Her newly formed body convulsed uncontrollably in agonizing spasms as her screams of pain and terror pierced the air. Gently an invisible force lifted her out of the waters of the resurrection pool, levitating her in the notum saturated air and embracing her with a soothing touch that penetrated throughout her entire being. Her screams and spasms eventually subsided as she floated there for some minutes, and she slowly became aware of the soothing music that flooded the garden.
Her senses returned to her, slowly at first, then in a flooding torrent of the sensations, images, and emotions she had experience that last several moments before she had died. The calming music that permeated the garden and reverberated into the very depths of her spirit and soul reassured her, reminding her that she was one of the Enlightened, one of the Chosen, and that nothing could cause her harm here.
Intoxicating warmth spread throughout her body. Stifling a yawn as she stretched, she closed her eyes and relaxed into the unseen force that held her aloft in the air. A slight breeze gingerly caressed the nudeness of her body as she sighed deeply and drifted off to sleep.
~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~
Several Months Earlier…
A satisfying burst echoed in the cave as the head of one of the Mantis’s clawing at her exploded into a bloody pulp. In short order several more corpses were piled into a heap on the first. After taking a moment to wipe the gore off of her armor with a rag, Fixerspy knelt beside the dead Mantis’s and proceeded to skin and dissect their remains. A short while later she stuffed a few mantis parts into one of her backpacks with a satisfied smile. She was distracted by the beeping of her datalink.
She glanced down at the now full bag of mantis parts that she had collected to fill her latest contract, an order from a tradeskiller for raw parts and supplies to make Mantis Armor. Some days it wasn’t worth the hassle of answering calls, but today curiosity got the better of her. Especially when she noticed that the call was coming in on her ultra-private line, was highly encrypted, and was not back traceable. That always meant two things… whoever was calling… whatever they were calling about… It was extremely illicit and extremely dangerous. And that meant $$$. An amused smile crossed her lips. She could use a little adventure after the hours of tediously camping the Mantis den.
“Er… Yes?” she offered hesitantly after tapping on the link.
“Travis Molen here, F’spy” a weary, husky voice said. In the background the sound of battle could be heard, peppered with the shouts of combatants and shrieks of dying mobs. It sounded dreadful.
Travis Molen was the Manager of the ICC ShuttlePort, or at least what was left of it. When the Aliens first invaded Rubi-Ka, the ShuttlePort was one of the areas that damn near got wiped off the map, permanently. Since that time the Aliens had been waging a non-stop campaign to conquer the area, but had been held in check by a small contingent of combined planetary defenses under Travis’s command.
“Hey Travis. Still stuck in hell, I see..”
“Unfortunately… Listen, I need another favor. The local Unicorn Commander here is up to his old crappy stunts again. I’ve got Neuts and Clansmen kissing the reclaim in droves cause he refuses to supply ammo to them… Says it is being held in emergency reserve for his troops until the next shipment arrives from Omni-Pol. Name your price, but I need you to say that you will help.”
“Love to help, Travis, but I damn near got caught by ARKS last time. I don’t know…”
“Dammit F’spy, I said name your price. I don’t have time for CareBear politics while people are dying.”
One of the most ancient and without dispute the most powerful guild on Rubi-Ka, ARKS were normally rather pleasant, friendly, and helpful fellows when you crossed paths with them. But the ICC ShuttlePort was an Officially Quarantined Area, and ARKS took very seriously their assigned duty to patrol the borders of the ShuttlePort and keep unauthorized people out. Especially Black-Marketeers.
“Well?” Travis let the question hang in the air a moment, waiting for Fixerspy’s answer.
“Hmm… Some friends of mine need some Technical Libraries… 3 or 4 bags of em? And some salvaged crates of random stuff you might have recovered from any of the crashes.”
“Deal!”
“I’ll drop the supplies over by Brandon on the beach. Can you send the libraries and salvage out as a shipment that I can pick up from a Noob on the mainland?”
“No Problem. But you will need to drop by and grab the shipping documents. I’ll leave them stuffed behind the nano vendor. And be damn careful with all these Unicorns around!”
“See you in 20”. She hung up the comlink and gridded out…
~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~
Getting onto the island had been tricky… and she dared not risk any data traces of her coming or going via the grid. “God Dammit” she muttered to herself. Things were not going according to plan. She had managed to drop off the supply shipment on the beach for Travis… (Brandon Thorn was a really great chap but he could be clueless sometimes), and had sneaked up and retrieved the shipping documents of the black-market goods she was getting as payment. But on the way out she had somehow been detected while sneaking past the shuttlepads… and now she had Omni Unicorn SquadLeader Fixx chasing her to the far side of the island.
“You have been detected…” The message had flashed almost innocently on her datalink.
“Alert! Black-Marketeer! Fixerspy, Halt and Surrender!” The cries of alarm had sounded faster than she could think SH** to herself. And now she was running, as fast as she could, easily out distancing the Unicorns, and trying to get off the damn island before it was too late. So what if the Unicorns complained and rumors spread that she had been here? Who would really care about unprovable rumors? But to be caught here, in the flesh… that was a different story.
Alarms flashed across her datalink again. A message transmitted nearby had been intercepted and decrypted. It was Fixx petitioning ARK for assistance. “God DaM…” The thought went unfinished. Almost instantly a large hulking form materialized in front of her, an ARK insignia glowing on the breastplate of his armor. She didn’t even have time to scream…
~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~
Fixerspy awoke peacefully, well rested and extremely relaxed. Gently she floated down and was set upon the ground beside the resurrection pool. Stretching, catlike, she picked herself up and started rummaging through her stuff on the reclaim alter. Squadleader Fixx flashed briefly thru her mind… that would definitely be a score to settle later when she could. Her very brief encounter with ARK also flashed thru her mind, but there was nothing she could do about that other than hoping that they had no further interest in her. ARK was not to be screwed with… and if you got on their bad side all you could do is prey…
The flashing light on her datalink drew her attention. Sighing, she pick up the link and tapped a few buttons…
“Msg vom ARK: This is your Last Warning! Any Further Violations of the ICC ShuttlePort Quarantine will result in revocation of Insurance, revocation of Citizenship, and Banishment from Rubi-Ka”. “Funny,” she thought to herself, “I don’t remember getting any warning whatsoever before you Nuked Me with Instant Death… Maybe I really should have surrendered to the Unicorns,” she shrugged to herself.
The next message was not much better. It was a standard Omni-Pol security bulletin issuing an all points bulletin to arrest her on sight. “But then again, Maybe Not…” she laughed. The situation with ARK had her seriously worried, but she could care less about Omni’s desires to arrest her. She was safely insured in the gardens of Pande, far beyond their reach, and had always found ways of evading or escaping from Omni-Pol in the past when she encountered them.
The third message was the one she had been hoping for. It was a non-descript series of numbers and dashes… Travis’s code letting her know he had sent the contraband shipment, as agreed… but the next several messages from Travis alarmed her. Apparently she had repeatedly missed attempts to deliver the contraband to her.
Giving the datalink a few quick taps she doubled checked today’s timestamp. Over three and a half months had passed since her visit to Noob Island. Not only had ARK Insta Killed her on sight… they had intercepted her death transmission and placed her in suspended stasis for several months before allowing her to resurrect. Damn! Talk out being knocked out of the game! Gods only knows what had been going on or what she had missed out on in the meanwhile.
Tabbing thru the rest of her messages she came across Travis’s last message, reassuring her he had made arrangements to have her booty stashed in a safe location. “N.L. B.Y. Cave”. She knew exactly where that was… She collected the rest of her stuff, shoved it into a bag… and wandered out onto the garden lawn near the exit statue. Blushing, she realized too late that she was only dressed in mother natures finest when others visiting the garden whistled at her admiring her lack of modesty.
~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~
Later that day…
Newland Backyard was all but deserted. Before the Alien Invasion it had been one of three major training grounds used by new arrivals to acclimate to Rubi-Ka and get training in survival skills before venturing out into the cities and wastelands beyond. Now, except for the occasional odd veteran or curiosity seeker, it was a virtual ghost town.
Fixerspy had easily located the stash of contraband at the rear of the grounds, tucked away past a crumbling wall and ruins of a building complex, and had made several trips to tote it all back to a bank terminal for deposit. Once she had thought she had seen someone in the distance, but the occasional site seer was not to be unexpected, so long as they didn’t stray too near her or her business.
On the way back from double checking that she had left anything behind, the low rumble of engines caught her attention. Spinning around, she watched a craft in the distance fly over the cliffs surrounding the training compound and start to land. It was an Omni-Pol Troop Transport ship.
“WTF?” Remembering the All Points Security Alert for her arrest, she was wary of danger… she instantly started casting a nano-program to grid. And instantly her datalink blarred alarms that her nano-transmission to hack into the grid was in danger of being detected.
“WTF!?!?!?!” She wanted to leave NOW! But she also had no desire to possibly have her gridstream redirected into an Omni-Pol jail cell, or have Omni Scum tracking and chasing her thru the grid or laying in ambush waiting for her at the grid exits. Aborting the grid, she spun round and started running like hell…
Dashing across a bridge that spanned a small lake, she dove for cover in the rocks along the cliffs. Instantly she started buffing for combat and double checked her weapons… a Conflagrant Syndicate Messenger Gun and a Kyr'Ozch Submachine Gun - Type 5, as well as several lessor weapons. Preparations made, she buffed her concealment and perception and then melted into the rockface. Activating her datalink she quickly tapped the commands for it to passively monitor and intercept local transmissions.
Across the lake the ship was landing beside the vendors and insurance terminals. A moment later what looked like 3, maybe 4 squads of troops poured out and mustered into attack formations. “God Damn It!” she cursed to herself. “They must have traced me when I left Jobe and entered Borialis on my way to Newland.” Wondering if Omni-Pol was actually making a serious and concerted effort to capture her, she started scanning the troops for signs of the Unicorns. Much to her relief she did not see any…
Warnings flashed across her comlink. She was picking up chatter as the Omni-Pol troops broke up into several formations, one taking up a sentry guard around the ship, the others sweeping out in combat patrols, searching… They were Actively Scanning and Monitoring all local transmissions, doubly so for Grid transmissions. That clinched it for her. They knew she was here, somewhere, and they were going to try to flush her out.
Her fingers started tapping randomly on the casings of her submachine guns, almost as if trying to decide which to use first, as she watch a pair of Predatech hounds and a squad of troops sweeping in a search pattern towards the lake edge.
As she watched and waited, she started planning her escape route. Doubtless she would be under heavy fire the whole time. She would make them pay dearly as they crossed the bridge, then she would retreat around the lake to the shack, stand ground there, retreat further down the cliffs to the crumbled wall and ruined builds, stand ground there, and then make a dashing retreat across the open fields, thru the tunnel, past the transport ship, and out into the city beyond. Then she could hit the whompahs and play ring around the rosey until she could signal her yalm to pick her up and make a dash to the wastelands or beyond.
She decided on the Kyr'Ozch Submachine Gun - Type 5. Normally she favored the CSMG, as it was an old tried and true that had seen her thru her journeys in the Shadowlands… but now she was going with the SG-T5 because of it’s superior lethal combo of burst and fling shot specials and damn near 1/1 ratio of rapid fire.
She sighted in on the nearest troops that were trailing the hounds. She was confident she could dodge and outrun the hounds, and the hounds couldn’t attack her from a distance… but the troops could. She watch as they and the hounds neared the bridge… “That’s it… right this way… a few more steps… And…”
And then the hounds turned and headed the other way… back towards the exit that lead out of the training grounds and into Newland City… and the scum grunts wandered after them… Puzzled and Confused, Fixerspy lowered the SG-T5 and pondered the situation…
~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~