Rogue Runners

{|style="width:100%; color:#FFF;"
 * valign="top" style="padding:5px;"|

Coasting as silent as a dream, their target vessel cut a dark swathe against the backdrop of stars. No radio emissions, no thermals, no exhaust trail. The ship’s blocky, brutal silhouette blended in with the background darkness with a near-perfect uniformity. She drifted, and appeared to all outside eyes a dead ship.

Jacques Lumen knew better, he had been piloting through the Gauntlet for long enough.. The distinct bristling of low-grade civilian weapons system, the steady pulse of query signals out into the darkness, as quiet to a sensor as a whisper, searched for any automated programs to handshake with. If the query caught the pod on an open frequency, then it would initiate an automatic response, and the ship would see them as clear as day.

Thankfully, the two-man pod had shielding to prevent such automated queries from taking advantage of an open system.

“Standard Merchant freighter,” Jacques said to the man behind him. “We’re looking at thirty guns, twenty two tonnes of cargo aboard. Small-time shipment, nothing big.” He turned back to the viewscreen. The pod crept closer, and the imposing blocks of the ship ahead of them grew larger in the glass viewscreen.

“Doesn’t matter,” the man behind him said, picking the gear for their mission, and strapping it to a belt across his metal armour. “We’re only looking for specific items, we’re not looking to take everything they have.”

“Right,” Jacques keyed the approach system to lock their angle. “I’m bringing her in to the airlock,” he said, stooping down to fetch his helmet. He put it over his head, and twisted it on with a hiss and a click. A few experimental breaths, and he confirmed the O2 systems were functioning.

He heard a similar hiss from behind him, and a deep breath over his comms unit.

The pod crept close enough to the ship that they could see the circular indent of a port side airlock on the hull. Jaune stood up, and walked up to the cockpit, resting a hand on the seat and motioning forward. “Watch for security cams,” he said.

Scoffing, Jacques looked up at his slit visor. “Please, a ship this size? They wouldn’t have any. There’d be no point,” he shrugged. “Ship’s too big to monitor every angle, and their sensors would see everything for them.”

The other man smirked. “Except for a Pod.”

“Except,” Jacques flashed Jaune a grin from over his shoulder, “for a pod.”

The stocky, two-man insertion pod drifted closer. Jacques didn’t dare pulse the thrusters this close to the ship. Not even a quick burst from a ventral stabiliser. He inched closer to the airlock, engaged the docking clamps with a flick of his wrist, and felt the pod lurch.

“We’re secure,” he said, unbuckling his harness and grabbing a slug rifle from beneath his seat. The viewscreen shimmered off, turning the view of the ship into a view of the stars. Their back camera flicked off, giving them a proper view of the stars ahead of them, rather than a back view of the ship they were inching towards.

The pair of men walked towards the airlock at the back of the pod. The other man turned to Jacques. “Time?”

Jacques checked his wrist. ”As soon as we pop the cork, we got sixty seconds before the ship’s automated lockdown kicks in.”

The other man stared at the airlock. “Sixty seconds to run a half klick?” He looked back at Jacques. “That’s a quarter mile.”

Jacques nodded, feeling his heart thrumming with a nervous energy. “We can do it, Jaune.”

Jaune Gusteau nodded in reply, both of them assuring the other. “Alright,” he said, hitting Jaune on the shoulder, and bringing out a pistol. Let’s get some money.”

The airlock cracked open, and clattered to the floor. A klaxon began wailing, and the timer started. Sixty seconds.

The two men took off to the left side at a dead sprint, rushing past doorways and transport tubes that went between decks. They ran past an engineering bay, close to the heart of the ship, and ducked right to bisect the vessel and head to the tube they needed.

Jacques hit the ladder first, sliding down without even bothering to grab ahold. Jaune went next, pistol out and covering their rears. Jacques’ rifle felt heavy in his hands as he ran, his visor glossing over with each breath he took.

The klaxons wailed again; fifty seconds until total lockdown. ALl airlocks, all portholes, all ship systems would freeze up, drop shutters, seal bulkheads. They had little time.

Three private security types rounded the corner in front of them, blocking off their path. One of them pointed at the pair, and yelled something that Jacques couldn’t hear above the sound of the klaxons warbling above him.

The two men kept running, closing the short distance between them and the trio with powerful, long strides. The pair were upon the security officers before guns could be raised. Jaune slid his pistol into its holster, and brought out a heavy, metal maintenance jack. He struck out as he sprinted past, catching one of them in the helmet. The soft material crunched under the heft of the metal baton, blue flecks of paint flicking off and spinning in the light as they, and the body, fell to the ground with a thud.

Jacques ducked left to avoid a shotgun coming up from the right. He pushed off the decking beneath him, braced his other leg on the wall, and launched himself at the man, twisting his upper body in the air as he went. Sticking his other leg out, Jacques felt a crack as the femur made contact with the man’s jaw, dislocating the bone and knocking the man out cold.

The third man, sandwiched between the two men, used the butt of his rifle to jab at Jaune. Jaune was already running past him, stopping briefly to sweep his leg out and under the third man, knocking him off balance.

Jacques ran on ahead, so he didn’t see the pistol shot Jaune put in the man’s forehead.

Forty seconds; another alarm blast ripped through the silence of the ship.

They ducked around a corner, and could hear someone sprinting behind them. They didn’t bother to stop, even when shots started ringing out, and bullets bit at their heels, shins, and the decking around their feet. A shot grazed Jacques in the side, ricocheted off the thick armour, and embedded itself somewhere between the porous decking below them.

They pulled left into a room, and down another tube with a ladder, and into the upper catwalks of an expansive, cavernous cargo hold, lined with metal boxes and crates. They jumped down, not bothering with the stairs, hitting the upper levels of the crates, and rolling off into the middle of the stacks.

Thirty seconds.

Doors around them opened, and more guards clad in blue flooded into the room. Jacques raised his rifle and shot at two as they ran, hitting one in the chest. Red stained his fatigues as he fell, and the other two with him dove out of the way.

“Here it is!” Jaune said, stopping beside one of the crates. A rust-coloured bull glared leeringly up at them, and beneath it, the emblazoned black lettering of ‘BDS’ stood out. Jaune put his maintenance jack on the lid of the crate and jammed his fist down on the other end. The lid popped open.

Six lockboxes greeted them. Jacques didn’t waste any time, he just grabbed three, strapped them into the pouches on his armour, and turned away. Movement at the other end of the stacks caught his eye, and he raised his rifle to shoot at the shapes as they crept about.

Jaune strapped his three boxes in, and turned to Jacques. “So,” he said. “Exfil plan?”

Jacques looked around. They were in the open, beneath three criss-crossing catwalks. Too exposed, and not many ways out. He turned to Jaune and flicked his head to one of the lower-level doors. “Follow me!”

Twenty seconds.

They hit the door controls as they ran, slipping through just tight enough that their arms caught on the locks as they hissed open. Jacques dropped his rifle, cursed in his head, but kept sprinting.

Jaune paused at an intersection. Jacques ran past and shoved him to keep moving. He did, but behind Jacques this time. They sprinted, wheezing into their suits, oxygen flashing red. They were using their internal supplies this whole time—a rookie mistake.

They came to the edge of the ship. A seven inch thick plexiglass porthole separated them from the void of space beyond. Jaune and Jacques exchanged looks, but before they could speak, a hail of gunfire made them flatten against the wall. The automatic fire never let up for a second, and Jacques dared a glance around the corner to see who it was shooting at them.

A featureless gold visor and a thick, broad chest plate greeted him.

“Tracker!” Jacques yelled, shrinking back behind the divet in the wall as the gunfire began chewing up the air where his face was a few moments prior.

Ten seconds flashed on their helmet timers, red, warning letters.

“What do we do?!” Jaune yelled from the other end of the corridor.

Jacques held a hand out. “Pistol! Quick!”

Jaune tossed him the gun, now armed with only a maintenance jack. He shook his head. “Not even that would pierce his armour,” Jaune said, flicking to the cannon in Jacques hand.

Jacques aimed at the window instead. “How about glass?”

Jaune said nothing. Time slowed to a crawl, and Jacques pulled the trigger.

The glass exploded the second a crack formed. The slug from the M6 didn’t break the glass, but the pressure differential did. The pair of men were sucked out into the void. The rush of air around them was replaced by their own panicked breaths.

The world around him frantically span. Jacques caught glimpses of the ship every few seconds, and the rest of the time he could only see stars. Looking down, Jacques tried to fight off the nausea as he pressed a button on his wrist, and started praying. Any god that listened, any demon willing to take his soul, any angel giving him providence.

A shape grew larger on his helmet. A yawning airlock and two grasping docking arms came closer. The pod grabbed the two men, perfectly homing in on their tracking beacons. The airlock hissed shut, oxygen flooded into the room, and Jacques tore his helmet off, sucking in lungfuls of air.

Zero seconds.

Jaune did the same, coughing and spluttering as he ripped his helmet and his empty Oxygen can off, casting them to one side. “You absolute maniac!”

Jacques laughed. “That’s the Rogue Runner way, baby!”

After a few seconds, Jaune joined in, and the two laughed together.

Outside of the pod, the ship drifted away, bulkheads sealed, porthole shutters closed, as silent as a dream.