My name is Jax. Or at least, it was for this job. The name feels like a lie in my mouth now, as bitter as the smell of the phase charges hanging in the air.
"Jax, move!" The voice was Mia's, the last of us still standing besides me. She was behind a server bank, the Veridian logo mocking us with its clean, corporate lines. I could hear Lucy's ragged breathing from where she'd fallen, a dark stain spreading across the pristine white floor.
One simple job. Walk in, flash some steel, scare some data-clerks, and walk out with the server core. But our steel had turned to lead in our hands. The Black Fangs… I could feel a cold rage building in my gut, a rage that would have to wait. Right now, VDT Security was closing in, their standard-issue pulse rifles very much operational.
"The guns are dead, Mia! They're bricks!" I yelled, tossing the useless Black Fang rifle aside. It clattered uselessly, a monument to our betrayal.
"Then find something that isn't!" she screamed back, the sound punctuated by a fresh volley of plasma fire that vaporized a chunk of the server she was hiding behind.
My eyes darted around the room. Wires. Consoles. Fire suppression system. The PII specialists were cowering in a corner, their faces a mix of terror and something else… satisfaction? Did they know?
An idea, stupid and desperate, sparked in my mind. "The fire suppression! On my mark, hit the main conduit behind you!" I yelled, pointing with my chin.
Mia's eyes followed my gaze. She saw the thick, red-striped pipe and understood. It was a gamble. A massive one.
I grabbed Bart's body—vekk, he was heavy—and used him as a shield, a grim and final service from a dead friend. I pushed him out into the open. The VDT guards didn't hesitate, peppering his corpse with a fresh round of shots. It was the moment I needed.
"NOW!" I screamed.
Mia slammed the butt of her useless rifle into the conduit's emergency release valve. The room was instantly plunged into a blinding white deluge of fire suppression foam. It wasn't just water; it was thick, caustic, and designed to smother electrical fires by suffocating everything. We couldn't breathe, but neither could they.
Under the cover of the roar and the blinding foam, I lunged for Lucy, hoisting her over my shoulder. Her body was limp, but her breathing was still there, a faint, rattling promise. Mia grabbed my arm, and we stumbled blindly towards a service corridor we'd mapped on the way in.
We burst through the door into a clean, quiet hallway, gasping for air, dripping foam and leaving a bloody trail behind us. The alarms were blaring now, a facility-wide shriek. We were no longer thieves; we were vermin in the walls of a fortress.
"They'll lock down the whole sector," Mia panted, leaning against the wall. "The spaceport will be a no-go."
"Then we don't go to the spaceport," I said, my mind racing. I looked at the bleeding woman on my shoulder. "We need a medic. And not one of theirs." I looked at Mia, my eyes hard. "And then we need a ride. Find me a terminal. Find me a maintenance shuttle. Find me anything with an engine that isn't pointed at the sky."
One simple job had turned into a war. And our first battle was just to survive the next hour. The Black Fangs had left us for dead. They were about to find out how big a mistake that was.
We run down the alleys with the neon lights illuminating the puddles on the ground our boots splash in. I look in the windows trying to find anywhere we might find a med kit, when I spot it, a butchery. I kick in the back door and drop Lucy onto the butcher block, her body lets out a groan.
I toss the useless brick on a nearby table and look around for a med kit. Mia shouts from the door “I’ll check the perimeter.”
I spot the med kit and lay it out next to Lucy. She’s stopped moving, and I barely pick up her breath. First I gotta patch up the holes she's got. I cut her shirt open and spot a shoulder wound and a stomach wound, both leaking blood.
I inspect both sides, rolling her over, she gives a weak pained cry. “You hang on Lucy. looks like its just front burns. Went through your armor but not through you. That's good!” I patch up the wounds on her backside, and lay her back down. Then I spot the owner pointing my brick of a gun back at me.
“What are you doing here?” aiming the gun at me, and looking between me, Lucy and Mia, who has returned through the back door looks at me, then to the owner.
“Listen, I need to patch her up. You want a dead woman on your conscience?” I continue my work, now going to search for anything that might be left inside her. He raises the gun and points it directly at me. “That's not gonna work, man. So just le-” I hear the sound of the wall behind me explode as the owner lets out a blast from the pistol.
He looks as shocked as me now. I raise my arms up. “N-now just w-who are you? And what are you doing here?”
“I’m just here to patch up my friend and we’ll be on our way. Sheer luck I picked your shop, figured no one would question blood and you'd have a med-kit.” I lower my arms slightly, “now please, I promise we aren't going to hurt you. Vekk, you can keep the gun, just let me patch up my friend and we’ll be on our way.”
He looks at me and then down at Lucy, now moments from total unconsciousness. “Fine, get her patched up. Then get out. Don't need VDT Security in my business.”
I continue my work and without looking say “Mia, make a distraction for us, two sectors away, make it look like we’re trying to steal a ship.” I patch up the blaster wounds and give Lucy a stim pack. I look at the owner, still pointing the pistol at me, “She should be up in a few ticks, and we’re gone.”
Mia is frantically working on her integrated computer in her forearm and we hear the sounds of transports and sirens heading off in a different direction. “Done.” She lowers her gaze and looks down at Lucy who is beginning to regain consciousness.
I pull her up to begin our march out to find a ship. She lets out a pained cry, “I know Luce, you just gotta hang on until we can get off planet.” I turn to look at the owner, now with a sad look in their eyes. “Thanks.” We head out the door and back into the neon skyline.
“Alright, where’s the closest port?” I look at Mia, she scans the area and sets off towards the north.
“Looks like there’s some ships up ahead,” I spot a courier ship, “That one. It’s fast enough to escape the planet, then we can head to Blackthorn Cradle” Mia stops in her tracks, I turn to look at her, hearing Lucy’s breath getting stronger. “What?”
“You want to go back to them? Are you crazy?” She looks desperate, “we just barely made it out of this job. And now you want to head right back to the Black Fangs?”
“I want answers! They owe us answers! All of us! They need to answer for Bart!” I look at her, my anger rising up in me like a fire, forging a weapon. “They are going to regret what they did to us!” Mia rejoins me in the walk toward the ship. I use one of the ports in my arm and hack the door frame, pulling it open and laying Lucy on one of the bunks.
We head off the planet and towards Syndicate space. Now the real gauntlet has begun. The ascendancy knows our faces, but the syndicate would be hunting us as well.
We escape ascendancy space and head to Blackthorn Cradle, I set the route sync and lay back in the chair resting my eyes for the first time in what feels like a ten-day. I wake moments later to the sound of klaxons, I shoot up quickly and look at Mia, still holding her once useless rifle. I guess that's something.
“Looks like Ember Maw, we gotta prepare for a boarding.” I look at Lucy, now sitting up nursing her stomach wound. “We’re all gonna need to fight through this one. It looks small, but it's got armaments. I vote we play dead and let them come in, we can seize their ship from them.”
“We’re gonna need to be quick.” Mia shoots back at me. We both look at Lucy, who is now rummaging around finding a stun baton. We each give each other the same look.
I shut off the engines and wait for their ship to close in.
Hearing the grapple arms pinch the ship, disabling the engine–fine, we weren't gonna need it anyway.
We hear the airlock pinch around the door and they attempt to rip open the door. As soon as it begins to open, Mia shoots one through his head, and the door slams open. I jump forward swinging my arm, need to make it to the main deck, Lucy and Mia can handle it.
The ship was a maze and it stank like incense. Jumping over piles of junk and scrap amidst the debris I see a machete, I pick it up and continue. I finally see him, the captain, a Zorai “You fools try to board MY ship? I am to be feared! I will take your head for this!” He hopped up on his seat and pulled out his machete.
He dove at me swinging his blade wildly. I jumped aside, blocking it with my arm, and I sliced downward. Got him badly in the leg, but my arm now hangs limp as the captain cut one of the tendons. I don't think, I just slice again and hear him let out a pained groan.
Looking down, I see his body, laying there and blood leaking from the gaping wounds in his leg and arm. He looked back at me, eyes filled with a burning rage. I just press the machete into his chest as he lets out a final growl.
I grab some clean cloth and wrap my arm up. Nanoblood should heal the tendon, but it will take time. I let the grey blood flow out until it stops.
I walk back down towards the entrance, pulling the captain’s body with me and see that Lucy and Mia have taken care of the rest. Thankfully the Black Fangs didn't cut off the weapon again. But we can't rely on that forever. “Toss it, with the rest, before it becomes dead weight again” We take the makeshift pistols off the corpses and she drops the rifle with them before we head back towards the bridge.
We decide to just disconnect the ship and drift. Pretending we are a Maw crew celebrating a win. I check out the captains quarters and see an oracle conduit, displaying the active bounties across the galaxy.
I check and see that each of us has a 500 Credit bounty on us. Probably gonna go up after they realize we took out the Ember Pups. We each take a room and lay out for a night of rest.
I wake up and see the bounty has been raised to 700. Gonna start having to worry about the slavers. Sable Chain won’t come on their own, they’ll hire out for the Whispered Knife or Crimson Blades to handle.
Almost as if on cue we hear the alert and I rush to the bridge where Lucy has been sitting monitoring. “I think it’s the Coil…” she sounds panicked.
“Alright that means poison, Mia, see what you can control with the ventilation.” She immediately sits at a console and I hear the oxygen recyclers reset as she focuses. “Lucy, check and see what kind of defenses we can work up. I’ll take the door. Get me on the intercom, I want to be the first friendly face they see.”
I grab my stolen pistol and check—three rounds, not much, but I can work with it. Over the comms I hear Mia, “alright I’ve closed off the oxygen supply. We have limited time but they won’t be able to turn our systems against us!”
“They’re deploying canisters! I’ll try to take them out.” Lucy says and I hear the sound of the ships guns letting off plasma bolts. “Damn one made it through!”
I hear the sound of metal pierce into the ship and the sound of a chain pulling in. The canister slams behind the pierce and I see a sickly green gas begin seeping in.
I shoot it and try to patch the hole in the hull. I hear the gun going off again and I look out the window to see that the ship is coming in closer.
I take over the grapple arms, if I can disable their engine then we control the battle. Oxygen is leaking out—need to be quick.
I grab the controls and release both arms, the controls are a little wonky but I’m able to work through it. I grab the engine and engage the crunch. I see the engine just release a bunch of liquid which freezes as soon as they reach the lack of atmosphere.
I reel in the ship and wait by the boarding hatch. I pull their ship next to ours and wait for it to bounce off the hull, I drop the door and jump out into the vacuum.
My starforged lungs don’t require air, so I just jump out and climb the outside of their ship.
Standing on the bridge window shield I just point the pistol at them through the window. Their panicked faces tell me that they couldn’t stop me and even if they could, I wouldn’t stop anyway. I let a bolt loose and watch as the vacuum breaks and they fly out into the void.
I walk through the dead ship and pick up anything that could be useful. Coil is mostly scientists, so there’s not much we can use, but they do have significant FTL fuel. I walk back into our airlock and close it up.
Mia and Lucy both look at me concerned. “Shields don’t work up close.” They don’t change their expression. “If they wanted their air they shouldn’t have tried to poison ours.” I walk past them back and load the fuel before heading up to the bridge.
I slump down in the chair exhausted from the work we’ve been doing. Lucy comes up and sits in the pilots seat, “Jax, you don’t have to do this alone.”
“Yeah… thanks Lucy.” I stand up and walk into the captains quarters, the oracle conduit is now up to 900.
Suddenly over the comms I hear an outside transmission. “Lllllladies and Gentlemen and beings of all types! We have a new raid just for those of you lucky enough to afford the fees we will be displaying the newest victims! They are three rogue agents who freelanced for the Fangs!”
Just then we watched as two ships both twice the size of ours drops out of FTL into our system. And the displays screens are now showing that we’re being targeted. A huge missile barrage gets unleashed. I ran back to the bridge “Lucy! Jump us! NOW!”
She calculates and slams the accelerator, throwing us into FTL. Vekk! I need to think. The blades always make a spectacle when hunting a target. We’d need some better weapons. Just then our ship gets yanked out of FTL and we look out the window to see a Bleeding Veil ship just pointing its interdictor at us.
“Charge them!” I shout. Her blank stare is losing us time. “Ram them! They want to protect their ships and we can’t escape.” Lucy snaps out of it and sets max speed to their ship. They blink first and rush to the side. I am waiting with the grapple arms to quickly pull them in. Mia is waiting by the airlock and we see they are also ready for boarding.
The door lowers and we see a group of about ten malnourished fighters each holding blades and batons. Mia just points her rifle at the biggest, I see him cower and built into his arm is a debt tracker. These are debt slaves for the Sable Chain. I say “we have no fight with you! Join us and be free!”
I see them drop their weapons and I just walk past to take out the smuggler captain who is using slaves as fodder. Now shouting through the comms to take us down and their debt would be forgiven. I kick in the door to the bridge and shout loud enough for all to hear. “I kill you now, and free everyone on this ship!” A single blast and he collapses on the comm unit with the hole in his head still smoking.
I copy over the navigational files–smuggler routes should be useful. Walking back down to the airlock, I look at the former slaves. “You can join me, or you can take the ship and try to return to your old life. But know that we are going to Blackthorn Cradle! We will confront the Black Fangs to answer for our high priced weapons that they turned off during our job.”
I see many of them cower at the words. “These are not orders, you are free to go. Just know that you will still be hunted. You can defend yourself with us.”
One of them approaches me with a fiendish look in his eye. Pulling off a lure skin from his face–Whispered Knife, they sent an assassin. I reach forward to grab his arm and feel a blade go through my arm, and then nothing. My arm is sliced off where the blade went through.
No time to think, I go to punch him in the face when he zips to the other side of the room–gives me enough space. I use my good arm and grab my pistol, shoot out the port hole behind him, the vacuum grabs him and I see the fear in his eyes–good.
As he’s about to be pinched by the window I see him try to grab his arm again, trying for another jump. I shoot through his arm, he screams and I give him a final blast through his chest. His body clogs the window and I force everyone into the bridge. I head outside and repair the damage.
Shouldn't take much. Having one arm will be a slight burden, but it was my fault it happened in the first place. I hold the plate down with my foot and use the welder to fasten it back down.
The glow from behind me begins to grow brighter, I turn and see that the crimson blades have returned. I do a slapdash finish and head back inside. Mia is rummaging through the assassins' property, finding herself a replacement rifle. She also found me a cybernetic arm, I grabbed it and pressed it into my wound, waiting for the nanoblood to take hold.
“The Blades are coming, they’re going to keep coming. We stop them now, yes?” I’m looking at Mia who is excitedly prepping the weapon. “Jump into the slavers ship. Set the destination for a collision course.”
She looks back at me with a smile, jumping up and heading to the veil ship's bridge. “Keep hold of the ship with the grapple! Give it 20 Ticks!” I pull the rest of the assassins' property onto our ship and drag their body to the other.
She comes running back as the arm finally begins bonding. I pick up the blade the assassin cut through my arm with, and then I pick up my arm and toss it onto the other ship. “We’re clear.” She lets the grapplers go and we both watch as the ship charges off.
The broadcast is about to begin when the teleship goes dark, and we see the ships break apart in the void. Mia lets out a loud laugh as Lucy comes down.
“Alright, we took their audience. Now it’s just ship vs ship and this is a pirate vessel.” I’m trying to sound confident, after losing an arm.
Lucy looks back at me. “Same deal as before?”
“Yeah, after losing their other ship, I’ll bet they blink, we’ll grab them again. I see why the Maw likes them so much.” Mia is now ready with her rifle as the rest of the crew comes down, holding whatever makeshift weapon they could find. “This could be brutal… nobody is forcing you to fight.”
They all look back at me and Mia, gripping their weapons tighter. “You fought for us, and you don't even know us. Least we can do is help.”
Lucy comes over the Comm. “Alright, here comes the ram.” I hear someone firing off the weapons–good to have a crew. Mia is at the grappler arms and we pull their ship in again just like before.
“Alright everyone, ranged fighters, line the sides standard blast pattern once that door opens. Melee fighters, up front with me, we charge in once that door opens all the way.” I see everyone confidently line up now following the commands.
I hold the cryoblade in my good arm and swing it once to get the weight right. Putting my cyber arm forward. Stretching the fingers and testing the reaction I’ll have to use it as a shield until I can fix it properly.
The door hisses open and the fighters pepper the entry way with blaster fire. Once it stops we hear people charge through, Mia knocks one out with a clean shot, as I slice through the other. The initial bombardment took down at least four others.
I look down at the weapons they have–flashy. I walk forward waiting for the captain to come down, but I see no one… maybe he was with the ones that died. Then I hear it… whimpering.
I follow it and see the captain, a Zorai, now afraid for his life. I shut the door and say “Tell the Fangs. We’re coming.”
I walk back to our ship and let them go free. We had a destination, Blackthorn Cradle. I head back to the room and see the bounty has disappeared. Laying down I close my eyes and feel comfortable for the first time since this whole betrayal happened.
Lucy wakes me up the next morning telling me “We’re close to Blackthorn. Just thought you should know…”
“I’m sorry I’ve been distant Luce, I can't really be normal again until we get some answers.” I say, leaning up.
“You say this is for us. But what are you gonna do when the answer isn't a good one.” Her feline face looking very serious.
“Then he’s going to explain it to Bart.” I grab the pistol, two shots left on the charge. “You don't have to come with me, but I will find the Engineer, and he will tell me why.” Tucking it into the holster that once held their betrayal.
“200 Credits for the pistol, 50 more for the holster, the Engineer talked me into it! I wonder how much Mia paid for that rifle to stop working. Or you with the shield that suddenly stopped working.” She flinches toward her wound, still healing.
“I don't disagree. It’s just… thank you for not leaving me.” She says, as I stand up and walk to the bridge. “I’ll guide us to the planet, you think we should prepare for a fight?”
Mia interjects as soon as we set foot in there “Uh Jax, they are giving us landing coordinates. Do we… follow them?”
“Sure… I’ll be in the docking bay, just let me know when we're there and I’ll head off.” I head off towards the bay. “If you don't hear from me. After a shift… Leave me.” I don't wait for a response, I just head off.
I grab some tools to recalibrate the hand. Losing the dominant one will be irritating until I can get it fixed. It takes a hundred ticks, I strap the cryoblade around my waist. I just stand by the airlock waiting for the ship to land.
Then I feel their eyes on me. I turn around and see all of them, my crew, just staring from the gantry. I feel the ship set itself down, and I open the door. “Give me a shift.”
Heading out, I walked to the engineer's storefront offering ‘top quality weapons’ that ‘never fail’. Opening his door I see the fat Krumm. He jiggles up and tries to meet me benevolent, I just pull the sword and point it at his throat.
“Jax! That's a very nice blade! It's very good to see you! How'd your job go?”
“Shut it! I don't want your questions.” I step towards him and he backs up into the counter.
“I take it your job didn't go well…” he looks down at my other hand, now a cybernetic skeleton.
“No… Veridian did not go well… Our weapons shut off!” He looks scared now. “You got any answers for that one?”
“Ohhh, Veridian paid for a kill switch… Black Fang weapons don't work when the victim has a kill switch.” He rolls himself around the counter and sits back down. “You should have done your research better… but, you live and you learn.”
“People died! You're going to answer for that!” I am frothing with rage. “We bought high quality weapons, FROM YOU, that just broke on us.”
“You’ve more than proved yourself! How would you like a full commission as a freelanc-” I don't wait for him to finish. I pull out the pistol and point it at his face. “I’m afraid that won't work here either.” he says back confidently.
I pull the trigger and watch as his brains splat over the back wall. “Yeah, I thought so.” I flip the sign for closed on his shop, and head back to the ship. “I don't want your prison either.”
