Chapter 13: Chapter 13

Chapter 13

In the middle of the trip to the station...

The trio sits together in the middle of the common room on the ship. Genesis, Gree, and Eve all sat together, looking rather serious. There was a bit of tension in the air...before Genesis slapped down what she held in her hands on the middle table.

"Four of a kind."

The other two groan and toss their cards on the table as well; neither can win with their hands. Genesis took the two credit chips offered. Sure, it was low-stakes but getting more money was fun. The other two sighed, Gree started first, "Damn. How the hell do you win three times in a row? Poker sure is an incredible game..." Eve just made an approximation of a frown, no mouth and all, but she stewed in her displeasure for the time being. The jellyfish-like being pouted while Genesis rounded up all the chips and popped them into her wallet.

"It's pretty difficult to play against you guys, though - no offense, but at first, I thought you two would be difficult to read. I didn't realize how expressive you two actually are." Genesis grinned a winning smile. "Work on your 'poker faces.' Especially you Eve." Genesis winked; Eve was surprisingly expressive. Maybe not with her face since she doesn't have a nose or mouth, but with her tentacles. Genesis basked in the glory of her victory for a moment before cooling down.

"It's been a day already. Are we almost there, Eve?" The alien in question picked up a small pad, looked it over, and answered in that whispy voice of hers, "No. We've still got a day's travel unless something throws us off course. Why?" Genesis frowned and tapped her foot, "Well, it's just that I'm itching to get back to battle. Ever since being born, it's been bugging me, the addictive feeling of growth and power. It's obvious for me, quite literally." A tap to the side of her head insinuates she can see her relative power. 

Gree snorts, "Feels like a damned cheat to me. You've told me before, yeah. Makes me jealous..." Gree slurped up a nutrient package from a squeeze pack before continuing, pointing a clawed, beefy finger at Genesis. "You know where to train yourself at any damned time. I feel my own growth stalled. Even though the Captain was a battle to the death, you got more out of it than me! Damn!" While his tone was accusatory, Genesis believed Gree didn't really mean anything by it. Or, at least, anything to damn Genesis. Gree was her friend after all.

Eve though was new. Over the past day, she's not interacted with Eve much other than learning she knows her mechanical engineering. There was a time when her Inner Library picked up on some errors in the ship they were flying mid-fight, so she told Eve who began cursing people who didn't know what the hell they were doing with the tuning of the vessel. Thirty minutes later, they were fixed. Eve was very passionate about equipment and machinery. She had also tuned up their weapons and armor yesterday; something about people being amateurs. But they fit better and cleanly took their Ki in afterward. At least a 20% increase in effectiveness, or so Genesis' calculations put out.

The only thing Genesis didn't know about was Eve's powers. Her race was...interesting. She wasn't a Lizardman who's powers were obvious when looking at them. Eve's powers were something else entirely. Perhaps she didn't even have a solid body underneath the form-fitting jumpsuit? But that didn't make sense since the jumpsuit showed an obviously thin female form with no noticeable tentacle bulges. Did she have stingers? Did she even have bones? She wanted to avoid asking, and looking her up in the Inner Library would feel wrong, too, mostly because she'd get TOO MUCH information. 

If she had to think about it, though, on how their party's strength was - Gree was a physical specialist, with his stat output being higher than Genesis in the physical stats but lower mental. Eve was the opposite, having high mental but low physical. They were both Ds in their primary stats but Es in their lower ones. It was probably a natural inclination rather than them not training them. Genesis stopped her thought process and finally spoke up, the entire tirade in her head having only taken three seconds.

"Well, Gree, if there's anything you're better at, it's battle sense and your physique. Eve's better than me with Ki use as well." She tapped her chin, "Do you think it's weird you've been with me for another mission, Gree?" Gree didn't seem to expect the question. He hummed..."No? I think the Captain saw how well we took on that bastard in the last one and decided to toss me out again." He then jabs a thumb at Eve. "Her? I think we needed someone like her." Eve looked smug at that, "Of course. You two don't know how to fix an engine after all!" Genesis nodded. Even if she could look it up, it'd be different from an expert fixing it after all.

"So, Eve, what do you normally do?" Eve tilts her head, then shrugs. "I trade other scientists for their mechanical expertise, read over their notes or blueprints, and do my own projects in my spare time. It hurts not having the same income as the scientists, but some of those nerds just need knowledgeable folks to bounce ideas and opinions off of. My trade is my spare time. Then I train my energy control and fine-tune its output which is probably more in line with what you wanted to know." Genesis nodded, "Yeah, but likes and dislikes. I know Gree hates vegetables, but that's obvious. Look at those teeth!" Gree grinned and snapped his jaw, releasing a sound not unlike a bear trap snapping close while empty.

A small beep from the pad took Eve's attention. Her tentacles stiffened and ground against each other in mid-air; mild agitation filled her face. "What is it?" Gree asked. Eve stood up and moved towards the ship's cockpit, "Company. This isn't right. There shouldn't be anyone at all this far out in the West. We're coming up on an asteroid field. Who the hell would be this far out?" Genesis and Gree also got up with her to head toward the cockpit.

Eve sits in the pilot seat, looking out of the window towards the asteroid field they were in. In the far-off distance, there were five light signals, different from a star, in that they were moving towards them. It was an orange hue. The comms channel beeped, and Eve opened it up. A male voice from the comms channel told them everything they needed to know about the oncoming group.

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"This is restricted airspace; this area is owned by the Maverick group. You shouldn't be here. Failure to leave in the next few minutes will be met with hostility." Eve hmms, fiddling with one of her hair tentacles. "Restricted airspace? Nothing was even here for a good month or so. Your group isn't known by any nearby settlements or in any of the trade routes." So this was the group they were looking for, alright. Scavengers, ready to rip apart anything not nailed down. Or even if it was, they'd melt the nail and take it anyways.

Eve motioned for Genesis to get a bit closer. The voice over the comms got more aggressive, "It doesn't matter. This is our airspace. You stay your course, and we will blast you to pieces and take your pieces to be repurposed." Eve whispered to Genesis, "Get on the outside of the ship. We'll need you." Genesis nodded, not before hearing Eve respond, "Threats? There's nothing even out this way; we're heading towards-" The sounds cut out as Genesis left the cockpit and ran to the airlock. She put on some magboots, a jetpack, and her bracelet and armor. She had to do it quickly, moving out of the airlock with speed. 

Within moments, she was now attached to the hull as it sped through space. The airlock closed behind her as she got up to the ship's top. In her Scouter, she could hear Eve suddenly chime into her comms channel. "Genesis, they're right pissed. They're the group we came for. I wasn't expecting them to actually have ships. I can maneuver around the field. You're good with psychic power, right? Use it here and hold on to the ship - oh shit!" The ship suddenly dipped, and Genesis sank down too. Overhead a laserbeam shot close enough for Genesis to feel the heat above her. This ship's shields would go down after a hit from that lancing weapon.

More minor laser fire started blasting across the expanse of space as the ship lurched into the side. The ship shot toward a rather massive asteroid. While small stationary asteroids were nothing to the shielding array in the ship, the real damage came from even more prominent pieces of space debris. Their ship went into a slide to swerve around the asteroid in a circular motion. The front faced the asteroid and started to blow into it with charges of a missile. Three of them impact its side, sending massive chunks of space rock into the hounding passage of the five spacecraft. 

The debris created an excellent cover while they shot away. Genesis' scouter crackled to life, "Genesis! Grab as much debris as you can. Toss it at those bastards!" Genesis reached out with her psychic force, extending several 'hands' to grip and pull debris to her at incredible speed. She obtained many chunks of the asteroid the size of her torso with the force she could put out. Eve yelled, "Hold on! Gree is getting to the turret." From the top, a turret pops out. It was a decent medium-sized personal controlled turret. Still, it wasn't like that laser-lance that shot towards them earlier. Gree crackled to life on the comms channel, "Haha! Time to shoot some dirty scavs! Take this, you greedy RATS!"

The turret suddenly swiveled and locked onto the five ships in the distance, still trying to follow tight maneuvers of Eve. They had passed through the asteroid shrapnel...partially. Some of them looked slightly damaged from the little trick. Small bumps and dents showed on the hulls of the ships in the distance, except for one. This one was in the middle of the formation and seemed to be the group's leader. From the turret, laser fire started to billow forth. A thin line of several separate lasers blasting through space.

None of them hit the ships, though. They spread out to ensure the turret couldn't focus on any clustered together. Genesis stopped waiting. She aimed the asteroid, her brain hyper-calculating the trajectory and the strength of her next toss. The far-left one in the middle of space was her target. The torso-sized asteroid suddenly shot off like a hyper-speed shot. There was no sound other than a sickening impact in space, then an explosion rippled out shockwaves in space. Genesis' aim was spot on.

Gree and Eve cheered over the comms, and Eve piped up first. "You pissed them off, Genesis, even more than I did! They must've been friends. Hah!" Genesis froze for a moment, her brow furrowed. Her last opponents were pirates, ugly people who murdered for a living. These were people trying to make a living, or so she thinks. But it came down again to that...life was cheap in this universe. People could die quickly just from someone with enough power just looking in their direction. She clenched her teeth and burrowed these sudden feelings down. She'll have to deal with this sudden violent thought process later. 

They still had to deal with these enemies pursuing them. It wasn't going to be easy either. But, they seemed to have experience in space. If they didn't want to kill them, they do so now with a loss of one of their numbers. These guys were a step above pirates. Genesis wasn't sure how she knew, but these guys were at least in the middling levels of E rank. Trained men and women. Genesis tossed two more asteroids at their members. "Gree, aim for the far right. He's pinned to the side of the bigger asteroid!" They were still circling around the asteroid. Gree laughed, "Got it!" He aimed between the middle of the two flying asteroids. The moment the targeted ship tried to get out of the way, laser fire lit him up.

The target's shielding held up for only a couple of seconds under the sustained fire, the rest of the beams making small holes all over the ship until the cockpit was hit, cracking it open and sending a round deep into the ship. Another explosion. The ship went up in flames. That was two of the five down. They still had three to go. Were they really that tough-

Eve suddenly shouted over the comms channel. Panic fills the usually carefree, whispy voice.

"THERE'S TEN MORE IN FRONT OF US! GENESIS!"