Chapter 296 – An Impressive Debut

Emily strips the intriguing scanners from the pirates’ ships, but leaves the rest of their poorly-balanced modules. Their thrusters are over-tuned to the point of damaging themselves with each use, good for catching up with others in short sprints, but completely useless for long-haul flights like the Crimson-Blade Pirates are used to, and their power plants have clearly been in a state of Overdrive for far too long, close to collapsing and taking the ships with them. None of them has anything close to an advanced grav-drive, like most small spacecraft, with the crews relying on magnetised boots to keep themselves stably adhered to surfaces.

Their scanners, however, are genuinely inspired. They’re based on a form of short-range sensor usually utilised by miners to track instability within asteroid fields by recording minute vibrations passing through the floating rocks. However, instead of simply flagging incoming collisions, the scanners are boosted to track signals further away, looking for the recognisable pattern of displacement caused by the wakes of cruise-speed ships. They’re only useful in a dense debris field like Xeroph 3a, but in the correct conditions they can outrange the long-range wake detectors of Emily’s ships nearly twice over.

Emily gladly takes them into her Factory to break them down and draw up several blueprints to integrate the technique into her crew’s scout ships.

They don’t run into any more trouble on the way to their target station and, a little over two weeks later, Harriet interrupts Emily’s focus once again. She turns her attention away from the active transmutation array in the process of bonding several materials to a sheet of world-eater skin and begins donning her mercenary uniform.

She covers most of her form with her concealing cloak and slips on a pair of pitch-black, armoured gauntlets. She pulls her mask from her belt, its white surface now covered in a multitude of runes for several durability and comfort enchantments, before fusing it to her face with a light current of machina. It feels like a second skin, not blocking her breath or vision at all, and she finishes by pulling up the hood of her cloak to swallow her head in darkness, syncing with the mask’s enchantments to leave the stark-white, featureless face the only thing visible.

She Blinks out onto the ship’s bridge, giving both of her main pilots a fright when they turn to greet her.

“Damn!” Slippy exclaims, jolting in their chair while McCloud freezes, gazing into the gaping black voids where her eyes should be. “Sheesh, Boss. Warn a synth if you’re gonna sneak up on them all spooky-like, will ya?”

“It’s certainly a distinct look,” McCloud mutters with a flat tone, shaking his head and turning back to his controls.

“I wouldn’t have thought it was needed,” Emily responds, distorting her voice with a low hum of machina, her attention focused on the distant space station they’re rapidly approaching as it fills the ship’s canopy. “You’ve both seen worse.”

The station, Xerten FCA, is an oddity even among the many wonders Emily has seen since leaving Ulea. They’re approaching it head-on, giving them a perfect view of what appears to be a shattered planet of grey rock. It’s half the size of Ulea and split into three equal parts, with a lattice of metal struts and structures holding them together, and a bright, glowing light in the centre where the core should be, emanating a powerful energy signature.

“Yeah, but we were expecting our vice-captain to pop in, not braced for attack,” Slippy chuckles to themselves, mostly ignored by the other two.

Emily connects to the station’s BlackNet access node with a quick stream of machina through their ship’s data relay, and almost immediately finds a record of the station’s creation. As she suspected, it used to be a functional planet, but it was damaged several centuries ago in a battle between two unidentified ninth phase martial artists that laid waste to 3a; which used to be a mechanoid-controlled sector of the jointly controlled Xeroph 3. Subsequently, one of the mechanoids’ eighth stage mechanics decided to convert the dying planet into a fractured-core-access style station to facilitate continued trade with the other powers of Xeroph 3 while their main forces relocated to the still-thriving Xeroph 5.

“What a mess,” Emily muses as she reads the records, much to the amusement of the other two mechanics half-watching her data access.

“Welcome to universal territory wars.” Slippy shrugs.

“The Xeroph galaxy cluster has never had a ninth level awakened to unify them,” McCloud explains. “And they’re mostly ignored by the larger territories nearby, so it’s a pretty constant battle out here for resources. This isn’t even the first active war here since I’ve been part of the crew, though the last one was in Xeroph 1, and we were in Alliance space at the time, so we didn’t take part.”

Emily directs the fleet towards a cluster of unoccupied asteroids within view of the station to dock, avoiding getting too close and being forced to allow scans to identify them as Heavy-Blade registered ships. She makes a mental note to ask Silvia about acquiring some ships with unregistered Guild ID’s for future exploits under the Elivarus name.

“All of you are to remain on board while I handle business,” she instructs, transmitting her voice across the squadron. “I won’t be long, so try not to draw any attention to yourselves.”

She heads to the ship’s airlock, concealing her circles in the process, before stepping into the vacuum and kicking off towards the station using a stream of machina to guide her flight. She aims for a surface dock on one of the planetary fragments, reaching out ahead with a wave of machina to identify herself and avoid the station’s defences being turned on her. They allow her access without interference, and it doesn’t take long for her to enter an artificial atmosphere and touch down on the fragment’s surface between several docked ships.

A few heads turn towards her, but most don’t pay her much attention after feeling her fifth stage presence and marking her as not worth the effort. She quickly heads for a transport bubble system to take her below the surface and selects the mercenary sector as her destination. The bubble carries her across a bridge to one of the other planetary fragments, letting her get a closer view of the connective structures for a few moments before she’s back underground.

When the door to her bubble opens, she’s greeted with a familiar setup, nearly identical to that of Xlanax’s but larger in scale. She strides through a long, subterranean corridor tens of metres tall and wide, lined with various businesses, towards a massive chamber filled with congregating mercenaries.

She ignores the few heads that turn to take in her unique appearance and makes for an open counter.

“How can I help you?” asks the first circle human mage with flaming red hair and matching eyes behind the counter.

“I’m here to claim two bounties,” Emily responds flatly.

“Bounty claims can be done at the automated Terminals,” the clerk says without batting an eye, gesturing to one of the walls of the hall lined with Terminal screens.

“I was under the impression that contracts with a specified material reward couldn’t be completed through the automated system.”

“You’re completing a high-rank contract?” The mage visibly starts, and Emily feels their mana reaching out to brush against her machina as subtly as possible, clearly trying not to present it as an attack while they confirm her fifth stage presence. “That’s… of course. I presume you have evidence of your kills?”

Emily nods. “A corpse for one, and a crystal recording for the other.”

“Perfect. Your mark, please, and what would be the bounties’ names?”

“Yorn Balwin and Perinith Hardyfold of the Heavy-Blade Pirates,” she answers while pulling her mark from within her robes, watching the clerk struggle to hide their shock as silence spreads throughout the hall.

Emily doesn’t break her gaze away from the mage behind the counter, but she can feel hundreds of eyes turn towards her, and hears quiet, disbelieving murmurs spread around the room. She watches the clerk’s face pale as they verify her mark.

“You, as a two-awakened group, fought the Heavy-Blade Pirates for your first contract?”

“We didn’t fight the entire group: we simply killed their leader. The other was needed to lure him away from the battlefield he was occupying.”

“Right.” The mage nods in understanding, calming and becoming businesslike. “We will need to verify the evidence to mark the contract as complete.”

“Here? His body isn’t a pretty sight, and I worry for the durability of your floors should any of the acid soaking it leak.”

“We’ll use a private room. I will also need to call in a higher-ranked Guild employee to mark off a high-rank contract, and to verify the corpse’s identity. I hope you understand.”

“By all means, lead the way.”

Emily follows the clerk away from the watching crowd and through a series of doors to a small room with plain reinforced walls, covered in glowing enchantments.

“First, the recording crystal, please.”

Emily hands over the crystal and waits for several minutes as their eyes gloss over, checking through its contents. When their vision clears, they regard her with clear respect in their gaze.

“I can identify no tampering beyond the concealment of the recorder and their exact spell forms. Your partner’s magic is truly inspired.”

“Thank you, I’ll pass the message along.”

“Much appreciated.” The mage nods, stepping back to give her room. “Now, the corpse, if you will.”

Emily takes a prepared spatial storage off a clip on her belt. It’s formed from a disk of metal covered in runes, with a distinct button on the top and a spatial crystal set into the centre. She holds it out with the crystal facing down and presses the button, dumping the storage’s contents onto the floor.

The clerk impressively holds their stomach at the sight of Yorn’s mangled corpse, but Emily doesn’t miss their lip curling in disgust, with a hint of fear in their gaze as the alchemically-enhanced acid hisses against the room’s protections. It doesn’t eat through them, but it certainly tries.

“If you plan on having another inspect it,” Emily says, as the clerk crouches to inspect Yorn’s half-melted face without getting close enough to touch him, “I’d advise we don’t keep it out of storage for too long. The acid is fully spread through his system and still eating him from the inside out. Given a couple of hours, he’ll lose structural integrity and collapse.”

“Do you not have an appropriate neutralising agent?”

“I didn’t when I hit him with the attack, but I do now. However, spreading it through a corpse would be more effort than it’s worth when the damage to his value as a material is already done.”

The clerk does shiver at her casual mention of using another humanoid awakened as materials, but they cover it with a nod.

“Okay, please re-store him while we wait for my superior to arrive.”

Emily holds the storage out and presses the button again, drawing the corpse back into the safety of its stasis enchantments.

They wait in silence for several minutes before the door opens and a six-armed, two-headed humanoid mage at the fifth circle steps in.

“You’re dismissed, Alseior. I’ll take it from here,” says one of their heads, focusing on the clerk while the other looks Emily up and down. “You’ll have a minor completion mark added to your record for good service.”

“Thank you, Sir,” the weaker clerk nods before handing him the recording crystal and stepping out.

“So, you’re the one who killed the annoying gnome?” one head asks Emily while the other’s eyes gloss over to check the crystal’s contents.

“You knew Perinith?”

“Not well, but I’ve heard enough complaints about him from Elwaine over the years.”

He must be the contact in 3a that Elwaine spoke of.

“Ha! Done in by spatial collapse, what a horrible way to go.” Both heads grin as he finishes watching the battle. “I take it the old elf is still around if you’re not claiming their bounty too?”

“Yes.” Emily nods, following an unspoken gesture to proceed and releasing Yorn’s corpse again. “These two are the only important members I can claim.”

“Yeesh, you really don’t fuck around,” the mage says with his nose crumpled in disgust, kicking Yorn’s head to the side dispassionately to get a better look at the melted half.

“Melvor, by the way,” introduces the head not staring down at the corpse, one of his arms sticking out for Emily to shake. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“Coldstone.” Emily accepts the offered hand.

Melvor releases a wave of raw mana to lift the corpse, using his many digits to weave several detection spells at once.

“Yep, that’s Yorn alright. I see no issue with marking these bounties as completed and providing the assigned rewards to Elivarus,” he says, his voice taking on a practised, professional tone. “The combined one hundred and fifty thousand credit reward will be paid directly into your group’s main account; however, the material reward will take a few days for us to put together given its inclusion of several unique items. Are you alright waiting here, or would you like the reward to be prepared at another station for your collection?”

“I can wait.”

“Perfect. So long as you remain within the station’s signal range, you’ll receive an alert to your Terminal when it’s prepared,” the mage explains, moving to a Terminal built into the room’s wall and activating it with his own mark before tapping through several screens.

“Now that Guild business is out of the way and one hell of a first payday is on its way,” the head not watching the Terminal says with a grin. “How would you like to buy some scrolls?”