Having destroyed the stealth craft that had attacked them, Mark quickly scooped the malfunctioned rail cannon up before he approached the wrecked and fired a cable at it, teetering the wreck to the Sparrow
"Lisa, come to the cockpit, I need your help with the drones"
"On my way"
As Lisa got moving, Mark got started with the salvage operation, quickly deploying a few drones to begin picking through the wreckage
'Oh, one corpse secured'
Salvaging was usually done to secure valuable cargo, data cache, undamaged weapons and ammunition. However, Mark ignored everything but the corpses on the first pass over the wreck, quickly securing 3 corpses
"Don't"
"But it looks mostly undama—"
"Don't"
"Tch, fine"
Leaving the torpedoes he was in the process of salving behind due to Lisa's insistence, Mark secured some multi cannon ammunition before recalling the drones and cutting the teeters
"Alright, let's get out of here"
Lisa patted Mark on the shoulder and reassured him
"I got it, go find out who we're going to fuck over"
Mark didn't argue and floated out of the pilot seat
"Sure thing… Could you come wake me in about 12 hours?"
"Wake you? Are you going to scream about resistive genes again?"
"Maybe, though I'll try not to"
Lisa let out a sigh and waved him off before she grabbed the side of the pilot seat and dragged herself over before she strapped down and began prepping the ship for FTL travel, as her fingers danced over the console with practiced movements she had a sudden bout of clarity and muttered
"Here I am… Piloting a stolen combat vessel for a… Whatever Mark is, with who knows how many bodies scattered around the cargo bay while my companion is on his way to harvest the memories of some fresh corpses"
Mulling it over again in her mind Lisa knew she should be at least somewhat revolted by many parts of her current situation, she knew she should be terrified beyond belief. However, she felt no fear for anything but separation from Mark
"... It really is just like my older sister's famous saying"
With that mutterer Lisa finished plotting a route and kicked the Sparrow into gear, once separation was achieved she pushed the button and the Sparrow's drive purred to life as it instantly accelerated to faster than light speeds
-
As Mark sunk into his trance he began going over the noble houses and high ranking officials and the public information on them, from there he skimmed the unsaid meanings over hundreds of pages of documentation and cross-referenced publicly documented events, everything from dinners and pirates to marriages, funerals and public duels passed through his mind with blistering speeds
'2 factions? No, 3 factions'
Scanning attendance lists and pictures in his eidetic memory, Mark had quickly identified 3 different factions in the higher society of the Vengidir collective federation, the neutral which due to their neutrality and distance from the other two opposed factions had frozen their relations. Now they had started to form their own faction, though it had a more loose foundation due to the lack of a clear set of objectives and goals
'...If you stand for nothing, you don't stand at all… Not that the others have any better reasons'
Standing on a hard right side were the nationalist, their ambitions were a return to the glory of the noble houses and in the long term their more conservative political views being firmly established in law and then in culture
'Well as the reason goes… No, fuck those guys… Well, they'll at least help us out with this round of payback'
On the hard left side were the federation hardliners, their views on the surface seemed noble enough, the establishment of fair elections and strengthening of the checks and balances, but to anyone that had dug into their connections to various mega corporations, their motivations seemed far more based on greed and the checks and balances changes they were suggesting had several not so hidden Draconian implications
'And at near the top of that totem pole sits the person we're after, Captain of the border fleet, Anton Vindica… From the memories of the stealth crafts crew, he's not only the source of most of the Draconian shifts, but also the main driver in actually getting the idealistic top of the totem pole rooted in reality'
Going over the mental board again, Mark started picking out connections inside the federation hardliners that could help out with their upcoming conflict, from there he picked out possible connections before he began exploring the other 2 factions in closer detail
-
By the time Lisa yanked Mark out of his trance he wasn't frantic anymore, he had gone more than a little beyond that point
"...We're heading towards the border region, the one next to the Rulith kingdom"
Lisa paused before she asked in a slightly timid tone
"I thought we were supposed to gain distance to the Rulith kingdom?"
"Yeah, but this takes precedence… We're getting one over on the guy that ordered us around before sending people to kill us…"
Lisa nodded before she admitted
"It… It just seems like an awful big risk for revenge's sake"
Mark blinked a few times before he shook his head and corrected Lisa's misunderstanding
"This isn't for revenge, we just destroyed a 6 billion credit stealth combat ship prototype undergoing its final trials, leaving its wreck at a SubNet array for all to see and pick apart, this is for survival's sake… Hopefully disrupting their supply lines will stop them from sending people after us"
This was the reason for Mark's apparent calm exterior, he had realized pretty early in his trance that they were in deep shit, but as he kept digging deeper and deeper he came to realize that with Anton Vindica's vengeful personality especially when it came to his advanced military R&D projects it wouldn't be too far removed from reality that most of the reserve border fleet would be actively hunting them in the not so far future
"Right… Well, should we get going then?"
"Yeah, I'll send an encoded message to Luna the information I've compiled first though"
As Mark wrote up a report on the information he had gathered and encoded it with the 12 million character encoding key Luna had made for their long range communications before he sent it to SubNet array to decimate over around 300 light years of space for the quite steep price of 12.000 credits
Thinking about how sending what amounted to an email had cost him what amounted to half a year of expenses for an average person made Mark hurt a little inside
'...Funds might be a little tight'
However when he checked his credit wallet and found a 3 million credit deposit for the resale of the very high performance equipment Luna had used to run its lab with, Mark showed a smile and muttered
"Never mind, thank you… My oldest friend"
-
Lisa woke up doing FTL transit, she could tell at once by the feeling deep in her stomach that told her something about everything she was experiencing was wrong, this condition which was aptly named Jump sickness was quite common and all things considered Lisa's symptoms were quite mild
'...Ugh'
Pulling her arm out of the bedroll she pulled the top Velcro strap free to get some more wiggle room, pulling her upper body upwards she undid the other 4 straps and freed herself completely from her bedroll, emerging from her bed wearing one of Mark's t-shirts and a pair of loose fitting shorts she tussled her hair for a bit before suddenly stopping as pain shot though her features
'Argh my neck…'
Finding her neck quite sore Lisa massaged it a bit as she gathered the bedroll together and stuffed it into a plastic bag which she sealed on the end before pressing the button for a regular clearing cycle
"Mark?"
Calling out for Mark, Lisa waited a few moments without receiving a response, letting out a sigh she pulled on her vacuum suit and zipped up before she manipulated the console to power on the suit that quickly tightened slightly around her body before letting out a clear chime
'He better not be in a trance again…'
Pushing off the floor, Lisa floated over to her locker and pulled out a comb which she ran through her hair to straighten it out somewhat before she tried it up in a low bun and secured it with a hairband, and checked her appearance in the mirror for a few moments before she nodded
'Alright'
Before she exited her room, finding Mark proved quite easy as he never really used his own room, so after not finding him in the cargo bay with his macabre collection of corpses she found him in the cockpit where he was flying around a holographic map, he studied the map of a facility in complete focus until Lisa knocked on the side of the hatch
"Oh, good morning Lisa"
"Yeah, can you get my neck again?"
"Sure"
Mark flew over and slid behind her before he began massaging her neck, quickly reliving her pain
"You really got to change your sleeping habits"
"...Yep…"
Doing her best not to let out any unladylike noise from the pleasure of having her pain relived with pinpoint precision and care Lisa nevertheless managed a simple response as she focused on the holographic blueprint, at first glance it seemed like a simple zero atmosphere facility placed on moons and planets without breathable air. However, the more she noticed the details, the more she could tell it was a military facility, after a few moments she asked
"Is this our target?"
Mark pushed her over towards the holographic display before he took a place next to her and nodded
"Yeah, it is not an exact blueprint, I started out with a prefabricated unit that fit the one from the harvested memories and edited in the modifications after what I also gathered from the same source… It's not complete, but the most sensitive bits have been located"
Lisa nodded and manipulated the holographic display downwards following a series of elevator shafts for a moment before a large underground cavern were exposed
"This is?"
"The main lab, not only are there physical prototypes, there should also be a large Ficer data cruncher and a series of habitation blocks for the biggest eggheads… Our targets are all 3"
Lisa nodded, she zoomed the holographic display out and began running scenarios in her head, breaching points, lines of fire and exfil routes were quickly painted and thrown out in her mind as she realized this would be quite the task
"Well, assuming only the two of us will enter, this seems quite the difficult task…"
Mark nodded and explained further
"Plus there's a navy bastion in the same system and a garrison station in orbit around the very same moon, so going loud doesn't seem exactly like the best idea"
Lisa nodded, the two of them continued brainstorming possible assault angles and infiltration plans for a few hours until Mark fell silent and pulled up the schematics of the garrison station before zooming in on the command bunker section of the station, then he pulled up a calculator and a note app as he started a series of calculations in complete focus, as Lisa slowly passed together what Mark's new angle was she let out a dry laugh and commented
"That's suicidal…"
Mark nodded as he finished up his calculations and marked the gravity drive of the station along with several points where decompression would be required
"Yep, that's why no one would expect it"