Cath

Price of Life (EliteCommander and Cath)

“True enough - If they can follow us through the soup, I will eat a fishcake.” Light remarked, missing the point of the phrase - he loved fishcakes.

“Well…thank you, Jess! We aim to please, don’t we Senjen? Be sure to spread the word of our services, just not too far. We wouldn’t want to tip off the company we stole from, now, would we?”

His suit went inert as Light considered what to do while they waited to reach their destination. There were a dozen little jobs that piled up the moment he looked away. He also wanted to survey any possible damage to his hull, but that wasn’t advisable right now.

“How does your new suit feel on the job? Have you looked through all the services on offer?” He asked Senjen eventually.

Price of Life (EliteCommander and Cath)

The ships had scarcely disentangled before Light was weighing up options.Another ramming action was unlikely to succeed, but was there a nearby asteroid belt that could do the job for them. Maybe they could lose their pursuer in the mess of mobile objects?

He began frantic evasive action before abruptly stopping when Jess told him they were pulling away. “What? Oh! Haha! Success!” He wiggled his appendages in defiance of the fleeing pirates, cooing happily.

“I’m very happy to oblige. Let's get out of this system.” Light signed off comms and plulled them out from the planet’s orbit. Then he plotted a course using the co-ords Jess sent and jumped them into FTL travel with another jolt.

Once he was satisfied, Light pushed through the mess of loose objects that’d come free of their mountings and went amidships. When he found the two of them in the cargo bay he approached boisterously with mock boxing jabs about two centimetres from Senjen’s face that he’d seen Humans apply among friends.

“I knew this old hulk could do it! We have the mass; nothing can stand in the way of that.” He eyed their prize greedily. “We’re close now; I can practically smell those credits. Maybe I will upgrade my suit after all!”

Price of Life (EliteCommander and Cath)

As soon as Light got an indication on size and mass he knew what he was going to do. Instead of heading away and attempting vainly to escape, he aimed his ship’s hefty bulk right at the other ship.

When they cleared the ridge, their adversary panicked and tried to change course to avoid being rammed. For a moment it looked as if they might narrowly avoid the assault. Then Light redirected all power to the lateral thrusters and they lurched violently together.

There was a terrifying crunch along the length of the hull. Light was thrown off the control pads he held and a hundred objects came loose to float around the cockpit. “Contact!” He warbled.

Then they were free again and careening off towards the endless void of space. Light ran a damage assessment. Nothing serious had broken.

Price of Life (EliteCommander and Cath)

“We’ll be fine; we’re going to need your help loading up though.” Light murmured through his trance.

Once the ship landed he set a new proximity alarm with a tighter radius. Then together they embarked on the fraught task of lugging their new cargo between ships. Light kept an anxious eye on their surroundings at all time and tried to martial every nerve in his body that screamed at him to run.

Just as the last crate was being fastened did the alarm sound. “Close the doors!” He ordered, before careening into the cockpit to take direct control. The scan showed the enemy ship was closer; it’d landed briefly in a field between them before taking back off again thirty seconds later. It was now steaming directly at them - there was no way they’d be able to make a clean break here.

“They dropped boarders, get ready to defend that bay! I’m going to get us in the air!” Light stretched in every direction imaginable to complete pre-flight actions in record time. Then he gunned the engines and took them up off the rocky wasteland.

Price of Life (EliteCommander and Cath)

Light gazed into the blackness beyond the cargo ramp. He couldn’t see anything yet. But that didn’t mean they weren’t out there, watching, waiting for them to leave the relative safety of the freighter. It was generally easier to obfuscate a small signature than a large one.

“I like our chances in my ship more than out there in the open with this heavy cargo - I’m bringing it in. Stand by.” He then addressed Senjen directly. “Get out your weapon and take a defensive position. They might be closer than we think.”

Light then plopped down behind one of the crates they were carrying and accessed his neural lace again. His ship soon began to move toward them at a ponderous pace; the remote connection was taxing to maintain.

Price of Life (EliteCommander and Cath)

The reddish swirls on the surface of Light suit jangled erratically as he understood the implication of the recent scan results. His ship hovered thirty metres off the ground as he rescanned to be sure. Yep, there it was. He swivelled towards Senjen, spinning the BangStick back into a ready position by his flank.

“We’ve got an unidentified craft just parked nearby. Did you check the bay for anti-boarding measures? We might need them. Jess!” Light motioned to the gaping cargo ramp before him. “What do you think? Can we scare them off with something on this ship? I need about five hundred second to bring the ship in to land down there.”

Price of Life (EliteCommander and Cath)

“Alright, let's get this over with!” Light replied.

What he’d seen in the upper deck didn’t leave Light as they got to work. If anything the unsolved mystery expanded to fill his head. Before long he was scanning the doors back the way he’d come, as if the corpses would stumble through at any minute.

He worked his suit hard. Senjen still moved more boxes but Light wasn’t far behind. Together they forged a path through the cargo bay towards the loading doors in a significant but respectable amount of time.

“And now to load it onto our ship…” Light pondered. “It makes sense to bring the ship closer rather than try to lug this over uneven terrain.” He accessed his neural lace and reached out to his craft from across the couple of hundred metres of void. His aim was to run a new scan of the area and then lift off remotely to bring it gently to a stop right outside the cargo ramp.

Price of Life (EliteCommander and Cath)

“Ooh, nice!” Light yoinked one of the protective cases out with a tentacle and examined it closely. That included popping it inside his gel suit like one might with a candied date, and then popping it back out again. “Its a lot of money for something so plain. They should add some colour…” He slid it back into the crate and surveyed the cargo hall.

“What a mess!” Light sidled over to the closest part of the blockade and tried to lift one of the crates by himself. He could just about manage it, but the suit whined in protest. He placed it back down a few inches from where it had laid before.

“Gravity is not our friend today - what say you help me here, Senjen?”

Price of Life (EliteCommander and Cath)

“OK, I’ll be right down.”

Light pinged the manifest to Jess and Senjen via their private network. He made another sweep of the cockpit but found nothing else of value. He finished with a closer and appreciative look at the engineer’s handiwork, and his attention was drawn back to the body itself. Why had they depressurised their crew quarters with people inside? Had they been fighting, or was it something else at play?

He fiddled with the console and accessed the crew’s medical records. There were no new entries. He huffed, resigned. He would have liked to bring closure to these Humans’ deaths, but there was no time to waste.

Light exited the cockpit and headed down to the cargo bay, BangStick still at the ready as he traversed the corridors.

“Where can I help?” He asked when he arrived, removing the obfuscation over his suit to reveal his emotions again.

Price of Life (EliteCommander and Cath)

Light recoiled at the sight of the captain’s deformed visage with in her suit. Even to his form of vision the degradation was pronounced.

“I’ve got a fourth body - likely the captain - in the cockpit. A lot of damage, some repairs. Looks like she had a plan before she died. Searching.”

The captain did not have the manifest on her person. Many of the computers in the cockpit were out of action, having been harvested for parts. He was eventually drawn to the main console attached to the captain’s chair.

Wincing, Light gently unbuckled the body and flopped it onto the floor so his suit could envelop the console. Light stuck his face right next to it while his manipulars fiddled with the tablet interface.

It took a fair amount of time, but he eventually got through and let out a little bubbling coo as he found the manifest.

“I have it!” He announced proudly, before falling silent again. His suit read him names and job roles for the deceased crew, which he tried to commit to memory. It also read him flags from the route.

“They flew closer to the star; captain’s orders. I wonder why.” Light said solemnly.