Team SRDS (Stardust)

Chapter 28: Postmortem

Ross woke up in a state of panic. The first thing he did was calm himself down by focusing on his breathing for a few seconds. They weren't in immediate danger.

He looked to his left, where Diamond lay sound asleep. He breathed a sigh of relief, then looked to his right. Steele was also sleeping, but Sigbjorn was missing.

"Ugh..." Ross softly groaned. He got up and walked to the door of their room. Light seeped in through the bottom. Someone was awake. With caution, he opened the door and saw Sigbjorn and Weiss, sitting on some chairs they must've pulled from the table where they were having dinner. On the main table lay a metal mass of some sort. Both of them were breathing heavily, seemingly tired.

Ross stepped out of the room and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes.

"Sorry for waking you, Ross. We must've made some noise when we hauled this junk in huh?" Sigbjorn said, looking at something on the table behind him.

"Nah, don't worry about it, the rest are asleep. Anyway, what's up?"

"Oh you know, going out of the Pit for a nice drive, getting shot at as punishment, barely escaping with our lives... the finer aspects of life," Sigbjorn said.

"Mhm, okay..." Ross began yawning and realized halfway, "Wait what?"

"Long story short, we were testing the exits of the Pit, we ran into some White Fang and escaped with some evidence," Weiss said. Sigbjorn stepped aside to reveal the turret laying on the table.

"Don't worry. We kicked ass. It's all good," Sigbjorn said, grinning and doing a double thumbs-up. He looked at Weiss and pointed with his eyes at his hands, "You gotta do this too or he won't believe me."

Weiss sighed and then mimicked Sigbjorn's gesture and expression.

"See? It's all good," Sigbjorn said.

"Totally under control," Weiss said. "The whole time."

Ross chuckled. "I'll bet. Want me to wake the others?"

"As much as I want us all to get some sleep before tomorrow, we could use some examination of this turret," Sigbjorn said.

"Alright, I'll wake up my team," Weiss said before walking over to her team's room.

"I'll get the others," Ross said and went back to SRDS' room to wake Diamond and Steele.

As Steele left the room, Ross noticed Diamond staring at him.

"What? Something on my face?" he asked.

"Nothing, nothing," Diamond said as he rose up. "C'mon, let's get a good look at this thing."

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(5 minutes later)

Both teams stared at the minigun on the table in front of them. As Diamond and Ruby began examining the weaponry, Sigbjorn and Weiss explained the details of their encounter.

"It was concealed. Popped right out of the vehicle once they needed it. Caught us completely off-guard," Sigbjorn said.

"How the hell did the White Fang get their hands on tech like this?" Steele stared in disbelief, still shaking off some sleep.

"You said that those vehicles were carrying both that gun and some troops?" Ross asked, to which Sigbjorn nodded. Ross paused before affirming, "Are you sure? Because then they'd be carrying a lot of weight."

"We saw what we saw," Weiss said, "And the gun isn't as heavy as you'd expect."

"So... maybe it's less powerful too? Like a standard rifle?" Steele said.