Voltuvia Sytem Crossing

I undid my straps when I saw the habitation rings rotating around the station.

A beam scanned my ship as I approached. Before I could even react, a landing clearance code was issued by a robotic voice over comms. The sequence identified the station as Medusa Sector. It even patched me through to hangar maintenance to schedule repairs.

I asked Hangar Maintenance if they thought any Medusa Agents would want to look over Everest; seemed like someone should look into why this guy went rampant.

"No, and we're limited on our waste facilities. Just space him before you get too close. I don’t want to deal with a fried cyborg."

Alright Everest, into the airlock. I ripped off the name tag from his flight suit before I sealed the door. One day you're a spacefarer crossing the system, the next day you're a rampaging cyborg trying to crush a ship that just came out of jump, and after that you get unceremoniously flushed out of an airlock.

-----

The Tradehub was busy here, and of course I got stuck behind the guy who wanted to haggle with the Weapons Broker. It was no wonder why the broker introduced themselves as Ink; covered with tattoos of plants and animals from some sylvanian planet I've never heard of; Orcus. They were cute though, maybe I'd take the extra time to try haggling too.

I wanted to sell off the counter guard I found on Everest. Ink wanted to trade me for a carbon dagger to defend myself with, commenting that it looked like I could use one. I tried to explain that in my hands, hacks are deadlier than any weapon. I don’t know if they believed me but they did give me directions to the wiredoc while the serum transfer was pending.

I quickly spent the serum I'd just gotten on some extra replacement parts for my ship. I figure if I take care of my ship, my ship will take care of me. Damn, I need a name for that old smuggler rig, every other ship out here has a cool name.

-----

The wiredoc was a young guy named Lirio. I totally unloaded about being attacked straight out of jump and then having someone teleport onto my ship, trying to kill me. He listened as he rebandaged some of my cuts and scanned for any internal damage. He even seemed to care about what I was letting out.

"Do you meditate, Jade? You should try it. We all ended up in this galactic dark age because the humans before us expanded too far, too fast, and lost their balance among the stars. They eventually tore themselves apart just trying to survive! The cyborg…"

"Everest"

"Yes, Everest. He lost his balance between man and machine. Not that cybernetics are evil, but the way you described it, I don’t think it was Everest in there trying to kill you. You need to find balance in here, or you're going to get sent spinning across the stars by everything you bump into out there."

He had tapped a gloved finger against my temple as he finished sharing his wisdom.

The proximity sensors beeped, they had picked up a another craft. Before I could check the readout to see how close it was the metal of the hull screamed as an impact sent my ship spinning. Ambushed straight out of my jump and this guy is dive bombing me? Does he want to kill both of us?

--CRITICAL CONDITION--

Now all the alarms and sirens were screaming at me, the stars were spinning outside the cockpit, and my first thought was to get this guy's name so I can add it to my list. He's going right at the top.

It took me a second to pull myself together and pull my ship out of the spin. I saw him turning to come after me again; no time to think, just time to do. The old smuggler speeder I'm flying has some moves. He only clipped me this time.

I was torn between turning to engage or dumping boost to escape. Honestly… In that moment I had totally forgotten I can just jam that button and jump out of a bad situation.

That’s when I noticed the other ship's pulse jets had stopped glowing.

Then I smelled electrical fire and burning flesh. I wheeled around in the cockpit to look; teleporting onto my ship was a raging cyborg. Well, he has been a cyborg but now he was something else. A vicious war over a body between man and machine. Machine was winning. The eyes of a man that used to be in control of his body stared at me, frightened and in pain. He looked so sorry for both me and himself. The cybernetic body started toward me, its movements erratic, and definitely hostile.

HACK_trojan

So at war between his two halves, he never stood a chance against my hack. I breached and went to work. The cyborg fought back, grabbing me and crushing my body. I didn’t slow down though, it would take more than that to stun me.

HACK_javelin

I was in and I tore through every bit I could. I didn’t stop. I could feel my body being crushed. But he was on my ship, he had me in his grip, it was a race to the bottom.

I won.

We had fallen to the ground when the man and his cybernetics died. I looked at him as I pushed my self away. He wore a flight suit like mine, like any spacefarer. Barely legible over the burnt and melted mess, I read his name tag. Everest. I didn’t add his name to the list.