The roars sputtered, gasped like a dying man. Kor didn't wait for the drones to fall, turned back to Qivan. His blade strikes were clean, confident as he drew the blade up through netting to each side of the kid. As he sliced, he aimed at the maglock plating securing the door.
This was it. Last EMP shot. If the drones kept coming, his options were limited. The kid had better appreciate this.
Engines reduced to a receding whine and Kor's ears ringing in the absence of sound, the shotgun fire felt hollow as a small explosion rocking your capital ship's bow. Behind them, drones banged and collided and tumbled as they feel.
Kor caught the door with his blade as it bounced from within its jam, flung it open. He sheathed the conbat knife as he stepped inside. "Qivan, let's go."
Shaking, Driver fell in behind Kor, and they stepped out into deserted hallway. The soldier swapped mags, stuffed the empty away in his coat and slapped in a standard.
"The sky bridge, kid. Where is it?"
No response from Qivan. Kor grabbed the kid's shoulder as he tucked away the shotgun beneath his coat. "Driver? Qivan, look at me. Sky bridge. Where is it?"
"Far side, uncle, not far." The kid's voice shook like his hands and shoulders. Kor knew he needed to keep him focused. Losing the kid in his thoughts now would be bad as leaving him back in the nets.
"Good."
They retreated from the nearby elevator shaft, which would be a primary response artery for security. No general alert or call to battle stations had occurred, which seemed strange to Kor. Any Menelaun population center would have torn apart an invader with their bare hands by now. He chalked it up to different cultures and a heavy civilian population.
Two turns and they began to encounter more foot traffic. More smells of food, and what looked like a centralized market of sorts. Low ceilings gave everything a claustrophobic feel, and smoke from woks and grills hung over everything. More importantly, it looked like there were multiple entrances.
"That cut through like I think it does?"
"Yeah, uncle, but too many people."
"Camouflage. Let's go."
Inside, the pedestrian presence was heavier than on Tisbel's floor. The people didn't part for them, but neither did they make it a struggle to pass. The soldier and his guide merged with the flow.
As Kor and Driver navigated the stalls, the soldier stripped off his coat, casually pulled the sleeves through so the deeply red liner would be visible instead of the leather. It wasn't a perfect deception by any means, but it was better than nothing.
"Driver, take off your coat," Kor said as they approached a clothing stall. Off the rack garments were pushed out towards the crowd, and the attendant's attention was focused on a paying customer.
The kid looked like he was about to argue, but Kor shot him a look that told him they didn't have time for his bullshit. Driver removed his purple coat as Kor grabbed one that was yellow-green as the street-level gas pockets.
Coat in hand, Kor turned back to Driver, stopped.
The purple coat, large and puffy and draping, seemed to have been its own kind of camouflage. Wearing only a lightweight black shirt and red pants covered in buckles, Driver looked suddenly vulnerable as he hugged a protective arm around the slight swell of his breasts. There wasn't much he could do to hide his hips, though.
No, not his. Theirs, maybe? Fuck, Kor didn't know. And right now was a hell of a time to ask about sexuality and personal identity. He tossed the kid the yellow coat, shoved them back into the crowd as he tossed the purple one over a nearby rack.
"Gimme your mask."
"Uncle, uh, shit," Driver replied, stumbling over their words as they pulled on the yellow one. It was too small, and the sleeves revealed two inches of wrist even as the bottom hem rode up around the waist. "My mask, yeah? I, shit, I can't."
"Why not?"
"My face, it, uh, shit I'm nervous. Just don't work normal."
"Then get un-nervous. We don't have time for your body to not work."
"It ain't work like that, yeah?" Driver's voice was rising, the panic returning. "Fuck you, uncle, why the hell did I even let you drag me along?"
They were in the flow of movement now, caught up as they eeked their way towards their destination exit on the edge of the market. People crushed in on all sides.
Forcing aside the beginnings of his own guilt, Kor kept the kid moving. "Because you needed money, Laren." The will to completion, of seeing the mission through no matter what the costs, was ingrained into Menelauns from the time they were children. Willpower was in their sacred DNA, a genetic coding to hate seeing work undone and incomplete. Their parents and the Agoge then drilled it into their minds and bodies, tempering and strengthening the instinctual imperative: Survive. Complete. Ignore the costs. Success was the price you paid to deepen your gene pool. So Kor ignored his guilt.
"You needed the money, and you saw that I had more. Do you trust me, Laren?"
"I-I-I don't know, uncle. That's what I can't figure out!"
Kor pulled the kid back out of the crowd and off to the side, yanked them around to face him. Both hands on Driver's shoulders, he looked up into the thick plastic lenses of the gas mask goggles. "Driver, I need you to trust me."
"Uncle, you's tried to kill me." The kid was like a small, hollow-boned animal beneath Kor's hands, fragile and frightened. Their whole body shook like they were the edge of a fault line, and they tried to turn away. "Twice."
"Once. The second timr I just needed you scared."
"Well, fucking worked, yeah? Still fucking shitting myself."
"Driver, you help me get out of here, I promise you you'll get paid. I'll do everything I can to make sure you make it through in one piece, too. Paid enough to be setup for life."
Driver cast a sideways glance. "You's honor as a Menelaun? On the Empress's life, yeah?"
Kor's teeth ground, his jaw pulsing as he worked it. He hadn't made a bond like that in . . . Where the hell had the kid learned about that, anyways?
"Fine," Kor said, eyes still on Driver's as he checked the peripherals of his vision, made sure they remained in the clear. "But I do this, you and I are bound. You understand? My honor doesn't make me a whipping boy or a chump, some sucker you can stab in the back. You break your end of things, I don't have any need to hold myself to shit. Got it?"
The kid hesitated, swallowed hard before nothing. "Yeah, uncle, got it. Sides, I'm more scared of you than the Blues."
The old soldier nodded. "Good. You should be." He glanced away, collected his thoughts. It had been a few years since he'd given the oath, but it had to be worded exactly right. Not that Kor was superstitious, but one didn't tempt the Furies unless one needed to.
"I, Kor, give my word that, on pain to my honor and my service to Empress Mortivant, the Unchained and Undying, Queen of Burcast, the United Satellites, the Belt, the Fifteen Constellations, and Menelaus, final and immortal scion of the Arasti Dynasty, I will fulfill my obligation to you or fall in battle trying. The Ferry reject my offering shall I break my oath, and the Furies chain me to the rock for my liver to be devoured."
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Chapter Three should finish sometime this coming week! Then we'll be into chapter four, and I'll get to slowly unfurl more of the world of Varis I and the sectors surrounding it, maybe even the greater galactic culture. So, my biggest pet peeve when it comes to scifi and fantasy is that every character in them seems to be a sociologist or have a fucking PhD in every culture. No one ever goes "oh, well we just do that because we fucking do that", like normal people would. For instance, how many people who live in your CITY know when it was founded, or what its history was really like? That's pat of the reason why I've just had people shrug when asked complicated questions about their culture. "That's just the way it is" is way more believable, in my opinion, than "Because, in 1513, the Lord of Whogivesafuq struck down the martial obligations of the common man". I figure that with Galactic history, things would be even more difficult to remember. Not everyone is Tisbel, after all, with an AI integrated into their mental circuitry.
