[story] Saber Chase

[Dartz]

If only things would be that easy. Nobody knows this until after she's aboard the KnightWing.

Maico could feel her head throbbing. Someone had switched her heart and her brain, then given her head a great big shaking, before parking an elephant on her temple.

She tried to move, and felt her thoughts run like liquid. Her whole awareness sloshed around behind her eyeballs. She could hear a voice, speaking in the distance. She locked on to hit, hoping to bootstrap her mind.

“We have her aboard. She took a nasty one to the head, but she should be alright.”

It sounded familiar. A little on the hoarse side. A strange lilt. a woman who spent a lot of time around cigarette smoke.

“It wasn’t us that attacked her. It was a merc ship that’d been sent out there to intercept any shuttle leaving Frigga. It was bad luck really.”

Who’s us? Maico shifted her weight, another pulsing wave washing over her mind

“We’ve got their memory cores. I’m afraid they’ll have to come home with us for the time being. First glance suggests we might have our missing link.”

She forced her eyes open, being greeted by a flat metal bulkhead. She was on a bed... something that barely qualified for a bed... under another with a lattice of carbon springs.

“It’s more proof for our friend. If I thought they knew who the Sabers were, I’d almost call it a frame job with how fast that alert went out, but I think they were just trying to punish Frigga by killing one of us to make a point.”

Us? The Friggans? That does sound like Jet. She did her best to look around without moving, but it didn’t tell her much. She could hear the distant humm of engines, mixed with the whirr of a life support system.

“Well, Anika’s injury would’ve killed her dead if she was human, and she says the merc executed her, but that said, I wouldn’t put it past them if they thought she was after them,”

Anika? That’s definitely Jet then. Jet came to the rescue. She was alive. She was somewhere safe.

Where am I?

“It’ll have to wait until we’ve analysed the whole lot. I’ll forward copies to the usual suspects natch, but we’ve been working on this for months, it’s a pride thing, but I’d like to wrap it up. We’re still going to give her the details too, of course.”

She tried to move again, setting off another wave of dizziness. Her stomach churned in protest, while her body began to float. She started to become aware of the bandages constricting her head.

“Well, she’ll need a few days rest. She got hit pretty hard so she’’ll have a concussion at least. She’ll be our guest. Then, I’ll bring her to a settlement of her choice, or let her leave with the Rinna K.”

She started to remember what had happened, like waking up from a dream. It was there, but the more she thought about it, the less clear it became. It felt like she was grabbing at smoke.

“We’ll take the ‘wing. I’m pretty sure she figured it out anyway. I knew she had us as soon as she mentioned how she got Sylia. And she already had footage of everyone on Frigga by then. So if she’s going to go with the story, we’d best be there in a position to handle it in person. “

Someone was behind her, working away at something. Another presence was moving, eating something. She could smell instant ramen.

“I half hope she does. I’ve got this cool ship and all this hardware and everything I did and I can’t ever show it off. I think it’d be awesome fun, the best of a bad situation. And if she doesn’t, well I think we’ve given a reasonable excuse to let it drop.”

They’re talking about me?

Jet laughed a little. “But I’d still prefer if she didn’t.”

Definitely talking about me. she did her best to listen in. She did her best to get most of what she’d just heard straight in her mind.

“Because she was more important than the secret.”

Jet, talking about her. Talking about rescuing her. Talking about her knowing secrets. Sylia Stingray. Footage of everyone on Frigga. The Knight Sabers.

She had proof.

“I’ll see you then. Bye...”

Maico tried to sit up again, but her body flat out refused to let it. It blocked her attempts with a wall of nausea. She whimpered, settling for being able to lie on her back.

“Kotono,” she heard a voice warn. A very sharp tone.

Daryl Haur. Kotono Ito. She managed to turn her head to the side, getting a view of a woman’s back. She was wearing a tight black and white skinsuit.... a derviative of the OGJ-standard with some extra cabling running from the backpack. It left nothing at all to the imagination.

It was obviously Kotono’s slight figure, her attention buried in a medkit spread out on a kitchinette desktop.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Our passenger’s awake,”

Maico craned her head back. The Blue Saber was sitting on top of a locker, her legs crossed and her arms folded across her chest. Daryl’s blond-hair framed face seemed to have been photoshopped on top of the armer. She felt something catch in her throat.... a yelp, a gasp, a cheer that she’d been right.

It might have been her head injury playing tricks on her.

“Where am I?” she managed to force out, her voice wavering as her vision blurred. Kotono dropped out of focus as she turned around, the polymer skin covering her body as she moved.

“You’re on our ship,” she said in a voice that was soothing and soft as a favourite cuddly toy. “You have a bad concussion, try to not to move,”

Fingers pressed against her shoulder, easing her down onto the bed. She could see all the little connectors and cable plugs for a hardsuit coming into focus along the arm.

“What ship?”

“Our ship,”

Maico did her best to scowl at her.

“The good ship KnightWing,” the Blue Saber clarified. “We rescued you from that Merc. That’s all you need to know,”

“So you are the Knight Sabers, then?” she questioned, her voice just a little hoarse.

“Bingo!” Kotono chirped with a fat grin on her face. It seemed to split her head in two, running from ear to ear. It was the smile of someone who thought they’d pulled the greatest prank in history.

Maico didn’t have the energy to cheer. Her mind just rolled over and started to spin around.

“Where’s Jet?”

“Forward, with Anika,” said Daryl. Maico could see her trying to brush her hair back into it’s normal style. That feathered hair seemed determined to stay, no matter how hard she tried to keep it down. “Stupid quirk,” she spat on her palms and tried to slick it down with her spit.

An image of Anika lying soaked in blood flashed through Maico’s mind.

“Anika?” she gasped. “As she alright?”

Kotono’s hand held her to the bed with gentle pressure.

“Oh, she’s fine,” Daryl answered with an unworried swat of her armoured hand.

Maico gave her a dubious look for a moment, “But I saw her die,” she said in a small voice. “Shot straight in the chest. I saw her blood,”

Horrible, red, sticky and oily.

“That was just hydraulic fluid,”

Kotono was giggling behind her hand, Daryl chuckling in her throat, a smirk on her face. Another colossal prank. The memory hit her in the head like a fire-extinguisher. I’m a CI, Anika had told her.

Her skull throbbed with another wave of disorientating pain. She grimaced, bracing herself to keep from rolling over and falling to the deck. Her inner ear made the journey while the rest of her braced herself on the bed.

Either there was something wrong with the gravity field on the ship, or she was worse off than she thought.

A hatch opened above her head. She tried to crane her neck around, get a glimpse of white and blue armour.

“Jet?”

“You’re awake?”

“Reports of my demise have been slightly exaggerated,” Maico just about managed to say

“Glad to hear it,” Jet answered. The cyber glanced at her for a moment, just long enough to let Maico know that her welfare wasn’t Jet’s immediate concern. “We’ll be back at base inside twenty minutes, and there’s a doctor waiting to see you,”

“Thank you,” Maico managed to say.

“It’s what we do,” Jet dismissed it. “Anyway, we have a bit of a problem. A half hour after the shuttle got attacked, somebody sent a message to the patrol blaming us for it,”

“We were framed, “ Darly jumped to the obvious conclusion.

“The only people who could framed us are people who knew Maico would be on that shuttle, and know we’re based on Frigga,” Kotono pointed out,

“Or they just realised who she was, and thought it’d be a great way to make us enemies of Fenspace, while also sending a message to Frigga. They didn’t even have to know we’re the Sabers, it would’ve seemed like a two birds with one stone deal,”

“It’s possible,” Jet admitted, taking a deep breath. “It makes things tougher for us anyway. The truth is already out there, but we have to be careful how we handle this.”

“Maybe it was Ryan?” Maico interrupted, in a small voice.

Three sets of eyes looked to her for an explanation, “Who?” said Kotono

“He’s a friend who knew I was chasing you. I was messaging him right when they attacked, so maybe he jumped to a conclusion,”

“Human stupidity,” snorted Daryl, “trumps human ingenuity any day. That’s what happened.”

Maico dropped out of the discussion for a moment, doing her best o make sense of where she was. A small living space in a cramped spaceship, with three Knight Sabers in it. And how was Jet wearing that armour

It was Saber Whites. A similar colour scheem to Jet’s own, but somehow a little bulkier with more prominent shoulders, and none of her etched markings besides the words “KNIGHT SABERS” on the helmet, and “HARDSUIT” across the chest

A half-remembered conclusion coalesced out of the fog of her thoughts.

“Jet,”

“Yeah?” the cyber turned to face her.

“Are you Sylia Stingray?”

“Sylia’s this puppet body, with dyed hair and contacts, yes. “ confirmed Jet, smiling just a little. Her expression softened assuringly, “We’ll take later back on Frigga when you’re able. We’ve a lot to discuss.”

“So long as I can record it.”

“We’ll see,” said Jet, and Maico suddenly thought of the hundreds of times her parents had used that as a euphemism for ‘No’. She didn’t feel like picking a fight over it, instead, focusing her attention on the name plate affixed to the bulkhead.

High Energy Research Laboratory
Project Bone Prototype Series.
Spaceframe B0N3-098-STA

SC KnightWing.
“Out of the darkness...comes the Knight.”

It wasn’t a very comfortable bed.

Meanwhile, back in 2019 on 37 Fides, a minor side story:

“Thunk,” went the switch.

It was followed moments later by an electric scream, cut short by the sound of something hard and heavy dropping against something metallic.

Jet had a thundering headache when she came to, her pulsing brain was being squashed inside her skull, drumming against bone and metal to get out.

“Segmentation fault,” she slurred out, bracing herself against the cockpit frame. Instrument lights were star spangled blur. Blinking a little, she tried rubbing at her eyes. Steel fingers stunned her for a second, before her mind caught up.Hardsuit, right.

“Uh... Sorry JJ. We forgot to switch their boot order. It tried to use your brain as a boot device .”

So that’s why I feel like I’ve been kicked in the head.

“Uh....Jet...” a woman’s voice was calling. One of the squirrels, it was to high pitched to be natural.

“Jet Jaguar, respond,”

Who? Right, I’m Jet.

She found she was breathing without inhaling. Or something. Air was being injected into her chest, before being drawn out again and recycled. Primary Life support stable, she thought.

“Help me... somebody help me please!”

A boy. That snapped her clean out of it. She glanced around the cockpit, eyes darting to instruments, then to the cables running down from her body,

“Medical team to workbay 7. Medical team to workbay 7 Emergency,” the radio announced.

Where was he?

“Where are you?” Jet barked out.

“I don’t know sis.... I can’t see a thing.” was the answer.

It was coming from the shipmind interface panel. Of the three drive control computers, two were answering green. The third was answering with a red ring. Readouts on the centre console advised her that it’d been voted out of the triumvirate due to anomalous core fluctuations.

She pushed the comm button, “I’m here,” she soothed. “I’m right here,”

“Where?” the boy’s voice asked.

“Right here Mackie.” Jet responded, feeling a horrid lump rising in her throat.

“I can’t see you. I can’t feel anything. I can’t..... I can’t...”

He was panicking. He might’ve been gasping for breath.

“You can talk to me. I’m your sister, I’m right here. And I’ll figure this out,”

And she was shaking. Jet punched open a comm-channel.

“I’m alright,” she croaked, “But.... but my brother. I think....” she glanced around one last time; all seats empty. “I think he’s in the drive computer,” Her voice cracked.

“Brother?” the voice on the other end of the line blurted.

Jet blinked for a moment. “Yes my brother,” she snapped back. “Get someone down here. Get a cyberneticist. Get someone who knows this shit and get him the fuck out of here before I come up there and start cracking skulls.”

“But Jet,” said the voice, calmly, “You don’t have a brother...”

“oh....” her voice shrank. So that’s what happened. Comprehension was a brick to the face. The computer had tried to use her as a boot device, reading her hardware like a disk drive. “I do now,” she said, choking on the words.

Jet didn't pick women who had similar personalities to the original Knight Sabers, just to stick with the canon dynamic. It's the result of something of a silver-haired day
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--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?