Lea shifted nervously as Miranda continued to rub the bridge of her nose. Her whole posture was slumped slightly, losing a lot of the tense intimidation she had oozed when Lea and Sydney walked into the small room. The older woman seemed more tired now.
“You really know how to make a bad situation even worse, don’t you Lea?” Miranda said finally. It had taken a while to explain the whole situation, even without factoring in the part where she basically had to skirt around Kae’s gender identity issues and keep all the names and details straight.
“Hey,” Lea protested, huffing with indignation, “I didn’t do this! Blame Fidaela, not me.”
“Please, ma’am. We just want to save our friend from whatever they are doing to them.” Sydney pleaded. Thankfully he’d been uncharacteristically tactful in letting Lea do most of the explaining, but she knew he was desperate to do something to be helpful.
“I believe you when you say that.” Miranda sighed, shaking her head. “But at this point we already have things in motion out here in the real world.”
“There must be-” Sydney started back up, but fell silent at a gesture from Miranda.
“That’s not to say we don’t need help elsewhere though, Mr. Iskanda.” She told him, straightening up again. “So, if you want to help, listen up.”
Lea furrowed her eyebrows. What was Miranda getting at? With another gesture, the table came to life with a display. One showing the current map of Stellara Nova’s game setting, with all the major players. Miranda pointed at the Terran Union’s territory, where the siblings had spent most of their time grinding credits to buy the Vagabond.
“I’m sure you both are familiar with this,” Miranda said, “But here’s what we know. Fidaela has been making overtures to an in-game corporation. Nothing too abnormal, real companies do sometimes sponsor those in-game to promote their products' digital equivalents and create brand awareness, but we suspect Fidaela is doing it for another reason.”
She pulls up an overview of the Delanno Group’s holdings across Union space, which was covering a large number of fuelling installations, mining settlements, and trade routes between systems. “They’ve been pushing Delanno Group further into expanding their operations within the game, and have started to do more detailed data mining across the code they can access.”
Sydney let out a small whistle. “That’s… Bold. I didn’t think they’d risk that kind of dev attention.”
Lea nodded in agreement. While one could do surface level data mining on the game’s installation code, the development company of Stellara Nova, Saytence, was extremely protective of the actual mechanisms of how their code operated. They had a large number of security programs to protect it from the average gamer trying to see the underlying fabric of Stellara Nova’s universe, so for a large corp in-game to be trying to do that on a broad scale was practically begging to have the upper-ranks of the company banned.
“We think that Fidaela wants to use Delanno as a cover to get access to a vulnerability within the code. We don’t know what they are after specifically, but they absolutely see value in risking a lot of attention for it.” Miranda finished.
Sydney leaned over, nodding at the data laid out. “So where do we come in?”
“We want you to disrupt as much of Delanno’s data mining operations as you can. Become a nuisance they can’t ignore, and get them to divert resources to deal with you.” Miranda replied. “The longer you can stall them, the more time we have out here in the real world.”
“And how will this help us rescue Ka- Myles?” Lea asked, trying to keep the frustration out of her voice.
“We are… Already working on a way to get your… friend out of Fidaela.” Miranda replied, her gaze locking on Lea’s. “Well, it was mostly to destroy the other tech they are working on inside, but jailbreaking an unwilling test subject falls under that purview.”
Lea frowned, but nodded as she looked over at her brother. It wasn’t what she was hoping for, but… She trusted Miranda. She’d been a soldier back in the day of the North American Territorial wars, and had organised the largest prisoner of war breakout of the conflicts. Plus… Lea knew that Miranda didn’t bullshit around. If she said they were doing something, they were. But trusting the life of Kaela to someone else… It was something Lea had to do.
Taking a steadying breath, Lea said, “Lets go grief the fuck out of some Delanno bitches then.”
Bringing the Vagabond in at Union Starstation again was an easy task, compared to the unassisted docking I made at the mining outpost. This time I could feel the way the Novaspace, or game, was guiding my movements as the two docking rings connected. As I’d continued to level up, the ability to use the strange sixth sense to guide my movements into more careful and precise operations became easier and easier.
“We have a good seal with Union Station,” I said as I glanced back at Soren in the captain’s chair. Him and Lea had logged back in a day after they had set off to talk to the authorities - though they apparently didn’t even try. Instead, Lea had gone to her old friends - The Runaways. The fact my hopeful saviours were notorious anti-corporate rebels who had numerous grudges against my family name wasn’t exactly comforting. I bit my tongue though. My frustration at my helplessness would only make me say something stupid.
“Very good, Miss Kaela.” Soren said, standing up. “In that case, everyone has one day of shore leave. We will be departing tomorrow on our next adventure.”
I rolled my eyes. Apparently we were going to be now working against Delanno Group, despite them being the largest corporation in the game. That was the deal with the Runaways, since allegedly Delanno was getting help from Fidaela in the real world. Something to do with the code of the game? I really wasn’t paying attention when Lea and Soren explained it to me. I was too lost in my own concerns, and the fact that the longer I was in this game the closer I came to further surgeries at the hands of my own Aunt.
I slipped out of my seat, quickly walking out of the bridge. I wanted to get away for some time, and maybe spend some of the credits we’d earned from the last job. I’d managed to level up a couple more times in the process of training during the quiet hours of the trip back, especially with the help Nitra gave me. I’d gained two more skill points with the two levels I’d gained.
Like I’d wanted, I had dropped one into the Intermediate Short Blades Certification. It was a solid option for me at this point, and even Nitra had recommended it given where my stats were allocated. She was more than willing to help me learn how to fight with both a pistol and knife at the same time, though it needed to wait until I could actually buy a melee weapon that could do significant damage. My pistol also needed an upgrade from the most basic starter weapon.
The second skill point I’d gotten had been put into Integrated Pilot Gear Certification, though I was wary of the implants part of it. Given what was being done to my real body… It made me shudder to think about. Still, being able to buy the helmets and other ‘clothing’ options would be invaluable for my piloting. I used to have a fully integrated pilot suit and helmet set up when I was flying solo, which had helped a lot with the intense high-G manoeuvres.
As I approached the airlock, I spotted Autumn and Nitra both there. The two synths were chatting, though the Delanno woman seemed a bit on edge. As I approached, the two turned to me. I could feel my face heating up as I made eye contact with Nitra, remembering how she had recently held me for an entire night.. Her arms around me, softly petting my head, scritching just behind my ears…
I shook my head to clear the thoughts, though my tail didn’t seem to really care as it swished back and forth behind me. “Hey…” I said quietly as I approached. I didn’t want to talk, but they were blocking the passage out.
“Good morning, Miss Kaela.” Autumn nodded robotically at me, her voice a gentle flat tone. “Thank you, Miss Nitra. Seeing as we are docked now, I shall make my request known to the captain.”
“Oh?” I tilted my head to the side, curiosity overtaking my desires. “What were you going to talk to Soren about?”
“Well, I wish to continue serving with this ship,” Autumn replied, her facial expression never changing as she talked. I could hear a slight shift in her tone though, but not enough to really understand why.
“Ah… Well, good luck.” I nodded slightly. “I was just going to go out shopping…”
“Mind if I tag along, puppy?” Nitra asked, placing a hand on her hip teasingly. It took an enormous amount of effort to keep my voice from squeaking as I replied.
“Y-yeah, sure…” I nodded slightly, and found Nitra’s hand slipping into mine. To my surprise, I found my other arm being scooped up into the hold of Lea’s.
“I’m coming too.” Lea said, brooking no debate as she made eye contact with Nitra.
“I have no objections to a second beautiful woman.” The synthetic woman said.
My heart pounded in my chest as I looked between the two women on either side of me. Lea was smiling with satisfaction, and Nitra just had a playful smirk on her face. It was then I realised I was being ganged up on by people who cared about me, and I felt my structurally unsound emotional damn break. I pulled both of them into a tight hug, with my tail wrapping around Nitra’s leg as I nuzzled into Lea’s shoulder.
Eventually, though, we parted. With a brief apology fest from me and lots of laughter from Lea, Nitra and Autumn, we headed out the airlock into the station. It’d be a long walk from the docking arms to the shopping section, but with two of my favourite people holding my hands, it was a pleasant one. A much needed one, given how fully my heart felt. It was exactly what I needed to get my situation off my mind for a short bit.
Feel kinda sorry for Autumn(assuming she's not a Fidaela spy here to monitor Kaela), wants to continue working with the ship but works for Delanno, who they are planning to attack.
Ohhh do we have a poly relationship developing here? Nitra has seemed like someone she's into, but we have the love confession from Lea too and that seemed more than just familial love.
*rubs hands together delightfully*
Historians: And they were the best of friends.
@Oddark And they were roommates!
@MaeveWerepuppy And then they all... had a perfectly platonic relationship akin to sisters... but with less clothes and more canoodling...