Emissary
Chapter 13 - Upgrades and Recovery

Stel complied and leaned as far as she could to test the mostly-healed gunshot wound from a few days before, pleased to find the injury had all but faded aside from a noticeable scar.

"Feels great, Ryn. And now I've got a scar to remember the journey by."

Ryn let out a scoff of a laugh and leaned back in his command chair on the bridge, flicking on a switch as he got comfortable. "Perfect, glad you're making the most of it. Now, let's talk shop." The fennec points at the glowing projection on the screen and taps two spots, little pins of light marking where he touched. "We're here. Old Earth is there. Five days away. You've gotten zero piloting time since you've been recovering, so I'd like to run you through the upgrades we got back at Anywhere and make sure we've got the best shot at not dying if we run into any more Nalesh'ka."

Stel sat in a chair of her own and watched with growing interest in Ryn's briefing. She had been quite bored just reading the flight manual for the Emissary in the time she was recovering, so the chance to get back into the mech suit was putting her in a good mood.

Ryn pulled up a wire-frame diagram of the Emissary, the bipedal mech suit currently stored in the Motherwill's forward launch bay. He gestures to the right "shoulder" of the humanoid mech and a more detailed diagram grows in size.

"This is the upgrade I got from Yiel. It was intended for the Motherwill, but I figured you might get better use out of it." Ryn gives Stel a sideways look as she leans in towards the screen, reading the details of the new weapon. "This is what we affectionately call a 'wave-pulse cannon.' Pulse cannon will do, or whatever you prefer I guess. But essentially, it is your solution to any problems. It breaks things down at the molecular level in a reasonable range, letting the cannon tear a mech-sized hole in just about anything. Aside from a star, I guess. Though, we've never tried..." Ryn trails off as he pulls out his datapad and types something in quickly before tucking it away, returning his attention to the cannon. "Only problem is, especially with your suit, it has about a four minute charge time. Devastatingly long in combat, but it'd be your opener or closer in a fight. I recommend the latter, as it will definitely sap your suit power for a good while, leaving you without at least one of your main systems. Shields? Gone. Thrusters? Probably. Life support? I wouldn't recommend sapping that one."

Stel nods solemnly as Ryn describes the use of the cannon, speaking up once he finishes off. "I'll be careful, I promise. Now... Old Earth, five days. We're gonna get there, get help, and race back? Won't that take too long? Can we get a warp gate set up?"

Ryn shook his head sadly. "That'd be feasible only if there was a gate to warp to back home. And no doubt that one is gone by now. The Nalesh'ka are vicious, but not stupid. So, we'll just have to hope those Old Eathers have been keeping up with their research programs and have some new thrusters or slip drives to get us back there fast."

Stel grimaced but recognized the logic. "Alright. Well, five days, slip drive is cooling down, and a glance out that window reveals asteroids. Mind if I take a spin out there?"

Ryn grinned and glanced out the forward viewport. "You got it. Go on, suit up and mount up."

Stel bounced up and ran to her bunk room, pulling on a jumpsuit and riding the elevator down to the access hatch of the Emissary. She crawled in and the system lit up around her, the engine coming online and emitting a welcome hum in the machine around her.

"Slip drive will be ready in twenty, give or take a little maintenance from myself. Be back in fifteen, got it?" Ryn's voice crackled through the communicator.

"Got it." Answered Stel as she watched the launch bay doors slide open in front of her. The vastness of space, gorgeous blue and red gas giant below her, and the narrow ring of asteroids around it. The light above the bay door lit up green and Stel boosted her thrusters, sending the mech forward and launching out of the ship. Stel felt free for the first time in days as she felt weightless in the mech suit. Rolls came easy to her, the movement of the mech was still clumsy, but with the neural link, it was far better than her first piloting, with all manual controls.

Stel marked the Motherwill on her sensor board and headed for the asteroid belt, bringing her secondary systems online. Stel brought the mech into a gentle arc, diving into the band of gravity-locked rocks. Stel leveled her mech's hand guns, cannons three times her own size, at some of the smaller rocks and began taking pot shots at the hurtling boulders. Small ones broke apart, larger ones stayed intact but were noticeably scarred. Remembering the charge time of the wave-pulse cannon, Stel diverted power away from her normal weapons systems, the left shoulder missile launcher and her two arms, and pushed it into the pulse cannon, the system pinging that it was charging.

Stel ordered the system computer to give her a visible timer to count down the charge of the cannon and put her attention to avoiding rocks.

A small asteroid went speeding past Stel, causing her to roll faster than she had been to avoid it, eliciting a short yelp in surprise as the rock seemed to have come from nowhere. It hadn't been on her forward scanner a moment ago. Curious, Stel spun her mech to face the rock, tracking its tracked trajectory only to find nothing traveling along the same path.

A little unnerved, Stel keyed on her communicator and tried to reach Ryn only to be met with a quiet, pulsing static. Now actively alarmed, Stel attempted to push power to her sensors only to find her request denied on account of the charging pulse-wave cannon.

"Dammit." Stel cursed under her breath as she double-checked what systems she did have power to. Shields, thrusters, life support, and the pulse-wave. Minimal weapons, no long-range sensors, and no communicator, it seemed. Definitely something to bring up with Ryn when she got back to the Motherwill.

A sudden beam of brilliantly bright energy tore her thoughts away from the ship as a dozen asteroids in her proximity exploded into smaller rocks, sending shrapnel skittering off her shields, the thin particle field blossoming into green ripples all around her mech suit. Stel cursed colorfully in several different languages as she kicked her thrusters into motion and dived away from the origin of the beam. Suddenly, dozens of rocks all around her began to move far faster than they had been, slowly orbiting the gas giant. Instead bursts of thrust sent them in random directions, scattering all through the local space and then began to pursue Stel.

Stel keyed her sensor board back on in search of the Motherwill only to find no recognizable dot. The asteroid belt was too dense and seemingly magnetic for her sensors to operate normally. The beleaguered and pursued mech pilot slammed her communicator back on, "Ryn! Where the hell are you? We got... something in here!"

The Emissary rocked violently as it was struck in the back by something. Stel grunted as she was thrown forward into her crash harness. Swearing again, she checked the timer on the new cannon on the Emissary's shoulder.

"Dammit... I'm not going down like this." She muttered as Stel spun the Emissary 180-degrees and pointed her front towards where she had been attacked from. Looming before her was an oddly familiar vessel with an oblong body and twin "pincers" protruding from the front of the vessel, both pointed directly at her. From the tips of the pincers came two more beams of energy, narrowly missing Stel and the Emissary. Dipping into evasive maneuvers as she rushed toward the Nalesh'ka vessel, looking uncomfortably familiar to the command ships she had seen at Cantarus, as the world was being razed beneath her and Ryn. This one looked oddly rock-like, blending into the asteroids around it and was likely waiting for people just like Stel to stumble into its local space.

The ship sent another beam of energy at Stel and glanced off the Emissary's shields. Stel grunted as she was thrown again, but sighed in relief as the computer calmly informed her "hull still holding." S~ᴇaʀᴄh the Find ɴøᴠel.nᴇt website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

Stel was so focused on approaching the control ship that she was startled by a ping from the computer notifying her that the pulse-wave cannon was ready. Stel let a whoop out and brought up the targeting system for the cannon only to get a brief error code.

Sweat began dripping down Stel's face, surprising her at how tense and stressed she truly was. Swearing at the failure of the targeting computer, Stel diverted power away from shields, halving their power, and put it into thrusters. With a burst of speed, she raced forward towards the control ship, getting closer and closer as the pursuit ships finally caught up.

With a desperate gasp, Stel brought the mech's right arm up and grabbed the barrel of the pulse cannon protruding from the mech's shoulder and pulled the trigger. The cannon wasted no time and with a tremendous vibration through the mech suit sent a lethal beam of energy towards the command ship at point blank. The beam chewed through the hull like it were paper and kept going, igniting fires as the ship's atmosphere ignited, only to be snuffed by the void of space.

The pursuit ships behind her all stopped as the pulse-wave hit something critical and they scattered in random directions, impacting asteroids of various size and causing dozens of small explosions all around the Emissary.

Stel sank back into her seat and breathed deep, the silence following the firing of the pulse cannon was deafening. And then warning pings went off in the Emissary.

"Warning: Systems failing. Shields, down. Thrusters, down. Weapons, down. Life support, failing."

And to make matters worse, the forward viewport went dark, sealing Stel inside the metal cockpit of the mechsuit.

Stel swore again and began slapping buttons in the cockpit, trying to get it to cold start, just like she'd been reading about in the manual. She would have thanked Ryn for making her read those at any other time, but right now she just needed to see. She was elated as the viewscreens came back online and her heart sank as two more pincer-ships crawled out from behind large asteroids, seemingly coming to the aid of their dying bretheren.

Stel let one more colorful curse out when her communicator erupted into noise.

"Mila!" Ryn's voice roared over the communicator as the Motherwill raced towards the Emissary, scooping up the disabled mech as asteroids skittered off the freighter's shields. The launch bay closed around Stel, sealing her in the relative safety.

Stel began to shake as she crashed from her adrenaline high. Realizing she'd just chosen to engage a numerically superior force while half disabled from a faulty upgrade and lived? She decided a nap was in good order and as she faintly heard Ryn's voice over the communicator, she did just that and let her eyes slide shut.

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