[Art lovelysaberstudio ]


Roe smugly followed the two guards flanking him. They had put him in handcuffs hoping they would hold him.
The guards leading him looked a little nervous, leading this tall winged alien to their officer, they were holding poles for fighting in stations and ships, and to non-lethally subdue troublemakers.
Roe was a troublemaker, but he wasn’t threatened by their twigs. He’d been officially arrested for various reasons.

The group entered a room, his guards remained by the door happy not having to stand close to Roe, as he approached the desk.
The old fat man was red in his face, completely mad, fuming and angry at Roe, who did not flinch at the accusations and threats thrown at him.

The two guards behind Roe were shaking in their boots as their captain was screaming at Roe, he apparently did not like the fact that his daughter and Roe had been frisky, claiming that he had brainwashed her and controlled her.
Roe was mostly entertained by the Captains tirades and rants. He kept checking his modern handcuffs, simple alloy chains, not too hard to break, they had also tried to use alloy chains to keep his wings in place, pathetic.
-
Suddenly alarms blaring, a generated voice recommending people not to panic and seek shelter and hide from an unknown attacker.
“What is this now!” The Captain shouted.
Before he got any answer, the fortified door exploded into splinters as two humanoid looking robots entered the room and cut down the two people by the door.

The two silvery metallic machines, looking a bit morbid to humans, with their skull looking heads and red glowing what you’d call eyes.
Clumsily balancing like humans, one of them approached Roe, ready to strike. Instead of hands they had a long sharp blade.
One of the machines swung at Roe. He easily dodged, raising his bound hands so that the blade cut the shackles in half.
Finally free Roe did a pirouette, grabbing the closest machine's blade and breaking it off its arm and stabbing it into its red glowing eye, while the second got impaled on the sharp edges of his wing.

Roe gave the captain a mocking small bow. “If you don’t mind, I shall take my leave, and leave you with these.” The fat man had already hid under his table.
His wings free, they caught air as he flung himself at a third machine, crushing it under his fists.









***

Glitch hacked angrily at the humanoid looking robot, growling while his bladed weapon cut small chunks of its metal structure. “Die! Die! Die!” He grunted angrily.
He was about to strike one more time in his blind rage.
But as his arm was raised, he felt a tight grip around his wrist and he couldn’t strike anymore.

“Save your anger to the functioning ones, and focus so you don’t lose yourself in anger.” A voice spoke behind him. Glitch growled as his visor flickered in confusion as he leapt forward to get away from his captor, who had released his wrist.

Blind in rage he lunged forward to attack the one interrupting with his blade, not realising it was not a machine.

Roe easily and swiftly parried the attempted cut, recognizing the blind rage in the protogens eyes, so to speak.
Grabbing the Protogens wrist again as he dropped the makeshift blade, Roe retracted his wrist blade. He watched reality trickle back into his fellow creature.
“I do not know your history.” Roe spoke, as he gently released his capture. Clearly he wasn't a danger now.
“But it's clear you have a personal vendetta against these machines, and I would like to offer a helping blade, from a fellow creature.”

Roe watched the protogen who had collapsed onto his knees, clearly exhausted from his outburst. He turned his hand, palm up offering a helping hand.
-
Glitch grumbled as he held his head, looking up at the raptor he had tried to kill in his instinct.
“I.. You offered me help when I tried to kill you?” He asked, meekly.
Roe nodded calmly. “I recognize your rage, I've tasted it more than once.”
Glitch accepted his hand as he stood up.

“Whatever you are fighting internally with these machine beasts, know that you are not fighting them all alone, you have a whole station of security trying to defeat them. And as a silly mercenary smelling blood I offered my aid, and I am willing to share the money.” Roe spoke, offering a temporary alliance.

Glitch looked around, and picked his blade. Pressed a button and bent the blade to be protected in the handle.
“I suppose it's better than to fight alone.” Glitch replied.
“Name’s Roe, Roe Seong. I mostly fight hand to hand, with or without my blades.” Roe chuckled, exposing his blades extending from implants on his arms.
“And wings are not for show, you can use me as a bullet shield if needed.” His mechanical wings moved gently, the solid light yellow plates shivered to life.

“Ah, fellow slave to various overlords.” Glitch pondered.
“My name is.. Glitch, I think. I do not know if I had one before.” He spoke, offering his hand to seal the deal.
Roe gladly accepted the handshake, would be good to fight alongside non-human and a skilled fighter.

“If you do not mind me asking.” Glitch inquired. “Your whole species were enslaved, the whole planet quarantined, how come you are playing mercenary with fancy implants?”
Roe pondered for a few, he didn’t fancy talking about his or his species history too much, but Glitch was being polite.
“Various races came together and wanted to create new kinds of implants, designed to fight onboard ships, mainly boarding. And they needed bodies to test on, strong ones.”
He spoke as they walked along the corridor towards a racket of noises.
“And what better than my kind, bought for coin, prodded and cut into for joy and profit.”
Roe inspected the visible implants around his wrist.
“I suppose something went wrong, one moment I am stuck to a table, so many needles and knives and drills. Next moment something explodes, third I find myself on a human salvage vessel.” Roe let out a sigh and shook his head.
“So I suppose I was lucky, or unlucky.”


—

---

The duo arrived at an upper walkway, above a docking bay, after cutting down several of the weird machines roaming the station, they seemed to have come up with an effective way to deal with them.
Looking down from the walkway, they seemed to be a good hundred metres above the floor of the loading dock.
Roe brandished the rifle he had grabbed along the way from some security lockup, it was an old school style that propelled slugs using a chemical reaction.
Crude compared to modern ones using mag-rails, but very satisfying, and it seemed to work.

“Large groups of humans being led like cattle.” Roe muttered, scanning the area below through the scope.
“Hmm.” Glitch wondered. “They don't seem to have much meat, or any other resource to use.”
“Slavery.” Roe responded coldly, his trigger finger itched. He wanted to shoot but understood it was too much of a risk.

The silence was broken by massive machinery waking up, metal gears pulling open massive steel gates. Familiar crackle of force fields separating the opening space from the docking bay interior.
A quite large ship was slowly approaching, the force field crackling along the hull of the vessel, the people below were being guided towards the ship.

“Well, fuck. The robots seem to have themselves a ship.” Roe looked at Glitch, who wandered over to a panel flush with the wall.
“Open!” Glitch demanded. Roe chuckled, Walked over and punched one of his wrist blades into the thin gap between the panel and wall, twisting it popping it out.
The panel fell onto the walkway with a gentle klang, it did not alert the machines below.

Glitch grinned maliciously, or at least the expression on his visor looked like a malicious grin.
“Watch this.” The Protogen said, as he laid his hand on the exposed circuitry.
A simple maintenance panel, hiding a collection of relays and switches. Roe watched in confusion as Glitch’s visor flickered, black and swirls of purples and browns.

Sudden noises caught Roe's attention, weird crackles and snaps in the walls around him, as Glitch seemed to giggle like a madman.
“What are you doing?” Roe asked with concerns.
There was no response, but a sudden whirl and a crash as the massive metal alloy gates closed, way too fast to be controlled.
The doors fell from above, crashing into the front of the ship poking into the docking bay. Force from the gate shaking the whole station, ripping through the hull of the vessel.
The robots watched in confusion, the people ran in panic from the rain of steel and ship pieces.

“Huh..” Roe watched, part in awe, part in confusion sprinkled with fear.
Glitch returned to Roes side by the railing. “Fun, huh?” He laughed.
“The station main computer was quite willing to give over control of the gate.” Glitch stated, sounding quite proud of himself.
Roe quickly gathered his thoughts as he jumped onto the railing.
“You’ll have to tell me about whatever that was, later. You mentioned your ship was nearby? I have a feeling the station security won't like the crash welded doors!”

Glitch confirmed his ship's location as he jumped onto the back of Roe who had spread his wings.
Using his wings Roe slowed the landing to a comfortable drop, sending a shockwave to confuse the machines.
Glitch looked at the ship part that had landed in the bay.
Looked like a nose part, mostly dark grey with clear alloy panels where the pilot could see through for visual confirmation of piloting. But there was no visible pilot, empty and dark. Glitch hissed at the thought that it was either autodocking or AI driven.

Three rifle shots brought his attention back, Roe had brandished the stolen rifle. Glitch scanned the large docking bay, from the group of machines now raising and trudging carefully towards the two, the panicking humans running around, and on the opposite side the crashed ship.
“Keep them busy, raptor boy! I have a stupid idea!” Glitch shouted as he bolted towards the hull of the vessel.

“Like I don't already have my hands full!” Roe shouted in response as he had to dodge one of the humanoid robots' blade arms. He caught the robot blade in a tight grip, with a strong twist he broke it off its hinge near the hand of the machine. And with a grunt and a swift stab the robot stumbled back and fell onto its back with its own blade in its glass eye.

“You ugly pieces of shits want a fight? A fight you shall get!” Roe shouted, taking running steps towards the nearest group of machines trying to corral some humans.

Between loud rifle shots, swift flowing shadows and crashing robots, none of the humans were really able to describe what happened.
Roe was too fast, between his implants granting him strength, speed and abilities given by his wings, the machines had trouble tracking him.


“Roe! Down!” A crackled, but powerful voice echoed through the docking bay, just as Roe sank his daggers into yet another machine, cutting and shredding its internal.
He barely heard the command, but something made him trust the voice as he dove onto the cold hard floor.
The machines looked at him trying to calculate what happened, surrender?

A massive explosion shook the floor, more loud shatter followed by explosions. Roe could have sworn it sounded like ship point defence shooting. The floor around him exploded as the point defence turrets shredded through the robots.
“Mad bastard managed to activate the turrets.” He glanced around, the smoke and dust choked the air, his dark visor assisted his visions with their scannins, showing outlines of destroyed machinery and cratered floor. Looking back at what remained of the vessel trying to dock, its point defence doors were open, with twenty metre long barrels poking out, occasionally sending out a barrage of explosive shrapnel to any approaching group of machines.

Glitch ran over to Roe, who was still low, taking in the situation.
He patted the raptor on his shoulder gently. “Let's go! Someone is messing with my ship, and I can't promise how long the defence systems of what remains of the ship can hold on!”
Roe climbed up onto his legs again, shaking off the dust. “Do I want to know what you did?”
Another loud salvo, thankfully deafened by his equipment, the humans were holding their ears, coughing up dust and grime. Suffering, but alive and not enslaved.
“It's complicated! Let’s go! This way!” Glitch led the way for the duo towards a maintenance corridor, the shortest way to the docking bay where his small ship was.

-

The duo snuck around some groups of robots, the local authority seemed to have gotten some control on the robot invasion, apparently the ship Glitch destroyed had some control link over them, now the robots were trying to defend themselves, but didn’t have the hive-mind link of the mothership.
They were useless.

“Hmm, there’s an arrest warrant on us.” Glitch casually mentioned.
“Let me guess, they objected to crashing the ship? Deafening the humans in the docking bay?” Roe complained as he was working on a stubborn door not wanting to move.
“Eh.. Some encrypted channels claim the robot uprising is because of us?”
Glitch had infiltrated the station's internal communications.
“What is strange, they use the same communication encryption as the ship I broke, and fragments are the same in the hive-mind communication between the robots…” Glitch’s voice dropped low.
“Typical, arrange a whole robot uprising, and now that failed, blame it on the only two aliens on the darned station!” Roe grumbled.
He reached back to the gloomy Protogen behind him, encouraging him to follow through the now forced open door in the maintenance corridor.

Sneaking around armed guards, they arrived at the correct docking bay after a few hours.
Exhausted and tired they looked around from behind cargo crates, the lights were dim, barely enough to see where to walk, thankfully both of them had other means to see.
Carefully to avoid motion detectors and other cameras, they snuck towards a ship.

They saw the ship a short distance away. Smooth elongated sleek design, quite old with its engine pods in the rear. Old, but functional. Weapon bays hidden, designed to also handle atmospheric re-entry. Right now docked, barely visible in the darkness.
“Someone’s messing with it.” Glitch hissed.
They approached the ship, spotting a small figure huddled on a walkway near the airlock. The figure was bent over what looked like a small computer, clearly trying to hack their way in.

Roe motioned Glitch to follow quietly as they walked up on the figure, too distracted to notice the two approaching.
Roa banged the butt of his rifle on the walkway just behind the figure, spooking them, making them jump and shout, dropping their computer device into the darkness below.
“AAH! What! Fuck!” They swore, noticing the duo and they dropped their computer, they considered jumping for a brief second.

“Human, female. A little rascal by the look of it.” Roe inspected the cornered rat.
Glitch giggled. “You were trying to steal my ship? I don’t think she is with the authorities here.”
Roe nodded. “What should we do with her? Push her down? Leave her to the authorities?”

Glitch pondered a moment, the girl watched them, worried, no way to run.
“There they are! You are all under arrest!” A stern voice shouted in the distance, as blinding lights turned on.
The Duo turned towards the voice, some people flanked by robots were pointing at them.
“Looks like fun times are over.” Roe said calmly, brandishing his rifle, turning towards the people.
“Get the door open, I'll keep them busy.” Roe shouldered the rifle, loaded it and let a single round loose. The human, young adult girl whimpered at the loud explosion from the rifle, and then from the louder explosion from the fuel lines above the people that were chasing the Duo.

Glitch laid a hand on the outer hull of his ship, the shell of the ship pushed outwards and then slid up, exposing the airlock gate under the outer armour.

A few extra rifle rounds to keep the robots at bay.

Glitch had disappeared inside the ship, leaving Roe and the girl outside to deal with the attackers.
His opponents tried to use some of their weapons, but their guns did not work on him, non-lethal rounds, designed not to damage the fragile station and ship interior, completely opposite to Roe’s rifle that was designed to rip and tear.
Shielding himself, and at the same time the girl with his wings form the concussion rounds, making sure none of the humans or robots reach any of the docking bay backup control computers.

The ship roared to life, burning concentrated hydrogen to warm the fusion engines. The normally deafening noise was useful, making the people slow their approach.
“Now! Onboard!” Glitch ordered Roe.
“What about the girl?”
“You decide!” Glitch responded. Roe groaned, he couldn’t believe what he was about to do.

“You!” He commanded the girl, she looked up, shielding her ears. Roe grabbed her by her shirt and tossed her into the ship's air lock, he followed in and closed the door.
The armour shield closed thereafter, as the vessel began taking flight, retreating from the docking bay.

Roe dragged the girl into the interior of the ship, a little cramped, but functional inside.
He pulled her to the helm where Glitch was motionless on the captain's seat, Roe assumed he was ok and was controlling the ship.
“I see you decided to grab her.” Glitch smiled, turning back to the duo entering his ship.
“Snack for later.” Roe grinned teasingly, fastening her to one of the assistant chairs. He sat down and fastened himself onto another nearby chair.
“Ride may be a bit bumpy, the remnants of the ship should have control of the outer defences of the station now, so we shouldn’t have problems with fighters.” Glitch mentioned as he returned his attention to the helm where he was sitting.

It was indeed bumpy, thankfully the energy shields and hull held up to the nearby exploding ships and crashed into various junk as the vessel shot itself away.


**

The trio were quiet as they navigated the hyperspace. The ship slowed down and dropped out of the hyperspace bubble. The blue aura of plasma quickly evaporated around the vessel as it approached some large dark rocks.
Glitch expertly piloted the vessel with its landing legs against the large rock, an asteroid ro a small planetoid. He landed it to mask its mass and visual profile, effectively being invisible to scans of pursuing vessels.

“There we go! Parked!” proclaimed Glitch, letting out a sigh afterwards.
“Anyone have the energy to grab something to eat?” He chuckled.
Roe groaned, all muscles ached as he tried to move.
“You hurt?” Glitch asked, concerned.
“No.. But pumping adrenaline and a cocktail of hormones through your body takes the toll, so if you want me to crawl I can help, thanks for the lift by the way” Roe responded.

“I.. I can help, if you tell me where the kitchen is..” The girl whispered.
“Speak up, I don’t bite. I can't promise Roe wont.” Glitch laughed, Roe laughed softly.
“Well, I am technically a freeloader, stowaway. Let me help, I'll be useful.” She responded, a bit more confidently.


Glitch fiddled with the computer in front of him.
“The lights will guide you, go via the fabricator and get yourself some clothes, shoes at least.” the Protogen smiled.
She thanked him profusely and snuck away.

“Wonder what her story is.” Glitch pondered out loud.
“Slave.” Roe stated. “Or former slave, possibly from one of the human settlements on the fringes from federal space.”
Glitch shuddered. “I take it you have experiences with them?”
“More than I care for. Some of the people that employed my services had me round up humans from slums. Upper levels didn’t seem to care that people disappeared by the thousands, just more space to fill with more beggars and sludge.” Roe growled in response. Soft, low but with a harsh flavour to bite in his bitterness.

They were quiet for a moment, listening to the heartbeat of the ship. Liquids running through the pipes, ventilation humming softly, creaks and cracks from thermal expansion.
“That’s why you took her on board?” Glitch asked, glancing back at Roe from his pilot's seat. Roe didn’t respond, Glitch understood, In his own way.
-
“I understand that the guard Captain didn’t like you very much?” Glitch inquired, Roe laughed.
“Let’s just say he did not approve of me and his adult daughter had a go in his bedroom. He kept her as some sort of purity trophy. She did ask me directly to do it, in his bedroom, on his bed in front of his security cameras.” Roe inspected his nails. “She got an experience of a lifetime, and I can't refuse a request from such a fine lady, and I love to piss off puffed up people”.
“Oh dear!” Glitch responded in pretend shock. “I take it was an rebellious act against her father?”
Roe nodded. “Apparently tired of being controlled by him.”

***

“Where are you from, originally?” Glitch asked carefully. “Don’t need to answer if you don’t want to.”
Roe was thoughtfully quiet for a moment, before he spoke.

“What we are taught as young, from the moment we can learn, is that we were uplifted and saved from a devastation created by our own people, and that only by working the debts to our masters can one day our children be free.” Roe shook his head.
“What I learned in my travels, that we were indeed uplifted, but not because they wanted to save us, but as we were strong people, physically and mentally. And apparently very easy to modify genetically and with implants.” Looking at his right hand, he flexed his fingers into a muscle, the blade popping out from what looked like a wristband, but in truth was implanted into his arm.

“They needed toy soldiers in a war they were losing, and fast. So they found our planet, small and unremarkable, poisoned and destroyed it, then claimed to come to save us. I believe a lot of us believed them, heck, even worshipped them.” He slowly retracted the blade as he relaxed his fist.

“Because of deception, and force all of us joined a war that wasn’t even ours. At some point a lot of us revolted.They nuked our planet to ash, forcing the boot on our throat and then properly enslaved us, using us for their silly little games.” Roe let out a sigh, the silence grew heavy.

___

There was a knock on the door, which woke up the two snoozing in the cockpit.
With a quiet noise the door slid open, and the woman who they had onboard struggled in pushing a cart with some food on them.
“Oh, um hello Gentlemen, i got some food stuff, i think. I followed the instructions.” She laughed, offering soup to both of them.
They thanked her and tried the soup.

“Hmm, slightly bland but edible.” Roe chuckled, tasting the bland coloured soup.
She shrugged gently packing her cart. “Not much for spices and flavours in the cabinet.” She turned to Glitch the protogen launching on a chair slurping up the gooey goodness.
“Your ship?” He nodded. “We’ll need to do some grocery shopping, very poorly packed pantry!” She scolded him, sending Roe in a fit of laughter.

Suddenly this scared little girl who tried to hack into a ship now was scolding the owner of it.
She sat on the floor, leaning against a computer terminal scooping soup into her mouth.
“Huh, she eats like she’s not eaten in weeks.” glitch pondered.
“Rascals rarely eat well, can go hungry for days and devour any food they come over. Or try to ration scraps to last.” Roe commented, with a hint of personal experience.
The girl remained quiet, just nodded as she slowed her gulping down.