So it's been quite a while since I've posted Eve fiction, but this is something of a coming out of retirement bit for me. I thought I'd give a go of working with a DUST mercenary on something new before I see about finishing the old stories that I have out there. At any rate, this is a short little bit about a capsuleer many of you know, and a DUST mercenary most of you probably don't! Hopefully you enjoy.
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Ryoko didn’t like being in space, but had had years to practice keeping her discomfort from her face. The ride to the Ishukone-run station had been a silent one, Ryoko alone with her discomfort at being in a moving starship. She was sometimes mocked for her discomfort, and she admitted that now, more than ever, it was strange. She was an immortal clone soldier. Even if the worst should happen and the ship breached, leaving her alone in the void, she would simply awake in a clone reanimation unit as though from a short nap.
But old habits died hard. Ryoko was thankful for the featureless, matte-black facemask that enclosed the helmet of her Caldari State Protectorate assault dropsuit. Her armor was brushed, steely gray and black, the overlapping plates glinting in the ship’s interior. From within this cocoon of armor, hydrostatic gel, and man-portable shields, the mercenary was busily perusing the layout of the station, preparing for the part of her job that she could control, while she waited out the part she could not.
It had been just over a month since she had signed a contract with the Ishuk-Raata Enforcement Directive, and she had already been assigned to the personal security of Vice Admiral Katrina Oniseki by the alliance’s executor. She wasn’t the sort to question why someone would need a bodyguard. Since being assigned to the Vice Admiral, Ryoko had gained and lost respect both for and from the woman, even after a month still not certain how she felt about the peculiar capsuleer.
That wasn’t what mattered, though. Ryoko had never had any particular feelings toward those she had protected in the past, and that had always made her job easier. Now, as she was made to reluctantly hand her weapons to the security desk at the Intaki Syndicate branch office, she found herself glad for the silence of their journey, as it had afforded her the opportunity to examine the station schematics, and determine the best and safest exits from the station should they become necessary. Few people understood how truly boring bodyguard work could be.
Of course, Ryoko being unarmed was more or less a formality. A small contingent of I-RED marines was patrolling the area outside, ostensibly keeping the meeting safe from external threats. But, while Ryoko had been given only a bare minimum of information about these negotiations, she knew enough about the Syndicate to know that having muscle on hand was never a bad idea.
The actual meeting itself was of little interest or concern to Ryoko, though. They were ushered into a small boardroom with a semicircular table, around which were situated chairs with glass bases and metal frames that, Ryoko assumed, were high style somewhere in the cluster. She had gleaned that Katrina wanted to arrange a specific trade agreement, but the finer points she would have had to have been briefed on to understand. And she did not need to understand. Instead, she took to studying those present.
The opposition, if that was the term for such a business deal, was a semicircle of a half dozen Intaki and, curiously, one Deteis hearing Katrina’s proposal. The Intaki were all male, all with similar dark business suits, and close-shorn hair. The Deteis, a woman in perhaps her mid-forties, wore a gray suit, and sat at one end of the semicircle. She wore a pair of holo-screen glasses, and had been paying Ryoko a good deal more attention than she had been to Katrina.
It wasn’t unusual for clone mercenaries to draw attention, particularly when fully armored, and it wasn’t that the woman was staring that drew Ryoko’s attention and even perhaps suspicion, but rather the way she kept her glasses trained on her instead of looking at Ryoko out of the corner of her eyes as one might expect. Ryoko caught brief glimpses of her green eyes, often occluded by the projections in her glasses, framed by her lightly grayed black hair. Even as the meeting began, and the others at her table began examining the figures Katrina projected over the holographic table, this woman’s eyes remained on Ryoko.
The clone mercenary was so fixated on the woman’s stare that she almost missed what was happening at the other end of the table. Katrina had just made some kind of quip, obviously intended to ease some of the tensions at the table, when one of the Intaki men’s hands dropped under the table. It was too smooth a movement, too quick to be without purpose. Had she not possessed the reflexes afforded her by her cloned body, and her dropsuit’s force amplifiers and reactive circuits, she wouldn’t have been able to act in time.
Mouths dropped open around the table as the Civire woman interposed herself between Katrina and the Intaki opposite her. Katrina’s brows contracted in fury at Ryoko’s hands clamping down on her shoulders and pushing backward, and she opened her mouth to speak. If she said anything, her words were drowned out by the sudden explosion of gunfire. The man, across from Kat had reached under the table to pick up a shotgun, and Ryoko staggered slightly as its full spread hit her in the back, instantly draining her shields.
The tremendous force of the shotgun blast dispersed against Ryoko’s dropsuit shields, and the Civire pushed Kat down toward the floor, forcing her to duck beneath the table. She could already see movement around the table, others apparently either going for the doors, or going for weapons themselves. Ryoko had no weapon of her own, and knew that another shot, maybe two from the shotgun would leave Katrina without a guard.
Seeing nothing better to use, Ryoko seized the chair Katrina had been sitting in and smashed it against the ground, splintering it into twisted chunks of metal and glass. The support from the back had broken nicely into a slightly curved piece of metal as long as Ryoko’s forearm. It would do. She picked it up, rising from the ground, keeping herself over Katrina’s prone form. She saw the Intaki first, her arm uncoiling, hurling the bent metal at him. There was a faint whistle as the rod flew through the air, and a sick, wet slap as it embedded itself in the shooter’s sternum, the gun clattering to the table from lifeless fingers.
Another report shattered the brief silence, and Ryoko saw the vanishing forms of two Intaki and the Deteis woman fleeing through the room’s rear exit as the remaining three men tried to encircle the mercenary, each wielding what Ryoko recognized as heavy blaster pistols. Ryoko didn’t feel the impact through the layer of hydrostatic gel in her armor, but she knew it had happened, and knew that her armor could only take so many hits from such a powerful weapon.
With her armor, she was quite a lot faster than the three baseline Intaki thugs, but she had Katrina to worry about. She would have seconds to act before one of them got clever and killed her charge while she was eliminating them. Her mind raced through the possibilities, searching for an option. It was hard to like what she settled on.
Taking advantage of the incredible strength afforded her by the dropsuit, Ryoko kicked outward at the table just as she heard the next blast of gunfire. The table flipped end-over-end, smashing into the nearest Intaki with such force that the expanding pool of red seeping into the room’s carpet from beneath the table’s surface was likely the most recognizable part of the man that remained. Even as the table was still in the air, Ryoko sprang at the next closest man, clamping a deathly powerful armored hand over his weapon hand and forcing it toward the last Intaki, who did not have time to react as Ryoko pulled the trigger, crushing bones in the hand of her victim as the pistol round tore through his last remaining companion’s skull. Red and gray spattered the wall behind him.
It was only as Ryoko’s thoughts slowed, bringing her back into synch with those around her that she became aware of the screams of the man whose hand she had crushed. She turned her featureless mask slightly in his direction, as if only just now realizing that he were there, and then released his hand, bringing her elbow back to collide with his face, the armored plate over the joint crashing through skin and bone, the screams becoming a wet, choking sound before he fell limply to the ground.
She did not stop, could not stop to check for more. The last Intaki had barely hit the ground before Ryoko was kneeling in front of Kat, gripping her by both shoulders, staring down at her, her dropsuit running a brief medical scan.
“Are you hurt?” she asked, her voice filtered through the dropsuit’s external speakers sounding cold, mechanical. Such additions to the suit had been an afterthought by its designers, and allowed little of the voice’s tone into their broadcasts.
Kat looked up at her. The fury had left her face to be replaced by…was it fear? Awe? Ryoko wasn’t sure and didn’t have time to figure it out.
“Are you hurt, Katrina?” she repeated.
Katrina shook her head. “No, I’m good” she rasped.
Ryoko hauled the flag officer to her feet, pulling her upward and glancing toward the room’s two exits. One had been their entrance, which was sure to be guarded. She had seen the others of the group, obviously those who were not intended to be active participants in the attack, flee out the back, which she knew led to private offices, and an emergency exit into a station corridor behind the building.
Ryoko turned toward Katrina, pointing her face directly toward the younger woman’s so that it was clear Ryoko was looking straight at her.
“I need you to do exactly what I say,” she said calmly, evenly. Her voice sounded robotic through the suit’s speakers, and she wasn’t sure if that helped or harmed the sense of calm she wanted to project. “I’m going to get us out of here but you need to do exactly what I say. Understand?”
“Stop talking and get us the frak out of here!” Kat snapped.
Ryoko took a step back, bending down to pick up the two pistols she could find, the third having been flung out of her sight when the table had impacted the unfortunate Intaki. She kept one for herself and pressed the other into Katrina’s hands. As Ryoko noted Katrina checking the counter on the pistol she had been given, Ryoko’s suit synchronized with her own, showing a remaining fifteen shots in her current power pack.
“We’re leaving the way they did,” she said.
Ryoko pointed through the door the Intaki had fled through, then looked back at Katrina.
“Stay no more than a meter behind me. Ready? Go.”
Ryoko waited for the half-nod of acknowledgment from Katrina before kicking the door in and sweeping the hallway with her stolen pistol. As she had thought, it was empty. The attack, such as it was, was not something that had been planned beyond. Apparently none of the Intaki had bothered to consider what might happen if Katrina had brought protection.
Why the Intaki Syndicate would want Katrina dead was a question for another time though, and Ryoko half-ran at a crouch through the hallway, making for the exit at the rear. She could hear raised voices behind them, and picked up speed, rising to her full height and sprinting forward, smashing into the door that she knew led into the station corridor at a full run.
The door exploded off of its hinges as Ryoko collided with it, the Civire staggering to a halt and whirling to look over Katrina’s shoulder as the capsuleer struggled to keep up with the sudden burst of speed. Behind her, she heard the low thrum of plasma fire, Katrina having half turned to fire at their pursuers as she ran.
“Down!” Ryoko shouted sharply, and Katrina ducked into a roll, tumbling through the door and smacking into Ryoko’s shins at full speed. In her armor, it was almost enough to make her stagger.
As Katrina ducked, Ryoko opened fire, her blaster pistol belching superheated plasma, etching fiery trails through the air and burning through the guards at the opposite end of the hall. These armored guards wore the black and dull green armor, along with the stylized logo of the Serpentis Corporation. Even as that bit of information clicked into place for Ryoko, one of the guards behind the two she had just killed primed a grenade and hurled it down the hall.
Ryoko immediately pulled Katrina up, turning the unarmored woman away from the explosive, putting herself between Katrina and the grenade. With no means to close the door, Ryoko knelt, leaning over Katrina and forcing the smaller woman to curl into a fetal position. She saw the flash of light in her peripheral vision before hearing the deafening explosion. An instant later she felt it. Her shields, having been recharging since their exit from the boardroom, redlined again, and she was thrown forward, her elbows digging into the ground as her much larger body shielded Katrina from the fire and concussive force of the explosion.
Alarms filled her heads-up display as the fire and pressure burned through her suit. Ryoko gritted her teeth, pain taking the alarm’s place as she felt the fire against her back, exposed now as the grenade’s mercifully small payload was spent. A locus grenade like the ones she carried into combat would have killed them both outright. She spared a fraction of a nanosecond to thank the stars the Serpentis soldiers were not so well equipped.
Ryoko’s biomonitors danced, peaking and plummeting in front of her eyes as she fought to stay conscious. She knew the only thing keeping her going was adrenaline now, and that as soon as that ran out, she would pass out. Katrina was, her suit’s sensors told her, unharmed. Perhaps a bit bruised from the overpressure and Ryoko’s body had served as sufficient cover from the blast.
She might have recovered faster, but for the damage to her helmet. It had cracked along the right side, where her head had been turned toward the blast, and perforated one of her eardrums. Still, through the dull ringing in her ears, and the throbbing in her temples, Ryoko could hear the sounds of the I-RED security force that had come to assist them fighting the Serpentis soldiers, the station alarms blaring at the fire behind the building, and Katrina’s muffled swearing. That, at least, explained why there was so little resistance on their way out. The mercenary whispered a silent thanks to the guards she may never meet.
With her helmet cracked, the heads-up display was unreliable, flickering across her vision, occasionally blanking and leaving Ryoko with an empty view of the inside of her blank helmet. She craned her neck forward over the screaming protest of her shredded back, chinning a button inside the helmet that disengaged the suit’s pressure seals around the neck. The shattered helmet all but fell off of her once released, clattering to the ground where the nanite autodestruct system activated a moment later, thousands of tiny machines devouring the helmet, destroying its any data held inside its on board computers, leaving nothing but a black smear on the ground.
“Up,” Ryoko gritted out, and there was a rasp to her voice through the filters, and her words tasted of copper, her lips and tongue slick with what she knew to be blood. “Run, there.”
Ryoko stood, pulling Katrina to her feet with her, even as her own body screamed in protest, the push to get Katrina moving making Ryoko gasp with both pain and the realization of how severe her injuries must be. She did not have time to stop and take stock of it all, though, instead ushering Katrina through the door and pointing to the curved hallway ahead.
“Goes straight back to the dock,” she said, her words thick, even a bit slurred. “Run.”
Ryoko was the one who had trouble keeping pace, now. The force amplifiers along her back had been obliterated, leaving much of her armor’s support systems unable to function. This slowed her down considerably, and when combined with her own body’s rebellion at being made to move, the mercenary knew that Katrina might reach the dock long before her.
Katrina’s strides were scarcely half as long as Ryoko’s, the Civire woman towering over her, but Ryoko’s suit was warning her that shrapnel had punctured one of her lungs, torn through her torso and broken a rib, lacerating the liver and one of her kidneys. The sheer effort of putting one foot in front of the other made Ryoko’s vision swim. Her sight blurred as she panted for breath alongside Katrina, barely able to match pace with her.
Ryoko felt herself slipping, blackness creeping into the edges of her vision as they rounded a corner and she saw a group of three marines guarding a door. Her hand numbly jumped to her pistol, fingers clamping around the weapon she didn’t even remember placing on her magnetic thigh pad. It wasn’t until the men lowered instead of raised their weapons that she realized these were I-RED marines defending the access corridor to the docking bay. Her fingers gratefully slipped from the butt of the weapon.
When they had docked at the station, Ryoko had made sure that Katrina’s ship, a Drake-class battlecruiser, rested near the access panel, leaving them two methods of return. Her father had once told her that the best warriors were not those with the sharpest eyes, or the strongest bodies, but rather those who could anticipate and plan for the most different possibilities. His advice had saved her again, it seemed.
Ryoko almost lacked the strength to push the access panel open, leaving the task to the three marines who had taken up positions around Katrina. Unattended, the mercenary tried to swallow down a lungful of air, but found herself lightheaded still, unable to get enough oxygen with one lung collapsed. She tried to smooth the tangle of her silver-white hair that had fallen into her face, but succeeded only in smearing blood and sweat over it, leaving the front of her hair a grisly shade of pink.
Putting one foot in front of the other was the best the mercenary could do at that point, and she gritted her teeth at the effort even that took as she followed the trio of marines, bringing up the rear and covering Katrina as they made their way toward her ship. When the ground beneath her changed from brushed gray to illuminated strips, she knew she had made it onto the starship, and allowed herself to slump sideways against the wall.
A dull rumble, and a familiar shudder vibrated through the Drake’s hull as the ship lifted off, turning toward the yawning mouth of the docking bay. Ryoko, grateful that she had seen Katrina through the station and safely back to her ship, let her head droop forward. Her job was done, and it was the capsuleer’s turn to see them to their destination. She didn’t even hear the questions the medical officers were asking her, nor did she care to. She would wake up in the medical bay, or the clone reanimation unit, but either way, she had done her job.
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Topic: The Meeting (Read 652 times)