Devastation 

"Scuttle failed, go to bypass!"

Seeing the same error code when he tried to scuttle the reactor for the 3rd time, Mike told River to go for the non-reversible emergency shutdown and ejection sequence of the reactor core and FTL drive.

"Shit! I'm on it!"

Knowing full well what the consequences were, River nevertheless left her seat and opened an access panel in the cockpit floor before turning the piston inside and depressed it to activate the sequence.

"... Let's get out of here."

-

"Sir, the unknown contact is breaking up."

Receiving a report from one of the Ensigns, Gunnery Captain Jesper smiled proudly as he responded to his subordinate.

"Good job, those bandits seem to never learn."

As another group of ignorant, savage pirates fucked around, they found out.

Except this wasn't exactly like all the other times Jesper had destroyed bandits encroaching on his sector.

"Sir! Look at this!"

With one of his subordinates raising a fuss as he was about to declare the unknown contact destroyed, Jesper breathed a deep sigh of irritation. It was all well and good that the drones beneath him couldn't do their job without needing him to do and tell them every little thing, but Jesper nevertheless still found it quite annoying.

"Yes, what is it now?"

Withholding all signs of his mood with a fake smile, Jesper focused his extremely valuable attention on what his subordinate was pointing to on his sensor feed.

"Unknown contact is releasing a great number of signals the second we sized jamming them, and look at that grouping right there, we might have survivors evacuating their craft."

Glancing uninterested at what his subordinate had found, Jesper was frankly less interested in surviving pirates than the dirt under his nails.

"Hmm, so more target practice. Get to it."

"But sir, we can't fire on surrendered-"

"You heard me."

While he was somewhat aware he was breaking rules, Jesper knew that a rescue operation would lead to at least an hour more of paperwork for him at the end of his already extremely busy day, and as he was far too important to do such a thing I was easier to just put the bandits out of their misery.

"... Sir, yes sir. Requiring target solution."

"Perfect, fire when-"

"HOLD IT RIGHT THERE!"

Right as Jesper was about to give the order to fire he was interrupted by one of his most anal coworkers he knew.

"... Alex, what can I do for you?"

"That's 4th Gunnery Commander Alex to you Jesper, keep things professional now for once in your life… All Ensigns, cease fire on unknown contact, we're sending a recovery vessel."

Correcting the Gunnery captain about her title for the nth time with little effect, Alex relayed orders she had gotten straight from the top.

"On who's-"

"On the Council's authority Jesper, you're not shooting at pirates, you're shooting at a potential first contact from another world."

-

"Well, they've responded, it seems like they made a mistake and opened fire on us by accident."

Floating around out in deep space, Mike felt like his blood was starting to boil, but needing to save oxygen he did his best to keep calm.

Other members of his team, however, didn't have the same amount of discipline.

[ARE YOU FUCKING-]

"Yeah, yeah, I'm not going to let this go either, so calm down and save your o2."

Hearing the deep, seething rage building in Mike's voice, Jessica calmed down slightly while River and Dan were already busy working out a revenge scheme.

[So I'm not one for stereotyping and all but… Wanna skin a few fur ears with me Dan?]

[I thought you would never ask. I suggest starting from their tail due to the dense nerve clusters there.]

Passing the time the best they could about 5 kilometres away from the wreck of the Wyrm tethered together so they didn't drift apart, Mike and the others were stuck in deep space until the people who had put them in their current situation got their fingers out of their rear ends and came to pick them up.

Lit up by a black hole and a million stars surrounding him, Mike's surroundings were nothing but pure void. Although he wasn't in deep space at the moment, aside from Mike and his companions, the wreck of the Wyrm there was absolutely nothing.

(I guess Space really just is that…)

While philosophical thinking did wonders in bringing down Mike's oxygen consumption, he eventually needed to return to the real world as things needed to be set straight.

"Don't actually try and skin anyone you two, now that we're without a ship we'll need to get along with these people until we can get a new craft."

[... Roger.]

[Sure, I'll contain myself… For now.]

"Good, then next on the itinerary… Maintain information control, when in doubt, don't speak their tongue."

With the most basic rules of conduct in place, Mike and the others fell silent to save their oxygen as they continued floating together in deep space.

[... Contact. That would be them, wouldn't it?]

Sending out a ping to the rest of her comrades, River reoriented herself using the cold gas thrusters on her vacuum suit as she noticed some sort of ship closing in on their orbit a few kilometres out.

"Yeah I see them, it seems like they didn't send out a drone but went with a dropship instead, that's rare."

Normally, the beast people Mike knew from Interstellar Online didn't stray too far from their mega-ships and sent out drones the size of the Wyrm (or even larger) to do their bidding.

[Well, given that this is technically first contact with an unknown civilization this much is given.]

"That or they just want to save face… Either way, stay frosty, they're not our friends."

Making sure his pistol was loaded with armour piercing, Mike's eyes went cold underneath his tinted helmet as River also piped up, her voice equally frigid.

[If they try anything funny…]

"Then we're going down fighting… Is that clear?"

[[Roger!]]

As the contact Mike and River had been tracking gradually closed in, it eventually became visible to the naked eye, revealing itself to be a rectangle-shaped ship about the size of the Wyrm without much in the way of armament. As the dropship came to a hold about a hundred metres away from Mike and the others he was about to contact them over radio when one of the side doors simply slit open.

(This reeks… But nothing else to do I suppose.)

Unclipping himself from the tether that had secured him to the others while they waited, Mike activated the cold gas thrusters on his suit and signalled for the others to follow him on a delay. Entering the dropship via the open airlock, Mike found the crew compartment deserted while the door to the cockpit was locked tight.

"Hmm."

[What?]

"Nothing, follow along now."

[Rog.]

Giving the all-clear signal, River and the others quickly followed Mike and got strapped in as the door to the outside closed and the crew compartment pressurised.

"... Reactor and the FTL drive are spinning up, we're getting underway in a moment."

Feeling the familiar vibrations of a beastkin reactor and FTL drive combo, Mike remained on his toes.

"Dan."

[Yeah, the reactor is over here, somewhere beneath me. If it comes to it we could make this thing blow.]

While Dan still hadn't asked about exactly what had happened to River and Mike, he still understood.

There was no way he was going back to a prison cell, and the same went for Mike and River.

"Ma'am, salvage party 3 has recovered 4 survivors and marked their ship for possible recovery. ETA is 10 minutes, they're already en route."

Finally receiving some good news, Alex breathed a relaxed sigh before she refocused on the task at hand.

"The council has left this matter up to me, prepare the 7th hangar to receive the visitors and tell them I'm on my way."

"Yes Ma'am, orders have been relayed to everyone in the area, the 7th hangar will be brought under special lockdown momentarily."

"Then let's get going."

The place Alex called home was the great Ra'si of the 13 Swords, a supermassive capital ship referred to as a Shard housing about a million people. The 25-kilometre-tall Ra'si was currently 2 years into a 5-year resource extraction mission, picking the entirety of the system clean, although it mostly centred around collecting and refining rare metals mined on the dwarf planet it was currently tethered to.

Travel inside a Shard-sized craft usually occurred inside massive vertical trains which travelled all the way from the lowest engine deck all the way to the topmost communications array, these trains carried anything from passengers to cargo, munitions and even some medium-sized drones, no matter what they were transporting, this type of transport was optimised for volume and nothing else.

Therefore it was actually faster to grab a dropship or a tug boat if one wanted to go from one part of a Shard to another, but as Alex wasn't particularly pressed for time she took one of the vertical trains.

(... I wonder how these newcomers look? Perhaps they have more limbs than us?... Or perhaps even multiple tails?)

Inside the vertical train, Alex didn't stand out that much with her subordinate at her side. Sure the military uniform and insignia which marked her as Commander of the 4th Gunnery station did present an aura of awe whenever people recognised it, but otherwise Alex's long golden hair, proud lion-like ears, clear blue eyes and healthy tail were characteristics which could be found all over the place. Even as there were still people among her ranks who discriminated based on things like eye and skin colour, or even what kind of ears and tail a person happened to be born with, Alex and even the council she served under didn't believe in such outdated ideals. The only thing which should ever matter in beastkin society was one's merit.

From that point of view, it was no wonder Alex had ended up leading a large part of her home Shard's defence, she had passed the officer's exam with flying colours, distinguished herself in drone piloting and commanding and was even a skilled marksman.

Given her current trajectory, it was only a matter of years before Alex sat on the high council, but the person herself tried not to let that notion get to her head.

"Clear out and get ready! The dropship will be here any second!"

Having arrived at the 7th hangar, Alex personally oversaw preparations for the outsider's arrival as she did her best to keep calm.

The 7th hanger were one of the Shard's few docking facilities which only served crewed flights which were mostly ceremonial, as such it lacked the automated reloading stations and heavy cargo cranes and was mostly bare all the way out to the membrane forcefield which contained the hangar's breathable atmosphere while allowing ships to pass through unimpeded.

"Ma'am, there they come."

"Yeah, let's go greet them, remind everyone to keep calm. We don't want another diplomatic incident…"

Walking out to the dropship transport as it was setting down using its four tilting main thrusters/landing gear combo, Alex straightened her dress shirt and tie before she cleared her throat in an attempt to calm down.

"Welcome to the Shard Ra'si of the 13 Swords! I am the Commander of the 4th Gunnery station and my name is Alex! I hope this initial misunderstanding can be worked out with words alone!"

Making her greeting immediately as the drop ship shut down its reactor and opened its hatches, Alex stood in a bit of an awkward silence for a few seconds before there was finally movement.

As the first of 4 figures left the dropship, Alex finally saw the outsiders with her own eyes. Standing about a head taller than herself, the Commander judged the person to be male based on his body and stature, but everything else was hidden by a black vacuum suit with tinted glass. The visitor's vacuum suit was highly irregular compared to the ones Alex was used to, not only did it completely lack any kind of identifying markings, but it seemed to have some kind of built-in cold gas propulsion system in addition to multiple overlapping armour segments which most likely provided the wearer with some kind of protection against ballistic threats.

Strapped to the side of the visitor's waist was a somewhat unusual weapon, it seemed to be some kind of pistol without any kind of automatic fire-control system, but Alex didn't get a chance to examine it in closer detail as the visitor finally spoke up through some kind of heavily modulated voice filter.

[Greetings Gunnery Commander Alex, my name is Mike.]

Glancing around after naming himself, Mike placed a hand on his holster before continuing.

[I am sorry for the sudden request, but I'll need some kind of guarantee for me and my comrade's safety. I know it's common courtesy to assume such a thing, but we did come under attack directly after transmitting a request for mediation.]

Just from Mike's stance and the way he carried himself, Alex knew he was proficient in close-range fighting, it was clear from his centre of gravity that he was ready to draw his sidearm if needed while protecting his head from return fire at the same time. Furthermore, it didn't seem to deter Mike that his pistol didn't have an automatic aim system, it seemed he preferred shooting himself.

"Of course, I want to personally extend an apology for the earlier incident regarding your vessel Mike, the 13 Swords stand ready to recover and repair your craft to make up for the damage we did, furthermore I extend a personal guarantee, as long as you are on board the Ra'si no-one will try to harm you or your comrades."

As it seemed like Mike not only knew about her language but also her culture, Alex made a personal promise to Mike and his comrades.

[Hmm, I guess that'll do for now… I hope we can get along, Gunnery Commander Alex.]