((I'm really not sure if nine capgauss and a missile turret can drop a Teradon's shields, judging from my experiences in Deneb, but that's alright.))

"Spirit of Divinia, this is Whiplash 1."

"Go ahead, Whiplash 1."

"Situation is FUBAR here. Station defenses online. Phantom Blade is dust. Orders?"

"Stalwart, can you confirm?"

"Affirmative."

"Was Whiplash 1 involved?"

"Negative. Phantom Blade hailed the station and was met with taunts and insults from Family Galactic Travel before the defenses came online."

"Understood. Stalwart, are you currently under fire?"

"Negative. All turrets are focused on Phantom Blade."

"Copy that."

A few moments passed. And then....

"This is High Chancellor Chi. Stalwart, do you read?"

"Five by five, ma'am."

"This operation has gone on for far too long and costed us far too much. You are cleared to engage the pirate station. If the fugitive escapes, fine; pick him up afterwards. If not, that's fine too. But as far as I'm concerned, Family Galactic Travel declared war on us with the death of the Phantom Blade. I am simply returning the favor. Let it be known henceforth that Itani High Council views Family Galactic Travel's destruction of Teradon Phantom Blade as an act of war, and has issued a declaration of war in response. If your shields drop, you are ordered to jump to the nearest empty sector. Reinforcements will be there shortly."

"With pleasure, ma'am."

"Chancellor Chi, this is Whiplash 1. I'll try to distract the turrets and give Stalwart some breathing room."

"Copy that, Whiplash 1. Good hunting."

Stalwart sent one last hail to the station before unleashing upon the rat's nest. "Pirate station, this is IDF Teradon frigate Stalwart. The destruction of our compatriots has earned you a declaration of war. I say again: From this moment on, the Itani nation is at war with Family Galactic Travel, by order of High Chancellor Chi. Have a nice day." That accomplished, it then repositioned itself away from as many of the turrets as possible, pointing its nose square at the accursed station, and then let loose with everything it had. Gatling and Neutron turret fire smashed through every last vismetal window. Gauss bolts began to melt away the xithricite plating. The station then started to realize what was up and re-aimed all of their turrets at the remaining Teradon, but Sam was entirely anticipating this. He glanced around quickly and radar-tagged the four turrets that had line-of-sight on the frigate, and then set to work. After swinging his Valkyrie around, he loosed a Sunflare at the nearest one, causing the turret's threat level programming to ignore the Teradon and begin firing at what it thought was now the greatest threat. Sam repeated this process for the other three, doling out rockets and neutron blasts to keep them distracted. The plan wasn't going entirely smoothly...his ship was taking quite the beating, but the Teradon wasn't, which was the important part.

Several minutes later, it was finished. The station had broken into four distinct sections, causing the reactor to detonate. The turrets still desperately were trying to fend off the Valkyrie, in a forlorn attempt to fulfill their duty.

"Spirit of Divinia, this is Stalwart. Mission accomplished. Heading for home."

"Copy that. Nice work. Whiplash 1, do you read?"

Silence.

"Whiplash 1, this is Spirit of Divinia. Do you read?"

Nothing.

"This is Spirit of Divinia trying to contact Whiplash 1. Whiplash 1, do you read?"

A faint burst of static. And then....

"Mayday, mayday. This is Whiplash 1. Mayday."

"Stalwart, can you assist?"

"Negative, we cannot remain on station any longer. These turrets are shredding us."

"Copy that. Whiplash 1, this is Spirit of Divinia. What's your status?"

"I am disabled and drifting through the sector. Jump drive and engine offline. Oxygen levels dropping. Hull integrity is low."

"Roger that. Can you give us your location?"

"Still in India 8. That's all I know."

"Copy. Just make your aura as strong as you can; we should be able to pick up on it."

"Roger that."

He put every ounce of his willpower into just that, but it proved to be too much. Exhaustion and lack of oxygen caused him to black out.

But when he awoke, he found himself in the same exact medical bay from just a few hours prior. He began to worry if it was just a dream...but a small black jewelry box on his nightstand quickly dashed these fears. He opened it, revealing a bronze star.

Rin was halfway to the armory when the station shuddered. Then it shuddered some more. This wasn't good. What were those idiots doing out there? Then the sirens kicked in, making Rin jump. He shot the nearest three to calm his nerves. He figured they were probably blasting an entrance into the station, so he started jogging to get to the armory faster. He needed a little more time to prepare.

When he was just down the hall from the armory, the station started shuttering again, much more violently, and it didn't stop. Oh hell, were they trying to destroy the place? What could LeberMac have possibly done to piss them off enough that they were willing to kill a station full of people over it? What sort of "peaceful monks" would kill thousands of mostly innocent if shady civilians over one drunken cross-dressing back-shooting imbecile and a few smartass pirates?

Did... did LeberMac get caught cheating on the High Chancellor? Shit, what sort of braindead fool cheated on a freaking psychic?

An explosion somewhere behind him knocked him over. Ask rhetorical questions later, Rin, kill people now. The people who needed killing were outside. He was inside. They had more firepower. Why hadn't the turrets dealt with them yet? Turrets must be insufficient. No other suitable weaponry. Station reactor. That could be powerful enough if he could weaponize it. Maybe he could get it to explode in their general direc-

His line of thought was interrupted when the reactor blew and the shockwave knocked him halfway through a wall. He waved the birdies out of his vision and struggled free. At least the ringing in his ears was drowning out those annoying sirens. Then he noticed he was having trouble getting his footing, and stuff was moving around in ways it shouldn't. Just as he realized it was the artificial gravity that was broken, and not his much abused sense of balance, it started to really spaz out. He was thrown against the other wall, then the floor, then the ceiling. It tried to fling him back to the ground, but he had a hold on the struts in the drop-ceiling, so he just hurt his arms more instead. After that, the artificial gravity system gave up the ghost, and his weight gradually diminished until he was just floating.

Not floating peacefully, mind you. Apparently the station was now spinning slowly, so he was still being jostled around a bit. And the air was thinning. He'd had to give up his EVA suit to fit in that infiltration suit, so this was not good at all.

Out of ideas, Rin finally decided he just didn't care anymore. He found a small janitor's closet and let himself in. Then he used the last of the sealing goop he had in his pockets to make the room airtight. Fortunately they used plastic tiles for the ceiling, not that permeable cardboard-like other people liked.

That done, he popped open his emergency air bottle and then took enough painkillers to numb his entire body while the room pressurized. For now, he was going to finally get a good night's sleep. Later there would be a reckoning, but that could wait until he woke up in the cloning tank after he ran the room out of air. This body was shot anyway. He was just disappointed that he hadn't gotten to go out in a bang. There was a bang, but he wasn't at the center. What good was dying if you didn't splatter the enemy with your entrails? Oh well, maybe Rin #9583 would have better luck.

His last thought as he drifted out of consciousness was that hive controlled infiltration class power armor could survive and function just fine in a vacuum. Muahahahahaa....zzzzzzzzzz

((OOC: two missile turrets, actually, and six gauss turrets. Those can certainly drop your shields, but it normally takes longer. The lighting mines help. But hey, if you can be a slightly overpowered psi, I can have slightly overpowered turrets. :P ))

((I'm beginning to wonder if I took that last one a bit too far, actually.... Feel free to voice your concerns and I'll make some rewrites.))

To far? I was thinking perfect... death, insanity, betrayal... it was perfect.

((Not over the top Samwise. Some slight errors, but they were covered by Rin, so no probs☺.))

This was getting repetitive and tiresome. Every time he had a simple mission, the bloody smurfs would come along and create mass-casualties in order to stop his plans from actually coming to fruition. This time it was bordering on ridiculous. Who the hell would kill off a space station for a good-for-nothing drunkard and an ex-soldier who just happened to be the teeniest bit of a war criminal? This just showed what a callous and irresponsible lot the Itani was! Fortunately, they had missed this time. The part of the station that contained Asteroth and Lebermac had been torn away before the fusion generator, that was the heart, or stomach probably, of the station, had exploded, washing a wave of extreme radiation over everyone in the immediate vicinity. As it was, his dose-o-meter showed dangerous levels of exposure that was going to need expensive RNA medichines. More expenses; as if this venture hadn't cost him enough already.

He counted his immediate belongings, and uttered a mental sigh of annoyance. Three suits, one Warthog, still docked in the relic of a Teradon that had been Rin's. Probably was still actually. He noticed a heavy burst of exotic particles and the Itani cruiser that followed, into the station sector, on a vector for the Teradon. He looked up at the ceiling, or floor, he wasn't quite sure what was what to be honest, and screamed at the top of his lungs.

"By the long and swinging tits of the Lady! Why me Lady Serco, why the hell do you want to tease me so?"

The Itani ship was immediately engaged by the defensive turrets, but only took minor damage as it slowly twisted through space, allowing the cargo door to scoop up a trashed and leaking Valkyrie before re-engaging the jump engines.

Asteroth breathed again, they had apparently left. This time, hopefully for good. He sent out a query pulse to the MysticBot, but didn't get a coherent answer back. Apparently, it had worked its miracle and wreaked havoc on the other Teradon, but had lost functionality in the process. The Phantom some-thing was dead at least. Asteroth considered his options. Again.

Three suits, four tasks requiring suits. Without regret, he disregarded Rin as a casualty, or one that was soon going to become one when the station died completely, and sent the third empty suit on its impellers towards the smashed MysticBot.

He checked the Lebermac suit and frowned. Something had corrupted parts of its control circuitry, but was dormant right now. Asteroth wondered what it was until he recognized the syntax of the intruder. Somehow, the Hive had infiltrated his precious infiltration suit. He chuckled at the irony, but relegated the information for later pondering. For now, a simple block and a command that the suit was only allowed to take orders from his brainpal should allow Lebermac to survive long enough for the journey.

The MysticBot suit collected the remains of the bot and shoved the pieces inside the suit proper. He controlled the three suits to meet up inside the docking port of Rin's Teradon. Back to square one, but this time with Lebermac safely unconscious and under his control. He secured Lebermac's suit in the cargo bay of the Warthog and then opened the MysticBot suit. The assorted junk inside was almost worthless, except for the small crystal that housed the guiding mind behind the bot. He inserted the crystal into the suit's mem-store expansion slot and turned the suit off. This was definitely for later.

Without haste, he strapped into his Warthog, engaged the thrusters on full power and disregarded the scorch marks his ship left inside the Teradon as he catapulted out of the port. Naturally, without a central management system, the defence turrets started hammering at him immediately upon him launching. He dodged them easily, and boosted for open space. The jump engines worked as they should, and he left the destroyed station, the smashed Teradon and probably the corpse of Rin behind him.

The Valent station that was his immediate target was fortunately only one jump away. He docked without incident, paid the station dues, and unloaded the Lebermac suit. More error messages appeared like a tsunami of bad luck. He overrode the jerky movements and initiated a hard-core hunter-killer system to keep the Hive in check. He reckoned that he would have at the maximum 30 minutes before he would have to do something radical to the suit itself. He squinted as he thought about possible scenarios, and then disconnected the stealth and aura-dampening systems, tossing them in the hold. If the Hive won the fight over the suit, it would at least not have the prohibited Serco tech, only a 900 kg killing machine with an anti-matter powered engine core. He could deal with that, or he hoped he could.

He walked the two suits into the station, and datavised a request for a meeting with a Valent official. His mission had been solved, he had brought Lebermac to any Valent station; he wanted to get paid. When the official appeared, his heart sank immediately. This seriously did not look like someone that could pay out 60 million credits.

"Mr. Asteroth, I understand that you have Mr. Lebermac in your custody?"

In reply, Asteroth gave an order to the Lebermac suit to crack open and spill the unconscious pilot onto the floor. The suit refused. Asteroth loaded another H-K program and used the confusion it caused in the Lebermac suit, to manually override the suit integrity seals. The suit parted down the flank and allowed Lebermac to tumble onto the floor. Asteroth had been wrong, Lebermac was very much conscious, and by the look of it, pretty pissed off. Probably something with the leg he reckoned. He’d have to get over it, or not. He ignored the screams and ramblings, filtered the vocals of Lebermac away and instead focused on the official.

"My reward please."

"Ah, yes. Your reward. I am authorized to credit you with 60 million Valent Fusedollars, or their equivalent in UIT credits."

"What the hell am I to do with Valent money? I'll take the credits."

"Very well. Transfer initiated and finalised."

Asteroth checked his account. A total of 60.000 credits had entered his account.

"You must have misplaced a couple of zero's."

"Ah, I do not think so. The official exchange rate of the Valent Fusedollar to UIT credits is 1000 to one. And since you wanted credits, our obligations have been met. Have a nice day."

Asteroth shot the man in the groin. He then shot the three other Valent employees that were in the room and ended up pointing his thin-gun at Lebermac's agitated features. He tuned him in again and was immediately assaulted by the screams of outrage that apparently had been going on for a while. Asteroth considered, decided, and then holstered the gun. Fuck it, the Valent coorporation could have Lebermac now. Undoubtedly, they would be jinxed, shot, have their fortunes destroyed or worse. He closed the ex-Lebermac suit, and was immediately assaulted via tightband laser communications. The fucking Hive. He shrugged mentally, and walked out on the closed suit, the screaming Lebermac and the dead Valent employees. He was going back to sleep. He was not going to come out of stasis again until, well, for a long time at least!

Rin opened his eyes, and saw James standing cautiously at the opposite wall, well out of arm's reach (always prudent when your patient was volatile). That meant he was in the cloning bay at Sedina D-14. He had a fresh mind and a fresh body. Perfect way to begin a crusade. Oh yes, the smurfs were going to pay. Not today, because this was going to be big. He'd need to prepare. But they would pay.

He verified that James had set up the privacy partition, then climbed out and hopped into a freshly laundered jumpsuit. "Hey James, do me a favor. You've got the next clone ready already, right?"

"Of course."

"Sweet. Go ahead and start prepping it. I'll be right back."

With that, he strolled out the door. About fifteen minutes later, the next Rin clone woke up and got dressed. "There we go. Suffocation is lame. Splash damage is way more fun."

This time, he took the time to strap on his utility belt and a random assortment of armor. Unless it was a special occasion, he always used a random mix of stuff. Made things more interesting.

Once he was heading for the door, James interjected, "So I take it you don't intend to make another immediate return?"

"Nope, I'm going to grab something to eat. That's why I've got the armor. Can't have some random punk killing me before they even finish cooking my meal!"

"Oh, um.. right. Of course. Good luck then." Once Rin was safely gone, James pulled his headset and joystick out from under the desk and returned to his game. "Back. Sorry, work comes first and all."

"Oh yeah, no problem," was the heavily garbled reply. It was a game about the old days, when people lived in the mud and even primitive wheeled vehicles cost more than modern high end military spacecraft. Also, their comm systems were terrible, and the game strove for realism in that regard. "We took down the escort, and I got everybody to agree to wait before we dropped the carrier."

"Awesome. Just let me gain some altitude and we'll start bombing." Games with gravity and air were so crazy! Space was boring, just simple inertia. Want to turn? Counter-thrust. Simple. In air things were interesting, because you could change your direction just by rotating your craft so the air pushed it where you wanted it to go. And you had gravity to give you potential energy, so you could maneuver enough to travel short distances even if you ran out of fuel. And you had to pay attention to your orientation, because if you rolled the wrong way you'd start losing altitude.

Maybe when he'd saved up some money, he could get out of this rotten pirate den and move to a gas mine or something. He heard that some worlds had such dense air and low gravity that you could put on artificial wings and then fly under your own power. That sounded way more fun than just floating about in zero-g.

--

Rin managed to make it though lunch (he'd woken up at about noon station time) without needing to kill anybody. Nope, that guy he'd shot hadn't needed to be killed. But seriously, hitting on the waitress in the middle of the diner? It was just such a rude thing to do. If they had been the only people there, sure, that wouldn't be a big deal. But to do it when Rin was waiting to be waited on? Diners are for eating, and brothels are for molesting the staff. Why did people find this so hard to keep straight?

Maybe he should make some signs and post them outside his favorite diners. "Attention potential patron: This is a diner. If you are hungry for food, come dine with us. If you are hungry for human flesh, kindly try one of the many fine whorehouses this station is home to. We recommend The Gluestick."

Not that Rin frequented such places. He didn't have any moral objections; he just didn't understand the point. It was like playing a zombie survival game, but using invincibility cheats. He got his women the hard way: raw undiluted awesomeness.

"For example," he said out loud as he meandered through the corridors, "I could do something like this!"

He spun around and kicked a "wet floor" sign into the path of a couple. The male of the pair tripped over it and landed on his face. Rin dove in their general direction, slid along the wet floor, and caught his shoe on a dry patch. This flipped him back upright just before he reached the wall. He stuck his arms out and up and then kicked off with his legs, effectively cartwheeling partway up the wall. As his momentum began to die, he pulled in his limbs to accelerate his spin, doing several flips before throwing out and arm to slap at the ground, propelling himself sideways into a roll. He popped out of the roll into a flip over the man, who had just gotten back up, and snatched his hat off. Landing in a bow, he tossed the hat back to the kind gentlman and strolled away, ignoring the woman who was apparently fumbling to throw articles of clothing at him. Or were those teargas canisters? Nope, underwear.

"Yep, that's how I roll."

"Sorry, what was that?" said James.

"Huh? Where'd you come from?"

"An undisclosed residence in Odia. Why?"

Rin opened his eyes to see the interior of the cloning bay. "I died?"

"As usual."

"No, yeah, I mean... Uh, how many times have I died so far today?"

"Just the once sir. Last time you died was a few days ago."

Oh. It was a dream. Of course it was a dream. That explained the random scene focusing on a character who wasn't him. Also, people usually don't simply cartwheel up the wall in reality. Well, in realities that involve standard gravity and unaugmented humans, anyway. Probably there were some rare individuals who could do that sort of thing, but not Rin... Then again, he'd never tried. Maybe he could. He got dressed, and then darted at the wall. Just before he hit, he sort of dived head first into it, utterly failing at doing anything resembling awesomeness.

"Um Rin? Are you in a hurry or something? Don't you usually just go pick a fight when you want a more interesting death?"

"I ain't tryin' ta kill myself, dolt! I was testing something!"

"The whole, 'if atoms are mostly empty space, why can't I slide through the wall' routine? It's because they're like magnets. They repel each other without having to touch in the first place."

"No, not that. I was just, uh... never mind. What time is it? I knew automatically in my dream, but I think we're real this time. People don't automatically know the time in reality, right? Because if this is a dream, maybe I just think people don't automatically know the time as part of the dream..."

"It's 19:32 station time, Rin." After dealing with Rin for years, James no longer needed to consciously disregard his rambling. It was, as Rin would say, "totally automatic". Except he'd use a weird voice whenever he said that. James hadn't ever asked why. Or maybe he had, but the reasoning had been so broken that his mind had been unable to retain it. That was often the case with Rin.

"Oh, excellent! That mean's Stacy's BBQ is still servin' the good meat." By this point, Rin had finished putting on his armor, so he strolled off. Unlike the FGT Resort, he already knew everything worth knowing in Sedina D-14. He had the actual blueprints memorized, for those occasions where he needed to blast his way through walls and floors to reach someplace.

He watched the news as he ate. Looked like the Itani were claiming self defense on the destruction of the Resort. Other residents of Latos were disputing that, claiming the Itani attacked the station unprovoked and then when the station used its turrets in self defense, they destroyed it. Rin was more inclined to believe the Latosians, especially after an official from Odia made a statement backing them up. Not that it would accomplish anything. If the smurfs could get away with bombing civilians on Serco worlds without losing their moral high ground, there was no way they'd take any real flack for bombing a pirate-run station. Even if most residents were just normal folks, working as janitors or nurses or whatever. There was always some excuse. Phantom splinter factions, pirates, whatever was handy.

Not to say that the Serco were any better. All that corruption in the UIT? They inherited it from the Serco. They just didn't have that false sense of honor compelling them to sweep their dirt thoroughly under the rug the way the Toasters did. At least the UIT gave people more personal freedom than the other two. Even so, they still made Rin sick.

These presumptuous toads who called themselves governments needed to be washed away by a river of death. Rin would bring that river. Besides, somebody needed to protect the poor asteroids. He'd come to terms with the fact that the roids' rebellion was inevitable, and that humanity would probably be wiped out in their wrath. But he could strive to delay it. That was what had led to his becoming a pirate in the first place. He'd been an activist, then an eco-terrorist. But stealing stuff was just so much fun that he'd made it a full-time hobby. Besides, the more he'd looked into things, the more he'd realized that the problem wasn't the miners, it was society. Society was too closed-minded to accept the reality that asteroids were living creatures! They're just rocks, Rin, they don't have feelings. Bullshit! You're just a bundle of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, yet don't you have feelings? Do you feel it when I shoot a hole in your face?!"

"SHUDDUP RIN, we're trying to watch the tube!" shouted a guy called Joe, who was a few tables over smoking a big cigar.

"Oh, sorry, didn't realize my brainspeak was leaking out my mouth again. Waiter! Bring me another sandwich to plug that leak!"

The waiter rolled his eyes and delivered the food he'd preemptively gathered once he'd heard Rin's mental rant go verbal. Meanwhile, the newscasters had segued into another story.

"And if you thought two wrecked stations wasn't enough catastrophe for one day, I have good news! We're receiving reports now from a Valent station that is apparently under assault by some kind of cyber terrorist! We aren't really sure what's going on yet, but it looks like somebody tried hacking into their mainframe. They detected it and started trying to isolate the network. That's when all hell broke loose. We don't have many details yet, but they're reporting massive casualties via haywire defense systems, malfunctioning safety equipment, and a rampaging robot! Sweet, huh? Oh, this just in. Somebody managed to capture a video clip of the robot I just mentioned. It should be showing up on your screens in... ah, there it is now! Get a load o' that!"

Rin grinned when he recognized the infiltration armor. And was that LeberMac who was riding around on its shoulders? Yep, only one full leg. Rin wondered where he'd gotten that bazooka from. Sure looked like they were having fun!

Rin saluted the display with his mug full of milk. "Here's to Greyspace!"

"TO GREYSPACE!" rejoined his fellow patrons.

((it's been almost two months...safe to say this one's dead?))

((s/dead/concluded/))

Yeah, I felt that last chapter was a good way to end it. Why, was it not done?

Well, feel free to start a new one?

Who's game?

I'm down.

Already plsnning it.

LeberMac woke up and realized he'd not contributed to this thread for fer 6 months...