Down and Out – Part 1
My newest story is stretching all sorts of mental muscles.
YA is not my cup of tea. The stakes are… dissimilar to my regular offerings. To be perfectly frank: I need to be more awake and dedicated to crafting a solid story than I am at this moment in order to do it justice. One of my good friends, who is also a talented artist, has allowed this to move forward and I don’t want to spoil it.
So here I am, three AM on a Monday morning, in need of a story. Nothing to really fall back on, either. The Reign is Over is currently in the editing shop, being tinkered and tweaked and polished into its own novella. I’m not entirely certain I’ll even post any further parts of it up here. When it’s done, it’ll get the same treatment that After the Silence received. By that, I mean that I’ll take it all down and release it as the novella it was always meant to be. You know, with a singular cohesive story which aligns and makes sense and isn’t put together one post at a time with significant derivations over six months.
My primary responsibility remains, however. So I must provide you with the content which is expected of me. Content is my business ladies, and business is good!
So, today will be an experiment! I’d apologize for making you all my test subjects for this one, but any chance for me to dust off ye olde braine and get you guys something fresh and interesting is one I’m going to take. I’m flush with ideas that could grow into a story given enough time and effort. So let’s do this thing.
Down and Out – Part 1
Yara Amari let out an explosive breath, returning her uniwrench to the tool box with care as her face-plate fogged. She’d been at this joint for almost three hours, and she was no closer to fixing it than she had been when she’d suited up for vacuum. There was nothing for it: She was going to have to call Yow’ce and have him tow her battlesuit to a repair yard.
Yow’ce was the most reliable Vulpine Yara had ever met. He’d saved her bacon way more than once since she started, and she had no doubt he’d be doing it till she retired or died. Whichever came first. She closed the tool box and pushed against the un-moving limb towards the entry hatch on The Luck Dragon. She hated that she couldn’t fix her battlesuit on her own, but humanity hadn’t helped uplift foxes for nothing. Armed with twin thumbs on the side of each paw and a supernatural knack for machinery, human robots had gone from impressive to ascendant. The problem was, human hands and the tools they could wield were no longer up to the task.
Vulpines were unavoidable if you wanted your battlesuit to keep you safe. So many of her fellow mercenaries tried to make due with their own repairs, but Yara hadn’t remained whole and employed for six years because she was willing to let her pride get in the way of good sense. Humans were an amazing bunch, full of innovation and adaptation, but the reality had some harsh limits as to what could and couldn’t happen. As my three hours of useless attempts to fix this heap of junk have just demonstrated Yara thought with a resigned sigh.
She reached the entry hatch to the retrofitted cargo hauler she called home. Normally, both she and her battlesuit would be inside The Luck Dragon after a mission. She’d run into another suit mid-mission, and while she’d caught them by surprise, they’d gotten off a few solid shots of their own. With one arm frozen in combat position, there hadn’t been any point trying to squeeze the damn thing into its usual spot within the cargo bay when she’d cleared atmosphere. Limited to the Dragon’s exterior and in need of a quick getaway, she’s use the simple solution of firing electromagnet slammers into the battlesuits feet, effectively bolting it to the ship. It left her in the laughable position of having a thirty meter tall robot on top of her transport, but it had let her leave obit. Slammers were dead useful in battlesuit combat, and she’d pinned more than one opponent to a wall or ship to lethal effect. The fact that she’d been forced to waste two of them on such an undignified solution was enough to make her sigh once more.
It would take a miracle for this mission to break even. Between the replacement ammo, the two slammers, and the trip to Yow’ce’s den, she’d be lucky if she just covered expenses. Granted, her employers might take mercy upon her and cough up enough to cover the repair bill, but she doubted it. When you got paid for corporate espionage, that generally ruled out your employer being altruistic when it came to compensation.
“Be a mercenary, mom said! You’re perfect for it, she said! Rabble, rabble, rabble…”
Yara muttered dark recriminations of her mothers advice as she seated herself in the cockpit and opened an omnicom link with Yow’ce’s Den. She brushed aside the notification from her client that her recording had been received.
The Vulpine picked up after the first ring. He was nothing if not punctual. “Yow’ce here.” His voice sounded like a toddler talking around a pair of fake dracula teeth, but after awhile you got used to it. It was cute, but she’d never tell him that in a million years.
“Hey Yow’ce, it’s Yara. I need a tow and some repairs. When’s the soonest you could get to Sigma VI?”
Yow’ce growled in vulpish off com for a few moments, then returned to Yara. “I could have Vel’ce there in a few hours. Hot or not?”
“Cold, thank the gods. I can’t enter the soup with Glory strapped to the top of my tanker though.”
Yow’ce barked out a laugh, but there wasn’t any malice behind it, so Yara let the derision slide. She’d be sure to get back in her own subtle way later. “Alright Yara, just hang tight. We’ll get you into the den safe and sound in no time. Yow’ce out.”
Yara ended the omnicom, biting her lip as she put the receiver down. Three hours wasn’t a terribly long wait, and she’d managed to get the Dragon into the pre-planned emergency fallback point on the dark side of the furthest moon in the Sigma VI system. This job had been a bit bigger than most, however, and Nitecide Industrials had just lost a lot of mid-process advanced weaponry with her blowing up their depot. She’d done a thorough job of wasting both comm stations before she got started, but it’d be just her luck that they’d have a secret comm station or a freighter willing to break regulations to mount an omnicom like she had.
So she sat, and she grumbled, and she waited for the Vulpine’s to come dig her out of this mess.
To be continued…
Yow’cefully,
The Unsheathed Quill
