Adjustment

"Well, that went over great."

Having gotten out the medkit after Mike finished embarrassing himself, River made sure to rub it in deep while taking care of his broken nose.

"I've never claimed that I'm a good fighter, okay? My expertise lies entirely in piloting and shooting."

"Yeah, I can clearly see that based on how poorly you managed a skinny girl just out of a stasis pod, next time we should give her Parkinsons to, just to level the odds a bit more."

Instead of responding to River's mocking, Mike chose to just sit silent and accept it so they could move on faster.

"Okay, let's take it from the top then. My name is Mike, I'm a mercenary and I own this ship together with River here."

After having punched the shit out of each other, Mike moved on to self-introductions, although the beastkin didn't seem to trust him much yet she did at least realise that if Mike wanted to hurt her, he would have done so already.

"My name is Jessica, I'm an ensign gunner of the 45th free navy mercenary group… What the hell happened? What is this place?"

"... What's the last thing you remember?"

Not sure how much he should tell her, Mike still knew there was no good way of broaching the subject.

"... I, we were attacked by some group of unknown hostiles. Nothing we did even scratched them and as our war form was starting to get torn apart my superior shoved me inside a life raft."

"We found you sometime after that, a piece of what I assumed to be your warform was in orbit around a planet near a pulsar… There were no other survivors."

Although Jessica seemed to have somewhat realised it already, the news that there were no other survivors still shook her up quite a bit. While Mike had expected she would need a moment, Jessica quickly collected herself with a deep breath.

"So? What happens now?"

"We'll get you back to your people, but that's going to take quite a while so until then you'll be travelling with the two of us… I don't think it needs said, but I and River are your best shot at survival, if anyone else finds out that you're not human they will take you apart, slowly and with excruciating detail. We need to get underway immediately, follow me to the cockpit."

Turning to River, Mike gestured with his head for them to get going and headed to the cockpit, with Jessica following behind.

"... Right, we still need to work for a living."

Making sure Jessica was secure, River took her usual seat inside the Wyrm cockpit and lit up the navigation interface as the Wyrm's thrusters finally cut out and the ship returned to zero-G floating aimlessly through deep space between stars.

"... What kind of craft is this?"

While Jessica had figured that the sense of gravity she had been feeling came from propulsion, the size of the Wyrm did somewhat surprise her.

"We're onboard a Wyrm, it is a medium-large heavy fighter. It is in the upper echelon of what a pair of mercenaries like me and River use. We don't have large war forms or capital ships in this world like you're used to."

"Let's see, I saw we head to the Crown system, it should be no issue getting the final modifications for the Wyrm there."

Ignorant of Mike and Jessica's conversation, River recommended their next stop towards the galactic centre. While they had already procured hydroponics that would help stretch out food supplies operating outside of populated space, those supplies would need even more padding with the addition of Jessica on their crew, not even mentioning other essential outfitting like installing a fuel scoop that had been yet to be done due to the fact Mike couldn't find a quality one.

"Sure, that sounds decent, punch in the cords."

Agreeing with River's call, Mike turned to Jessica to update her as he got underway at the same time.

"Jessica, we're heading to a planet in order to finish outfitting this ship for long endurance travel."

"O… Okay."

Not used to the degree of acceleration she was currently undergoing, Jessica barely managed to squeeze out a single word response before Mike punched into hyperspace and acceleration normalised to 1 G.

Noticing how short of breath Jessica became under acceleration, River showed concern for her before she remembered that they couldn't really communicate.

"Are you okay?"

Still, some amount of information managed to pass through the language barrier, not that it elicited other than a slightly annoyed eye roll from Jessica.

(Right, they need to be able to speak with each other and know just a bit about their respective cultures. Enough not to step on toes would be good.)

"I'll go get some rest, try and get talking with River here, you'll need to be able to communicate or it'll be suspicious."

Turning to River next, Mike explained in a bit more detail.

"You'll need to be able to talk beastkin or at least understand the gists of it when we go to their side, be mindful that they all have extremely high pride."

"You can't be-"

"Sink or swim, goodnight~"

Watching Mike get up and leave while knowing that she couldn't leave Jessica unsupervised in the cockpit, River's expression quickly soured.

"... I hate that guy, I hate that guy so fucking much."

"---------------------?"

"I don't know what you're saying, but yeah, sure, fine."

Sort of defeated by Mike's behaviour, River learned back in her chair and zoned out until Jessica spoke up again.

"Mike? River, Mike?"

"He's gone out to sleep, S L E E P."

Drawing some sort of conclusion from River's words, Jessica seemed confused for a few seconds before she also learned back in her chair.

"----------..."

Getting up from her chair after a bit of deliberation, Jessica crouched down beside River, her long ears standing straight at attention.

(So that's what Mike meant when he said they have a lot of pride… Guess we'll start with counting.)

"So do you still feel like killing her now?"

"... Is that really why you left us alone for two hours?"

Getting back from a power nap, Mike found River and Jessica had taught each other to count in their respective languages from 1 to 50, along with simple yes and no. Of course, it helped that both Jessica and River knew their survival counted on them learning from each other.

"Yeah, but it did help, didn't it?"

"... I guess."

"Great, then go get some sleep."

"Already on my way."

Not really wanting to argue anything after getting her mind smushed by studying against her will, River went straight to bed and left Mike and Jessica to themselves.

"... How come you know my language?"

Trying to understand the language River was speaking through intuitive repetition, it became remarkably clear that learning a truly alien language took time and effort.

It did take a while due to distractions, but Jessica eventually found herself asking how exactly Mike could talk to her without any designable accent or effort.

"Because I studied it for a long time."

"That-"

"Don't ask questions you don't want to be answered."

While Jessica was curious, even slightly suspicious of how Mike knew her language, there were more important things in life, namely life itself. For all she knew, Mike could be planning to sell her off to a lab somewhere, or save her life just because he could. Having known Mike for just a few hours there was no way of knowing what could happen and Jessica hadn't exactly pegged Mike as the predictable type.

"Right then, you said before we're going planetside? What are we doing exactly?"

The way Jessica figured it, there were more chances to make an informed decision planetside.

"Getting outfitted with a scoop and extreme long endurance equipment so we can get you home."

"Just like that?"

"What happened to your craft is happening all over this galaxy at an ever-increasing frequency, I reckon 5 years till what powers are left grows paranoid enough to start wars with each other over it, 6 until any and all kinds of war stops because of a total breakdown of society… Then whoever's left will realise in horror that the apocalypse has finished its warmup, the same thing will happen to your world too, just a bit slower because your people are too loyal to each other to splinter like only humans can. There is only one way to prevent this: together."

"Right-o. I'm going to sleep."

(He's definitely insane…)

With Jessica's evaluation of Mike taking a complete nose dive the next few days in hyperspace only really spoke with River, although the amount of actual communication between the two of them was limited due to a slowly eroding language barrier.

"Here we go… Punch out in 5… 2… Welcome to the crown system, we're heading to 4-A. I know this is a capital system but anything on scopes?"

"Just some local security forces and the normal mass of traders keeping to their routes… If anything we're the ones out of phase here, I say we find a lane and stick to it."

Having not come from any trade routes and arriving at the very centre of the Solar Empire, it only took a few minutes before a pair of local security force fighters formed up on the Wyrm's tail and demanded it 'yield for inspection'.

"Well, that's just fucking typical… Do we take them for a trip or?"

Having read the message on her comm's display that could either be read as 'bribe us', 'this is a corporate-sponsored execution, pull over' or 'we're bored and want to fuck with the newcommer', River's first response was to turn tail and run.

"Nah, let's just see what they want, if they try and fuck with us in any way that's the same as fucking directly with the pilot's guild after the favour we did for the local branch leader."

Needless to say, security forces and mercenaries didn't get along that well, mostly due to the fact that mercenaries per their very definition sometimes played a little fast and loose with local rules, still, Mike and River had been playing inside the bounds of the law so far, and even helped the Solar navy so Mike figured it would be okay to at least hear them out.

"... What is happening?"

Having not gotten an update she could understand, Jessica still correctly figured that there was something wrong when Mike started easing the Wyrm out of supercruise, still quite far from their destination.

"We're getting pulled over for a traffic violation, next thing you know they found contraband on board and they'll smash our faces into the pavement just for a laugh."

"I'm sorry what?"

While Mike made sure the Wyrm at least appeared friendly on the outside, River warmed up the weapons.

"River, on weapons, use passive sensors only, for now, if things go hot we nail everything with KEM's and take our shopping somewhere else."

"Wilco."

(Let's see what you want…)

Acting just a little bit paranoid, Mike squeezed his grip around the stick and prepared for the worst as two light fighters belonging to the Solar navy local security force entered normal space at a range of 4 clicks.

[GCV-44 this is Victor 2-3-10 on your port side closing in at 10 m/s, please state your reason for bringing that kind of craft to a place like this.]

"Hello Victor 2-3-10, this is GCV-44 affiliated with the pilot's guild. We're here to refit with top-class equipment your capital planet is known for, in accordance with no fire zone regulations we will surrender to limited fire control lock when approaching for planetfall."

"They're scanning us, just a low rez to get a rough estimate of our loadout."

As River updated Mike who focused most of his attention on the pair of fighters, the security forces got back to Mike sounding just a little surprised, most likely after getting the scan data back.

[GCV-44 it appears you're currently carrying a set of small yield nuclear devices.]

"That's because I am, 6 of them to be exact."

[Right, we'll need to confiscate those I'm afraid. After that you'll be free to proceed, with vouchers for their credit value… Going rate at the moment is 400.000 per.]

"That's fucking absurd. This is fucking absurd."

Cutting off comms before Mike had a chance to, River was already protesting as Mike started unlocking the fire control system so he could dump the nukes.

"Of course, they're not going to let us land in their palace with nukes River, that's normal."

"Then we don't shop near their fancy palace."

"Normally I would agree, but fancy fucking rich kids need the best for their long endurance yachts and the best of the entire Solar Empire is right here."

Going over the pros and cons including what she had just learned, River eventually just rolled her eyes as she dumped the nukes herself.

"Those fancy rich kids better have the best fucking shit or I'll skin you alive."

"Right."

"And you're doing procurement for new nukes, I spent hours filling out the paperwork last time."