Real Loyalty

"Uhm you're welcome Lieutenant, for the compliment, I mean." He started " Your engineer was a brilliant man, I've seen plenty of Genesians with Vakirian base traits but never one that was engineered so fluidly as to make it almost impossible to tell you aren't actually a Vakirian, save for the fact you're much more muscular." He said, blinking irritatedly at his words, he had no clue how to have a normal conversation with a fellow male, and his skills with normal conversation with females were much less developed than that. It was true though, from what he did see when he helped her from the gunshot wound, she had a muscular that probably could've stopped an older firearm's projectile from piercing her.

Jail had a snarl mixed with the look of shock and hatred, the woman he'd believed he killed was sitting there grinning at him, and the child who proved his guilt and put the nails in his coffin, sitting there grinning at him. An Executioner walked in a digital clipboard in her hands, this was hilarious, not only did a woman and a child beat him, but now a woman was going to be the one to put him down. Ark could only laugh at this, it was absurd to him.
 
Fate copied Ark's reaction to the identity of the Executioner. "It would appear that fate doesn't particularly like him, and I don't mean myself when I say that." She said between fits of laughter. While somewhere in the back of her mind she felt bad for laughing, overall she really didn't care. "To be killed by a woman, that, I believe is the ultimate form of irony for someone like him." After a few moments had gone by, she had finally managed to calm down and merely watched silently as the Executioner prepared to carry out the execution. Soon this would all be over and she would no longer have to worry about someone causing the unnecessary deaths of her comrades. Well, for the foreseeable future that is.
 
"By the order of the Council, and War Marshall Arlata Timor, the Condemned, Jail, Is to be publicly stripped of his uniform, and Executed by gunfire." The Executioner, started. Ark turned to Fate and said, "Yeah, He must be losing control of his bowels with how angry he must be, Outsmarted and beaten in combat by a child, A woman having a pivotal part in that and now a woman ending his life, after he's left in just his underwear. This day is outstanding for him." He chuckled.

The executioner had already ripped the uniform off the man, leaving him shackled in the room only wearing his boxers. "Whoaaa man's built like a brick wall! Tell me, Lieutenant, are brick wall muscles required for your kind? I don't mean to be offensive." He said, just before the Executioner said, "In Fairness, do you have any last words?"

Jail, growled, "Yeah, Slut, I do have some final words: that Bitch and her little pussy sucking boytoy, that little Vakirian shit, they can both fuck themselves! Get on with it already!" He screamed, his rage overwhelming just before the Executioner walked to a weapons rack, and having scanned her prints and unlocked the weapon, aimed it at the former Colonel. "Here it comes...." Ark Said, again taking on the innocent boy's grin staring down at Jail, ignoring his insulting words of him being the Lieutenant's plaything.
 
"Many of my kind were made for the sole purpose of being soldiers, so yes; many of us do indeed have such a physical make up." Fate replied to Ark's question. A shot of anger filled her body as she heard Jail's words; however, she was able to quell it seconds later. There was no point in getting angry over something so trivial, especially when he would be dying any time now. She watched as the Executioner aimed her weapon, time seeming to slow down around her. The lone shoot echoed throughout the entire room, everything else was silent. Jail's body fell forward; the only thing keeping it from hitting the floor was his shackles. "It's finally over, huh?" She asked, her voice coming out like a whisper.
 
"Not quite Lieutenant," Ark started, "Still got Dirk's Hanging to go to. I'm not to familiar with Terran colloquillism what does 'pussy sucking boytoy' actually mean? I assume it means something to the effect that I'm your slave?" He really assumed it was an insulting way to call someone a slave, but not having very much contact with the species from the Terran system he only learned basic english, not slang though from his home he knew curse words. "Well I'll see you on the transport, Lieutenant," He said, giving her a quick smile, he felt so weird, one day in this unit and he put two people to death, saved the life of his CO, and though it was to save her life, ended up seeing her topless, and he was a teenager. An eventful first day, to say the least, though he now had his mind clouded by many many many different things, Terran male shovinism, having a school boy crush on a female who was his superior, an attraction that started the day he met her, the clear corruption of individuals in the high brass of Alliance military. He sat on the transport and closed his eyes trying to clear his head.
 
Fate nodded toward Ark as he told her farewell. "Yeah, I'll see you there." She then turned to Kiel and asked, "Corporal, would you mind getting me some water?" He nodded and then walked away. She then sat back in her chair, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. It had been one of the most stressful and crazy twenty-eight hours she had ever had during the course of her military career. She was rather grateful that she would have the next two weeks off. The young Lieutenant was pulled out of her thoughts by approaching footsteps. Opening her eyes, she was greeted by the sight of Claus. He smiled at her. "Hello Lieutenant. I take it that you are feeling better?" "Yes sir." She replied. "Good. I apologize for what occurred during the meeting." He said to her. "It was not your fault sir. You had no way of knowing as to what he was going to do." Fate replied. "That maybe, but I was the one who called the meeting, so I feel that I am somewhat at fault. As an apology, I will be increasing the HROU's overall budget." Her eye's widened as she heard this. "Sir, you don't have to do that. We have plenty of money already." She said, shock clearly audible in her voice. "No, I want to. You and your unit have done many things for the Alliance and I think this is long overdue." He told her with a chuckle. The two were then interrupted as Kiel made his way back over with a bottle of water in his hand. "Well then, I should be going. Enjoy your time off." The High Council seat then walked away, leaving a still shocked Fate behind. "What'd he want?" Kiel asked her. Fate was barely able to respond. "Our budget had been increased." "Really? Sweet." He said with a smile, before handing her the water bottle. "Thank you. Now could you take me to the transport?" "Yeah, sure." Kiel then wheeled her trough the complex and to the transport. Upon arriving, she saw that Ark was sitting back was sitting back with his eyes closed. "Long day, huh?"
 
He shook his head a little as he heard Fate speak, "Oh uhhh yeah, I'm just ready to get back to the base, and sleep in a real bed, instead of napping in that cot in the hospital." He said, wincing as he sat up. "I should've seen him trying to pull a gun, though, it's not often that I don't catch things like that. History and old earth Television have shown Terrans to get extraordinarily unstable and violent when backed into a corner. I should've been prepared for it, I'm sorry." He said, feeling a pang of guilt in not having gone over every possible way the Colonel could've reacted at the hearing. "At least I made sure he got what he deserved, though." He finished, wincing again and holding his side, one of the more shallow sets of stitches having popped before he entered the transport, simple fix, but his bandages were showing some blood. "I can't imagine it having been an easy day for you, getting shot isn't easy to deal with even for quick healers."
 
Fate's face became serious. "You are in no way responsible for what happened. No one had any way of knowing that Jail would draw his weapon, much less shoot me. If I hear you blaming yourself again, I'll have you assigned to desk duty for the next month. You hear me?" She told him, her voice changing into the one she normally used when commanding her troops. She then shook her head and took a deep breath. "Sorry about that. I just don't like it when people take plan for something they had no control over. As for the wound, your right. It sure hasn't been on the easy side. While, yes, I have been shot before, this was probably the worst. But I should be fine after a few weeks though." She stopped suddenly as she saw the blood leaking through his shirt. "Are you alright?"
 
"I Hear you Ma'am, my apologies. It won't happen again!" He said painfully saluting her, he listened to her, and nodded, he knew how bad it felt getting shot, there were scars on his body from bullets and plasma bolts. She'd noticed the blood, he saw, and nodded to her question as he pulled the tshirt off, taking the bandage away, the gash had opened up. "I'll be fine, lieutenant, where do you think the regenerative genes you have came from?" He said giving a pained cocky chuckle. "I've had worse fights on the station I grew up in." He unwittedly said in a cocky tone, like fights were impressive or something. He grabbed the med kit from up above and tore open a salve packet wincing as he rubbed the somewhat stinky slop on his wound, "I hate this crap." He said, chuckling a bit, "whoever invented it probably couldn't feel or smell. Smelly gloopy mess!"
 
Fate gave a small laugh. "Yeah, I have to agree with you there. That stuff is uterly disgusting." She said, giving a disgusted look as she caught the smell of the salve. No matter how many time she encountered the stuff, it never got any better. "Anyways, it appears that we will be getting quite a bit more equipment than I expected, so I'll need your help with choosing some of the more complicate technological equipment as that is not my area of expertise. So, considering that you are our tech sergeant and you have the next two weeks off, would you be willing to help me?" She asked him.
 
He chuckled as she agreed about the medigel, and raised an eyebrow, listening to her speak of new equipment. He smiled, then he nodded and said, "Of course," he started, "I might be a bit biased though, choosing high end tech manufactured by my own people. I don't really trust Terran technology, it tends to be....temperamental, in truth they seem to be better at engineering people than they do weapons or otherwise." He was being honest, the Terran tech he had dealt with in the past had always upset him greatly he often called technology from the Terran races, haranaki, pretty toys. Besides that, he was biased to Vakirian hardware because his species have been regarded as the most advanced in the technological field. To the point that, most races now reverse engineered their tech or learned it from them, Earth having become a space faring civilization due to reverse engineering of ancient Vakirian tech found in the ruins of many ancient cultures.

"Whenever you want I can go over every speck of tech at the base and we can put in requisition orders for, anything within the budget really." He said, his blueish purple eyes seeming to light up at the news that he could play with new tech and modify it, maximize anything he could get his hands on, it was gonna be a day at the amusement park for him.
 
"Trust me, I don't think we'll have to worry about breaking the budget. The HROU has a relatively high budget compared to other units and it would appear as though or budget was just increased as well. So, if you recommend Vakirian tech, then that's what we'll get it." Fate said, smiling as she saw the look in his eyes. "And, I have to agree with you on the superiority of Vakirian tech. I've had a couple of missions were I've had to use it instead of Terran, and when I went back to Terran the difference was obvious." She remembered one such mission. It had been a couple of years after she had first joined the military and she had been sent on an infiltration mission into a Vakirian pirate crew. The tech she had encountered while on board had made Terran tech seem incredibly out dateed. "Why dont you meet me in my office at noon tomorrow and we'll talk about this then, that alright with you?"
 
"Terran technology hasn't advanced very much after reverse engineering ancient remains left by my ancestors, and a couple of other races as well I believe. Earth has been home for a few species honestly." He said, chuckling, "It's kind of funny, for centuries humans weren't even aware of it, and there were 'aliens' living among them the whole time." He smiled and nodded, "Sounds good lieutenant, I'll compile a diagnostics list of our current equipment, weapons servers power supplies, refrigerators, armor, etc. and we can discuss upgrading it, though there might be some Karri tech requested for the armor, they lead the lines at making armor and environment control tech. Their survival kinda forced that though."
 
Fate nodded. "Alright then. I'll look forward to it then." She said as the transport pulled up the HROU HQ. "Well, I hope you have a wonderful evening. Now if you excuse me I have some more paperwork to fill out, since there always seems like an endless supply paperwork to do." She stated before leaving Ark alone by the transport.

Two hours later Fate felt like banging her head against a wall. When she had left the day before the pile had only been an inch high, but when she had gotten there earlier today the pile had grown by at least five inches. She had only managed to complete around half of the pile. Running one of her hands through her hair, she leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. A beeping interrupted her moment of piece. "What now?" She groaned. Opening one of her eyes, she looked at the terminal on her desk. Fortunately for her it was merely a reminder from her doctor to not forget to take her pain meds. After she deleted the message she turned her attention back to the stack of papers. A few seconds later, she made an executive decision. "You know what? I'm going to go for a walk." She said, desperate for something else to do. The young Lieutenant then rolled herself out of her office and into the hallways.
 
Ark had returned to his quarters, he was asleep. Dead asleep, but it wasn't peaceful, in his sleep his mind replayed the incident on the New Dawn.

He was running, there were two others with him, each taking turns firing behind them as the Dovus pirates had unleashed mutated bioweapons into the corridors. Rasping, squealing, crunching and screaming, all of those sounds could be heard over the gunfire as the threat was dealt with. The Dovus pirates were not giving up this ship and they meant it. A few of the pirates were in the engineering bay, tampering with the engine to trigger a self destruct mechanism, or just screw it up so badly that it just exploded because of damage, the cause wasn't clear.

Ark didn't have many options, the engines were going critical, and he had to insert new reactor rods and patch the cooling sinks, or everyone was going to die. He was preoccupied trying to save the ship, his fingers clattering away at an outdated keyboard programming security drones to place the reactor rods, his teammates trying to cover him against a seemingly neverending supply of rifle fodder. Pirates were coming in droves to attack the 6 man assault team, and for a while the 5 men fighting were able to hold the pirates off, the engine bay was quickly becoming an overcrowded morgue.

The pirates started getting smart though, taking cover where ever they could, and started getting the better of the team, one dropped, his head burned completely off by a plasma cannon, then another, a hole burnt straight through the chest, then another with multiple searing tears ripped through her, the team had been cut down to three, and Ark had just finished replacing the reactor rods with the drones, though two of them had malfunctioned and fell over. Ark couldn't help them, he had to replace the rods manually.

His body twitched in his bed, his mind still making him relive the horror, and in his mind, he was replacing the two rods the drones failed at inserting, having pushed all power in his suit to defend against the enormous amount of radiation, he was still starting to feel its effects. He finished quickly only to find that only one of his teammates, a Karri/Human female he had grown fond of, a 20 year old who called herself Raill, was injured, her blood a greenish hue with streaks of red, was running down sections of her armor. She regrouped with him after activating a booster system in her specialized suit that started to at least somewhat repair the damage to her body. She was weak, and he still had work to do, and they were both sitting in the killbox, the lowest ground.

"I'll cover you! Just fix the ship!" She barked, herself holding rank over him, and he nodded quickly sneaking over to damaged Cooler sinks to at least give a temporary patch to them. She'd managed to cover him, and he finished quickly. They started to fight their way back to their extraction craft, and nearly almost made it, but the Captain was sitting in the boat, waiting for the two of them. As soon as Raill opened the door, her head exploded her brain, blood and shattered skull splattering all over Ark's now exposed face since he had retracted his helmet thinking the operation was over. He stood there shaking for only second, long enough to take a shot in the shoulder, and Ark immediately shot up in his bed awake now, covered in a torrent of a blueish hued sweat, a scream accompanying his startled awakening. He sat there nearly hyperventilating his eyes wide and he was frozen.
 
Fate had walking, or rolling because she was still stuck in a wheelchair, back to her quarters since it was rather late, when a sudden scream echoed throughout the hall. She quickly looked around for its source. The young Lieutenant knew that many of the rooms around her were empty since a party was being held in the mess hall for one of the unit's members and nearly everyone had been there when she had stopped in to get a snack. Her eyes stopped when they came to the room she was certain that she had assigned Ark nearly two days ago. Rolling over to it, she knocked softly, checking to see if anyone was there.
 
Another yelp came from the room as soon as the knocking started followed by a thud, Ark had not yet fully come back to his senses and thought the knocking was gunfire. The door slid open to show Ark tangled in a blanket and lying awkwardly on hist and face as he saw Fate. "H..Hello Lieu- Lieutenant, ni-nice ni..night?" He asked a purplish blue streak showing beneath both eyes.
 
Fate blinked for a few moments as she processed the scene in front of her. Ark was sitting on the floor, tangled up in his sheets, looking like he had just fallen out of bed, which she suspected to be the case. She then covered her mouth as she struggled not to laugh at Ark's predicament. "Yes. I believe it is." She answered as she took a deep breath to try and calm herself down, but was failing miserably. "Are you alright? You took quite a fall there."
 
"I...I..I'm fine, I errr, I had a nightmare." He said struggling himself back into the bed, his face visibly clenching up in pain. "Just a, a bad dream, and the knocking scared me. I'm sorry." He said, shaking a little bit, remembering his dream. "I haven't slept very soundly since the New Dawn, bad dreams keep waking me up." He heard the sounds of partying somewhere else, "I didn't errr, I didn't disturb their fun did I?" He was speaking like someone who had a nervous breakdown, he was trying to hide but he was panicking, and he'd never dealt with bad dreams very well.
 
"I apologize for scaring you." Fate said, feeling slightly bad for having startled him. She knew what it was like to have to relive the horrible memories of the past. No matter how much she tried her own nightmares would never go away even though it had been over twenty years since the event had happened. Her hands unconsciously clenched as flashes of that day appeared in her mind. "Nightmares that spawn from memories are the worst kind of dreams. No matter how many times you dream them they will never change and will never be able to be changed. If you ever need anyone to speak with about your nightmares, my door is always open." She told him, offering a small smile as she did so. "As to whether or not you disrupted the party, I highly doubt it. The music is so loud in there that I doubt they could hear anything at the moment."
 
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