Juvul [city], Serenity [dwarf planet], Daavin [star system]
19 December; 15:54:03 Hours
Thunderous cheering erupted as a band finished playing their set at a local outdoor pub, the singer threw his four arms up into the air before diving off the stage into the crowd. Female Astronauts were fawning over him as he crowd-surfed by them. Farah was standing just outside the velvet ropes where she had been watching the concert, but Klaus grabbed her by the arm before tugging her along.
She looked up at him with a frown, pointing back to the concert. “Buuuuut Klaus!”
“No, Far, we’re not even supposed to be on this little shithole of a planet,” he growled, moving them into the crowd of Astronauts that were walking around the city square. “And you! You, you’re most certainly not supposed to be just out in the public like that - You wanna get picked off? Huh?”
“N-no,” she softly said, her bottom lip curled down as Kyra and Amelia came walking up to the two of them.
“Hey, hey, what’s wrong, Sweetie?” Amelia asked as she placed her hand on Farah’s shoulder.
“I, I don’t want to get picked off,” she sighed.
“Picked off?” Kyra at first chuckled but then her eyes squinted and she turned to Klaus. “What did you say to her?”
“What? She was just standing out in the open, and she’s well aware of the fact that she’s highly sought after.”
“You didn’t.”
“I might have mentioned she could get picked off,” Klaus squinted his right eye, rubbed the back of his neck, and said, “More than might have.”
Kyra’s right fist and a portion of her forearm transformed from soft skin to shiny steel seconds before she punched Klaus’ left shoulder. “You’re a dumbass!”
“Ouch! What the hell was that for?”
“Because you scared her! What were you thinking?”
“I didn’t, I, I didn’t scare her…” he stammered and looked to Farah who exaggeratedly puckered her lips and made her eyes big.
“You did, Klaus, you did,” Farah softly told him before she started to giggle.
“Sweetie, if you’re ever going to pull that trick on guys, you have to fully commit,” Amelia smiled and explained, “If you crack at any point, it loses its power.”
Farah laughed. “Okay, ‘Melia! I’ll remember that!”
“What are you two teaching her?” Klaus barked and threw his arms up.
“We’re just making sure she’s ready for this universe,” Kyra told him and placed her hand on his chest.
The three girls were all laughing while Klaus stood stone-faced, but the aura shifted for Amelia as she stopped and her eyes narrowed. She began to scan the crowd around them, sizing up numerous Astronauts; several Momekians, a Hulbuol, two Krems, and then her sights locked onto a Vrut-92r droid. The droid was an eradicator model with a Dreostum alloy exoskeleton and what Amelia could feel was a Kalber-infused bone structure. Amelia’s pupils dilated more and more the longer she looked into the Vrut’s glowing white eyes until she felt a small hand tug on hers.
“‘Melia? W-what’s wrong?” Farah asked as she looked at Amelia with her head slightly tilted to the side.
“Yeah?” Klaus echoed Farah’s concern, as he now began scanning the crowd. “What’s wrong? I know that look.”
“What’s the chance that there’s a Vrut-92r droid all the way out here in this star system?” Amelia asked as she looked away from Farah and back to where she saw the droid, but found it was gone.
Kyra chuckled. “A Vrut? Come on, those were the personal guards to the Chancellor of the Prime Republic - They were all decommissioned after the republic’s fall.”
“I saw one. I know I did.”
“Come on, ‘Melia, they were all decommissioned.”
Klaus was now looking where Amelia was, his eyes squinted as the hairs on the back of his neck were on end. “Kyra, she wouldn’t be so adamant about something she wasn’t sure of.”
“She’s mistaken,” Kyra chuckled. “There’s a lot of people, easy to think you saw something.”
However as the three were going back and forth over what Amelia knew she saw, Farah’s attention was peaked. She noticed Astronauts hurrying to leave the area. Her eyes slowly grew larger while her heart started to race, she tugged on Amelia’s hand again, saying, “‘Melia! ‘Melia, something isn’t—” but Amelia seemed to ignore her as she was arguing with Kyra.
“Kyra, I know what I saw!”
“I’m sure that you know what you THINK you saw…”
“Klaus,” Farah hurried over to him and now tugged on his scorched hand, as she stammered, “some-something is going on! Klaus! P-please! Klaus! Some-something is-isn’t right!”
He, at first, only glanced at her but several Astronauts hurried past them and one brushed into his left. Klaus glanced around at the thick crowd, though he noticed it was no longer as packed as it was several moments ago. Out of instinct, he pulled Farah close to himself and turned to Kyra and Amelia to call to the two but a voice shouted out a second before him.
“Amelia!”
There were several shrieks from the crowd as Amelia’s eyes shot open wide at the sound of the voice. Kyra looked at her with eyes narrowing, she watched Amelia slowly turn around to find her husband standing twenty feet behind them with two Rangers flanking his left and right. Then in a blink, nearly ten more Rangers pushed through the crowd, encircling the four with TAK8s aimed at them.
“What the hell are you thinking?” Wade barked.
“That I had to do what was right,” she said and looked him deep in the eyes.
“You’re not in KOG anymore, dammit!”
“That doesn’t change what’s right.”
“What’s right is for you to be back with our kids, Amelia! But, but now I’m here to, to, to—”
Her head tilted slightly. “To what, Wade?”
“I don’t like this, Klaus,” Kyra whispered to him as he sized up the Rangers.
“I’m scared, Klaus,” Farah whimpered as she wrapped her arms around his waist.
Wade rubbed the bridge of his nose, bit down on his lip, and then sighed. “To arrest them... and you.”
Amelia subtly shook her head.
“Don’t,” he growled, “Don’t make this any tougher than you already have.”
Kyra went to take a step toward Amelia when several of the Rangers clocked the charging rod of their rifles. The loud hum reverberated through Farah and her eyes sunk, they lit up bright crimson as memories flashed through her mind; her running through a forest, the sound of the gargled augmented communicating as Rangers were chasing her down, the bright blue flashes of charges zipping by her and the bodies of a dozen people who had all tried helping her at some point.
“<Don’t move!>” one of the Rangers snapped.
“Make it clear to them, Amelia,” Wade expressed, “This isn’t some game and there’s no Union bah-b-ba-bac— UGHK!”
Amelia’s eyes fluttered as Wade started to violently cough. She took several steps toward her husband but one of the Rangers beside him aimed her rifle at Amelia, took a step forward, and snapped, “<STOP! Don’t take another step!>”
“He’s my husband!” Amelia screamed.
“<Sir?” the other Ranger, to his right, placed his hand on Wade’s shoulder who was still coughing, and asked, “Are you okay? Sir?>”
Before anyone knew it, several of the other Rangers who were circled around the group either began coughing themselves or started to convulse before they collapsed to the ground. Wade dropped to his knee, he vomited blood onto the cobblestone street, Amelia gasped as he briefly made eye contact with her and she saw he was bleeding from his nose and eyes. It wasn’t long before Astronauts in the crowd surrounding them began experiencing similar symptoms; bleeding from the nose, eyes, and ears, coughing and vomiting blood, and collapsing into seizure-like convulsions.
Amelia’s eyes appeared to be ten times their normal size, mouth agape as she realized what was happening, and she spun around before storming up to Farah who she grabbed by the shoulders. “Stop! Stop it, now! Stop! He’s my husband! Stop, please!”
“Let her go, Amelia!” Klaus yelled as he grabbed her right forearm and his red eyes ignited with a burning flame.
Farah looked up at Amelia, her bottom lip quivering and her ruby-glowing eyes began to slowly dim. “I’m, I’m sorry…”
Amelia yanked her arm free from Klaus as she whipped around to find her husband on his hands and knees, taking in deep breaths. Her eyes darted around momentarily, seeing the Ranger who had collapsed, he lay seemingly dead beside Wade with a pool of emerald blood around his head; the other Ranger knelt down beside Wade, placed his hand on his lieutenant’s shoulder, and checked on him.
“<Sir? Sir? We, we need to get you medical attention - ASAP!>”
“Alright!” Klaus said. “Time for us to get the hell outta here!”
“I have to help him,” Amelia said as tears rolled down her cheeks. “I can’t just leave him like this! I can’t!”
“Are you stupid?” Kyra snapped, “He was going to arrest all of us - That means YOU too!”
“He’s my husband! He’s the father of my children, dammit!”
“Okay? But he was going to arrest YOU!”
“Ladies! Ladies! Um, we gotta go!” Klaus urged them, as he and Farah were beginning to back away.
“He apparently doesn’t give a shit about the fact he’s your husband and the father of your two’s children!”
“I, I just can’t let him die! I can—” Amelia was saying when Kyra unleashed a vicious right hook that caught her in the jaw and instantly knocked Amelia out.
Klaus’ eyes shot open wide as he watched his girlfriend knock out their friend, and he threw his arms up. “What the hell did you do?”
“She was going to be stupid and stay,” she rationalized her action. “So I did what I had to…”
“Come on, Kyra!”
“And now you got to do what you have to!”
“Um,” his eyes narrowed as he asked, “and what is that?”
Kyra smiled from ear to ear as she pointed to Amelia.
“You have got to be joking!”
“We have to move her somehow, and Farah ain’t gonna be able to carry her.”
“You can do it, Klaus!” Farah cheered him on as he hurried over and picked Amelia up off the ground.
Klaus grunted and mumbled to himself as he tossed Amelia over his shoulder. He then glanced around the crowd that began to encroach on them, checking on the other Astronauts who collapsed and suffered similar effects as the Rangers. He wrapped his right arm around Farah’s shoulders, saying, “Let’s move!”
“Where to, Klaus?” Kyra said as she looked at him.
“Back to the port,” he told her, “There’s got to be at least one smuggler who’ll take us to Kandok.”
They began to push their way through the crowd as Kyra sighed, “I hope you’re right.”
Though emerging out of the opposite side of the crowd was the Vrut-92r droid Amelia had first seen, its glowing white eyes tracking the four as the Astronaut from Jabul, Baontun Yelsung walked up beside it with the tails of his brown leather trench coat swaying side to side. His piercing blue eyes caught sight of the four before they disappeared into the thick and he grit his teeth, growling, “<War Dogs ruin everything!>”
“<Quite the unpredictable emergence that was,>” the droid acknowledged.
“<No, Vee,” Baontun said, “that was something we should’ve seen when the raven-haired Stark showed up… We overlooked her file.>”
“<Perhaps - Though the odds as I recalculate with those variables now plugged into my predictive algorithm are still against this scenario occurring… Calculating… Calculating… Calculate— Final analysis finds a twelve-percent chance of this outcome.>”
Baontun’s brow furrowed, he rubbed the bridge of his nose and clenched his right fist tightly. Though before he could get a word out, a woman’s voice came over their earpieces, “It looks like they’re headed to the port. What’s the plan? They’re down one, this could be our chance to acquire the tag.”
“<No,” Baontun said, “there’ll be a fleet of War Dogs here within the next click. We’ll never get off-world if we engage now.>”
Vee turned to face Baontun. “<My algorithm suggests Baontun is correct as a GDC fleet was pinged en route to the planet. We have an eighty-eight-percent success prediction if we follow the tag to Kandok.>”
“<It’s settled then,>” Baontun said, “<Reconnect at the ship and we’ll continue shadowing the tag… for now.>”
“Understood, Baontun.”
“<Eighty-eight-percent success is ten-percent higher than my previous calculations.>”
“<Let’s hope that you haven’t excluded any x-factor in your calculations this time, Vee,>” he snapped before pushing his way through the crowd.