Perched on a crate in her personal hangar in Huola, she watched with curiosity as her 'chief techie', as she called him, stood there scratching the back of his neck, wearing a look of utter annoyance.
"Well? Any reason my lights go green?" she asked him as she gave a glance over to her favorite frigate, the slicer.
"Not a damn clue. It shouldn't be happening. There's no reason for it to be happening. Every diagnostics we've run comes out clean. We've even replaced them....so. Yeah. I've asked around, this isn't happening to no other slicers but yours."
She wrinkled up her nose, "I could understand if it were just the one slicer...but most everyone I've flown has flickered green. Various shades. Golds, too." She shrugged.
"Yeah. I don't get it either. I'll try to figure it out," he vowed as he gave her a loose salute before heading out of the hangar.
She stared at the SotR Temptation, her Imperial Navy Slicer, debating on podding up and making a break for it. She'd just heard over intel comms that the station she lived in was being camped by various pirate scum with fast locking tackle.
Not that she was overly worried, she'd played this cat-and-mouse game plenty of times before and rarely had she ever been caught. Not in a slicer, anyhow.
Leaning back on her elbows, she absently started to bite on her dogtags while her blue gaze scanned across the tatical information trailing across the opposite wall. The pale, neon green information flashed out a myriad of data at once. Which systems were contested, which were close to being vunerable, and a host of other information regarding possible enemy fleet movements. Currently Huola was a hotbed for every upstart pirate wannabe along with a hodgepodge of other more established groups like Star Fraction and VETO. Sabotage had jokingly named Huola the Danger Zone after watching several of the exit star gates become infested with the new riff raft that was plaguing the system.
To the right of the display, the screen flashed with an up-to-date data spread of which pilots were currently in the system.
A familiar name caught her eye.
Garst Tyrell.
In Huola?
She uttered a string of curses as a mixture of fear and anger slid through her.
Perhaps, she thought, perhaps it was just a coincidence. He had once lived in the Bleaks so it was possible that he was just here picking up something. Perhaps he wouldn't even notice her.
Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps...
Her comm unit blinked with an incoming text message. She cringed as she read Garst's name...
"Why hello there Shalee, I just happened to be in the neighborhood. I think, and I'm quite concerned about this, that I may have killed a couple of your friends. I'm having the corpses sent to your hanger so you can identify them, along with some of their personal belongings (gifts, don't say I never gave you any! You'll have to wash off the blood yourself though I'm pressed for time). And...if it indeed turns out that they weren't your friends, well...I'll just have to do better next time. I hear you're close to a certain Matari... mendori, mintori, ah yes "Mintor" and he would appear to be actively using the local networks. Hmm...well that settles it. There's blood in the water and it'd be against my nature for a shark like me to ignore it. Back to the hunt love, I'll have more corpses for you before I leave. That I promise. "
She deleted the message and sat up straight, barking out orders to her crew to ready her slicer. She needed to get the hell out of there, and fast.
Moments later, she had left system without a word to anyone, making her way towards Arzad. Around the Labapi solar system, both Sabotage and Eran commed her at once, wondering where she had gotten off to. She explained that she was picking up some contract work from Concord, that there were reports of the usual Sansha terrorists hiding out in the asteroid belts of Arzad and she needed the security status that would come from shooting them down.
They had met up with her in Arzad, cleared all the belts and secured the system before making their way over to Saidusairos and Kurniainen to meet up with some of her militia mates, Anbeerlin and Plaid Rabbit.
During the night, Garst had passed through her local though she tried to ignore the fact. After another hour, he was there again and she could no longer ignore him. She opened up comms with him.
"Leave Eran out of this."
"Like you left me out of your life? No, Mintor proved he was without honor earlier during our 'duel' and his blood is now mine to claim. "
"Since when do you care about honor?"
"Combat is my religion. The duel is it's most holy rite, pitting ones strength against another to prove who is better and more importantly who's left...to defile that...that...that is heresy, something you claim to know very intimately Mrs. Crusader. Don't get in my way if you value your other friend's lives."
Realizing it was pointless to respond, she killed the connection with a sigh of frustration and an eerie sense of déjà vu...
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