For Whom the Bell Tolls

[Rusty]

"Yes, actually. Apparently it blows cover if you get sliced open and there's no blood."

He scowled at the empty blackness and activated a Holonet console on the shuttle's wall. It wasn't much more powerful than the one [member="Laguz Vald"] was using, and was probably decades older. However, it did have the advantage of being connected to a much, much larger antenna. There wasn't much that could be called signal, but there was a faint ghost of one when he set it to detect pings.

"Probably not the Netherworld. Never been myself, we Shards tended not to get drawn in when all that hooplah went down. If I had to guess, we're in a dead nebula or something. Don't ask me how we pulled that off, we were only supposed to jump to the edge of the system. Freakin' ghetto hoopty of a spaceship..."

Swearing didn't help, but it at least made him feel better. Ever since he'd parted ways with the Captain, his ability to curse without that damned beep had returned, and that made profanity worthwhile. Rusty blistered the air for a solid minute straight while he thought.

"If this is a dead nebula, that would explain the lack of holonet signal. Some of these things are weird as hell. They're mostly just gas, but if something big enough blew up back in the distant past, say along the lines of a hypernova, that can really kriff up local hyperspace. Or we could have just landed in a cloud with a high concentration of some rare sensor absorbing metal or something. Or I could be wrong on all accounts and we're just up chit creek without a paddle. We probably didn't leave the galaxy proper, since that tends to be a lot more explody, but who the hell knows?"

The Shard realized he was rambling, so he clamped his mouth shut and sat down in one of the troop seats. He rested his head in his hands and tried to think. At times like this, he really missed his robot chassis. The HRD did an admirable job of simulating things like endorphins and hormones, which was nice at times, but it did kark all to help when they were in a tight spot. There was a reason he only took the damned thing on easy missions.

 

[Laguz Vald]

Xe snorted and eyed the HRD out of the corner of xir eye. “Who woulda thunk, huh?”

At least xe was stuck in the middle of nowhere with someone competent. The situation could’ve been much worse. It could’ve been Primeval.

For all the money and influence xir time with the cult had gained xem, the folks were sometimes a mess. Anja was icier than the freezing wastes of Helska, the Priests were either crazy, cannibalistic, or a healthy mix of both, and the run-of-the-mill fanatics were just a pain in the ass to work with.

[member="Rusty"], on the other hand, was solid. Literally.

Laguz chortled at xir awful joke and plopped down on the seat next to the man. “‘S not all bad. There’ll be peace and quiet here like you can’t get nowhere else in the Galaxy.” Xe paused for a moment, swinging xir legs back and forth. “Besides, I’ve never been to a dead nebula. Well. Not this one, anyway. We might find something interesting here.”

Jumping back to xir feet, the shifter stalked over to the bunk section of the freighter. After a few minutes spent rummaging through footlockers and mattresses, Laguz returned with a triumphant grin and a bottle of space swill. Xe strongly suspected they used the same thing to clean rust and dirt from the engine, and xe didn’t care.

“To dodging another bullet?”

 

[Rusty]

Rusty cracked a grin. Well, it wasn't like they were going anywhere any time soon.

"I'll drink to that," he said. He could smell the stuff from across the room. He suspected that the poor sod who tried to degrease an engine with this stuff would be shot for sabotage. He rummaged around until he turned up a couple of empty 40mm shells to use as cups. Apparently, one of the dead pirates had a thing for grenades.

The liquid went down like a TIE with a proton torpedo shoved up its arse: fast and fiery. For about the millionth time, the Shard was glad he didn't have a gag reflex. Not that anyone who drank this stuff for long would keep their's. Might have been the point, actually.

"Some of these places have mineral deposits like you wouldn't believe. Stuff that doesn't get used up in other stars and planets, you know? If the passive scanners don't turn up anything hostile in the next few minutes, I'll run an active scan and see what pops up. We might strike it rich."

It was doubtful, of course. Nebulas were big places, and dead ones tended to be even more so. This particular gas cloud might be a few hundred miles across, or it might be a few hundred light years. You have a better chance of finding a needle in a haystack. At least the haystack could be taken care of with a jar of flammable goodness and a lighter.

The problem with navigating out of a place like this wasn't finding an escape vector. They were basically empty space with pockets of cold gas, after all. The problem was, without the light of stars and protostars, they could easily blunder into failed planet or something and they'd never know it. The sensors were supposed to pick up mass shadows, but if they weren't picking up the Holonet, chances are they wouldn't have a chance. For short jumps of no more than a few lightyears, they'd probably be fine, but the further the jump, the greater the chances of catastrophe.

"Kark it. If there ain't nothing actively trying to eat us, I say we hold tight for a bit and get hammered. Ain't no use in trying to kriff with a nebula right now. As jittery as I am, I'd probably just get us killed."

He raised his makeshift cup to [member="Laguz Vald"] and toasted.

"Well, at least there aren't any Mandalorians."