069: The Rock, Rolled – Six
The engine room wasn't normally one of Elytra's haunts, but with Malakh neck deep in an upgrade she'd been brainstorming, and everyone else otherwise engaged, she thought it would be a better use of her time to be of help to someone than it was to mope around on her own.
"I gotta say, I was really impressed with how realistic you got the effects to look in those shorts," Malakh said as Elytra handed her to tool she was after, "If I hadn't watched you animating it yourself, I would have thought you actually went out there and filmed yourself thrashing a stadium full of T0-K4Y, or flown that fancy bronze ship off Iromay."
"You can thank the Kith provided editing suite we got for that," Elytra told her with a casual shrug, "I just had to recolour some models and choreograph some scenes, nothing that impressive. The whole escape from Iromay was just the footage that Viatrix managed to scrounge from Baithaiz servers, and I just tweaked it a bit."
"Hey, don't sell your skills short," Malakh popped her head out of the open panel she was leaning in, wagging her tool at Elytra reproachfully, "I had a look through the whole suite when we got it, and most of it was way over my head. You aren't just using stock models and default animations, you're making stuff yourself on the fly. That's impressive!"
Elytra opened her mouth to argue the point, but Malakh just gestured with the tool more emphatically, cutting her off before she got the chance.
"Okay, maybe it's not so easy," Elytra relented, "It's not something I would have ever seen myself doing back home, at least. I thought I'd be stuck as a delivery driver for the rest of my life!"
"Never thought to try out another career?" Malakh asked, wiggling her fingers out for a different tool.
"In hindsight, I wasn't thinking about much of anything back then," Elytra sighed, handing over the one Malakh wanted, "I'd focus on working enough in order to make rent and keep myself alive, then come home and recover as much as I could before my next shift. I honestly wasn't doing a whole lot of living."
Malakh let out a bitter laugh at that. "I know the feeling. Spent my childhood on a shithole world, doing whatever I could to survive. I didn't think I'd make it to adulthood. But here we are, Kith of the Void with a loyal following and a bunch of ancient mechs who chose us to be their pilots! A far cry from our humble origins."
"And the pay and benefits are a whole lot better than our last careers." Elytra pointed out, "Slavery left a lot to be desired."
"That is a fact!" Malakh agreed, her smile dimming somewhat, "Now we just gotta see how the whole V'tala situation is going to pan out."
Elytra handed off the next tool Malakh motioned for, asking, "How's Rhea doing on that end of things?"
"Not as well as she'd like," Malakh admitted before leaning back into the open panel she was working on, "If it was just a problem of the flesh, she would have probably gotten it sorted out by now, but a psychic wound isn't exactly something you can suture back together with needle and thread. It's proving to be way out of her wheelhouse, which she's none too happy about. And it certainly doesn't help matters that the only ones who would have an idea on how this whole dlegh thing works enough to reverse it have kept it hidden from their own people for so long that there's no one left alive who could get it sorted in anything close to a timely fashion. And even if we handed over everything Vi found to an expert usgaisjan psyentist, who's to say how long it would take them to untangle it all?"
Elytra sighed at that revelation. "Plus, who knows what kind of fallout would happen if it got out we'd gone digging in Usgaisjan state secrets."
That got a grim laugh out of Malakh. "Yeah, it's a bad situation all around. I just hope it doesn't get worse before we can solve it."
Rhea couldn't exactly give V'tala a clean bill of health as her recovery was still ongoing, but she did deem her healthy enough to get out of the medbay and get situated in the last remaining officer's room. After showing her where the mess hall was ("We usually cook something up fresh for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but feel free to swing by and grab something from the fridge or whip something up for yourself whenever you get peckish." "Three meals is more than adequate."), as well as getting her some changes of clothing from the auto-tailor in the fabrication room ("If you ever feel like expanding your wardrobe, the interface on this thing is easy enough to use, or you can ask Vi for help." "I'm fine with these."), she brought her to her new room, showing her how to open and lock her door, and how to use the controls inside to adjust the lights and temperature to whatever she found to be most comfortable.
"It's just got basic furnishings in here at the moment, but you can use the fabricators to get pretty much any kind of decoration or furniture you'll need." Rhea told V'tala, watching as the woman took in her new space.
"That won't be necessary," V'tala said, a slight frown turning down her lips, "This room is extravagantly large. Are there no smaller quarters?"
"Nope. Our rooms were supposed to be the quarters for the Thalatte officers that were to be in charge of this ship - the Thalatte are one of the Enlightened races, reptilian in appearance, with a hankering for conquest - and the cabin for the regular crew has been converted into a hydroponics bay. A better use of the space, because now we've got access to fresh herbs and vegetables." Rhea said.
V'tala just made a noncommittal noise in the back of her throat while she continued to judge the space.
"I'll leave you to get settled," Rhea said before motioning to the comms unit next to the door, "If you need to get a hold of any of us, call for us over the comms, or just come find us, it's not that big of a ship after all. After breakfast we can go over an exercise routine for you to take up during the course of your recovery. You were severely malnourished for a long time, so it's going to take a bit to get you back to full strength, and pushing things is only going to make that process take longer."
Frowning like she wanted to argue that point, V'tala turned to meet her stare, but Rhea held it unrelentingly. After a moment, V'tala conceded with the slightest of nods.
"Like I said, call any of us if you need anything. Bathroom's just through that door over there, and breakfast's going to be in about an hour and a bit. We hope to see you there." Rhea said, turning to leave V'tala to her own devices. The other woman just inclined her head in farewell as the door shut between them.
Rhea sighed to herself, staring at V'tala's door for a moment. To date, that had been the least confrontational conversation she'd had with the woman, so that was a good sign, at the very least. Especially since the self-depreciation had been to a relative minimum, which was a huge improvement.
Turning to go back to her office to try and riddle out a way to undo the dlegh bond between V'tala and Pryseia, Rhea could only hope that the former's continued autonomy would help to loosen the knots in that tether, because her own experiments weren't producing much fruit.
And if her scans of the pair of them were correct, this bond was causing them more harm than they realized.
Commander Usys Tase Ary Coit of the TNF Kladimo was something of a paradox within the Thalatte military.
They were clever, cunning, and always got results, positive ones at that. With how choked by nepotism the officer ranks within the Thalatte's navy were, this was something of a rarity. Every award, every commendation, every victory Comdr. Usys achieved was due to their skill alone, rather than their subordinates triumphs being claimed as their own.
And unlike the rest of the honour obsessed officers within the fleet, Comdr. Usys was not afraid to play a little dirty in order to ensure they came out on top, especially if it spared the lives of those under their command. When it came to their enemies, Usys had no problem lying, cheating, stealing, and whatever other underhanded means they could use to overcome their foes. While other commanders would charge their enemies head on, guns blazing, Usys would rather ambush an adversary and destroy them before they even knew Usys was there.
This unwillingness to throw away the lives of their troops made Comdr. Usys popular with the rank and file soldiers, and hated among the upper echelons of officers.
This ended up working to Comdr. Usys' favour, as far as they were concerned, because they despised most of the other officers as much as they despised them. As someone who could get results, and who none of the generals wanted to have to deal with in person, this usually netted Usys postings on the fringes of Thalatte space, chasing down whatever random targets command would assign them.
One of the few superior officers that they had any fondness for was Commandant Aparik Du Auaoy Pha, a kindred spirit who actually put the work in to achieving their rank, rather than cashing in on their family name to achieve it. The two had struck up a fast friendship, always willing to come to one another's aid should the other require it.
And so when Comdr. Usys had been given the order to hunt down the escaped slaves who not only stole the experimental vessel Comdt. Aparik had been overseeing the test run of, but killed the Commandant and the rest of the Thalatte officers under their command, Usys had been more than happy to take up this chase for revenge.
Given dossiers on the non-Thalatte crew, Usys hadn't been sure which of these Lesser had been responsible for this travesty. Tracking the Pelekys to Allodapini Station and acquiring the security logs at gunpoint had revealed the bulk of the crew disembarking, stolen goods in hand as they scattered across the galaxy, with four remaining behind to take the ship and the larger than average Odazaen as their prize.
The deupazing Corporal Killzar, a mech pilot of renown. The human Doctor Marinos, skilled with both languages and medicine. The apiarian Sergeant vel-Ahllan, a pilot famous for getting out of dangerous situations. And the deorviran Chief Khari, with technical expertise to put even the best Thalatte engineers to shame.
Comdr. Usys had no idea what they planned on doing with a stolen ship and a stolen mech, but they knew that these four had set forth to the other side of the galaxy, as far from Thalatte space as they could get. And though they'd stripped the Pelekys of its QECD, as well as an assortment of other tracking measures, they hadn't found them all.
At least, that was what the Commander had believed, until the Kladimo fell out of subspace, not onto an unawares Pelekys, but a comet littered with the tracking devices and kill switch bomb they had been following the signal of.
Tracking this band of miscreants became a more difficult task after that, but Comdr. Usys was not the sort to give up when met with a challenge.
A stray report intercepted in Baithaiz space - detailing about a minor rebellion that had attempted to gain traction on one of their colonies - would have been something to ignore if it weren't for a mention of a completely black stealth ship snatching up a larger than average Odazaen from some type of mech fighting arena. The trail was cold by the time the Kladimo arrived on the scene, the Baithaiz authorities supremely unhelpful, but Usys's team did manage to extract footage that showed Killzar escaping in the Hyttan mech, alongside a koleopteran woman the Baithaiz had taken prisoner.
The next crumb along the trail ended up being an informative one. A museum on the Zymeth leisure world Ritroser had fallen victim to a substantial theft, their attempts at downplaying the severity of it thwarted by vacationers uploading footage through an assortment of social media platforms that showed a larger than average Odazaen breaking out of the museum and being dematted away by an invisible vessel. This had led Comdr. Usys' team to the exploits of a relatively new crew flying under the Kith of the Void's banner, if their own social media presence was anything to go by.
A deupazing, a human, an apiarian, a deorviran, a masked stranger, and three massive Hyttan mechs - Storlayacas - tucked safely away on their ship.
None other than the Pelekys. They hadn't even bothered to change the name.
Getting access to their broadcasts proved easy enough. A subscription created under false credentials and rerouted enough times to make sure no one would be able to trace where the money was coming from gave Comdr. Usys front row access to the fictionalized exploits of these rogues as they made cryptic statements and battled Leviathan. That last bit had been particularly insightful, as their astronavigator had recognized the debris field where this battle with a monster of the void took place, enough that they were able to track down the general area of the galaxy where the now Kith affiliated Pelekys was likely to be.
Whatever technology that the Kith used to broadcast their crimes gave them unique energy signatures, and so Comdr. Usys had been hoping to have caught the Pelekys unawares when they tracked a Kith signal to Usgaisjan space. Instead, they had ended up ambushing a ship called the Briddbragnan, an unimpressive vessel with little in the way of a social media presence. And with how quickly and easily the Kladimo's crew had been able to subdue the Briddbragnan's, this lack of a following was more than understandable.
Comdr. Usys had crossed paths with Kith crews before, and they'd always proven to be a prickly, unhelpful lot, more willing to risk death than sell out their own. Captain Lauter of the Briddbragnan ended up being the exception to this behaviour, as not only were they willing to sell out the Pelekys, but they wanted that ship and everyone on it dead. Comdr. Usys was more than happy to exploit this grudge.
As such, when Lauter had contacted the Kladimo with the news that the Pelekys was in the middle of broadcasting a live operation, flush after their own joint mission with another Kith crew in Necupole space, Usys' analysts already had the location of the planet they were on.
Forwarding the location with the explicit instruction that the Kladimo and Briddbragnan would engage the Pelekys together had ended up being a mistake. No sooner had the coordinates been transmitted, the Briddbragnan had made the jump to subspace, blasting apart the building where the escaped slaves were playing pretend. Had Lauter waited for the Kladimo to arrive, the Pelekys would not have been able to make good on their escape.
The Briddbragnan was gone by the time the Kladimo made it to Lichhaemleas, and refused to answer any of Usys' summons. Clearly hiding in subspace, as the ship itself could not be tracked. Not long after, Usys' analyst informed them that every trace of the Briddbragnan and its crew vanished from Kith social media, no doubt in response to them attacking one of their own. Usys knew the Briddbragnan would be of no help to them going forward because of this, and so put them out of their mind.
The next breakthrough on the Pelekys' location ended up coming from the Pelekys itself. The exact coordinates of their destination, and the route they would be following to get there. That didn't matter in the slightest, however, as that brought them straight to the heart of Bernetigan territory, and Usys was not willing to risk the lives of them or their crew to give chase through that quiet corner of the galaxy. Either the Pelekys would succumb to the threat of Bernetigan assimilation, or they would make it out the other side to safer territories. Usys' hunt usurped if the former, and something to continue if the latter.
Strangely, they found themselves hoping for the Pelekys' success. For what they had done to Aparik and their crew, Usys would have their revenge, but even they had to admit that the crew of the Pelekys knew how to put on a show. It would be a shame for Queen Kaizoku and her cohort to meet so ignoble an end at the hands of the Bernetigan.
But they emerged triumphant from Bernetigan space, only to be drawn in by the Briddbragnan itself. Usys thought that they'd have them now, but by the time their analyst had deciphered where the two Kith ships were, they had already gone, the Briddbragnan to who cared where, the Pelekys with a new crew mate and Storlayacas in tow.
Sitting in their office aboard the Kladimo, the blast shield pulled back from the window that ran the length of the room, Comdr. Usys huffed out a sigh, clacking their claws together in thought while they stared out at the starry expanse before them. Tracking the Pelekys, even with the aid of others, had proven to be a fruitless endeavour at every step of the way. If they stayed chasing their quarry, they would never be able to catch up to them.
The only way forward was to get ahead of the wily crew and catch them before they had the chance to slip away in their stolen stealth ship. It would require clever tactics and unconventional thinking.
Unfortunately for the Pelekys, this was where Commander Usys Tase Ary Coit of the TNF Kladimo excelled.