Unknown planet, late at night

"So let me get this straight…" Daniel said, seated up against the rusted vehicle he and his brother had tried to steal, his hands still behind his head and his arsenal of gear at his feet. "You spaceballs stole some Vanu tech, tried to use it, got us all fucked 'cuz we were using your stolen test data. Now we're stuck on some godforsaken desert planet with no access to Tubes, limited supplies, and nothing but each other. And you want us to help you go shoot up a bunch 'a roaming bandits hiding out in that spaceship and steal their shit?"

"Unfortunately, that's right," Sofia said, still peering down the ironsights of her light machine gun, the weapon leveled at the blue-clad soldier's head. Edward could tell she was still seething with anger from his unanticipated invitation for them to join the group.

"Well, I'll be frank with y'all, that sounds like the biggest pile of horseshit, and that plan to go rob these guys sounds even worse," Daniel replied. "I'm a doctor, so y'all can trust me when I say I've got twenty different meds on me that would make suicide a helluva lot more pleasant than getting stabbed by some psycho fucker with a rusty shiv and contractin' tetanus or gangrene."

"Thank you!" Edward said, gesturing toward Daniel and his brother while looking at Sofia. "See, I'm not the only one who thinks it's a bad idea!"

Sofia shook her head in disgust. "Don't you get it, dipshit? We need those supplies to get ANYWHERE! You wanna jack a vehicle and go, be my guest, but who knows how far it is to some sort of settlement where you could get food, water, or fuel for your ride. Now, if you'll excuse me," she said, lowering her light machine gun, "I'm taking Tony and we're getting inside that damn ship!" Glancing back toward where she knew Tony was hiding, she put her hands to a button on the side of her helmet to turn on her communication radio. "Alright, Tony, get your ass over here. We're going in."

"What do you think they're talking about?" Tony asked, kneeling behind the rusted vehicle as he watched his CO and his new friend talking amongst themselves and their prisoners. Not to his surprise, the female Sovereignty sniper remained quiet and motionless, ever vigilant as she watched the events before them unfold through the scope of her plasma rifle. Bored, his gaze wandered down toward the chaingun on his left arm, then up and about the terrain until he finally found himself staring at Charlotte, looking over the alien-looking rifle she held in her arms. "That's a beautiful rifle…" he thought out loud, looking over the teal-colored glowing heat exhausts of the dark purple rifle's plasma core.

A muted electronic beep rang out from the comms speakers inside his suit's helmet. "Alright, Tony, get your ass over here," he could hear his CO say. "We're going in."

"Damn, just when I thought I was catching a break…" he thought as he rose to his feet, the muted whine of servo motors spinning up filling the suit once more. "Hey, I've gotta go meet my captain. Apparently, she still wants to go in there," he said, looking down at Charlotte from behind his helmet's orange-tinted "eyes". The girl looked up at him briefly, the alien-like gaze of her helmet's glowing face mask slits sending chills down his spine. After what seemed like an eternity, she nodded, only to return her face to the buttstock of her rifle once more.

"Creepy attitude," he thought as he pushed forward against his suit, lumbering over toward his squad leader where she stood.

"Alright, come on," Sofia said, jogging off through the parking lot of rusted cars toward the dimly-illuminated makeshift ramp that led up to the gaping breach in the ship's hull. She stopped at the base of the ramp, waiting for her slow subordinate to catch up. "Alright, here's the plan," she began, pointing toward the top of the ramp. "I'm going to get up there, scope it out. If there's too many for me to handle, I'll signal you to come up. I'll pop a flashbang, then you hose them down. Don't go into lockdown mode, they may have explosives on hand, so retreat if they do. We can't afford to break this suit. Any objections?"

"No objections, ma'am," Tony recited, almost saluting from muscle memory. As much as he disliked the idea of storming the ship in the first place, he thought, "…I'm in too much hot water with the captain as is. It'd be suicide to say anything other than 'yes ma'am' or 'no ma'am'."

"Good," Sofia replied, nodding. "Oh, and one other thing, no grenades," she added, glancing down at the M3 Pounder grenade launcher mounted over the suit's right arm. "We need the stuff inside to be salvageable if possible."

Tony nodded. Silently, he watched as his squad leader carefully walked halfway up the ramp, slowing to a crawling pace as she crept silently up the rest of the way, with hardly the slightest click of metal boots on metal ramp as she went. As she neared the top of the ramp, she dropped to a crouch, getting as close as she could until she could peek her head up over the top of the ramp. Almost instantly, she ducked back down and waved toward him. "Here goes nothing…" he thought, taking a deep breath of the suit's oily, filtered air.

Pushing forward against the heavy suit, he raised his left arm, watching as the M1 "Heavy Cycler" chaingun's ammo count popped up on his suit's heads-up display. With each thundering step up the metal ramp, a sensation of tension filled his heart and stuttered his motions. As he climbed closer to the top of the ramp, he took one final deep breath and pushed up to the top of the ramp. Inside the shining metal room illuminated by LED lights overhead, he could see a few dozen dirty men, their ragged clothes layered with patchworks of rusted armor. Somewhere in the room, some loud, obnoxious club music was playing through speakers whose bass woofers were blown out and buzzing. Without that, Tony suspected, you could have heard a penny drop as the occupants of the ship stared in shock.

Like a moment of calm before the storm, Tony grinned. "Sorry, guys. Wrong place, wrong time," he thought.

A small cylindrical device skittered past his feet, landing on the ground hardly a few feet away. With a percussive blast automatically muted by his helmet's speakers, the grenade let out a blinding blast of light that left the raiders staggering about the room. Pulling the trigger inside the suit's left glove, the bulky gun let out a series of staccato pops that sped up as the spinning barrel spooled up, hosing his opponents with bullets as he swept the room with the weapon. Hardly a weapon was drawn by the ship's occupants before they were mowed down by the storm of bullets, leaving behind a layer of bodies that coated the metallic floor of the room with blood.

Easing off of the trigger of the chaingun, he looked around the room until he was satisfied that the occupants had been eliminated. "Clear!" he called, still waving the spinning gun about the room at the bodies.

"Good work, soldier," Sofia said as she breezed into the room, her light machine gun cradled in her hands. "Alright, same procedure, sweep the room for survivors, then check the adjacent rooms… looks like those Vanu fucks and the couple of rebels they spared will be joining us after all. Typical wimpy shits, skipping out on the legwork…" she added.

One by one, Tony went about the room, gently nudging the bodies of the fallen men with his heavily armored foot to check that they were dead. "Just another day at work, I guess…" he thought, a frown on his face. "Feels sorta bad knowing none of these guys will ever get up again. No Tubes for them."

"Holy Jesus, y'all really let loose in here," a voice said. Still jumpy from the engagement, Tony spun about as quickly as the suit would let him, raising his chaingun at the newcomer. "Whoa, there, cowboy, no need to take our heads off just yet," Daniel said, reaching for his sidearm. "Just checkin' yer handiwork, that's all."

"Gave me a heart attack," Tony replied, resting a hand on his armored chest.

"Since you all finally showed up, you can start tossing out the bodies," Sofia said, peering down a hallway at the back-right corner of the room with her machine gun raised. "Take what loot you can and get them out of here before it starts smelling like unwashed ass in here."

"Somethin' tells me she'd know all about unwashed ass," James snickered to his brother. Sofia, whether pretending or not, didn't seem to hear.

Stepping over the bodies, Tony stomped over to the nearest doorway, the sliding metal panels locked shut. "I would be seriously surprised if this works," he thought, reaching down to what looked like a small card reader with buttons and a screen. Testing some of the buttons, he was unable to elicit the slightest response from the security panel. "I don't think these doors are working, Captain," he said, moving toward the next door. Stepping up to the next panel, he felt something crunch underneath his foot; looking down, he realized he'd stepped on one of the many corpses' hands, nearly pulverizing it under the half-ton battle suit's titanium-alloy foot. "Sorry," he thought, backing away from the corpse.

"Tony, stop fucking around and move on if the doors are locked," Sofia said though his voice comms. Looking up, he noticed that she had disappeared down the hallway she was scanning earlier. "I want you done sweeping the other hallway by the time I get back. And kill that damn music if you can find those speakers."

"Right," he replied, looking around the room. Underneath the bloody carnage, he found the pair of broken speakers pumping out the terrible music and swiftly put them out of their misery with a quick kick. Stepping over the corpses, he made his way to the other open doorway in the back-right corner of the room, the hallway littered with garbage all the way down to the closed door at the far end. Cautiously eyeing the few sliding-door entryways that stood open in the flickering halogen light, he raised his chaingun and let the barrels spin up before proceeding down the hallway.

Reaching the first door, he found an illuminated room lined with bunk beds built into the walls, each covered in various trashy-looking things he assumed were personal belongings of the deceased inhabitants. "Probably just a bunch of crew rooms they pried open with a crowbar or something…" he thought, briefly sweeping the room with the spinning barrels of his weapon out of habit.

Moving on to the next room, he found yet another set of crew bunks. "Probably all of them were in the main room partying or something…" he thought. Suddenly, something moved in the corner of his vision, causing him to spin around. At the end of the hallway, he saw it: a single man clad in rusty improvised armor, wielding what looked like a jury-rigged double barreled shotgun next to an open door at the end of the hallway on the left. "Don't come any closer, demon!" the man yelled, his strangely-accented voice quivering.

"Hey, Terran guy, you alright back there?" Tony could hear Daniel call down the hall. Even from fifteen feet or so away, he could see that the man's hands were shaking. "Hey, man, just put the gun down," he said, taking the first few booming steps toward the man. Without warning, one of the barrels of the raider's gun discharged, peppering Tony's suit with hot lead – not a single pellet from the improvised weapon even left a scratch on the titanium-steel alloy armor, according to the damage indicator on his helmet's display. Tony quickly raised his arm and replied with a volley of gunfire, plastering the man to the door until he sank to the ground in a pool of his own blood, fragments and spalling from his rusted armor littering the floor. "I wish these people would stop giving me such a scare… jeez," he thought, trudging over to the fallen soldier where he lay. Inspecting the man proved to be useless; "just some old, bearded dude with nothing to lose, literally," he thought, noting the man's tattered clothes, empty pockets and shoe-less feet.

"What the hell was that ruckus all about? Damn gunfire got my trigger finger itchin," James called from behind him. Tony turned about to see James and Daniel walking toward him, their hands hovering over the sidearms at their waists. "Some junkie try to get the drop on ya?"

A small gasp from the room on his left that the man had emerged from caught Tony's attention. The room was completely dark, and from what little light flooded in from the hallway, he could see it was filled to the brim with crates and containers of all kinds on either side of a tight passageway. Peering into the darkness, he watched as what looked like a young boy began to peek around the crate, only to disappear as soon as he realized Tony was watching him.

"Hey there, little guy, come on out," Tony said, doing his best to get down on one knee in the heavy battle suit. After a few more moments, the young boy peeked out once more, staring at him with a terrified gaze. "Come on, I'm not going to hurt you," he said, waving toward the child.

"Who the hell you talkin' to?" Daniel asked, leaning in over Tony's shoulder until he, too, spotted the child. "Well I'll be…"

After several seconds of waving, the young boy finally stepped out into full view; hardly more than five years old, the boy looked somewhat malnourished dressed in ragged clothes much like the raiders he had just shot. To his surprise, the boy ran back into cover.

"Hey, I'm going to come back there, alright?" Tony said, calling to the boy. Pushing some of the crates aside with the strength of his suit, he forced his way toward the back of the storeroom until he found where the boy was hiding. In the dim light that filtered into the storeroom, two girls in ragged clothes sat against the wall, unconscious and chained at the wrists to a cargo-securing mount in the wall a few feet above their heads. "Oh… oh, god damn!" Tony exclaimed, kneeling down to the girls where they sat. "Captain, you read me?" he said, placing a hand on his helmet's comms button.

"Yeah, private, loud and clear. Get scared of your own shadow again? I heard some gunfire."

"No, one of them tried to get the jump on me so I shot him. He was hiding out in a storage room at the end of the hall. He had prisoners."

"So?"

"A boy, maybe five or six, and two girls… one maybe twelve or thirteen, one a bit older. I think these nut-jobs were screwing kids."

A moment of silence. It took several moments before Sofia finally responded with a solemn "on my way," leaving Tony to his thoughts. After a moment of contemplating, he reached up to the chains where they looped around the wall's strap mount, giving them a gentle tug to test their strength. With a swift yank, the ancient chains gave way, the links snapping as the chain slid free of the sturdy mount. "Hey, you Conglomerate guys, get back here," he called, peeking around the boxes to wave them in.

The two New Conglomerate soldiers stepped into the room, making their way through the piles of boxes to their hiding room. "What the hell is… oh, sweet mother a' Jesus," Daniel let out, watching as Tony gently lifted the older of the two girls in his suit's arms, holding her up for the men to see. "Get 'er to the lobby, let me take a look at 'em both in the light for wounds," the man instructed. Reaching down, he scooped up the little boy into her arms "Up we go, bud."

Waiting for James to pick up the other girl, the three soldiers made their way back to the main room, arriving just as Sofia returned from the other hallway. "Any others I need to know about?" she ordered.

Tony shook his head. "I passed up a few rooms to fight the guy that jumped out on me, so I dunno."

"I'll go check the rest. The other hallway is clear," she said before disappearing down the left hallway.

"Alright, uhh…" Daniel said, looking around the blood-stained room. "First thing's first, we gotta find somethin' to put them on that ain't covered in blood…"

"Left hallway, first room, there were some bunk beds," Tony replied. "Follow me."

Leading the way back down the hallway from the main common room, he stepped into the first open room on the left. Shifting his hold on the malnourished prisoner, he stepped over to the closest bunk bed on the right wall of the crew quarters and ran his hand over the ancient mattress to brush away the previous occupants' garbage, careful not to bang up the grenade launcher mounted on top of his arm. Once the bed was free of garbage, he gently laid the girl down on the bed and stepped back, waiting for the New Conglomerate soldier to do his job.

On the other side of the room, Daniel sat upon a beat-up chair he had drawn up to the lowest bunk on the left side of the room, the young boy he had been carrying now standing at his side. "Lots 'a cuts and bruises, that's obvious, but the question is, any broken bones…" he muttered to himself. Removing his armored gauntlets, his hands began their probing over the young girl's body, first taking her pulse at the throat and at the wrist. "Still clingin' on for dear life. Got bigger balls 'n most Terran soldiers to stay alive after a beating like this," he added, chuckling softly at his own joke. Reaching into a pouch on his waist marked with a white cross within a red circle, he withdrew a small emergency flashlight and, gently raising the girl's right eyelid with one hand, shone the light in her eye. "Non-responsive. That confirms the low, weak heartbeat. Five to one odds they're slippin' 'em pills or knockin' 'em out so they can't fight back," he said, returning the flashlight to his pouch.

"What the hell… an' I thought we were fucked up," James said. "So what'cha gonna do for her, Dan?"

"Until she wakes up, just basic stuff," Daniel replied, reaching into his bag. He withdrew a hefty roll of gauze, some small self-adhesive bandages, a tube of cream, and a small bottle of pills that he rattled at his younger brother. "Antibiotic pills. Until we get home, you ain't touchin' my medical stash unless you want me to give you a colonoscopy with your own damn shotgun barrel," he said, turning his attention to the young girl once more. "Make yourself useful 'n go find where these dirty fucks're hiding their food. They'll need water."

"I know!"

Surprised at the sound of a new voice, Daniel looked down at the young boy clinging to his leg, staring back up at him with a mix of energy and terror in his wide-eyed gaze. "I know!" he repeated, pointing toward the door.

Setting his supplies on the bedside, he bent down and put his hand on the young boy's shoulder. "Hey, bud, you think you can lend my brother a hand 'n finding us some water? That'd be mighty helpful of you."

The young boy nodded frantically, sprinting for the door as fast as his little legs would carry him. "Come on!" he called, sprinting down the hallway toward the cargo room he had been hiding in. Watching him go, James looked back at his brother and shrugged before jogging after the child.

Watching as his younger brother left the room, Daniel returned his attention to the unconscious girl; between thirteen and fifteen, the red-headed girl looked significantly younger from systematic malnourishment that had left her as light as a feather, hardly anything more than bones and skin underneath her ragged dress. Twisting the top off of the brand-new bottle of antibiotic cream, he removed the aluminum seal and replaced the cap, squeezing a bit of the snow-white cream onto the tip of his finger. One by one, he began probing the young girl's injuries, spreading the ointment on all but the smallest cuts to preserve what little cream he had. Only a few the largest of lacerations required gauze wrapping, focused mostly on her back from where she had been whipped. Pulling her dress back down, he moved on to rubbing antibacterial cream into the cuts on her face before stepping back from his handiwork. "I'll probe for broken bones when she's awake, but that'll need to wait," he thought, scooping up his armored gloves and medical supplies.

Turning toward the other side of the room, he found Tony down on one knee in his heavy battle suit, looking over the older girl in silence. "Hey there, big guy, you're starin' like you've never seen a girl before," Daniel said, patting him on the shoulder as he set his gloves and supplies on the end of the bed.

"I'm just worried, you know," the MAX-suited Terran said. "It's Tony, by the way," he added, extending a hand.

"Nice to meet'cha, Tony. The name's Daniel," the doctor replied, taking Tony's hand and letting him shake it. "I'm a field doc, so y'all can trust me when I say I'll get these two on their feet, 'aight?"

Both men turned their attention back to the brown-haired girl, who looked no older than sixteen and hardly any better off than the younger girl. "Alrighty, let's get this show on the road, shall we?" Daniel said, dabbing the first bit of antibiotic cream on a cut on the girl's foot. Suddenly, her eyes shot open as she scrambled back against the headboard of the bunk, reactively kicking away Daniel's hand and sending the tube of cream flying across the room.

"Whoa, calm down, it's okay," Tony said, raising his hands in a gesture of peace. The older girl didn't buy it, as she scrambled to find something to use as a weapon as she pushed herself against the back wall of the bunk, settling on a small, worn-out steel lighter she was poised to throw. With one hand, he gently reached to the release clasp on the back of his helmet and lifted the armored helmet off, revealing his face from behind the bug-eyed MAX suit mask. "We aren't going to hurt you, alright? He's a doctor, he just wants to help," he said, nodding toward the New Conglomerate soldier that was preoccupied with digging through the junk littering the room's floor to find the antibiotic cream he had lost.

Slowly, the fear in the girl's face slipped away, replaced by confusion. "You… speak Terran?"

"Yeah! I'm a Terran Republic soldier, see?" Tony said, pointing toward an icon painted on the shoulder pads of his suit's armor.

The girl suddenly recoiled away from him like a demon from a cross. "You… are no better than the Motorheads!" she said.

"Oh, those shitstains that were holdin' y'all prisoner?" Daniel said, returning to the bedside with the tube of ointment. "Yeah, he shot 'em all. As soon as we're done here, y'all are free to get on home. What's your name, ma'am?"

At Daniel's words, the girl looked confused again, looking over the alien-looking New Conglomerate soldier with wary eyes, then back to Tony. "They… are… all dead? Just… like that?" She stuttered, ignoring the field medic's question.

"Yep," Tony said, giving her a laid-back grin. "Do me a favor and do what he says, alright? He's a doctor, he'll get you feeling better in no time."

The girl finally began to relax, but her brown-eyed gaze never left Tony for a moment as Daniel worked over the cuts on her legs. "Why did you kill them?" she asked. "I thought… the Motorheads and the Terrans were working together?"

At this, Tony raised an eyebrow as he glanced over at Daniel. The helmeted soldier glanced back, but simply shrugged and returned to his work. "We're… uh… from out of town, so to speak," Tony said. "Why would the Terran Republic be working with people like these?"

"So the Terran Republic's here, huh? I knew those Vanu fucks were up to no good." Tony glanced over his shoulder, noticing Sofia standing in the doorway. "Lying through their teeth, the purple scum. Not Auraxis, my ass," she said, stepping inside. "By the way, you two know why that other NC rebel's snooping around the ship with that little kid? I don't like that one bit. And where's those damn Vanu freaks at? I found something that I need him to take a look at."

Tony and Daniel looked at each other, then back at the angry Terran captain. "Hell if I know where them technofreaks 're at, but that kid thinks he knows where some water 'n food's at, so James's rootin' around them storage crates for that, I'd imagine. Prob'ly just got distracted by somethin' shiny, I'd imagine."

"What did you find, Cap?" Tony asked, rising to his feet. The once-muted sound of the hydraulics in his suit filled the room as he stood up, reminding him just how nice it was to have electronic noise filtering in his helmet.

Suddenly, Sofia nodded; Tony knew she had just gotten an idea in her head. "Actually, screw those Sovereignty two," she said, stepping backwards out of the room, into the hallway. "Come with me, I'll need your suit for a minute."