Chapter 95: Chapter Eighty-Two Dragons and Looting

Uliera shifted her body, as she maneuvered around a floating wreck. A move that brought her into a sight line with the Erali cruiser trespassing in her system. It was a smaller cruiser, about eight hundred meters long, and armed mainly with light particle cannons. Along with a few missile tubes, and torpedoes. Her sensor array was however fairly beefy. Clearly a light cruiser, specialized for escort duty, and counter stealth operations. Among other possible roles that a ship like this could fill. Despite the powerful scanners, that ship still remained blissfully unaware of her presence, and she was quite close. Close enough that someone looking out a window would have been able to see her, if not for her own cloak. A fact that made it quite easy for her to learn what she wanted from these interlopers.

With a thought, she reached out, and touched the minds aboard the intruding alien ship. They were quite unguarded, making it trivial for her to search their minds unnoticed. It only took a moment for her to learn that they were preparing a boarding party, a salvage team to board one of the battleships she had destroyed. These Erali were not planning to stick around, but before they left they planned to plunder a few trinkets.

Uliera scoffed. It was not their right to take plunder from HER defeated foes. However that doesn’t mean they are entirely unwelcome to it. For a price of course, but since she didn’t feel like speaking with these Erali, why would she bother to tell them that? Besides there were myriad ways to tell them there was a cost. To remind them of old laws. There was a reason so many cultures, even those with matriarchal tendencies had stories that involved the sacrifice of young women to dragons. A common thread was that a dragon would only accept a young, and living woman. Such rules were suddenly relevant here now.

At the moment however she did nothing. Instead, she decided to bide her time, and wait. They hadn’t realized that battleship was claimed. She had left her mark on it, but until someone saw it, and recognized it for what it was, she would do nothing. Well nothing much. She did reach out, and access their computers. It was a simple matter to ensure if someone did think to search HER MARK that the computer would bring up the relevant information. She would leave the choice ultimately up to them.

If they tried to leave with trinkets, and not a single sacrifice, she would make herself known. On the other hand, if they saw her mark and left without any trinkets, she wouldn’t care if they left a sacrifice or not, and would allow them to leave. Of course if they wanted to earn her favor, they would leave tribute behind before they left, a living girl would be prefered, but she would take any object of value. Regardless, Uliera saw this as a test for her new neighbors. One she hoped they would choose wisely. She had made sure they had the information they needed. In fact she had already went and expanded their ship’s meager database. It was time to see what they would do. To see which path they would choose? Will they seek to gain her favor? Perhaps they will try to steal from her, and pay the price? Maybe they would seek to trade some of their numbers for a few trinkets? Whatever the path, she was going to let them make the first move.

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The shuttle settled onto the deck with a thud. With a sigh, she picked up her equipment and double checked the seals on her all-purpose hardened survival suit. It was a full body self contained suit with independent life-support, a power pack, personal shield, and thruster pack. The outer layers of the suit were made of hardened polymers intended to deflect micrometeoroids, but they were also quite resilient against other hazards. The result was a suit that was not only perfect for survival in space, but also good for protecting the wearer from things like small arms fire. The APHSS was a particular favorite of dedicated salvage teams, and she was quite happy that it was standard military practice to keep at least one for every crewman aboard. It was, after all, the right tool for this job.

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Certain her seals were right, the young woman activated her hud. It took only a moment to boot up, and instantly she had a display at the top of her vision that was giving her important metrics such as shield strength, life support status, and remaining power. There was also a metric for fuel supply. All very useful items to have at a glance. She pressed another button to activate her shield. Her suit seemed to shimmer for a moment as the shield activated. 

Glancing around it seemed the team was ready. The team leader seemed to agree, and the signal was given. The area around the door shimmered for a second before the door silently opened, swinging downward to create a ramp into the airless hanger beyond. It had been left open after the crew evacuated, making it a prime place to enter the wrecked battleship. Well half of one anyway. A different team was investigating the other.

She was third off the ramp, her skin tingled a bit as she passed through the airskin into the bay. It was actually kind of pleasant, perhaps a little too pleasant, as her nipples hardened in response. A fact she tried to ignore as she looked around. One of the first things, she noticed was a rather impressive image emblazoned on the rear wall of the bay. It featured a dragon clutching three worlds in its claws, beneath it nude women were depicted living a simple yet happy life. Some of them even seemed to be kneeling beneath it in worship. It was a curious piece of art, very explicit, and highly detailed. She could see the individual pieces of fur on each individual, no two girls were alike, and the artist had rendered even the smallest details. It wasn’t even censored either, since she could see breasts and pussy in their entirety. Yet it managed to seem tasteful. 

The young woman took several photos of it, and made a note to have the computer analyze it when they got back. Honestly she would have done it now, and simply beamed the images back to the ship, but everyone was on edge because of this graveyard, and the captain had ordered minimal comms. They weren’t to use them, unless they needed to. An order she understood. They didn’t want to attract undue attention, especially when they didn’t know who did this. As she turned away, she noticed the work seemed to be signed. In the lower left corner, were several strange characters below a prominent symbol, one that featured three rings orbiting a red jewel that was grasped in a dragon’s claw. It was wreathed with a ribbon that was emblazoned with a phrase written in alien characters. The same strange characters as those below. It was not the Neku language, nor was it any language she knew, but clearly seemed to be the written form of some alien tongue. Something told her this was very important, and she snapped a few photos of that as well. 

With that done, she turned to the first task at hand. Securing the bay, as their entry point into the ship. Already a few of the others were working to restore the local air skin shield, she joined them in the work. A task that took only a few minutes.

They placed a few generators in key places, and took advantage of the existing hardware to project an energy barrier meant to keep the atmosphere in. There were a few other places in the hull that would need this treatment as well, and other teams had already gone to do that. In the meantime, her group left to restore life support. Once that was done, they would be able to work without worrying about their air supply.

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The alien display in front of her shifted colors from bright red to a muted blue. Seconds before she noticed the vents activate. A check of her suit sensors indicated the room was pressurizing. She smiled, life support had not been too difficult to restore. It had failed due to loss of power, and now that the system had power again, it was running. Although it had taken a little coaxing to get it to actually start after they restored power, but that wasn’t too surprising given the state of the ship.

Turning to her partner, she signaled for them to head down the hall. She’d noted a weapon’s emplacement they had passed on the way here. Definitely something to look at for salvaging useful components. Who knows, maybe the entire cannon was in good shape? They were here to gather Neku military equipment after all, weapons, shields, that sort of thing. Getting an intact cannon would be great. An intact shield core would be especially prime, as the Neku shielding was superior. Such an object would go a long way towards bridging that gap.

The emplacement wasn’t that far down the hall. It was a recessed turret with two plasma cannons mounted inside. The turret was designed to be stowed inside the protective belt of the hull, and could be raised above that belt when needed. This one had not deployed, which made entry inside easy. The room had consoles clearly intended for manual use of the cannons.

Silently the two Erali girls pulled out their tools, and got to work. It seemed the turret was designed to make removal of the guns easy, which made their work that much easier. Still it wasn’t a quick job, and it took a good long while to decouple the cannons, and get them ready to be moved. By the time the cannons were ready to remove, the ship had repressurized, and the air was breathable. Allowing them to open their breathing ports, and switch off their independent life support systems. That was quite useful since it allowed them to conserve their air. 

Personally she couldn’t wait to get back, so she could remove the suit. As useful as they were, these suits felt kind of confining, and they just covered so much that she was kind of uncomfortable in it. She had little doubt the others felt the same, but those feelings didn’t stop her from doing what needed to be done. Finding useful equipment to bring back.

With the cannons ready to be moved the two of them unpacked the grav harness, and loaded them up. It was going to be a fair walk back to the bay. Thankfully one that proved to be uneventful, and by the time they got back, the other teams already had quite a few items ready to load, including a shield core, and a secondary reactor module. Someone had even brought back part of a thruster assembly. It seemed they might need another shuttle. The ship had plenty of intact military hardware worth salvaging afterall, and the more items they salvaged the better.

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