Space Pirate Bart
A story I wrote for a friend to flesh out his OC
Based upon an RP we had together
Alarms went off in the prison block to signal a new inmate arriving. Immediately, the hallways sprung to life with the prisoners looking out their cells to see which unlucky soul would join them this time. For some, it was a matter of wasting time, having nothing better to do. Others were on the lookout for friends, former partners or others whose guts they hated.
Every new arrival was a huge change in the hierarchy and fragile calm of the block, with fights breaking out often if a bad combination of inmates was put together. The guards were aware of this, but did not care, hoping the problems would just resolve themselves. Regardless, at the moment it was just entertainment for the curious prisoners.
Among them was a red scaled kobold named Bart, incarcerated due to his previous affiliation with the space pirates. He never got enough of the excitement of a new inmate joining, due to how boring it could be here. Of course, there was the added bonus of the guards becoming distracted by all the other inmates, giving Bart ample time to scrounge up materials during lunchtime.
This wasn't the first time he was imprisoned in the station orbiting OS-2142, and it likely wouldn't be his last. Even though they tried to make it impossible to escape, Bart had found many ways to do so, using nothing but his wits and the flaws in the security system, earning him the nickname Bart the slippery.
Bart wasn't the strongest, but what he lacked in brawn, he more than made up in brain. Using anything he could find, from forks to elastics from the prison garb, he fashioned a lot of tools he used in his escapes. Early on during his first imprisonment, he had found an unsupervised vent in a corner. After careful observation, it turned out this one was a trap for inmates trying to escape, having motion sensors within the deeper parts. He never had taken this bait, so he wasn't sure if it actually led somewhere. He did find out that an earlier branch of the vent led to a dead end with a half rusted panel. Using the tools he made he could leverage it off, discovering there was a pathway through the walls to a storage room. Of course, in order to create an alibi, he did set the motion sensors off a few times, which did put him in trouble with the guards when he came crawling out the entrance of the vent, but also gave him the reputation of just hiding in the vents without escaping. With this in order, sneaking off and crafting gadgets for his escape was easily done, since he could hide them between the walls, with the others no more wiser than they were before.
Now that the new inmate joined, he would have another good opportunity. He felt in a good mood, it was going to be his tenth escape from this prison after all, and he thought he needed to have a special method as a form of celebration. For now, he would just enjoy the chaos.
Around dinner time, all the inmates where shepherded into the mess hall, where Bart just played with his slop. Not that they ever served something proper here, but hey, at least it was nutritious. Being a kobold was pretty useful here. With their general reputation as being weak cowards, even the most battle-hardened criminal of his species was deemed unimportant, making him disappear from everyone's radar. He spotted the new guy walking around, and casually catapulted some of his slop to the man, hitting him in the face. As expected, he got angry and before long, a brawl started, giving him a reason to retreat to the vent. 'Gotta love all those hot-headed criminals' he thought to himself as he crawled through it. Due to a tracking anklet, he needed to be careful and could only move when it wouldn't be suspicious, like during the brawl. But now that he was out of sight, his plan could start. During his many visits to the prison, he planned ahead and made multiple stashes around the vent and other places where he knew security was lax, just in case he did come back here. Planning ahead always had been one of his strong points after all.
Reaching his desired stash, he got out the wire and batteries, as well as some other items, combining them to make a small disruptor pulse. This little tool would block the signal from his anklet, as well as delay the motion tracker for a bit without deactivating it, so they would have trouble figuring out how he escaped. Now that the pulse was active, it crawling through the vents should be done quickly, which was not an issue for Bart at all. As it turned out, the other end of the vent ended up in the barracks of the guard, but since the alarm did not go off, nobody was around, making it easy for Bart to get out.
"Tre, one of the trackers has gone out. Can you check for me?" Voices came from the next room. 'They already sensed that huh? Well, not going to help them much' "What's the problem Clyde? Where did you lose it" "Around the vent trap in the hallway, but the sensors within show no issues, so nobody headed through there. Can you go and look into it?" The other guard, Tre, just made a sound of agreement and left. Bart had only half-listened to the conversation, in case someone walked closer, while he was rummaging through lockers to see what he could get. 'For security, they are rather lax. I found a keycard here, a stungun and some credits. Nice, should be enough to get me out' Not one for letting opportunities go to waste, he used the stungun on the remaining guard in the next room, netting him some extra cartridges for the gun and letting him deactivate the cameras on route to the hangar.
Due to his small stature, he had no trouble hiding from any patrolling guards to the hangar, and arrived there without issue. He looked around at the various models, his inner mechanic feeling giddy at these high tech marvels. They were made to chase and intercept the current line of smaller crafts, those used by smugglers or people looking to flee. For them, the downside would obviously be that they wouldn't be able to catch one of their own. Climbing aboard his target, he saw that there sadly were no keys left in the ignition. 'Too bad, that would have made this too easy' He thought as he started to hotwire the spacecraft. Since the guards had to be ready to leave at any moment, they tended to leave the crafts unlocked in their own hangar. After all, nobody but them could enter this. 'After my escape, I think they will have to correct that mistake'
Starting the ship, he guided it to the exit of the dock, passing the atmosphere barrier and flying away. From here it would be smooth sailing. Nobody would find out he left until it was too late, and he had another story to brag about at the bars. Speaking of which, he needed to get some money for that.
For some quick and easy money, he decided to resort to his all-time favourite, robbing from those that had too many. Big corporations transported a lot of materials and minerals along the central trade routes, and were a prime target for lovable rogues like himself.
The routes were well guarded, but the best thing about space travel was that not everyone felt the need to stick exactly to the main road. People wanting to sneak things by under the radar, or people just careless enough to drift. It didn't matter, as long as he had something to sell in the end.
He found a nice spot in an asteroid field along one of the more common routes, and stabilised his new ship in between a few, activating the gravity tethers to make some of the asteroids orbit him, creating a makeshift shield. Waiting for a good opportunity should take a while, so Bart started rummaging through his ship. It was designed for a small group of interceptors if needed, four people maximum, but loaded with food, incapacitating weaponry and other toys for a crafter like him to work with. With this small armoury, it was easy getting off his anklet and keeping it deactivated. He kept the dormant tracking device as a commemoration of his 10thsuccessful escape from prison, putting it away until he could remove the battery.
Some of the weapons here were not usable for species as small as kobolds, but there was at least a smaller plasma rifle he armed himself with as well as stasis grenades. Making sure his loadout was complete and everything in order, he added from the supplies a suit for outside travel, because you never knew when to escape from an airlock or break a window in style. 'Sweet, they have good stuff' He thought as he saw the Soma class spacesuit, designed to be formfitting to any wearer with the help of Nano-machines. It was not meant for heavy duty, but allowed the wearer to at least survive 30 hours outside before the cold began to set in. Happy with his preparations, he decided to take a nap, but not before setting the scanner to alert him should anyone move from the road and past the asteroid field.
Sleeping in the beds of a ship usually wasn't restful, but this time, the kobold slept like a log. Maybe the quality was better than what he had been used to, or maybe he was just really tired. Either way, his sleep was soon interrupted by the blaring of the alarm, alerting him to the presence of prey. He rushed towards the cockpit, looking at the ship that was entering this path. The ship was a pretty normal Atlas-class transport ship, commonly used to transport materials used for building, but even a small fraction of minerals could fetch a decent price here. Since it had no escort ships with it, it should be easy enough to land on it.
He engaged the cloaking device on his ship as he flew in under it, attaching a magnetic tether to the underside to keep his ship close by.
Now that his new ship was secured, he went to the side exit, opening the airlock and stepping out into the vast void. Within the field, he shouldn't have to worry about drifting off too far, but it still unnerved him every time he went out, as a small mistake could cost him dearly.
Without a doubt, he was safest close to a ship, and made his way to the transporter, locking himself close to the hull of the ship. He started crawling across it to find out the nearest airlock, but even the closest one was on the top of the ship, which meant he had to scale the entire side. Then again, no easy job was ever worth a lot. At the very least, there was only a very minimal chance for him to get caught, so he took his sweet time, making sure that he got there safely.
While he liked that the ship was going off the regular course, he did wonder why it was like this. If they were smugglers, they would have defences on board, but this section of the transit roads were quite safe from his own experience. If however there was another reason why they flew like this... It could just be a technical issue, but he had heard rumours of alien invaders, or mind controlling plant spores that made people zombies. In all fairness, he spent a lot of time on the 'net to keep up with the latest news, and a lot of trash came in between the valuable info, but it never hurt to be prepared.
Shaking the negative thoughts off, he reached the airlock and snuck in. Decompression took time, and would certainly alert the crew, but if he moved fast, they could hopefully just interpret it as a glitch.
The inner doors finally opened as Bart rushed down the hallway, quickly finding stairs to the lower decks, where he looked around for a room to hide out in. One of the rookie mistakes was rushing to the loot. Even if they thought it to be a glitch, they would always suspect foul play at first, and check up on the cargo. Hiding there would be significantly harder, so he would rather hide out in an unused room. The vents here were no good, but one of the rooms was clean, sterile even. nobody had used this in a while, so he could wait here for the next fifteen minutes.
Expecting this would be rather boring, he took out the police handbook he stole from the ship, and started flipping through it, laughing at all the rules and how serious the guards were taking themselves.
Minutes passed, but he heard no sound outside, so he carefully looked out the door. Seeing nobody, he poked his head out, but couldn't hear anything aside from the regular mechanical sounds that were to be expected. While this was rather suspicious, he found this the best time to sneak around, as he rushed to the stairs to the cargo area.
As he descended, he got a growing feeling that there was something wrong here, and his suspicion was confirmed when the door to the cargo was wide open.
Having come this far however, he decided to press on, to see if at least he could get away with something valuable to make this infiltration not a failure.
He walked through the area when he spotted something between the containers. There was a strange growth spreading over some of the containers and walls in the distance, even climbing into the vents. Observing this for a while showed that it very slowly expanded. Never before had Bart encountered something like this, but his sense of danger went off loudly within his mind. To be sure, he grabbed a nearby piece of railing, and cut it off with his gun's taser function. It was long enough to poke the growth without being near to it. The growth had a sickly color and squished under the touch of the railing, when it suddenly grasped the piece of metal and started to spread over it.
Bart quickly let go of the metal and backed away. Whatever they were carrying, it was dangerous to everyone board, and he had to get out this instant. Rushing back to the stairs, he knew that he had enough time to get out if he didn't run across anyone, when suddenly the ship shook, and loud noises were heard from above.
The ship was under attack, and that meant he was now stuck between two equally bad situations. As he ran up the stairs, he could hear the hard sounds of people entering the ship above, making a racket as they did. This could only mean that raiders had boarded the ship, which was bad, since the raiders were known for killing everyone they met to rob them, and they were making their way down. Sliding into a side path, he needed to find a new escape route, and to that end, needed to be safe first.
From his current position, he could make it to either the bunks and the kitchen, which would lead to the bridge, or to the engineering area, which usually had an escape route or two. The latter option was clearly the better one to the crafty kobold, as he rushed there at once. However, when he arrived, he saw that the growth had spread here as well, possibly through the vents. This was a terrible development, but luckily it hadn't reached the emergency shutters, which Bart closed, just to be sure. The shutters wear of a strong but clear material, intended to observe the issue behind it, so the best plan could be formulated.
In the distance, he heard the raiders go down to the cargo, and loud screams. Before Bart could wonder why they would scream, the growth behind the shutters started pulsing and expanding at an alarming rate. Whatever caused this must have been because of the raiders interacting with it. 'Great, so not only is this heist a bust and raiders invading on my spoils, but also there is this fleshy wall of death fungus making things harder than needed, just my luck'
He had no choice now, he needed to go to the bridge, where the crew would be. He would rather be alive and in jail than to lose his life in such a horrid fashion. Carefully, he sneaked towards the residential area, where some of the raiders had already gathered and were plundering whatever they could find. Bart took his stungun and primed it, so he at least had some defence if needed. His moment of opportunity came when one of the two raiders went to use the bathroom, giving Bart enough time to shoot one in the back, before blocking the toilet with a heavy cabinet. To be sure that nobody followed him, he tied up the other and locked him into the storage closet.
His way now clear, he made his way to the bridge, when he spotted the growth coming from the vents to the side. Before long, they would cover the entire hallway, so he needed to rush towards his new goal. As expected, the doors to the bridge was closed, so he banged hard on it. "You gotta let me in! Whatever it is that you carried here is spreading towards the bridge" Surprisingly, someone from the other side responded. "And why would we do that, we are safe here on this side. Why open it for a raider?" "First of all rude, I am no mere raider, and second of all, if you don't, I will try forcing my way in, which at the very least will damage the barrier."
Within moments, the doors opened, someone grabbed him from the other side and slammed him down on the ground of the bridge as the doors closed again. He felt the familiar shape of a gun against his head, but at least he was safer here than outside. With people you can talk after all.
"Now speak kobold, what are you doing here?" The person holding the gun was a cheetah, awfully twitchy folks according to Bart, and this one seemed to be barely holding it together. "I was just-"
"Just planning to rob us and maybe kill us huh?" The cheetah wasn't about to give the poor thief a chance to explain when another voice bellowed at him. "That's enough Seth!" The voice was powerful, but unmistakable female. 'Must be the leader of this group' Bart thought to himself. "No matter what you came to do here, we need to work together if we want to survive. We will start explaining. We seemed to carry an indigenous parasite with us, that feasts on biological matter. Someone must have smuggled it among our merchandise, because we would never have carried it if we would have known about it. The thing seems to grow slowly, but if you get close to it, it will devour you whole and will be able to grow immensely. It's likely that the other invaders have found that out the hard way. My name is Isabel, and I am acting captain since our actual captain befell that grim fate..." The mood of the room became silent, as Bart finally looked around. The bridge was packed with the crew, all huddled around, having sealed most vents. "Normally we would detain you, but we don't have that luxury. As you can see, it will be only a matter of time before the parasite reaches us, but it has broken off all our communications and disabled our controls.
We will overlook your trespass into our ship if you go out there and fix our communications for us." "And why haven't you done that yet yourselves if I may ask?" "The parasite reacts poorly to fire, so we got here, as far away from the thing as we could, to make some flamethrowers from what we had, when the raiders attacked." "I see...In that case, give me one. I will make my way to the engineering room and fix this for you" "Wait Isa, can we really trust him?" Seth spoke, not wanting to give something crucial to the kobold. "it's either him or you, and I'd rather have you to make sure our own defences against the thing work as long as they can. The intruder is small enough to slip past openings, and will likely be there faster" "Not to mention, I technically am a certified engineer." Everyone looked at him in disbelief "What, it's true!" "At this point, it wouldn't even matter if you were the pope. We need you to go there or we will all die." Bart nodded as he took one of the flamethrowers, putting on the mask of his suit as he stood before the door.
The crew opened the door and Bart immediately started spewing flames with his new toy, making the growth near the door shrivel and retreat slightly. Quick on his feet, he rushed through the hallways, using the flamethrower to open patches on the ground where he could stand, deftly hopping between them as he retraced his steps down to the engineering room. Reaching the barrier again, he used more fire to clear a wider space so he had enough time to hack the door. For an escape artist like him, it wasn't too big a deal, but he had to be mindful of the remaining fuel.
He should have enough to reach the engineering room if he remained careful. Clearly they hadn't anticipated the immense spread of the parasite, but nobody would have been prepared for this.
The doors opened, and once again he went onward, as he found his target. Clearing the path, he entered the communication servers, as he looked for the correct links. Even though part of it was destroyed, you never needed much to send out an emergency signal. Without warning, the growth expanded, causing Bart to waste the remaining amount of fuel in the flamethrower. 'Fuck, the thing must have gotten one of the remaining raiders.'
Having no way to protect himself now, he needed to work fast. He could move around the room luckily as he gathered what he needed, before moving to the final room, where the signal could be sent from.
First, he had to turn off the electricity of the device in order to not shock himself, and then started building a signal booster around it. So busy was he that he didn't noticed a stray tendril sneak up on him, grabbing him by the foot suddenly. Bart screamed in surprised shock as he was pulled to the ground and towards the main body of the growth, the tendril not being able to pierce his suit.
Currently, he was facing an unpleasant death if he didn't move fast, but what could he do? He only had a stungun after all. 'But wait, if I overload it, the explosion should create enough heat to let me go!' This was a foolish idea, but the only one he had, so he threw the gun along with a prayer, hoping he would survive this.
As the gun exploded, other devices in the room exploded as well, creating a shockwave knocking Bart back into his target, while allowing him to break free. His joy at survival was short lived however, as the impact broke the signal. Even though the booster worked, they couldn't get a signal out. Was this it? Was he doomed to die here after all he had tried? Defeated, he slumped to the floor, thinking about his grand escape, and that he just wanted to celebrate his 10th successful escape. Suddenly, he remembered. His tenth escape? He still had his anklet with him. The device should give a continuous signal, so if he managed to connect it to the booster, it should be able to reach the prison. Any place would be better than here after all.
Quickly working, he managed to connect the device as the growth started making its way to him again. The signal was activated successfully, but now he needed to make himself safe once again. Looking around, he found a storage chest, one that would be sealed airtight if used. He opened it and threw all the sensitive tech out, creating space for himself to crawl up in. Sealing the box behind him, all he could do was wait and hope for the best, while his oxygen supply kept him alive in here. Forever seemed to pass, time having lost meaning inside here, and with nothing to do but wait, as well as being stressed out of his mind, Bart began to lose consciousness, hoping it would all turn out for the best.
He awoke to find himself in a cell. It seemed his prisoners had indeed rescued him in time, and hoping the others were fine as well. Outside the room he was in, he could hear a discussion going on, between someone he suspected to be a guard, as well as Isabel, the captain of the transport. "He might be a criminal, but he put his life on the line to save others" Bart was surprised, most people didn't care about criminals or even other people once they got what they wanted, but he was touched by the sentiment.
Still, he wasn't planning on sticking around for long here. The ship he was on used rather subpar cells, and there would always be an escape pod nearby...