Dead world: The Dreaded Lady

Chapter 5

The atmosphere in the ship was uncomfortable. The botched mission, the lust for revenge, was weighting heavily on the crew. Jack tried her best to keep them calm and together but Gregor's death was still fresh in their minds no matter how much they tried to deny it, even to themselves.

Kel stayed locked in her room, Juan remained on the roof brooding and Rock lifted some heavy equipment in the cargo bay to get some frustration out. The only one not affected by this was Caleb who currently sat in the workshop, trying to repair a broken computer he just found laying amongst Gregor's old stuff.

The screen was thankfully whole but the insides.....oh dear...

They may have to return to Harrington to get the disk decoded. Why did the old world create so many different devices to store data? Couldn't like 2 suffice?

But he was certain he could get it up and running. Gregor had a nice collection of very specialized tools, many was intended for electronics.

He replaced wires, remade small chips to plug into the computer. There nothing super advanced he could use on board, but enough to fix this pretty low tech PC that was already incredible rare out in the wasteland.

Jack was in the cockpit, still piloting the ship in a none specific direction.

Where were they supposed to go now? They had been so close to finally getting closure after weeks of bad runs. She leaned back into her chair and looked at the gun in her hands. It was a 9mm with a custom grip and a skull inscribed to its side. It was made for her by Gregor. A gift from an old friend. She remembered the day he gave it to her like it was just a few days ago. She had just lost her former hand pistol in a skirmish, then he stepped into the cockpit with it. He wanted nothing in return, a gift from one friend to another...

Now however.....well...

She supposed it was time to go back to taking odd jobs again....after all injustices was the norm. People died out here, that's life. She was just about to plan the next route when the communications panel opposite of the wall map started beeping.

She went over to it and pressed the blinking light. 'Captain Jack, I know you'll hear this.' A cold shiver ran down her spine when she heard that muffled voice as imagines of gunfire and explosions flashed before her eyes. 'I still have his head you know...its a nice trophy. A reminder how I humiliated you. It sits perfectly by my throne...if you want it back then I'll be waiting at the place where it started.' The message ended there and she stood frozen. That fucker was taunting her...

It was a stupid idea to go after him. It was so obviously a trap and she knew it. Yet he would keep taunting her and the crew forever. And the imagine of Gregor's skull being defiled by that...thing twisted her stomach till it almost physically hurt.

She could not let it live...the raider warlord had to die!

*

'Jack, you can't be serious! He WANTS us to go after him! He probably even has missile launchers ready to shoot us down from the air!' Juan argued her.

'We can't let that fucker get away with it either!! HE KILLED GREGOR!!' Kel was just barely holding back herself in blind rage.

'I know!!....And honestly if we ignore it he will keep taunting us. And Javelin will send him against us some other way. We'll never be rid off him until he dies..' 'We can't ignore him nor can we go in! So what do we do??'

A silence fell over them, no one seemed to know where to go from here.. 'Well...I might have an idea..' all eyes turned to Doc.

'This time we know what the area is like, we know basically how he's going about it. The main reason for last time was the element of surprise. So what if instead peacefully flying in we fire the first shot?'