Varuni Vice

 Before leaving, he grabs the pistol from the ground and offers it up for either of the miners to take. "You don't have to shoot it, but I don't want the pirates getting it back."

Ayers takes the revolver, and as Katelyn works, both of the two miners get into the remaining vacc suits.

Satisfied, Max trots back to fetch Igor, and the two left with him. The trotting quickly turns into a hobble as his wounded leg reminds him that he'd just been shot himself.

Igor seems relieved to see Max mostly unharmed and pushes the captured wolf to walk in front of them while he picks the otter back up onto his shoulders. All of them go back to the room connected to the airlock.

"Guess we'll have to go looking for the others. If they aren't here by now they're probably setting up a trap somewhere. I think we should head to operations first so we can clear it and maybe see if we can get any intel from it."

Max paces in a little circle. "But first, let's make sure we've really got these two secure." He starts searching the living prisoners first, looking for any hidden weapons, radios, or any other useful tool.

Both of them have compads, as expected. Between the two, Max finds 25 hard credits, small chips certified as currency by The Exchange, which serve as physical representations of the ubiquitous digital currency that are standard on the Amber Omega sector's advanced worlds. Otherwise, they carry nothing but their clothes and don't put up significant resistance to being searched. One is resigned to this job being over, and the other is occupied by the pain from his wound and the distraction of Katelyn treating it.

Max checks both compads to make sure the pirates weren't dumb enough to leave them unlocked as he heads back to check over the one he'd just killed. It was grisly, but potentially critical work. Besides his combat rifle, there's nothing of note. And both compads show simple dot-matrix locks when Max taps the screens.

Max takes the rifle and heads back to reunite with the others. "I'm not keen on all of us trying to move covertly through the building here. We'll have to split up. I'll take some and go look for the rest, starting with operations. Some will need to stay behind here to watch the prisoners."

He presents the rifle to the other miner. "I don't particularly want to leave you two alone with them, even if you're armed, so..." He glances at Angela. "Stay here with them."

Angela nods. "We'll keep a close eye them."

"We'll make it quick." Max taps his compad. "I'll keep you informed after we check out operations."

He steps back toward the hallway. "Igor, Katelyn, let's go."

Again they stand outside the doorway to the first room of the complex. The two bodies here, as well as blood from the wolf Max himself, shot being on the floor, make it a grisly scene. Stretching twenty meters to the right is the hallway that leads back to the cafeteria, with the bathroom being halfway down the corridor. To the left, the hallway goes a couple of meters and then makes a sharp right turn with a door in place there.

"We already know what's that way," Max says, pointing toward the cafeteria, "So let's go this way." He heads back to the left, staying ahead of the others like before. At the door, he signals for Igor to be ready, then tries the controls.

With the door sliding open at his touch of the button, it seems they didn't lock the door behind them when they came this way. Max's light shines down the gunmetal grey corridor. Multiple windows facing space line the left-hand wall, where the three can see the endless field of bright stars against the stark blackness. With Amilamia's star on the other side of the asteroid, the rock beneath the wall is covered in the dark shadow cast by the building. Inside the hallway, there's a door on the right-hand side ten meters down, and then another at the end of it approximately twenty-five meters away.

Max moves up to the nearest doorway. Best to start there.

He signals for Igor to form up on the other side of the doorway, then hits the controls.

This door slides open as well, and when Max looks around the corner, he sees a large room about ten by fifteen meters in area, with the longer wall being the one facing the door. Inside, one corner of the room has a small weight rack and bench for lifting, with non-slip flooring. The majority of it, however, has carpet and a variety of furniture. A long and comfortable-looking couch, a round table with a few chairs, a large screen on one wall. Even a small bookshelf with physical books, and some cardboard boxes, as well as what looks like communal datapads.

A lounge of some sort. Looked much more comfortable than the rest of the facility.

But more importantly, there wasn't anywhere someone could be plausibly hiding or setting up an ambush inside, so they needed to move on.

Max signals for Igor to follow him again and leads him back out and to the other door at the far end of the hallway. Once more, he signals for him to get ready, then triggers the controls.

As this door opens, fluorescent light spills out into the hall. The operations center is a large room, about big and open as the cafeteria. One wall is covered with large windows that show some of the landscape of the asteroid, with the distinctive strip-mined surface on display. Multiple workstations and displays with information on the various drones are arranged around the room, with a holographic display table in the center of the room. A pillar of cables lead up to the ceiling, and server racks take up the rear portion of the room (to the right from the doorway). It takes a moment to see, but there's a body slumped in one of the chairs.

Max suppresses the urge to mutter a curse. He didn't feel quite so bad about killing two of the pirates anymore.

And this could easily be a trap. He considers a few ways to get any pirates to come out of hiding, such as faking them out by throwing something they might mistake for a grenade. He did have the compads he took from the others but isn't convinced they'd take the bait.

Nevertheless, he slowly steps into the room and directs Igor and Katelyn to take up cover behind some work stations. He'd start a sweep or try something crazy once they were relatively safe.

Walking in a crouch, Igor moves toward the nearest desk large enough to cover him. From there, he watches Max's back.

Max thinks for a second more and decides to go with the grenade idea, rather than try to sweep the room the hard way. He grabs one of the pirates' compads and stares at it for a second. Nothing lost if he tried it. If the pirates were in here, they knew they had company.

He finds a desk to crouch too and shows the compad to Igor and Katelyn. "Frag out!" he shouts, just before hurling it deeper into the room.

There's no response from behind any of the desks or the table, nor does anyone scurry out from behind the column of machinery and wiring. They're alone in the room.

Max waits a couple of seconds longer to make sure they were alone.

Once he's reasonably sure, he stands and says, "All clear." He makes a cautious approach to the body slumped in the chair. He knows it's too late already, but has to check.

Wearing a jumpsuit like the vixen's - Anika's, -the male feline body has dark brown fur. Blood slowly drips into a mostly-coagulated pool on the floor from a wound in his stomach. A pistol is on the floor as well under one of his arms, touching the edge of the dark red spot.

Max grimaces. Yeah, he definitely didn't feel so bad about shooting the pirates now.

"Keep watch, I'm going to fill Angela in," he tells Igor and Kat as he reaches for his compad and reaches out for her.

Katelyn continues to maintain radio silence as she stays safe behind her shield.

"Hallo?" Angela's voice answers after a moment.

"Operations is clear but we found another one of the miners. Deceased. The pirates must be in the other part of the facility so we're moving that way. Everything clear there?"

"Yeah. They haven't tried anything," she replies.

"Good. Let me know immediately if you see or hear anything unusual. We're going to check the computers here real quick before moving on. Stay put for now."

Max looks to his companions and says, "See if any of the computers are unlocked. If we're lucky there might be some indicator of where the director or pirates are. Surveillance cameras maybe."

Quickly they find a large datapad station with views of cameras throughout this building and the neighboring one. Many are offline or show only darkness. However, one of the neighboring building shows two figures walking with a light. The virtual map puts them in one of the outer corridors, walking toward the airlock in that building.

Max watches for a moment longer to see if they're going to exit through the airlock. Things were going to get a lot more complicated if they did.

They keep walking toward the airlock as he watches, and as they reach it, one reaches out to tap the controls to open it.

Max quickly checks the terminal for any sort of remote lock for the airlock. If they could lock the pirates inside then this instead would get much easier.

There's no obvious way to do that though, but then he wasn't the one that should be doing this anyway. He waves Katelyn over quickly. "See if there's a way to lock them in the airlock. I can't find any controls for it."

"Alright." Katelyn nods, willing to give it a try.

As Katelyn scans her eyes over the unfamiliar interface, she sees an overwhelming amount of technical information without context. Things she can guess are various measurements like O₂ partial pressure in the airlock or time remaining. By the time she's started looking for any sort of remote override, the cycle is almost finished. Then as she thinks she's figured out how to do it, the commands she taps in end up throwing error messages. Max watches the external airlock doors open on the security feed, as the two pirates step out onto the rocky surface unaware.

Max groans and tries to locate any external video feeds. He hopes the facility had use of such things, maybe for monitoring the mining robots.

Easily Max finds an external feed and sees the figures booking a trot toward the landing pad.

"Great." Max waves for Igor and Katelyn to follow him back the way they came, then reaches for his compad to call Angela again. "Angela, they're outside and headed for the launchpad. They might be trying to escape or might be trying to reenter the facility through that airlock. We're on our way back."

"Acknowledged," Angela curtly responds through Max's radio.

Back at the airlock, Max tells Angela, "We're heading out. Come with us."

He glares at the two prisoners. "Your buddies are trying to leave without you. You've got nowhere to go, no weapons and two armed guards making sure you don't try anything. If I get back in here and you're not right here, I will find you."

"Yeah, I get it," the uninjured wolf responds. The leader only glares at Max.

Max starts working the airlock controls. "Let's hurry. They're already on the way to the pad."

The four of them stand in the airlock, waiting for the minutes-long cycle to complete draining the still-good air out. By the time the outer door opens, the two pirates are already on the landing pad and approaching their shuttle.

And they were probably too late. Max wasn't about to jump in the shuttle and chase after them, but he's not quite ready to give up yet.

He raises his rifle their way and shouts into his radio, hoping theirs are tuned into a frequency he was broadcasting on, "Stop and drop your weapons!"

Clearly, they hear it, because they look at the facility instinctively, and then break into a run toward their shuttle's door.

Max trains his rifle on them as they go, but there was no way to get to them in time, and if he was going to stop them, it would amount to shooting someone in the back.

"Forget it. Let them go. Let's get back inside before they decide to use the sandthrower on us."

He hits the controls for the airlock.

Mid-way through the cycle, they hear the shuttle take off and lift away. It flies over the asteroid's horizon from their vantage point, as the airlock's inner door opens. The captured pirates are still present, and the miners look immensely relieved to have everyone back.

Max is relieved too but has to break the news. "The other pirates got away, but at least we've got the facility under control now." He looks to the miners. "Is there an internal PA system or anything like it? I guess we need to look for your missing director."

Ayers looks over and nods quickly. "Yeah... yeah, we can broadcast messages from operations."

"Alright, great." Max gestures toward Kat. "See if you can find some tarps or something for the casualties. And preferably something to restrain the pirates here with while you're at it. Igor, give her a hand with that."
"I can probably get by with just one of you coming with me." Max points at the cat among the miners, who were clearly less hurt than his companion. "Don't think I ever caught your name. Can you show me how to use the PA system?"

"Stein, and yeah," the feline shakily answers.

Max thinks for a second more. The dead miner was in operations, and Stein looked like the last thing he needed right now was another emotional shock.

"If it's simple enough you can just tell me how, actually. The scene in operations was... not pretty."

Stein doesn't look surprised to hear what happened to Hanson. He'd feared it'd been the case anyway. "You... don't need to say it. The, uh, controls are on the console by the right door, facing the windows."

Max nods. "Understood. I'll be back as soon as I can. Angela, keep an eye out while I take care of this." He heads off back toward the operations center.

Once through the door and out of sight by the others, he goes back to limp a little from his gunshot wound earlier. Honestly, he probably should have had Katelyn look at it before he went off to do this, but it couldn't be a bad hit and everyone would probably feel a little better with the pirates restrained and the dead take care of the best they could. He'd survive until then.

Back in operations, he stops at the window for a few moments to stare out into space. He feels like he should be expecting the pirates to circle around in their shuttle and attack again, but if they had two brain cells to rub together, they were probably gone and rethinking their life choices. Pity that they wouldn't be prosecuted, but that was rapidly becoming a distant concern.

He tries not to look at the dead cat as he limps over to the controls Stein told him about. He fiddles with it for a second and says into it, "This is Maximilian Sisko, operating under the Exchange. The pirates attacking the facility have been subdued and the facility is secure. Director Klein, if you can hear this message, please head to the airlock near the landing pad."

They have to wait until a few minutes after Katelyn and Igor return from their search, but eventually, they hear the door far down the hall from the airlock open. Creeping low along the wall, a figure wearing another one of the jumpsuits and holding something in one of her hands, they see a figure. Her long white fur makes her attempt at sneaking a little tougher than she'd probably hope, but it must have worked well enough. Cautiously, she approaches the room where everyone is waiting.

By now, Max has made his way back to the airlock to wait with the others to wait and see if she turned up willingly. To his relief, she does.

He steps out into the hallway, weapon stowed now and greets her. "Director Klein?"

Slowly, she nods in response. As she gets close and into Max's light, he can see that her long white fur and jumpsuit are covered in dirt and dust, and she still has a small pistol held at her side. Even without her confirmation, he can see the "Klein" nametag on her uniform.

"I'm glad to see you're alright." Max waves a hand over the prisoners. "You can relax. The pirates are all restrained or dead."

"Ah." It's hard to tell whether it's an answer, a small sigh of relief, or just a tired sound. Seeing them actually subdued does make her guarded posture fall slightly.

"The Exchange sent us to find out what was causing the communications blackout. Under the circumstances, I think we should probably take you and the other survivors back to Wisal. We have a shuttle waiting on the landing pad and can leave shortly. Or, if you'd rather use the radio we can use the shuttle to contact Wisal."

"I..." want to go home. "I think it's best we leave."

Max nods quickly. "Then let's." He turns back to the other miners. "I'll take you all back to the shuttle, then bring a suit back for the wounded one. Igor and Angela, keep watch. I'll be back in a few minutes for the rest of you."

He heads over to once again start cycling the airlock.

It takes multiple trips to get everyone transferred to the shuttle. Special care has to be taken for the severely injured otter, who couldn't put on the vacc suit for himself. At some point, Max also has the bodies moved somewhere where they won't decompose before anyone can come back here.

Eventually, everything is ready for them to leave. Katelyn takes off, leaving the facility behind to run autonomously. As the shuttle starts to leave and the spike drive powers up, Max sends a message back to Wisal, explaining the situation.

The next day, Friday the 7th, is spent entirely in space between the mining facility and Wisal. As the shuttle hurtles partially-tangible around the metadimensional eddies that the spike drives allows it to interact with, Katelyn has to split her time between manning the helm and treating the injured. By the end of that day, Max's glancing wound isn't a concern anymore. But in more interesting medical news, against all odds, the otter starts to stir...

Whoever is closest to the otter when he comes to can tell he's starting to regain consciousness with a pleading murmur.

"W-water ... water ..."

Max is surprised to hear the otter do anything, so it takes a second for him to realize who was asking for it. He gets up and carries a bottle of water over, opens it and presents it to him.

The otter's paw shakily hovers over the water, then gives an unexpected snarl!

Max feels the unseen tug at his holster and he immediately throws his hand over it. He doesn't really think about what's happening so much as duck around a bulkhead wall. "The otter's awake and he's a psychic!" Max warns the others.

"Yeah! Run! That's what'ca get for try'in ta kill an undercova' cop!"

A coffee cup flies past Max's head and smashes apart on the opposite wall.

"You know how many years ya' get for wounding an officer, pal!?"

"You know how many years a pirate gets for attempted kidnapping and murder!?" Max spits back, drawing his pistol and flicking the safety off. He wasn't buying that story.

"I was try'in ta' stop a kidnapping ya' antler head!" the otter shouts back. "Officah' Wikus, badge numbah' K2TVHOUV, on assignment rescue one Director Klein and return her ta' Varuni. A rescue you interrupted with a slug that exploded my fuck'in chest cavity you mall cop look'in sun'ov'a bitch! prick! Fuck!"

A bedpan flies past Max's head and ricochets around off the opposite wall.

Max flinches from the bedpan soaring past. He clutches the pistol and thinks about what he is saying. It still didn't make a whole lot of sense.

"How did you even know about the kidnapping if you're not one of them? The Exchanged called us in after the fact and only knew that communications had been lost."

A laugh echoes out from the med room. "Yeah, 'course he works for 'The Exchange'. Listen' pal, our planet's Intelligence wing is'a little bit bigga' than some jackoff intern at The Exchange! We knew they were up ta' noth'in particularly fuk'in magnanimous some months ago! Find'in out exactly what was my whole job!"

Max peeks around the corner. "Yeah? So what was the holdup in stopping them? And how'd you get to be part of their merry little crew?"

"Only had the green light to blow my cova' when I had an actual line of sight on tha' girl. Didn't wanna' lose me if they hit tha' station at tha' wrong time. 'Cause newsflash Exchange boy! There's' more tact ways'a doin' things than fuck'in shootin' everybody up!"

Max then hears some rather dire sounding hacks and coughs.

The deer grimaces. He was right about that but wasn't in their position, so he didn't fully understand.

"Well, excuse me for trying to make sure nobody on my team was killed. Bear in mind that we'd already found one dead miner, who you didn't save, by the way, and had every reason to expect the pirates were going to add us to the list if given the chance."

He steps into the room, firmly grasping his pistol but keeping it low, and says, "Either way, if you're telling the truth then when we get back to Wisal we can verify your story. You're not in much shape to be yelling right now."

"Fine! Yeah! Seal me in here, and we'll see who they put the cuffs on when we land! I'm good with that." Wikus spits back. "Less contact with ya' the bettah, 'cause I'm an inch close ta' strangling ya' ta' death my mind fo' ruining my fuck'in op!"

He's yelled to the point of huffing and finally lays his head back.

"Jus' feel worse for tha' poor girl. Who knows they're gonna do to her . . . she was right there . . . jus' two rooms away . . . but I' made the mistake of think'in I could talk to whoever the hell ya' unknowns were . . . 'Cause I did care about that' minah' . . . and those two otha' hostages . . . even if my orders said I didn't wave ta' . . ."

"Who? Klein? What are you worried they're going to do to her? Who are 'they' anyway?" Max asks. "You know she and the other miners that survived are with us, right?"

"They are?" Wikus says in a genuinely surprised tone, followed by a sigh of relief. "Praise be fah small miracles . . . They're called tha' 'Brelkus Pact. Th' pirate group, that is. They wah' start'in ta' get a reputation ah' Hijack'in ships ta' make some chop shop cash, sell hostages, and all sorts ah' other racketeering."

"How big their operation has become? Two of them are dead and two more in custody, including the leader of this particular little venture. Two got away, so I imagine whoever's really in charge now will be angry and probably seeking revenge." Max is a little thankful that the ones that got away probably had no idea who any of them were.

"Hard to tell, the cells keep isolated from each other. Good ya' kept the leader alive. Was tha' only one who knew how to contact anyone with ah' lick of real information on tha' rest of 'em."

The door bursts inwards as Katelyn rams her shield in through, pistol held close to herself. She was already in the process of a 5-point room scan, taking note of her colleague Max still alive and standing and then at the otter, who immediately finds himself a target under the shielded cat's gunsight. "Max, you still good?" Katelyn asked quickly, staying behind her tightly gripped shield next to her pistol.

Max waves for her to put the gun down. "Yeah, it's fine. I was just talking officer Wikus here. Turns out one of the pirates was actually an undercover officer infiltrating the group to try to prevent the kidnapping. Bad timing all around."

"Hi. How ya' doin'?" Wikus says to Kat in a brunt tone full of dry sarcasm.

Katelyn nodded and lowered her gun, still looking at the other. "Right... Well, when you inevitably decide to boil our brains from the inside of our skulls, just keep it in mind that I'm Why you're still talking at all."

"Listen, lady, I jus' wanna get back ta' my department when we land for my motha' of all chew outs and reassignment. Ya' let me do that, we ain't gonna have no problems." Wikus shoots back.