Alex was frelled. Beyond frelled, really.
The aches and pains in her body were beginning to make themselves known and she couldn't afford an adrenaline crash now.
But in the precise series of moments during which she plummeted toward the bay floor, her breather dislodged with the collapse of scrap metal, her body trapped in the heap of former prisonship, she was also--however temporarily--free. For the spanse of two or three moments after, she was breathing great gulps of freshly cycled, non-guts-laden air between exhalations of hysteria. Sounds less amusement and more...profound relief. The enormity of freedom crashed over her like a turbulent wave of nullspace during a clean slipstream jump.
Just as dangerous, too, because she had no clue whether the scrapper who'd collected the Diem Vuong and summarily dismissed its worth would be nearby or long gone; whether he'd be pleased or displeased...or displeased to the point of violence at finding a stray aboard his ship. Her laughter, such as it was, faded when no one hurriedly turned a corner to blow her fool head off with a laser. It became grunts as she quickly shoved free of the detritus, moving a metal shield over her head to help lessen both her heat signature and her visual from anything that might have been monitoring the wreckage. Finally, it moved into silence as her calculating brain, the technical part that figured out how things worked and how they could be fixed settled on the problem of likely being unwanted in a stranger's ship.
She cast a tired gray gaze along the walls and ceiling of the hangar for surveillance equipment and was not pleased with her odds. Outdated though some of the tech appeared to be, what little she could see from the metal she lay underneath said she'd be--likely had already been--spotted.
It left her options. Few of them, but options regardless.
She could come right out and greet whatever crew the metal collector's ship had to offer. Maybe seek to secure some pity--and a bath; hot, solid food. It would be clear that she'd been imprisoned on board the Diem Vuong. What might not be entirely clear to a stranger however, what with her body covered in...everything...was that she was not responsible for the ship's fate, its crew's demise, nor even her own survival among the wreckage. She'd been on enough missions for the Agency to know most people assumed one imprisoned had done something wrong or belonged, legally, to someone else. The lack of intergalactic regulations on such fronts made these safe assumptions that precluded confrontation and kept ship captains from suing station masters. Alex decided, shifting to get a clearer look around the bay, she could not afford someone else's assumption that she was incarcerated for such a reason, nor the assumption that she'd taken freedom into her own hands.
Leaving her fate to strangers again did not fulfill the survival need rampaging inside her brain.
So, she would not greet the crew. She could instead blend among them. Large doors set into the walls provided the only obvious means of escape into the inner ship. If it hadn't been lit up and in use, it would have been her best option, because she'd have been able to override any attempt to stop it, spoof its level stops so no one could tell where she got off, and, as an added bonus, no one would have expected a motion so bold. She'd steal a uniform, fit in among the engineering team, wait until the next stopover at a station or some-such. Unfortunately, only seeing the hangar wasn't an indication of how many levels the ship had--nor how many crew and how tightly contained an operation she faced.
Even if she had time to break it down and try the tube to get around the ship, the problem of too many unknowns remained.
That left outright disappearance. And though maintenance tunnels could be flushed to present a one-way ejection out an airlock, though the surveillance in the hangar would show her point of entry, Alex knew maintenance tunnels. All it would take was a bit of dismantling, all quick glitch that would close her off from detection and reappear as normal after a time. She could burrow in like a spacerat, make a little nest of her own until the ship hit port.
As good a solution as any, only she had to act fast on it, because now her right leg was beginning to throb.
She didn't care that she slipped and stumbled on a hurried, scrambling way to the grate, that her handprints and footprints and someone else's gore--or maybe her own--tracked a clear path. She assumed she'd be seen regardless. Once inside, she'd vanish. No crew with less than an engineering genius aboard would shake her loose. Until docking, she could be a Phantom, like the one of musical inclination in an old Earth opera house.
Wouldn't the crew just throw themselves into a snit if she started sending demands and playing some variety of music from the bowels of their ship? A sound crossed between a giggle and a sob escaped a few feet from a clean getaway. Between that and her overactive flight response, her senses were tunneled to opening the grate, and nothing else. Alex had no hope of knowing if she'd be discovered before she could find out how very Phantom-like she could become.
She registered between somehow working the grate free in record time and hunching before its entrance that to make such a plan work, she'd have to have tools. Alex did not have tools. She'd barely kept hold of the oxygen device in her hand, barely did so now as she clambered inside the tunnel entrance. In a blinding flash of red-orange-black-then-red-again, her right leg seized. A moan echoed into the only hope she had of retaining her freedom, and then waned. Her breath came in pants as she tried to push past the pain.
One dainty...blood-and-guts-smeared...bare foot stuck out of the tube, disappearing inside by tiny, almost immeasurable degrees as her adrenaline flat-lined.
The aches and pains in her body were beginning to make themselves known and she couldn't afford an adrenaline crash now.
But in the precise series of moments during which she plummeted toward the bay floor, her breather dislodged with the collapse of scrap metal, her body trapped in the heap of former prisonship, she was also--however temporarily--free. For the spanse of two or three moments after, she was breathing great gulps of freshly cycled, non-guts-laden air between exhalations of hysteria. Sounds less amusement and more...profound relief. The enormity of freedom crashed over her like a turbulent wave of nullspace during a clean slipstream jump.
Just as dangerous, too, because she had no clue whether the scrapper who'd collected the Diem Vuong and summarily dismissed its worth would be nearby or long gone; whether he'd be pleased or displeased...or displeased to the point of violence at finding a stray aboard his ship. Her laughter, such as it was, faded when no one hurriedly turned a corner to blow her fool head off with a laser. It became grunts as she quickly shoved free of the detritus, moving a metal shield over her head to help lessen both her heat signature and her visual from anything that might have been monitoring the wreckage. Finally, it moved into silence as her calculating brain, the technical part that figured out how things worked and how they could be fixed settled on the problem of likely being unwanted in a stranger's ship.
She cast a tired gray gaze along the walls and ceiling of the hangar for surveillance equipment and was not pleased with her odds. Outdated though some of the tech appeared to be, what little she could see from the metal she lay underneath said she'd be--likely had already been--spotted.
It left her options. Few of them, but options regardless.
She could come right out and greet whatever crew the metal collector's ship had to offer. Maybe seek to secure some pity--and a bath; hot, solid food. It would be clear that she'd been imprisoned on board the Diem Vuong. What might not be entirely clear to a stranger however, what with her body covered in...everything...was that she was not responsible for the ship's fate, its crew's demise, nor even her own survival among the wreckage. She'd been on enough missions for the Agency to know most people assumed one imprisoned had done something wrong or belonged, legally, to someone else. The lack of intergalactic regulations on such fronts made these safe assumptions that precluded confrontation and kept ship captains from suing station masters. Alex decided, shifting to get a clearer look around the bay, she could not afford someone else's assumption that she was incarcerated for such a reason, nor the assumption that she'd taken freedom into her own hands.
Leaving her fate to strangers again did not fulfill the survival need rampaging inside her brain.
So, she would not greet the crew. She could instead blend among them. Large doors set into the walls provided the only obvious means of escape into the inner ship. If it hadn't been lit up and in use, it would have been her best option, because she'd have been able to override any attempt to stop it, spoof its level stops so no one could tell where she got off, and, as an added bonus, no one would have expected a motion so bold. She'd steal a uniform, fit in among the engineering team, wait until the next stopover at a station or some-such. Unfortunately, only seeing the hangar wasn't an indication of how many levels the ship had--nor how many crew and how tightly contained an operation she faced.
Even if she had time to break it down and try the tube to get around the ship, the problem of too many unknowns remained.
That left outright disappearance. And though maintenance tunnels could be flushed to present a one-way ejection out an airlock, though the surveillance in the hangar would show her point of entry, Alex knew maintenance tunnels. All it would take was a bit of dismantling, all quick glitch that would close her off from detection and reappear as normal after a time. She could burrow in like a spacerat, make a little nest of her own until the ship hit port.
As good a solution as any, only she had to act fast on it, because now her right leg was beginning to throb.
She didn't care that she slipped and stumbled on a hurried, scrambling way to the grate, that her handprints and footprints and someone else's gore--or maybe her own--tracked a clear path. She assumed she'd be seen regardless. Once inside, she'd vanish. No crew with less than an engineering genius aboard would shake her loose. Until docking, she could be a Phantom, like the one of musical inclination in an old Earth opera house.
Wouldn't the crew just throw themselves into a snit if she started sending demands and playing some variety of music from the bowels of their ship? A sound crossed between a giggle and a sob escaped a few feet from a clean getaway. Between that and her overactive flight response, her senses were tunneled to opening the grate, and nothing else. Alex had no hope of knowing if she'd be discovered before she could find out how very Phantom-like she could become.
She registered between somehow working the grate free in record time and hunching before its entrance that to make such a plan work, she'd have to have tools. Alex did not have tools. She'd barely kept hold of the oxygen device in her hand, barely did so now as she clambered inside the tunnel entrance. In a blinding flash of red-orange-black-then-red-again, her right leg seized. A moan echoed into the only hope she had of retaining her freedom, and then waned. Her breath came in pants as she tried to push past the pain.
One dainty...blood-and-guts-smeared...bare foot stuck out of the tube, disappearing inside by tiny, almost immeasurable degrees as her adrenaline flat-lined.
Dreams come in a size too big so we can grow into them.
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