2. Tertiary
The probe sputtered despite her best efforts, making barely twenty meters per second under the onslaught of the spatial tendrils surrounding it.
"Surrender, Matari. There is no escape." The voice said through the comm-interlink channel. The Amarr's punisher glistened in the sunlight of Osoggur, a shining example of bureaucratic efficiency.
"Yes, I know, I am suspected of terrorist activity," she replied back before the voice could continue. The comm-interlink quit, and Airgoidh Brendan wiggled her fingers, feeling the gel accept and modify the movement into color. Even as she sat helpless in the grip of the Amarrian webifier, she felt very comfortable and relaxed.
She had at first rejected in horror the thought of climbing into a pod filled with liquid gel during her training at the Republic Military School, but now she felt only release of tension in both her body and mind. The neural interface lodged just beneath her left ear relayed the probe’s condition to her brain, and her brain provided images in her mind that she could not distinguish as what her eyes might see or her dreams might create. A red wave-filled blob told her that the punisher was taking up an orbit around her probe. Blue, blinking indicator lights showed that her shields were down, and nearly half her armor now lay in a debris field around her ship.
She willed the thruster control to station keeping, and then adjusted her latitude so that she was settled onto the same plane as the Amarr.
"Surrender, Matari. There is no . . ." the voice began again.
Airgoidh interrupting, "Look, what evidence do you have that I am a terrorist? By what right do you ensnare me?"
"I will tow your vessel to the station for inspection. Do not attempt . . ."
Airgoidh willed the volume to its lowest setting as she watched the red wave of the punisher settle into its orbit. Other colors indicated the Amarri ship’s afterburners were in standby, its laser cannons maintaining a lock. He was right, she thought. There was no escape from such a situation other than to watch him orbit . . . She thought about ejecting and letting the autopilot scoot her pod away, but she wanted something else - his blood. Of course, that would be hard to get with this old wreck, but soon. Perhaps not today, but soon.
A taste of guile filled her mouth as if with sweet bread. The gate to Amamake lay just ahead of her, the probe's nose pointing exactly in the direction of the multi-hued double helix that was the icon of a Stargate. The local channel was filled with pilots, some Amarr, but only this young pilot posed any danger. The comm-interlink moved those analog sounds into her brain, and she heard them holographically inside her head, her ears tingling as the words appeared as both sound and images. As a child she had assumed that whole crews manned ships all walking the decks to battle stations or even to the mess hall for chow. Learning that even the largest battleships required only one crew member amazed her, and horrified her too at the thought of the enveloping gel filling her body, and certainly disgust at the thought of breathing it.
Airgoidh wiggled her fingers again, for there was nothing to do but watch him orbit. Movement in the gel created secondary colors in her mind, and certain movements could initiate a ship’s command function. She waited until his ship had begun another orbit of the probe. He slid to her left past the wing, flying to a point just before he started to turn past her . . .
"What's your name?" She asked.
"What?" The voice seemed incredulous. His name was clearly displayed on the HUD.
She punched her arms away from her in short bursts, and her probe’s thrusters lurched the ship forward another 200 meters for just the one second needed to fall out of the range of his webifier.
She laughed as her probe's trajectory had kicked her over the line.
"Watch your orbit next time," she said to no one as the comm-interlink became static.
The three AU warp dropped her just at the jump range of the Gate, which she hastily attended to even as the punisher fell in behind her. She encircled the multi-hued double helix with her hands, and then pressed her palms together. Her motions cued the neural interface, which then accessed the Stargate, received recognition and relayed acceptance back into her mind; such was the power of the brain interface, to allow the mind to see the images and interact with them physically via the gel.
No time for long goodbyes, she thought, the gate enveloping her ship with spatial cloaking. The image in her mind, which she could touch with her hands, was one of the double helix wrapping her body in tendrils of white light. That white light became darkness as the cloaking activated, and then a short period of visual cacophony.
Jumping always made her hyperactive even though the ship's gel was supposed to prevent any of the gate’s energies from affecting the pilot. Little in the way of productive thought could be accomplished in the jump, more the mind was frozen in dreams and memories that flooded to the surface. Her memories were of the slaver pens, constellations filling the sky there were so many slaves.
The jump always ended at the memory of her owner dying by the stroke of his own lance, and then falling into her lap. A face appeared from the early morning haze before her, a face that she had seen in dreams since her earliest childhood, a face of a Matari woman whose own blood was pouring from many wounds.
The jump ended in its characteristic jolt, and Airgoidh locked Amamake VI into the gel by grasping the grey ball that was the planet in her right hand. She warped away just as the Amarr appeared from his temporary cloak. Damn he was fast.
Amamake VI was a desert for the most part, habitable but only if you liked to eat sand at every daily venture outside. The probe had already been programmed for the landing coordinates, but the Amarr was on her six as she started into the atmosphere.
Four more local Amarr had answered his call for assistance, and she could see them dropping in next to him in her mind.
Her shields were barely charged, and being knocked down with the combined might of at least five laser cannons. She diverted the probe's descent slightly to land farther away from the settlement of Amake'Son than she would have liked, but the grid showed a series of caves nearby in some malinite outcroppings - better shielding against their scans.
The ship wheezed as the lasers punctured her hull. The engines simply quit, the gel reacting by turning that portion of the envisioned ship a dull gray. Listing to the left, nose down, she could feel the ground approaching too fast. The probe's damage control operated on emergency power now, and the pod’s gel changed into a semi-solid rubber for the landing.
Howling winds woke her, but it took her a moment to realize that her ears were actually hearing the sound rather than the sounds being in her brain. She punched out of the gel pack. Her body hurt, and she stumbled as she stepped out onto the sand, which burned her feet through the thin boots she had only just recently tolerated enough to wear. She had tended the slaver's paddy's her whole life, so what need for shoes?
She ran for the outcropping as the punishers landed at 30 meters. The sand was as deadly to her speed as any webifier, but she knew the Amarr would be equally as slow. The Amamake sun was setting, and she thanked Cizin and Matar and every other known entity for that.
Somewhere in this forsaken spot, the backdoor of the Amarr systems, she had to find the Matari woman who had saved her from the slaver a year ago, and whom she had saved in turn Airgoidh Brendan searched for her sister-of-blood, Gaelbhan Wulf.
She had completed her training at the Republic Military School, and had heard her sister had come to this planet. For what reason? What of the Sect of the Ra? Rumors told of a schism in the Sect, one caused by Gaelbhan. Looking back, Airgoidh saw there was no time to delay.
Below and only slightly behind her, the five Amarr were giving chase.
Zayard heard the sound of ships flying overhead, heading out into the desert, but the one sound he knew well was the sound of a dying ship. It was quite unmistakable, the sheering of the fuselage as the ship became rubble even in mid-air. He pushed open the door of the bar, seeing the smoky trail leading into the malinite network. Some other ships followed, and he thought they looked Amarri, but they were too far away now to tell.
Luci's Bar sat empty, as it had for the last two days. The death of the Amarr ensign, the strange visitors one right after the other, the threat of Amarr inspectors soon to arrive, all had taken its toll on his business. He looked back into the bar, seeing in his memories the faces of friends long dead and enemies still alive. His wife stood at the counter too, Matar bless her, but only for the moment it took to remember she had died there too.
He let the door swing shut behind him as he started out to the dunes, snagging a breathing mask and some water. Might as well see what he could salvage from the ship. Trudging through the hot sun, the sandstorms gone for the moment, the bartender ignored the passers-by in this outland settlement. His wife had hated this planet, yelled at him more than once for being so stubborn about coming here, and for all the blasted sand that she found in every corner, every shoe. She also loved him, and he knew it. She loved his strength and determination to remain active even in these later years. She loved that he flew off into space to do battle with Amarrians and to run missions for thee Republic Security Services. She loved him for sticking with the promises made to the People’s Front. She loved him. That was all that mattered.
She died to protect that love. He found her, slumped over the bar, shot by unknown intruders. Could have been Angels, just as it could have been Amarrian bogey-men or even Ammatar slaver-scum. He never learned anything more than that she had died to keep the intruders from learning his whereabouts. Some of the settlers had been questioned by men dressed in sand gear about what they knew of him, but no one could identify them, not even by their dialect. Assassins yes, but what race they could not guess.
And why had they never returned? He had burned his wife on the pyres to celebrate her return to the Halls of Matar, and he had remained in the settlement tending the same bar for years. Why had they never returned?
Matar, he asked daily in prayers, why had he never been able to seek the Right of Retribution?