Empyrean Iris Story Collection Vol. 3

Road Trip To Revolution

"How do you get pulled over in space!"
"Quiet, or I swear I will turn this ship around." Krill grumbled, slowly easing up on the engine and firing the forward thrusters to come to a slow stop, or gentle drift. Behind them, a cruiser with AORD (Arcadia Orbital Defense Division) printed on the side eased to a languid stop. They hadn't even managed to make it out of low orbit, and Krill had exactly no idea what he had done wrong.

Granted he wasn't the best cruiser pilot he knew, but these shuttles were built for people like him, mostly preprogrammed and running most of its more advanced calculations on autopilot. Someone like Adam would have hated the entire system, but for Krill it should have been easy.

"Nice work." Clotho muttered.

Lachesis tittered from behind them in the passenger compartment.

"Diplomat 1 please standby."

Krill adjusted the radio so he could hear better.

"How do we expect to sneak onto the Vrul home world if you can't even sneak off a moon." Atropos wondered idly plucking at the seat fibers.

Krill glanced at the rear camera, "What is taking this guy so long."

Krill would have been fine paying a ticket, anything to just go and get this over with, but here they were sitting and waiting while this guy did nothing. The Grubs leaned forward to see what he was looking at, though there was nothing really to see. The ship hadn't moved at all since pulling them over.

Krill keyed the mike, "I.... is there a problem, sir."

"Standby." Came the reply

Krill frowned sitting back in his seat. Now this didn't make any sense. He was in the diplomat's ship after all, so why was he being pulled over in the first place? In fact, wouldn't they be impeding diplomatic work. It was then that something slapped their front windscreen, while Krill wasn't looking. If he hadn't been belted in, he would have leaped out of his seat, and if he had had a rectum he probably would have shat himself.

Even so, Conn looked very amused with himself, leering through the windscreen like some sort of space monster, his rows of little white teeth just visible past his parted lips. His voice echoed eerily through the cockpit even though his lips did not move, "Somebody's in trouble."

Atropos leaned forward in her seat, "Hey! You promised."

Conn's Eerie laugh echoed through the cockpit, "I didn't tell anyone anything . I am simply here to watch krill get torn a new one."

"Ah shit." Krill muttered, "Riss."

"It did not take long for the second shuttle to arrive. It was a small military cruiser of some sort, mostly non-descript, primarily short range used only to transport people in and out of orbit. Krill sighed and leaned back in his seat, while the grubs huddled together in the back doing their very best to make themselves look small.

There was a common misconception on Arcadia, that Krill was the one you wanted to watch out for. He was known to be acerbic, angry, threatening, and in some cases, libel to make you question the safety of your digits, but when it came right down to it, he was all bark and no bite. For all the angry threatening and ranting he did, he never really carried any of it out.

If Krill were to have character stats in DnD, his highest was surprisingly Charisma. He didn't have to make people suffer if he could simply threaten them into thinking that he could. It was a worthy system, until he ended up with someone who could call his bluff. That person was rare, but Riss..... well, Riss was all bite and no bark . A talented psychologist, he could easily dismantle anyone with a few well placed words.