XxX-XxX-XxX
Official Supporters:
Obsessive Readers, Laurel
Compulsive Reader, The Impossible Muffin
Intrigued Readers, Archer
Commissioner, Gib, Death Daddy, Le Spork, Polemoduke
If you want to be on the Supporter list, PM me for details or join our private server for details. Hope you enjoy reading my stories, please leave me a comment to let me know if you did, or where I can improve. Link here, where able to be seen : /2UZncAm
Second link here, remove ( and ) and it SHOULD work : D(i) (slash)kfhkfUb
Beta(s) :
XxX-XxX-XxX
Requested By :
Spork
XxX-XxX-XxX
"Fifty seven assorted books, mostly non-fiction, all in relatively adequate condition, three Class A Dust fuel cells, civilian grade, taken from nearby vehicles, and nineteen mostly intact security drones. Pre-fall. And a supply of three tons of Dust from an emergency generator that was never activated, along with its power systems." Weiss reported quickly, standing at the base of her sister's personal, aging Warden class industrial-lander.
It was a sturdy, blocky-backed ship, with a ramp as wide as it was and two wings wide enough a to mostly fill the old roundabout they had landed in, that sloped back along its sides and just over it, providing some cover from the light rain pattering down on them. The front was a roughly rectangular glass cockpit that stuck out ten feet or so from the cargo hold. To the right of the hold was the crew bay, sealed for now to keep the water coming off the crates the worker droids loaded up from getting in, where she and her sister had spent the night before sleeping, waiting for the go ahead to land. The other side had the maintenance bay, split between simple work-tables for the drones and racks they could fold up into for transit. At the back of each, sheltered by the wings, were round engines bolted to the wings and chassis by heavy metal support struts.
It stood up on a set of three long, collapsable legs protruding from open storage segments just under the cockpit and in front of each engine. Its wide 'toes' had enough force, and weight on them, to bite into the old concrete. Each of these feet housed powerful engines that could lift the entire craft up, angling it as needed for the powerful primary engines to propel it to speed. Running on automated defensive protocols, a pair of four-barreled rotary cannons were set between the rear legs and just behind the front. Three more lined the spine, too, she knew, tracking anything that ranged too close.
It was an old, ugly animal, but her family had always preferred the more industrial, old Mantle style of craft, from before the war. But for all that it was thrice as costly to run as more modern ships, the manoeuvring thrusters meant they could land almost anywhere. And the weapons systems were excellent for handling swarming Grimm.
So far, those guns had been allowed to stay quiet, at least…
"Good work." Winter hummed, standing just above her, at the edge of the ramp itself where it joined with the ship. One hand lingered on her saber, and the other continued to work at the edge of the white and blue coat she wore.
"Is something-"
"Everything is fine." Her sister snapped, eyes locked on the stormy skies around them. "I'm just… Alert."
'Stressed' Weiss mentally corrected, flicking a look up the road to another roundabout four hundred feet or so away, where another Warden was working. Cars, trucks, buses, and even a dilapidated, mostly crushed and disassembled, Paladin class battlesuit littered the road. But she could see it well enough. Its crew was working inside the old Vale General, though. A much more critical, and rarely vacated, spot for scouring than the school they were at.
Which was why their parents and Whitley were there, with a larger complement of their drones.
"We should get underway soon." Weiss suggested as a weather alert flitted across her Scroll's top. "A storm is coming."
"Indeed…" Winter hummed, turning to look at the only quarter-full hold of their cargo bay. "Such a light haul, however… We should broaden the drones' take rate. Even if they load mere wood and wires, or sections of these old cars. If nothing else, the foundry-ships can melt it down for scrap."
"I suppose." Weiss shrugged, "But the less we load, the less Dust we'll need to get airborne."
"True." Winter nodded, "But I was suggesting cutting away the salvageable metals and piping, not just removing whole sheets and loading them up."
"Oh…"
"Such sense should be obvious, Weiss." Her sister chastised her, voice sharp but quiet as her eyes watched the darkening skies. "If you do not mean to see our company sunken to the bottom of the ocean, then you need to learn these things. Especially in that thing you bought yourself.
"Father bought it…" She argued quietly, working through inventory as more droids arrived carrying metal crates with labels slapped to the tops. Bar-codes that the ships scanners read as they came. "It's a modern ship… Faster than our Wardens-"
"And half as reliable." Winter shook her head, mired in old, upper class traditionalism. Or, well, her father's variant of it at least. Frown evident in her voice, she went on, "You shouldn't need to ask me about-"
"Radar alert!" Weiss cut her off, still staring at the screen as a little red button blipped up on the center of the screen, laid over everything else aside from the emergency drone control panel on the side. "Unknown ship from point three-four-three, picking up speed and- Smaller contacts are breaking off it!"
"Smaller-" As if to answer her question, the a sleek, curved sloop screamed by overhead, its wide solar side-sails held open by two long masts on each side and its blocky engine blasting searing heat and force that shook free rubble and glass that rained down on them.
Along with inky black creatures, like wolves as tall as a man, that fell and died all along the street.
One survived the fall, though, bouncing off a building and then crashing through the rusty, corrugated roof of a bus-stop. Its arm hung limp at its side, and its side leaked brackish blood through matted fur and cracked armor plates. But the thing pulled itself up and turned to her, snarling as their eyes met across the forty or so feet of open street. She heard someone saying something nearby, but she froze, eyes wide and frightened as the creature took a step towards her and reared up, snarling in spite of its fellows dying all around it. Gunfire echoed from behind her, but she ignored it, dropping her Scroll and staggering back a step as Myrtenaster came free.
And it charged.
A gunshot right by her head snapped her out of her fear as something bronze hurtled by and punched into its throat and out the back of its head as it came. The spear withdrew with similar speed, and a gloved hand caught it as she was yanked around and reeled back from the hand that stung her cheek.
"P-Pyrrha?" She stammered, only standing because the armored mercenary held her up, her shield affixed to the arm that pulled her flush against the woman's side.
"Are you awake now?" She asked, shifting her spear to its rifle form and peppering another mangled, surviving Grimm as it came.
She didn't get to answer before something slammed into the road a dozen feet or so away. Pyrrha shoved her up the stairs as the giant raven spread its one good wing and staggered upright, the other hanging in a limp, bullet-ridden mess as the auto-guns on the ship's spine continued to fire. A pair of the simple, silver menial drones the SRC used for its work caught her and helped her up the ramp as those droids that were going to be able to make it scrambled up the ascending ramp. Some slipped on the wet metal as they went, the relatively clumsy machines collapsed and rolling away without so much as a peep of complaint, but she and Pyrrha made it.
"In!" Pyrrha barked, shoving her into the otherwise empty crew compartment.
She stumbled and fell onto a couch as the ship shuddered, its engines overclocking as it tried to pull an emergency take off and angled the ship before the Gravity Dust could kick in to regulate 'down' for the passengers. Pyrrha leapt on her, bracing against the wall and the edge of the couch to more or less lock her in, no doubt using her Semblance to help with the matter.
Suddenly, the entire ship jerked to the side and alarms blared, and Weiss felt her heart racing in her breast.
"What-"
"Brace!" Pyrrha warned her, casting aside her weapons and curling even tighter around Weiss, teeth bared and eyes wild. "We're going down!"
"We're what?!" She screamed, grabbing at Pyrrha's side with one hand and clutching Mytenaster, pinned between them, tightly enough her hand throbbed. "We can't go down in Vale! I-If we go down in Vale, we're d-"
She was cut off by screaming metal and another sudden jerk that hurled them away as the room came apart beside them. She flailed in the air as Pyrrha grabbed at her dress and yanked hard enough to rip the seams along her spine, hurling her to the back end and then sweeping her arms back to yank herself forward. Weiss saw light for a moment behind her, along with a flash of trees and a road, before everything lurched again and Weiss saw only darkness.
XxX-XxX-XxX
Weiss groaned as she came to in a dimly lit space, red lights blinking in scattered spaces around the mostly dark space. Her head throbbed with each heartbeat and, when she tried to sit up, her equilibrium swam and she collapsed onto her back. Her breath came in short bursts through aching, bruised - at least - ribs and part of her vision was… Warped, when she opened her eyes. Dark in places, and twisted all along one side. When she touched her hand to the side of her face, it felt wet and came away red.
"Oh…" She murmured, "I hit my head."
"Weiss…" She turned, looking along the collapsed, ruin mess of what had been the Warden's little kitchenette. Pyrrha was there, too, pinned by a jagged piece of what had been the metal cupboard that had punched through her thigh and into the ground. One of her arms lay limp, too, and she grit her teeth as she craned her head to look at Weiss and ask, "C-Can you move…?"
"Somewhat…" She groaned, rolling over and pushing herself up on broken glass and segments of deck-plating. Mytenaster lay beside her and she grabbed it, using it to steady her a bit as she turned towards a scratching sound at the door. "What…?"
"You have to fight." Pyrrha said, "Grimm. Trying to get in."
But she couldn't… Even in her best, she'd frozen on seeing one, wounded and dying, yards away. Now, stuck in half a cabin meant to just barely comfortably serve four, with her swimming vision and aching back? She didn't stand a chance. And she knew it, too… So, turning, she summoned what Aura she had left and poured every ounce of it along Mytenaster's edge and through the Dust in its cylinder.
Her swing sprayed a thick wall of ice that coated the the entire back end of the cabin and the door, hardening and condensing in the already-chill air from outside.
"That… Should hold…" She muttered, staggering and collapsing to the side.
As darkness crept in, she could only pray that someone, some-why, would come to save them…
XxX-XxX-XxX
This time, when she woke up, she woke up in a more warmly lit room. Base fluorescent light filled the room while, outside, the bright speckles of New Atlas' skyscrapers and, distantly, its dockyards and the wandering fleets that surrounded the massive floating city twinkled. But Weiss had to turn to see it. Everything on her left was darkness and, when she touched that side of her face, she found bandages. But not gauze. No, this felt different. Thicker, stiffer, and with a faint static charge she could not place until her hands ran over the faintest ridges of tiny nubs dotted along her eyebrow, like studs for piercings.
"Cybernetic anchors…"
"I see your mind is as sharp as ever." She turned toward the voice and winced as her vision swam and the deep baritone rumbled a laugh. "Not so fast, Miss Schnee. You've been through quite an ordeal, and are only just coming out of anaesthesia."
"I see…" She murmured, meeting the grizzled General's gaze and lingering on his own eye studs, and the faintly luminescent blue of his left eye. "My eye, then?"
"Indeed." He nodded, taking the seat in the otherwise empty, and small, hospital room. Frowning, he said, "Miss Nikos also survived, though she needed no prostheses. You only needed yours because of your lack of Aura. By the time my forces secured the area, and salvaged what was worth the effort, your injuries had lingered too long."
"I see…" She murmured, closing her good eye and frowning. "Uplift Protocols?"
"Indeed." He nodded, "I am loathe to simply leap to official business… It can wait."
"I'm fine." She snapped, shaking her head and muttering as her anger - and fear - began to quiet. "I apologize. I just…"
"I understand." He wrapped a knuckle on his arm and smiled sadly. "You owe me no apologies."
She nodded and, moving on, said, "Business, then…"
"Very well." He sighed and nodded, back straightening as the General went on. "Per standard law, your ships, which were destroyed in the crashes, were salvaged for what was worthwhile. All Dust has been appropriated, as has half the value of the scrap and whatever salvage you had aboard. Whatever drones were left were also split in half and, along with a dossier of your gains, will be waiting at the SRC warehouses. Your recovery was a part of operations and, thus, will not be something taken from you. Your treatment, however, has come out of the SRC's discretionary funds."
"What was left of them…" She muttered, closing her eyes against news she dreaded but, finally, asking, "You said both ships crashed. My family…"
"Your ship's cockpit was crushed entirely on impact. The initial impact through the skyscraper ruined its internal structure, and it landed first on the subsequent landing." Ironwood answered quietly, frowning thinly - his only way of showing sympathy, she knew - before he went on. "The other ship landed better, but your parents tried to flee. With the Grimm lured by the noise and terror…"
He didn't need to go on…
She understood.
"So…" She sighed, "It is over, then."
"No, it isn't." Ironwood said, standing and grunting. "Your business' license is still valid, as you have one remaining ship in your fleet. You also half drones, and enough Lien to continue operating. Further, Miss Nikos' recovery will fall within the time on her contract. Therefore…"
"I can make another run…" She murmured, a faint flicker of hope burning to life through the pain she was trying so very hard to keep from showing on her face. Swallowing through a dry throat, she said, "How long until…"
"Your recovery is two weeks." He said, turning to leave, "That said… I can forward you some easy sites after, that I find in the interim, so the time is better spent."
"You'd do that…?"
"Your father may have carried the SRC into near destitution," Ironwood answered, "but… I owe your grandfather."
The man left without another word to illustrate the dangerous implication of corruption. But, as the door closed and Weiss finally let herself suck in a pained breath, eye burning as tears welled…
She felt the tiniest ember of hope burning in her heart.
XxX-XxX-XxX