Sighing in relief, Chris watched as her ship settled down onto its landing struts. “Ahhh… home sweet home,” she said with a smile.
“And I think at least a third of your stress just went away,” Jeph commented.
“Damn right it did,” she replied as the Void Eagles engines powered down and the landing ramp began to lower. “My ship’s out of that hanger, and it’s never going back there.” She shivered slightly, wrapping her hands around herself for a moment. “I am never going back to that room if I can avoid it.”
“That’s fair,” Nene agreed. “I still think you need to look into a dedicated facility for this far out.”
She shrugged. “Once the Nebula Hawk is paid off,” she said, starting to walk over towards the ship. “Then I can look into building something out here. And it’ll probably be here somewhere,” she added with a grin as the others followed. “Mimas is tempting, I admit, but I do far more work here.”
Jeph raised an eyebrow. “I thought the Warsies would jump at shipping on a genuine, licensed from Lucasarts, Star Wars freighter,” he said.
“Some do,” Chris admitted. “But the simple fact is, they don’t export enough yet to make it worth it.” She grinned. “The local farms are way more profitable.” Jeph laughed, nodding in agreement as the Friez siblings stepped down the ramp. “Hi guys!” the Orion chirped, waving, then giggled as they both skidded to a halt, eyes wide.
“...C-Chris?” Jules managed, looking over the smaller woman. “Is that…?”
“Eyup,” she grinned, posing slightly. “Behold, the price of doing a good deed. How do I look?”
“Gorgeous,” Julian mumbled, then shook his head, looking away. “Uh, sorry.”
Chris took pity on him, stepping forward and patting him on the arm. “It’s okay,” she said. “I’d kinda noticed that already anyway. But, either I try and roll with it, or I curl up into a ball and cry for a few days.”
Suppressing a stab of envy as she looked her friend over, Jules raised an eyebrow. “You’re probably going to do that at some point anyway,” she warned. Chris looked over at her, then nodded in sad agreement.
Shoulders slumping, Julian looked down at her. “Dammit Chris. I’m sorry. If we hadn’t-” Chris raised a hand, cutting him off.
“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t you dare blame yourself for this Julian. If this is the price of protecting my friends, so be it. If you need to blame someone, blame Glear. Okay?” Julian didn’t reply immediately, looking over his friend again. At last though, he nodded slowly, and she smiled faintly, taking what she could. “Good. Now, where’s Tee?”
came the reply from the top of the landing ramp. Chris glanced past her friends, then gasped at the sight of her astromech droid, sitting on top of a mechanics creeper, right leg joint nothing more than a collection of jagged metal and cut wires. he added with a cheerful beep.
“Ohmygod!” Chris exclaimed, shoving past the Friez and running up the ramp. Kneeling down next to her friend, she scowled. “Why didn’t anyone tell me it was this bad?” she demanded.
T7-01 replied, his other leg twitching in a shrug. He looked his captain over, optic glowing brighter as he saved his scans to memory.
Glancing up from the leg joint, Chris glared at him. “Not distracting me from this buddy. Kit…”
“Hey, Tee insisted he’d be fine until we were able to bring the ship around,” her daughter protested via the ships external speakers, although everyone noted this time she failed to manifest her avatar. “And we didn’t really want to worry you with everything else going on…”
Jules took over the defense, holding up a tablet. “And he did make a list of the repairs and parts he’d need,” she offered. “The kid sent that over to JMC last night…”
declared the R2 unit that was rolling towards the ship, towing a small trailer of parts behind him. R2-G0 snarked.
“Geo...” Jeph warned.
“Keep going trash can,” Chris laughed, standing up and walking back down the ramp to collect the parts. Pausing, she leaned down next to his audio inputs and said sweetly, “If I do get a job there, I’ll be putting you in a 33-S and bringing you along for the ride.”
he shot back.
“Don’t be so sure,” Nene replied, an innocent smile on her face.
Geo paused, looking between the two women as they walked back up the ramp and knelt down next to T7, then made a beep that even the Friez could translate as “Eep.”
Smirking, the Orion started unscrewing panels while Nene checked the notes. At the bottom of the ramp, Jeph snorted and glanced at the Friez. “Could I get a hand with the cargo door?” he asked.
While the Friez followed Antilles, T7 looked back at Chris again. he said quietly. Looking up, Chris gave him a baffled look.
She patted his head. “You did the best you could Tee,” she assured him. “I didn’t think she’d be willing to escalate things that far either. So, don’t worry too much, hmm?” T7 took a moment to consider that, then nodded slightly.
Geo called out.
“It’s not on my to-do list,” Chris replied, smirking.
Chris and Nene looked at each other, the Orion rolling her eyes, forcing Nene to suppress a giggle.
***
“All set,” Dan said, lifting up the camera and resting it on his shoulder. “Stand by.” John Simmons nodded, taking a breath and reviewing the story in his head one last time. This was it. The opportunity to restore his career, show the entire system the truth about the monsters the fools in charge ignored, and reclaim the fame and glory that should be his.
“And now we’re going back to Serenity Valley,” the newsreaders voice said in his ear, “where there has apparently been a new development in the Professor crisis. On the ground is John Simmons. John, what’s the latest?
Expression level, John stared into the camera. “Sarah, I’m currently outside the offices of the Jupiter Mining Corporation here in Serenity Valley, where the Secret Master of Fenspace Jeph Antilles has been attempting to cover up evidence of the Professors crimes, and interfering in the ongoing criminal investigation.” He could imagine the confusion in the newsroom, as they realized he was going off-script, and he had to fight to resist the urge to smirk at the thought. Smug bastards had it coming. “Officially, Christopher Wood, fatally wounded during the Professors rampage yesterday, remains in hospital and hasn’t yet awakened from the biomod coma caused by the injection of an unknown and possibly experimental strain of Handwavium. However, it appears that he is awake, and that Mister Antilles has attempted to mislead the media and public, due to the drastic, and questionable, nature of Mister Woods transformation.”
***
Chris and Nene were just lifting T7 off the creeper when a shriek of rage echoed across the hanger. “Guys! Get in here!” Kitbash screamed. Chris, Nene and T7 sprinted for the ships living quarters. Jeph, the Friez and Geo ran through the cargo bay instead, and in seconds, they all arrived to see the main holoterminal in 2D television mode, showing ISN’s news coverage.
“It’s the mudraker,” Jeph muttered. “What the hell is he up to now?” His question was answered almost as soon as he spoke, the image changing to security footage from the hospital, showing Jeph and Nene quietly getting Chris out of the building unnoticed. “Ohhh shit.”
“Earlier today, Jeph Antilles and his Android assistant Nene Romanov smuggled the transformed Chris Wood out of MacDonald Memorial Hospital, attempting to suppress details of the change the Professor inflicted on her,” John Simmons continued in his best ‘serious concern’ voice. “Security footage, along with details from other sources-” as he spoke, the image changed again, this time showing phone recorded footage of Nene and Chris talking, “-has revealed Chris to have experienced an extreme biomod. All indications are that he has become an Orion Slave Girl from the classic science fiction show Star Trek.”
“Son of a bitch!” Jeph snapped, his voice raising in pitch mid-curse as she shifted.
“That’s from inside our offices,” Nene realized, eyes widening in horror.
“... Slave girl?” Chris whispered, face paling, hands starting to tremble.
“At less than five feet tall,” Simmons noted, “and with a body designed for nothing more than sexual pleasure, it would appear that Chris Wood is no longer in a position to ever interfere with the Professor’s experiments again. On top of that, there is evidence that the biomod has caused an extreme personality shift-”
Geo demanded.
“-in line with her new physical reality. And the question must be asked, was this deliberate?” The footage changed again, going from Chris, giggling and playing with a lock of hair as she spoke to Jeph, to the previous day, with the Professor ramming a needle full of handwavium into the dying mans chest. Chris shrieked as she saw it, stumbling back into Nene’s arms and nearly collapsing.
“What the fuck is he doing?” Jules demanded. “This isn’t news! This is-”
“This is the sort of thing you expect from the man that claimed the Turnerites were invading,” Jeph snarled. “Sensationalist crap. The better question is ‘what is ISN doing?’”
“The Professor caused this change,” Simmons noted. “None of the handwavium he injected into Miss Wood remains to allow the strain to be identified. Is her new existence as a Slave Girl his intention? Punishment for her meddling? And why is one of the Secret Masters of Fenspace attempting to cover this up? Why is Jeph Antilles protecting the Professor by trying to bury this?”
Growling, the SMOF in question glared at the image of John Simmons. “Oh you stupid, shit slinging, paparazzi wannabe,” she snarled. “I am going to end you.”
It seemed that someone at ISN had realized the hand grenade Simmons had just thrown at their network, as the signal briefly cut out, returning to a now nervous looking Sarah Earl, the anchorwoman grabbing at her composure with professional determination. “And we appear to be having some interwave issues with Ganymede,” she commented with a completely straight face. “We’ll try and get John back as soon as possible…”
Groaning, Julian facepalmed. “Well, that was career suicide,” he commented. “How the hell did that moron become a reporter?”
Nene snorted, still holding onto Chris. “He got out here back in the early days,” he said, “back when Fenspace didn’t really have a media. The idiot never managed to get his bachelor's degree in journalism back Earthside, so he went somewhere he thought he could get away with it…”
“Slave girl,” Chris repeated, horror fading from her voice and replaced by fury.
“uhhhh…”
“Slave girl!” she snarled. “Property! Sex toy!” Furious now, she shoved free of Nene. “Kit, where is the bastard?!”
“Um, out the front of JMC,” Kitbash replied before she stopped to think. Snarling, her mother ran for the landing ramp, murder in her eyes. Just before she got out of the living quarters however, Jeph reached her, clamping both her hands around the smaller womans waist and lifting her off the ground.
Holding the new screaming figure at arms length, Jeph stepped back slightly, making sure there was nothing the girl could reach. “Chris, focus!” she snapped, trying to cut through the rage. “As much as he deserves it, you can’t just kill the bastard. Just calm down!”
The rage burnt itself out quickly, the tiny figure going limp in Jephs arms. Carefully, she lowered Chris to the ground, then stepped in close. “It’s okay,” she said quietly. “He’s going to pay…”
Sniffling, Chris rubbed at her eyes. “I’m not… I’m not that,” she whimpered. “Not a slave girl, not just a…” Geo twitched, remembering their earlier joke, but Jeph paid her astromech little attention, pulling the Orion into a gentle hug.
“Most definitely not,” she agreed.
***
“And I think at least a third of your stress just went away,” Jeph commented.
“Damn right it did,” she replied as the Void Eagles engines powered down and the landing ramp began to lower. “My ship’s out of that hanger, and it’s never going back there.” She shivered slightly, wrapping her hands around herself for a moment. “I am never going back to that room if I can avoid it.”
“That’s fair,” Nene agreed. “I still think you need to look into a dedicated facility for this far out.”
She shrugged. “Once the Nebula Hawk is paid off,” she said, starting to walk over towards the ship. “Then I can look into building something out here. And it’ll probably be here somewhere,” she added with a grin as the others followed. “Mimas is tempting, I admit, but I do far more work here.”
Jeph raised an eyebrow. “I thought the Warsies would jump at shipping on a genuine, licensed from Lucasarts, Star Wars freighter,” he said.
“Some do,” Chris admitted. “But the simple fact is, they don’t export enough yet to make it worth it.” She grinned. “The local farms are way more profitable.” Jeph laughed, nodding in agreement as the Friez siblings stepped down the ramp. “Hi guys!” the Orion chirped, waving, then giggled as they both skidded to a halt, eyes wide.
“...C-Chris?” Jules managed, looking over the smaller woman. “Is that…?”
“Eyup,” she grinned, posing slightly. “Behold, the price of doing a good deed. How do I look?”
“Gorgeous,” Julian mumbled, then shook his head, looking away. “Uh, sorry.”
Chris took pity on him, stepping forward and patting him on the arm. “It’s okay,” she said. “I’d kinda noticed that already anyway. But, either I try and roll with it, or I curl up into a ball and cry for a few days.”
Suppressing a stab of envy as she looked her friend over, Jules raised an eyebrow. “You’re probably going to do that at some point anyway,” she warned. Chris looked over at her, then nodded in sad agreement.
Shoulders slumping, Julian looked down at her. “Dammit Chris. I’m sorry. If we hadn’t-” Chris raised a hand, cutting him off.
“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t you dare blame yourself for this Julian. If this is the price of protecting my friends, so be it. If you need to blame someone, blame Glear. Okay?” Julian didn’t reply immediately, looking over his friend again. At last though, he nodded slowly, and she smiled faintly, taking what she could. “Good. Now, where’s Tee?”
came the reply from the top of the landing ramp. Chris glanced past her friends, then gasped at the sight of her astromech droid, sitting on top of a mechanics creeper, right leg joint nothing more than a collection of jagged metal and cut wires. he added with a cheerful beep.
“Ohmygod!” Chris exclaimed, shoving past the Friez and running up the ramp. Kneeling down next to her friend, she scowled. “Why didn’t anyone tell me it was this bad?” she demanded.
T7-01 replied, his other leg twitching in a shrug. He looked his captain over, optic glowing brighter as he saved his scans to memory.
Glancing up from the leg joint, Chris glared at him. “Not distracting me from this buddy. Kit…”
“Hey, Tee insisted he’d be fine until we were able to bring the ship around,” her daughter protested via the ships external speakers, although everyone noted this time she failed to manifest her avatar. “And we didn’t really want to worry you with everything else going on…”
Jules took over the defense, holding up a tablet. “And he did make a list of the repairs and parts he’d need,” she offered. “The kid sent that over to JMC last night…”
declared the R2 unit that was rolling towards the ship, towing a small trailer of parts behind him. R2-G0 snarked.
“Geo...” Jeph warned.
“Keep going trash can,” Chris laughed, standing up and walking back down the ramp to collect the parts. Pausing, she leaned down next to his audio inputs and said sweetly, “If I do get a job there, I’ll be putting you in a 33-S and bringing you along for the ride.”
he shot back.
“Don’t be so sure,” Nene replied, an innocent smile on her face.
Geo paused, looking between the two women as they walked back up the ramp and knelt down next to T7, then made a beep that even the Friez could translate as “Eep.”
Smirking, the Orion started unscrewing panels while Nene checked the notes. At the bottom of the ramp, Jeph snorted and glanced at the Friez. “Could I get a hand with the cargo door?” he asked.
While the Friez followed Antilles, T7 looked back at Chris again. he said quietly. Looking up, Chris gave him a baffled look.
She patted his head. “You did the best you could Tee,” she assured him. “I didn’t think she’d be willing to escalate things that far either. So, don’t worry too much, hmm?” T7 took a moment to consider that, then nodded slightly.
Geo called out.
“It’s not on my to-do list,” Chris replied, smirking.
Chris and Nene looked at each other, the Orion rolling her eyes, forcing Nene to suppress a giggle.
***
“All set,” Dan said, lifting up the camera and resting it on his shoulder. “Stand by.” John Simmons nodded, taking a breath and reviewing the story in his head one last time. This was it. The opportunity to restore his career, show the entire system the truth about the monsters the fools in charge ignored, and reclaim the fame and glory that should be his.
“And now we’re going back to Serenity Valley,” the newsreaders voice said in his ear, “where there has apparently been a new development in the Professor crisis. On the ground is John Simmons. John, what’s the latest?
Expression level, John stared into the camera. “Sarah, I’m currently outside the offices of the Jupiter Mining Corporation here in Serenity Valley, where the Secret Master of Fenspace Jeph Antilles has been attempting to cover up evidence of the Professors crimes, and interfering in the ongoing criminal investigation.” He could imagine the confusion in the newsroom, as they realized he was going off-script, and he had to fight to resist the urge to smirk at the thought. Smug bastards had it coming. “Officially, Christopher Wood, fatally wounded during the Professors rampage yesterday, remains in hospital and hasn’t yet awakened from the biomod coma caused by the injection of an unknown and possibly experimental strain of Handwavium. However, it appears that he is awake, and that Mister Antilles has attempted to mislead the media and public, due to the drastic, and questionable, nature of Mister Woods transformation.”
***
Chris and Nene were just lifting T7 off the creeper when a shriek of rage echoed across the hanger. “Guys! Get in here!” Kitbash screamed. Chris, Nene and T7 sprinted for the ships living quarters. Jeph, the Friez and Geo ran through the cargo bay instead, and in seconds, they all arrived to see the main holoterminal in 2D television mode, showing ISN’s news coverage.
“It’s the mudraker,” Jeph muttered. “What the hell is he up to now?” His question was answered almost as soon as he spoke, the image changing to security footage from the hospital, showing Jeph and Nene quietly getting Chris out of the building unnoticed. “Ohhh shit.”
“Earlier today, Jeph Antilles and his Android assistant Nene Romanov smuggled the transformed Chris Wood out of MacDonald Memorial Hospital, attempting to suppress details of the change the Professor inflicted on her,” John Simmons continued in his best ‘serious concern’ voice. “Security footage, along with details from other sources-” as he spoke, the image changed again, this time showing phone recorded footage of Nene and Chris talking, “-has revealed Chris to have experienced an extreme biomod. All indications are that he has become an Orion Slave Girl from the classic science fiction show Star Trek.”
“Son of a bitch!” Jeph snapped, his voice raising in pitch mid-curse as she shifted.
“That’s from inside our offices,” Nene realized, eyes widening in horror.
“... Slave girl?” Chris whispered, face paling, hands starting to tremble.
“At less than five feet tall,” Simmons noted, “and with a body designed for nothing more than sexual pleasure, it would appear that Chris Wood is no longer in a position to ever interfere with the Professor’s experiments again. On top of that, there is evidence that the biomod has caused an extreme personality shift-”
Geo demanded.
“-in line with her new physical reality. And the question must be asked, was this deliberate?” The footage changed again, going from Chris, giggling and playing with a lock of hair as she spoke to Jeph, to the previous day, with the Professor ramming a needle full of handwavium into the dying mans chest. Chris shrieked as she saw it, stumbling back into Nene’s arms and nearly collapsing.
“What the fuck is he doing?” Jules demanded. “This isn’t news! This is-”
“This is the sort of thing you expect from the man that claimed the Turnerites were invading,” Jeph snarled. “Sensationalist crap. The better question is ‘what is ISN doing?’”
“The Professor caused this change,” Simmons noted. “None of the handwavium he injected into Miss Wood remains to allow the strain to be identified. Is her new existence as a Slave Girl his intention? Punishment for her meddling? And why is one of the Secret Masters of Fenspace attempting to cover this up? Why is Jeph Antilles protecting the Professor by trying to bury this?”
Growling, the SMOF in question glared at the image of John Simmons. “Oh you stupid, shit slinging, paparazzi wannabe,” she snarled. “I am going to end you.”
It seemed that someone at ISN had realized the hand grenade Simmons had just thrown at their network, as the signal briefly cut out, returning to a now nervous looking Sarah Earl, the anchorwoman grabbing at her composure with professional determination. “And we appear to be having some interwave issues with Ganymede,” she commented with a completely straight face. “We’ll try and get John back as soon as possible…”
Groaning, Julian facepalmed. “Well, that was career suicide,” he commented. “How the hell did that moron become a reporter?”
Nene snorted, still holding onto Chris. “He got out here back in the early days,” he said, “back when Fenspace didn’t really have a media. The idiot never managed to get his bachelor's degree in journalism back Earthside, so he went somewhere he thought he could get away with it…”
“Slave girl,” Chris repeated, horror fading from her voice and replaced by fury.
“uhhhh…”
“Slave girl!” she snarled. “Property! Sex toy!” Furious now, she shoved free of Nene. “Kit, where is the bastard?!”
“Um, out the front of JMC,” Kitbash replied before she stopped to think. Snarling, her mother ran for the landing ramp, murder in her eyes. Just before she got out of the living quarters however, Jeph reached her, clamping both her hands around the smaller womans waist and lifting her off the ground.
Holding the new screaming figure at arms length, Jeph stepped back slightly, making sure there was nothing the girl could reach. “Chris, focus!” she snapped, trying to cut through the rage. “As much as he deserves it, you can’t just kill the bastard. Just calm down!”
The rage burnt itself out quickly, the tiny figure going limp in Jephs arms. Carefully, she lowered Chris to the ground, then stepped in close. “It’s okay,” she said quietly. “He’s going to pay…”
Sniffling, Chris rubbed at her eyes. “I’m not… I’m not that,” she whimpered. “Not a slave girl, not just a…” Geo twitched, remembering their earlier joke, but Jeph paid her astromech little attention, pulling the Orion into a gentle hug.
“Most definitely not,” she agreed.
***