[color=f7941d]"Letting him my ass..."[/color] Holly muttered darkly, not bothering you mute her comm. She wondered dismally if they would all die out here. Martin wouldn't let that happen if he could avoided it. Nor would Holly, for that matter, but the question was whether it would be left up to them. 

She urged Stolas toward the rent in the hull, where the Big Boi was still floating, latched to the side. The manipulator arms on Stolas reached out, Holly was blown away by how intuitive it felt, even compared to her Rodi. On hand grabbed the sub-machine gun from its hands, the other grasped the empty mobile suit by the edge of its chest armor, at the gap on the neck. She pushed it out into space, moving Stolas out of the ship, and holding the Rodi above her as cover for the ongoing fire. 

~~~ 

"Cap'n!" Mick called from his console, "Those unknown Ahab frequencies, they're mobile suits, coming out of that ship!" 

"Where did they come from?" Brun shouted, leaning forward in her seat(her bottom starting to float off in the microgravity). "How the hell did you miss them, Mick?!" The end had a note of accusation, the likes of which she usually saved for the Human Debris. 

"They blinked onto the scanners all at once!" He defended himself with an edge of fear in his voice. "No matches on reactor frequencies," Mick was scanning over a long list on one console, then glancing at a zoomed-in image of the mobile suits moving through the debris field. "Armor pattern is weird too. They look like damned antiques…" he trailed off as he watched the screen. One of the new suits was carrying Holly… or, rather, Familiar One's Rodi. It wasn't fighting back, even though the only damage to it was the sensor array. 

"Captain," he began again slowly, "I think they were there the whole time. Familiar Squad's comms have gone silent, I think that's them!" 

The captain of the [i]Mercurial Witch[/i] pushed away from her chair, a little more violently than might be warranted, and stopped herself at Mick's shoulder, by grasping it tightly. She looked over his screens, and watched as one of them in the middle of the pack pushed against the hull of the ship, throwing a Man Rodi into the incoming fire from the [i]Witch[/i]. A direct hit caused an explosion, silent in the vacuum, but brighter than the sun. 

When their optics had readjusted, the mystery mobile suits had disappeared into the debris. 

"Cease fire immediately!" Brun barked(Mick jerked his head away as she yelled in his ear). She pushed roughly off Mick again, and floated to the middle of the bridge. "I want Chain Squad sortied [i]now[/i]! If those rats aren't back in their cages, you'll be sleeping chained to the [i]Witch's[/i] hull tonight!"

~~~ 

After Holly's smoke screen, they traveled through the debris; a ludicrous risk that they were too ignorant to avoid. Their propellant tanks were dry, so they traveled by pushing off larger pieces of space garbage, so that they were "jumping" back and forth amongst the detritus, aided by the weaker propulsion from their Ahab thrusters. 

They came, finally, to an edge of the Debris Zone, where they had been directed by their new benefactor. Apparently Martin knew him from the before times, and Holly was trusting him on the (rather weak) theory that he must be better than Brunhilde. 

Holly hunkered down, her new mobile suit settling on an old, jettisoned armor plate from some large war ship. A small smile touched her face as Martin went on a fairly typical tirade of unearned positivity, but it vanished suddenly when Thom cut in to disabuse him of his delusions of friendship. 

Holly sank dejectedly into her seat, but said nothing. This was what happened when you changed things. You always risked losing what you already had. But… it must be worth it, right? Hell, if Thom [i]really[/i] wasn't their friend, they were only being kept together against their will anyway, right? 

[color=f7941d]"There's no use getting ahead of ourselves,"[/color] she finally answered, quite dully, [color=f7941d]"We dunno what we're walking into. I just hope…"[/color]

Before she could finish, the debris under her mobile suit's very feet shook, and she saw a gouge in the metal, mere meters from her position. Moments later, Stolas alerted her to an incoming Ahab wave. 

Already, Holly recognized who was attacking her, and she pushed off the ancient armor plate, jumping up and away, so that she was obscured amongst smaller pieces of debris again. 

Attacking with a long range weapon, before her reactor's presence could be read? That was Carrot's opening gambit. And if she was here, that meant the rest of Chain Squad, the free pirates who still piloted mobile suits for the [i]Witch[/i]. 

[B]"Okay, rats,"[/b] the hated voice of the Bosun cut in on an open LCS frequency, [b]"I'm supposed to put you back in your cages… but I'm not sure I want to bother. Are you gonna make it easy, or do ya wanna just die?"[/b] 

Holly peeked out from her cover, and saw two mobile suits. Carrot's Graze was still hanging back, and would likely harass them from a distance for as long as she could. She saw the Bosun's mongrel machine, cobbled together out of the most menacing parts he could find. It was painted(at great expense) mostly dark gray and black, but had a white skull-and-crossbones across the chest. It wielded a machine gun from a graze, and a large sickle like blade that Holly had never seen on another suit before. 

The second suit that was plainly visible was Mack. Mick's older brother, and former Debris, like Carrot. He piloted a Graze that was more or less complete, hardware wise, but was painted in a patchwork, depending on what colors of nanolaminate were on hand when it needed patching up. It carried a longsword and a simple, round shield.