"Entitled entanglements never end well," Captain Diomika Tsing muses to herself, reviewing the message with a dower eye. A slight frown creases her stoic brow. Around her, the bridge crew busies themselves with their appointed routines, yet more than one glance falls her way, and the air is heavy with their expectation. "He can't guarantee that we will be close by. We can't serve as Jupiter's personal guard."
"Did you use that explanation when you argued for more time patrolling this sector?" Gemma's voice is her usual composed, general calm, but Captain Tsing recognizes the wry inflection the android can effect, when she chose. "The alert did come from a registered Marshall. Stinger wouldn't call for reinforcements lightly."
"I know. I've already put this crew at risk on Jupiter's and Caine's behalf. I just hope Caine knows what he's doing."
"Of course he doesn't." Kiza Apini interjects as she steps on to the main deck of the Aegis cruiser. She sports the black on black gear of an Aegis, with two silvery white, feather light patches upon each shoulder, the mark of a Legionnaire cadet. Her long, golden hair is tied in three tight chains of braids. A twin pair of energy guns spring from each thigh. "Caine knows as much about love as Jupiter does about the big, bad universe. But this isn't about love, is it? You called me?" She pauses, gauging the activity on the bridge, the views upon their screens, the message hovering like a dark butterfly before Captain Tsing. "We've changed course."
Captain Tsing nods sagely. She motions to the glowing message and steps aside for Kiza's examination.
"I fear you will miss your interview with the Legionnaire." Kiza nods slowly, acclimating her self to that fact.
"They need help." Her voice is calm, but her face is tight with controlled concern. Stinger, her adopted father, is sure to jump to Caine and Jupiter's defense, even if the act were to claim his own life. Barely recovered from his own recent captivity, he had chosen to return to Earth, watching over this newly risen queen and Caine, whom she loved as a brother. Kiza had felt a passing stab of envy when she realized Caine's depth of feelings for Jupiter. But in the sum, she found it was her father's need to serve that some days consumed her with worry for his safety. His torn, conflicted eyes had reflected in her own heart when he made that choice, he to stay, she to fly off to a destiny which she dreamed would make him proud. Now, this.
Captain Tsing interjects into Kiza's dark musings. "My recommendation will stand with the Hall of Aegis."
"Of course. My thanks." Kiza's eyes glitter, as her every muscle tightens into a fighting stance, and she aims her sights where the tiny blue dot slowly enlarges, that planet that was, for a time, her own home.
"Hold here," Captain Tsing commands as they reach the orbit equidistant as the moon.
"Aren't you going to assist?" Kiza asks too quietly.
"Of course." Captain Tsing steps evaluates the information dancing before her on the screens. "But the threat isn't imminent. Stinger is already in position with Jupiter's ship," she trips over the words, her honor as an Aegis captain warring with her newfound fondness for the courage and devotion of Caine Wise and Jupiter Jones, yet she knows that the ship isn't legally Jupiter's to own, "and extracting."
"So we just wait here?"
"I need to see," Diomika Tsing whispers, then steps back from her console. "We are Aegis, not mercenaries." Her brush with the machinations of the Abrasax family had too often left her feeling powerless and outmaneuvered. "I intend to collect solid proof of these transgressions, this time."
"Bait?" asks Gemma, turning her frozen features toward the front monitor.
"Incentive. To show themselves." Kiza's lips thin dangerously. Captain Tsing sees, but ignores this insubordination. "Record," she commands Philo, "everything."
As if hearing her orders, far below, the waters along the city shoreline flicker with sudden turbulence, roils briefly, glows like some mythic sea serpent, then half a dozen single fighters shoot out from the depths of the lake. They rise swiftly, circling the ship that, while invisible to any tersie's eyes, glowed brightly in their monitors. The hidden ship fires back with precision aim, and two of the fighters spin away, fragments spraying like a meteor shower against the night. The remainder, however, have focused their efforts upon the belly of the ship, where the entry port forms a fragile link to the tiny forms rising below.
"Down, support that grav beam!" Captain Tsing barks the command even while Kiza leans forward as if she might engage those ships herself. "Deploy the suits. Engage those fighters!" Far below the main deck, a score of darkly armored suits, manned and waiting within the arching cavern that is an Aegis cruiser flight deck, drop into the vast black of space, and dive into the glowing lights of the Chicago night sky. Like an arrow of angered wasps they aim towards the sparks of battle, stinging their own sprays of brilliant, dangerous light.
"The bream has failed." Gemma calls out.
"Oh, no," Kiza breaths out the words, "they're falling."
As if in a half remembered nightmare, Jupiter watches the flicker, and the failing, of the gravity beam's blue glow. She barely has time to gasp as the flailing, screaming body of Vladie plummets directly down towards her. In a horrifying moment of instinct, her arms wrap around his legs, and, completely overbalanced, together they fall.
Almost immediately, Caine reaches them and grasps Vladie by the back of his shorts, halting their breakneck speed, his wings straining with the combined weight. Vladie's eyes bulge in terror, and no small amount of sudden pain as his shorts pull up quite tightly. Together, Caine and Jupiter struggle to right themselves, despite Vladie's continued wails and thrashing. Jupiter glances down, her eyes wide and straining. Just as her feet brush the pavement, like a misshapen, ungainly bird, the entangled trio begins to rise.
"Stop!" Jupiter yells as Vladie's elbow nails her in the ribs for the second time. She peers around Vladie, her eyes pleading with Caine. "My mother? Nino?"
"Safe," Caine manages to convey with a stab of his chin at the light cruiser high above. With heavy wings beats and the combined force of both pairs of glowing gravity boots, Jupiter and Caine inch skywards. Jupiter spares a single glance upward, where the beams from two light fighter ships beat against the small cruiser with her most precious of cargoes barely aboard.
"Stinger. Go. Leave!" Caine opens his mouth as if to contest, but snaps it shut. Even as his wings beat with heavy strokes, his eyes close briefly in silent communication. For an instant he frowns before his eyes open, and offers Jupiter a terse nod.
One of the enemy fighters veers away, and angles towards their own small struggling knot of humanity. She watches with growing horror, knowing there can be no dancing flight as once Caine had saved her own life. Time seems to slow, and she wonders who crouches within that ship. A keeper? A sargon? A lycantent? Who commands them? Who wants her dead, this time? Her eyelids close with fatal expectation.
A gasp escapes her when her body is wrenched sideways, but rather than the force of blazing death, the grappling arms of a single suit jerk them upward, and, however briefly, out of the line of fire. The single ship follows. The world spins in crazy circles, the suit pilot dipping and dodging the beams. Instinctively she ducks as sparks sting her face. Caine reaches around Vladie to encompass them. Despite the forces pulling and pushing and the dizzying accelerations, she finds strength from his embrace, his eyes, his scent. He knows this world, this type of battle. Possibly more at home on the life and death of a battle field than anywhere else other than by Jupiter's side, if Caine has any, he shows no fear, at least, none for himself.
Three more suits pull into formation around them, together engaging a shield, blocking her sight and the deadly beams. The forces steadied by the shielding, she merely has to look into those calm, wise eyes, and Caine answers her unspoken questions.
"Captain Tsing is laying cover fire. She's readying our retrieval. Stinger has already portalled to safety."
Tucked within the ring of single suits, they fly into the night, Vladie passed out between them.