Darkened Stars - Chapter 13

Darkened Stars - Chapter 13

Stardate 29364.0 - May 13, 2352 - 05:22:00

Keiko leaned over the table wearing only an apron and smile as she sliced the freshly baked apple pie into slices with a mek'leth.

Carefully pulling out a slice, she offered it to Rain, and the small of freshly baked apples filled her nose as she reached forward to take it. The moment she did however Keiko's expression became impish and the other woman reached forward and pinched her on the upper part of her breast.

“Yeowch!” Rain yelled, sitting up with s start at the suddenly pain only to hit her crest in the roof of the bunk.

“Owe owe owe.” She muttered rubbing her head in pain as she looked around to see Keiko looking over at her with a less than amused stare.

“Weapons, fast.” Keiko said, switching her look to the bag Rain had been using as a pillow. “More will come soon.”

“More?” Rain asked in confusion, the drowsiness of sleep still gnawing at her.

Keiko pointed with her sword down to the bodies of two dead Orions laying on the floor of their cabin.

“They pumped neurozine gas into the cabin.” She quickly explained as Rain stared in wide eyed shock at the dead forms.

Now that Keiko mentioned it, there was a clear smell of baked apples in the room, which all but immediately made her mind flash back to– 

She slapped herself, interrupting that train of thought before it could get going and using the sudden spike of pain to help wipe away the last dregs of tiredness from her system.

“Why aren't you unconscious?” Rain asked as she checked her disruptor, making sure the weapon wasn't on a setting that would risk burning through the hull.

“Respiratory implant to filter out harmful chemicals.” Keiko answered with an impatient look towards the still open door.

“Here.” Rain said, tossing the Japanese woman one of the nano-pulse weapons from her bag.

“What?” She asked rhetorically upon seeing Keiko's frown at the weapon. “We literally only had two disruptors in the house, and your friends cut mine apart.”

And it wasn't like she could have just gone down to the local armory to pick up a new one with all the questions various people had to have been asking about her little rampage.

“Okay. So did they say anything before you kataned them?” Rain asked Keiko with a look towards the pair of dead Orions as she hopped down off the bunk.

“Betting each other how much they would get for us on the Orion flesh markets.” Keiko said, taking the opportunity to spit on one of the bodies.

“Stupid Rain.” Rain muttered to herself as she slapped a palm to her crest. “Idiots like this are why you're supposed to pay half in advance and the other half on delivery.”

“Probably would have done it anyways.” Keiko offered consolingly as she kicked the bodies a few times for good measure before turning back to the Asari with a somewhat lost look in her eyes. “But what now?”

Rain covered up her immediate urge to exclaim how she had thought Keiko had a plan by scrunching up her brow in consideration as her mind raced to figure out how to get out of this without being spaced by whatever random extra the Orions had manning the transporter controls.

“We'll have to rush the bridge.” She voiced the first thought that came to mind and then continued to run with it. “They probably won't be expecting it given we're both supposed to be out cold.”

Keiko nodded, and Rain waited a moment for her to go before rolling her eyes and taking the lead when it became clear the Japanese teen was expecting her to head the attack.

“I feel like I should have been counting heads when we were shown around earlier.” Rain muttered as she made sure her barrier was active and then stuck her head out of the doorway. 

“They had a crew of sixteen, so forteen left.” Keiko offered helpfully as Rain’s eyeridge twitched slightly at having her inadequacies once more directly thrust in her face.

Confirming the hall was empty, Rain moved out of their temporary quarters and began following the branching corridors towards the bridge, making sure as she did to clamp down hard on her go to biotic reactions to avoid any possibility of accidentally causing a hull breach or blowing up the ship.

“Where is everybody?” She muttered nervously as they neared the turbolift without running into even a single Orion.

“Probably mid shift.” Keiko put forward.

That made sense, and Raine had to fight back her sudden urge to facepalm for forgetting it was usually a thing people serving on starships did so they could always have a group actively monitoring and taking care of things.

With that Rain held her breath and tapped the control for the turbolift, praying silently as she did that the lack of any noticeable alert meant the people on the bridge weren’t actively monitoring the ships internal sensors.

She let out the breath as the turbolift doors opened moments later revealing an empty interior, and after a moment of hesitation made her way inside.

“Bridge.” Rain said the moment Keiko joined her, holding her disruptor at the ready and tensing her muscles so she’d be ready to move the moment the turbolift arrived.

They came to a stop, the doors sliding open as Rain dashed forward ready to fight through fire, only to stop dumbfounded at the fact that literally nobody was paying any attention to their arrival.

“About time.” Nezia said, not even looking back from where she was lazily lying across the arms of her captain’s chair. “The two weren’t heavy were they?”

“You really are just fucking dumbassas aren’t you.” Rain said in exasperation as she pointed the disruptor at the Orion captain. 

All four of the Orions on the bridge turned at her voice with surprised looks on their faces that quickly morphed into alarm as they saw her weapon.

“Suffice it to say if any of you go for your weapons I will shoot Nezia.” Rain informed the four, feeling it needed to be said even though she didn't see anything more dangerous than a bevy of different bladed weapons on the group.

Nezia rapidly paled as a trio of matching grins found their way onto the other three's faces. Which was the point all three began reaching for their weapons.

Rain fired and Nezia went down stunned as the other three attempted to rush her in a way that might have been moderately concerning if she were still a human.

Keiko dashed forward and Rain was left to blink dumbly as the Japanese woman's katana sliced through the metal of one of the Orion's saber like weapons like it wasn't even there.

Two barely detectable impacts hit her barrier, turning her attention away from the weapon that was apparently a lot more impressive then she had thought, to the other two Orion who were staring in confusion at the shimmering field of biotic energy that had stopped their weapons.

Taking advantage of their shock, she turned her disruptor on the pair, the weapon discharging twice at the pull off her finger to send the pair collapsing to the floor unconscious.

Turning back to Keiko, she openly cringed at the bloody sight that greeted her before turning her eyes away from cut up pieces that had been an Orion to put on a faux smile as she looked the Japanese teen in the eyes.

“Good work.” She praised her, knowing how important positive reinforcement could be in situations like this. 

“Good sword.” Keiko returned, staring at the bloody weapon with a small smile on her face that slowly morphed into a frown as she looked at the three still breathing Orions. “You wanted them alive?”

“I wanted some of them alive.” Rain corrected with a smirk. “Unless you know how to fly an Orion starship?”

Because while she might recognize a few of the controls she'd seen on the bridge from things she'd picked up over them years, she very much doubted her ability to actually fly the ship anywhere.

“Can't you just take it from her head?” Keiko inquired in a confused tone as she pointed over at Nezia.

Rain opened her mouth to say no only to close it with a click as she remembered that technically was something she should be able to do now.

“Would you believe I forgot?” She offered lamely as she rubbed the back of her neck in embarrassment.

“Here.” She said tossing the disruptor to Keiko. “Go stun the rest of the crew, and I don't know, stick them in the slave cells or something.”

Worst came to worst they could sell them to someone, not something Rain would feel particularly bad about given they had been in the process of doing that to others. Though the Asari rather hoped at least a few would take her up on the eventual offer of continued employment, since she really didn’t want to be running the ship alone.

“And the slaves?” Keiko inquired.

“Take an accounting of their skills.” Rain ordered, figuring there was probably someone in there with useful knowhow. “I’ll go over it later and offer anyone useful a job, the rest we’ll drop off somewhere.”

Keiko nodded before heading to the still open doors of the turbolift, leaving Rain to walk over to the captain and stare down on her with a frown on her face.

“This is probably going to be more embarrassing for me than it is for you.” She said as she began maneuvering the woman’s unconscious body in such a way as they could share a seat.

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One of the most important things Keiko’s grandmother had taught her was to follow power. It was why, prior to his death while slipping a worm into the Palkar house’s internal systems, that she had been rather successfully working her way into Fusajiro Yamaguchi’s futon.

Because he had been the up and coming power in the Yamaguchi family.

It was also why she had taken one look at the blast crater that had been her home, and decided that following the psychic murder princess that claimed to have a way to get off world and away from anyone who might want to silence potential loose ends, was her best chance of coming out alive in this.

Something made easier by the fact Keiko had caught Raine giving her appreciative looks when she thought the Japanese woman wasn’t looking. Which meant the shared futon play would still be an option, even if the target of it most likely had different parts. Something which she wasn’t that broken up about given the blue woman was nearly as hot as Fusajiro had been. 

Though she was going to miss the rock hard abs.

She paused in her thoughts as she came to what the ships deck plan had said was the mess hall. Readying the loaned energy weapon, she tapped the door controls, waiting patiently as it opened before peering carefully around the corner of the doorway. Only to let out an annoyed sigh at the pair of passed out Orion’s sitting next to a bottle of some kind of alcohol.

Pulling the trigger twice, she stunned the pair even though they were already unconscious, having encountered more than enough suddenly awake and alert drunks in her time to know the risks of the pair waking while she was dealing with the rest of the vessels layabout crew.

That done, she moved to secure them with the shackles she had discovered in one of the store-rooms. A lucky, though not entirely unexpected, find all things considered given they meant that she could take her time and do things properly.

With the four that had been asleep in their bunks, the two who had been fucking each other in engineering, and now this pair, that just left the last two to find. Given the process of elimination that had been her search so far however, she was pretty sure she would find them guarding the slave pens.

Finishing with the last of the two, she began making her way down to the cargo bay, a thankfully short trip made a tiny bit longer by the fact she was choosing to use the maintenance shafts to go between decks instead of the single lift.

The large interior doors that would take her from the ship proper to the cargo bay were in the same state of being open as they had been when they had walked through earlier. A stupid thing to do for multiple reasons, but one that made things eminently easier for her to sneak through since she doubted the large secure looking structures would open anywhere near as quietly as the other doors had.

Hugging the wall to avoid direct line of sight from those inside, she stuck her head out to take a quick peek through the open double doors. The lines of slave pens were blocking her line of sight to the left and right of the doorway, but thankfully the pair she was looking for had decided they wanted to be in the center of the room, as she was able to spot them playing a card game of some kind.

Flicking her eyes to the two’s hips, she was glad to see they too lacked any proper energy weapons, something she was coming to suspect had been more out of the captain's rightful paranoia that her crew would try to use them on her then anything else.

That didn’t mean they weren’t armed however, as she spied a pair of neural truncheons on their belts. Though she suspected those were more for controlling potentially rowdy slaves than actually fighting off determined borders.

Holding her breath and tensing her legs to begin moving, she lined up a shot on one of the pair before pulling the trigger, letting out her breath and dashing into the room at the same moment the shot downed him.

The other Orion, one she recognized now as Beld, just stared dumbly as the man across from him went down, and with an annoyed growl at the sheer amount of incompetence at play she fired again, the green bolt sending him to join his friend in unconsciousness.

“He should have knocked over the table and used it as cover.” She muttered in disdain as she finished her trek into the room to follow up on the second half of her orders.

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Author’s Notes: Sometimes dumb criminals are just dumb criminals, aka that moment when you realize you’re two level 10 characters running through a CR 2 encounter.

And yes, Keiko knows a bit more about what was going on then she’s admitted to Rain.