Barry carefully considered the options that were available to him. Although his Astray unit has good reflexes that sync up with his own reflexes developed from years of martial arts, he was doubtful that he would be able to kick away the rifle before the enemy got off at least one shot. The only potential trump card he had at his disposal was the female thief stuck in his unit's left hand. "So it seems we're at a standstill..."
"Oh? Just how did you derive that conclusion?"
"Obviously, you want the safety of your comrade and I want you out of the unit you're currently occupying. How about a trade? If you get out of the other Astray, I'll let you and your comrade go. You can take one of the Mistral pods down there to go wherever you wish," said the Natural pilot. He had to make sure that he gave them good options which would lead to their freedom so they wouldn't make irrational decisions. There was a full minute of silence before the other pilot spoke up.
"I do admit that I'm concerned about her safety however when you're an outlaw living in this koo-koo nutty universe with few resources and methods of survival at your disposal, the value of a person's life isn't exactly very high compared to the value of a fully functional mobile suit. Besides, she knew the risks. Nothing personal, Porsche."
"YOU BASTARD!!!" Before she could curse any further, a shot from the white Astray's beam rifle was fired and Barry quickly dodged out of the way. The discharge was strong enough to breach the hull and allow the Astray unit along with whatever oxygen was in the room to escape into space. The white Astray unit powered up its propulsion system and blasted off through the hole.
Barry looked around the room frantically for any emergency sealant but it seemed that they didn't have anything in this particular chamber. 'Just what type of cargo ship is this?!' But he could worry about that later. He tapped a control in his cockpit to bring the unit's left hand to the cockpit and quickly yanked the woman inside before sealing his hatch. He whipped off the face mask and saw that the black girl was not breathing. He frantically tried to give her CPR and breathed as much air as he could into her mouth but after two minutes, he realized that it was futile.
He shifted her dead body around so he could operate his unit and ensure that the Mistrals are clamped down properly. Then he used his radio to get in touch with Jean. "Jean, we have a problem..."
**********
"Can it wait? I'm a little busy here..." The blonde Coordinator put away his communicator and ducked to avoid a gunshot from one of Laverty's crew. As he suspected, the cargo ship crew actually turned out to be a group of space pirates who managed to survive throughout the war. They had planned on using the away team as hostages to obtain whatever they wanted from the Ortigiya but that didn't work out so well as Jean's late arrival turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Now the five Ortigiya crew members were scattered in the engine room but somewhat sheltered from Laverty and his crew.
A young man with curly brown hair carefully crawled his way towards Jean. "You have any Superman tricks you can pull off to get us out, Jean?"
"Just a sec, Leroy..." Jean took out his engineering kit and revealed a hidden compartment underneath his tools that contained one flashbang and six tranquilizer darts. Jean took out the flashbang and gave it to Leroy. "Hold on to it until I finish assembling the handgun."
"Alright guys... let's do this!!" Leroy tossed out the flashbang to blind the pirates in the engine room. However, he and his fellow engineers emerged a bit too soon and they too were blinded by the flashbang.
"Dammit, Leroy!" Jean emerged from his hiding spot and used the edge of a crater to boost his weightless body towards one of the pirates and jammed a dart in his neck. Then he bounced off that pirate's body to another pirate and jammed another dart. He repeated this motion until he ran out of darts and the only pirate left still conscious was Laverty. To quickly render him unconscious, Jean kicked Laverty once between the legs before throwing a punch to knock the other man (who turned out to be skinnier since he wore a disguise) out. While the others regained their senses, the blonde Coordinator took the time to call back Barry. "Just as we thought... these guys turned out to be pirates. Did something happen on your end?"
"Two pirates tried to take our units. I couldn't stop the person who took your mobile suit and to make things worse, he created a hull breach in here to escape. It sucked all of the oxygen out of this room and killed his partner."
"Swell. We still have the pods, right?"
"Affirmative."
"Let's just get back to the ship and resume our course before the other pirates wake up. If we can make it back to the Junk Guild, I can retrieve my custom Long Dagger that I used to escape from the Alliance in the first place."
It only took the away team a few minutes to get back to the pods with Jean opting to hitch a ride in Barry's mechanical left hand. As for Porsche's body, it was placed in one of the ship's corridors. Her fellow crew members will probably give her a proper funeral and farewell later. Just as the group exited the ship and focused their sights on the Ortigiya, they received quite a shocking view as they could visibly see that the ship has been damaged with the emergency sealant used to seal a hull breach near the engine room.
"Hang on, Jean!" shouted Barry as he pushed his propulsion system to maximum speed to get back to the ship as soon as possible.
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(Posted Wed, 25 Jul 2007 17:28)
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