Buffalo sat still and silent in the void of space, the only thing that kept Nails sharp was the constant lightning blasts inside the Badlands that kept him aware of his surroundings. Sensors were non-functional, so he kept a very sharp eye out to the area around him, anyone could come out of the shadows here.
"Buffalo isn't responding to my requests to dock...and I'm not reading ANYTHING near my ship." Nickels said interupting Nails' thoughts.
"I noticed that too, try Buffalo one more time, maybe they'll let us dock."
Nails heard the transmission sent to Buffalo and the doors opened on both sides of the station with out any confirmation from the station that they had been allowed to enter. Nails looked at Nickels in his ship and he looked back to Nails and shrugged.
"Could be a trap." Nails said aloud.
"He wouldn't trap us like this." Nickels replied. "He's family."
"Family may be family, but black sheep aren't really considered 'family'. If you remember correctly-"
"-I know he turned Rogue and betrayed his own brother, so what. Greed changes people, you and I are prime examples of that."
"We didn't turn Rogue."
"For Pete's sake Josh, we stole two f***ing fighters for honored war veterans. You really think we havn't turned 'Rogue'?"
Josh sighed and looked over at his brother again who had a look on his face, almost to say You're an idiot.
"Fine, we'll dock, but keep your wits about you, I don't like the feel of this...it's too abandoned and dark...but I'll go along with it. Make sure you're armed before you get out of your ship and have the gun at the ready, I don't want to be surprised."
"Right, lets get this done."
The two fighters manuvered to dock with Buffalo and dissappeared inside the station.
"Remember boys, the life of a Freelancer is well paid, as long as you don't go the route of a Mercenary." a father said to his two boys.
"What's a merkkanary?" said the smaller of the two boys.
"They're people...like Freelancers like your old man, but they're much more dark and will do many things to get their rightful money. Some Mercanaries are not bad however, but after a while money will corrupt them, turning them evil and bad."
"But Freelancers earn money too right?" said the bigger of the two boys.
"They do, but what we do, is different. We do escort missions, not maruading missions against other factions."
"What's murading?" both the boys said.
"I hope you boys never learn, but remember, keep your cards close to your chest at all times, no matter what the mission, you never know when you might need to high tail it out of there. And never let your enemies know what you have up your sleve, never even hint to it, them not knowing what you have to your advantage is the best defense you can ever have."
* * *
Nails allowed his Avenger to touch down on the landing block aboard Buffalo and as he did so he heard the landing struts release the air stored inside them. He opened his canopy slowly and looked up, holding his handgun close to his person, and making sure the rifle on his back was steady and held tightly to his body to keep it from making noise. He swung his right leg up and slid down the outside of the ship. He climbed out the wing and hung off the edge, allowing himself to drop down to the floor.
The entire inside of the station was dark, emergency lighting illuminated the inside of the station. No other lights were on in the section, and there was no noise, only the noise of Nickels and Nails feet clanking across the station's metal floor.
"Any contacts?" Nickels whispered to Nails.
"Nothing." He wispered back. "This is really weird, normally this section is swarming with mechanics..."
"Yeah...lets go ahead and scout ahead, he's got to be here somewhere, keep your eyes open, at least you're right about that."
Buffalo was dug out from one of the larger obsidian shards that passed for asteroids in the Badlands, and as such quite a few of the hallways were little more than cave-like tunnels with shoddy doors every few yards. The lights were flickering, bordering on swinging to the red strobes that would signify a switch to emergency power. Nickels and Nails struck out for the dock-control room, as somebody had to have opened the door. Had to.
Nickels slowly turned the knob to the room and gave it a small push, nudging it open with his handgun and ducking to allow Nails room. Nails came in strong, handgun in both hands, sweeping the room searching for targets. Nothing.
Relaxing some, they walked in, looking at the control panels. There was a beeping red light that was quite noticeable, and underneath it a small two-line screen.
"Hey Josh, check this out," Nickels said, looking over another console. "Looks like all their ships launched about thirty minutes ago towards... Buffalo? What?"
"What do you mean? This is Buffalo... right?"
"Yeah, that's what this is showing."
"That makes no kind of sense..." Nails said, thinking for a minute.
"Errr.... Nails.... I think it makes sense now." Nickels turned, eyes a tad wide.
"What?"
"They're moving to another asteroid because the Navy found this one."
"WHAT?!"
"We got an inbound Liberty Navy Cruiser group. The Badlands are slowing them down, ETA 5 minutes."
"Oh s***, we need to get out of here. Get the coordinates for the new 'Buffalo', we'll head there too."
"How long until they intercept this station?" Nails asked while running.
"From the calculations onboard the station...two minutes ago."
"S*** Jess! Lets get the hell out of here!"
As the two reached their fighters, the station began to shake.
"We can't go back to Buffalo, that will lead the Navy there."
"S*** you're right, we have to bail out of New York."
"Send him a message, let him know we're heading out of Liberty...towards Magellan, maybe we can unlock that gate in the Badlands and escape through there, into Hacker space."
"Damn it's worth a try."
* * *
"Shut up!" said the girl hanging off Josh's arm.
"I did, and we won the game. Hoverball isn't easy you know."
"Whatever." Jess said from behind the two.
"Hey if you're going to be a negative nancy, why don't you just be quiet. You agreed to come on this trip, so quit b****ing."
"Yeah, I didn't know miss popular would be coming with us."
Josh glared at Jess who glared back.
"I'ma woop your ass stick."
Josh bareled at Jess and the two began to fight, the two began to beat the living tar out of each other. Despite Jess's size, he was still wooping his bigger twin brother. The two wound up going over the founain's wall and splashing into the cold water. The temptature of the water brought them back to their senses as they came out of the water coughing and sputtering. The girl stood there staring at Josh.
"Real mature Josh." she said and walked off, arms crossed.
"Thanks a lot a**hole." Josh said to Jess as he stormed off.
* * *
Another barage of fire bounced off Nail's shields as he tried dodging the fire.
"Distance to the gate?!" Nails yelled over the alarms in his ship.
"We're close, less than 2K away, prepare for Speed Dock, I've unlocked the gate for a period of 10 seconds...it's going to be close."
Both the brothers screamed as the gate opened, and swallowed the two small ships, and leaving the Navy fleet sitting in space, scratching their heads.
It was a blue expanse of rocks and frozen water, floating. The jump gate was old and had not received any maintenance, so it was a wonder the thing still worked. Scanners took a moment to orientate, and the static was replaced with one contact - the brothers saw each other, happy to be alive.
Damn Jess, don't ever do that again... that is not how I want to die.
The comms were quiet for a moment, then: Yeah, me neither. Where to next? There's the Hacker base in here, or Freeport 4. I don't like our chanced on the Hacker base... we could always run to Bretonia, and from there go to either the Omegas or Taus. What do you think?
"So, Leeds would probably be a good idea, to lay low. Bretonia doesn't really get involved with either of the other two houses business with the war with Kusari."
"Would probably be a good idea to head there then. Formed on you, lets go."
The two brothers flew towards the Leeds Jumphole, uncertain of what they would find on the other side.
The two brothers came through to find nothing...just the brown void of space.
"Guess they're not following, either that or we lost them. We have a few minutes before the Liberty Navy manages to get a hold of the Bretonian government. I suggest we move through Leeds as fast as possible, head for Tau-31." Nails said warming his cruise engines.
"Are you mad? The warzone?" Nickels exclaimed.
"What better place to lose a foe than in the midst of a war?"
"Good point. Well, we better hurry, I'm picking up contacts on radar, possibly bounty hunters."
In Tau 31, the depleted asteroids that once yielded asteroids were littered with the debris of fighters, the dead hulks of capital ships, and the bodies of pilots and soldiers that had fought, and died, for control over the Edge Worlds. Flying through as fast as possible, the brothers were lucky to not encounter much in the way of hostile ships, though they did pass by no few heated battles.
"What do they fight for?" Nickels asked, a tad awed at the scenes of carnage in front of him.
"Heh, ask them, cuz I sure as hell don't know" was all Josh replied.
The rest of the trip through Tau 31 was silent, and then they jumped to Tau 29, and there was a Kusari Destroyer, demanding they cut their engines and prepare to be boarded. Shocked, the duo couldn't react before a tractor beam latched onto their ships, some advanced technology designed to stop ships in their tracks. Helpless, they were dragged in.
The liberty fighters were dropped in the middle of the bay, no one existed in or around the fighters until the Kusari soldiers began surrounding the ship. The lead soldier climbed to the top of Nail's hatch and ripped it open, only to have half of his skull blasted off by Nail's gun. The soldier, with a shocked look accomping the large blaster hole in his head, fell back with a thud to the floor.
The rest of the soldiers began shooting the ships, however their more than poor IQ couldn't seem to figure out their blasters wern't hitting the ship due to the now engaged shields. They were, however, weakening with everyblast.
"We got lucky bro." Nails said over the comm to his younger brother.
"How so?" Nickels replied.
"They landed us right over a hatch. Our shields overlap right near it, we'll be able to escape before our shields fail from their blaster fire, I suggest we get the hell out of here now."
"I hear ya. Nice job with that soldier by the way."
"There's time for compliments later Jess. Get to the hatch...now."
The two brothers climbed out of their ships quickly and jumped through the hatch with out the soldiers noticing, leaving them wondering where their prisioners had gone.
The hatch led to a maintenance tube that spanned most of the length of the ship, criss-crossing under the corridors with the purpose of giving access to all the hard-to-reach systems. Whoever designed it was an idiot. It was the perfect way to sneak around the ship, and gave a straight line of travel to the second launch deck on the other side of the battleship.
"What the ---- does the KNF want with us?" Nickels said out loud, on the verge of hitting something.
"Who knows? Who knows why any of this is happening? Let's just get to the other fighter bay, and 'borrow' a couple of ships. I swear, this place gives me the creeps..."