Eighteen

Kon watched over Benny's shoulder as they appeared in local space. A faded star glowed dimly in the center of the system, burning a faded, deep, red. He turned his eyes away from the star and toward their objective. A large asteroid field stretched out across the system, hundreds of thousands of fragments of rock and iron, hurtling through space at catastrophic speeds.

"Are the gaps really that big between all of them?" Kon asked as he looked at the viewscreen projections about the asteroids.

"Hmm? Oh yeah, generally there's plenty of space in a belt like this. Lots of little micrometeorites, but I got shielding for that," Benny said, slapping his hand on the console. A small green bar was the only indicator of the shielding he was talking about.

"Got thirty minutes till we're there, time to suit up," Benny said, rolling out of his broken down chair and standing up, shooing Kon out of the small bridge with a wave of his hands. Kon retreated reluctantly, eyes still glued to the numerous consoles and controls.

"I want one." The greed that blossomed and took root in his gut was fierce, surprising him with its intensity. He wanted a ship like this, his own vessel to sail across the inky black and to chase new horizons. A place that was his own.

"How much does a ship cost?" Kon asked as they walked down the hidden hallways to the armory.

"Fairly cheap. Keeping them space worthy is the expensive part. I found Puca nearly abandoned in a shipyard a few decades back. Got her for the cost of a few energy batteries. Getting her up to my standard was much more expensive. Used a mix of rare metals, rift cores, and natural treasures to pay for it all," Benny said.

"Not creds?" Kon asked as they kept walking.

"That's just human currency. What we use between each other. The greater galaxy tends to lean more towards a bartering system. Monster cores are fairly reliable, but also precious stones or metals, or you have to take a risk and convert to a local currency. The bigger ones are generally fine, once a group has secured a few systems they generally become fairly stable. Then there's always the Torg."

"Torg?" Kon asked as they entered the armory. Diur was already there, suiting up in her own armor. They had gone with a similar armor set as what they had used last time, but with a much thicker, vacuum proof suit as the underlying gear. Kon quickly began to pull his own on as Benny continued to talk.

"They're like us but for merchants. They show up anywhere and everywhere and there's a lot of them. They use some type of internal banking system to keep track of everyone who registers with them and they're damn good for it."

"They have their own currency?" Kon asked as he grabbed his armored breastplate, strapping it down tightly to ensure it covered the entirety of his torso. He looked over at the weapons he had available to him and then looked over to see Benny's inquisitive eyes on him.

"Yes. Just called T-Notes, but they're fairly well accepted by everyone. Never, ever steal or cheat the Torg. It's a good way to end up with a contract on your head," Benny warned. Kon grabbed a heavy mace and tied it to his belt before grabbing a laser rifle, standard in ship combat, and strapping that to his back. He looked over the rest of the gear and pulled out a pair of heavy duty gauntlets with thick metal plating over the knuckles.

"Can take the meathead out of the brawl, but can't take the brawl out of the meathead," Benny sighed wearily as he grabbed his own weapons. Nothing as powerful or explosive as what they had used at the information brokers.

"There's a few air jets around here somewhere. I'll slave them to my helmet just in case you get blown off the station. Keep you from floating around in space for a few hours till I retrieve you," Benny said as he opened up a drawer and pulled out a pair of backpack-like contraptions.

"Strap these to the back and you'll be good to go. Helmets on with the filters you should have about an hour of air. If you need a top up just retreat back to Puca."

"You're making it sound like you won't be there with us," Diur said as she strapped her propulsion system on. There was a series of straps that she struggled with for a moment before Kon went and helped her. He spun around and she quickly helped him into his own gear.

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"Its just monsters and they're weak. Kill, harvest, repeat. Do you need supervision for that?" Benny asked, raising an eyebrow at them.

"What are you going to be doing?" Kon asked as he watched the old man don his own gear. Benny didn't bother with any propulsion packs or anything else like that, settling just for a simple suit and laser rifle.

"My job. Recovery of the database. Got to let the kids out to have some fun now and then without the old man looking over their shoulder. Now, remember to grab plenty of bags for cores, the station is fairly overrun," Benny said, pointing at a series of cloth bags to the side. Kon and Diur grabbed them without hesitation, both also grabbing long gutting knives from the armory and strapping them on. By the time they looked up, Benny had vanished.

"Feels like old times," Diur said as she settled her helmet on her head.

"Much cleaner this time," Kon fired back, offering her a grin before he put his own helmet on. A muted click told him it was secure, his HUD flaring to life and offering him detailed readouts including an oxygen bar in the corner of his vision.

"Think Benny has extra oxygen containers or something?" Kon asked as the two of them walked out of the armory.

"Undoubtedly. But they weren't in our write up for what our loadout should be," Diur said.

"Making us take a bunch of trips back and forth is irritating, but I guess we earned it. Didn't think about it," Kon said as they arrived at the loading ramp. Benny was nowhere to be seen, but Kon didn't trust that to mean the old man wasn't around or at least aware of what was going on.

"He didn't say anything about our weapon choices at least," Diur said. She touched the hilt of her sword and looked pointedly at the mace and heavy gauntlets on his hand.

"They're comfortable this way," Kon said to her, leaning against a bulkhead. The Puca shuddered as they entered a gravity well.

"At least the facility's grav generators are working," Diur said, straightening up and hooking her arm around a strut. Kon mirrored her and locked his own arm around a strut as the sudden surge of deceleration tried to rip him off his feet. Benny appeared next to them, appearing in between breaths, to stand there completely unfazed by the ship's maneuvers.

"Ready?" Benny asked. Before Kon or Diur could say anything the loading ramp slid down, a burst of air rushed out of the ship, picking Kon off his feet and throwing him out of the still lowering landing ramp. He hit the ground hard, rolling to his feet as he looked around. Benny's raspy laughter filled his ears through the built in comm unit in his helmet as the old man came strolling down the ramp.

"Have to pay more attention to your surroundings," Benny said, chortling as he passed them by. Before Kon could say anything the old man vanished in between steps. Kon stopped, his mouth hanging open as he looked at the spot the old man had just occupied.

"Do you think it's stealth or he just moves too fast for me to comprehend?" Kon asked, looking back at Diur as she came down the ramp much more gracefully than he had.

"Both," Diur said with a shrug. The moment her boot's left the landing ramp, it began to rise, sealing shut with a series of loud thumps that echoed across the space. She drew her sword smoothly as she came to stand next to him.

"Gravity is weaker here," Diur said, bouncing gently on one foot. It wasn't so weak that she floated but it took a second for her to come back to earth. Kon nodded and the two of them set off, moving slowly through the abandoned hangar bay that they had landed in.

A steady blue energy field kept the atmosphere in, otherwise it was just a metal box attached to the outside of a large asteroid. Plain gray steel was the only color, with nothing on the walls or floor to indicate habitation had occurred.

A single wide door was open, partially twisted on its tracks to prevent it from closing. Darkness leered at them from the interior of the facility, a gaping maw that absorbed everything.

"Are you scared? This might be a bit creepy," Kon said as he fiddled with his helmet, a pair of bright beams cutting forth to spear through the darkness as he found the correct trigger. Diur's own headlamp flared to life a moment later and the interior of the hallway was laid bare.

Crystalized blood spattered the walls in long streaks, smeared across like a thin layer of paint. A myriad of colors, red, blue, and luminescent green, all intermingled in death. Gnawed on bones sat in corners, thick rime across them. They both froze as they took in the carnage.

"What are your senses telling you?" Kon asked, pushing his own senses outward as far as he could. Now that they were back around rift energy it was harder to isolate the feel of someone's energy, but it was there. A pressure that assaulted him from every side, dozens of presences that momentarily sent a bolt of fear through him.

He waited, feeling the shifting energy all around him. There were dozens of them, each little prickle of power less than Diur's own steady pulse of power. A tense part of him relaxed. The beasts were similar in power to Diur if slightly weaker, probably around peak F-Grade at best. That was within their limits of handling. As the fear abated, a pulse of excitement worked its way through his veins, igniting them in a way he hadn't felt on their last mission.

A challenge against an opponent he didn't truly care about. Killing living thinking beings had settled roughly on his mind, regardless of if they were trying to kill him first. Monsters were much easier to deal with. They simply existed to kill and die.

"Several dozen monsters, all in the upper peak F-Grade. Likely has an E-Grade around here somewhere in the rift," Diur said after a minute. Kon thought he could hear a bit of excitement in her own voice as well.

"Do you think there's something wrong with us? Being excited to go into this spooky ass station and killing monsters?" Kon asked, looking over at Diur. She didn't deny her own excitement as she stared into the facility.

"Not at all," she said slowly, and Kon knew that she was smiling underneath her helmet. The two of them moved forward, Kon in the lead with Diur watching his back, as they plunged into the monster infested station.

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