Flyby the Lantern
by Kakita Kaori, M'thack-ir, and Shinjo Keetan
A story of the Space Ronin, Shinwa, in an age of Space Travel, wherein our heroes get to rescuing the Nezumi
The arrangements had been made. The deals had been struck. That their Unicorn partners for the mission had brought along a little extra enforcement in case things went south on this quick strike expedition...well, all Shinwan knew is that the ship was now accompanied by a group of fighters that called themselves The Wake Angels.
Scorpion space was coming fast. They'd asked just to zip in, land quickly, load up the ship with its cargo, and leave as fast as possible.
The Ronin had no idea what their new "partners" would think about that cargo, though.
Hopefully, everything would go smoothly. When it came to space combat, his role was to keep out of the way and remember that life was short.
Mono no aware. There is an end to every story. Even mine.
Hopefully that would not happen today.
From the darkness of a storage closet very near Shinwa, squeaking can occasionally be heard from the Nezumi occupying it. He had made it clear that he wanted to keep out of others' way for the ride, but Shinwa can feel a constant tingle down her spine; she alone knows he is in fact preparing for what will inevitably come.
The Wake Angels did not exist. Their very existence could be taken as an insult, a dangerous proposition. One does not walk into the home of another with a drawn weapon. And so, they did not exist. The Firedancers saw to that.
The Koshuud Industries Mk 3 "Firedancer," a proprietary Radiant shielding of the Unicorn shipyards, was designed to passively enhance the speed capabilities of fighters operating in atmospheric conditions by draining off a large amount of the heat generated by intense velocity before it could reach the body of the ship and ruin the pilot's day. Seeing success on the competitive racing circuits, the upper echelons of the Clan decided to install them on select groups of Baraunghar class fighters, for the tactical superiority fighters could spare the extra power required to maintain the shielding without experiencing the loss of speed a single-pilot fighter might.
The Baraunghar class fighter has no inherent stealth capabilities. It was not designed to exploit the element of surprise via sudden strike, but rather by moving at such speed and maneuverability that any response was impossible. As such, a standard Baraunghar would not be the most subtle vessel to bring on a covert mission. However, in the right hands, a Baraunghar equipped with a Firedancer module could perform a delicate and dangerous maneuver known simply as "Riding the Wake."
Utilizing the Firedancer's enhanced heat shielding, a Baraunghar running at low power could slip into the engine backdraft of a larger vessel, creating a strange form of active camouflage. Only the best or most foolhardy of pilots attempted such a thing, for it first required down-stepping the engine to such a level that ramping back up to full speed could damage the reactor if done ineptly, resulting in costly repairs. Then, in this intentionally crippled state, it involved diving into a trail of plasma. The output of the standard Rokugani engine is extremely hot, even in vacuum, easily enough so to cause immense damage to an unshielded vessel. Even with the Firedancer active, it is a delicate play. Too far from the ship, and the backdraft is not hot enough to disguise the heat signature of the Baraunghar from passive scanning. Too close, and the Firedancer could overload, bathing the front of the fighter in burning heat. In addition, it is far from perfect, for while it fools the scanners that seek active Fire kami in the area, the plasma trail from a vessel the size of the one the Angels now followed silently was far from bright enough to disguise the ships from someone simply looking out a viewport. A good thing too, for if the trail was bright enough to render them invisible, the Angels would also be flying blind.
Sitting in the cockpit of his Baraunghar, Moto Ariel carefully adjusts his flight speed to remain in the sweet spot, wishing he could remove his helmet to wipe the sweat from his brow. His fellow Angels always make such maneuvers look so easy. He always appears uncertain next to them, but can show no fear in the face of their confidence. So, failing the chance to run a hand across his face, the large man instead narrows his eyes and draws in a deep breath, savoring the familiar flavor of the recycled air. It still has just the barest hint of peppermint from the jury-rigged mod that Tai-Wen fixed up last time they had extra stiped to burn. The sharpness brings him calm, and he opens his eyes fully again, ready to work, one of a trio of silent phantoms basking in the glow of their client's engines.
Something chirped...Shinwa didn't really know what it was called, but he knew that when that thing chirped it meant that the ship was entering the general local proximity of a planet. Curiosity got the better of him, and he made his way up to the front of the ship to see the main viewscreen and confirm that this, was, in fact The Lantern.
The moon below had lower gravity than he was used to, and large active volcanoes spewed their noisome gases through the atmosphere. The ground was all raw sulfur, ash, and volcanic rock. No life would grow here. There was no water. The air was bound to be half poisonous, a hideous fume. And, from the report he'd read, enough obsidian to risk madness for those who spent too much time on the place. Flashes of lightening from terrible heat-driven weather systems licked across the moon's surface. Only a mad person would want to live on such a planet.
And yet the Scorpion were there...as was the cargo Shinwa and Kiru had come to retrieve.
Shinwa shook his head.
"Unicorn-sama's....Could you please let the Wake Angels know that we're here? If they could kindly remove the monitoring satellites without being seen, this one would be most grateful. We can then land and retrieve the cargo. Thank you."
Shinjo Kailen is sitting comfortably in the co-pilot's seat of the Ki-Rin's Way. She waits patiently for her time to come. The captain had explicitly said that since this is a job she brought over, she would pilot the ship for their final approach at the planet. She looks over to Hajime. They are in this together. Their first real mission. The two women have worked together before, but they have never pilot the ship during a mission that requires such guile and precision. At some point, before Shinwa speaks, the woman looks at the screen in front of her and nods to the Iuchi. "It is time!" she proclaims as softly as she can and stands up.
"Captain, permission to..." Before she has a chance to finish up her phrase, the elder captain nods. "Granted." She says.
Kailen moves to the pilot's seat and looks at the shugenja next to her. "Piece of cake, Hajime chan. Let's do this." She turns a switch that lowers the power of the ship. The lights go down and it is evident that nothing but the life support is active at this moment.
"Ketaan san, you are up." She says to the radio. "Communication down until further notice. Waiting for your signal to enter the system. Satellites in position according to previous intelligence. Good luck. Over."
She turns to the ronin with a grin of self confidence "We will be there shortly, Shinwa san. Just sit back comfortably and enjoy the ride."
Ketaan is stretching out in the cockpit of his fighter when the message arrives. His hands are on the controls the instant their covering engine exhaust begins to fade as the larger vehicle powers down. He can almost feel the nod as the unspoken agreement passes between the Angels.
As one, they dive out of the plasma trail in wildly different directions, and without taking the time to aim, fire their payloads.
While the weapons upon a Baraunghar were designed to handle most conventional ammunition, the same systems that could propel top of the line explosive rounds could also act as a crude shot mass driver. Small meteors with cores of some heavy element with natural Radiant properties launched at the last known prediction for the satillites would crumble upon impact, the heavy radiant cores thoroughly frying the Scorpion's broadcasting equipment as well as rendering the floating spy to so much scrap to fall from the sky to the planet below.
After the impact,the resulting fragmentation of target and projectile will fall irregularly to the world's atmosphere, resulting in theories that the satellites were destroyed in meteor shower. The radioactivity in the rubble will support the theory.
All of which hinges, naturally, on the information being good.
The weapons unleash doom into the silence of the Void. The mission is now in the hands of their informant, and of fortune.
Shinwa watches impassively as a sparkle of shattered satellite tumbles into the foul-smelling atmosphere. "Try to land behind the ridge I described earlier. It is about a half-K from where we need to be. We will bring them to you. Domo arigato, Shinjo-sama."
He hesitates for a moment, and adds. "If some number of passengers arrive, but we do not...please do not wait for more than an hour, or stay if you are threatened. Take those passengers that arrive to Gennai's Garden. They will know who to contact on the way. The koku will be sent to your accounts regardless, I promise you."
The ronin bows and withdraws.
As he passes the broom closet, he says, "Kiru-san. Prepare yourself for the descent." Then he straps himself in for the descent through the atmosphere.
Hajime nods at Kailen. She was a bit anxious over this as she felt a little rusty with this kind of thing. On the other hand however, nothing could be worse than the boredom of sitting around and doing nothing! The Iuchi just grins at Kailen when she speaks to let her know she is ready anytime!
The door opens and out comes the Nezumi, his obsolete Koiso MKV radiant pistol in hand. The tassel of feathers dangling from the handgrip shimmers softly with an otherworldly glow before fading to normal.
"Rik, you will need to stay on the ship today, so I can find my way back. Stay hidden once I'm gone, okay?" he squeaks quietly, not that any of these humans can understand him...except Shinwa, of course.
Something in his scarf replies in a similar chitter, "it's about time to sleep anyway."
Kiru smiles as he finds a seat opposite Shinwa to strap himself into—no sense in getting killed before he can save anyone.
This is the part that most pilots can never master. The satellites are off, but reaching the surface still unseen is not something easy.
"Starting secondary engine." Kailen presses a button and a small engine starts. Slowly, the ships starts approaching the planet. About ten minutes later, they start moving a bit faster.
"Entered atmosphere." Kailen announces and presses the button again for the engine to stop. Gravity will do the rest. And the start going faster and faster.
"Cooling system on." Various buttons are pressed and various systems on the ship start working again. But not the engine.
"1 km to surface. Hajime san, I will need full speed in 20....... 10, 9, 8". It is good to have an Iuchi at this point. Otherwise, it is even more riskier.
Flanking the ships burning descent are three much smaller objects, the miniature fireballs that mark the Wake Angels' descent. In the cockpit of one, Tai-Wen casually flicks on the atmospheric control settings, leaning back and putting her hands behind her head as she surveys the shit excuse for a planet. Its ugly terrain rushing ever closer, the entire view tinted lime by the Radiance of the Firedancer keeping the cockpit nice and cool, she shakes her head in slight bemusement at what the Scorpion consider worth settling.
An alert flashes on her microfabber, and she eases out of her relaxed pose to set her silver armored hand on the controls.
"Hope you buckled your seatbelts, kids," she mutters sardonically into the unpowered coms. Communication blackout protocol could be a pain. While she trusts the Angels to know what they are doing, she has her doubts as to what the Ki-Rin's Path can sustain. "It's going to get rough."
With that final thought, she engages the airbrake, and the G-forces slam her into the back of her seat.
Gravity is an oni. It snatches you out of the sky and hurls you to the ground if you let it. If you dodge...just right, it can hurl you into orbit around it, where you dance just out of its reach, but it snatches at you over and over again. Dance too far out of its reach, and you break away, spinning outwards to the stars. Dance too close, and it grabs you and drags you to the ground again.
Shinwa didn't like this part of the dance much. It would help if his dance partners liked him better. He glared balefully at the ship around him, not entirely sure that it didn't want to kill him just on general principles.
Down and down....and then brought short as the thrusters kicked in at the last moment, setting down the ship with a gentle kiss on the fiery moon's surface. Of course the rules are true....but thank the kami for them anyway.
Time to go get what they had come for.
Kiru is at the blast doors before anyone can get there; he knows who he is, and the word 'queasy' does not feature in his Name. He deftly reaches into his scarf and then places the diminutive Rik up in the overhead grating, knowing his friend will scurry to a comfortable and safe retreat to await his return.
"Shinwa, careful-careful. Shinwa will need Shinwa's helmet. The smell suggests similar air quality to the Terrible Darkness Lands. Best to avoid cancer," Kiru calls out loudly over the commlink on his wrist, for the benefit of the other passengers, mostly.
Then he punches the door release and dashes outside, head low and gun in hand.
Shinwa pulls on a mempo with a clear visor and taps the gauge on the side a few times to make sure the air kami are circulating properly in it.
Cancer. Of course. he thinks grimly. I shall have faith in you today, air kami. Do you have faith in me?
Not enough time for a crisis of faith now, no matter what the air kami's opinion is.
"We are departing now," he signals the bridge. "We shall endeavor to be back as quickly as possible. Please remember what I said." Even on embarking on a mission of stealth, Shinwa speaks like some Friday night B-Movie samurai in the Kurasawa action vids a mere hundred years after the development of celluloid.
He checks his obi under his trenchcoat and his daisho at his side. Whether or not communications will stay up...well, with him it was always a little hit or miss. He'd try for now.
"Let me find the cameras first, Kiru-san. The path into the mine is certain to be monitored."
With that, he exits the blast doors and steps out onto the surface of the volcanic moon, letting the blast doors shut behind him and stop the smell of sulfur and brimstone from filling the ship.
"Just run everywhere. Shinwa's mere presence will break them." There is a quiet cackle through the commlink.
Shinwa can feel a familiar tingle before seeing the vision of a Nezumi sneaking up on its goblin quarry in his mind's eye. Strangely enough, he finds the thought encouraging in relation to his own capacity to go unseen. (Mechanically, we both just gained a Stealth rank of 4, so you know, bae.)
Kiru is stalking up ahead. Moving quietly, yes, but his species are far swifter than Rokugani, and so he is still making more ground at present.
Fortunately, Shinwa can see him quite clearly, almost as if the Nezumi has a faint glow surrounding him that only Shinwa can see.
Shinwa moves steadily behind, hand on his daisho, contemplating this particular mystery of stealth. However, he activates the commlink to say
"Hidden cameras. Four meters left, one forward, two up. The second is five meters right, one point five forward, two point five up. You will not be able to bypass them."
Even M'thack-kir's keen eyes cannot see anything at those locations other than plain, soot-gray cliff face. The Scorpion are either hiding their cameras very well, or Shinwa is imagining things.
Maybe I should have brought Rik after all...
"Can Shinwa break them?" Kiru whispers into his wrist.
Shinwa considers the issue carefully. "Does simple violence count?" The corner of his mouth crooks in a small grin. "I can cut down one. You will have to shoot the other one. There is a small fleck of stone just below the right camera. Aim just above there."
He starts the count.
One.....two...three.....
In a blur of motion he draws his katana and jumps. In the low gravity, he needs no assist to close on the spot on the cliff wall, and his blade flicks forward. The tip penetrates some sort of masking fabric, and the camera falls off its niche and to the ground, landing at about the same time he does.
Ah. Simple enough.
Kiru takes aim where he has been instructed to, then pulls the trigger confidently. A laser significantly more potent than what the weapon should be capable of producing discharges, creating a small crater in the wall where the camera used to be.
M'thack-kir sniffs the air and nods to himself. "Kiru will leave a trail for kin-kin to follow as an escape route." He briefly rubs his cheek against the wall at belly height, marking the spot with a pheromone that identifies his Tribe and the direction to safety.
Then, another nod to Shinwa, and Kiru stalks ahead, ready to vaporise the first Scorpion to cross his path. He seems unperturbed by the partially toxic atmosphere he is breathing in all the while.
The benefits of a small base, on an isolated moon, with an unbreathable atmosphere, where there is nothing of value to be won. No one is going to bother with outdoor sentries. The hidden cameras and proximity alarms, each of which either Shinwa has been able to discover (if hidden) or Kiru has been able to identify easily (if not hidden) and avoid or disable are more than sufficient to satisfy even the most diligent guard. They have arrived during the night cycle for the small mining base. That only leaves the door. It has been built to be protected from most kinds of damage, even from a fighter's guns.
I might be able to get through....but it would make noise. Noise means a fight. I would need to issue a challenge. That would not help these nezumi at all.
Shinwa arrives at the door and reaches out to lay his hand on the controls. He was not impressed.
He nods, takes a step back, and attempts to open the door. The locking mechanism continues to hold. Shinwa does not seem surprised. He tries it again a second time. This time the mechanism fails. So does the opening mechanism. The door rocks, but does not open automatically.
Fortunately, Shinwa can give the heavy door the good old heave-ho. That should do it.
"Wait, Shinwa," Kiru whispers behind him. "Emergency protocol for doors is to have them open after a malfunction is cleared."
He steps up to the controls himself and places his palm on it, before chittering quietly.
Just as soon as Shinwa feels the familiar tingle wash down his spine, the controls light up with a beep, and the door opens.
Kiru wipes his cheek against the doorway. "We are close. The scent is strong, and there is only one trail. Clearly kin-kin are forced to work outside in those conditions, and imprisoned at night."
Enough said, Kiru stalks inside, following the pheromone path laid out so clearly for his nose. He tries not to think about the emotions of fear and lost faith that the scent is so heavy with.
Shinwa nods and follows, continuing to keep an eye for hidden cameras...or hidden Scorpion.
When they draw near certain passageway he stops. "Human. 10 paces that way." His words are scarcely above a whisper. He gestures to the right, to a room off of one of the side corridors. Fortunately, the room door is closed. He has to trust to M'thak-kir's additional stealth and his own light step to sneak past the room quietly,
It is only a matter of minutes before they find the holding cell. It is the size of a traditional samurai's greeting room, and certainly not large enough for twenty eight adult Nezumi and some newborn pups to reside in comfortably.
Kiru's nose twitches as he notices that the metal bars on this prison door have been partially chewed through, but at a height humans wouldn't notice.
They still have fight in them. Hope isn't lost.
Kiru squeaks in Nezumi at the prisoners, sending a ripple of surprise among the wakening tribe. Someone responds, arriving at the cell door to stick their nose through it and sniff Kiru's scent.
The whispered chattering goes on for a few minutes, until Kiru's speaking partner nods and gestures to his extended family.
"They have agreed to join the Burnt Crane Tribe. They have no rememberers or Nameseekers left anyway," Kiru explains quietly to Shinwa. Then, he holds his pistol to get a shot at the electrical lock on the door and fires, blasting a hole the size of a Hida's head through it.
"They know to follow the scent trail I left. Will Shinwa escort the mothers and babies first?"
His fingers tighten around the pistol's handgrip. "Kiru will leave last."
Shinwa says softly. "They must be as quiet as they can, and we move quickly. Tell them if we encounter anyone, they must keep moving forward as quickly as possible, following your trail, until they get to the ship. The doors will open for them. I will fight whoever they encounter. They must not stop, for any reason at all. We will bring any who get left behind. You will tell them this?"
He leaves unsaid the little truth they both know...that they will fight to distract the Scorpion and allow the Nezumi to escape with the Unicorn, even if it costs both their lives. And one of them cannot leave without the other.
"Ahhh..." Ketaan's voice comes through the comms to all of the Unicorn at the landing site. "Hate to be the one to break radio silence, but our intel didn't happen to mention Chuubushi patrols did it?"
"No?" Ariel's uncertain response comes across.
"Funny, because I'm looking out my viewport at what looks a lot like jump-jets off in the direction our employers went."
"THOSESHITSMEAREDSCRAPHUMPING," The rest of Tai-Wen's invective devolves into static as a puff of radioactive surface dust is kicked up by the sudden activation of atmospheric engines, temporarily scrambling communications. One by one, the Baraunghar-class fighters leap off the surface and shriek through the thin, caustic atmosphere on the Ronin and Nezumi's trail.
Kiru bares his teeth in a grin at Shinwa. "Strongest instinct in Nezumi is survival. Kin-kin do not need to be told to keep running. Already instructed kin-kin about the ship and doors, too."
His head turns sharply. "Rik is in danger. The ship might be compromised. What if friends are really Three Face Night Tribe?"
M'thack-kir squeaks a quiet order at the other Nezumi, before gesturing for them to go onwards.
"Shinwa, find a safe-safe zone and see if ship is safe first, okay?" There is concern in his hushed voice, but the matter at hand is too important to be paralyzed with worry over his little friend.
Shinwa simply nods and leads the way out, leading the nezumi on path that avoids any Scorpion that might be wandering the hallways at this late hour of the night. Whenever it seems that a human might be near, he places himself between them and the slaves. For a moment there was a risk...but no. This time, he is lucky.
When he reaches the main doors, this time, they open easily since Kiru did not lock them after they had managed to bypass the locks the first time. After that, he starts off moving ahead of the group of Nezumi, then circling back, leading them away from the cameras that have not been disabled.
"SECURITY COMPROMISED. ALL PERSONNEL, FULL ALERT."
No need to hide anymore, good.
Kiru tells the last of the escapees to bolt for it, then he reaches into the Field of Dreams to pluck a particularly powerful memory taught to the Tribe by his mother...
From where Shinwa is, he can feel a brief tingle before seeing the sudden image of what can only be a Nezumi climbing through the top window of a castle in the dead of night, a blade in each hand as well as in clutched by its tail.
Vengeance is here. Time to hunt down the local human chief!
"Sky-Eyes, Slingshot!"
Ketaan's ship becomes a ripple of green with a humming whine as he activates the Firedancer while picking up speed. In the cockpit of his own ship, Ariel slaps a scroll case onto a magnetic strip, flying one handed as he unrolls the classic prayers of the Iuchi and begins muttering his greetings to the slow and sick water kami of this Fortune-forsaken rock. The flow of energy, imperceptible to all without the gift, traces lines of blue between his and Ketaan's ship.
A quick, heavily static-riddled message penetrates the bunker to the helmet of the Ronin within. "Compan****side. We'll cov*****uick."
A salvo of carefully aimed Radiance from Tai-Wen's ship darts past the spearhead of their wedge, throwing up additional plumes of radioactive crud to obscure visibility and corral the surprised Chuubushi together. Mere fractions of seconds after their reactive jump jets have pulled them away from the sudden scorch marks on the moon, Ketaan's kami-enhanced engines dart him directly over the clustered samurai in a near-invisible screaming fireball obscured by dust and burning atmosphere. The sonic boom and pressure wave that follow in his wake are more than enough to smash the unfortunate Scorpion into the ground, shattering bone and suit as the rest of the wing circles for another pass. Handheld weaponry begins to lance randomly out of the cloud of toxic dust and confusion.
Kuso!
Shinwa swore silently to himself. Around him, more than a dozen nezumi scrambled, eyes filled with fear and staring around in a panic as a pillar of dust and volcanic ash ascends in the direction the Unicorn ship ahead of them. Many more are running through the trench cut in the walls of layered tuff and obsidian.
A static-filled message reaches his headset, but it's beyond him to make out what the words are. And then he feels the shift around him as his senses sharpen, his muscles flex, and a surge of andrenaline...not his own...races through his body as the nezumi starts hunting.
I need to stop him...he needs to get out of there and round up these crazy nezumi while I try to secure the landing site....
He taps the commlink button on his mempo to signal M'thack-kir...or the Unicorn....But there is no answering chirp to greet him to signal that communication lines are open. Dead. Air kami...you pick a fine time... He prays that the regulator on the mempo holds out just a little while longer. A fight where you cannot breathe is uniquely challenging.
Very well. If battle it is...
He stops running in a small crook of the trench not far from the Unicorn ship. He raises his hand, his face grim, the gesture infused with an air of imperious authority that draws the eyes of the Nezumi to him. He holds the position, perfectly still, focusing on slowing his breathing, stilling the racing of his heart, quieting his mind. The Nezumi can smell no trace of fear.
"Sekai ga ugoku node, ore wa chuuou de tatteiru." He exhales slowly.
As the Nezumi gather around him, all catching up, he lowers his hand, palm down. A gesture he hopes they understand. "Wait here." He then turns and runs towards the Unicorn vessel, his simple trenchcoat streaming behind him, his hand on the tsuka of his katana.
When fighting Scorpion, one thing has been true in every story since the beginning of the Empire.
It was never the ones you could see that were the problem.
He can smell them all so easily, the ones who are alarmed, both afraid and excited, as he nears them.
They are not worth my time.
He weaves around a few by taking separate corridors, keeping low just in case.
Then he stops.
There are too many of them...I won't have a chance if I don't leave now. And I'm sure I've been spotted on camera by now...Survival first. Vengeance later.
He whispers something to himself, drawing on yet another memory altogether.
Shinwa is hopefully not too distracted by the tingle that accompanies the brief vision of a glowing Nezumi sprinting past him at incredible speed before it fades away.
"BANZ-" the Scorpion who rounded the corner and charged at Kiru with an electric stun-sai is interrupted by a single laser shot. Hard to shout when your neck is disintegrated, causing your body to drop to the floor while your head flies forward from the running momentum.
Definitely time to go.
Kiru turns and bolts for it, knowing the shout and the laser blast will draw more attention. His agility enhanced by the memory, he makes use of his tail stretched out behind him to steer his direction like an ancient sailor would his fishing boat rudder, throwing himself into fleeing faster than humanly possible. There are two moments where he is forced to leap over or around an unsuspecting Scorpion heading in the opposite direction and then turn a corner sharply so he won't become an easy target, but it is hard to get lost when the very air is laden with the key to escape.
And he has two guiding pilot lights in the form of Rik and Shinwa to keep him on course.
Except that the main entrance is now guarded by two bushi with stun-sai and holstered sidearms.
Kiru stops in his tracks, pressing himself against the wall so as not to stand out too much.
A moment later, a gust of air surges down the corridor, causing both Shinwa and Kiru to tingle as it passes Kiru.
Shugenja. I have no choice but to run now, M'thack-kir realises.
He fires a shot at one of the two guards as he begins to run, not caring about killing the Scorpion so much as making them panic so he has a greater chance of escape. Luckily, his target screams in pain and drop his weapon to the ground, deactivating its electric field, meaning that Kiru only has one armed enemy he needs to focus on evading as he somersaults over the two bushi and dashes out the door into the trench beyond.
A laser narrowly missed his head, beaming out ahead of him. Clearly this fight is not over yet.
The unexpected burst of speed races through Shinwa as he runs, but he doesn't have time to once again question the strangeness of being linked in this way to a Nezumi. The speed is welcome as he puts the escaped slaves further behind him and closes rapidly on the landing site.
The crouching bulk that is The Ki-rin's Way squats over on the hillside like some great beast of burden: an winged elephant, perhaps.
Shinwa focuses, scanning the landscape, looking for the unseen, the expected only because of the nature of their enemies.
There.
Two Chuubushi, possibly left behind by a squadron of others who are serving as a feint for these attacking vessels, were hidden behind some larger rocks, sheltered and out of sight of the ship.
And up on the side of the vessel, a hidden explosive device that would crack the hull of The Way open like a crab in its shell.
It probably has a timer. But it is just as likely they can trigger it instantly as well. I cannot take care of both at the same time. Fortunes help me...
He took a deep breath, and leaped, sword down, crashing from a distance to land between the two chuubushi in their radiant armor, his katana a silver flame of death that cleaves through radiance and steel with equal ease.
"Are they clear?"
"No way to tell. Keep them distracted, Vanguard."
"Can do."
Ketaan's Baraunghar continues to spin frantically in the air, dodging Radiant fire and returning his own to keep the Chuubushi suppressed and their attention drawn.
"Come on, kiddies. Keep your eyes on the," a Radiant bolt comes a hair too close, ricocheting off of the shielding a breath before hitting the fighter. "...Maybe not that close. Can you focus your eyes a bit to my left? Thanks!"
"This is taking too long," Tai-Wen mutters into the coms as she approaches the atmospheric limits, reeling around to provide cover fire. "Even with the satellites down, someone will get off a transmission. I don't want to be neck-deep in fighters."
"The prisoners are in the trenches," Ariel says, coolly lining up his own hovering vessel with his wife's. "We just need to buy them a bit more time."
"And give the Scorpion a farewell present? I've got just the thing!"
"Any opportunity to test new toys, love?"
"You know me too well. And it's not like they don't deserve it."
"Well, it wouldn't do to be ungracious guests I suppose."
Tai-Wen's evil grin is almost audible through the coms.
"Follow-follow!" Kiru barks at the newest members of his Tribe as he practically soars past them, not taking the time to slow down at all.
His momentum, only increasing thanks to his natural and supernatural speed, carries M'thack-kir out into view of the ship, but he does not run directly toward it. Instead, his tail arcs out behind him to adjust his course, and Kiru zeroes in on Shinwa taking on two chuubushi alone. One of them reaches for a remote button, but Kiru makes a carefully placed shot with his pistol as he approaches, incinerating the remote in the Scorpion's hand. And causing some useful collateral damage to said hand as a bonus.
If that remote is important, I'll fix it later.
"Who in Jigoku do you think you are?!" screams a woman's voice from above.
Kiru looks up to see an armoured samurai-ko several feet in the air above, hovering without the aid of technology.
Shugenja.
She holds a number of glowing plastic cards between the fingers of each hand, ready to throw them.
Even matched against a surprise attack, closed from a distance with an uncanny speed, Scorpion chuubushi are fast and well trained. These were no simple yakuza but trained warriors of a great clan with excellent weapons and heavy radiant armor. Shinwa might be impossible to hit with a radiant firearm at this distance, but the great clan schools still taught iaijutsu, and the draw on a radiant weapon was almost as smooth as the draw of Totsuzen.
Still, the ronin's first blow was a crippling strike, and the chuubushi he struck found a deep crack in his helmet, releasing the oxygen and letting in the poisonous air of the sulfurous little moon. He also found himself with a crippling injury to his hand a moment later....Shinwa could sense Kiru's presence closing upon him and just barely dodged the shot that took out the remote. But while that bushi was still trying to draw, Shinwa had a more serious threat to face...the bushi that had not yet been struck.
This is your moment, he silently told the bushi in front of him. Live it well. This is where your story ends. They both lept into motion. The Scorpion was a little quicker on the iaijutsu draw, but his blade slid off the ronin's trenchcoat. The blade cut into Shinwa's flesh, but the wound was minor. The injury Shinwa inflicted in return cut deeper. But worse than the injury, the light rimming the chuubushi's blade suddenly flickered. The bushi was skilled, quick to counter the attack, but the blade struck and did...nothing. It struck deep and hard, but had no edge with which to strike and simply bounced off of Shinwa's trench. His next strike similarly did nothing...and was his last as Shinwa took his head. The head bounced gently to the ground in the lower gravity.
He can feel the seconds ticking away like the hairs standing up on the back of his heck. And above, the shout of the shugenja. He hopes Kiru can handle it, because he can't. He has to stop that bomb. The other Scorpion, his hand damaged heavily, draws his blade. Unfortunately for him, Shinwa is already ready. He narrowly escapes the blow and strikes back deeply, fracturing the helmet completely and shoving the samurai away to choke on the air.
No time left to check to see him through yet. Shinwa spins and braces himself for one more great leap...this time to reach the bomb.
Air kami...I promise you...let me get to that bomb and stop it....and I'll....
He didn't finish the thought...he was already in the air.
Kiru doesn't try to answer the shugenja's question - it would take valuable seconds to explain he is the Seeker of Brightness. Seconds he doesn't have.
So instead he rolls evasively to the side, pulling the trigger on his weapon as he flicks its aim out at her.
The laser finds its mark, pulsing into the Scorpion's chest and knocking her backwards with great force, but it is not the only thing to reach its target: two of the glowing cards dart out and attach themselves to the central ashigaru plate covering Kiru's chest. Immediately, the plate glows white hot and begins to sizzle, melting.
"Iyaa!" Kiru screeches as he scrambles to remove the plate before it can corrode painfully onto his chest. He drops his weapon to the ground, gouging at the binding that straps his armour around him with his claws.
It takes several seconds, and M'thack-kir ends up with a bleeding, furless patch on the centre of his chest, but he manages to remove the armour before it can completely melt him; strangely enough, the metallic acid should have engulfed him instantaneously, but something slowed it down.
I'll need to fix that...but no time!
He calls out for his kin to hurry aboard the ship, presuming Shinwa is running over to it with haste to open the door for them all. Then, he scrambles along as well, forgetting his Koiso MkV sidearm as he does so.
"Clear! They're clear!"
Ariel barely has time to call out the signal over the coms before whipping through his scrolls to find the appropriate prayer. Their ships almost touching, the water kami once again reach across the barren expanse, but this time for the pilot rather than the engines of the accompanying Baraunghar.
In her own seat, Tai-Wen lines up the shot as she stares at the last retreating ratman through the enhaced image on her viewport. Her fingers hovers on the trigger of her weapons and the loading controls, but she waits until she feels the familiar sensation of the kami speeding her actions. The moment she does, she is a blur of motion as she fires the solid-mass weapon systems once, triggers an automated reload for a very special payload, and fires again.
The first mass to fly out of the Baraunghar is what appears to be a glob of metallic red paint. It has no special name, for it is merely an engineering additive essential in the activation of Radiant shielding mixed with isotopic dye. The second launch sends the Baranghar lurching back with an abrupt explosion of force as the payload fires an engine of its own. The explosive equipped on it is a high-powered incendiary device of accelerants, caustic agents, and a ridiculous amount of mass. The creator, who had a flair for the dramatic, dubbed it the Ten Gods' Promise. The delivery system carrying the TGP also has no name, but not for the reasons of being unimportant, but because it is a contradiction. The sheer size of the TGP means that it requires a container with its own means of propulsion, for the firing of a weapon of the TGP's size from a fighter causes such recoil that aiming is impossible otherwise. However, the system that carries the TGP has to be aimed somehow. The Koshuud, being inventive minds with a knack for horrific levels of space-age destruction, would surely never utilize gaijin technologies to create an onboard computer small enough to fit in a piece of ordinance with the sole purpose of tracking a specific isotope only found in proprietary engineering additives before they were activated.
That would be dishonorable.
The first Scorpion out the door is flung backwards into the bunker as she is bodily smacked with a heavy pile of dyed additive. She hits the polished steel of the corridor, and the auto-clear on her visor sweeps the dye aside to reveal an immense missile following close in the dye's path. She is too busy scrambling out of the way to see the outer shell of the container split away, revealing the TGP in all its horrible glory. She is too busy ducking the TGP's flight from the capsule and down the corridor to see the dye turn brown as the isotope catalyses against the metal of the missile shell. She is too busy diving for cover to see the neon green of the Firedancer shield flicker to life, sealing the bunker entrance with a heat-containing concave barrier.
Then the payload smacks against the wall of the hallway, and within the sealed confines of the fortress, the Ten Gods' Promise is fulfilled.
Shinwa lands with a solid 'thunk' near the join between the left engine and the main body of the Ki-rin's Path, balanced somewhat precariously. Right below him, a large, circular black disk with a clear digital timer is attached to the body of the craft like a blister. A digital clock interface counts down the seconds...less than thirty left.
29...
28...
27...
Typical.
26...
Everything is falling apart around him, but Shinwa does not have time to worry about that at this particular moment. Kiru will have to deal with whatever he's squeaking about over there on his own, because if this bomb goes off no Nezumi are getting off this rock.
25...
And neither will I. Short story.
24...
He taps the bomb gently with his katana blade. Sometimes that might stop the countdown, but that kind of luck is not with him today.
23...
22...
21...
As he pulls the blade back, he notices that there is no magnetic tug pulling his blade towards the bomb or to the magnetized hull.
20...
19...
18...
Makes sense...not every ship uses a steel hull....GOOD!
17...
16...
15...
14...
Shinwa assesses. He draws his blade back. This is going to be tricky on the angle. But he's done worse.
13...
12...
11...
Focus.
10...
9...
Strike. The blade swings down at an exotic arc, cleaving delicately through the paint, epoxy, and metallic hull of the ship itself, skinning off the thinnest of layers with an odd metallic shriek, and cutting the bomb free of the ship. It slides a foot away but is otherwise is unharmed.
8...
7...
Shinwa takes one stride over to the bomb, his footfalls heavy on the roof of the craft. He gives the bomb a tremendous kick, sending it sailing away from ship as far as it can go in a direction away from the Nezumi.
6...
5...
4...
It flies in a wide arc, assisted by the moon's lower gravity to go much further than it would have otherwise, but Shinwa crouches behind the engine anyway so he doesn't get blown off.
3...
2...
1...
BOOM!!
Enough of the toxic dust clears for the coms to come live again, and Shinjo Ketaan's carefree tones ring out to everyone on the coms. The buzzing hum of Radiant fire can be heard in the background.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I regret to inform you that, due to unforeseen circumstances, we're going to have to cut your cruise short. For complaints and refunds, please see your nearest Scorpion embass*"
He is cut off by a crackle of static as Tai-Wen seizes the channel.
"Get off the coms," She barks, "Right. Time to go, get ready to dust off."
Are you crazy?! What are you doing setting explosives off for? Kiru thinks with exasperation as he picks himself off the ground. The other Nezumi do so too, and huddle together as they rush into the waiting ship.
Kiru comes last, inspecting his left paw which juts out at a particularly unhealthy angle.
"Foolish Shinwa! Warn Kiru next time!" he growls, mostly to himself, as the cargo bay door closes.
One of the escapees approaches to see if he is okay, but he waves her away, wraps his broken arm in his obi neck scarf, and then sets about inspecting his new kin, the two new pups and their mothers first.
As he walks over to the two mothers, his armour materialises back on him as if it had always been there, and his Koiso MkV radiant pistol appears in his hand, which he holsters quickly.
"Time to go, all clear!" Kiru barks into his commlink.
Even as Kiru is speaking into the commlink and the ever-patient pilots have started the thrusters and are slowly raising the ramp that serves as the cargo-bay door, all the Nezumi in the cargo bay can hear the sound of footsteps running across the metallic top of the space vessel, and Kiru can sense the presence of Shinwa running above him, on /top/ of the craft.
Sensing Kiru inside the craft, and knowing he would not be there if the Nezumi were not, Shinwa scrambles as the craft starts to move, sheathing his katana as he runs. He scrambles across the top of the large ship to get to where the cargo bay doors are, an athletic feat probably impossible without Kiru's enhancement. When he arrives at the spot, he finds them already about to close, only a narrow gap to daylight left.
The ronin doesn't hesitate, but throws himself headlong into the gap. The fall sends him rolling down the length of the steep, almost-shut ramp to land with a thunk at M'thack-kir's feet.
The ramp seals shut completely and the ship's shaking reaches full power, flattening nezumi and human to the floor of the cargobay as it thrusts its way into orbit.
A story of the Space Ronin, Shinwa, in an age of Space Travel, wherein our heroes get to rescuing the Nezumi
The arrangements had been made. The deals had been struck. That their Unicorn partners for the mission had brought along a little extra enforcement in case things went south on this quick strike expedition...well, all Shinwan knew is that the ship was now accompanied by a group of fighters that called themselves The Wake Angels.
Scorpion space was coming fast. They'd asked just to zip in, land quickly, load up the ship with its cargo, and leave as fast as possible.
The Ronin had no idea what their new "partners" would think about that cargo, though.
Hopefully, everything would go smoothly. When it came to space combat, his role was to keep out of the way and remember that life was short.
Mono no aware. There is an end to every story. Even mine.
Hopefully that would not happen today.
From the darkness of a storage closet very near Shinwa, squeaking can occasionally be heard from the Nezumi occupying it. He had made it clear that he wanted to keep out of others' way for the ride, but Shinwa can feel a constant tingle down her spine; she alone knows he is in fact preparing for what will inevitably come.
The Wake Angels did not exist. Their very existence could be taken as an insult, a dangerous proposition. One does not walk into the home of another with a drawn weapon. And so, they did not exist. The Firedancers saw to that.
The Koshuud Industries Mk 3 "Firedancer," a proprietary Radiant shielding of the Unicorn shipyards, was designed to passively enhance the speed capabilities of fighters operating in atmospheric conditions by draining off a large amount of the heat generated by intense velocity before it could reach the body of the ship and ruin the pilot's day. Seeing success on the competitive racing circuits, the upper echelons of the Clan decided to install them on select groups of Baraunghar class fighters, for the tactical superiority fighters could spare the extra power required to maintain the shielding without experiencing the loss of speed a single-pilot fighter might.
The Baraunghar class fighter has no inherent stealth capabilities. It was not designed to exploit the element of surprise via sudden strike, but rather by moving at such speed and maneuverability that any response was impossible. As such, a standard Baraunghar would not be the most subtle vessel to bring on a covert mission. However, in the right hands, a Baraunghar equipped with a Firedancer module could perform a delicate and dangerous maneuver known simply as "Riding the Wake."
Utilizing the Firedancer's enhanced heat shielding, a Baraunghar running at low power could slip into the engine backdraft of a larger vessel, creating a strange form of active camouflage. Only the best or most foolhardy of pilots attempted such a thing, for it first required down-stepping the engine to such a level that ramping back up to full speed could damage the reactor if done ineptly, resulting in costly repairs. Then, in this intentionally crippled state, it involved diving into a trail of plasma. The output of the standard Rokugani engine is extremely hot, even in vacuum, easily enough so to cause immense damage to an unshielded vessel. Even with the Firedancer active, it is a delicate play. Too far from the ship, and the backdraft is not hot enough to disguise the heat signature of the Baraunghar from passive scanning. Too close, and the Firedancer could overload, bathing the front of the fighter in burning heat. In addition, it is far from perfect, for while it fools the scanners that seek active Fire kami in the area, the plasma trail from a vessel the size of the one the Angels now followed silently was far from bright enough to disguise the ships from someone simply looking out a viewport. A good thing too, for if the trail was bright enough to render them invisible, the Angels would also be flying blind.
Sitting in the cockpit of his Baraunghar, Moto Ariel carefully adjusts his flight speed to remain in the sweet spot, wishing he could remove his helmet to wipe the sweat from his brow. His fellow Angels always make such maneuvers look so easy. He always appears uncertain next to them, but can show no fear in the face of their confidence. So, failing the chance to run a hand across his face, the large man instead narrows his eyes and draws in a deep breath, savoring the familiar flavor of the recycled air. It still has just the barest hint of peppermint from the jury-rigged mod that Tai-Wen fixed up last time they had extra stiped to burn. The sharpness brings him calm, and he opens his eyes fully again, ready to work, one of a trio of silent phantoms basking in the glow of their client's engines.
Something chirped...Shinwa didn't really know what it was called, but he knew that when that thing chirped it meant that the ship was entering the general local proximity of a planet. Curiosity got the better of him, and he made his way up to the front of the ship to see the main viewscreen and confirm that this, was, in fact The Lantern.
The moon below had lower gravity than he was used to, and large active volcanoes spewed their noisome gases through the atmosphere. The ground was all raw sulfur, ash, and volcanic rock. No life would grow here. There was no water. The air was bound to be half poisonous, a hideous fume. And, from the report he'd read, enough obsidian to risk madness for those who spent too much time on the place. Flashes of lightening from terrible heat-driven weather systems licked across the moon's surface. Only a mad person would want to live on such a planet.
And yet the Scorpion were there...as was the cargo Shinwa and Kiru had come to retrieve.
Shinwa shook his head.
"Unicorn-sama's....Could you please let the Wake Angels know that we're here? If they could kindly remove the monitoring satellites without being seen, this one would be most grateful. We can then land and retrieve the cargo. Thank you."
Shinjo Kailen is sitting comfortably in the co-pilot's seat of the Ki-Rin's Way. She waits patiently for her time to come. The captain had explicitly said that since this is a job she brought over, she would pilot the ship for their final approach at the planet. She looks over to Hajime. They are in this together. Their first real mission. The two women have worked together before, but they have never pilot the ship during a mission that requires such guile and precision. At some point, before Shinwa speaks, the woman looks at the screen in front of her and nods to the Iuchi. "It is time!" she proclaims as softly as she can and stands up.
"Captain, permission to..." Before she has a chance to finish up her phrase, the elder captain nods. "Granted." She says.
Kailen moves to the pilot's seat and looks at the shugenja next to her. "Piece of cake, Hajime chan. Let's do this." She turns a switch that lowers the power of the ship. The lights go down and it is evident that nothing but the life support is active at this moment.
"Ketaan san, you are up." She says to the radio. "Communication down until further notice. Waiting for your signal to enter the system. Satellites in position according to previous intelligence. Good luck. Over."
She turns to the ronin with a grin of self confidence "We will be there shortly, Shinwa san. Just sit back comfortably and enjoy the ride."
Ketaan is stretching out in the cockpit of his fighter when the message arrives. His hands are on the controls the instant their covering engine exhaust begins to fade as the larger vehicle powers down. He can almost feel the nod as the unspoken agreement passes between the Angels.
As one, they dive out of the plasma trail in wildly different directions, and without taking the time to aim, fire their payloads.
While the weapons upon a Baraunghar were designed to handle most conventional ammunition, the same systems that could propel top of the line explosive rounds could also act as a crude shot mass driver. Small meteors with cores of some heavy element with natural Radiant properties launched at the last known prediction for the satillites would crumble upon impact, the heavy radiant cores thoroughly frying the Scorpion's broadcasting equipment as well as rendering the floating spy to so much scrap to fall from the sky to the planet below.
After the impact,the resulting fragmentation of target and projectile will fall irregularly to the world's atmosphere, resulting in theories that the satellites were destroyed in meteor shower. The radioactivity in the rubble will support the theory.
All of which hinges, naturally, on the information being good.
The weapons unleash doom into the silence of the Void. The mission is now in the hands of their informant, and of fortune.
Shinwa watches impassively as a sparkle of shattered satellite tumbles into the foul-smelling atmosphere. "Try to land behind the ridge I described earlier. It is about a half-K from where we need to be. We will bring them to you. Domo arigato, Shinjo-sama."
He hesitates for a moment, and adds. "If some number of passengers arrive, but we do not...please do not wait for more than an hour, or stay if you are threatened. Take those passengers that arrive to Gennai's Garden. They will know who to contact on the way. The koku will be sent to your accounts regardless, I promise you."
The ronin bows and withdraws.
As he passes the broom closet, he says, "Kiru-san. Prepare yourself for the descent." Then he straps himself in for the descent through the atmosphere.
Hajime nods at Kailen. She was a bit anxious over this as she felt a little rusty with this kind of thing. On the other hand however, nothing could be worse than the boredom of sitting around and doing nothing! The Iuchi just grins at Kailen when she speaks to let her know she is ready anytime!
The door opens and out comes the Nezumi, his obsolete Koiso MKV radiant pistol in hand. The tassel of feathers dangling from the handgrip shimmers softly with an otherworldly glow before fading to normal.
"Rik, you will need to stay on the ship today, so I can find my way back. Stay hidden once I'm gone, okay?" he squeaks quietly, not that any of these humans can understand him...except Shinwa, of course.
Something in his scarf replies in a similar chitter, "it's about time to sleep anyway."
Kiru smiles as he finds a seat opposite Shinwa to strap himself into—no sense in getting killed before he can save anyone.
This is the part that most pilots can never master. The satellites are off, but reaching the surface still unseen is not something easy.
"Starting secondary engine." Kailen presses a button and a small engine starts. Slowly, the ships starts approaching the planet. About ten minutes later, they start moving a bit faster.
"Entered atmosphere." Kailen announces and presses the button again for the engine to stop. Gravity will do the rest. And the start going faster and faster.
"Cooling system on." Various buttons are pressed and various systems on the ship start working again. But not the engine.
"1 km to surface. Hajime san, I will need full speed in 20....... 10, 9, 8". It is good to have an Iuchi at this point. Otherwise, it is even more riskier.
Flanking the ships burning descent are three much smaller objects, the miniature fireballs that mark the Wake Angels' descent. In the cockpit of one, Tai-Wen casually flicks on the atmospheric control settings, leaning back and putting her hands behind her head as she surveys the shit excuse for a planet. Its ugly terrain rushing ever closer, the entire view tinted lime by the Radiance of the Firedancer keeping the cockpit nice and cool, she shakes her head in slight bemusement at what the Scorpion consider worth settling.
An alert flashes on her microfabber, and she eases out of her relaxed pose to set her silver armored hand on the controls.
"Hope you buckled your seatbelts, kids," she mutters sardonically into the unpowered coms. Communication blackout protocol could be a pain. While she trusts the Angels to know what they are doing, she has her doubts as to what the Ki-Rin's Path can sustain. "It's going to get rough."
With that final thought, she engages the airbrake, and the G-forces slam her into the back of her seat.
Gravity is an oni. It snatches you out of the sky and hurls you to the ground if you let it. If you dodge...just right, it can hurl you into orbit around it, where you dance just out of its reach, but it snatches at you over and over again. Dance too far out of its reach, and you break away, spinning outwards to the stars. Dance too close, and it grabs you and drags you to the ground again.
Shinwa didn't like this part of the dance much. It would help if his dance partners liked him better. He glared balefully at the ship around him, not entirely sure that it didn't want to kill him just on general principles.
Down and down....and then brought short as the thrusters kicked in at the last moment, setting down the ship with a gentle kiss on the fiery moon's surface. Of course the rules are true....but thank the kami for them anyway.
Time to go get what they had come for.
Kiru is at the blast doors before anyone can get there; he knows who he is, and the word 'queasy' does not feature in his Name. He deftly reaches into his scarf and then places the diminutive Rik up in the overhead grating, knowing his friend will scurry to a comfortable and safe retreat to await his return.
"Shinwa, careful-careful. Shinwa will need Shinwa's helmet. The smell suggests similar air quality to the Terrible Darkness Lands. Best to avoid cancer," Kiru calls out loudly over the commlink on his wrist, for the benefit of the other passengers, mostly.
Then he punches the door release and dashes outside, head low and gun in hand.
Shinwa pulls on a mempo with a clear visor and taps the gauge on the side a few times to make sure the air kami are circulating properly in it.
Cancer. Of course. he thinks grimly. I shall have faith in you today, air kami. Do you have faith in me?
Not enough time for a crisis of faith now, no matter what the air kami's opinion is.
"We are departing now," he signals the bridge. "We shall endeavor to be back as quickly as possible. Please remember what I said." Even on embarking on a mission of stealth, Shinwa speaks like some Friday night B-Movie samurai in the Kurasawa action vids a mere hundred years after the development of celluloid.
He checks his obi under his trenchcoat and his daisho at his side. Whether or not communications will stay up...well, with him it was always a little hit or miss. He'd try for now.
"Let me find the cameras first, Kiru-san. The path into the mine is certain to be monitored."
With that, he exits the blast doors and steps out onto the surface of the volcanic moon, letting the blast doors shut behind him and stop the smell of sulfur and brimstone from filling the ship.
"Just run everywhere. Shinwa's mere presence will break them." There is a quiet cackle through the commlink.
Shinwa can feel a familiar tingle before seeing the vision of a Nezumi sneaking up on its goblin quarry in his mind's eye. Strangely enough, he finds the thought encouraging in relation to his own capacity to go unseen. (Mechanically, we both just gained a Stealth rank of 4, so you know, bae.)
Kiru is stalking up ahead. Moving quietly, yes, but his species are far swifter than Rokugani, and so he is still making more ground at present.
Fortunately, Shinwa can see him quite clearly, almost as if the Nezumi has a faint glow surrounding him that only Shinwa can see.
Shinwa moves steadily behind, hand on his daisho, contemplating this particular mystery of stealth. However, he activates the commlink to say
"Hidden cameras. Four meters left, one forward, two up. The second is five meters right, one point five forward, two point five up. You will not be able to bypass them."
Even M'thack-kir's keen eyes cannot see anything at those locations other than plain, soot-gray cliff face. The Scorpion are either hiding their cameras very well, or Shinwa is imagining things.
Maybe I should have brought Rik after all...
"Can Shinwa break them?" Kiru whispers into his wrist.
Shinwa considers the issue carefully. "Does simple violence count?" The corner of his mouth crooks in a small grin. "I can cut down one. You will have to shoot the other one. There is a small fleck of stone just below the right camera. Aim just above there."
He starts the count.
One.....two...three.....
In a blur of motion he draws his katana and jumps. In the low gravity, he needs no assist to close on the spot on the cliff wall, and his blade flicks forward. The tip penetrates some sort of masking fabric, and the camera falls off its niche and to the ground, landing at about the same time he does.
Ah. Simple enough.
Kiru takes aim where he has been instructed to, then pulls the trigger confidently. A laser significantly more potent than what the weapon should be capable of producing discharges, creating a small crater in the wall where the camera used to be.
M'thack-kir sniffs the air and nods to himself. "Kiru will leave a trail for kin-kin to follow as an escape route." He briefly rubs his cheek against the wall at belly height, marking the spot with a pheromone that identifies his Tribe and the direction to safety.
Then, another nod to Shinwa, and Kiru stalks ahead, ready to vaporise the first Scorpion to cross his path. He seems unperturbed by the partially toxic atmosphere he is breathing in all the while.
The benefits of a small base, on an isolated moon, with an unbreathable atmosphere, where there is nothing of value to be won. No one is going to bother with outdoor sentries. The hidden cameras and proximity alarms, each of which either Shinwa has been able to discover (if hidden) or Kiru has been able to identify easily (if not hidden) and avoid or disable are more than sufficient to satisfy even the most diligent guard. They have arrived during the night cycle for the small mining base. That only leaves the door. It has been built to be protected from most kinds of damage, even from a fighter's guns.
I might be able to get through....but it would make noise. Noise means a fight. I would need to issue a challenge. That would not help these nezumi at all.
Shinwa arrives at the door and reaches out to lay his hand on the controls. He was not impressed.
He nods, takes a step back, and attempts to open the door. The locking mechanism continues to hold. Shinwa does not seem surprised. He tries it again a second time. This time the mechanism fails. So does the opening mechanism. The door rocks, but does not open automatically.
Fortunately, Shinwa can give the heavy door the good old heave-ho. That should do it.
"Wait, Shinwa," Kiru whispers behind him. "Emergency protocol for doors is to have them open after a malfunction is cleared."
He steps up to the controls himself and places his palm on it, before chittering quietly.
Just as soon as Shinwa feels the familiar tingle wash down his spine, the controls light up with a beep, and the door opens.
Kiru wipes his cheek against the doorway. "We are close. The scent is strong, and there is only one trail. Clearly kin-kin are forced to work outside in those conditions, and imprisoned at night."
Enough said, Kiru stalks inside, following the pheromone path laid out so clearly for his nose. He tries not to think about the emotions of fear and lost faith that the scent is so heavy with.
Shinwa nods and follows, continuing to keep an eye for hidden cameras...or hidden Scorpion.
When they draw near certain passageway he stops. "Human. 10 paces that way." His words are scarcely above a whisper. He gestures to the right, to a room off of one of the side corridors. Fortunately, the room door is closed. He has to trust to M'thak-kir's additional stealth and his own light step to sneak past the room quietly,
It is only a matter of minutes before they find the holding cell. It is the size of a traditional samurai's greeting room, and certainly not large enough for twenty eight adult Nezumi and some newborn pups to reside in comfortably.
Kiru's nose twitches as he notices that the metal bars on this prison door have been partially chewed through, but at a height humans wouldn't notice.
They still have fight in them. Hope isn't lost.
Kiru squeaks in Nezumi at the prisoners, sending a ripple of surprise among the wakening tribe. Someone responds, arriving at the cell door to stick their nose through it and sniff Kiru's scent.
The whispered chattering goes on for a few minutes, until Kiru's speaking partner nods and gestures to his extended family.
"They have agreed to join the Burnt Crane Tribe. They have no rememberers or Nameseekers left anyway," Kiru explains quietly to Shinwa. Then, he holds his pistol to get a shot at the electrical lock on the door and fires, blasting a hole the size of a Hida's head through it.
"They know to follow the scent trail I left. Will Shinwa escort the mothers and babies first?"
His fingers tighten around the pistol's handgrip. "Kiru will leave last."
Shinwa says softly. "They must be as quiet as they can, and we move quickly. Tell them if we encounter anyone, they must keep moving forward as quickly as possible, following your trail, until they get to the ship. The doors will open for them. I will fight whoever they encounter. They must not stop, for any reason at all. We will bring any who get left behind. You will tell them this?"
He leaves unsaid the little truth they both know...that they will fight to distract the Scorpion and allow the Nezumi to escape with the Unicorn, even if it costs both their lives. And one of them cannot leave without the other.
"Ahhh..." Ketaan's voice comes through the comms to all of the Unicorn at the landing site. "Hate to be the one to break radio silence, but our intel didn't happen to mention Chuubushi patrols did it?"
"No?" Ariel's uncertain response comes across.
"Funny, because I'm looking out my viewport at what looks a lot like jump-jets off in the direction our employers went."
"THOSESHITSMEAREDSCRAPHUMPING," The rest of Tai-Wen's invective devolves into static as a puff of radioactive surface dust is kicked up by the sudden activation of atmospheric engines, temporarily scrambling communications. One by one, the Baraunghar-class fighters leap off the surface and shriek through the thin, caustic atmosphere on the Ronin and Nezumi's trail.
Kiru bares his teeth in a grin at Shinwa. "Strongest instinct in Nezumi is survival. Kin-kin do not need to be told to keep running. Already instructed kin-kin about the ship and doors, too."
His head turns sharply. "Rik is in danger. The ship might be compromised. What if friends are really Three Face Night Tribe?"
M'thack-kir squeaks a quiet order at the other Nezumi, before gesturing for them to go onwards.
"Shinwa, find a safe-safe zone and see if ship is safe first, okay?" There is concern in his hushed voice, but the matter at hand is too important to be paralyzed with worry over his little friend.
Shinwa simply nods and leads the way out, leading the nezumi on path that avoids any Scorpion that might be wandering the hallways at this late hour of the night. Whenever it seems that a human might be near, he places himself between them and the slaves. For a moment there was a risk...but no. This time, he is lucky.
When he reaches the main doors, this time, they open easily since Kiru did not lock them after they had managed to bypass the locks the first time. After that, he starts off moving ahead of the group of Nezumi, then circling back, leading them away from the cameras that have not been disabled.
"SECURITY COMPROMISED. ALL PERSONNEL, FULL ALERT."
No need to hide anymore, good.
Kiru tells the last of the escapees to bolt for it, then he reaches into the Field of Dreams to pluck a particularly powerful memory taught to the Tribe by his mother...
From where Shinwa is, he can feel a brief tingle before seeing the sudden image of what can only be a Nezumi climbing through the top window of a castle in the dead of night, a blade in each hand as well as in clutched by its tail.
Vengeance is here. Time to hunt down the local human chief!
"Sky-Eyes, Slingshot!"
Ketaan's ship becomes a ripple of green with a humming whine as he activates the Firedancer while picking up speed. In the cockpit of his own ship, Ariel slaps a scroll case onto a magnetic strip, flying one handed as he unrolls the classic prayers of the Iuchi and begins muttering his greetings to the slow and sick water kami of this Fortune-forsaken rock. The flow of energy, imperceptible to all without the gift, traces lines of blue between his and Ketaan's ship.
A quick, heavily static-riddled message penetrates the bunker to the helmet of the Ronin within. "Compan****side. We'll cov*****uick."
A salvo of carefully aimed Radiance from Tai-Wen's ship darts past the spearhead of their wedge, throwing up additional plumes of radioactive crud to obscure visibility and corral the surprised Chuubushi together. Mere fractions of seconds after their reactive jump jets have pulled them away from the sudden scorch marks on the moon, Ketaan's kami-enhanced engines dart him directly over the clustered samurai in a near-invisible screaming fireball obscured by dust and burning atmosphere. The sonic boom and pressure wave that follow in his wake are more than enough to smash the unfortunate Scorpion into the ground, shattering bone and suit as the rest of the wing circles for another pass. Handheld weaponry begins to lance randomly out of the cloud of toxic dust and confusion.
Kuso!
Shinwa swore silently to himself. Around him, more than a dozen nezumi scrambled, eyes filled with fear and staring around in a panic as a pillar of dust and volcanic ash ascends in the direction the Unicorn ship ahead of them. Many more are running through the trench cut in the walls of layered tuff and obsidian.
A static-filled message reaches his headset, but it's beyond him to make out what the words are. And then he feels the shift around him as his senses sharpen, his muscles flex, and a surge of andrenaline...not his own...races through his body as the nezumi starts hunting.
I need to stop him...he needs to get out of there and round up these crazy nezumi while I try to secure the landing site....
He taps the commlink button on his mempo to signal M'thack-kir...or the Unicorn....But there is no answering chirp to greet him to signal that communication lines are open. Dead. Air kami...you pick a fine time... He prays that the regulator on the mempo holds out just a little while longer. A fight where you cannot breathe is uniquely challenging.
Very well. If battle it is...
He stops running in a small crook of the trench not far from the Unicorn ship. He raises his hand, his face grim, the gesture infused with an air of imperious authority that draws the eyes of the Nezumi to him. He holds the position, perfectly still, focusing on slowing his breathing, stilling the racing of his heart, quieting his mind. The Nezumi can smell no trace of fear.
"Sekai ga ugoku node, ore wa chuuou de tatteiru." He exhales slowly.
As the Nezumi gather around him, all catching up, he lowers his hand, palm down. A gesture he hopes they understand. "Wait here." He then turns and runs towards the Unicorn vessel, his simple trenchcoat streaming behind him, his hand on the tsuka of his katana.
When fighting Scorpion, one thing has been true in every story since the beginning of the Empire.
It was never the ones you could see that were the problem.
He can smell them all so easily, the ones who are alarmed, both afraid and excited, as he nears them.
They are not worth my time.
He weaves around a few by taking separate corridors, keeping low just in case.
Then he stops.
There are too many of them...I won't have a chance if I don't leave now. And I'm sure I've been spotted on camera by now...Survival first. Vengeance later.
He whispers something to himself, drawing on yet another memory altogether.
Shinwa is hopefully not too distracted by the tingle that accompanies the brief vision of a glowing Nezumi sprinting past him at incredible speed before it fades away.
"BANZ-" the Scorpion who rounded the corner and charged at Kiru with an electric stun-sai is interrupted by a single laser shot. Hard to shout when your neck is disintegrated, causing your body to drop to the floor while your head flies forward from the running momentum.
Definitely time to go.
Kiru turns and bolts for it, knowing the shout and the laser blast will draw more attention. His agility enhanced by the memory, he makes use of his tail stretched out behind him to steer his direction like an ancient sailor would his fishing boat rudder, throwing himself into fleeing faster than humanly possible. There are two moments where he is forced to leap over or around an unsuspecting Scorpion heading in the opposite direction and then turn a corner sharply so he won't become an easy target, but it is hard to get lost when the very air is laden with the key to escape.
And he has two guiding pilot lights in the form of Rik and Shinwa to keep him on course.
Except that the main entrance is now guarded by two bushi with stun-sai and holstered sidearms.
Kiru stops in his tracks, pressing himself against the wall so as not to stand out too much.
A moment later, a gust of air surges down the corridor, causing both Shinwa and Kiru to tingle as it passes Kiru.
Shugenja. I have no choice but to run now, M'thack-kir realises.
He fires a shot at one of the two guards as he begins to run, not caring about killing the Scorpion so much as making them panic so he has a greater chance of escape. Luckily, his target screams in pain and drop his weapon to the ground, deactivating its electric field, meaning that Kiru only has one armed enemy he needs to focus on evading as he somersaults over the two bushi and dashes out the door into the trench beyond.
A laser narrowly missed his head, beaming out ahead of him. Clearly this fight is not over yet.
The unexpected burst of speed races through Shinwa as he runs, but he doesn't have time to once again question the strangeness of being linked in this way to a Nezumi. The speed is welcome as he puts the escaped slaves further behind him and closes rapidly on the landing site.
The crouching bulk that is The Ki-rin's Way squats over on the hillside like some great beast of burden: an winged elephant, perhaps.
Shinwa focuses, scanning the landscape, looking for the unseen, the expected only because of the nature of their enemies.
There.
Two Chuubushi, possibly left behind by a squadron of others who are serving as a feint for these attacking vessels, were hidden behind some larger rocks, sheltered and out of sight of the ship.
And up on the side of the vessel, a hidden explosive device that would crack the hull of The Way open like a crab in its shell.
It probably has a timer. But it is just as likely they can trigger it instantly as well. I cannot take care of both at the same time. Fortunes help me...
He took a deep breath, and leaped, sword down, crashing from a distance to land between the two chuubushi in their radiant armor, his katana a silver flame of death that cleaves through radiance and steel with equal ease.
"Are they clear?"
"No way to tell. Keep them distracted, Vanguard."
"Can do."
Ketaan's Baraunghar continues to spin frantically in the air, dodging Radiant fire and returning his own to keep the Chuubushi suppressed and their attention drawn.
"Come on, kiddies. Keep your eyes on the," a Radiant bolt comes a hair too close, ricocheting off of the shielding a breath before hitting the fighter. "...Maybe not that close. Can you focus your eyes a bit to my left? Thanks!"
"This is taking too long," Tai-Wen mutters into the coms as she approaches the atmospheric limits, reeling around to provide cover fire. "Even with the satellites down, someone will get off a transmission. I don't want to be neck-deep in fighters."
"The prisoners are in the trenches," Ariel says, coolly lining up his own hovering vessel with his wife's. "We just need to buy them a bit more time."
"And give the Scorpion a farewell present? I've got just the thing!"
"Any opportunity to test new toys, love?"
"You know me too well. And it's not like they don't deserve it."
"Well, it wouldn't do to be ungracious guests I suppose."
Tai-Wen's evil grin is almost audible through the coms.
"Follow-follow!" Kiru barks at the newest members of his Tribe as he practically soars past them, not taking the time to slow down at all.
His momentum, only increasing thanks to his natural and supernatural speed, carries M'thack-kir out into view of the ship, but he does not run directly toward it. Instead, his tail arcs out behind him to adjust his course, and Kiru zeroes in on Shinwa taking on two chuubushi alone. One of them reaches for a remote button, but Kiru makes a carefully placed shot with his pistol as he approaches, incinerating the remote in the Scorpion's hand. And causing some useful collateral damage to said hand as a bonus.
If that remote is important, I'll fix it later.
"Who in Jigoku do you think you are?!" screams a woman's voice from above.
Kiru looks up to see an armoured samurai-ko several feet in the air above, hovering without the aid of technology.
Shugenja.
She holds a number of glowing plastic cards between the fingers of each hand, ready to throw them.
Even matched against a surprise attack, closed from a distance with an uncanny speed, Scorpion chuubushi are fast and well trained. These were no simple yakuza but trained warriors of a great clan with excellent weapons and heavy radiant armor. Shinwa might be impossible to hit with a radiant firearm at this distance, but the great clan schools still taught iaijutsu, and the draw on a radiant weapon was almost as smooth as the draw of Totsuzen.
Still, the ronin's first blow was a crippling strike, and the chuubushi he struck found a deep crack in his helmet, releasing the oxygen and letting in the poisonous air of the sulfurous little moon. He also found himself with a crippling injury to his hand a moment later....Shinwa could sense Kiru's presence closing upon him and just barely dodged the shot that took out the remote. But while that bushi was still trying to draw, Shinwa had a more serious threat to face...the bushi that had not yet been struck.
This is your moment, he silently told the bushi in front of him. Live it well. This is where your story ends. They both lept into motion. The Scorpion was a little quicker on the iaijutsu draw, but his blade slid off the ronin's trenchcoat. The blade cut into Shinwa's flesh, but the wound was minor. The injury Shinwa inflicted in return cut deeper. But worse than the injury, the light rimming the chuubushi's blade suddenly flickered. The bushi was skilled, quick to counter the attack, but the blade struck and did...nothing. It struck deep and hard, but had no edge with which to strike and simply bounced off of Shinwa's trench. His next strike similarly did nothing...and was his last as Shinwa took his head. The head bounced gently to the ground in the lower gravity.
He can feel the seconds ticking away like the hairs standing up on the back of his heck. And above, the shout of the shugenja. He hopes Kiru can handle it, because he can't. He has to stop that bomb. The other Scorpion, his hand damaged heavily, draws his blade. Unfortunately for him, Shinwa is already ready. He narrowly escapes the blow and strikes back deeply, fracturing the helmet completely and shoving the samurai away to choke on the air.
No time left to check to see him through yet. Shinwa spins and braces himself for one more great leap...this time to reach the bomb.
Air kami...I promise you...let me get to that bomb and stop it....and I'll....
He didn't finish the thought...he was already in the air.
Kiru doesn't try to answer the shugenja's question - it would take valuable seconds to explain he is the Seeker of Brightness. Seconds he doesn't have.
So instead he rolls evasively to the side, pulling the trigger on his weapon as he flicks its aim out at her.
The laser finds its mark, pulsing into the Scorpion's chest and knocking her backwards with great force, but it is not the only thing to reach its target: two of the glowing cards dart out and attach themselves to the central ashigaru plate covering Kiru's chest. Immediately, the plate glows white hot and begins to sizzle, melting.
"Iyaa!" Kiru screeches as he scrambles to remove the plate before it can corrode painfully onto his chest. He drops his weapon to the ground, gouging at the binding that straps his armour around him with his claws.
It takes several seconds, and M'thack-kir ends up with a bleeding, furless patch on the centre of his chest, but he manages to remove the armour before it can completely melt him; strangely enough, the metallic acid should have engulfed him instantaneously, but something slowed it down.
I'll need to fix that...but no time!
He calls out for his kin to hurry aboard the ship, presuming Shinwa is running over to it with haste to open the door for them all. Then, he scrambles along as well, forgetting his Koiso MkV sidearm as he does so.
"Clear! They're clear!"
Ariel barely has time to call out the signal over the coms before whipping through his scrolls to find the appropriate prayer. Their ships almost touching, the water kami once again reach across the barren expanse, but this time for the pilot rather than the engines of the accompanying Baraunghar.
In her own seat, Tai-Wen lines up the shot as she stares at the last retreating ratman through the enhaced image on her viewport. Her fingers hovers on the trigger of her weapons and the loading controls, but she waits until she feels the familiar sensation of the kami speeding her actions. The moment she does, she is a blur of motion as she fires the solid-mass weapon systems once, triggers an automated reload for a very special payload, and fires again.
The first mass to fly out of the Baraunghar is what appears to be a glob of metallic red paint. It has no special name, for it is merely an engineering additive essential in the activation of Radiant shielding mixed with isotopic dye. The second launch sends the Baranghar lurching back with an abrupt explosion of force as the payload fires an engine of its own. The explosive equipped on it is a high-powered incendiary device of accelerants, caustic agents, and a ridiculous amount of mass. The creator, who had a flair for the dramatic, dubbed it the Ten Gods' Promise. The delivery system carrying the TGP also has no name, but not for the reasons of being unimportant, but because it is a contradiction. The sheer size of the TGP means that it requires a container with its own means of propulsion, for the firing of a weapon of the TGP's size from a fighter causes such recoil that aiming is impossible otherwise. However, the system that carries the TGP has to be aimed somehow. The Koshuud, being inventive minds with a knack for horrific levels of space-age destruction, would surely never utilize gaijin technologies to create an onboard computer small enough to fit in a piece of ordinance with the sole purpose of tracking a specific isotope only found in proprietary engineering additives before they were activated.
That would be dishonorable.
The first Scorpion out the door is flung backwards into the bunker as she is bodily smacked with a heavy pile of dyed additive. She hits the polished steel of the corridor, and the auto-clear on her visor sweeps the dye aside to reveal an immense missile following close in the dye's path. She is too busy scrambling out of the way to see the outer shell of the container split away, revealing the TGP in all its horrible glory. She is too busy ducking the TGP's flight from the capsule and down the corridor to see the dye turn brown as the isotope catalyses against the metal of the missile shell. She is too busy diving for cover to see the neon green of the Firedancer shield flicker to life, sealing the bunker entrance with a heat-containing concave barrier.
Then the payload smacks against the wall of the hallway, and within the sealed confines of the fortress, the Ten Gods' Promise is fulfilled.
Shinwa lands with a solid 'thunk' near the join between the left engine and the main body of the Ki-rin's Path, balanced somewhat precariously. Right below him, a large, circular black disk with a clear digital timer is attached to the body of the craft like a blister. A digital clock interface counts down the seconds...less than thirty left.
29...
28...
27...
Typical.
26...
Everything is falling apart around him, but Shinwa does not have time to worry about that at this particular moment. Kiru will have to deal with whatever he's squeaking about over there on his own, because if this bomb goes off no Nezumi are getting off this rock.
25...
And neither will I. Short story.
24...
He taps the bomb gently with his katana blade. Sometimes that might stop the countdown, but that kind of luck is not with him today.
23...
22...
21...
As he pulls the blade back, he notices that there is no magnetic tug pulling his blade towards the bomb or to the magnetized hull.
20...
19...
18...
Makes sense...not every ship uses a steel hull....GOOD!
17...
16...
15...
14...
Shinwa assesses. He draws his blade back. This is going to be tricky on the angle. But he's done worse.
13...
12...
11...
Focus.
10...
9...
Strike. The blade swings down at an exotic arc, cleaving delicately through the paint, epoxy, and metallic hull of the ship itself, skinning off the thinnest of layers with an odd metallic shriek, and cutting the bomb free of the ship. It slides a foot away but is otherwise is unharmed.
8...
7...
Shinwa takes one stride over to the bomb, his footfalls heavy on the roof of the craft. He gives the bomb a tremendous kick, sending it sailing away from ship as far as it can go in a direction away from the Nezumi.
6...
5...
4...
It flies in a wide arc, assisted by the moon's lower gravity to go much further than it would have otherwise, but Shinwa crouches behind the engine anyway so he doesn't get blown off.
3...
2...
1...
BOOM!!
Enough of the toxic dust clears for the coms to come live again, and Shinjo Ketaan's carefree tones ring out to everyone on the coms. The buzzing hum of Radiant fire can be heard in the background.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I regret to inform you that, due to unforeseen circumstances, we're going to have to cut your cruise short. For complaints and refunds, please see your nearest Scorpion embass*"
He is cut off by a crackle of static as Tai-Wen seizes the channel.
"Get off the coms," She barks, "Right. Time to go, get ready to dust off."
Are you crazy?! What are you doing setting explosives off for? Kiru thinks with exasperation as he picks himself off the ground. The other Nezumi do so too, and huddle together as they rush into the waiting ship.
Kiru comes last, inspecting his left paw which juts out at a particularly unhealthy angle.
"Foolish Shinwa! Warn Kiru next time!" he growls, mostly to himself, as the cargo bay door closes.
One of the escapees approaches to see if he is okay, but he waves her away, wraps his broken arm in his obi neck scarf, and then sets about inspecting his new kin, the two new pups and their mothers first.
As he walks over to the two mothers, his armour materialises back on him as if it had always been there, and his Koiso MkV radiant pistol appears in his hand, which he holsters quickly.
"Time to go, all clear!" Kiru barks into his commlink.
Even as Kiru is speaking into the commlink and the ever-patient pilots have started the thrusters and are slowly raising the ramp that serves as the cargo-bay door, all the Nezumi in the cargo bay can hear the sound of footsteps running across the metallic top of the space vessel, and Kiru can sense the presence of Shinwa running above him, on /top/ of the craft.
Sensing Kiru inside the craft, and knowing he would not be there if the Nezumi were not, Shinwa scrambles as the craft starts to move, sheathing his katana as he runs. He scrambles across the top of the large ship to get to where the cargo bay doors are, an athletic feat probably impossible without Kiru's enhancement. When he arrives at the spot, he finds them already about to close, only a narrow gap to daylight left.
The ronin doesn't hesitate, but throws himself headlong into the gap. The fall sends him rolling down the length of the steep, almost-shut ramp to land with a thunk at M'thack-kir's feet.
The ramp seals shut completely and the ship's shaking reaches full power, flattening nezumi and human to the floor of the cargobay as it thrusts its way into orbit.