgirl like an unneeded computer disk. If Ford or... the thought died in her mind.

How insane was it to see yourself walk through a door, to see yourself standing right there and now. She forced herself not to throw up. She wasn’t Cathy anymore. She wasn’t ever Cathy.

She found herself trying not to start crying all over again.

If Ford or Cathy had not received her distress call and decided to come here, she would have been long gone when the Kuenstlers arrived. She would’ve an empty shell sitting in a tube, without even the sense to wonder who or what she was.

How often had she awoken in this tube, not knowing what had happening before ? How many times had Quattro overwritten her? How many times had she figured it out and just been wiped all over?

Her throat was still hoarse.

She’d watched the whole fight. Her own.... Cathy’s own trainers on Venus would’ve laughed at Quattro. It was obvious she had no combat training. Watching Quattro wear them down had made her sink to despair. She’d have the chance to watch herself die, scant minutes before she felt herself get erased.

Cathy rescued her from the tube. Cathy held her when she fell out. Cathy reassured her that everything would be okay.

She then told Cathy exactly what had happened to her and Cathy just held her. Quattro screamed, as Jet wrenched her arm while cuffing her. Oops.

The adrenaline rush began to fade. She began to shake. She began to feel tired, so went to sleep in her familiar bed on the Stargazer. She began to wonder, she began to hope that when she woke up, it’d be all just a nightmare.

----

Jet and Ford were in the bar.... what had been the bar... helping themselves. Nehallenia was a hive of activity again, groups of the local Senshi being marched to transport aircraft, while others were being dealt with locally.

It was a mess dealing with them all, but Jet was thankful it wasn’t her mess. Such was the benefit of command delegation. Some called it a fluid command style that encouraged personal initiative and allowed people who actually knew their jobs to take care of things. Jet personally would put it down to her own desire to avoid doing the work herself.

It meant keeping one eye on the information flowing to make sure things were going as planned. Keeping the big picture clear was hard enough even with software assistance. Two C-130’s worth of prisoners were already gone. Nova was in the landing bay being loaded, and repaired. Quattro had been taken care of. Cathy was taking care of Vivio personally, for obvious reasons.

Sato was gone. Just a few isolated pockets of resistance, most of which just gave up. Any casualties had been removed. All was well. She got sick of using the damned wristcom after about ten minutes, and decided it was worth the risk to switch back to her internal systems. It was worth it for the sheer convenience.

Operation successful. Hardware secured and on its way to Mars, then on from there for analysis. There was a request from Cathy to be dealt with; Jet saw to that with a few moment’s thought and a quick message.

Ford was busy fiddling with her damaged arm, and trying her damnedest not to pay attention to the blood on Jets body. Take a shower god damn it, it’s disturbing.

“I still don’t believe it,” she said, taking a sip from the same bottle of generic yellow carbonated alcoholic beverage she’d been nursing for the last hour. “A copy. Not a perfect one, but enough to believe she really was Cathy.”

Jet looked at her, then looked at her own reflection, distorted in the bubbling surface of her own drink. Iridescent traces of wavium swirled and chased each other around solar systems formed from bubble stars and planets. It was her daily dose, and while cooling off with Ford was as good a time as any.

“This is.... frightening stuff,” Ford continued.

“Yup,” said Jet. “Depends on what the analysis turns up, if it’s just a one-shot wave effect, or if it’s something reproducible. If it’s something that can be reproduced....”

Jet didn’t finish. Jet wasn’t quite sure how to finish. Mucking around with memories was GiTS stuff, but a totally independent copy capable of being placed in a totally separate body was getting into true Transhuman Space territory.

It occurred to her that if it had come from singinst it might even have been lauded as a true breakthrough. But it didn’t... it came from a Boskone madgirl’s lab, and the only thing Jet could think about was how dangerous it had been in the wrong hands.

“You want to destroy it all?”

“I honestly don’t know yet,” Thermiting it all and throwing the remains into the sun sure wouldn’t stop someone else from inventing it again sometime in the future. And it wasn’t a decision she had a right to make on her own. “It’s on a secure flight to Mars anyway. With Quattro secure on the Nova and going to meet her grandparents, that’s the safest place for it all for the time being.”

“My truck loaded up yet?”

Jet checkered her planner.

“Yea. Upper cargo deck,”

With half the Gruppe going with Quattro’s lab, there was plenty of space left.

“Great, I can get it fixed on the way.”

Another silence followed. Jet finished her drink in one go feeling a light tingle tickle through her body. She relaxed just a little bit. With a deliberately gentleness, she raised her right arm, brushing her fingers against Ford’s cheek.

“I’m glad you’re alright,” she said, wearing a soft smile. “I was really worried,”

Ford smiled at her. “I can look after myself, y’know?”

“I know. But...” And Jet was stuck. Sensing her trouble, someone fired a message at her demanding her presence elsewhere on the asteroid. The main servers were taken out of the control centre. Nehallenia was being picked apart for evidence. “Sorry, duty calls,”

As usual.

----

Cathy was looking out of the window of the transport ship Great Justice had sent with Taskforce Butterscotch, taking the chance to relax for the first time after Ford and her fight with Quattro.

It had been a close-run thing, much too close to be comfortable with it. A little bit worse timing here, a little bit less luck there and they might have been all killed, long before help would have arrived. Or maybe even worse.

What Quattro had done during the fight, what she had done before to her own catgirl, what she could have done to all of them with a little bit more time was more horrible than Cathy wanted to think about at the moment.

But the mission had ended well. It hadn’t been a perfect result, but it was good enough. They had accomplished all primary mission goals, it wasn’t that important that Sato had escaped before Butterscotch had blocked off traffic from Nehallenia.

“Someone will get her at a later time. She is not really a Boskonian, she will make mistakes” she whispered to herself, gently stroking Vivio’s neck at the same time.

The other catgirl was sleeping with her head on Cathys lap, her tail still twitching back and forth. It had taking Cathy many hours to calm down Vivio enough to learn what had happened while the forces of Butterscoth and the Panzerkuenstlers had secured the asteroid base and arrested all inhabitants.

The thought about learning that you were not the person you believed you were was disturbing. Whatever Vivios personality had been before their mission to Nehallenia, it was gone. Replaced with something Cathy had believed to be unique in Fenspace and on Earth. Quattro had ripped down the protective wall around this assumption.

But now the Madgirl was gone, she had left Nehalennia in the Nova. She would not hurt anyone for a long time, others would make sure of this. Her lab had been disassembled to look at everything later, but Cathy had already filed a request that if the copy of her was still inside the computer, it would be erased permanently.

But if this technology was possible, there was no guarantee that someone else would not reinvent it. Maybe Agatha Clay even had a copy of Quattros tech, or at least some blueprints how it worked. They could not just destroy it and bury the mission report under lots of paper, they needed to prepare for the next time.

If it was possible to attack an organic brain like this, there had to be ways to detect it... ways to defend against it. It was too horrible to believe there wasn’t one. There was a lot of work to do, and they had to begin with it quickly. Maybe she could ask the Panzerkuenstlers how they detected the memory manipulation to check if the procedure could work on an uncybered brain too.

Vivio awoke, still shivering. She slowly sat up. Cathy put her arm around her and drew Vivio towards her.

“Its all right, she is not here anymore... she will be locked up for a long time, she cannot hurt you anymore” she whispered. Knowing how another person thought and what that person liked or not liked had advantages.

Vivio sighed and nodded slowly. “It was just another nightmare. I will be okay in a few days.” He leaned against Cathy and shivered again. “I dreamed I just woke up in Quattros tube... again.”

“I will stay here, so you don’t wake up alone... and I think you got a bit of sleep this time, you really need it.” She wasn’t surprised at all that Vivio found it hard to sleep after her time with the Madgirl. “We will leave the station in a few hours, and I don’t think anyone of us will ever need to get back here.”

“But what will happen afterwards? The only place I remember is somehow... already occupied? Its not much better for the other catgirls, most of them remember a few months of their live, not much more.

“We will think about something, I promise.” Cathy answered, unsure what to do. “But I am sure we will find a way to solve this problem.”

“And even with Quattro gone, who says the other evil Boskones don’t have access to the technology too? Or can reinvent it?” Vivio continued silently.

Cathy took a deep breath, that was an idea far beyond in the realm of nightmares.

“We have to make sure that we learn how to defend against this technology. The cybers were somehow able to detect it with their implants, maybe we can do this too for an organic brain.”

Cathy nodded, a defense or just a detector for a manipulated mind would be a huge step forward to defuse this kind of attacks.

“I have already asked Jet if I could join the Cyber Federations team to look deeper into this technology. She said she would forward the request.” she replied.

Vivio smiled for a short moment, then she closed her eyes and sighed. “You are right, we will find the right thing to do, both of us. This isn’t over until there are still Boskones left capturing innocent people and sell them as biomodded slaves. We will find a way to make their life miserable.”

Cathy chuckled, then she got serious again. “Yes, that sounds good. We should talk with Cortana about it, she is down in one of the Hangars.”

Vivio was uncertain about this. “I am not sure I want to go to her right now. I know... I know her, but she will not recognize me, because I am not you.”

Cathy sighed, but did not want to press the argument. Both of them still stared out of the window when the transporter left Nehallenia and began to move to Mars.

----

Quattro looked like a caged rat. She had that look in her eyes, a vicious caged hatred. Her cloak had been removed, her glasses taken away. The two transmitters on the side of her head had been disabled. One of her arms had been broken.... by accident. And she was strapped to a steel framed chair by several meters of waved duct-tape.

Jet looked down at her, quite satisfied that she didn’t have a chance in hell of getting free.

“Alright,” she said, trying to put on a lazy front. “Let me tell you where we are. We’re in the front Shuttlebay of the Destiny Nova. That hatch behind you,” Jet pointed to it,” Has been damaged. Two of the three locks are broken. So if we catch you messing around, all it takes is a button push to send you into the void of space where you will remain for a very long time.”

“Fine,” Quattro snarled, glaring hard at Jet. Her expression mutated into a smirk that suggested she was quite content with the situation, that she was working on something.

“Now what’s going to happen is, we’re taking you to meet your grandparents. But, it’ll save everyone a bit of bother if you tell me everything you know about Virtual Slaver Wasp and Agatha Clay before we get there,”

She sneered. “You expect me to talk?”

“Really, I don’t care either way.” Jet responded, following the prepared script. “We can get it all from the computers if you don’t. But thanks to the damage you did to our engines, it’ll take us three days to get to our finally destination..” Jet took a long deep breath. “So that’s three days for you to think about what’s going to happen to you when we get there.”

The plan was to leave her to sit and stew for a while on that.

“Hah... bitch. You only won because of that idiot Senshi being too trusting. If it’d been up to me, your girlfriend and her pet would’ve been dead long ago.” She smiled at the thought. “Or maybe I would just have been gone with two new pets in the cargo hold.”

Jet expression changed into a vicious snarl, her hands clenching together with a sharp clack. She drew in a deep breath, feeling a furious shiver run through her body. Bite back.

“Oh I see... you hate me, don’t you? I can see it in your eyes. It’s buried deep and burned in.... and you hate hating me!” She laughed hard, mocking. “And you hate me because you hate hating me, that’s so hilarious. I...”

Jet grabbed her by the throat, cutting that off with a vice grip. Roaring with fury, she picked the android and chair up single handed. Quattro twitched, beginning to struggle. Jet threw her to the deck, buckling the chair under her body. The whole deck seemed to shake with the force of an impact easily strong enough to kill a human being. The android cried as her broken arm was tweaked. She felt something hot press against her throat, and something else pin her good arm. Opening her good eye, she saw Jet looming over her, face contorted into a horrible sneer, ready to cut her head clean off. The marbled steel of a blade was drawn across her throat, a hair away from her throat.

For just a moment, Quattro thought that maybe it’d worked just a little too well. The weakness had been there, she poked at it... and it blew up in her face.

“Now,” Jet began with a rough edge to her voice that suggested she was trying very hard not to just scream it in her face. “I might have a reputation for being a decent human being and for bringing people in alive, but didn’t your ma ever warn you to beware the nice ones?” she took a ragged breath, adjusting her grip a little.

“You fucked with the brains of my trainees. You screwed with their very selves. You raped... a catgirls mind and put her through some god-awful torture I’ve seen. You tried to kill my partner and Cathy. You would’ve murdered a family. You would’ve ruined us all and our reputations and made us take the fall for your insidious chicken shite.”

Jet stopped. She was staring. Quattro swallowed... an automatic imitation of a human reflex. That blade would go right through synthetic flesh. It’d go right through her head.

“I know you’re trying to goad me into killing you, or breaking that chair, or ruining my own reputation; I’m not a moron. But I’m this close to finding the most god-awful way I can think of to do it. Because I’ve seen what you shitehawks did at Jusenkyou to those kids from Hogwarts. I had good friends I trained with dying and I know what you fuckers made me along the way.”

Quattro tried to move. Jet gripped even tighter, staring right through her at the deckplates beneath.

“Don’t fuck with me, or I will fucking bury you!”

It seemed to ring off the metal walls, hanging for a few seconds. Jet was visibly shaking, her face twitching and red with rage. Her breathing was fast and shallow, hissing through her nostrils.

She held herself steady for long moments, Quattro staring up at her through her one good eye. Jet’s thought process had hung completely. Quattro was stunned into silence. Calmly, Jet began to haul herself back up to her feet, ceramics scraping against metal, leaving the android lying on her back still strapped to a buckled chair.

Jet slowly began to walk towards the hatch, seeming just that little bit dazed. She pulled open the hatch door, stopping at the threshold before glancing back over her shoulder.

“I’m not the one taped up in a shuttlebay. And neither is that ‘idiot senshi’.. Just remember, strong ruling the weak is all fine and dandy until you find someone stronger than you. I’ll leave you with that for a bit.”

The hatch clanged shut behind her, leaving Quattro lying on the deck, forced to choose between staring at the buzzing overhead lights, or staring at the buckled walls which had obviously been hastily stripped of equipment.

She was.....weak.

----

________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

[Star Ranger4]

“You are right, we will find the right thing to do, both of us. This isn’t over until there are still Boskones left capturing innocent people and sell them as biomodded slaves. We will find a way to make their life miserable.”

This would be better phrased as "This isn't over while there are "...
Hear that thunder rolling till it seems to split the sky?
That's every ship in Grayson's Navy taking up the cry-
NO QUARTER!!!
-- "No Quarter", by Echo's Children

[robkelk]

“And even with Quattro gone, who says the other evil Boskones don’t have access to the technology too? Or can reinvent it?” Vivio continued silently.

I refer you to Tabitha Doe. They've already got it... but that isn't very well known known outside the Pinafore's circle.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[HRogge]

“And even with Quattro gone, who says the other evil Boskones don’t have access to the technology too? Or can reinvent it?” Vivio continued silently.

I refer you to Tabitha Doe. They've already got it... but that isn't very well known known outside the Pinafore's circle.

I know they have related tech, but I think Quattros one went a little bit farther. Quattro took the mind bending/erasing tech already existing and improved on it, its not a completely new tech.

[Foxboy]

I don't blame folks for forgetting about Tabitha, she's cardboard compared to the Dobbses. And, well, I almost squicked myself on her "debut" so...
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll

[Dartz]

It's a bit different... a bit more advanced version of the same concept maybe

What Quattro did was scan Cathy's mind, dump the irrelevant parts for space reasons, store it electronically, then write the scan onto another catgirl's mind. It's copy and paste with a person. She was working on selective memory editing and deletion, and would've had something within a reasonable timeframe if Nehallenia hadn't been hit. Easily GiTS-level stuff at the very least, and possibly beyond....
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

[Dartz]

Jet stopped outside the hatchway, She closed her eyes, taking one long deep breath. Her blood was boiling in her veins. Inside the armour, she was shaking, physically shaking. Quattro deserved to die. Every single cell of her body knew it. There was a nice red button that begged to be pushed. It’d send the contents of the shuttlebay hurtling into empty space. In my judgment as a troubleshooter, Quattro was too dangerous to be allowed to live. Quattro made an attempt at escape, and triggered the door latch. The hatch had been damaged by the Stargazer hitting it, it was just an accident. There were a hundred potential rationalisations, or explanations; little white lies that soothed and promised nobody would know the truth.

But, Jet thought, that isn’t me.

It doesn’t fit the Jet Jaguar brand. It didn’t fit the image she was so careful to cultivate both to herself and the world at large as a decent, and safe, person. It was the antithesis of everything she wanted to be to be crouched over someone with a blade to their throat threatening them and meaning it.

Even if they deserved it.

Jet was honourable. Jet was a martial artist with a warrior’s pride. Jet wasn’t an indiscriminate murderer. Jet killed four of the local Dark Senshi on Nehallenia solely because not-killing them would’ve taken too long. She was drenched in blood, and nobody really knew it. Trapped in a solid tank being pumped full of thick, iron blood, slicking up around her body, crawling up her neck promising an inevitable guttering, chocking death if she didn't kick and scream and tear at her bindings and curse and swear and beg for forgiveness from all the God's she could think of and plead with them to get her the fuck out RIGHT NOW!

Recurring nightmares were a bitch. She banished that memory with slow, deliberately controlled breathing, letting a sympathetic rush of panic slowly wind down. Jet stood there, steadily allowing the worst of that hot anger to radiate out of her body. The rest could just be squelched down underfoot. Another deep breath.

“Something up?”

She opened her eyes to see Luka looking at her with concern, the guts of a network switch spilled out on the console in front of him. Jet knew with every fiber in her body that he had to have heard what happened in there.

“Nothing,” Jet said.

She quickly marched out of there, near slamming the hatch behind her, climbing up into the living quarters. There was still a sticky mess on the floor which had flowed out from under a cabin door. It clung to feet like road-tar on a hot day. Inside, a child was complaining about her clothes not fitting anymore while someone tried to reassure her that she was growing up again. Hotaru Minaguchi’s life had changed forever, that much was certain. Joker-Ace, a textbook positive Joker-Ace.

Lenneth was getting something to eat. Neither of them said anything to each other. There was a good chance Lenneth, or anyone who’d been forward in the galley, had also overheard what happened. Jet headed aft through the engine room with her head down.

Only one of the turbines was running, just above idle to provide hotel power. The music was kept to a soothing volume. With the acceleration burn finished, they were coasting for the rest of the journey. Linda was bandaged up and reading that book Miranda had been reading earlier; Heart of Darkness. She grunted in pain as she moved.

The worst part was, what Quattro’d said was true. Jet hated Zwilniks. And, Jet figured, decent people didn’t hate like that. That was why it had to be kept private. Not even Ford could know.

Ford was in the rear cargobay. she had her truck parked up on the upper deck, and had removed some of the plates to give her access. It was a decent enough replacement for a proper lift, and made getting parts out a hundred times easier.

“Hey, Jet,” she said, calmly. “What happened?”

Jet stopped dead for a moment. “Nothing,” she said, avoiding eye contact.

Ford stopped working, “What happened?” she repeated, a little more firmly.

“Nothing,” Jet repeated, her voice taking on a hard edge that demanded Ford drop it. She forced a smile and feigned a yawn “I’m just feeling a little bit tired... It’s been days since I slept.”

“I’m kinda working here right now,”

“I just have to stow some gear on the upper deck,”

Jet boosted up with a kick from her engines, landing gently on the deck above. Her own locker was towards the forward end of the bay, around the other side of the parked truck. It was a tight enough squeeze. Each of the Gruppe had their own personal locker aboard, along with the powerpoints and system connections needed to actually get to sleep and/or charge batteries.

Her power was low, but not critical. Her cells were good for three days straight flight, two days hard combat, or over a week sitting on her metal arse going stir crazy trapped in a little tin box of a ship. She shuddered a bit, a rumble through her whole feeling body like the vibrations a distant train going past. Just having something to eat would maintain things enough to keep her awake. Jet didn't dare sleep with Quattro aboard.

“We going to staying at the Forge for any sort of time?”

“No,” Jet shook her head. “Just long enough to drop our passenger off into AC's tender loving care and refuel. We’ve got another mission we need to start prep for,”

Truth. Jet swallowed a yawn, leaning down against an upright for a moment. The overhead lights buzzed in her ears like a swarm of flies caught behind a window. A little tired. Noah Scott was a little wealthy. The adrenaline had gone. The tension had gone. Decking Quattro had seemed to have swallowed the last of her energy. The only thing keeping her awake was the hardware propping the organics up. Batteries at low. Get something carbohydratey... a good source of chemical energy. That was the advantage of a having good organic fraction. Muscles didn’t run out of electric power and she didn’t waste her power cells just walking around. The only electrical draw right now was the computer hardware, which was barely running above idle. She could go for another two days or so like this before things started getting critical.

“My arm’s a bit trashed, so I’ll probably have catch up then,” said Ford.

“Righto,”

Silence fell. Ford had stopped work. Jet could feel herself being watched. It bred a creeping paranoia deep in the pit of her stomach fuelled by the absolute certainty that Ford had to have heard what Jet did. Ford had to know. Jet may not have had real skin, but she still felt goosebumps prickle across the tops of her arms and along her back.

Jet felt ready to throw up. She tried to keep her mind off it, undoing the clamps locking her blades to her forearms. Her reflection in the marbled metal looked tired, eyes sunken into dark hollows in her face.

The marbling came from the impurities in the steel. It was the impurities which gave it it’s real strength. It was a reminder that it was all her little human flaws which gave her her true strength and power.

And which were threatening to destroy her.

She wiped the blade down with a special cloth, removing every last spec of dirt she could manage, before dabbing it down with a protective oil. Finally, it was wrapped up in it’s cloth and placed carefully in a felt-padded recess in wooden box. The second blade received the exact same careful treatment. They were super strong, waved metal, with a glassteel edge capable of going edge to edge with anything and cutting right through. Jet once cut a .50 calibre bullet clean in half in mid air using one. The part of the story she never told was that it’d been a one-in-a-million accident.

Their big quirk was that if the steel ever tarnished, all their strength was lost, and it was the devil to regrind and polish them. It was supposed to be a reminder to Jet to keep practicing and honing her skills. It was a wonderful reminder of how difficult it’d be to rebuild her reputation.

It was gone if someone found out. It was gone even if she told someone. The last thing Jet wanted was to spend her life with people whispering behind her back that she was somehow dangerous. Like a verdant green volcano cascading with ancient forestry, that seemed like a nice docile and inviting hike right up until the moment the pressure got too high inside and it blew it's top in the most violent manner imaginable.

It wasn't worth focusing on right now.

“Vielen dank für ihren schutz,” Jet breathed as she closed the lid on the box with an almost maternal gentleness. It locked with a click and she slid it back under its cover. Her pistol was safety-locked before being secured. There was a big Barret rifle that was never used beside it, to which Jet had added Dai-Gurren markings for shits and giggles.

And that was that. Jet locked it all away.

“What’s going to happen to her,” Ford asked, mildly.

Her voice seemed to come like a bolt of lightning from the quiet of the cargobay.

“Huh?”

“Quattro,”

“Right.” Jet was tired. “Fucked if I care,” she shrugged. “But if she’s built by Agatha Clay, she’ll have to be analysed and tested. And repaired,” Jet added that as an after thought.

“What do you want to happen to her?” Ford asked, carefully.

I’m afraid Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. Jet smiled darkly on that thought, turning back to face her partner. “I don’t know,” she said. “Why’re you so worried about her?”

“Uh......” Ford looked away for a moment. “That wasn’t what I meant.” She laughed lightly. “I was just surprised to see you quoting Dirty Harry. I should’ve known better. Nobody says anything that cheesy and means it.”

Jet thought back to the lab, trying to remember what exactly she’d said in the lab. It hadn’t been that long ago. The only thing she could remember was seeing Ford hitting the ground. “I did?”

Ford’s expression flattened. “Yeah...”

Jet glanced back at her, looking as puzzled as she felt. A rubber glove of feeling brushed against Jet’s body, leaving her with the uneasy realisation that she might have just missed something important, and didn’t know what. It was a feeling that crawled across her body like a thousand Penderecki cockroaches.

“I've been burning the midnight oil these last couple of days is all. I guess I didn't think it through,” She forced this big self-effacing smile that would've made any politician feel ashamed. It was shallow and plastic and so clearly at odds with what was going on underneath. “I'll get some sleep when she's off the ship, I promise”

Ford heaved a frustrated sigh. “Sure. I guess I'll drive back with my truck. Make sure the garage's alright and I'll see you in a couple of days.”

“Righto,”

Split the bullet in half again, Jet thought. She failed to hide an obvious sigh of relief, before allowing silence to close back in like a comforting blanket. As far as Jet was concerned, she'd just dodged the bullet once again. Safe and sound. The living-room elephant could stay in hiding. The can of worms would stay sealed.

Jets mind was clearing up. Those angry stormclouds where giving way to a grey cold haze. Maybe the sun would come out soon. She finished stowing her gear, before taking a few moments to decide that it might be a good idea to catch up with her meditation. Her last cycle had been interrupted.

Which explained why she went off on Quattro like that. That was a perfect fit. Tired, stressed, interrupted meditation, of course I'm going to lose my temper. She almost smiled at her own cleverness for realising it.

There was something assuaging about having an excuse. It was Not Her Fault. She could blame circumstances Beyond Her Control. It was liberating.

Jet left, using her wireless systems to make sure Quattro was still properly guarded. Passing through the engine room, she set R'n'R for those who'd reached their two-week limit, checked training schedules, and made a specific point to request details on how Jana was doing.

Lenneth was still eating in the galley as Jet made her way passed to the airlock.

“Just going outside, might be some time,” she said.

Naturally, nobody batted an eyelid. It was Jet's known personality quirk.

The hatch locked shut behind her and vacuum embraced her like an old friend. She felt her whole body fizzle inside as pressures equalised and Jet passed out of the human realm. The hatch light went red, and she opened it, stepping out into the black abyss beyond, taking hold of some handrails intended for maintenance. Naked infinity tickled the naked skin of her face.

Repairs on the damaged engine were going ahead, a pair of Senshi in spacesuits cutting out the mangled coil remains with a gas-axe. One of the advantages of flying a 'coaster', fixing things in space was much easier without a drive field. She hauled herself up onto the roof of the ship.

Barrelling through space at a fair slice of C, everything felt still and calm. She was Out There again, She could feel her whole body relax as she allowed herself to lay on her back along the top of the hull. The ship's own internal grav-field kept her down. Jet considered hooking into the nearest interwave station, and going to her metaverse server, but the speed and bandwidth would be just plain crap out this far. It'd be like sucking a keg of beer through a straw.

On her vision, she picked out the Forge, the Mars, then Atalante. Little spots in the distance. She could be at any of them inside an hour, if she was bothered. Sitting upright once more, blowing out a sigh as a silent puff of vapour and crystal ice, she sent a message asking not to be disturbed for an hour or so, before cutting her comm's and closing her eyes.

A few minutes later, she was already deep within herself.

Right. That could be the end of it. Unless anyone wants to write what happens to Quattro after she's dropped off, or unless anyone has any further suggestions. We thought about going further, possibly bringing in Noah in person, but too much more and this'll turn into the LOTR ending.

There's an epilogue story mostly done, showing Roland getting arrested and Ford finally taking Jet over what she's seen..... and the beginnings of the Highway star.
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--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?