Chapter 4: Breach

Black swirled into gray as Diah woke, her blurred vision clearing into an image of blue steel interior. She looked around, the throbbing pain in the upper right of her head made worse by the movement.

The blood from her wound had dried and crusted, clumping her normally silken hair. She blinked again, adjusting to the darkness. The room was empty except for a small crate thrown into the corner.

Diah stood then fell back down as her legs gave way. As she moved to catch herself, she became aware of the cuffs placed around her wrists. She landed awkwardly to avoid them, taking most of the blow to her shoulder instead. She sighed.

"Of course there's cuffs."

Diah rolled onto her back and placed her hands together, channeling her energy into a small purple ball. She placed two fingers inside and tugged at the core, using her other hand to shape it into a dagger.

Satisfied, Diah flipped the dagger around with her fingers and began to saw away at the cuff's connecting latch. She had yet to meet a lock, chain or cuff that could best her.

The latch gave a quiet snap and Diah pulled her arms apart in victory. Picking the cuff's locks with ease, she tossed them to the side. She studied the room once more.

'This is definitely a Kunar ship,' Diah thought as she ran a hand across the featureless wall. 'The steel here can only be mined on Yara. But what do the Kunar want with me?'

Diah walked slowly along the wall, tracing it with her fingers.

'Probably political,' She continued in her mind. 'It's always political.'

Her index finger caressed a groove in the wall, near invisible to the eye. She had found the door, and with it, a way out. She slid her dagger into the groove then pressed against it with all her weight. Even though her Kanushin seemed indestructible in its dagger form, there was a small hint of fear that this may be the one time it broke.

The door clicked, then whirred open to a circular bay. A large silver slab sat in the middle of the space, the light from its hologram illuminating the rest. A handful of plasma rifles and boxes of nucleocores were strewn about the floor. Nothing Diah could use, but also no one around to worry about.

This was one of the only times she was thankful for her mother. Being a member of the Alis, the Chyl's governing bureaucracy, made Wyrna and her daughter constant targets. Wyrna had made sure that, from a very young age, Diah would be able to protect herself and get out of any potentially dangerous situations. While her methods may have been a bit too extreme and, at times, even borderline tortuous, Diah had to acknowledge the advantage it gave her.

She peered around the bay once more, dagger in hand, then moved to the slab. The hologram floated above her, a rotating planetary view of the galactic quadrant they were in.

"This doesn't make sense," She mumbled to herself as she traced the ship's trajectory. "We're moving too fast to be heading for any of these planets."

Diah swiped her hands across the map, zooming in on the ship itself. She rotated the view once more and saw a large cylindrical satellite just ahead. No, not a satellite. A station. Understanding rushed in.

"Tovarro, the only station where you can lose one person in a sea of eight billion," She whispered.

She had to go, and fast. If the Kunar docked on Tovarro, any hope of tracking her down would be completely lost.

Diah inched toward the opposite end of the bay, anxious to find the door to the piloting deck. As she approached the bare wall, muffled radio chatter caught her ear. Pressing her back flat against it, she slowly slid sideways as the chatter got louder.

Finding the door's groove once again, she took a deep breath and held her dagger close. A faint smile began to form. She was nervous, but also a bit excited. Who ever got to go on an intersystem journey just to escape their mother?

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Zaius never knew his parents, but often wondered where he would have ended up in life had they been around. Pirating ships around Avir? A politician on Flightline? Maybe a humble shopkeep on Neo Abeona. It didn't matter. He was, at the moment, getting his teeth kicked in by the giant Terric with a scar on his eye.

"You think you can hold out, exowaste?" Jax teased from atop a nearby mound.

Zaius called up shield after shield, but Jix smashed through each of them with ease. Small emerald shards floated in the air as they moved through the dunes of waste around them.

"I'm just going easy on the guy," Zaius teased back. "I'd hate to ruin his fun!"

Jix uttered a primal screech and charged forward, swinging wildly. Zaius dropped to the floor, letting him pass, and shot back up with a concussive blast.

Zaius took off running.

"Get back here coward!" Jix yelled in frustration. "I'm going to rip you to shreds!"

"Not a coward," Zaius responded quietly to himself. "I just know how to pick my battles."

He shot another blast at the ground, this time more controlled, and launched towards an unprepared Jax. Zaius stuck his arm out, clotheslining the talkative twin into the ground. He pushed through, using the sudden shift in momentum to roll down the other side.

"Try catching me now!" Zaius said, his nerves and anxiety at an all time high.

There was no going back from what he just did. No one got to attack Areshia's top lieutenants and live. Still, his gauntlet's gave him a fighting chance - a chance to get from under Areshia's thumb.

Jix had managed to climb to his brother and helped him up. Jax dusted himself off. He pointed a needle-like finger toward Zaius.

"Areshia will want the pleasure of ending you herself."

Zaius laughed, unable to hide his nerves. Still, better to go out with a bang.

"You can tell Areshia that she can kiss both sides of —"

The sound of crunching metal and an explosive pop cut Zaius off. Before he could look around to see what happened, an incredible force smashed him into the ground. Dazed, he felt the rushing whoosh of pressure instantly latch on and lift him into the air.

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Diah pried the doors open as quickly as she could, but the Reclaiment was already waiting with a hefty blow to her midsection. She flew back into the slab, her head cracking against it. Flashes of white light danced across her eyes.

Diah shook the wound off and tried to stand, her balance thrown off and her vision now doubled. She sliced at the Reclaiment, cursing as he dodged her with ease. Desperate and in pain, Diah summoned a half-shield around her front and rushed at the Kunar soldier with all her might.

The move sent them both tumbling back into the piloting deck and against the control panel. The ship swayed and bobbed from the hit. Winded, the Reclaiment tried to bat her away and retake control.

Diah was a second quicker, stabbing him in his hand. She pressed it into the control panel, twisting her dagger to make sure the Reclaiment was unable to escape. The disheveled Chyl stumbled back, proud of herself as she threw one last solid punch against his helmet.

The force smacked him into the ship's yoke, the fighter tilting sideways and careening straight into Tovarro's side. The metal crumpled like paper with a horrible screech, ramming into a set of girders and ricocheting the ship straight down.

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Zaius reached out in panic and grabbed wildly at anything he could, finally catching a chunk of broken rebar. Debris flung past him, everything being sucked out into the never-ending vacuum of space.

'This is it,' He thought. 'This is how I die.'

Zaius took a deep breath to reserve any oxygen he could, the air around him getting stiffer by the second. He searched around with burning eyes to find a fiery hole and smashed girders in the top right of the Stock Dock's outer hull. Tracing the path of destruction, Zaius' eyes landed on a small obsidian ship crumpled amidst a cluster of debris just meters away.

He heard yelling just ahead and turned to look back up the dune. Jix was firmly holding onto something as well, his brother Jax in hand and flailing wildly from the depressurization.

"Pull me closer, please!" He heard Jax plead, fear baked into his tone. Zaius watched as Jix struggled to reel him in, his grip slipping with each passing second.

In less than a millisecond, a thin sheet of junk metal flew through Jix's outstretched arm. Indigo spatter rained across the dune and into the wind. Jax screamed as he flew up into the air and out into a cold death.

Zaius felt nauseous. He ripped off one of the straps from his jacket, latching himself to the broken bar in his hand. It cut deep into his palm. Sirens flashed and blared above but Zaius couldn't hear them. He looked back up toward the hole.

A swarm of yellow engineer bots had latched themselves to what remained of the hull. They moved quickly and accurately, spraying layers of liquid steel together to form a temporary bandage. As it spread and hardened, the pressure within the Stock Docks began to stabilize.

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Sky's hands shook lightly as she was called over to Areshia's table. Though she tried to hide her nerves, she knew that something was wrong. A lump formed in her throat.

Areshia sat, hunched slightly over the table with her chin resting on clasped hands. She had a pleasing smile, but it felt cold and sinister. Her eyes, electric like her hair, betrayed the snake-like personality that lived within. She lifted her head and cocked her head from one side to another. The club's music blared around them.

"You're smaller than you look onstage," Areshia said, breaking her intense gaze.

She wiped her hands on her lap then pushed forward a small glass of glittering liquid.

"When you're up there, lights flashing and music pulsing, it makes you look almost like a goddess."

Sky gulped, unsure of what to think about Areshia's comment or her offer. Her hands twitched under the table.

"Thank you," She finally responded curtly.

"Don't," Areshia responded, looking back up with icy eyes. "That's what I hear my crew say all the time, and they're such fond fans of yours. But you know what I see?"

Sky shifted in her seat, uncomfortable.

"I see a scared little searcher," Areshia continued, pulling in.

"You're someone who doesn't know who or what she is. But I do. It's my job to know who and what," She said, taking a pause to run her eyes up and down Sky, "you are."

"I'm not a searcher," Sky uttered under her breath.

Her hands dug into her exposed knees. The air around the two changed instantly.

"I'm sorry, did you say something?" Areshia snapped, cupping her ear toward the scared Uvari. "Because it sounded like you might have just talked back to me?"

The increase in Areshia's volume made her guards start to shuffle closer. Sky knew things would get bad if she didn't pivot fast. She looked to the side, cleared her throat and looked back to meet Areshia's gaze.

"I know you want something, Areshia. So just tell me what it is."

"Sure!" Areshia said with the fakest giggle. "I'll just cut to it. Zaius was supposed to be back to me by now with something very, very important. I don't like waiting. Now, I know that he's part of this little family you have here, so I want to know exactly where he is before I have to start tearing this place apart piece by piece."

"I haven't seen him in days," Sky answered succinctly.

While it was the truth, it did hurt her just a bit. She thought that after knowing Zaius for so long, he would be more open about what he was doing, or rather - who he was associating with.

"Hmph."

Areshia offered a closed smile and blinked her eyes a few times. Her fingers instinctively traced her tattoos as she went deep in thought. Her face twitched a bit and she looked up at the club's ceiling.

"Tell you what," She sighed. "Let's chat, woman to woman. I wasn't always like this. I've seen a lot, been through a lot, done a lot. But I've always ended up on top. You want to know how I got there?"

Sky shrugged her shoulders. She wasn't quite sure what the point of the sudden change in conversation was.

"I did what others were afraid to do. I stepped in when the Underside was at its weakest and made the greatest crime syndicate this side of Atania."

Areshia stood up, heated from her own words.

"And you want to know what all this has gotten me? A little blue bimbo that thinks she can outsmart me!"

Sky saw one of the guards move quickly behind her, ready to fire. Before she could react, the sound of a plasma blast echoed through the club. Everything went silent. Patrons watched as the guard fell to the floor, a cauterized wound in his side.

Gen walked to Sky's side and pushed his glasses up, swiping back the sprigs of hair that had fallen in his face. He pointed the plasma rifle in his hands toward Areshia. The rest of her guards pulled their solar pistols and aimed at Gen in return. Areshia laughed.

"I think it's time you paid your tab and left, Darling," Gen said calmly, waving the rifle towards the door. "No hard feelings, just business."

"Just business," Areshia repeated, amused.

She snapped her fingers and the guards around them lowered the weapons. Areshia walked by the still-seated Sky, knocking over the drinking glass with a flick. It smashed against the floor, the glittering liquid splashing over Sky's feet.

"You're lucky I owed him a favor," Areshia said coldly, then let out another fake giggle. "See you later, Sparkles."

As Areshia and her cronies left the club, Gen put his rifle aside and patted Sky on the shoulder.

"Thanks for having our back, sweetie. You ok?"

Sky put her hand on Gen's and nodded slightly.

"She called me a searcher."

Gen furrowed his brow.

"She just wanted to get in your head, Sky. We both know that's not true."

Sky looked down at the glittering mass pooling around her. It swirled and melded into a cumulation of colorful flecks. Sometimes the most beautiful things arose out of the most chaotic of messes.

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The ground beneath Zaius's feet had never felt better. The Stock Docks had completely re-pressurized, junk and cargo materials scattered across the entire station floor. Zaius released his wrist from the makeshift restraint, his palm covered in a crimson smear. He tried to wipe it off to no avail.

Jix sat crumpled and unconscious at the top of the mound. His brother was claimed by the infinite black.

Zaius thought about offering help but turned back toward the smoldering wreckage.

'If there's anyone still alive in that,' Zaius thought, 'They may need help too.'

He stood for a moment, trying to make an impossible decision. His body started moving toward the wreckage before his mind could catch up. Something about the situation seemed off, like a voice in the back of his mind wanted him to check it. He didn't have time for too much thought though.

Zaius raced toward the crashed fighter as it began to crack and pop, fire spreading in the newly oxygenated atmosphere. As he approached, a segment of the tail fin snapped and crashed into the floor.

"Hello?" Zaius called out, hopeful someone might answer.

The heat from the ship's exterior began to increase rapidly. He turned into a larger cracked segment of the fighter, looking around at what seemed to be the piloting deck. Machinery sizzled and sparked. A single Kunar soldier, or what was left of it, was smashed into metal folds.

"You definitely didn't make it," Zaius thought aloud as he crouched to investigate the remains. "Was it just you though?"

A small shuffle came from nearby. Zaius turned, unsure of what he heard. "Hello?"

He moved to the edge of the deck and pulled open a malfunction door. It was another deck, a map room of sorts. Trails of fresh blood ran along the floor.

Zaius followed and avoided the spreading licks of flame jutting from the walls. The trails led him to a pile of cargo crates thrown together in the midst of the crash. An outstretched arm laid unmoving at the bottom

Zaius charged his right gauntlet and punched the pile, scattering the crates. He rushed to toss what remained to the sides. As he dug, the body of an unconscious female became clearer. He pulled her out, briefly checked her pulse and lifted her in his arms.

Zaius wasted no time getting out of the burning wreck. Outside, he set the unconscious body down gently. Away from the blazing reds and oranges of the flames, it was easier to see that the woman was a Chyl. Her pointed ears cut through her amethyst hair, her frame humanoid in shape but a bit more wiry. The marks on her face were the clearest indicator though. Elegant swirls of diamond-like freckles were etched across her cheeks and forehead, dancing in the light like the brightest of stars. He moved closer, studying the patterns.

"You're a High Mark," Zaius noted with surprise.

The Chyl's eyes flung open and a swift fist moved across his face.

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Diah didn't really know what happened between the crash and the current moment, but waking up to a face inches from hers forced her fighting reflex to kick in. She swung rapidly, knocking the Human square across the jaw, and scooted back in an attempt to make space.

"What the hell!" The Human howled, grabbing his mouth. "I save you and this is what I get?"

Diah pressed herself upward, fighting the pain. She inspected the Human male. His textured mint locs pulled forward into a blonde-tipped mohawk. A tinge of red flowed beneath the ochre of his skin. Angry amber eyes stared back at her. She blinked. In the confusion of the moment, Diah hadn't thought to answer his question.

"Are you ok?" Diah finally asked. She relaxed just a little and looked at the chaos around them. A puzzled look developed. "What happened?"

"I was hoping you'd tell me, High Mark."

Diah let out a scoff.

"Typical. Of course the Human only cares about my marks."

She threw her hands up in frustration and started to walk away. The Human followed her.

"Hang on, your highness. You can't just go crashing a ship into my station and then run off like nothing happened."

Diah stopped and spun around.

"First," She said with a finger in the air, "I'm not even sure what happened here. I was kidnapped, I fought back and now I'm stuck here in Tovarro. Second, I'm not a princess!"

She huffed and started to march away once more. The Human ran in front of her, shifting into a backwards walk.

"Look, wrong foot ok? I'm Zaius," He noted with a couple of gestures. "I pulled you out of the wreckage and I'm just wondering if you need help."

Diah stopped and tilted her head down to take a breath. She looked back up, freshly composed.

"Diah. Nice to meet you and thanks for saving me. Now, how do I get out of this place?"

Sirens blared in the distance, different from the alarms that sounded during the breach. Zaius perked up a bit and he looked off to the distance. He turned back towards Diah.

"We have to get out of here."

Diah threw him a questioning look.

"Why? If those sirens are help, they can get me to wherever I need to be."

"Not that simple. It's TovaSec. Think military police. And if they catch me with these," Zaius explained, showing her the Kanutic gauntlets, "Neither of us are getting out of here alive."

Diah could tell from the sudden spike in fear that Zaius was telling the truth, or at least enough of it to convince her. She glanced around at the Stock Docks once more.

"Where do we even go from here?"

"I have a place," Zaius said, pointing the way. "But we're going to need to make a stop first."

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The breach of the Stock Docks was plastered across every holoscreen and MenXhip in Tovarro. At least 1,382 people had been declared dead or missing by the time the newsbots had started to circle, and TovaSec had locked down everything they could. The Kunar, ever the aggressors, were caught red-handed doing something seedy at best and terroristic at worst. Either way, they had quickly become the public's enemy.

Areshia didn't care about any of it. There was just one thing about the incident that actually pertained to her, and she was going to have it. As her crew scanned through endless streams of security footage, some of which had been conveniently lost to TovaSec, she found exactly what she needed.

She let out a real giggle this time, a hint of sadistic glee hidden within. Her eyes burned with hellfire.

"Gotcha."