1:3:8 Retrieval (Part 2)

Reid didn’t even need the cuffs anymore. Lore sat there, paralysed, just watching as a river of viscous, metallic fluid pooled on the floor by where Char’s head had fallen. Locked in their own mind, the world so close yet so far away, hoping that the obvious was not true. It wasn’t blood, she wasn’t dead, it wasn’t real. Time slowed to a crawl stretching  Reid’s cackling until it was little more than a dark echo. Lore rose from the chair, a tear in their eye, and ran over to Char; for the first time, they seemed to have been effected too. Their movements were as though they were running through syrup, the air around them resisting their motion. Eventually, they fell at Char’s side, their knees wet by her blood. They wanted to cry, they wanted to sob but they just couldn’t. Their face burnt and their throat felt full but they couldn’t do anything about it. Lore screamed. A solitary voice in the vacuum. It rippled through the blood of all present. Lore put their hand on Char’s head. The shot had penetrated all the way through but the wound felt shallow. Char’s head began to turn. Lore flinched. It was subtle but they could feel the muscles and ligaments moving as Char winked. Lore didn’t know what to do but return to where they were supposed to be. Before they did, they placed a gentle kiss on the only part of Char’s head not covered in blood. They left Char where they found her and sat back in their chair. They just sat there, numb; not sure what they should be feeling. There was something, creeping upon them, an impending sense of guilt. Guilt for not feeling anything, guilt for what they were supposed to be feeling. They had really only just met her and yet, they had this unshakable bond with her. A second feeling hit them, compounding the guilt; an uncomfortable stickiness that came from Char’s rapidly drying blood on their hand and knees. Anything they had been feeling before that moment, instantly gone. Pain, planning, preparation, gone. They felt as though they were ready for Reid, they welcomed her but she was nowhere near as gutless as their memories had led them to believe. The timid trainee they had been shown had been replaced by the more than worthy adversary before them. She walked over to Lore and rested her hand on their injured shoulder. Reid forced her middle finger into their wound, her nail tearing through the cauterised walls, opening it anew. It was almost cathartic. The pain felt right, like a justice, righting the wrong of their missing emotions. The feeling spread itself out to fill the griefless void but it still wasn’t enough; Lore felt like they deserved more so, they waited in paralysed silence. Reid circled the wound with her index finger, occasionally poking it as if testing the waters, but with Lore’s lack of reaction she soon lost interest. She made sure to claw any edges that she hadn’t agitated on her way back out.
“Whoever shot them, you did an excellent job.” As if by habit, Reid moved the finger up to her mouth before remembering where it had been. She wiped her hand across Lore’s shirt, polishing her finger before slapping them. “No vitals hit, clean shot all the way through and pre cauterised. Torturer’s dream.” She looked over to the clones. “I want you with me when we drop them at Crait’s feet. Your talents are likely wasted wherever you’re from.” She summoned the soldiers that brought Char in to take her away.
“Where are you taking the body?” The plan was changing almost too quickly for Destiny’s liking. “You know she’s Quatarrian? Notoriously difficult to put down.”
“Crait saw to that. When she fired on my ship, the weapon temporarily sapped her ability to heal herself. Even wearing it drains her. She was just as mortal as you or I. She is now of no consequence.” Reid nodded to the Clones. They closed in around Lore, dragging them to their feet. Destiny took Curve’s hand. “What are you doing?”
“I thought we were preparing to Breach?” Destiny replied.
Reid exhaled briefly through her nostrils, a smile across her face. “Not necessary anymore.” She waggled her Type Fifty Two Breacher. A holographic bubble formed around them and after Reid typed in the coordinates, it began to project their future surroundings. Content with what she saw, Reid made it reality. They didn’t even realise they had moved. The bubble withdrew but the ship remained. “Holding hands…” She chuckled.

Reid’s backup ship was larger than The Destiny yet still felt cramped. Ventilation ran along the head and foot of every wall. Apart from the engineering bays, the ship only had two rooms: the bridge and a toilet. In addition to all of the controls necessary to pilot the ship, the bridge also had to serve as a mess hall, living quarters and recreational space. The bunks were recessed into the walls and stacked one on top of each other, five to a column and close enough so as each occupant had scant room for even their nose. At the back of the bridge, cordoned off by yellow and black chevroned tape, three bunks, a sink and a toilet.
“Go on then.” Reid nodded toward the segregated bunks. She turned back and began fiddling with the console.
Only just recovered from the unbelievably smooth Breach, the clones gently yet visibly forcibly tossed Lore into the cell.
“Crait, come in, I’ve got you a surprise. Found something on the surface I think you’ll like and I’m bringing it back. Met some of your friends down there too.” She smiled at Destiny. “Just make sure the hangar doors are open when we get to you.”
“Three beds?” Destiny pointed over to the cell. “Strange to have an odd number.”
“We brought what we needed.” Reid narrowed her eyes. “One for Lore, one for Blue and one for that alien. Shame we’re coming back with so many spare bunks.” She looked over at her crew’s sleeping arrangements. “Never lost so many people in one mission.”
“Never gets easier.” Destiny’s eyes fell not on the bunks but the cell’s empty bed.
“Crait wouldn’t have happened to tell you about Blue would they?” Reid loaded a picture of Blue on the viewscreen.
“We had a brush with them when we first landed but they evaded us. Local knowledge.” Destiny looked to Curve for reassurance.
“Followed them through nearly a mile and a half of slums before they just vanished into the smog.” Curve continued.
“Would have helped if they gave us proper helmets instead of these…Things…” Magpie waved his mask around. “They don’t even seal properly.”
“It’s the company line. Use the old before dishing out the new. I’m surprised you got the golden armour.” Reid turned around from the console. “Seems you got a newer version than my lot did.” She walked over, her eyes squinted, already examining every centimetre of their armour. “Similar materials… Is that a new under-armour? And I am liking that plate configuration. I wouldn’t mind a gander at the helmet.”
Destiny could see the clones fidgeting out of the corner of her eyes. She went over her next words thousands of times in the split second she had to respond. She grumbled. “We never got the helmets, obviously, but we only got the rest because they needed a tester group and I volunteered my squad. Helmets aren’t ready apparently.”
Reid sighed and shook her head. “They never are.” She walked over to the bunks and opened a locker. “This is the absolute rubbish they give to us Inquisitors.” She tossed the helmet over to Curve. “I know it’s only for EVA and stuff like that but still… It’s only just better than the standard issue stuff.” Curve gave it a quick look over before trying to put it on. It balanced on the top of her head, unable to proceed further. “Oh, they’re custom made for each Inquisitor. Safety feature apparently but they never take into account bloating and weight loss slash gain. I spent a month observing women at a twentieth century weight loss group and apart from learning how to resist some of the most brutal forms of torture ever devised, it also meant I had to requisition a whole new suit of armour. I have to count every calorie…”

Reid was about to continue her rant when before them, something appeared on the viewscreen. Where the vacuum had once filled the viewscreen, it was now dominated by a geometric mess of hull and guns. As if hidden by the stars themselves, a vessel the size of a small village awaited them. Crait had made sure that The Protectorate’s full resources were at their disposal when designing their ship; they had also made sure that it was as imposing and as dangerous as its commanding officer. There wasn’t a metre of hull that didn’t have a weapon on it or a conduit to power another weapon. An orchestra of lethality stood ready to attack any foe that cross their paths. Destiny couldn’t help but be amazed; two kilometres tall, three wide and four long made it a behemoth but something about it made her sceptical. As subtly as she could, Destiny slipped her hand into Reid’s console and began investigating the files she had pertaining to Crait’s ship. Without a name or registry, she was searching for a pin in a needle stack. Taking her hand away from the console, she began to properly scour the ship itself. Emblazoned on the hull in house sized lettering: Simplicity. With a name, she could now access the correct blueprints. Her hunch was correct. Just as with Reid’s ship, Crait’s needed a massive amount of energy to not only propel and control its bulk through space but to reliably fire its nearly four thousand weapons; ninety percent of the craft was designated as engineering, containing power generators and huge capacitors to allow the guns to fire continuously without stalling for too long between shots. The blueprints also revealed more about the design. Simplicity had been built in orbit with the hope it would remain in space until its eventual decommissioning, however, Crait had a contingency should that change; the front of the hull was a new addition and apart from allowing more weapons to be mounted and providing extra protection to the bridge, it also acted as a ram. A golden, four pointed star that peaked like a pyramid shone against the marble white of the rest of the hull. It shimmered as their ship passed by it.
“How about a proper look?” Reid smirked as she changed their course, piloting them much closer to The Simplicity’s hull.
A closer look was exactly what they needed. “Are those…?” Magpie had somehow snuck between Reid and Destiny. He was pointing at two large cannons.
“If you were about to ask if those are Soloss Matter Expellers, then yes.” Reid whistled. “Ever seen one in action?”
“Only on holos.” Magpie shrugged away. Destiny looked to him then back to the hull. Only a handful of the weapons she saw matched the blueprints.
“None of these weapons look standard. What are they, experimental models?” Destiny was seeing the worst of the worst from every species humanity had ever encountered and even a few that she didn’t recognise.
“Oh, they aren’t.” Reid had a sick smile on her face. “Each gun represents a planet or people who have been ‘simplified’. You would have loved Citrius One. Even managed to convince the locals that they did it.” She pointed to Lore.
As they neared their destination, Destiny got a closer look at some of the ten percent of the ship which wasn’t weaponry; in place of escape pods, a half dozen hangar bays. Even though they took up nine percent of the remaining space, they weren’t entirely wasted space. Each hangar allowed the docked ship to pay their lodge by becoming temporary generators for Simplicity and in extreme cases, they could also donate their arms to bolster the war machine. Reid negotiated her way into the open hangar bay, successfully avoiding scratching her ship’s hull; they were finally docked. An arm extended from Simplicity, grasping Reid’s engines, cycling them to full. Airlocks hissed and spat as the Rexian atmosphere that had unknowingly clung to them; eventually, it was entirely vented and replaced with the pure, recycled air from Simplicity. None of them had realised quite how heavy Rexel’s atmosphere and gravity had made them feel until it was gone. It was unexpectedly freeing, like stepping from a pool after walking around for hours. Each step felt like they were walking on clouds.
“I’ll square things away with Crait and get things ready for the prisoner transfer.” All eyes were on Lore. “We may even be able to get you guys a transfer to a more respectable Order.” Reid nudged Destiny.
“We’re always ready for action.” Destiny retorted.