Were it possible for someone to angrily, perhaps grumpily, pilot a star ship then a photo of Lix would be the poster for such a heated movement. Her glare, hot enough to melt steel, stared ardently ahead as Jack snickered in the navigator's seat. For his part, the man was doing a fantastic job of painting every bit of debris, derelict, and drifting hazard that his Kux'lar girlfriend was contemplating ramming into at full speed onto her control console's display. Even Skrunkles couldn't stop himself from snickering once Jack had regaled him with the tale, the little Hux trying his damnedest to avoid drawing the pilot's ire towards him as he sat uselessly at the comms officer's panel. That Lix continuously rubbed her thighs together only worsened her mood. It didn't help, in fact, it made things so much worse. At this rate, she'd need to change her jumpsuit, Jack had riled her up something fierce. She was ready to go the extra mile, to ride that Slip 'N Slide all the way to the ramp and the base and launch into a lake and the fact that the Gerthtrude's bridge was small enough she could still smell the Human was only making things all the harder. Normally she'd abscond for his cabin and take care of business with her tail, or better yet, drag the man into the shadows to finish what he started… but no, Jack had chosen a place fraught with danger to get the Kux'lar all needy and bothered. There would be consequences… hard and rough and sweaty and nipping consequences.

  Perhaps even full on biting, with teeth!

  "Head snrk, head on bearing two-two-four at a negative seventeen degree pitch." Jack bit his lip as he programed in a general direction for her to follow, the instructions wired directly into her command console screens. "I remember a decent sized patrol skirmish out in that sector, pretty deep in the debris, so we should be shielded from scans." His eyes twinkled with mirth as Lix continued to glare at him in the reflection of her instruments, her tail lashing in agitation.

  "Copy that." Fangs clenched, Lix rolled the Gerthtrude down and aside to slide through two mangled ships as the fat cargo freighter creeped from its hiding place. It was as if a smaller animal was crawling from the eviscerated belly of a much larger predator, the frigate they'd been hiding in masking them from the ever watchful eyes of the council fleet in the distance. The somber graveyard, as well as a passing council fighter marred by age and the unrepentant cold of the void, quelled much of Lix's desire. Said fighter still held its pilot clutched tightly to its seat, an embrace of metal and cold, pilot and ship drifting for eternity. Visible through the cockpit, the dead Human floated limply in his harness as the Gerthtrude passed close enough that one could open the airlock and touch the punctured fuselage. As quickly as it had come, the jovial air about the bridge died to be replaced by a high tension focus. Jack and Mo'Ona cleared their throats as Lix adjusted in the her seat, the fire in her belly dying to a smoldering ember she could ignore.

  For now.

  "These fighters will have exactly what I need to get ya No Safety Measures up an' runnin' again. Not to mention all sorts o' weapons."

  "What kind of stuff did you guys standard issue?" A dull scrape skittered across the Gerthtrude's roof, the debris becoming more of an amorphous cloud. Jack ignored both it and the gnawing knowledge that he'd have to do so much repair painting when they returned.

  "Mostly laser, nice high-powered beams that cut right through armor an' utilize integrated proton batteries to keep the power demand on your systems down." To accentuate his point, the mechanic pointed at another derelict council fighter, its insides visible through a clean burn that cut through her side like a chef prepping a fish. The edges of the metal had that telltale sloppy edge of high intensity heat. "Ya gonna have to charge em whenever you dock, but it be worth it."

  "Ngh… Skrunkles' head hurt…"

  "I like lasers over ballistics, no offense to railguns." Lix hissed as she rolled the Gerthtrude to avoid a troop carrier that still had weakly flickering lights, that stylized 'SA' stark across her hull. Jack's people lied inside, a tomb of steel and cold. "Also, lasers are cool."

  "Right, 'cause cool factor is what we're lookin' for here." Jack adjusted several vectors on Lix' guidance. "As long as that fat carrier over there stays put we can gut an' scrape whatever we want from these." Behind him, Skrunkles had to wipe the drool that was slowly dripping down his split muzzle. The Hux found his mandibles chittering, slipping from his gullet against his will as excitement grew. Oh, how he wanted to explore every silently drifting vessel for sweet, juicy salvage. "Would you stop droolin' on my floor you mutant hybrid mishmash? You're makin' a mess, leakin' like a-"

  "Horny Kux'lars?" The two men descended into muffled giggles once more, unperturbed by Lix' angry reptilian bark.

  "I'm gonna space you two, I swear on my scales. We're five hundred yards out but… I can't see jack through this debris field."

  "Good thing I'm right here then. Maintain headin' at a slow burn, in fact, I'm goin' to divert power from weapons to shields. Should push away some of the smaller trash." True to his word, the debris cloud grew in density until Lix was flying blind, using her instrument panel to follow Jack's indicated course.

  "Ugh… dropping the viewport shield, we're just scratching up the cockpit like this." Darkness descended upon the crew as a hefty blast shield slowly covered their only view of the outside. Bits of metal crunched under the heavy slab of alloy, red running lights illuminating the now protected bridge. Within moments, a series of camera feeds lit the console in front of the Kux'lar's muzzle, her eyes squinting before the harsh white light turned a gentle green. Each view had the angry, fat barrel of a PDC just below it, the bristling weapon systems primed and ready to rend apart the Gerthtrude's enemies. The visibility wasn't much better… but it was an improvement. "Skrunks, take over PDC control and see what you can do. Lix, I've got eyes on our shield, I'll let you know if anythin' starts to poke at us a bit too hard."

  "Skrunks? Gehheeeeee, movin' ups in da worlds. Got two nicknames nows!" Snickering through his whiskers, Mo'Ona used said fat cannons to gently bat away sheared bulkheads, drifting fuselage, and shattered cockpit glass. Each piece would have netted him a pretty Roark at the smelters, his soul dying a little with each discarded scrap, until he reminded himself he was here for the big score. "Hngh… shoulds we scans? Get a bit of eyes arounds us?"

  "Nah," Jack waved the idea away. "Same interference that blinds the council fucks makes us blind too. 'Sides, pingin' a scan might slip through an' alert 'em if we're unlucky."

  "Creepin' it is! Skrunkles good ats creepin'." An alarm killed what little joking mood the crew may still have had, the klaxon quickly silenced as Lix worked the controls.

  "Yeesh, nasty radiation spike popping up on sensors, and we've got debris started to wedge into the directional thrusters. It's like flying through a tangle hazard…" Gently rolling the control sphere in her paw, Lix killed all thrusters to pull the nose almost ninety degrees high. Were there any gravity to pull on her passengers, they'd have most likely burped a bubble of nausea. Reversing thrust, the 'Roid Racer pilot eased the fat vessel backwards out of the webbed mess of stray conduit and broken ship parts. It was like guiding a bus through a jumbled jigsaw puzzle, only every piece was a jagged sleeve of sharp metal.

  "We's free! Twists port thirty degrees, dorsal thrusts at five percents. Threads us through the next stretch!" It was easy to forget Mo'Ona was, against all odds, a skilled pilot. In fact, that underestimation might be the very reason why he was so successful in his endeavors outside the cockpit. "Justs a little mores… goods to go!"

  "One of the starboard thrusters is getting stuffed up. I'd blast that crap out if it didn't shove us into more trash…" Claustrophobia wasn't common among the Kux'lar, and Lix had never thought herself of having it, but when the Gerthtrude started to feel stuck? Perhaps she didn't feel the tight constricting corridors upon her own scales but the Gerthtrude certainly did upon her hull. In turn, Lix felt herself fidgeting with her feet, her claws clacking over one another as nervous energy began to build in her thin chest. She didn't much like feeling as if whatever she was piloting couldn't move. "Gnah… losing more thrust on the starboard quarter…"

  "Looks like I'll have to go clear it. Skrunks, ya gotta pull double duty." The little Hux simply saluted, adding the ship's shield array to his visual overlay. Jack was halfway to the lift when Lix stopped him with a hiss.

  "Oh no, did you forget about the radiation, monkey man?"

  "I'll have my suit on, scaly lady. It was literally built for space walks, under fire no less!" His carefree grin didn't ease the lizard's worry. "I'll keep an eye on my rad shielding, yeah? Toodles, captain." His boots slipped into the lift as he was rewarded with an angry hiss, Lix's glare following him down until the tiny elevator took him away from her piercing sight. He'd pay for that… still, it was true they probably needed a spacewalk. It wasn't like she could clear the blockages by wiggling the ship, or the blast of simply turning on the thrust would be enough to jettison whatever was lodged in there. Skrunkles simply shook his head as he watched the Kux'lar follow her Human on the cameras, waiting until he was suited up in that creepy armor before tapping the comms with a single tiny rat claw.

  "Okays, linking Jack's unit to the ship… comms are greens."

  "Jack? This is the Gerthtrude, how copy?" A grumpy hiss was still audible in her voice, but the edge was blunted.

  "Muffled but readable. I only had time to fix up the armor, I think my comms got jiggled aroun' a bit."

  "Well un-jiggle it you dumb… thick necked… banana eater."

  "Heeeey, you're gettin' there ya dusty, dull scaled blank eyed lizard." Jack's pitying praise did little to sooth the Kux'lar's ire as he made final preparations in the cargo bay. His zero-g canister was filled, his oxygen cool and refreshing, and his black on red paint job free from blemish once more after the careful application of a brush. The only real addition he needed to add was a magnetic tether, one that slotted nicely onto his external gear belt. Jack flipped the wide disk around and secured the magnet to his own armor with a dull clunk. It would serve as his lifeline, should the worst happen and he lose grip on his freighter.

  The airlock klaxon, dulled by his helmet, was a familiar sound, as was the weightless pull stopped short by his mag-boots as gravity left him. Now that he was separated, his expression hidden inside his helmet, he let the cocky grin and energetic facade fall away. Soon, it was replaced with a tightly wound tension… a fatigue… A part of him didn't want to go out there, a part of him wanted to return to the bridge and make little Mo'Ona take up the torch… but no, salvager he may be, this was his home. He wasn't going to run from the dead fingers clutching at the edges of his bones. He'd felt the call of his specter kin when he'd made the short walk to the Keelhauler hangar bay, that faithful jump made worse by Tik'Tik clinging to his leg… Now here he was once more, braving the vacuum in his old armor…

  In this dead stretch of space…

  Jack had held it together in front of the crew. Now his face hardened.

  In anger… in exhaustion… in grief. Whatever his people had become in the end, they were still his people. He had lain upon a cold table and let saws and scalpels cut away the flesh and bone he'd been born with and replaced them with painful, if powerful, cybernetics. He had fought side by side with those who wanted to see their home be more than just a slave state, a well pampered vassal for the council. Jack had shared those dreams, shared in the lofty vision of Sevar as an economic powerhouse instead of just another division of the Whisper Box and its million banks.

  "Hey fellahs… been a minute." Quickly, Jack slapped home his tether as melancholy dragged him away from the ship, the airlock slowly easing shut to truly drown him in the sensation of… of… what was he feeling? Jack didn't know… he searched his own head as he drifted between two melted slabs of a destroyed Sevar fighter larger than his body by half. Gently, he reached out with one hand while tugging on his tether, bringing his face to a clean stop just before the faded SPDF. It was as if his hand, the cybernetics exposed to the cold of deep space and safe within its protective alloy casing, was weighed down by an engine block. Slowly, he traced what he could of those familiar letters, imaging the rest as he scratched the burnt fuselage. Sevar Planetary Defense Force… To think he'd been so proud when he got his wings and implants he'd almost had gotten a tattoo… That would have been disastrous in the long run. Not that it mattered, Sevar was an erased memory, and those remaining few dared not breathe a word of their origins.

  The council's hunt squads were no joke, their implants and gear top of the line and constantly updated. Most even had brain software that uploaded the latest and greatest tactics directly into their neural network, no need for long weeks of training to master a skill. Jack had only ever tussled with said teams once and barely escaped to tell about it. Or… not, as it were. These were the very same men that had made up the team that whisked away Angela after her defection, intel and all, without so much as a trace of their passing. Council boogeymen, through and through, plaguing the nightmares of every surviving Sevarian.

  "Jack? All good out there? I don't like you in that radiation, hurry up and clear the thrusters."

  Lix's voice snapped the man from the mental cage he'd erected around his sanity, the man forced to physically shake his head to banish the creeping dread. With one last look to the destroyed section of ship, he gripped his tether tight and pulled.

  "Yup, just makin' sure I do this shit right. Rather waste five minutes than forget somethin' and drift off into the void."

  "Ugh, everything out there wants to kill my Human. Speed it up, or you're painting my claws when we get back to Koorka Station."

  "You paint your claws?" Jack's boots landed firmly back on the Gerthtrude's hull with a satisfying, and relieving, thunk. Now came the annoying part, leap frogging said tether every few steps or so. It wasn't that he had to just… protocol was so ingrained that he found himself following the safety rules of his mechanic certification course as if it were a second way to breathe. Three points of contact at all times, set tether, test tether, move forward, and repeat. It was like an inchworm tyring to run a mile, all effort and very little progress. However… As Jack pushed away another fridge sized slab of alloy, this one trailing broken cables and wires, he saw the wisdom in it. At least here, surrounded by snag hazards and debris so thick it clawed at his suit, the tether was a literal lifeline that would save him should he get snagged.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  "Lots of interference… but I think that radiation is coming from the route you plotted." A grumble, familiar and reptilian, slithered across the comms as Lix did as she did, worry and hiss.

  "Probably a reactor breach of a bigger frigate or so, we used 'em as carriers sometimes. They used different engines from us lowly cargo freighters and shuttles." Grunting, Jack rounded the final bend to the starboard quarter, his eyes fixed on the affected thruster. A broken cable wound around the nozzle ending in a fat wad of melted metal. Instead of getting blasted out to some unknown sector of space, the cable had gotten caught around the drive bell to swing the unsightly ball around and back into the thruster itself. A lot like those stupid cup and ball games Humanity had brought from earth. "Little fuckin'… I see the problem, standby."

  "Skrunkles will sit. Gerthy's seats much more comfortable than Spitfire's."

  "If I find even one bug on my ship, it's your ass, Skrunks."

  "Don't threaten Skrunkles with a good times." Jack could only scoff in disgust as he yanked on the offending cable, sending the mass sailing off into the distance to bounce off larger debris like an intergalactic pin ball. "Aight, y'all should have a green thruster."

  "Make distance and I'll test it, or you'll follow that ball of metal. I like my Human alive and in the ship where I can nip him." Lix flipped between her cameras, carefully tracking Jack's progress before releasing two quick bursts of power from the previously clogged nozzle. "We are good! Get your ass back in here before you can only give me girl babies."

  "I… uh, don't think I can give you eggs?" Jack mumbled as he started the slow journey back to the airlock. A message ping lit in his helmet visor, a simple picture from Lix. The contents made his stomach drop, the blood draining from his face as real terror took him. There… upon his cot… was a perfectly oval egg, red in color just like Lix's scales. The blankets had been bunched up around the little oval and a pillow propped to ensure it didn't roll.

  "That should give you some incentive to get us home safe, Papa." Jack could only answer with choked gurgles, his fingers limp around his tether before Lix began to giggle. Her muzzle, scrunched with effort, stared back at Jack through their comms link with sparkling eyes. "You should see your face."

  "That's… what's so funny? Oh stars, when did you lay? Why didn't you leave at the Stripped Bolt?! Fuck, does that mean it needs like… care an' shit? What do we do?"

  "Jack, Jack calm down!" The Kux'lar, and now Hux, couldn't hold their laughter any longer. "It's unfertilized you dolt, I laid it a few days ago. Only thing it's good for is an omelette."

  "Fuckin' Hell Lix, ya shaved a year of my lifespan!" Jack eyed the picture once more. "You… eat 'em?"

  "Good protein. Better than tossing the thing, though it's not as healthy for the Kux'lar that laid it. You can make some okay scratch selling your unferts on the market."

  "That's fucked up." Jack, the journey to the airlock complete, simply held tight to the entry latch. "That's real fucked up."

  "That's just how we Kux'lar do things. I'll make it for ya when we get back! Papa taught me how to fry 'em good."

  "I guess I deserved that. Now let's get a move on before I lose my actual mind." Jack slapped his tether onto the airlock hatch, opting to just hang on for the ride. His heart still hadn't come down from its frantic pace. "Cruel ass walkin' handbag. Un-tanned leather belt…"

  "Yeah yeah, now get in here!"

  "I'll hang on out here, might need to clear another blockage." Jack idly pushed aside an entire collum of ship trash. "We'll be gettin' there soon anyway, already used the Gerthtrude's nav computer to calculate the drift the debris cloud would have wandered over the last few years. Should be tons o' good picks. Skrunks, you keep an eye out too."

  "Oh, Skrunks is verys keeping eyes out."

  "Calm down you insatiable thing." Lix teased, her fangs glistening in the low light of the cabin. "So… how many times have you come out here Jack? Is this why the Stripped Bolt has so many parts?"

  "I've been out here a few times, three before this trip. An' no, I use business practices to get my stock. Too risky to wander out here for a resupply."

  Once again, and to his displeasure, the line went quiet as Lix focused on simply flying. Of course, Jack didn't blame her. Navigating the thick cloud of metal and plastic had to be taxing, though he'd have liked to have something to distract him from the drifting dead SPDF fighters. These were simply too damaged, scouts most likely, and might have what he needed but… better to make the trip out to real salvage. Besides, he could already see most had destroyed, or pillaged, weapon systems. Most would be in the hands of some council goon or as a trophy, but they weren't the first team to slip past the antimatter refinery's ever watchful eyes. The Last Stop Staryard was infamous for a reason, Hell, just making it here and taking a trophy back was enough to earn yourself a legend. It was the only reason Sevar hadn't been completely forgotten, but the stories were few and dreadfully far in between. Most who sneaked in just wanted salvage, not history.

  Not that anyone would believe them…

  A part of him wanted to turn the Gerthtrude homeward… to return and stand in the devastation of his people and let their ashes cover his boots… or to fly her directly into the heart of that damned station and piledrive the fat freighter right into the most populated hab. Alas, he'd never make it halfway to either destination before swarms of nimble council fighters melted him, and the crew, inside the Gerthtrude's bridge.

  "Skrunkles sees big cluster of readings aheads. All sorts of stuffs…. radiations too, not too bads…"

  "That'll be it. I 'member relatively where that little spat used to be. Just took a lil' math at the nav computer to calculate where it might end up."

  On the bridge, Lix found her eyes widening as the debris field thinned just enough to see a smattering of both council and SPDF fighters drifting together in a deep orbit around the distant sun. It was as if two vipers had latched onto each other, dying in the enemy's coils as venom played havoc on their insides. Corpses of pilots long dead and preserved by the absolute cold sat still in their cockpits, their eyes hidden behind flight helmets or darkened viewports. No doubt about it, this was a graveyard through and through. Swallowing her sudden trepidation, Lix angled the Gerthtrude towards the tangle of death and metal, her tail lashing in the hole Jack had cut for her.

  "Want Skrunkles to go too?"

  "Huh? Bwah?" Talons clacked over each other as the Kux'lar nervously ran her feet together, her killing claws flexing as the sudden voice shattered the tension in her chest.

  "That's… yes, please…"

  "Ha! Skrunkles can smell ya worry from heres! Don't worries, salvagin' is my forte! I'll keeps your mans safe." Lix didn't even have time to pin the little rat with a glare before he was down the lift. Nonetheless, she was grateful for his help. If Jack wouldn't get his dumb ass into the ship, then at least he wasn't alone outside.

  Mo'Ona, for his part, found himself with no shortage of enthusiasm. The Hux was still shucking on his suit he'd brought over from the Spitfire still latched to the Gerthtrude's side. Excitedly panting, he sealed the zipper only when he was in the airlock, Jack raising an eye at him from outside. He had paused only to slip an empty duffel bag sporting a hardy zipper around his shoulders. It took him to stand on the tips of his paws to reach the latch, bouncing happily as the hatch swung outward after a quick depressurization cycle.

  "You seem hap- ack!" Jack raised his hands as Mo'Ona scrabbled across the outside of the airlock, his little paws grabbing onto his own suit before the Hux settled in at his back. "Oi."

  "Skrunkles is backpack. And keeping eyes on Jacks. Lix looked ready to bites little olds meeee…" Little paws tippy tapped on Jack's shoulder as the field of derelict fighters and shuttles finally came into view, his whipcord tail wagging inside the sleeve of his suit. "Oh, oh, looks! Looks looks! Ahhhh, theys in such good conditions!"

  "Yeah," Jack reached up to adjust the trembling rat. "Council likes to use neutron weaponry in their fast squadrons. Ballistic and missiles clean up the rest. Most here though… you'll just find empty ships."

  "Empty ships wit' loots! Ah… aha…" The bouncing rat's exuberance died as he noticed Jack's blank stare ahead. It was a cold look, one that gazed through the silent vessels and beyond to something only the Human could see. "Should we's… stay outta the cockpits?" Sighing, Jack shook his head, ensuring Mo'Ona had a good hold on his neck.

  "Hang on tight, lil' guy. We're gonna have to space walk. Lix, I'll hop over on your word. I know what I'm looking for. Don't forget to take a gander at their hardpoints, everythin' out here will fit on the No Safety Measures."

  "Oooh, you know what a girl likes."

  "And Huxes!" Mo'Ona wrapped his arms tightly around Jack's covered neck, even though his own tether was attached to the man's belt. Even still, he couldn't keep his eyes off the smattering of ships. It had been obvious that once upon a time the cloud had been much more dispersed, as upwards of several to hundreds of kilometers could span the gap between two warring ships in a space battle. Time, gravity, and perhaps even a council tug or two, had bunched them together. With a huff, Jack kicked away from the Gerthtrude and out into the tightly packed field. It made sailing through the debris a breeze, their progress hindered only when Jack had to push away an errant slab of metal or two. Behind him trailed a thick steel spool still connected to the slowly motoring Gerthtrude, Lix sliding the fat cargo freighter into a holding pattern not too far away as Jack touched down on the first intact SPDF fighter.

  It was like stepping back in time as he thumbed the airlock's manual release, his hands moving on autopilot to slip into the derelict craft. Skrunkles immediately disengaged from his back to explore, but Jack… Jack stood rooted in place as not even a gust of air slipped out of the ship's innards. There wasn't much to it; to the right was the engine bay, a tight little affair, and to the left… the cockpit. The walkway was narrow and gunmetal gray, leaving the single seat surrounded by panels and switches in such a small space one would have to swivel the chair around just to sit down. It wasn't much… just a fighter after all… Jack didn't know what he'd hoped to see, what he thought he might find.

  The inevitable is what greeted him.

  Still latched into her pilot's seat, a woman with identical cybernetic implants sat with her mechanical arms slotted into receptacles built into the ship's control console. Most of the switches were flipped to divert power to the engines and weapons. Life support, interior lights, even power to the communications panel had been redirected to more important purposes. Shaking, Jack turned the seat just enough to gaze into the frosted over helmet… at the woman within… from her eyes ran twin crystalized lines of blood.

  A. Arlington… her chest plate said.

  "Ya did good sister… lot's o' council wrecks out there." With one final pat to the dead Sevarian's shoulder, Jack knelt and began to pop free frozen bolts in the deck with a multitool he'd slipped into his gear belt. One by one they drifted along the cabin only to be snatched by Mo'Ona's reaching paws. Already his duffle bag full of components, parts, fasteners, and errant piping he'd uninstalled faster than Jack could have thought possible.

  "Oh! Goin' fors the coolant-fuel regulator?" The little Hux squatted with a pair of jury-rigged tools that disassembled the floor panels even faster than Jack's professional power spanner. Within minutes, the duo had a trench built all the way from the cockpit to the engine bay, the Human and mutant rat working in tandem to remove cables, connectors, and of course, the master computer cores in both the cockpit's command console and the engine bay's temperature control unit. It was the very same system the mechanic had been forced to hotwire during Lix's last preliminary race, resulting in an overheat event in the entire engine bay. This length of conduit and electronics were vastly different. At a glance, it looked hardier, heavier, and all around better built. "Niiiice! Oh, oh oh oh! Skrunkles never seen this brand. Titanium connectors… whats gen is the controllers?"

  "Sevar generation, good ol' proprietary tech. All our conduits were made with silver an' the environmental observation unit is made with a five-point zero gigahertz CPU for direct communication from engine to cockpit. Lix will be runnin' damn near cold with these response an' reaction times."

  "Eeeeee! That means-"

  "An uptune to the engine. I can get a fuck-load more performance out of her with cooler runnin' temps. This will take care o' mainly fuel flow and coolant temperature but with a pilot to drive command module, she'll make the most out of every drop of fuel we stuff in the No Safety Measures Hooooh, she's gonna purr like a horny bitch. I can't wait to hear it, fuuuuuuck yes."

  "Even mores uptuning." Mo'Ona's tail wagged, his paws carrying him to the cockpit to remove said module. It was much more simple affair. "Whats engine does Lix gots?"

  "Oh dude," Jack moaned, needy and heated, securely coiling the wires around the module they'd just scavenged from his dead sister in arms. "It's a Haikyu Seventy-Eight, Bunson edition. So fuckin' fat and glorious and full of-"

  "Powerrrrr… Skrunkles loves the ways Haikyu set ups theirs piping."

  "Right? That shit is fucking sexy, drop ya panties sex-"

  "Boys," Lix drawled over the comms. "You aren't going to start making love over there are you?"

  Jack nearly vomited.

  Mo'Ona shook his head yes with an enthusiasm that sent him floating across the cockpit. With a simple toss, Jack flung the rat down the short corridor into the engine bay to finish removing the pilot module himself. This one… would need an adapter of some kind. Nothing he couldn't fabricate in the Stripped Bolt. Just like that, they had everything they needed to get the racing ship up and running again, better than ever.

  "So's… why not just takes one of 'dese fighters? Parts are top shelfs, stuffs you couldn't gets on Koorka." The little rat spread his arms, gesturing at the walls around them as he floated boneless in the corridor.

  "As much as I love my people's tech, Lix still has the faster an' more maneuverable ship. We put a lot o' quality parts an' materials in our designs but they are still mass produced. That engine back there ai'n't got shit on a Haikyu. We were buildin' for war, not races. 'Sides, we show up with a whole Sevar fighter Lix will be pinged as a terrorist and blown outta the stars 'fore we can even blink."

  Skrunkles nodded at that, peeking out the still open airlock. Each of the Sevar ships had a mean looking dual laser system under their noses, the barrels longer than he was tall and the power bank wider around than the Hux' entire body. Judging by the melted hulls on the council ships, Mo'Ona guessed they'd put out some nasty heat.

  "Lix, see a hard point you want? We have anything you could dream of as long as it's lasers." Jack lightly kicked Mo'Ona into open space, the little Hux flailing until his tether pulled tight to the Human's belt. Chuckling, Jack pushed the suddenly pouting rat back out the airlock twice more when he pulled himself back before he received a response.

  "Ummmm… they're all the same… but take the one from the fighter you're still on. Something poetic about getting them all from the same source." Nodding, and grabbing Skrunkles under his arm like a flailing football, Jack simply walked out the airlock and to the belly of the fighter, his mag-boots holding him fast to her surface.

  "Ngh! What Skrunkles do to you? Stop bullyings Skrunks."

  "Don't make it so easy then." The Hux ceased his struggles as the impressive laser system came into view, his face behind his helmet gleaming with glee.

  "Oh, there's two, sides by sides… ngh… Lix! No Safety don't gots the space for both! I wants the other ones." It… was only fair. As much as the rat disgusted her at first there was no denying Mo'Ona was growing on Lix.

  "Sure sure, all yours. Let's grab 'em and jet. That'll be everything we need right? How's your radiation shielding holding up?" Jack shot her a thumbs up, kneeling so he and his newest rat acquisition could get to work. Lix smiled, wide and toothy. Things were looking up! It would also be good for her soul to see the No Safety Measures whole once more. The 'Roid Racer missed being straddling the motorbike style seat and leaning into the turns, of feeling her rare engine rumbling and purring. Oh, how excited she was to hear her racing shuttle after the new parts and tuning!

  "Shieldin' holdin' up like the line in a pilot's license distribution center. Ain't goin' nowhere." That just worked to put the Kux'lar even further at ease.

  So great was her excitement that she almost missed the sensor ping…

  "Uh… boys, might have trouble here…" Lix could see Jack cease in his work, Mo'Ona still rapidly removing bolts and cables as the Human gazed up at the Gerthtrude.

  "Oh yeah?"

  "Yeah, sensor pings, just on the cusp of our range. Really scratchy… hard to… see…" Trepidation grew in the Kux'lar's chest as she forwarded her sensor readings, anxiety beginning to bite at her paws. She wasn't a technician nor mechanic; she couldn't pick out a ship's make and model from silhouette alone. Jack however… He'd said the council never came out into the debris field, but what if things had changed? How long had it been since Jack had visited?

  "Fuck. Mo'Ona double time, we gotta get these free yesterday."

  "Jack? Talk to me." On reflex, Lix found herself flicking extra power to the PDC's, the Gerthtrude rumbling with energy and bristling cannons. Anything that got close would have to endure a fusillade of skull rattling fire, a volley she'd seen eviscerate a shuttle like it was paper. That new found confidence waned, however, when a second wave alerted her to incoming… something.

  Then a third…

  And a fourth…

  "Jack, sit rep, what are we looking at? I thought you said they don't patrol the debris field."

  "They didn't," His voice was hurried and panting, his cybernetics pushing the first laser towards his stalwart cargo freighter before joining Mo'Ona on the second system. "Not with manned ships. I know those shapes… fuckers reverse engineered our fuckin' drones." Risking the wasted time, Jack risked a look into the dense debris fields around them. He felt like an insect trapped in a spiderweb and he hadn't even felt the silky strands until they were around his neck. "And if they're anything like ours… they're suicide drones."

  Suicide drones that would pop holes in even his hardy freighter…