Adrastae

Capture

As the marred enemy ship closed the gap with the Sanguine, the captain paced angrily. The ion disabler was going far too slowly to catch up with the superior engine of her quarry, and so the captain's ship would have to engage in battle. She sighed, and made the short walk back to the window, to watch as the scarred, ugly piece of junk flew towards her. The strange blade had since retracted back into the underbelly, and the captain knew that it would be an easy capture now that all of its ranged weapons had been disabled. All they had to do was blast open the 0. engine, and the ship would be done for. Torpedo tubes were being loaded at this very moment. Nothing could stop her now. The strange ship had put up a good fight, but it was as good as hers. With a start, she realized that the craft was close enough now that she could clearly see into the cockpit, with the help of her black-market implants. Curiosity overtook her, and she zoomed in to get a closer look at what was going on. A tall man stood, staring straight back at her, wearing some kind of gray trenchcoat, with an even stranger mechanical vest and arm attachment. Who the hell outfitted this guy? A blonde woman sat in what was apparently the copilot seat, one of her arms submerged into the armrest of the chair. The hell? And, to top it all off, a Hydrean stood near the back, studying a holoview, with a cord jacked into the back of his neck. Curiouser and curiouser. She was about to dezoom, realizing that she had gained all she could from this, when the man held out his palm, revealing some kind of swirling blue light. Then, he was gone. Frantically, she searched the rest of the cockpit, when a sharp pain knocked her in the side of the head, shocking her to the side, making her jump. Her eye moved back to normal human vision ranges, and she turned to see who or what had attacked her. The tall man in the coat stood over her, coattails drifting with his movements. He was holding what appeared to be a modified coilgun, and he had just whacked her with the barrel. She moved back slowly, and he advanced. The look on his face was one of calm, but she could tell it masked hatred. Frantically, she reached up and flipped one of the switches embedded in the ceiling. Alarms started going off around the entire ship, and her crew stumbled into an alert. She reached for something else in the ceiling, a handle spanning the diameter of a hollow cylinder shape. The woman pulled it down, and it came out with some small difficulty. It was a stun gun, designed to knock out a full-grown Hydrean. It would certainly take Stone out with no difficulty. The woman swung the gun around at his head, and Stone ducked, thrust his hand out, and blinked behind her. As he did this, he executed a pirouette, bringing his coilgun in an arc down on her shoulder. It hit her collarbone, and Stone heard a sharp crack. She spun around to meet him, but saw something behind Stone, and she gave a knowing grin. Stone ignored this, and as he was bringing the coilgun up underneath her chin to put a round through her skull, something sharp jammed into the side of his head, and into a large implant node. A needle inserted itself, and Stone's entire implant network started going haywire, and spasms began to rock his body. He twisted his jumping arm around his twitching body, somehow keeping his trigger finger from moving, pressed the coilgun into the man behind him's gut, and pulled off three shots. A faint thunk-thunk-thunk accompanied this, as the disks ripped through the man's intestines. Then Stone's vision went black, as the stun gun fired into his chest.

Aeren and Samson had no idea what had just occurred. The Kaylee plunged underneath the ion gunship, as a small laser turret shot repeating rounds at their craft. The sword was out, swinging at the maneuverable pirate ship. It jumped to the left, just barely missing the downward swing, and Aeren pushed forward, and brought the length of hardened metal up in front of the aggressor. It almost flew into it, but adjusted its flight patterns to dodge. Aeren was getting frustrated. This was obviously a very good pilot. Samson stood at the holoview, studying the ship's style of flight, trying to determine where it would be next. It seemed entirely erratic. Samson shook his head in irritation. Aeren swung the ship around again, but the ion disruptor refused to be caught. Instead, Aeren made a snap decision. She turned on point-thrusters, and stopped the 0. engine. The ship slowed, then came to a halt. The ion disruptor flew a cautious circle around the black, melted craft. Aeren watched, in silence. The pirate flew in another looping ellipse. Samson quietly padded forward, away from the holoview. He, too, watched in silence as the ramshackle ship with it's six glowing blue ion cannons and VASIMR thruster stalked its prey. Suddenly, it flipped around, and shot towards their backside. The two ran to the holo, and watched as the ion disruptor flew far past their ship, doubled back, and made a beeline for the engines. Aeren tensed. "Wait for it... Wait for it... Now!" As the disruptor began firing off ion blasts at their vulnerable engines, the Kaylee flipped around, blade gleaming, and thrust forward onto the unsuspecting craft. It pierced all the way through, crinkling the enemy ship like paper. It's engine faltered for a few moments, then exploded. Pieces of shrapnel flew everywhere, some them bouncing off and even lodging themselves into the scarred hull of the Kaylee. A massive cloud of dust and gas enshrouded the ship. The blade pierced through the dust, followed by the rest of the ship. It turned to face the last remaining pirate, which by now, had completely destroyed the asteroid and was now sitting dormant. Samson's eyes were naturally drawn to the empty space where his former home obstinately refused to be. His scales turned into place. "I will avenge you," he promised to the hundreds dead. They lit off their engines, and began to move at a breakneck speed towards the last remaining pirate.

Stone woke up in a ceramic cell onboard the Sanguine. He started, then tried to sit up. He could not. His trenchcoat was gone, as was the teleportation vest, his coilgun, and practically everything of importance. The implant disruptor was still lodged in the side of his head. An angry-looking man stood guard, leaning on the opposite side of the wall, past the field of lasers. Stone eyed the lasers. Each port was inset into the floor, even if the man was not there, there was no way he could remove or break them. The man nodded to Stone. "Wakey wakey, asshole. You cost us a lot of men. It's a good thing you're worth so much that they were small losses compared to the gains," he said. A knowing smile crossed the lower half of his face. Stone cleared his throat, with some difficulty. "How much?" "A fully outfitted cityship and associated defense craft, that's how much." Stone's face dropped. A cityship? Wait...no. It couldn't be. The Leucosia. The man across the web of red light nodded. "You must have really pissed off our buddy Edward, to have him want you so bad," the man said. Edward. Of course. Stone tried to get up, but his arms were tied behind his back, and chained to the wall. The man chuckled. "Good luck," he said. "You aren't going anywhere until we get what we want." Stone stared up at the man with a growing horror.

Aeren and Samson leaned forward as the Kaylee raced at a breakneck speed towards the pirate craft that was accelerating away from them, towards the gate. They knew that if the ship was able to pass through the gate, they would have no chance of tracking it through. All of a sudden, it began to decelerate. What? Why would it... A massive ship, far larger than either the pirate or the Kaylee, began to emerge from the gate. It could barely fit, and the two could see that it was no ordinary ship. Huge moving parts rotated around it, and it seemed to be alive. A maw opened out of nowhere, a glowing light springing from somewhere beyond it's gnashing parts. A shooting star, with the letters E C stamped between the tails, was emblazoned on it's body. The logo of the Edwardian Coalition. The huge, and strangely organic craft, swam forward through space, enveloping the pirate ship between its jaws. They closed, and meshed back into the moving, mechanical hull. The opening was no more. With an effortless twist of its segmented hull, the machine shifted its front end back towards the still-active gate. Aeren took a step forward, reaching out her hand towards the fish-like, strangely alien ship. With a flourish of its too bright engines, the Edwardian craft sank back through the gate, to destinations unknown. A choked sob escaped from Aeren's throat. Samson stared at the gate all aglow, a bleak look on his usually expressionless face. After a few seconds, the gate deactivated, and the laser net disappeared. Samson slowly walked forward, his bare feet making soft sounds on the ceramic floor, to stand behind Aeren. He softly placed his hands on her shoulders, and gave her a comforting squeeze. Her hand dropped to her side, and then she crossed her arms. "Well... Now what do we do?" Samson chuckled. "We find the Empire of Lights. After all... we have the same goals now."
Aeren stared back. "You don't mean..." The Hydrean nodded slowly. 

Stone sat in the ceramic cell, chained at the neck, staring through the laser grid at the man on the other side. The other man stared back. They were like this for a while, one standing, one seated. Both wordless. Stone had felt the ship go through the gate about a half hour earlier, and he knew they were en route to somewhere else. He did not know where. The man smirked at him, the tracing tattoo on his face moving with him. The tattoo was of stylized circuitry, moving from his temple down to the side of his mouth. All of the crew of the Sanguine had some form of facial ink. Stone wondered why. All of a sudden, the man got a notification in his implant, and he looked up for a few moments. When he looked back down, an evil look was on his face, and for a few fleeting seconds, fear broke through Stone's emotional barrier. The man pulled out a small control panel from his jacket pocket. He looked it over for a few seconds, moving his finger above the silicone buttons, then pressed down on one with finality. An intense electrical shock exploded from the device jammed into the side of Stone's head, and his world blacked out.