20 .

"Argas report status, this is the last call. If you do not respond you will be presumed dead" what would followed after, was something anyone could guess. The woman was about to kill the call when the familiar voice come out of her comm, she sighed to herself in relief.

"You scared me, I would have been forced to take you in or shoot you upon sight" the woman finally calmed down enough to allow blood to flow into her pale fingers. She had spared no effort in contacting her friend, going to the extreme of using her personal comm.

"Why is your partner not responding?" she finally asked after a short while of taking deep continuous breaths to calm down. Having been in service with Argas for a while, they both believed that it was more honorable to die in battle than within their ships or on a sick bed. This would have been the hardest choice to make, having to gun down her own friend.

"She's dead" the voice from the other end felt slightly unfamiliar with the coldness. But she let that go, tense times would force some emotion out of everyone. She could understand her friend's plight.

"Have you called it in?" she asked just in case. Engaging in battle would have all of them tense to the point of neglect in reporting deaths within their ranks. Even if the engagement this time was not as dangerous as boarding protected ships, it would still be hard when one faced an experienced enemy.

"Not yet, reinforcements have arrived on sight, there's no need for me to do such tiresome and unrewarding tasks".

"That's more like you, its no small wonder why your presence is growing thinner by the day" she spoke as she looked over her shoulder. Someone was calling out to her.

"hehe, you know a lot about me don't you?" what was supposed to sound like a chuckle came out as a stiff laugh instead. The friend from the other side was not too keen on that as she had aher on duties to attend to.

"I'll catch up later, deal with the bothersome report yourself", then she dropped the call, having confirmed that her friend was safe and bored.

*******

"Yeah, bye" Jack circled as his visor observed the reinforcements moving closer. He had no need to hang up the call as the one on the other side had already done that for him. All he needed was to get ready to give his account on what happened to the arriving reinforcements, some had circled his position to increase the search range.

The first witness account didn't really matter to the squads approaching, but he had every reason to dump all of that crap onto someone else's platter. There were many reasons why he needed to do that, the major one was the fact that he had no idea how to file said report. He had no time to learn, so he had to bother someone else.

He pulled one of the squad members apart, and slowly spoke to her.

"I'm not feeling too well, can you help me file the report. I need a breather" he tried to sound as convincing as his acting skills could get him.

"You know too well that battle incident reports have to be filed, in the first person right? Besides, I see no injury on your person" the woman spoke back.

"Yeah, Lucky thing I didn't get clipped or this would have been easier to weave through" there was obvious sarcasm in his voice.

"I've read your file Argas, are you looking for a way to escape from writing an incident report?"

"Ugh… I'm actually hurt, last I checked, this was not some state military regiment" he sounded annoyed this time round. The woman could tell that he was running out of patience.

"OK, the rules don't say that a patrolling officer who stumbled upon the occurring scene could not provide account" the woman snapped her fingers. Jack quickly handed her a token he had retrieved from the real Argas' body.

'Shocking that the one thought I had of looting actually managed to pull me from a sticky situation…'

"Thanks, I owe you one" but his or her voice held no gratitude whatsoever.

The woman turned and walked over to the downed officer wordlessly. Jack faded into the background as he slowly approached the checkpoint, he made sure to remember the kind of information he would need to present if he was questioned within the base.

*******

After walking blindly for a while, he then came within the opening, guards marched back and forth as they carried out perimeter sweeps on their scanners. The security was pretty thick, he almost blushed at the warm welcome.

'Silver, look! Fans who appreciate our hard work!' such thoughts crossed his ever thinking mind.

Most of the patrolling sentries ignored his approach, they were either used to such scenes or they were too tense to spare him any thought.

His approach slowed down as he got overly cautious, this was probably the hardest part to move through.

"Please insert your weapon through here" a guard spoke to him as he walked over to the entry point. There was a scanner on the inner part of the building, his guess was proven true when he was also asked to step into a waiting platform.

What followed was what he thought to be a full body scan, he had never been that tense in all his life. Well, this life…

He could only pray that silver had means to fool the scanners, something she had done countless times already.

"Move along, be sure to retrieve your weapon from within" the guard bent and outstretched her arm in a motion to show how he should proceed to pick up his weapon.

'I wonder what you'll think of when you learn that the perfunctory action you have just done helped a wanted person escape from your crew' he was amused by the notion for a short while before dropping that line of thought.

'No need to jinx myself this early'.

The entry processes were remarkably easy, the problem came up when he was almost done with the checks. Having conducted himself as normal as a female-only crew would, he finally arrived at his final and possibly hardest tribulation.

"We ask that you kindly take off your helmets before proceeding to this point. Help us save on time. Access to the higher floors needs direct permission from..." his ears ignored all else, the frustration caused him to tune out everything within his immediate surrounds. A few words did manage to effortlessly roll out of his mouth.

"Well' shit…"