For Whom the Bell Tolls

[Rusty]

The skull made a sickening crunch as Gertrude's buttstock connected with it, all the force Rusty could muster behind the blow. The four legged creature dropped like a puppet with its strings cut, its skull burst like an overripe melon.

The three other creatures paused, suddenly wary. The tables had been turned. Prey could turn violent when cornered, they knew that well, but rarely with such ferocity. Their glittering multifaceted eyes were not the eyes of dumb animals, but of sentient beings who could think, who could plan.

The leader of the pack let out a long, chittering wail as the Shard leveled the massive rifle. They recognized that there was danger on an instinctual level and took several steps back.

The species wasn't one that the gunsmith had encountered before. Their flanks were covered with short green fur, thick and coarse, and their backs armored with thick chitin. Their heads seemed overlarge for their bodies, supporting massive jaws layered with rows of jagged, sharklike teeth. Long, muscular legs propelled their sinuous bodies with frightening speed when necessary. They limbs terminated in nimble hands, with three forward facing fingers and rearward facing thumbs. The thumbs were tipped with flat, almost daggerlike talons.

Individually, the creatures weren't large, only about a meter from snout to rump, but they clearly worked as a pack to make up for it.

"Laguz, you awake?" Rusty called, his back towards the wreckage of the freighter.

This was supposed to have been an easy mission. He had a load of armaments that needed to be delivered to a small band of mercenaries trying to get a start in the Mid Rim. Their leader had seemed pleasant enough, and had deep enough pockets to pay for the goods upfront. Their mission statement was to curtail the excesses of Force Users through superior arms and tactics, a sentiment Rusty could get behind easily. And so he had agreed to meet them in person with the first shipment, in order to work out contractual details for continued business.

He had hired his shapeshifting friend, [member="Laguz Vald"], as a bodyguard. "Friend" might have been an odd term for the both of them, but that was the most accurate way to describe their relationship. They enjoyed each other's company, they worked well together as a team, and their joint ventures were usually profitable. There was always a chance that they would end up on opposite sides of a contract one day, but until that day came, neither of them paid much attention to the prospect. It would happen, or it wouldn't. In the meantime, they partnered up whenever it was mutually beneficial to do so.

They had been in the air for less than an hour when the pirates struck. The attack had been vicious and well coordinated. Though the duo managed to escape, they were forced to crash land in an uncharted system. Rusty had tried to scout their surroundings when one of the aliens had tried to take a bite out of his apparently tasty HRD ass.

Something told him things would get worse before they got better.

 

[Laguz Vald]

Was this some sick cosmic version of karma finally catching up with xem? Was this what this was?

With no small measure of incredulity and, yes, outrage, a mess of skin, bone, and muscle poured from between the cracks in the steaming hull, and rearranged itself into something vaguely humanoid. For whose sake it was tough to tell, and even the shifter xemself would be hard-pressed to come up with anything resembling an answer.

In fact, any question longer than three words would probably earn the one asking a bullet between the eyes.

Guess it was a good thing [member="Rusty"] wasn’t really on the long-winded side.

“Oh, I’m fine,” came the reply, somewhat stilted and odd-sounding as Laguz remembered almost too-late that xe needed a mouth to speak. “I’m just dandy.”

Finally done inspecting xir mass for damage, the sniper lifted xir gaze, took one look at xir surroundings, and wished xe’d stayed in the flaming wreckage. The instantaneous folly passed a moment later, and with renewed focus Laguz hissed at the pack of creatures circling around them, a sound doubled, then tripled as xe pulled and spliced the vocal cords rippling along a rapidly elongating throat.

Ever wanted to see what a pissed-off shi’ido looks like? No, you didn’t.

Slamming a suddenly much bigger paw into the soil a few inches away from the HRD, the shifter sneered at the pack as xe leaned forward, casting an ominous shadow first over xir companion, and then over the group of predators, scrutinizing them with irisless eyes as saliva dripped down the needle-thin points of xir fangs, each measuring half the height of the hungry aliens.

Aliens that were probably realizing right about now that they maybe weren’t all that hungry after all.

 

[Rusty]

Rusty didn't startle as something big, alien, and distinctly animal took the field by his side. [member="Laguz Vald"] was a talented shifter, after all, and by this point, there wasn't anything xe could turn into that would shock him. Well, he mused, remembering a particularly liquor-sodden night that had left them both unable to look each other in the eye the next day, there wasn't much xe could turn into that would shock him. At least not sober. Another batch of that bathtub gin and all bets were off.

Xir growl certainly seemed to put the aliens off their lunch. They chittered nervously at one another, their body language suggesting that healthy caution was giving way to fear.

"Eh, what the hell."

The Shard fired a shot over their heads. Gertrude's song was deafening, even in the open clearing created by the crash. The pack skittered away with an almost arachnid grace, panic lending them speed.

As the echoing report of the gunshot faded, the subtle sounds of the wilderness began to reemerge, hesitantly at first, but building to the familiar ruckus that came with the truly untamed parts of the galaxy. Rusty breathed a sigh of relief. So long as he remembered to keep an ear out, the local prey species should give them a heads up if the predators returned. Which, knowing his luck, they would.

Crisis averted, he turned back towards the ship.

It was a mess. The hull was visibly cracked in spots, and coolant and other less identifiable solutions were venting vigorously, most of them sublimating into gas without the pressurized hoses to keep them safely liquid. It was probably for the best that an ion bolt had shut most everything down before the crash. If the structural damage was that bad, there was a good chance the reactor was breached. And if it was up and running when they hit, they'd have left one hell of a crater.

The only thing that gave the Shard even a glimmer of hope, besides having one of the most talented killers he had ever known at his back, was the fact that the first thing the pirates had done was shoot away their comm array's external antenna. The system had gone into shutdown when the bolt had struck to prevent further damage. There was a chance that that had prevented the ion bolt from frying it like it had everything else. If they could get the comms working, he was pretty sure he could jury rig one of the power generators for the GRTDs they were hauling to power the thing.

"Well," he said, assuming xe had remembered ears this time, "it could be a lot worse. The pirates can't strafe the wreckage without destroying the cargo. If we get out a signal and they pick up, I'm pretty sure we can take them."

 

[Laguz Vald]

The very instant the aliens skittered off into the thicket, Laguz’s drawn-out sneer petered out into a hacking cough as a particularly heavy plume of smoke wafted into xir open maw. Xir pale eyes teared up and xir form seemed to lose focus and clarity, dissolving back into the previous amorphous shape as xe tried to expel the soot from xir lungs.

“Kark!”

Wiping at xir cheeks, the sniper straightened again, joints cracking in time with the shriveling metal of their vessel. Or, rather, the remnants thereof. It didn’t look too great, to be honest. While the shifter wasn’t any sort of expert on the subject, xe certainly knew enough, and [member="Rusty"]’s words a moment later only confirmed xir suspicions.

“Probably why they tried to turn us into scrap metal. Dealing with one of us is trouble enough.” For the first time since they’d crashed, the shifter’s expression twinged into something akin to a smile, even if only for a moment. “Doubt they knew I was riding shotgun, so they’ll probably bite.”

By the time xe was finished, the smile had morphed into something far more ravenous, marked by the slight flare of xir nostrils and the pointed edges of xir teeth. When xe shifted particularly quickly between forms, certain features became stuck across various shapes. An artifact of impatience, as it were.

“I think I’ll go scout out the perimeter while you try to make something out of…” xe waved at the burning pile of metal, weaponry, and booze, “that.”

Xir voice implied that out of the two tasks, Laguz had the better job.

 

[Rusty]

Better job patrol might have been, but only because shifting was cheating. Or something.

Rusty couldn't change his shape without the help of a workshop. Then again, trying to cobble together a working comm from this mess was something of a workshop job too. He'd have to make do with whatever he could salvage from the ship.

Trying to navigate the ruined corridors of the freighter was not easy. The ion bolt had shorted out just about every active circuit, so he didn't have to worry about live current, but there were hazards aplenty that could rend and tear his HRD chassis. Sharp bits of durasteel jutted out from a variety of surfaces. Caustic liquids leaked from walls and conduits, and even without the current running through the wiring, the loose bundles that snaked across the deck were trip hazards.

It would be most embarrassing if Rusty were to trip and impale himself on the clutter. It probably wouldn't kill him, but he'd never hear the end of it.

There was a mostly complete toolkit in the makeshift workshop that Rusty had set up in the event that the cargo needed hasty repairs. The damn thing was strewn across the place, the neatly kept toolbox upended and spilled open by the crash. It would take days to locate everything, if the Shard were so inclined. Not that he was. Most of the sturdier wrenches and spanners were still intact, but a lot of the more delicate, more specialized equipment was shattered or twisted beyond repair. Which was a shame, because repairing the comm unit was going to be fiddly business.

More or less at random, Rusty shoved a collection of tools into a sturdy canvas bag that he found outside the door. It had probably been luggage at one point, but the zipper had busted, and whatever the contents had been, they were no more. But the seams held, and there was a convenient carrying handle. That was about all he needed at this point.

Trying to get into the cargo bay to salvage a generator was going to be a lot trickier. The cargo bay was a large, open area, and it had suffered severe structural damage in the crash. The only door Rusty could get to was badly warped, to the point that it would no longer slide easily along its rails. Or slide at all, for that matter, as he learned when he tried to manually crank it open.

The Shard swore. He didn't have a cutting torch. Hopefully, there would be a big enough breach in the hull somewhere on the ship's exterior to slide through.

[member="Laguz Vald"]

 

[Laguz Vald]

Shifting was cheating. Xe’d heard the words plenty of times, and always regarded the accuser with the sort of look that spelled in no uncertain terms that xe, Laguz Vald, didn’t give a flying kark about it.

Using beskar pellets in your Verpine sniper rifle was also cheating. Probably. As was using the Verpine in the first place, to be honest. The mercenary paid very little attention to the feathers xir chosen approach ruffled, because sooner or later, those same people realized they needed a really good sniper.

The sort that cheated.

Perhaps one day, that would be the pirates who’d shot xe and [member="Rusty"] down (though the shifter severely doubted they would survive beyond the next few days). Either way, underhanded or not, there would always be work for xem.

That’s why xe had to keep on xir toes, and xir eyes peeled, and xir ears peaked. Fortunately for xir own good health, xe could optimize and multiply all of those sensory organs for Best Chances™ out in the wilderness, which was pretty handy when you were utterly clueless as to what kind of wilderness you were stuck in.

The Primeval had taught Laguz a few good lessons on wildernesses and their general characteristics, and also that they only really differed cosmetically. Functionally, they all tried their damnedest to kill you, often in exceedingly creative ways. It’s as if every wilderness in the galaxy were engaged in a secret match of one-upmanship.

And boy, were they keeping score.

The shi’ido thus proceeded into the thick underbrush with extreme care, placing one foot in front of the other as if xe were expecting to have it bitten off the next second.

When something rustled to xir right, the sniper froze on the spot as if xe’d flipped a switch. The set of eyes on the side of xir head squinted as xe tried to get a better look at the thing crouching in the bushes. It looked like the kind of creature whose claws can rend durasteel as if it were paper, and Laguz was entirely certain xe didn’t want to be on the business end of those claws.

Exhaling, xe tried to take a step to the side.

There was a roar, and then a blurry shape launched itself at the shifter, maw open and chock-full of teeth.

So much for stealth.

 

[Rusty]

One second, Rusty was using a prybar to widen a rend in the cargo hold.

The next, he was sitting on his ass. He felt something wet dripping down his face and onto his collar. He touched his fingers to the dampness. They came back red.

"What the hell?"

His OS was fairly screaming at him, warnings that would have been the equivalent of pain to a true human. There was a gash on his scalp, not deep, but bleeding freely. Which was odd, because he hadn't had his head near anything sharp at the time. In fact, he was been paying special attention to safety, since they were stuck on a rock with no replacement chassis available.

There was a subaudible growl from somewhere behind him, so low that a true human probably wouldn't have detected it.

The Shard turned to find one of the creatures some ten feet away, lazily licking crimson from the tip of one of its rearward facing claws. It eyed him with the sort of lazy arrogance that one tends to get from being at the top of the food chain, and from being damn good at it.

"Son of a queen," Rusty breathed. "You're just karking with me."

The critter couldn't have understood, but its jaws dropped open in what could only be a grin. This one was slightly larger than the others, and had a bony crest that armored its brow and gave its face a misshapen, angular appearance.

The gunsmith stood slowly, warily, keeping his eyes on the creature the whole time. He took a swordsman's grip on the prybar, the meter long length of durasteel feeling heavy and solid in his hands. He kept his back as close to the ship as he dared, lest the creature slip in behind him. He cursed himself for not keeping Gertrude closer, but the battle box would have made the work nearly impossible.

"Come at me, bro."

The creature just stared, its eyes mocking.

Suddenly, Rusty heard a sound from up above, like something scraping metal. On instinct, he thrust the prybar above his head and threw himself to the side. There was a muted thump, and something hot and sticky began to run down his hands. The Shard lowered the bar to found a very surprised looking creature impaled on the bar, having nearly swallowed it on the way down. He removed his would be executioner from the weapon with a contemptuous flick of his wrist.

He said nothing, opting to glare at the creature that had been playing bait. It growled again, but retreated off into the bushes, just in time for a distant roar to make it to Rusty's ear.

Laguz, he thought, and started to race off towards the source.

But then he stopped.

These creatures were smart. Whatever they were, they could plan and work in groups. If he rushed blindly in, he'd probably be ambushed along the way, this time in overwhelming numbers. And that wouldn't do either of them any good.

He had to be able to do something, but what?

Rusty took a quick look around the crash site, came up with a plan that was decidedly insane, and blurred into motion, all in about the span it took to read this sentence.

One of the items he had salvaged from the workshop was an aerosol can of a combination degreaser/lubricant that was both wildly effective and extraordinarily flammable. He'd never consider using the stuff while the ship was in flight, as even a small concentration of vapor in a pressure vessel such as a ship's hull could be dangerous. Hell, it had its own storage box to protect it while it was on the ship. He cracked open the lock box with a quick burst of amplified strength, and extracted the can.

Next, he hopped on top of the ship and sprinted along the spine until he reached the turret. It was clearly out of commission, but that was just fine.

Rusty sprayed the entire can into one of the barrels, and then mashed the muzzle shut with another burst of unnatural strength.

As far as improvised pipe bombs went, this probably wasn't his best attempt ever, but it would have to do. He kicked the manual trigger on the weapon, and then dove off the side of the ship as a giant's hands clapped behind him. The noise was incredible, and if the thermal bloom was any indication, there was one hell of a fireball to go with it. Hopefully, that would be enough to startled the predators and send them running, and to give Laguz a fighting chance.

The Shard landed hard in the dirt, thankfully a portion free of debris, natural or otherwise. The explosion had better have worked, because he wasn't sure he'd be able to move for the next few minutes.

[member="Laguz Vald"]

 

[Laguz Vald]

Xe survived its first lunge mostly by the simple virtue of being able to duck much faster and much, much lower than most living beings. In fact, Laguz didn’t so much duck as xe folded down into xemself, watching the surprised predator sail through the air where xir head used to be mere moments later.

The creature – whatever it was – took on a rather shocked expression, flailing gracelessly when the flesh it had been counting on wasn’t there. Its purchase had quite rudely disappeared several feet downward, and instead of juicy meat, xir attacker sank its claws into a tree behind xem.

Wasting not a breath, the sniper sort of poured xemself in the other direction – because turning around is slow, and also for losers – and squeezed the trigger of xir trusty Tessie.

There was a loud bang.

The creature slumped against the trunk, lifeless, but Laguz wasn’t paying attention anymore. You see, Tessie, for all her punch and zeal, was a very quiet lady. In all the years xe’d known her, she’d never made a single sound. With a concerned gaze, the sniper went to inspect xir weapon for damage when xe caught the pillar of dark smoke crawling through the sky out of the corner of xir eyes.

In a flash, the shifter broke into a sprint towards their crashed vessel, images of the pirates landing filtering unbidden into xir mind. Xe would’ve heard a shuttle approaching, wouldn’t xe? Or did they have some fancy stealth teach, catch [member="Rusty"] unprepared?

If they had managed to take the HRD out of the equation, getting of the planet had just become considerably harder.

Xe burst back into the artificial clearing they’d burned into the thick woodlands, gun at the ready.

There was no one here.

For a few long, breathless moments, Laguz listened only to the sound of dying flames, xir protesting lungs, and the adrenaline-fueled thrum of the blood in xir veins.

“You alright?” xe called out, finally, and kept glancing around for any sign of danger.

 

[Rusty]

"I'm okay!" Rusty shouted through a mouthful of sandy soil.

He pulled himself up with a groan, his body protesting mightily. Nothing was broken, but man, that was not fun.

The blast had been much, much more powerful than he had planned. It had actually cracked the spine of the ship, and the two halves had fallen away from each other.

On the bright side, he could get to the cargo hold now. And hey, getting to the internals of the comms would be a piece of cake now. The Force apparently favored, drunks, children, and idiot Shards.

"Find anything useful out there?" he asked the shifter as he dusted himself off.

In the distances, the eerie howls of the hunters echoed through the trees. Rusty didn't have a limbic system, so the hairs on the back of his neck didn't actually stand up, but that didn't mean he wasn't creeped out.

"Like maybe a way to get these things to back the hell off? I admire persistence as much as the next fellow, but this is getting ridiculous."

[member="Laguz Vald"]

 

[Laguz Vald]

It seemed that the blast had scared anything not shifter- or HRD-shaped away for the time being. Laguz allowed xir tense posture to relax a minuscule amount, still keeping the extra pairs of eyes on xem just in case. Places like this, you could never be too careful; and after xir narrow brush with death back in the shrubbery, the normally paranoid assassin was even more cautious.

Slowly, xe made xir way across the charred clearing to [member="Rusty"], all xir gazes fixated on the treeline.

“Afraid not,” xe said with a small shake of xir head. “Got attacked by this oversized, mutant… cat thing. Can’t remember the last time a karker sneaked up on me like that…” Shuddering, Laguz trailed off, clearly displeased by the encounter. Was xe getting old? Was that it?

“They’re pack animals. Usually they’ll have some sort of alpha leading them… we kill that, and they’ll leave us alone. Probably.”

In xir younger years, when people were too busy dying from the Gulag plague to try and order additional hits on each other, the sniper had traveled the Galaxy far and wide in search of a perfect skin. It was a work in progress even today, though permanently put on the backburner as Laguz discovered the head-hunting business. Maybe one day, xe’ll get bored and return to xir pursuit again.

Or maybe xe would die on this karking planet before ever finishing xir quest. Who the feth knew?

 

[Rusty]

"You know, just once I'd like to meet a creature that saw a gun, recognized it was outmatched, and went and brought me dinner instead of trying to make me dinner."

The Shard leaped to the top of the ship in a single inhumanly graceful motion, his annoyance overriding the HRD's self-imposed limitations. It said something about the designers when being annoyed was a stronger stimuli from the operating system's point of view than fear or anger. Rusty wasn't sure what exactly it said, but it said something.

He ripped the cover off the antenna array and, with the help of a few tools and copious amounts of elbow grease, began tearing the thing apart. As he suspected, most of the components themselves were fine, if a little beat up. The ion bolt had left this particular portion of the ship intact, opting instead to travel down active pathways. The antenna was still shot, but there was enough left to boost the signal through the system. They wouldn't be able to receive, but they could certainly broadcast.

Next, he slipped through the crack in the spine, which was nearly wide enough to drive a speeder through at this point. He hurled a few crates of weaponry up and out, along with a power generator for one of the heavy machine guns. The guns themselves would be nearly useless if the pirates came, but there was enough other, less onerous ordinance in the hold to get the job done.

Mission accomplished, he hopped back up and out, and began splicing everything together.

"If we're lucky, the critters have learned their lessons and back off," he said as he jacked shotgun shells into an RF-12. "If we're not, we'll have to deal with them and then pirates. And if we're really unlucky, we'll have to take them both on at the same time. What do you think?"

[member="Laguz Vald"]

 

[Laguz Vald]

Laguz gave a rueful nod of agreement.

“I know. I know. No respect left, right? There was a time when monsters kept their distance when you fired a shot.”

Lamenting golden ages past, the merc shifted xir rifle around. Xe leaned back on the hull of their crashed ship, keeping xir eyes trained on the edge between their scorched swath of land and the wilderness.

It was frakking unknown regions out there, as far as Laguz was concerned. The close encounter of the third kind had put the sniper on edge. Despite best practices, xir finger hovered above the trigger. Damned if xe was going to be ambushed again.

The pile of weaponry and explosives beside xem grew steadily as [member="Rusty"] rummaged through salvage. By any normal estimate, the amount of arms and ordnance they’d brought would be nothing short of exorbitant.

But they were mercenaries. Gun-toting, fun-loving professionals who made things go boom.

“I think... when life gives you lemons, you whip out the tequila and get plastered while the lemons kill each other.”

With a steady hand, Laguz pressed xir rifle into xir shoulder and depressed the trigger.

A high-pitched yelp sounded at the edge of the clearing, and one of the creatures spilled its innards onto it a moment later.

“I also think that’s ship engines on your 8 o’clock. Looks like we won’t need that radio.” There was a grin on xir face as xe pushed off the hull. “There’s a spot up there in a tree. Good for an ambush. You gonna stay out here, or you gonna hide?”

Whatever the HRD chose, he’d have to do it quickly.

 

[Rusty]

"I'll play patsy," Rusty shouted after xir.

This wasn't a situation they often found themselves in. If anything, they were far more used to being on the other side of the equation, having run some poor, unsuspecting prey into the ground like hounds after a fox. But as any experienced hunter could attest, foxes had teeth, and a cornered, desperate mark was dangerous.

The Shard figured that, between the shifter and himself, they would give these miserable pirate bastards a thing or two to think about.

The shuttle was an Ugly in the truest sense of the word, a hybrid cobbled together from so many parts that it was hard to tell what it had originally been. The ball cockpit of a TIE sat on what appeared to be the nose of an undersized cousin of a Lambda class shuttle. The engine sounded like something out of a YT series. The twin blasters of the TIE were still present on the nose, and the loading ramp was lowered, revealing a couple of mooks manning an old E-web.

Oh goody, Rusty thought to himself. These guys weren't completely incautious.

For his part, the gunsmith kept his hands behind his head, his back to the wreckage of the ship. They hadn't blasted him on sight, which meant they were probably hoping to squeeze a ransom out of him before taking his life. Greedy sons of bitches.

The shuttle landed smoothly enough, the pilot clearly skilled enough to make the monstrosity behave in a predictable manner. The Shard wasn't terribly surprised to find that the pilot was a Givin. The hardy species were natural mathematical geniuses, and they could take hard vacuum better than most. Given the likelihood of a seal breach in a hoopty like that, it was a smart choice.

The evident leader of the crew, a tall, bald human with a scar that neatly bisected his scalp, continued on down his face and disappeared under his collar, pushed past the gunnery crews.

"Who the hell are you?" The man growled with the sort of practiced gravel that came from years of yelling at mirrors.

"The hell I am Rusty," came the Shard's response.

He could practically see the gears turning in the pirate's head as he tried to digest that statement.

"What are you, some kind of joker?"

"Not really," Rusty drawled, his words slow and laconic. Guys like this were used to victims being in a near panic. A calm target tended to make them twitchy. The Shard didn't want twitchy, but he couldn't convincingly play panic well enough not to set off even more alarm bells, so he went with the lesser of two evils. "I'm just a lowly weapons dealer, worth way more alive than dead."

"Yeah, we'll see about that, tough guy," the pirate spat. "Where's your partner?"

"Partner?" Rusty asked, his face betraying nothing. Either this guy knew about [member="Laguz Vald"] or the Captain. Either one was grounds to make sure he died and stayed that way.

"Yeah, the little short chick. I've done my research, buddy. You never travel alone."

"Ah, you mean [member="Malia Afredane"]. Killed in the crash, I'm afraid. Died on impact."

The pirate scowled. It was clear he didn't believe Rusty for an instant, but before he could reply, there was a howl from the brushes. The man whipped around, his blaster appearing in hand as if by magic.

It was all the distraction the Shard needed. He flipped the thermal detonator he'd been hiding in his fingers into the pile of weapons.

"NOW!" He roared, moving to dead stop to full sprint in an instant. He didn't want to be anywhere near that pile when it went off.

 

[Laguz Vald]

While [member="Rusty"] ran his mouth, Laguz scoped xir targets. Often careless and reckless in xir everyday life, this was the one area where the merc was meticulous and nitpicking to the very last detail. Every fraction of a millimeter mattered as xe adjusted xir aim. Every gentle gust of wind, and every meter of distance.

There were about a hundred of those between xem and the ramp of the ship, where xir first target sat innocuously. An E-web. Nice weapon, overall, but too bulky and inaccurate for xir tastes. It made up for that deficiency with the rate of fire and sheer stopping power, and that was alright if you didn’t mind the muzzle flash and the obscene amount of noise. Since even one of those was a sure-fire way to an early grave in xir line of business, Laguz avoided rowdy guns like the Gulag.

Another downside of the blaster were the high-powered cells it required to spew out the death lasers.

In other words, the perfect target if you wanted to blow a few people up.

A few seconds later, Laguz was surprised to discover that Rusty had the same ideat.

Oh, well. Great minds think alike?

The sniper squeezed the trigger without hesitating, and then xir whole field of vision was fire. There was no telling what havoc the combination of an exploding power cell and a thermal det would do. Laguz, for one, was glad that xe was far away enough to observe, and not partake in that particular thought experiment.

It looked painful.

When the smoke finally cleared, Laguz was already set to put a hole through the skull of the Givin captain. Rust bucket or not, they needed the vessel to get off the planet. Xe’d be damned before xe’d let the bastard thief whisk it away under their noses.

 

[Rusty]

Rusty was close enough to participate. He had sprinted away from the pile of munitions at top speed, but the shockwave was still enough to pick him up and sling him about ten meters.

His internal alarms were going off like air raid sirens. The concussion shattered his eardrums, leaving only the electronic backups, which left things sounding tinny and distant. Several of his internal organs suffered major shock, and he was pretty sure something was bruised. That was fine, he supposed, he didn't actually need them. Not to fight, at any rate.

He hit the ground on his feet and, instead of tumbling in a most undignified manner, he turned the momentum into a somersault and landed in a squat, pivoting on his feet towards the rest of the fireball.

The ship, minus a neat little hole in the cockpit- thanks [member="Laguz Vald"] for thinking ahead- was mostly unharmed. The thing was sturdier than it looked, and apparently had some sort of auxiliary shielding that protected it from the brunt of the blast. The gunnery crew at the bottom of the ramp, for instance, was mostly unharmed. Or at least they were until Rusty put a round into each of their heads from the EPC he picked up on his mad dash away from ground zero. The tiny 5mm round must not have been picked up by the shields, because they had no problem putting the pirates down.

The chief pirate was nowhere to be found. Probably ash on the wind, by this point. The pile of generators and munitions was basically just a glass crater by this point, still glowing harshly from the heat. And maybe a little radiation. Eh, kark it. What was a little radiation between friends?

The Shard charged towards the ship, carbine at the low ready. There were probably still some pirates aboard, and they'd have to be cleaned out if they were going to get the hell off this rock.

Up the boarding ramp he went, vaulting over the corpses of the gunners.

The top of the ramp was clear. It opened into a large troop-carrier style bay. This shuttle had been configured for boardings, not for long haul flights, and probably operated from a mothership that was hanging around in orbit. That meant that their window to escape was limited. If the mothership thought that the shuttle was compromised, they'd probably be blown to pieces by orbital bombardment.

Three pirates remained, clearly shuttle crew. They obviously hadn't been expecting much trouble. A full boarding party would have made for one hell of a firefight. Instead, three clean doubletaps, six bullets total, put the scum down. Rusty hauled their cooling corpses, as well as the corpse of the pilot, down the ramp and kicked them off. Hopefully, the wildlife would eat well tonight.

"Laguz!" he shouted. "Let's boogie."

 

[Laguz Vald]

Laguz didn’t need to be told twice. A planet nearly as inhospitable as Thral? Kark that, xe was outta there.

With a quickness that the laws of physics fiercely objected to, the mercenary skedaddled. Scurrying through the thick underbrush, xe spied an approaching pack of the beasts out of the corner of xir eye.

Xe upped xir pace.

When xe finally sprinted up the ramp, the legs borrowed from the felacat had made xem little more than a person-shaped blur. A muffled thump followed when the shifter abruptly spread xemself out into a wide membrane to break xir speed.

A moment later, a mouth morphed in the middle, screaming.

“Close the ramp!”

There was no way in Nether that those things were coming aboard. The rifle in xir arms barked as xe reshaped in the direction of the entrance. Red mist soon hung in the air, with near-surgical holes left in the wake of the high-speed pellets.

Nope.

Xe and [member="Rusty"] were getting off this planet, come hell or high water. Or flesh-eating, mind-boggling Lovecraftian monstrosities, as the case may be.

 

[Rusty]

The damned ramp seemed to take forever to seal, but finally, it latched shut. Rusty collapsed in a heap on the floor, his artificial muscles quivering from exertion. Even his body had its limits, and the last few hours and ran right up against them.

"Kark me," he said tiredly to the indeterminate form of [member="Laguz Vald"]. "That's the last damn time I take a freighter without a brace of turbolasers on hand to deal with pirates."

He could still hear the alien predators scratching at the hull, trying to crack it open to get to the tasty morsels within. Fortunately, while they seemed to be intelligent, they had no experience with technology. And even if they had, it seemed the pirates had invested more in security than they had the rest of the ship. A professional slicer would have trouble cracking that lock.

There was no time for exhaustion. Rusty hauled himself up on his feet and sprinted for the cockpit.

A quick inspection revealed that the hull had maintained integrity, which was nice. The EPC used frangible rounds mostly, designed to shatter rather than penetrate a hull. Aside from the single hole in the cockpit's viewport, they were good to go. A quick patch sealed up that particular problem. It wasn't pretty, but it was airtight, and that was the important part. The Shard got the engines warmed up. They were going to need to unass the area in a hurry.

Given that the comm was buzzing with angry sounding demands for information from what sounded like the mothership, hurry was an understatement. It was time to do something crazy.

"HOLD ON BACK THERE! Soon as we're up on repulsors, I'm gonna try to microjump us out of the system. Either this will work or kill us."

Suiting actions to words, he fired up the repulsors and pointed the nose straight up. According to active sensors and the navicomp, they had a straight shot. Assuming, of course, that the barely scanned system wasn't hiding any surprises outside of the orbital plane. Only one way to find out. He threw back the hyperdrive levers and watched the world dissolve into the technicolor swirls and whorls of hyperspace.

 

[Laguz Vald]

You knew chit had really gone from SNAFU off the deep end when Laguz started running out of swearwords. Two centuries and change in this foul galaxy xe called home had taught xem a few dictionaries’ wealth in curses. Xir vocabulary of expletives spanned more than twenty different languages with twice as many dialects and jargon variations.

It was nearly inconceivable that xe would expend all xir knowledge, and yet…

“Frak.”

The rustbucket trembled, creaked ominously, and then blinked off the planet. The jump flattened Laguz against the nearest bulkhead even though xe’d heeded @Rusty’s warning. Clearly the ship wasn’t made for these sorts of maneuvers. In fact, it probably wasn’t made for any sorts of maneuvers, if the noises of metal in distress were any indication.

“You better frakking hold, you motherfrakking son of a bith.” The merc spewed empty threats at the shuddering vessel as streaks of blue and white zoomed past the viewport on xir right. If xe died as a smear of flesh on a hull from hyperdrive malfunction (or, better yet, pulverized in the heat of a star), xe’d claw xir way back from Netherworld – again – just to shove one up the galaxy’s ass.

For now, xe settled for crawling xir way up the deck and towards the captain’s cabin, where xe eventually poured xemself into the copilot’s chair.

Pulling a blank on the navicomputer coordinates, Laguz glanced at the HRD. “Where're we going?”

 

[Rusty]

Somehow, against all odds and against common sense, they were alive.

There were a few recorded instances of people pulling that trick off, mostly by smugglers. Traditionally, that profession drew three types of people: desperate ship captains with nothing to lose, reckless thrillseekers with no regard for danger, and Corellians. They were often coming up with new and interesting ways to get killed, and sometimes even lived to tell the tale.

Jumping from within a planet's atmosphere was one of those tricks that killed far more than it saved. If they'd been on a more populated world, one where there was any sort of traffic or satellite shell, Rusty wouldn't have tried it, especially not in this piece of junk. He sighed and exited the cockpit, letting the navicomputer try to work out a course. It was then that he noticed the back of his collar was wet. Must have cut his scalp open in the jump.

"No clue," he said in response to [member="Laguz Vald"]'s question. "Gotta figure out where the hell we are first."

He sighed, and settled down on a troop seat, holding a bandage to the back of his head to staunch the bleeding. One of these days, he was going to get this thing upgraded to stop bleeding on command.

"You okay?"

 

[Laguz Vald]

“Brilliant.”

The sniper scowled in spectacular fashion that only shifters could truly achieve. The chunk of space xe could see through the cockpit was [SIZE=14.6667px]a uniform[/SIZE] black. Not even a single star in sight. That didn’t bode particularly well.

Xe followed [member="Rusty"] out of the cabin and into the main hold of the ship, xir movements still stiff from the bumpy ride. The vessel itself had quieted some, but Laguz could swear there was a faint rumbling in the background that hadn’t been there before. The scowl deepened.

“Is the bleeding function there so you can play a more convincing meatbag?” xe spoke as xe passed the bleeding HRD on xir way to the nearest viewport. It would make sense. It would be no less annoying.

This other chunk of space on the starboard of the ship was, likewise, utterly devoid of any suns.

“Well… crap. Where did you send us? Frakking Netherworld?”

Laguz had been to Netherworld, in fact, and didn’t much fancy a second visit. Getting out once had been difficult enough. Given the life xe led, the merc didn’t doubt xe’d have the rest of eternity to explore its many wonders once xe finally croaked. Until then, xe was fine with this side of the veil, thank you very much.

Turning back to Rusty, the sniper brought xir wristpad back to life. Holding xir breath, Laguz opened the holonet browser, teeth sunk deep into xir bottom lip. Seconds ticked by as the page loaded, and with each full circle of the loading widget, the crease in xir brow deepened.

With a sad beep, a fat red error message appeared on the screen.

“Crap,” xe said once more, with feeling. “I take it back. This is worse than Netherworld.”