[h1]Serin & Clara[/h1]

“FTL exit in thirty minutes - all crew to action stations.” The ship’s AI intoned through speakers in the ceiling of the armoury. It would’ve played inside Serin’s head too, if she hadn’t denied it access to her neural implant upon boarding. Moving fast now, she helped herself to a compact assault rifle which magnetised nicely to the front of her new tactical vest. Three magazines fit into pouches alongside it, with her OSNID operator sidearm relegated to a holster at her hip. 

She contemplated a few other weapons and toys, but decided to travel light. For Dr Hamilton, Serin had picked out an over-clothes armour pack and a small pistol, just in case. She grabbed them from an adjoining table along with her suit’s helmet and pushed past a squad of marines out of the armoury.

She called Clara via her implant, slaloming past running crewmen in the crowded corridors at a jog. “Serin? where are you? They’re nearly ready to leave.” She eventually picked up. 

“I’m on my way with all your gear, princess. You can thank me when it stops a bullet. Are you in a hangar bay?”

“Yeah…hangar 2. I’ll save you a seat.” Clara disconnected. Although the official plan was for civilians to wait until the landing zone was secure, Clara had insisted she get onto the planet as fast as possible. Serin had strongly objected at first, until she’d requisitioned reports from Outremer suggesting the unknown fleet was still active in orbit and appeared extremely powerful. She wanted to get Dr Hamilton to the asset as fast as possible, so they had the best chance of a craft to exfil to at the end.

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Clara checked the FTL clock while taking a last drink from her water bottle. Fifteen minutes to go. The troop transport they’d repurposed to carry the asset was prepped and waiting. All the data she’d been given on the object indicated it wasn’t harmful to human life by proximity. So she’d allowed the crew to fit a few more soldier seats back in at the last moment. They sat strapped in now, nervously eyeing the spherical mount in the middle of the dropship’s cargo area.

“We need to get you in place, ma’am.” a voice said. She turned; the gunnery sergeant was standing next to her, motioning with one hand for the waiting dropship.. 

“We need to wait for Serin.”

“I’m here.” Serin strode past, dumping an armour pack and sidearm into Clara’s arms.

“Are we ready to go?” She asked the sergeant, he nodded.

 Her eyes glazed over momentarily while she accessed her comms device.

“Captain. We’re ready to deploy.”

Once back, she took the armour pack out of Clara’s arms, activated it and chucked it at Clara’s feet. It unfurled into a mess of wires and thin blue material that grabbed hold of the doctor’s leg and began climbing up like a spider. After half a minute, she was covered from foot to neck in light armour, with a horrified look on her face. Serin chuckled. “Always wanted to do that. Alright, let’s get this over with.”