The Ashen Mountain Range

[H4X]

Somewhere, several thousand miles above...

A few screens exploded, showering bits of plastic and glass across the cockpit. One screen falling to the floor as the breaker box behind it exploded. Warning lights flickering on and off across several stations that were currently unmanned. Of the five seats in the tightly packed control room only one was occupied. The small cat-like girl in a seat different from the rest, seeming the part of a pilot's seat. Her hands trying to reach across to the various controls out of her small body's reach. The window ahead of her seat was sealed by blast shutters likely just as solid as the rest of the hull. After all, no matter how tough transparent material was, it would still be a weak point on a craft.

She glanced back at the past twenty-four hours. She had been used again as a tool for one madwoman's war against an entire species. She watched an entire world fall in a day to an army she was forced to follow. Hell, she helped to lead the attack. she cursed always being forced to take a backseat in her own mind at that witch's beck and call. The madwoman was able to win the war with only one cargo transport even being damaged by the conflict. Still as ending her own life went against the witch's control she still found herself trying to save the limping cargo-ship. It had seemed the entire fleet of Al'Tera came after revenge, seemed the smarter elements of the Al'Tera military had tried to save themselves over a hopeless war.
It started far too simply.

It was only her second jump with the damaged ship. The quick-fix to the engines meaning the engines operated under the concept of Five hours in, Five hours Out to allow the older Faster than Light Engines time to cool down. The rest of the madwoman's forces had left her behind. Lina, being the perfect little slave that she was ended up being the obvious choice for a three day vacation, traveling the 'slow way' to the other edge of the galaxy. Of course as fate would have it The entire fleet had found her course... or maybe the part of her subconscious that found even suicide wouldn't release her from her servitude, managed to sneak one trick past the programming ordering her to live. There were only two scout ships at first, her transport actually clipping one of the ships engines almost immediately after deceleration.
While her instinct told her to try and jump early, risking more damage to the FTL engines the programming took control. Her body started an attack on the two ships, the damaged scout ship remained stationary and thus less of a target. The other scout ship however demonstrated that a damaged cargo transport lost to it in terms of acceleration. The ship ran towards the center of the system, using the fact that the gravity well would make a jump out neigh impossible. Her war with the programming over the matter yielded next to no results as they followed the ship towards the star at the core of the system. The tactical advantage went to the scout ship as it dove towards the sun, radiation levels leaving her ship nearly blind. However after the four minutes wasted in combat she found herself regaining sensors only twenty seconds before the entire remaining army of Al'Tera noticed her ship. It seemed that while the war ended through scorched earth tactics of their homeworld, the military still had a force to be reckoned with... or at least they had more than enough firepower to destroy one little cargo ship.
She had considered all her options, even debating diving into the heart of the blue dwarf star that had blinded her to this trap. The both her own programming and the ship's overrode that option immediately. The ship might be able to recharge off a red-dwarf in an emergency if it wasn't damaged, but as things were the ship was damaged, the hull already slightly scorched, and power reserve was too low to attempt another dive that close to the star without a recharge.
The fight was quick and devastating to both sides. Lina dove her ship into the heart of the fleet, directing the entirety of her shields forward until she could begin to use the sheer number of ships in the fleet to her advantage. After all, how much trouble was avoiding friendly fire when you have over a hundred ships clustered together, trying to shoot one ship faster than the scouts once it was moving, and nearly as maneuverable as one of the Al'Teran fleet's top end fighters.
The ultimate goal of her dodge tactics yielded results soon enough when the weapon frequency orders went out. Between herself and the ship's computer the weapon frequency was analyzed and countered soon enough. Their ships fire stopped affecting their own forces at the same time they stopped affecting her own ship. Before the order to change frequencies had even gone out the cargo ship had dropped half a cargo bay worth of mines that scattered and vanished. Several short bursts of a plasma beam cut through some of the largest ships like a knife through butter once the ship slipped into their shield. The plasma weapons on the cargo ship were useless against any basic shields or at distance in atmosphere at least, the witch's idea of giving them a sporting chance by leaving those flaws in place. Sadly this meant that soon enough the smaller shielded craft were being sacrificed to protect the larger ships. Once this change came into effect the fight began to sway back towards the fleet regaining the advantage, though the larger ships were taking significant damage to engine related systems. While the fleet's energy weapon attacks were just being absorbed into the the cargo ship's shields at first, now they were creating an overload by returning to the varying frequencies. Systems were already starting to fail and Lina's programming finally calculated a ten percent chance of survival if they stayed. Redirecting the last of the shields towards the back of the ship she accelerated out of the gravity well.
It was quick work after that to override the FTL countdown clock and plot a jump out of system, though Lina found the ship taking several more hits as she managed to convince the programming to ensure they aimed to a system that in theory had a habitable planet. The one thing both sides of her mind agreed upon was that this would likely be the last jump the ship could make for a few weeks. Still while this was her last jump for a few weeks, with that many of the large ships destroyed, or at least having their space fold systems damaged, Lina wasn't going to be followed for some time to come.

After the retreat Lina pushed the ship, trying to extend the FTL jump as long as possible. As the engines started to flicker out little by little she glanced at the clock. Just over three hours in FTL now, with the power limiters disabled. Exiting FTL was especially rough as ship didn't completely decelerate. She had overshot and ended up in the gravity well of a system. She tried to maneuver the ship but found the dropout had left her skimming the atmosphere of a planet within moments. The hull's remaining armor was starting to tear apart at as the shields were assaulted by skimming through the outer layers of a gas giant. Lina extended the ship's collectors, risking the emergency refuel as she realized that blind misfortune had put her ship into a slingshot maneuver.


A few screens exploded, showering bits of plastic and glass across the cockpit. One screen falling to the floor as the breaker box behind it exploded. Warning lights flickering on and off across several stations that were currently unmanned. Lina sat alone in the pilot's seat. Her hands trying to reach across to the various controls out of her small body's reach. The window ahead of her seat was sealed by blast shutters likely just as solid as the rest of the hull. After all, no matter how tough transparent material was, it would still be a weak point on a craft.
The ship was rattling for several more minutes before finishing the maneuver. Once things had settled down she checked the mix ratio of the gases picked up by the collectors. Looking at the readings she began growling in frustration, there was a large excess of helium. Seemed that she wasn't going to be able to alter the ship's course much. She checked the vectors and looked at the damage reports, opening the blast shutters over the cockpit window. Given how large the planet was in the sky it was obvious she was going to be in for a rough landing She checked the cargo ship's design specifications once more just to be sure as a thought crossed her mind regarding the rough ride the dampeners had already given her.
"... Not designed for atmospheric reentry" she read aloud to herself, laughing. She checked the thrust output she could bring to bear and grimaced. Aside from the two shuttles, both still having full power, there wasn't much else she could do. The underbelly of the ship was layered with ceramics so heat wise she might have a chance without much left of the shields, but she was going to be finding herself riding a ship that was shaking apart. Jettisoning the cargo would lower the mass of the ship, but the equations showed it wouldn't be enough to let her control the ship enough to keep it from tearing itself apart. The programming in her mind decided that the shuttles had enough thrust to pull the cargo modules into a stable orbit, as a byproduct freeing up some energy for the dampeners. She sighed and decided that that meant the shuttles were gone as an escape route.
Lina typed away before speaking to the computer "Jettison cargo modules one through six." She blinked. A flickering error message had come up on the remaining control screens. The safety systems showed Cargo Bay One would not disengage. She brought up the internal camera for the bay and blinked, before grinning. "Guess today isn't a good day to die." With that statement she released the locks between the two foremost cargo modules. Modules two through six unlocked from the hull; the two shuttles on either side of the ship slid along the rails on the cargo modules, locking in to the rearmost cargo pod before several micro explosives pushed the pods loose.

Lina had rapidly moved down the remaining cargo module. The little girl struggled to climb into the cockpit of a fighter not entirely of the witch's design. It seemed that the madwoman had borrowed some elements from others designs, giving the overall appearance of an airplane, when one looked past the large blockish looking fold-pack designed for the fighter's use. Said foldpack was currently wired into powering the cargo transport's FTL engines, preventing the pod from being jettisoned. Lina began the start-up sequence on the fighter, attempting to release it from the restraints keeping it in the hold. She glowered as the system kept bringing up error after error as she realized the fold pack was staying where it was. It wouldn't be as much of a problem if not for one simple fact. The cargo module opened to the ceiling, and the fold pack was mounted to the top of the fighter.

The Cargo transport was streaking across the night sky like a very large shooting star.

As the ship began to feel turbulence Lina glowered to herself. With the fighter's computer she opened remote access to the cargo ship's controls as she turned up the fighter's internal dampeners. While the fighter was designed with reentry in mind, riding down inside a crashing ship probably was one of those things the designers would never even bother to simulate. This was going to be a rough ride after all...

 

[H4X]

The creaking noises reverberated around the inside of the Cargo-ship. Shock absorption for the critical systems had been taken into account, and overall seemed to be holding up, even if they were under a great deal more stress then intended. Lina looked at the control display, blinking at the sections flashing red. She checked the designs, biting back a few choice obscenities as she retracted the drive section to compensate for the lack of the other five cargo modules. The hull stress in the area decreased, but the rapid increase of stress to the rear section of the ceramic underbelly caused it to break loose almost immediately. The cargo ship started to spiral and Lina growled, firing the braking thrusters far too early in an attempt to keep the ship upright.

The ship was starting to nosedive. Lina checked the systems, trying to find something to adjust their course. She re-opened the collectors, and was finding that the re-entry friction was giving her a surprisingly generous amount of raw energy, though the oxygen intake wasn't anywhere near enough for maneuvering thrust. After a few moments of thought her programming decided on the best course of action. It set the plasma weapon to overload, waiting until the focusing system had burned out before she fired. A massive cone of flame erupted from the nose of the ship, nowhere near focused enough to reach the ground, but still giving a very bright flash in the night sky. The ship's sudden deceleration caused the fighter and it's foldpack to break loose from the restraints, though the series of impacts that followed crashed the connection to the cargo-ship's computers. Lina braced for one last impact as she checked the fighter's own altimeter. The ship plowed into the earth, coming to a stop once it impacted the more solid material of the mountain. A nasty case of whiplash pushed her pain receptors to the point where she thought she was about to black out. It took several minutes for her healing ability to kick in enough for her to climb out of the fighter, dodging past the loosely hanging lights and showers of sparks. She risked a quick glance at the foldpack still partially held in the restraints by cables that had torn loose, while the unit was mostly still attached to the fighter. It seemed she wouldn't be getting off this planet for a while.

Lina spent a few minutes hunting around with only the emergency lights for guidance, trying to find something to pry open either of the doors to the cargo bay. Several attempts followed, ranging from a crowbar to firing a bolt gun and finding her tail nailed down to the floor after one of the resulting ricochets. The little girl almost wished she was in a life or death situation, then maybe she'd be able to actually do something about forcing her way out. The hatch finally opened; followed by a wave of small firefly-like maintenance machines flooding the room as they made their presence known. Most of them seemed to be focusing on the fighter and Lina grumbled, glancing at her tail stuck in the deck plating. She sat down, relaxing for a moment... blinking as she realized she had shifted back to human form... which meant she didn't have a tail anymore. She glanced back, looking at the bloody bolt sticking out of the deck then shrugged and started walking along the corridor, trying to avoid any injuries from the damaged ship. She kept the bolt gun by her side, wondering what good the one remaining bolt would do. As she neared the cockpit door she had noticed rock and earth in the corridor. As she opened the hatch she saw that the blast shutters had in fact remained open during the little landing, the glass caving in and partially filling the cockpit with dirt. She shook her head, grabbing the first aid kit after digging it out and went back towards the crew quarters. Only stopping to grab a sleeveless longcoat that matched the ship's orange and white uniform. She slipped the coat on before heading to the airlock.

The airlock seemed in reasonable enough shape, though with the computer down neither side of Lina's mind was sure if it was a wise decision to attempt to scuttle the ship or not. She waited several long minutes as the airlock seemed to have issues with releasing the latch. Opening a weapons locker she pulled out a energy blade, instinctively ejecting the battery to check the power remaining.
"How can you be in a charging locker and only be at five percent?" she asked the weapon, half tempted to just toss it out as trash. She still checked the other batteries, shaking her head at the fact that they all were even less charged then the one actually in the blasted sword. She didn't bother to check the other sidearms, instead she looked at the last object in the rack, a gold colored bracer with ornate lines, and three retractable blades. She supposed being left with just a cat's claw for a weapon was either a cosmic joke, or just another of the misfortunes of her day. As she pulled the bracer on and tightened it several of the small fireflies floated out of a pannel, circiling around the door, moments before it released with a hiss of hydraulics.
"Best give the machines time to dig out the kitchen" she muttered to herself as she stepped out of the ship, looking at how deeply buried the lower sections were. She checked her watch, tapping it several times till it switched to a basic compass. "Hmm, south face... guess I better remember where I parked" she said, finding herself oddly comforted by speaking to herself. She tightened the laces on the metalic shoes, strapped the first aid kit and bolt gun to her back, while pocketing the near useless energy blade.

Adopting a runner's starting stance and shifting back to her hybrid form she grinned "Once more unto the breach" and with that the cat-girl was off, managing a nice easy run at 50MPH as she hunted for the nearest signs of intelligent life... or something that might signal the presence of some fish.
 

[H4X]

Lina was making steady progress over the terrain, eventually following the river as she kept her eyes towards it in hopes of fishing for a meal. As she still hadn't found any fish after a few miles she decided to turn and consider the strange fruits from the silvery trees. The color usually was one to scare her off given what prolonged contact with silver meant, but the ration packs needed to last. She sighed and turned towards one of the trees, putting her hands against it at first, waiting for any signs that the trees themselves had enough silver to burn her hands.

Finding her hands safe from pain or even a slight tingle she dropped her gear, shoes, and coat before climbing a tree, trying to find what seemed like a ripe fruit.  

[H4X]

She blinked, not feeling a threat meant no combat form. Still she wasn't sure what to think, as she extended her claws into one of the fruits, putting her strength into the hand before blinking as she released her grip, only managing a few shallow holes into the fruit. "Thank you for the warning miss ghost" she said, glancing around before focusing on the mist.

She pulled the fruit loose as she dropped to the ground. She looked at her watch then shrugged, cutting it in half with the energy blade, before she probed around with her claws and scooped out the core of the fruit. After poking it with her claws for a few more seconds she shrugged and ate it, blanching at the taste and chewiness. After a few moments she shivered. "Well, at least they're better then the long term ration sludge" she said, before looking back to locate the mist.  

[H4X]

She tilted her head. "Guess that was quite a show wasn't it?" she asked, the obvious referal to her vessel's crash. The slight look back over her shoulder towards the ship after seemed odd in a way to the cat-girl. She sat down and started picking up her supplies, finishing with her shoes.

"Some food other then this would be appreciated, though my ability to barter is limited" she offered as she stood up, lifting one foot then the other to remind her feet of the added weight of the shoes. Finding no reason to avoid trusting the woman, her mind too arrogant to believe any normal poison would do more then aggravate her healing response.

... That only a few moments after the fruit hit her stomach the girl suddenly found herself closing her eyes, and blushing a great deal, didn't cross her mind as karma's little revenge. The strange fruit having no ill effects, beyond a pleasant reaction spread around by her healing ability.  

[H4X]

"I'm fine, that fruit does seem to have an effect to it." the cat-girl said before shaking her head to clear her mind.A slight blush showing through the fur on her face as she resumed walking. "I'll be fine Lady Iri, just a bit distracted by the effect is all. But I do thank you for the offer of hospitality" she said in a polite tone that showed somewhat more control then most used around those they had just meet, especially under similar circumstances. It seemed that the cat-girl had some trust issues.  

[H4X]

She chuckled. "Alright, no formalities then." She glanced at the lizard, her eyes taking in the details of the creature in a way that almost made her seem zoned out. It ended quickly and he color had returned to her eyes only a few seconds after they glazed over. "I can just picture how scary one of those might be if threatened." Lina said as she glanced back towards Iri.

She rolled one of her shoulders for a moment before looking at the slightly taller woman. Said woman seeming to get taller as she shifted to a fully human form. The longcoat now just shy of brushing the ground behind her. The spots in her hair fading till her silvery hair just looked dirty and her cat-like ears adjusting slower then the rest of the change, ending with the girl having slightly pointed ears..

"Most people called me by the nickname Hax in my old group, always felt like their little joke ya know? As for where I'm from... I honestly don't know where I'm from anymore, been so long since I've been to my homeworld. It was called earth, though there are a lot of those out there I've been told. " She shrugged at this statement, deciding that truth wasn't a secret after all. "Never been sure if they were joking with me or not on that." She filed away the name Lumiere, but considered the word Rifters she ran through the various meanings that came to her mind before just asking "Are these rifters a human faction of some sort? I get that they likely are from some kind of space-time rift, but I can't say a form of transportation even as unique as that identifies a race"  

[H4X]

The small girl, glanced up at Iri before glancing around just a bit. She wasn't particularly worried about getting lost, but the fact that one Lizard had been so close without her notice showed the fact that either her other side had it's own flaws, or just wouldn't warn her when something that seemed non threatening appeared.

"Mostly it was about the digital stuff... code-breaking nonsense, or my ability to read a False Intelligence." she said with a shrug. "My earth probably is a decedent of the original I suppose, can't say really since for all I know maybe there was another earth before that earth." The girl figured her logic was either just crazy, or something she ended up with after leaving the old science-fiction vids playing when she slept.

The Rifters really seemed to interest the girl. Her mind processing the similarities between several options, each one resulting in a vastly different situation she had just landed herself in. "Slavers always are a nightmare, it's no surprise that their arrivial would mean good men go to war." The thoughts about the various slaver groups coming to mind weren't something Hax wanted answered, still there was one basic fact she felt like asking about... one that would clear up a lot about her landing. "This dimensional pocket of theirs, it overlaps here doesn't it?"