When he entered the med-bay, Kyle got his first good look at Tomas without the helmet and armor; a tall figure with oddly greyish skin and a bit of an emaciated look to him lying on the table, with his skin being dark, with silvery roots. From the visible loose skin, he clearly used to be much bigger than he was now.

  He was thoroughly strapped down; around his head, neck, arms, legs… and blinking, seeming to be in a bit of a panic, as Elise looked up, watching him enter.

  Kyle glanced at her. “We sure no spinal injuries?”

  She glanced at the board beside herself. “A bit of bruising. Honestly, the only real concern at this point is Argyria, but we can handle that with a filter and a few hours. In fact… he’s actually got a built-in blood filter, but it needs maintenance before it can handle it, been overwhelmed.”

  He nodded. “Good, then. Go ahead and remove the restraints… unless we need them to do the maintenance?”

  She turned to the marine. “Can you sit still long enough for me to purge the filter you’ve got beside your spine?”

  He blinked. “Uhm… yes? Please?”

  She looked back to Kyle… and when he just nodded again, she started undoing his restraints, one by one… with the man flexing his limbs as they were freed. “Oh, lord. I was worried there for a bit.”

  “Well, obviously, you should be. You were frozen for over a century, you had some sort of drugs… including a heft amount of silver, apparently… pumped into you in the hopes of thawing you out intact, and got bounced around like crazy afterwards. All that after losing your ship to a space monster.”

  The marine nodded… and leaned forward as Elise approached his back. His spine was clearly artificial; a solid foot of length between his shoulderblades as an access panel; and she carefully opened it… before spraying his whole back down with an antiseptic solution.

  She glanced at Kyle. “There’s some more work he needs, but it should be done in a sterile environment. He also needs tons of protein and months of physical therapy. He wasn’t built for this.”

  Kyle nodded. “We can do that. First, though… Mister Tomas.”

  “You saved my life, and my crew. You can call me Peter, Captain.”

  Kyle chuckled. “For right now, we’re going to keep things formal. From your words on the surface, I take it you know about the Screaming Skulls? And possibly my uncle, Steven Hartley?”

  The man blinked. “Of course! The Butcher of Petrov, and the screaming demons who served him. That was some hard, bloody work there, but it had to be done. Otherwise… we might all be the slaves of robots now. I know the Huxley’s better, though. What’s your relation to Brian Huxley? And did you know Jason Karth? Those two helped train me and my men, back in the day.”

  “Brian Huxley is my grandfather. Jason Karth, an old family friend. And ‘The Butcher’ is my uncle. I contacted him, while you were out… and he asked me to offer you a job.”

  Tomas studied him for a moment. “....I don’t think I ever met the man, but with his reputation… Honestly, I’d be glad to. I need to report in to whoever’s in charge back at the Alliance, first, but after that, I’d definitely be interested.”

  He closed his eyes, and gave a soft grunt as something audibly clicked in his back… there was a soft hiss… and a fairly foul scent, as Elise lifted a cylinder from out of his back, which appeared to be a glass tube of a murky brown fluid. She took it over to a sink, settling it in, and starting to rinse it out.

  Kyle watched it for a moment, before turning back to Tomas. “That’s actually the thing. We’d need you to delay reporting back to the Alliance, as part of it. They’d give you a cranial implant… full immortality… as well as overhaul and upgrade your existing cybernetics. You would also get to report back to the Alliance, after… but… the specifics about the monsters? We’re trying to keep secret.”

  The marine blinked. “... I’m not sure how to take this. You didn’t just kill me, or abandon me there, so it can’t be a ‘now that you know, we have to kill you’ thing…. And you’re not part of some government?”

  “Negative. The Sapper is mine, free and clear. The Skulls are in fact contracted to help suppress word about those ‘Dragons’, as well as protect colonies from them, but I don’t work for them. Mostly this is me… and if you’re willing, yourself… doing them a favor, and being paid for it.”

  “...Can I have some time to think about it?”

  “Of course.” There was a soft squeaking sound. Elise was cleaning out an internal compartment of Tomas’s cybernetics.

  “Gentlemen, we really should get him into a sanitary environment, and myself into a clean-suit for this. What I’m doing now will help, but ideally the inside of this thing should be as sterile as possible. The whole med-bay can be sterilized, but we’ll need to seal it for that.”

  Kyle chuckled. “Well then. I leave you in her hands. We’re going to want to stop acceleration and shut off the main drive to do a complete structural integrity check. Is there a best time for this chamber to be zero G?”

  Elise nodded. “Actually, yes. Sterilizing will be much better in zero G. I can lift everything up and truly completely clean the place, its a pain otherwise.”

  “Well then.” Kyle tapped his wrist. “Everyone, we’re going to be shutting off gravity for about an hour to do an integrity check. Anyone have something that needs gravity, we can delay it. If you have something that being zero-G would be useful for, we can delay a bit so you can get ready to start.”

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  He paused. After a few seconds, he got a response.

  Thor buzzed in. ~We’re going to re-organize the cargo bay and get these power lines properly secured. Zero-G would make that easier. Can you make it an hour and a half, starting in… five minutes?~

  Another call-in, from Barry. ~Heading to the bathroom, mind making it ten? I hate using that in zero-G.~

  Kyle chuckled. “Go ahead.” He glanced to Elise. “Go ahead and get whatever you need ready. I’ll get me gear setup for the testing, and you can start cleanup. Depending on what the first test shows, I might need to run another.”

  A quick nod. Kyle stepped out of the medbay, as Elise started getting to work, and headed back towards the main engine; once the door was shut, he tapped his wrist. “Poisseux, you mind keeping an eye on Tomas for right now? If he tries anything, I want to know about it.”

  ~Not a problem, Captain.~

  ***

  Testing the integrity of the ship was a deceptively simply process. Attaching various sensors to the support structure of the ship, and checking for cracks, seams, or issues, was nice. And if you continued to do so, through a steady acceleration process, all the way to zero… and checked it again… and then kept checking it constantly as you dialed back up to full acceleration…

  In theory, anything wrong should pop up in a noticeable fashion. The problem was…. Despite knowing how intensely durable the ship should be for her size, Kyle had trouble believing the results.

  Some of the stealth plating had been cracked, and needed to be replaced. The hull was scraped in a few spots. But aside from that?

  She was in perfect shape. No twists, no warps… she might have flexed slightly on impact with the planet… but he could do what little patching-up needed to happen…

  And get right back to it immediately. There was no need to go back in for an overhaul, repairs, anything of the sort.

  He stared at it for a moment. He was, oddly enough, hoping there was something serious that needed work. Give him a few weeks to hang around in the Ash system and persuade his friends to ditch the whole ‘space exploration’ thing.

  It was nice, having his friends around. And Poisseux was both capable and useful. Having some people who didn’t really need to sleep would be extremely useful. Almost made him tempted to get the final step taken, and all of his thinking moved from flesh-and-blood into the implant.

  But… it would never be the same. It would be crossing a bridge he could never come back from.

  Kyle sighed… and tapped his wrist. “The ship tests out solid. I’ll be monitoring it as we resume acceleration, but we should be fine. In fact, I’ve got spare stealth plating on-board, so we should be back at 100% by the time we reach Ash. Maybe just buy something else for ground exploration.”

  He looked at the timer. “We’ve still got ten minutes before the time is up. Everybody send up a message when you don’t have a use for the zero-G anymore. And we’ll start accelerating again.”

  They were still moving. Extremely fast, even. But like every space journey, you’d spend most of the time either accelerating or decelerating. Darkspace might be smaller than the real world, but it still had a fair amount of distance to it.

  He stretched, and looked around central engineering, giving the read-outs a quick once-over… before he got an incoming buzz.

  ~Captain. Our passenger seems to have overheard the mention of our destination. I don’t think he’s hacked into our systems, and our internal comms are encrypted. So… he likely literally heard Elise’s headphones from across the room.~

  Kyle turned to face the hallway… and immediately sent a signal to his powered armor, which started to approach, clanking its way down the hallway. “Oh? Why do you say that?”

  ~The moment you said the name ‘Ash’, he was visibly startled, and… Oh. Ahhh… He reacted again when he heard the power armor moving. He’s…. Well, hell. He just punctured Elise’s cleansuit with a medical las-cutter. He… appears to be taking her hostage.~

  As the armor stepped up, stopping beside him and unfolding, Kyle sighed… and started carefully detaching from his support frame, moving in. “There’s a sealed ventilation shaft leading to the med-bay, and a hidden program under the label ‘Clean Sweep’. Search and it pops up. Open it up, but don’t execute it yet. There’s a sentry turret hidden in every room of the ship that will pop out and kill anyone not on the approved friendly list, and it… might… take out the people frozen in the cargo bay.”

  The response was delayed for a few. ~..I see it. I can also see the approved friendly list. Has me and your friends on it. Why am I even listed? I don’t have a body anymore.~

  “I was going to offer to pay for cloning you a new one, if you wanted. Don’t worry about that right now.”

  He started snapping himself into the suit, one connection at a time. “Go ahead and send an assault drone through the shaft. I’m gonna open the door. You can send the drone through. If he exposes himself, either me or the drone will take him out.”

  ~Affirmative. He’s… opening up a comm.~

  The last spot sealed into place, and Kyle started heading towards the medical bay… as the headphones started.

  ~This is Alliance Sergeant Peter Tomas. I understand you’re currently taking me to a United Worlds system, and why you wanted to do this all friendly-like. I’m afraid I’m going to need to decline your offer. I need you to start thawing out my friends. You have one hour to put one of them on comms, or I start cutting pieces off of your friendly redheaded medic. I am fully aware of the shitshow I’d get for killing Captain Huxley, and have no intention of doing so. I just want a safe trip to Alliance space. No more, no less. You thaw us all out and get us there, we walk out the door. No hard feelings.~

  Kyle sighed. Stopping at the door, he glanced at his HUD. “Where’s the assault drone?”

  ~On the way. He’s put Elise between himself and the door.~

  Kyle shook his head. “Thor… grab me a needle rifle from the armory, please, and one magazine. He can hear me moving in the power armor.”

  The response was immediate. ~Got it, Captain. Just gonna shoot him through the wall?~

  “Exactly. Just nowhere near the head. Still want to save him if possible, and… I believe Elise is actually in that body, not in the server room remoting in?”

  It took a few moments for the response to come through. ~...Actually, no. I think all of us are in the server room. Honestly, after our little impact on planet Thor II, it seemed like the smart idea to keep ourselves in the most protected part.~

  “...Thor II?”

  As Thor stepped around the bend, carrying a needle rifle, he chuckled. “What, I was the first person to set foot on both worlds. Doesn’t that mean I get naming rights?”

  Kyle sighed. “...Yeah, no. Elise, do you want to just cut your connection to that body? You might get hurt in this, and I’d prefer you didn’t feel it.”

  ~Can I try kicking his ass, first? I wanna give it a shot as soon as you distract him.~

  “....Sure. I’m right outside the door in power armor. Gonna go ahead and open the door in… Ten…. Nine…”