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I knew this whole thing was a mistake. Sorren left and there hadn't been any word from him for days. Sure, he was an utterly MASSIVE wolf, but the pirates had their own giants. The pirates had guns and missiles. They were overdue for their check in. I shouldn't have agreed to help. The Navy should've been screwed and then they'd have to send someone else. If they sent anyone else, this would come out so much better.

The deck plates clanged as I paced back and forth across the hall. An officer? No... two stripes. A sergeant? He yelled over, "stop pacing! You'll wear a hole in the floor." He was guarding the communications center. We were in hostile territory, so every inch of the ship had extra guards, in case a pirate magically snuck aboard.

Whenever Sorren came back, the comms center would be the first to know about it. For the first few days, I had managed to keep myself confined to my room, sometimes sneak out to the recreation areas. On the Pillar of Justice, that meant a large gym with a few couches in the corner and a big screen. It beat my tiny room.

It was the fifth day now. We were hiding out over the planet's poles, out of sensor range, just.. Waiting.

Alarms sounded and the deck tilted under me. We were moving, fast. The ship's inertial dampeners weren't strong enough to keep up with it's fast turns. I fought against the new pull of gravity to the radio room door, just to try and listen in.

"Pelican One Seven in the blind," a voice came over the radio, cracked up, "have just escaped massive attack. They're closing in, I need extra-" The signal cut out.

I turned to the sergeant who yelled at me, "what's going on!?" I yelled over the alarms. We were going to General Quarters. That meant a fight, I think.

The sergeant was standing ram rod straight from the deck, unaffected by the ship's manuevering, while I was still trying to keep my balance. "There's an escape pod out there, he can't hear us, but he needs us to pick him up."

The door behind us sealed shut with a hiss. We were entering battle and now, every critical part of the ship was a fortress in its own right. My heart skipped a beat. Sorren was coming home, he had to be coming home. I just had to ride out the battle.

This proved harder than you would think. For most people, a battle is a big, action movie, right? We were in a space-tank. The ship spun and shot. I just sort of... sat in my chair twiddling my thumbs until the battle was over. For all the noise and alarms, I think I've had more excitement painting my house.

When the doors finally opened, I basically ran out into the hall, too much nervous energy built up. The docking bays were in the back of the ship, it was the only area big enough for Sorren to fit. They had isolated a whole stretch of cargo bays for him to work out of until we got to this backwaters disaster.

By the time I got there, they had the escape pod pulled in. My heart sank when I saw it. It was a human pod, about half a million times too small to have Sorren in it. It was someone else. He was still out there, and probably in trouble.

The hatch hissed open before the actuators failed. It just crashed to the ground with an echoing clang. Junior came stumbling out of the pod. He looked like he'd been through hell. He was in his armor, but it was charred, riddled with bullet holes. If he was in that sort of shape..

I scrambled over, "JUNIOR! JUNIOR!" I yelled. There were others there to help him out, three of them tried to stop me from scrambling up to him. They weren't quite fast enough. "What happened!? Is Sorren ok!?" I was in a panic. Tears barely held back as I braced for bad news.

Junior looked at me, he seemed to take a minute to work out just what to say. "Sorren's not coming back," he said, "he... met a girl and defected."

My heart sank. There was no way. Sorren wasn't a traitor. He'd saved everyone on that island. He'd helped when the pirates attacked Narlim. He fought for everyone here. Hell, he got his ass kicked by some trainers just to get ready for this mission.

"No... no... he wouldn't do that," I said, backing away. I hadn't known him long, but just defecting over some girl? Well... I hoped he'd do whatever it took to be on my side, but we always had been on the same side. "We need to rescue him!"

"He tried to kill me," Junior said, "he probably got the whole squad. We can't talk any sense into him."

"Then.. something must be wrong with him, he got drugged again!" I grasped at straws for an answer.

One of the guards looked to Junior, "the captain is waiting to debrief you." Business as usual for them. Whatever happened to that leave no man behind bullshit?

"W-what, you gotta go out there!" I plead to Junior. Two of the others grabbed me so I couldn't keep at him all the way to the bridge. "He was your friend!"

Junior just... left. I didn't understand, they were supposed to be friends, a squad, a team. How could you just abandon someone like that? We already knew there were drugs and diseases that could effect the giants. It happened once already. Losing someone like that, it had to be a blow to the navy, they only had so many giants in the service. Wasn't that reason enough to invade that little mudhole and take him back?

The two who had me, dragged me back to my room. I kicked and fought the whole way. It turns out, those mech suits are basically unstoppable. I don't know if they noticed I was putting up a fight the whole way. It got a bit rough at my door, they threw me in and I tried to get out, only to slam my head into the door panels.

Fuck.

Sorren was down there, alone, maybe being tortured, maybe drugged and brainwashed. Sure, he was a massive wolf, but he was a gentle wolf. He only wanted to do good and now the Navy was probably going to end up shooting him.

All the worries of the past few days flooded out. A barrier snapped and I cried. I just wanted Soren to be safe. I could at least live with him being in the Navy, he always had help and support. At least, so I thought until now. He was always armed and able to fight back. He hadn't been going on suicide missions.

It felt like an eternity passed. All was silent except the hum of the ship. I'd started to cheer myself up, any moment they'd sound that battle alarm. We'd be going in, guns blazing to bring Sorren back. Maybe they'd shoot some sort of gigantic dark gun, knock him out, and haul him back to the ship. The Navy had to have SOMETHING to control an unruly giant. There were very few of them in society, but this was different. They had to have exceptions for helpful giants like Sorren.

My hopes though, were shattered before the day was out. The console in my room lit up and presented the captain's face. "Alice, I've been told Corporal Dover told you about Sorren's condition," the captain began.

"You mean Junior?" I asked, I hadn't really paid attention to what their uniforms said, just what they called each other. It seemed like they only really called Sorren by his name.

"The man from the escape pod," the captain clarified. He was a busy man, he wouldn't know the nick names for everyone on the ship, just the name on the paperwork. "You are listed as Soren's next of kin. This is mostly a formality, but we have declared Sorren Missing In Action. We may escalate that to a declaration of K-I-A. We will confirm on our way out of the system."

"What!?" I yelled at the screen, "what happened to all that no man left behind crap?! Is that all busllshit!? We have to go down there and rescue him!" Grief and sadness was replaced with anger. I had been hoping, hoping so much that we'd have a little adventure, rescue Sorren, and everything would be normal.

"That's only in the movies miss," The captain said, "the risks of going down there are too significant. I can't send a hundred men to their deaths just to save one. You have my condolences."

I threw a book at the screen and it went dark. He must've worked out that I wasn't going to be very cooperative. The tears were over and now, now it was time to stay mad. If I were in danger, nothing would stop Sorren from getting to me. It might be hard, but he'd find a way to help. I wasn't trained but I had to find some way of getting to him.

My best bet was the drop pods. Sorren hated his drop pod. The system was highly automated and extremely fast. It ignored him half the time. If I could find a way to steal one of those pods, I could get to him. It wasn't like I could steal a full blown drop ship.

Of course, this all meant I had to escape my room. This part, I actually was trained for. Of all the skills to have.

I work as a nurse. The hospital has the same security-access systems most ships do. Doors can be centrally controlled and locked. Most of the companies making the automated doors for our hospital rooms sell them to the Navy too, they just make beefier doors. That means they have the same safety system and most of the same wiring, especially in crew-quarters like this.

Back home, we have attempted break outs all the time. Some patients are in the hospital for psychiatric hold, sometimes they're criminals who are being treated before the cops get them, and sometimes it's a patient who's just terrified of doctors. The key difference is, we know how to modify the doors at the hospital so they're not that easily fooled. This is a space ship, with perfect discipline and order. These doors were designed with obedient sailors in mind. They weren't designed for deliberate sabotage.

I gathered my supplies, everything I could cram back in my bag, I did. Except one thing. I brought a tiny surgical kit. It was enough to probably take out an appendix. With the whole training thing between Sorren and the squad, I thought it might be helpful. I thought this might be more of an adventure. It wasn't going to be, but I guess now it was more of an adventure.

To break out, I had to pop off the door control panel, unplug it's network connection, trip it's fire alarm by shorting two contacts, wedge it open when the door released, and then reconnect the network after it had gone out of alarm. How do I know that? My second year of med school we had an actual ship designer break out. He had a bad drug trip. The whole hospital freaked him out, but enough of his head still worked to break the door.

Supplies in hand, now the second part all our escapees did: look natural. If you saw a panicked patient, you knew something was wrong. If you saw someone just strolling down the hall, what reason did you have to bother them? They were just another visitor or a patient going to an appointment or whatever.

The troop bays were all over the lowest decks of the ship. I was careful to go nice and slow, when something else caught my eye. An escape pod. Stealing a drop pod might be a challenge, that might be locked. I would have to figure out how to cram myself into one of those battle suits. I had to hope it would land somewhere near the pirate settlement. If it messed up, I would be stuck without food, water, or anything.

By comparison, the escape pod was the lap of luxury. It was stocked with weeks of food, radios, even a tiny bit of entertainment. Most importantly of all: its AI would probably be more cooperative and it wouldn't have any locks on it. By definition, escape pods had to work at all times.

Time to go! I opened the hatch and immediately the systems started loading up. Lights flickered on and a computerized voice calmly started spewing instructions: "Any pilots present should take the operator's seat. All others, please take the seating to the sides. If no pilot is present, the highest ranked officer should take the operator's station. The nearest planet has survivable conditions with multiple occupied regions."

I took the pilot's seat. "Please select landing region," the computer announced. A small map lit up the screen. I stowed my things as best I could, the hatch shut in back, and I tapped on the city I thought Sorren was in.

I was not prepared for the rest of the ride.

The pod ripped from the hull and I was slammed to my seat. Inertial dampeners or not, I blacked out as we tore across space towards the planet below. The escape pod's number one priority was distance. It would get us as far from the ship as possible, and THEN it would start work on landing.

On the Pillar of Justice, alarms sounded across the bridge. My escape had woken the captain from his sleep. He was off duty by then. "Now what?" he growled as he stormed onto the bridge.

"Escape pod launched!" one of the crew announced. A view screen flickered up, showing the exhaust cloud of my pod's escape motors and a reentry trajectory.

"Who's on that fucking ship?" the captain asked, silence fell on the bridge before security footage popped up, showing my escape from my room, and then the pod launching. The captain's face turned shades of purple and red I didn't know a human could. The crew cringed as he cursed me out, language foul even by sailors' standards.

"Bring me Corporal Dover," the captain said at last. "Fucker should've shut the hell up when he had the chance."

By the time I came to, the pod was banking steeply in the upper atmosphere. The G's were still intense, I felt like I weighed half a ton. I guess it wasn't so much that I'd spend the flight sleeping. The pod was in all essence, a mini-dropship. It was a long tube with some trusters, big engines at the back. There were wings folded around the body that would guide us to the ground.

This part probably sounds fun. A ship gently swinging side to side as it lazily glides through the atmosphere. Bullshit. If objective one was get away as fast as possible, then objective two was land as fast as possible. It felt like my stomach was bouncing between my throat and my butt. We would swing one way, turn, and everything got pushed down. The ship eased up, and my organs got a chance to float back into place before we would get some negative G's and then back to being pinned down.

Far too late, I wondered if it might've been easier and less painful to talk someone on the ship into flying me down here.

Finally, a city began to emerge. A pirate city. I knew we had colonized these worlds first, but I didn't expect them to be this far along. I thought these people would be living out of ships or smaller buildings. This place was enormous.

It was easy enough to pick out the giants' section of the city, the buildings there were massive, but their features suggested they were just a few floors tall. Sprawled around them was the urban stretch of factories, ship yards, and housing. It didn't look as bad as I thought it would. That honestly doesn't say much. I expected to see flaming shuttles flying in the sky.

"An air field has been located," the pod announced. "Beginning final approach."

I could only hope this part was gentle. I could only hope Soren was somewhere close and not entirely insane like Junior said. He had to be here. He had to be saveable.