(Til Death Do Us Part) 8: Fleeing the Lion's Den
21 Feb 2023Silvia Sharpe
'Silvia.... Sivlia! Wake up we need to go now!'Jules rushes into Silvia's room and jostles her awake placing a finger over her mouth to keep her quiet. Silvia blinks rapidly, her heart is pounding and her breathing is heavy. She looks at Jules who is wearing a full set of Peacekeeper Synth Dominator armor. Silvia recognizes the armor as Venus had a set very similar to it in their closet back home. She replies in a raspy voice seemingly very confused about what she was looking at.
'Julia? What is going on? Why are you wearing armor?'
'Shhh.... put this on quickly!'
Jules hands Silvia a set of teal mechanic maverick armor with a peacekeeper synth belt. Silvia grabs the armor and flight suit and puts in on. Jules helps the best she can checking over her shoulder every few seconds to ensure the coast is still clear. Once they have managed to get Silvia into the armor Jules explains to Silvia in a hush tone what is going on.
'I found a way out of here. The room in the back has an emergency escape port to the planetary surface. If we can get out quickly enough we should be able to get to Pit Viper and get the hell out of here. Those two are going to chase after us for sure. I am faster than them but they have significantly more fire power.'
'I can't run. Shit I can barely walk right now. Sure the brace helps but my knee is still broken.'
'I will carry you to the ship, this planet is low enough gravity that it won't be much of a problem to get you to over to the landing pad. I carried you in here so I already know I can do it.'
Silvia nods and the two of them make their way back to the empty room in the back of the bottom floor that Jules had mentioned. With one final look of confirmation Jules reaches up to the emergency escape hatch and pulls the lever. As soon as the lever is broken free the alarm sounds. Jules climbs up and out of the room first then reaches down and pulls Silvia out of the room. Jules picks Silvia up with relative ease and carries her in a fireman's carry over to her ship.
Jules runs up the boarding ramp of Pit Viper and sets Silvia down in a small passenger compartment and fires up the thrusters on her ship. Just as they are about to lift off Diaz and Grenshaw come running out firing their plasma rifles at Jules ship. Grenshaw growls and yells to Diaz.
'Boss I'm going after them. Get Nightmare out of storage looks like we have a hunt. I already checked the girls room she has to be on that ship.'
Diaz nods as Grenshaw rushes to his ship. He rushes down to the ship hangar and makes his way into the cockpit of his ship hunter Nightmare. The ship is a purpose built full combat Fer De Lance painted tactical graphite. Diaz made it a point to ensure the ship was fully engineered and capable of dishing out a large amount of damage as quickly as possible. He Lifts off from the landing pad and chases after Jules in her Imperial Eagle.
Jules takes a quick look at her contacts panel and sees both Diaz and Grenshaw's ships. She picks a random location from the nav panel and activates her FSD. She pushes all power to engines praying that her Engineered dirty drag enhanced performance 3A thrusters are enough to avoid Nightmare's Plasma accelerators and rail guns. She sees the signal marker of Diaz's ship switch to a triangle indicating he has activated his hard points and she calls out over the comms to Silvia who is clutching her seats armrests.
'Hold on this is going to get rough.'
Just before the FSD can activate Diaz fires off the plasma accelerators, a round clips the right winglet of Pit Viper disabling the shield and causing significant damage to the ship.
"WARNING! Ship integrity critical"
'Shit! Hold on tight!'
"3.....2.....1. Engage!"
Diaz watches as the second volley of plasma slugs misses their target and the Imperial Eagle disappears into the void. He slams his fist into the ship controls. He calls over the comms to Grenshaw.
'Get in touch with the others and put a hit out on that ship. Make sure you state they need to be alive. The girl is no use to us dead.'
'You got it boss!'
Grenshaw sends out bounty against Jules and Silvia of 400,000cr each.
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Ennead
Jules and Silvia drop into Ennead, Pit Viper is severely damaged and in need of immediate repairs. Jules looks at the Nav panel and finds a planetary port that offers ship repairs and plots a course. As they arrive at the planet Silvia makes her way to the cockpit and stands behind Jules much like she would with Venus when they would arrive at their first port after a long expedition out in the black. She grabs Jules shoulder with her left hand.
'Thank you Jules. You didn't have to do this or anything you have done for me.'
Jules pauses for a moment when she hears this.
'I did though. My past is full of mistakes and moments I should have stepped in and helped out. I am tired of always having a reputation of being the one who did nothing. Watching them beat you and break your bones I felt like I was contributing by not stepping in to stop them. After the beating we took a few days ago we needed to get out of there as quickly as we could.'
Silvia stands quietly as they land at the port and are brought into the hangar. Jules rents out a room for Silvia and her and heads back to her ship to check over the damages. Half of the winglet is missing from the right side. and Jules knows that this repair will take a couple of days to repair. She proceeds to the shipyard manager and requests for the repairs to be performed. Jules returns to the room and lays down on the bed.
'Pit Viper is going to be out of service for several days at least. Most of the right winglet is missing. That damn ship Diaz has packs one hell of a punch. We are just lucky he is a lousy shot. I don't think we would have survived a full hit from him. We are not in a position to try and face them head on. I made a hasty jump and there is a very high probability they will find what system we are hiding out in. The further away we go the better chance we have of staying hidden.'
Silvia has a look of defeat on her face. Her head hurts and she is in significantly more pain than she has been in for the past few days. Diaz had come into her room a few nights prior and started beating her while Grenshaw recorded. The last several days in fact have been the worst she has had to endure. Jules had suffered too. Diaz had tied her up in the middle of the night and used her as a punching bag. Silvia lays down next to Jules and closes her eyes.