129: Mecha Combat – Twelve
"Alright, you'll be needing one of these," Malakh said as she settled into the copilot seat next to Nevara, holding out what looked like a thick cable with a girthy locking mechanism on it, "All in one stealth device. Visual, electronic, the works, way more advanced than the ones we had back at the Bakiz Institute when we got Castore. And a lot simpler too. We're going to have enough on our plate, we don't need to be futzing around with this."
The skies above Trowsorab were clear of traffic at this time of night, so Nevara locked in their course and speed so she could take the offered item. Shooting Malakh as questioning look, she asked, "And how, exactly, does it work?"
Looping her own device around her neck, the piece locking together with a mechanical clunk, Malakh explained, "I figured necklace style so it's as out of the way as possible. To take it off, squeeze the buttons on the top and bottom of it here, and to activate it, you just rotate this part."
There was what Nevara had thought was just a stylistic design, two semicircles end to end on the front of the contraption, but Malakh stuck her fingers into them and twisted like she was turning a knob. As soon as she'd twisted it from vertical to horizontal, she vanished from view.
When she next spoke, her voice was quiet, like she was speaking from outside the shuttle, not right next to Nevara.
"I also built it to muffle any sounds we'd make while moving, as an extra precaution." She said before demonstrating the capabilities of that ability by screaming at the top of her lungs. Again, it sounded like she was shouting from a long way off.
Once her scream tapered off, Malakh reappeared, speaking once again at normal volume. "We're going to have to have our suits completely sealed to get the maximum effect out of the assorted stealth systems in this thing, so us communicating on a closed line will also help with how quiet we'll actually be. And it'll also allow these things to keep our exteriors temperature controlled, so we won't have to worry about triggering any thermal sensors. Also, they're linked up to the cameras so that, to them and them alone, we'll appear as an outlined silhouette. Well, once we do some editing to overlay the effect. Figured we may as well get some action shots, and we can dub over it in post."
"That will save us from having to recreate the Dariyaschlde Institute digitally later. Are there any security measures in that place that we will need to worry about?" Nevara asked as she looped her own device around her neck.
"Just if there's any pressure sensitive stuff. There are devices that would work to mitigate our weight, but most commercial devices and the plans for such have drawbacks that I didn't have time to find workarounds for - like they're too noisy, or they draw too much power - so we'll just have to use a different workaround for that."
"She means me," Viatrix said from her Hyttan drone, sat on one of the passenger seats next to her stealth drone, her floral avatar appearing on its screen, "I'll be keeping an eye out for that kind of thing, and if we encounter any pressure sensitive areas, I'll carry you over them."
"We tested that drone's carrying capacity the other day," Malakh grinned, "It can haul stuff weighing a lot more than the pair of us."
Unlocking the controls of the shuttle to fly it herself again, Nevara returned her grin as she asked, "And just how did your experimentations go? I believe you were attempting to see what you could or couldn't do with Hyttan tech?"
Malakh's excitement was palpable as she said, "Oh it ended up going a lot more successfully than I could have hoped! V'tala's hypothesis ended up being correct - if you use a Hyttan object to install an upgrade into Hyttan tech, then said upgrade is integrated rather than rejected. If I install it with my bare hands, or use another tool to install it, it doesn't take. If Vi uses a different drone or something else to install it, again, it won't take. But when either me or Vi used the Hyttan drone as the installation tool, then the upgrade was fully locked in. That's how I was able to get the assorted stealth devices into the Hyttan drone - by using it to operate on itself."
"I supervised while not inside that thing," Viatrix added, sounding unsettled, "I don't what to find out what it feels like to go digging in my own innards."
"A valid thing to be hesitant about," Nevara agreed, "Performing an operation on oneself does sound deeply unappealing."
"Yeah, I had to dig some shrapnel out of myself once," Malakh grimaced, clutching her left side in an unconscious gesture, "Not an experience I want to repeat."
Shaking her head as if to expel a memory, she carried on, "But aside from the stealth devices, I've got some specialized scanners for us to use. Handheld, so we can use them to get a detailed enough scan on any interesting devices we find to get blueprint data for them. Vi's gonna be keeping an eye out for digital things to swipe, so we'll focus on the physical."
"And I assume we're scanning to get blueprints rather than taking items so that no one gets tipped off that there was a robbery at all?" Nevara asked.
"That, and we're not exactly going to have a cart we can use to haul shit around like the last time we went in all stealthy. And I don't feel like carrying a bunch of random devices around by hand." Malakh replied with a quiet laugh, though her expression fell slightly and her ears pinned back as she asked, "Do you think Pryseia's actually alright? I've never seen her rattled like that."
Nevara's mandibles clicked together once. Darting a glance over to where Malakh was still clutching a hand against her ribs, she asked, "That was from the Lancia, wasn't it?"
Malakh shot her a puzzled look, to which Nevara answered by staring pointedly down. Following her gaze, Malakh noticed where her hand was, and she pulled it away. Nevara couldn't help but notice when Malakh turned it over, no doubt to ensure it was only bloody in her memory.
"The Lancia?" Viatrix asked quietly, as if afraid of the answer.
Taking a shuddering breath, Malakh said, "It was a Thalatte battleship I was stationed on with Pryseia for a while. It was a massive thing, surprisingly fast and decidedly dangerous. It headed up a sizeable fleet of smaller ships that would patrol around active war zones to prevent their blockades from being broken. They came upon what they thought was a Meleten freighter trying to flee, but it ended up being a trap. Remote controlled and rigged with explosives, it took out more than half of that patrol fleet, and critically damaged the Lancia. The only reason Pryseia and I survived the initial explosion was because the engine room and mech hangar where each of us were stationed were on the back end of the ship - the front was completely blown off. The engine was going to go critical, the commanding officers had been killed in the attack, and I'd been hurt. The junior officers that remained had no idea what to do, so I ordered everyone around while digging shards out of my ribs, and then helped to get the engine stable once I stopped the bleeding. I was flogged to within an inch of my life for taking charge like that, once the survivors were rescued. And the only reason that happened was because Pryseia had organized her mech team to play the role of tugboats, and got the Lancia to safety. Against orders, so she got a flogging too. The only reason neither of us were killed for our insubordination was because we ended up saving a lot of thalatte lives. If it had been only slaves that we'd saved? We'd have been executed then and there."
"It took you both nearly a full month to recover," Nevara said, her voice distant and dark with memory, but she blinked rapidly for a moment, looking over to Viatrix as she went on, "They were transferred to the ship I'd been a pilot of at the time, and Rhea a medic on while they convalesced. Technically it was a prison ship, meant to house and heal those of us who did enough to be punished, but not enough to be killed by our masters."
"That's… awful." Viatrix voice warbled like she was about to cry.
Malakh scoffed, shaking her head at that. "It was worse than that. But even still, as badly hurt as we were, Pryseia was irrepressible. She acted like the whole thing was a vacation, not that she'd been brutally punished for the crime of saving as many people as she could. Even when they had us in the stocks, whipping us until we were all but flayed, she didn't shut down like she did earlier today."
Nevara let out a harsh breath through her nose, her mandibles clicking together sharply, once, before she said, "She was always the first to make light of a dire situation, even before we were captured. Anything to distract from whatever would bring our spirits down. Despite the threats inherent in our current career, it's a paradise to what we endured under the Thalatte, a life that is no longer something we have to spend every moment bracing against."
"Out of survival mode, so all those decades of trauma can finally be reacted to, huh?" Malakh said with a sad smile, "Guess we're all due for a breakdown in that case. I'm just glad V'tala was able to break through to her."
"She's proven to be an invaluable member of this crew, along with Elytra and yourself," Nevara said, shooting Viatrix a small smile over her shoulder, "I'm glad that the three of you have come into our lives."
"And I'm really glad it was you all who gave metaphorical birth to me." Viatrix replied, her voice going soft, "I can't imagine what I'd be like if anyone else had been the one to create me."
"No doubt more in line with what the Program was, at first." Nevara said with a shrug.
"Glitching and homicidal? That would have probably greatly reduced my life expectancy." The laugh Viatrix let out at the thought was far from humorous.
They lapsed into a comfortable silence after that, staring out at the star scattered sky racing past the shuttle's view screen, their angle pitched too high to see the ground below. It was a far cry from the tense silences Nevara and Malakh had to comport themselves with back in their Thalatte days, where anything so much as a breath taken out of form could be grounds for a reprimand.
But they were free of that now, beholden to the commands of none but their own, and so Malakh felt no guilt when she broke the silence several minutes later by asking, "Sooooooo… There's something going on between Pryseia and V'tala, right?"
That got a startled laugh out of Nevara, completely sidetracked by the subject change as she was. Side eyeing Malakh, she told her, "If there is, Pryseia has not made mention of it to me. Though I must admit, V'tala's method of grounding Pryseia earlier did feel quite… charged."
Whacking her in the arm with her tail, Malakh shot back, "Right?! Ever since we got back from vacation, V'tala's seemed… I don't know… like, aware of Pryseia? Protective. But then I don't know if it's mutual, because Pryseia's always protective about everyone, but then again she's always being encouraging to V'tala to experience life? Which she does with us all too, so I don't know?!"
"They're kinda… magnetized, in a way," Viatrix said in a stage whisper, and the others could swear they could hear a smile in her voice, "Even when they're talking to other people, they sort of always seem to end up turning towards one another? And they stare at one another when the other isn't looking quite a lot."
"Have you been reviewing security footage?" Nevara asked over her shoulder.
"I did. Just now." Viatrix told her, not doing a very good job about sounding sorry about that, "All my Hyttan upgrades have made it very easy for me to go over information in a speedy manner!"
Malakh spun her seat so she could grin at her drone as she said, "That bodes well for our upcoming theft. But what should we do about this whole thing? V'tala and Pryseia, I mean. Can we even do anything?"
"If there is anything between them, it would be best for them to come to the conclusion on their own, rather than try to force their hand." Nevara rationalized, "For all we know, as caught up with the narratives we're spinning for our Kith side of things, we may be seeing things where there may actually be nothing."
"Well, the relayers are certainly making a lot out of that nothing, if that's the case." Viatrix giggled, "Chivalry is second only to Midas Touch when it comes to fanworks produced, and the gap is closing fast."
"What are those terms?!" Nevara demanded, perplexed.
"Come on, you haven't heard the relay names before?" Malakh laughed, "It's what our fans use to refer to the relationships between the members of our crew!"
"The two romance juggernauts are Midas Touch - the name comes from a Human legend about a king who could turn things to gold by touching then, which alludes to Bathory and the Hand - and Chivalry - because that's for the Knight of the Tomb and Queen Kaizoku." Viatrix explained, "Although Boardroom Negotiations - that's Bathory and Kaizoku - is up there too."
Nevara made a confused noise in her throat before saying, "But they aren't in a romantic relationship?"
"No, but they are hot, and people like the look of them together." Malakh shrugged.
Shaking her head at that, Nevara could only say, "I don't understand that mindset at all."
Thankfully, the journey to the Dariyaschlde Institute went by without issue, Nevara guiding the shuttle to come to rest on the roof of the building, close to an emergency exit Viatrix has spotted on her initial reconnaissance run. Even though the ship was completely invisible, to scanners as well as visually, it was still a solid object that anyone could bump into if they happened to be lucky enough to stumble into it. As such, Nevara parked it on top of a decorative structure that had no access points, and Viatrix used her Hyttan drone to gently lower the pair of them down to the roof.
"And as you can see, just for our own sakes," Malakh had said once the three of them had fully engaged their stealth devices, "I made it so that we'll be able to see each other while like this. Last thing we'd need is to lose track of one another."
On each of their displays, they appeared like moving shadows, devoid of detail except for the shape of them. Not the best look for emoting, but given that they were here for stealth rather than drama, it would more than do.
It didn't take long for Malakh to disable the alarms on the emergency exit, Viatrix slipping inside to make sure the coast was clear before the others followed. Nevara and Malakh followed her down the dim stairwell before they came out to the floor where the Gheluc signal they were after was coming from.
Like the majority of buildings they'd seen on Trowsorab, the Dariyaschlde Institute was a massive structure built of chrome and mirrored glass, and that aesthetic had been repeated on the interior as well, the only difference being that the glass on the inside was frosted instead of mirrored, the faint lights coming from the miscellaneous pieces of lab equipment throwing hazy silhouettes on the walls around them, the low, after hours lighting providing little in the way of illumination.
"I'm not picking up a lot of security on this floor," Viatrix said quietly, her drone swinging from side to side as she scanned, "Just looks like there are a couple on patrol. I can keep them pinged on your HUDs."
"Perfect," Malakh grinned as the map of the floor projected on the inside of her helmet was updated with the guard locations, "Picking up anything else worrying?"
"Nothing so far. My other drone still okay?" Viatrix asked.
"Fully secure," Nevara said, the drone clamped on to the equipment pack Malakh had given her, looking for all the world like a backpack, "Hopefully we won't encounter a situation where we need it."
"Fortune favour us," Malakh agreed, "Our target is that Gheluc signal, but everything else in this place is fair gain. That being said, we don't wanna linger forever, and we don't want to do anything that would jeopardize our mission on this world."
"I'd propose just sticking to this floor, then," Nevara said, "Our target is at the far end of it, and if we follow this path to get to it, and this one to escape, we'd be able to pass by every room on this floor."
On all of their maps, Nevara's route appeared as a pale line weaving through the labyrinth of labs, the guards white blips moving through the white outlined halls on this floor.
"Let's get to it, then," Malakh said, pulling her scanner from her own equipment pack, "We're burning moonlight."
"This is gonna be so good!" Viatrix let out the quietest of giggles, "I can't wait to go over everything we find here, and then find the absolutely most infuriating ways to get it out into the galaxy! I might just leave behind a program to broadcast the security feed of this place, because I would love to see the looks on their faces when they realize what kind of security breach they've had!"
"So long as it doesn't lead back to us, go for it." Nevara encouraged with a quiet chuckle of her own.