The Reaper Chronicles

Filthy

    Samson didn't have the time to undo all the hardware holding the cloaking generator to the ground near the ship's fission reactor, so he did the next best thing and tore it out with part of the floor still attached. "Are you positive this is it?" Samson asked into his communicator. It seemed a little small. The entire cloaking assembly appeared to just be a plain, steel, capsule, only about the size of a young child. He had been expecting something much larger.

    "Positive." ASASN replied. "It's the only thing on the ship advanced enough."

    "How do you know?" Samson asked. "Does it give off some weird energy signature?"

    "It doesn't give off any energy signature." The ship replied. "Despite siphoning large quantities of energy directly from the generator."

    "Then how do you know it isn't just some battery?" Samson shot back as he hefted it over his shoulder and made for the door out.

    "Because even batteries give off something. I can detect that their generator is supplying this with energy but I can't see the device at all. It doesn't appear on any of my scanners."

    "Makes sense enough. Can you hack their wormhole systems and get me out of here?"

    "You destroyed their wormholer. Remember?"

    Samson thought back to the second grenade he tossed onto the control panel when he first entered the pirate vessel and paused for a second. "Oh yeah. Are there any-"

    "No escape pods." ASASN cut him off. "I had to destroy that system remotely to ensure that none of them escaped to other ships."

    "Oh." Samson said, realizing he had dug himself a bit of a hole.

    "They have a garage with some smaller raiding skifs. It'll be a tight fit for you and the device but I think you could make it work. A few of the remaining pirates have congregated there and are trying to hack the bay doors back open as we speak. You only have a minute-thirty left though so I suggest you hurry." ASASN mentioned. Samson adjusted the large, metallic pill and started running again, snapping off as much of the mounting hardware as he could while on the move.

    "Directions?" Samson queried.

    "You're heading in the right direction, the wall is going to curve up ahead and then you'll take a sharp right. Careful, there's a lifeform down that turn but it's not Incarthid.

    Samson rounded the corner at speed, fully intending to bypass whatever the lifeform was entirely. All he had to do was simply leap over it faster than it could react to his presence. He took a long few strides and then landed in the intersection crouched, ready to redirect his momentum with full velocity; but when he laid eyes on the lifeform his legs locked up, refusing to launch him. "Uh-oh." Samson said.

    That had Lee worried. He knew there were very few things that could register a threat level high enough to freeze his partner in his tracks like that and they shot through Lee's mind like a bullet. When he opened his mouth to ask what was wrong, the words came out quickly, powered by a heavy weight of anxiety. "Samson. Your helmet's video feed is broken. What's wrong? What is it?"

    "A kid." Samson replied

    "What?" Lee asked, both relieved and confused. As far as he knew, the Incarthid pirate code was that if a pirate had a child, it was never to be brought aboard ship until it reached maturity. Lee watched as Samson's blip slowly approached the unidentified child lifeform and instantly his anxiety reignited. He knew about Samson's soft spots. "Samson wait. You have no idea what that really is. It could be rigged to explode for all you know."