After eating breakfast, Hawk found herself with a half dozen men following her through the confinerous woodlands towards her ship. All but one of them was one of Keith's shipmates. The sixth man, a blonde boy just out of adolescense with a crooked nose, had simply said he was curious to see what a real starship looked like. Judging by the chatter behind her, most of his fellow Jomarkians were as well. She deftly slipped past one of the final trees and glanced backwards.
“I thought this was your world, not mine.”
“We're fishermen,” shot back Keith, stumbling over a fallen log, “not some ridiculous wild beast like you.”
She suppressed a grin and sauntered towards her freighter. A series of tootles echoed out from a nearby evergreen to reveal Joe, half-covered in pine straw. Hawk shook her head at the astromech droid.
What did you manage to get in now? I swear an astromech droid is more work than a pet, regardless of what Adrian says...Tapping a button on her comlink, the Pelagian lowered down the
Light's ramp down to the ground. The R3 unit rolled over to her and gave her a series of muted tones. She glanced at its readout display.
“Joe, relax, they're friends.”
No sooner had she said that then the Jomarkians burst through the branches of several nearby trees to gaze upon her ship. Several of the men's mouths dropped, but the blonde boy snapped a quick shot of the landed vessel with his camera, before scampering back towards town.
Well, I never expected him to actually stay... She let her thoughts stride through the pine trees to brush up against the young man's excited giddiness. It made her smile.
“You just going to stand there smiling like that all day, or are we going out there?”
Kitty shook her head.
“Sorry Keith, seeing all of your surprise and excitement of the
Light reminded me when I took my first starship ride,” lied the woman, “but this won't be quite the joyride, I imagine. Come onboard, and gentlemen, this is Joe, my ah, co-pilot.”
“A robot?” said one of the man, gazing at the cylinder, “Well, I guess I should have figured as much with people who have starships.”
“Indeed captain,” smiled Keith, slapping the older man on the back, “see what happens when you're actually nice to people.”
Kitty's smile faded.
Who's being nice to who? Or rather, who's helping who...She shook the thought away and led the Jomarkians into the courier's hold. Their eyes wandered everywhere, glancing at technology thousands of years ahead of their homeworld's. While most of the sailors dwaddled through the hold behind her, Keith kept right behind Kitty as the Jensaarai entered the cockpit. Her mind wandered out and brushed up against his thoughts; a swirling mixture of emotions assailed her. Kitty had expected his curiousity, excitement, or even pleasure, but not his longing. She ripped her mind back to focus on the physical world before her. The agent rapidly punched in a series of commands into her console, pulling up a holo of the squid-like vessel. Hawk turned her steel blue eyes on him.
“Back when I was a kid, back on Pelagia, several of these came up from the surface and almost wrecked my home.”
“Your home? Why?”
She glanced down, “My people's House lives on floating cities on Pelagia, and we have our enemies, rival houses so to speak. I don't know which one of them sent the ships to sink our city, but I know it succeeded in taking my dad away from me.”
“I'm so sorry-”
Hawk shook her head, “It's not like that. He didn't die, he just went away to get ready to fight them the next time they came. But anyways, I'm sorry about your ship.”
“Thanks,” said a gruff voice behind her.
She turned around to see the rest of the trawler's crew hovering just behind the doorway into the little pod.
Well, this could be getting a little awkward now...Joe pressed through the gang of sailors and rolled up to plug himself into the co-pilot's station. Kitty pulled a headset comlink over her head. She glanced backwards.
“You gentlemen may want to take a seat in the hold for now and strap in. Except the captain and Keith here, I've got chairs for the two of you right behind me.”
The courier slid forward on its repulsorlifts from its camouflaged enclosure before jetting out into the skies. She had expected the two men in the back to talk a bit more, but neither did, leading to an awkward silence punctuated by bursts of chatter between herself and the R3 unit as they headed the starship to scene of the assault ship's last attack.
“You know what I don't get?” said the Jensaarai, turning her attention to the passengers behind her.
“Hm?”
“Why didn't they kill you, or at least destroy your boat?”
Keith raised an eyebrow, “We got it too tangled up in our nets for it to do a whole lot.”
Well that explains why it attacked them. Was probably checking something out underwater when it got scooped up by the trawler's net. But still...if they were friendly, why not reveal themselves and work something out? If they were hostile, they could have easily destroyed the trawler with its weaponry...which suggests we have someone just trying to keep people away from it without killing people. In other words, another gray person like myself. Hawk tapped a button on her comlink.
“Galleon
Sunrise, this is
Dawn's Light.”
“
Sunrise here. What can I do for you, Miss Gwenaëlle?”
“I'm probably going to need some airborne backup. Can I borrow some of your drones? I'm just investigating a lead...”
A few minutes of silence elapsed before she heard an acknowledgement of her request and an affirmation that reinforcements were en route. Keith leaned up against the back of her chair.
“Drones? You have friends here too?”
“I'm a Confederation official,” half-lied the woman, “it comes with its perks at times.”
The Captain frowned behind her, “The same Confederation that's been buying up all of our fish?”
“The same.”
“Why, I just don't understand it,” said the sea captain, “you've got all this fancy technology, but you're coming to little old us here for fish?”
Kitty spared glance from one of the world's three moons, an icy ball of white, to look at the man.
“Sometimes there's not always a lot of food to go around recently. You have to imagine, not every world is like Jomark here, which is a real beauty. Some worlds are covered in active volcanoes like the one dormant above the village, or covered in huge cities built of metal and stone. The whole planet covered, not just little bits here and there. There's a lot of people who live there, and not a lot of places to get natural food. They import from everywhere else.”
“Oh.”
“I want to see them someday,” mused Keith, “think there's a chance...”
“Too much in the future,” replied Kitty tersely, “got to think about right now. That squid-like ship just doesn't have tenacles. It has...rayguns and missiles, a whole sort of other things that could hurt us.”
A series of black pinpricks began to flood their viewport, prompting some quiet prayers from the grizzled captain and Keith. Kitty eyed them carefully as they grew larger in her viewport. The Piranhas swooped and buzzed around her ship, forming a protective screen. Joe let out a series of beep-bops that brought the Jomarkian's eyes from the floor back to the ceraglass canopy of the courier.
“They're ours,” said the woman, “they're little robot fighters...and they came just in time too. We're here.”
The
Dawn's Light dived through layers of clouds towards the coordinates the sea captain had given here. A series of rocks jutted up through the waters around them.
Shallower than I thought it'd be. Her eyes scanned the surface below, seeing nothing unusual amon the sea-form tipped waves crashing down upon the barncle-encrusted rocks. It was as if nothing was there. Hawk pulled back on the yoke of the craft, leveling out its dive so that the
Dawn's Light just hovered above the sea's surface.
“Joe, give me a full scan of the water below us. Look for any active energy signatures...something artificial-”
The droid's head roated so it's large photoceptor stared her right in the eye and offered a loud retort.
“I'm not insulting your intelligence,” replied the woman, “I just want to make sure we're on the same page.”
The droid produced a series of jarring sounds, producing a miniature hologram that elicted a series of oohs and ahs from the Jomarkians behind them. Joe had pulled up a scan of the sea floor along with a blinking red dot slowly crawling on the sea bed floor. She glanced at her passengers.
“Well, at least there only appears to be one. And it doesn't seem to want to come out and play with us.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“Make it come out and play,” decided Hawk, “if nothing else, they should at least pay to fix your ship up.”
She eased up the yoke of the craft and gently tilted the nose of the
Dawn's Light to point at the waves below. Transferring Joe's findings to her targetting grid, she armed a pair of concussion missiles and launched them into the sea below. The two missiles barely entered the water before they exploded, sending a powerful concussive shockwave down to the floor and creating a few geysers that sprang forth into the air. Her console lit up, indicating an incoming call. She tapped a button, to reveal a lean man with graying hair tied up in a ponytail, along with a squat sullustan.
And here I thought it would be the Sunrise wondering what the hell I'm doing shooting up the ocean.
“Look lady,” said the man, “we don't want any trouble. Mind telling us why you're trying to sink us?”
Hawk slightly tilted her head downward, “Minding telling my passengers why you attacked their fishing boat?”
“Trawler,” corrected the sea captain, “bigger than a mere fishing boat.”
The man sighed, “Oh. It's you guys...your net entangled our craft-”
“I figured that much out already,” interrupted the Jensaarai, “along with the fact that you didn't want to reveal your ship's true nature to them, letting them think it was a squid...Why are you crawling the sea floor? It's not it's a typical activity on this world...”
The Sullustan angrily chirped at her.
“Look pal,” said the man, jabbing the alien in a stomach with a finger, “I don't feel like pissing her off. I know those ships around her. They might not get to us right away, but they will bring someone or something that can. We can't fight off the Confederation if they come knocking...Look, Miss...Miss...”
“Gwenaëlle,” filled in the Jensaarai.
“Miss Gwenaëlle, we're prospectors, taking a look at what one of our probe droids found here.”
“And what did they find?”
“Deposits of manganese nodules,” informed the prospector, “it could be worth a lot once it gets processed. I'm sure the Confederation, at least the CMF would be interested...”
Hawk frowned, “I'm going to guess that you didn't talk to anyone on Jomark about this.”
“Well...no...”
“Tell you what, mister...”
“Comin,” said the prospector, who then pointed his finger at the Sullustan, “and this is my navigator Lubl.”
“Why don't we all come to surface and have a talk with some of the Jomarkians and see if we can get work things out. If not, I'm going to be calling in a lot reinforcements from above.”
“No need to get so aggressive Miss. It'll all work out, I promise even the good sea captain here will be happy. I guarantee it.”
Kitty lowered her brow, “I guess we'll just have to see.”
