Galactic High

Jack breathed heavily as he dozed in his hammock, trying his best to doze and get what little REM sleep he could. Despite his brain telling him he had to, his body just wasn’t cooperating that well, with a combination of the earlier ‘bedtime’, the rattling cargo on the shelves around them, and Jack clearly anticipating the probable danger ahead all leaving him in an uncomfortable flux state of semi-lucidity.

Deciding to make the best of the situation, he just kept his eyes shut, trying to clear his mind of his worries as he simply listened to the sound of his own breathing and the slight rumbling of the shuttle and he lay there in the hammock with Chiyo.

His battleskin underneath his clothes actually felt good in the heated cargo compartment they were in, in no small part due to his new armour, which had done a good job of keeping his body well-ventilated so that there wasn’t any discomfort when he moved. He had no idea if things were similar for the other armour types, but he and Nika had agreed that it was a perfect fit.

Jack had no idea how long it had been since they started, but there hadn’t been any problems on their journey. The crew had kept to themselves throughout, though Chiyo had been confident they had been drinking on the job, causing Sephy to loop the internal cameras and check more of the containers for anything tasty or expensive, and Jack was grateful for the bag of steak-flavoured crisps the Skritta had thrown his way earlier.

Almost idly he shifted slightly in his doze, causing the figure he was cuddled up to move with him. He had almost forgotten Chiyo was there, and he instinctively wrapped his arms around her reassuringly, before all of a sudden there was a sudden sharp wave of force, causing him to snap awake with a start, spotting where his hand had accidentally been for a split second before the hammock tipped over, causing them both to thump down to the ground with a hard thud.

Hearing the groans from all around them, Jack could see that they hadn’t been the only ones woken up by that, as Sephy was rubbing her head on the floor, while Nika was on her feet scanning for threats.

“Fuck! What was that?” one of the crew at the front exclaimed.

“I dunno! Some kind of turbulence!” another one of the men grumbled. “Fuck, rookie! You’ve gotta keep an eye on things!”

“What!? The lights were green!” the rookie exclaimed in disbelief.

“Yeah, suuuure they were!” the first voice retorted, clearly not believing them.

“Um…sorry about that,” Jack whispered. “Accident!”

Suuure it was! Chiyo teased back. Some warning would have been nice!

“Damn, well that timing could have been worse!” Sephy shrugged with a grin. “We’re nearly there, only about fifteen minutes out.”

“In that case, gear up and get ready to move,” Alora ordered them all. “We don’t want to hang around here.”

“Roger that.” Jack sighed, as he got up and began to pack.

*****

“Coming in for a landing,” the old captain professionally called out over the ship-wide comm, as Sephy finished hiding the evidence of their scrounging of the cargo.

“We all good?” Nika asked, as she gave her shotgun a quick check out of habit.

“Yep!” Sephy grinned, practising her quick draw with her twin pistols. “These magnetic clips on our armour are dead useful! Even you won’t lose your weapons easily, Jack!”

“Oh for fucks sake, you’re still gonna bring that up?!” Jack groaned as the others snorted in amusement. “You would have dropped your stuff too!”

Well, even if you do drop anything, they should automatically reattach if you’re in close enough proximity and nothing’s impeding it.

“Like Iron Man or something, right?” Jack asked, earning a bemused look from Chiyo, who obviously didn’t understand the reference, but nodded anyway.

“Heh, that doesn’t work with grenades, right?” Sephy asked with a grin. “That one might be a bit counterproductive!”

“I am very sure it doesn’t!” Alora giggled. “But Clan Bharzum know what they’re doing! I’m sure everything will be fine!”

They all held on as the shuttle made its final approach, before finally plonking to the ground. Everyone was ready by the time the crew had everything powered down.

“So, head to the docks, find the crew and be out of here in less than ten minutes,” Jack stated as if to remind everyone of what they were here to do

“Yep!” Alora confirmed. “This should only be a border town with not many people around, so I doubt there’ll even be that many ships around. Add the fact that the crew is all Megafauna, and the fact they know we’re coming, and it shouldn’t be too hard to find.”

“Um…guys….” Nika called out as the cargo ramp began to open, and Dante gave a low whine of concern. “We might have a slight problem…”

The crisp, cold breeze that buffeted them was instantly punctuated by the sounds of shouts, screams and bedlam in the distance, broken up by the occasional burst of gunfire, but it was only when the ramp fully extended to let them down could they see the chaos they were about to walk into.

The Cypherport they had expected should have been a quiet, small border town with a simple dock for traders and fishers…

The Cypherport they had landed right at the edge of made the most ghetto streets of Detroit look tame by comparison!

Tightly packed shacks and dilapidated houses leaned menacingly over a labyrinth of narrow winding streets, barely illuminated by the many grimy, flickering neon signs all over the town that cast eerie shadows over the crumbling streets, adorned with gang symbols, crude drawings and warnings, with all sorts of dangerous looking people milling about, from what they could see from where they were.

I don’t understand… Chiyo began. This can’t be the right place? We researched this place, it wasn’t meant to be like this at all!

“Maybe the info you found is outdated,” Sephy pointed out. “But everything I’ve got says this is the place…what the fuck!?”

“Everybody stick close together!” Alora warned as they slowly and carefully made their way down the ramp, with the workers barely giving them any acknowledgement. “Our plan hasn’t changed. We head to the docks and get out.”

“I can plot us a basic route, but I’m not throwing drones up until we need to,” the Skritta warned as she typed a few things on one of her tablet devices, converting the view they saw from the cargo ramp into a basic map.

“Should we use the Broaches of Disguise?” Jack asked Alora, who nodded instantly.

“Good idea, Jack,” the Eladrie agreed. “The less attention we bring to ourselves, the better.”

Quickly activating their magic, the group cautiously made their way out of the tiny Corvin Enterprises drop-off point into the shadowy dystopian streets. Now that they were close up, they could see that the buildings around them were thin and mostly composed of wood with multiple floors, with the majority having steep, high-peaked roofs that dissuaded them from attempting to traverse along the rooftops.

Looking around Jack could already see a few faces of the shady-looking inhabitants gazing their way with suspicion and curiosity, causing him to keep one hand on his gun. He didn’t care what any of these guys wanted, if anyone came up to them with no good reason, he was ready to attack at a moment's notice.

Was this what it was like to be a cop in America?

“Hey man! You wanna buy some grass?” someone called out from the side, and Jack could see a few street vendors peddling their wares from makeshift stalls. The one that had called out to them was obviously trying to sell them drugs of dubious quality, but a few others had weapons or random electronics, probably stolen. Many of the vendors were obscured under hoods or facemasks, making it impossible to discern their intentions at a glance. Jack just curtly shook his head, and kept walking forward.

This is so sketchy, Chiyo pointed out, while doing her best to keep up with them on foot, not attracting any attention by floating in the air like she usually did.

“So far so good,” Jack whispered back, before a shark crack of gunfire echoed through the streets ahead, followed by the sounds of a few smashed bottles.

“That was closer to the centre of the town,” Sephy told them, checking her map. “We stick along the outside, we can avoid that shit.”

“Speaking of shit, fucking hell it smells bad,” Nika growled as her nose was assaulted by the pungent odour wafting around them.

“It’s just like the bad parts of the city,” Alora noted. “The quicker we get out of here the better.”

“Docks aren’t far,” Sephy whispered to them. “Just down the hill.”

“I see it…” Jack whispered back as they rounded a corner onto a particularly narrow street, where a gang of thugs aggressively stared them down as they passed, though didn’t go after them. A few of them whispered among themselves and pointed, causing Dante to lowly growl under his breath.

“Reckon they made us, Chiyo?” Nika asked the Ilithii as the group briskly kept walking, toeing the fine line between casual walking without fear and running to safety.

It is possible, Chiyo replied unsurely. I don’t know for sure.

“Then we lose them in the alleyways,” Alora muttered under her breath. “Are they following us?”

They look like they’re debating it, Chiyo confirmed.

“We can break line of sight up ahead, alleyway to the right,” Sephy whispered, and Jack nodded as he led the way. They turned down the alleyway, quickly sprinting for the next turning the moment line of sight was broken, keeping their footsteps as quiet as possible as they maintained their general direction down to the docks, before finally emerging on the waterfront to a few curious glances of some very inebriated sailors.

“How are we for time?” Alora asked nobody in particular, as Jack checked his commlink.

“It’s been about ten minutes,” Jack told her. “Just need to find our ride and we can get out of here.”

“Yeah, but these docks are fucking huge,” Nika pointed out. “It’s nobody’s fault, but we’ve still got bad intel about this place.”

“Then we just walk up and down and hope for the best until we see our guy.” Jack shrugged. “We know the kind of people we’re looking for at least, right?”

Right, Chiyo agreed. Let’s go! Keep your wits about you!

*****

“Where the fuck are these assholes?” Nika grumbled about 15 minutes later as they checked the various piers for any sign of their contact. “The client told us they knew we’d be on our way!”

“Doesn’t mean they have to sit in place I suppose,” Jack reasoned. “Though I’m surprised that in a place like this they wouldn’t have a guard set up for their ship.”

“Raises a valid point though,” Sephy spoke up. “Could we steal one of the ships and make our way to where we need to go?”

Don’t forget that we need to come back here! Chiyo warned.

“Okay, we ‘borrow’ one of the ships and return it intact then…” Sephy suggested half-heartedly with chuckles from the others.

“We can keep looking around here or we can wait for someone that looks like our contacts to show up,” Alora began grimly.

“Which will take time, which we shouldn’t waste, especially if people have worked out we’re here,” Nika prompted. “Anyone with basic astral sight can see through our disguises, and anyone smart and knowledgeable enough can work it out too, so waiting around is a huge risk.”

“Or we go looking for our contacts.” Alora grimaced, hating the idea herself. “There was a lot of noise in the middle of the district. Whatever it is, if they’re not here, they’re probably there.”

Along with everyone else, Chiyo pointed out. It’s a risky move.

“Do you think it’s a risk worth taking?” Jack asked, not having a particular opinion either way.

“I would frame it as our ‘least worst option’”. Alora tentatively nodded. “But in this situation we don’t want to hang around any longer than we need to.”

“You’re right, but we’ll need to be careful.” Jack sighed. “If we can’t find them, Sephy’s idea is probably the next best thing we can do. Unless anyone else has any better ideas?”

Looking around, everyone shook their heads.

“Very well then.” Alora nodded slowly. “Everyone stay as close together as you can without attracting attention. Jack, Nika, you lead the way.”

“Got it.” Nika whispered, Jack nodding in agreement as he took point, heading towards what looked like a busy main street in the distance. Though it wasn’t as covert as he would like, he figured that they could hide in plain sight while looking for their contacts.

“Eww…” Alora muttered under her breath, as a slurring reptilian almost stumbled into them, reeking of cheap alcohol and vomit as they staggered aimlessly past, weaving unsteadily across the dirt road with glazed eyes before they smacked into a crumbling wall, earning laughs from a few nearby crowds as he pitched forward and threw up on the floor.

“Damn! Wouldn’t want to be him in the morning!” Sephy quipped, as the group saw two shady-looking men approaching the drunk with ill-intent.

I doubt that fool has anything left worth stealing, Chiyo noted as they put some distance away from the imminent mugging.

“Wait, shouldn’t we do something?” Jack asked, only for Alora to sharply shake her head.

“Best not get involved,” Nika added as they saw the two muggers run away, while the drunk guy flailed around helplessly. “Or we bring much worse down upon us.”

“Yeah…” Jack sighed, who couldn’t help but agree with the logic. He felt uneasy as they weaved their way through the sea of gutter trash, not finding anybody who looked like their contacts, but gradually getting closer to the sounds of debauchery up ahead.

As they got closer to what sounded like a wild party up ahead, Jack spotted a small, rat-like Lizta squatting down right in the middle of the road taking a dump, to the immense displeasure of Alora as they gave the degenerate a wide berth.

“Reckon that was the Pooping Bandit?” Sephy joked, as Alora shuddered in disgust at what they had just witnessed.

“Doubt it.” Nika snorted in amusement. “Designated shitting streets are probably the norm here. Hell I’d sooner trust a dirt road than anything else in this shithole.”

Let’s hurry up so we can get out of here! Chiyo hurried them along. With any luck this will be the worst thing that happens this weekend.

“Let’s hope.” Jack agreed as they kept on moving, ignoring the inquisitive glances from the various beggars and panhandlers sitting at the side of the road begging for change. Though Jack wouldn’t have minded tossing a few credsticks their way, he didn’t want to look like an appealing target for any of the gangers and other trash hanging around.

“Watch out for pickpockets,” Sephy warned, as she checked the movement of a mangy toad-looking being who tried to sidle up past them, flashing him her gun, which caused him to back off.

As the group reached the top of the hill, the sounds of raucous laughter, clinking glasses and pounding music became deafening, drowning out everything else in a cacophony of noise that reverberated through the air. The streets around them were packed with a dense crowd, clamouring and jostling as they drank what looked like ale out of dirty-looking glasses, many of them chipped or smashed.

At the centre of the main street was a great obelisk jutting out of the road several metres high that looked like it was made of bright green glass, with white runes gently glowing in swirls along the base, but Chiyo looked genuinely upset by the way the star attraction of Cypherport had been defaced and almost completely blanketed by old graffiti and vandalism, and Jack couldn’t blame her. Though it bore little significance to him, he still felt a pang of sheer disappointment at seeing such disrespect for what should have been a cultural artefact, as a blue-scaled reptilian walked up to it, dropped his trousers and began pissing against it, while another placed his hand against it and puked, leaving a yellow stream along the faded glass.

“Leave it Chiyo, it’s not worth it.” Alora whispered to the distressed Ilithii, who looked like she was about to attack the men for their desecration, with Dante whining as he pawed at Chiyo’s leg.

“Guys? Over here.” Sephy called to the group and pointed. Just ahead of them was a huge building that might have once been a town hall or a temple of some kind, but looked like it had long since been repurposed into a huge nightclub.

Bolting onto the remains of what could have once been a religious symbol was a poorly maintained neon sign that kept flickering the words ‘The Soggy Pussy’.

“Welp.” Jack began. “I think we know where they probably are.”

“Well, they’re not out here.” Nika sighed. “No getting around it then, looks like we’re heading in!”

“Looks like it.” Alora sighed, as she took point.

I doubt it needs to be said, but don’t drink or take anything here, Chiyo warned, as they sidestepped a group of four off-duty Red Legion soldiers who were taking turns snorting lines of white powder off of a half-rotted wooden picnic table.

“Really? Aww damn,” Sephy joked as they politely made their way through the crowd to the front door, where a greeter was hyping up the crowd.

“You like dicks? We’ve got dicks!” The Xarak grinned as he pointed to members of the crowd. “Here at The Soggy Pussy we got lotsa dicks for you to choose! Hairy mammal dicks! Dry reptilian dicks! Wet amphibian dicks! Soft aquatic dicks! Questionable animal dicks! Laaaaady dicks!”

“Lovely…” Alora muttered under her breath as they gave the hypeman a wide berth and headed to the door, past the towering bouncers standing guard at the entrance. For a moment Jack thought they would give them trouble, but after assessing their worthiness in the mysterious way that bouncers do, they allowed them to pass without a problem.

Ducking under the buzzing signs and projections of various disgusting things that would make even Kizzarith blush, they group was immediately engulfed in a maelstrom of chaos. The pounding bass of the local shitty music swirled through the air like a physical force, shaking the very foundations of the building and almost completely drowning everything else out. Overhead, lights flashed and span in a dizzying array of colours, casting the room into a kaleidoscope of light and shadow, disorienting the group as they looked around for their contacts. Overhead, they could see a set of well-used heavy turrets scattered all along the ceiling looking out over the crowd, a sure sign that violence was commonplace here.

We should head to the bar. Chiyo indicated to the far end of the huge room. Maybe we can ask the bartenders if they’ve seen them, might need to throw them a bribe though…

“Stay behind me.” Jack warned, as he pushed his way past the writing, dancing bodies all around them tangling to the rhythm of the music, causing him to almost gag from the putrid scent of alien sweat and pheromones. He kept to the walls as a fight broke out in the middle of the dance floor between a few rival gangs, only for a few more bouncers on duty to step in and royally beat the perpetrators until they could no longer move, chucking them against the wall to take a nap.

Turning around to make sure his friends were still close, Jack moved away from the outer wall to avoid a series of women giving ‘special attention’ to a few guys, their expressions far from focused on what was going on all around them, making a beeline for the bar past a group of mercenaries smoking something questionable that left a sickly sweet smoke in the air around them.

“What you kids want?” one of the grungy-looking Xarak bartenders grunted at them with a sly expression as they approached the bar, surprising Jack that he didn’t call them out for their age, or being here in the first place. He simply guessed they didn’t care.

“A crew of River Giants,” Alora asked the man, slipping a credstick across the bar, which he pocketed with a greasy palm. “We seek the captain.”

“Yeah they’re around.” The barman grinned a creepy, toothy smile, staring at Alora a little too intently. “First balcony up on the left.

“Thank you.” Alora nodded as politely as she could before turning away.

“Finally, let’s find them and get the fuck out of here!” Nika shouted out over the noise of the crowd. “This place is dodgy as fuck!”

More than that, there was something off about that barman, Chiyo added, with all of the group agreeing with nodding heads.

“We’d better make this quick then!” Sephy urged them on. “I see stairs heading up over there!”

Making their way through the crowd they got to the staircase in the far corner of the room, near to where an avian DJ in a ridiculous purple pimp outfit was changing tracks while hanging a crack pipe out of his beak.

“Watch yourselves going up,” Jack warned as he noted the many spills dripping beneath their feet. Carefully they made their way up, dodging a few intoxicated patrons coming in the opposite direction with by now well-practised fitness.

“That looks like them over there!” Nika pointed in the distance. Indeed, a group of about 5 or 6 large green-skinned megafauna were sat around a small coffee table laughing at a joke one of them had told in between taking shots of hard liquor.

“Excuse me?” Alora called out to the oldest one, a bald man with a thick grey beard in a simple toga. “Are you Captain Ripples-On-Salt?”

“That I am lass!” The River Giant boomed out with a grinning jovial voice. “I must say you kids are all here much earlier than we expected!”

How so? Chiyo asked curiously. You were made aware by our mutual client that we would be on our way and to expect our arrival. You didn’t even post a guard on your boat!

“What in the name of deep waters are you talking about?” Captain Ripples-On-Salt scoffed. “We got word that the mess in the city meant we wouldn’t expect you until morning, got some tokens to come here to tide us over…”

“Word from who?” Alora asked incredulously.

As Alora spoke to the captain, Jack had an uneasy feeling as he looked around. Though the crowd was massive, and most seemed to pay them no heed as they conducted their business, he could somehow sense that eyes were on him, even if he couldn’t identify where they were.

“Guys, it doesn’t matter!” Nika told them. “We should finish up and get the fuck out of here!”

As Jack looked around he suddenly felt a strange sensation forcing his senses into overdrive. Immediately dismissing it as nothing malicious, he found himself looking down at his hand where the Ring of the Berserker was snugly attached. If it had actually done anything since he had first put it on, Jack didn’t know, but now for the first time it seemed to vibrate slightly, as the gem in the middle began to glow a slight blood-red, and only grew more intense in feeling…

“Alright, finish up…” the Captain began to order his crew. “We have a-”

“Fuck!” Sephy yelled in alarm, but Jack was already moving, suddenly aware of the danger as he quickly dodged to the side to avoid the knife, before grabbing the Xarak attacker’s knife-hand in a counter, using their forward momentum to drag them in a circle to smash it’s head into the wall in one solid motion. Sephy quickly used her wings to put some distance between her and her attacker, before she magdumped her twin pistols into the Korrigan that tried to stab her while the others had barely processed what was happening.

Sensing thunderous movement closing on him, Jack drew his axe and spun around in a diagonal slash, only for the axe to be caught in a single meaty hand, while the other reached forward and closed around his neck. Quickly letting go of his axe with one of his hands, the panicking Jack grabbed onto his attacker’s fingers to barely hold them back from snapping his neck then and there…

As he struggled to break free from the hold, Jack growled in defiance at the large Ogar man he really didn’t want to see again…

“Embrace your redemption boy!” the Redeemer snarled with a face bearing scars from their last encounter, his eyes staring into Jack with hatred as he squeezed tighter…

Desperately, Jack tried to break the grapple, but the Redeemer was just too strong! Behind him, he could hear the others with their own problems, so he couldn’t afford to stall for time. The confines of the balcony made it difficult for him to move around to try and slip out of The Redeemer’s grasp.

Unless!

His legs swung at the wall as the Redeemer flailed Jack about, trying to finish him, but Jack held stubbornly on. Gritting his teeth, Jack kept his footing, before he suddenly kicked off from the wall in a burst of strength, sending The Redeemer staggering back, still keeping his hold on Jack’s neck. As the two heavy forms hit the wooden safety rail, the long-rotted wood gave way like paper and smashed into splinters and the two figures headed straight to the ground below…