She'd sat here, in this very spot, to eat dinner not two weeks ago. Now... she was hiding under a table. Waiting for the sound of gunshots... and peeking at the reflections now and again in paranoia.... just in case.

  The tactics made sense. The enemy would undoubtedly come investigate the train tracks, where they'd spotted people from the air, as well as the bunker; and if they were lucky, the locals might be able to ambush them. It looked to be working better than she'd hoped; she could see, in the reflection, a group of pirates; mostly wearing a yellow and black uniform, though they didn't seem nearly as strict about it as the Alliance; which seemed pretty obvious.

  All of them were baseline humans; no obvious augmented traits, aside from cybernetics; at least three of them had pairs of glowing red eyes. They all wore black and yellow striped ceramic chestplates, and some sort of lightly armored skinsuit underneath it in those colors, but otherwise...

  Not just stunners. Lasers. Needlers. One even had a plasma rifle. And more importantly... they'd started launching drones.

  It had started with a loud, audible pop; and a strange, tingling sensation. Undoubtedly, some sort of area-of-effect stunner, that was being used indiscriminately; anyone who wasn't behind solid cover or inside some large metal structure would undoubtedly be unconscious. Hopefully not including Bob; before the pirates drones arrived... followed closely by the men themselves.

  Even as she saw the group come into the open; over a dozen pirates; she could hear the buzz of drones flying... and see them enter one of the nearby buildings. Another. Any second now, they were going to find someone.

  Bob didn't seem inclined to wait for that, and had clearly made it through the stunner. There was an audible whining sound; the high pitch of a Needle rifle primed and ready to fire; combined with the much softer sounds of launching, and the 'pops' of tiny projectiles breaking the sound barrier.

  As the group all turned to focus on the source of the fire, the one with the plasma rifle went down; at least a dozen tiny holes through his body; and Erica rose to her knees, aiming the rifle right through the window; and with an audible pop of shattering glass, nailed one of the pirates in the left shoulder... twice, in rapid succession.

  She could see it, amidst all the gunfire. First, a sort of fog, that area of the suit abruptly changing color, the pirate visibly cringing and starting to back up; likely a painful burn, and an ablative layer fried off. Then.... a puff of red and yellow, as the flesh beneath the suit was flash-vaporized with the second shot... and the pirate dropped to the ground, screaming...

  She turned, nailing a drone with her second shot; even as the other pirates were firing back, blasting trees, buildings... at least one of the other trainees.... but it was over in seconds. All of the pirates down... and Bob leaning against the tree, with several holes in him, blood oozing down his own armor; red dripping across grey to the floor in a slow, steady path.

  Some of the others started to emerge from cover; Erica shook her head. There were more of them. They'd undoubtedly be coming. She kept looking around... and snapped off a shot at another drone that was emerging from a building; only to miss, leaving a scorch mark on the building behind it.

  It alerted the others, however; and several of them fired at once; a needle impacting it moments before the sweep of a laser on a beam setting engulfed it; it was already starting to fall when it got melted into slag.

  Bob... didn't look in the best of shape. He'd clearly been hit by a few needle rounds through the torso and one arm. If he really wasn't augmented... either his armor had something to keep him going, or he was a dead man walking.

  There was another pulse. That tingling feeling again.

  Bob simply flopped onto the ground... alongside a few of the others who'd left cover. She didn't know how many people were still there, waiting to shoot... but this time, she switched the rifle over to the continuous beam setting... and the moment a drone popped into view, she fired... watching the thing partially melt and hit the dirt.

  As other drones flew into view, more shots were fired; several going down, and one simply immediately retreating.. before the sound of engines filled the area. After a few seconds, the dropship that had carried the pirates in came flying in low; a pair of heavy turrets, meant for anti-fighter work, sweeping across the buildings... she ducked low, and alongside a few others, rand into the back of the building... and even as the roof started to collapse, one of the others beckoned her forward... into a freezer. He shot the freezing mechanism with a needle rifle before shutting the door behind them...

  They could feel it. The building shaking apart around them, the sound of high-caliber weapons fire whistling through the air... then, after several minutes... silence. She and a few other trainees, none of whom she knew, were trapped there, in the darkness.

  ***

  At first, there was panic. The freezer was a relatively durable construct; and killing the cooling system while the door was still open had been a good call, ensuring they didn't freeze to death. The room was even a great choice if someone was sweeping the area with thermal sensors; it was a bit cool, and insulated, and would mean any hostile detection would be useless.

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  It also meant that friendly detection would be useless; nobody, friend or foe, was going to find them anytime soon.

  One of them; a man who was a bit slender but otherwise normal-looking, had his comm-unit raised, using it as an improvised flashlight; until another clicked a dial; and a flashlight attached to a needle rifle snapped on, filling the tiny room with light.

  It was still quite cool; boxes of frozen chicken and potato products lined the walls; but slowly growing warmer just from their body heat. The man who'd tried to use his comm as a light looked at the others. "Okay. So.... we're trapped here. In a crushed building. Inside a freezer. We've got guns. Food we can't eat without cooking it... anything else to speak of?"

  Erica glanced at the door. "Well, probably not trapped. It might take time, but I can get us out of here.. especially if we use that needler a few times and break some of the rubble into smaller pieces. Only real problem would be the dust."

  He blinked. "Ohhhh. Yeah, you're that weird heavy-aug who was dragging all the folks on the glider. You look really tall for one."

  "One of the older, more classic types, from Anvil. Name's Erica, by the way." She smiled at him... and looked at the others. "Heavy-grav augment, though not the strongest variety. I've taken the flying and the shooting courses, but if we wait a few hours before we get out, hopefully we won't need any of that. Got my laser rifle here, and know how to use it."

  The thinner man gave a quick nod. "James. And... I agree, mostly. Though... if this is the real deal, and the pirates have enough people to take over... it'd probably be best for us to get out quick. I... well, my augment isn't anything useful, here. We were made to accept cybernetics easily. I've got a laser, too, but I was here taking flying courses... so...."

  She blinked. That... was a terrible reminder. The Alliance had, back before implants were as cheap as they had become over the decades, deliberately engineered a breed of slave that could have control and interface implants installed to let them handle various technical tasks; and as implant tech got better, cheaper, and it became less needed, started culling them over the years.

  One of the other two chuckled; a woman quite a bit taller... and paler... than Erica patted her own needle rifle. She had long, dark, hair, and seemed... almost like a classic amazon from the movies. "Janice. Combat augment, but never really trained in fighting until recently. Redundant organs, bit stronger and faster than normal... not even close to a heavy, but I can probably handle myself. I can use the needler alright. Better than I would have thought I could."

  The last; the man whose own needle rifle was currently providing them with light; was leaning back against the boxes of chickens, and, up til now, was still wearing a helmet... which he carefully popped off, to reveal solid grey-black skin. "I'm still new with the rifle, myself. And of course, my augment is nothing useful here. Classic cold and heat resistance. I wouldn't have minded if the freezer stayed running, but I suspected you lot would, so..."

  Janice nodded, and smiled at him. "Thanks. Getting the cold air out before shutting the door probably helped quite a bit. Quick thinking."

  Erica looked at the door, then the others. "So. getting out... we can probably do. Between a needler and my strength... it would be easy. Maybe slow, but easy. And while this might be a full-scale invasion... it probably isn't. If we get out right now, in the next few seconds, we might be able to help stop them from being captured... or get captured ourselves. I.... don't think we can get out fast enough to help."

  The grey-skinned man sighed. "Yup. Bob's probably dead, the rest are getting dragged onto that dropship as we speak, or left for dead. They aren't gonna want to be here when backup arrives... I figure if we wait... an hour, maybe two, we'll be safe to start breaking out."

  Janice grimaced. "I really wanted to kill a few pirates. I've played so many sims of doing it, and kinda wanted to do it for real someday.... but yeah. We should wait.... two hours?"

  Erica nodded. "Two hours, then we break out."

  They all gave a nod, seemingly having settled on the most logical course of action. Erica glanced at James. "...So. A tech augment. Is that a long story, or..."

  The man chuckled... and lifted up his hair; revealing that, rather than the single tiny spot for a link most implants had, the back of his skull was mostly metal. "Not too long. They stuck a computer and interface in my brain when I was a kid, so I wasn't compatible with a normal implant. Sixty years later, smaller, better implants were commonplace, and someone whose skull was deliberately engineered to be able to insert an implant easily was... less advantageous. A merchant bought me for a handful of credits, and pretended I died during a visit to Karth."

  Janice blinked. "Pretended you died? Why not just set you free?"

  Erica coughed. "...If you free a slave, you're added to a blacklist, and can never buy one again. Its also a crime, even if you do it outside Alliance space. A merchant who deliberately frees a slave... ends up in jail the moment he shows up there."

  The woman shook her head. "Well, that's some bullshit. I guess if it weren't that way the ASU would just be buying slaves by the boatload and shipping them off."

  The only people Erica could think of who bought that many slaves at once were BSE; and they tended to just be dropping them off on some uninhabited world to form a colony, and then sell it as soon as they could claim legal ownership; and didn't care whether it was the Alliance or anyone who bought said colony. Still. It was possible, but unlikely, they would show up, buy every single slave at a market... and the whole lot be free a few years later. Just... living on some terrible hellhole of a colony world in the middle of nowhere.

  "Yeah. The Alliance just sucks in general in that regard, whatever positive traits it might have."

  The amazon shook her head. "Positive traits my ass. Those people are the biggest sponsors of terrorists and pirates in the galaxy. We'd all be better off it they just died."

  Erica decided not to mention that the Alliance considered the dubs to be the biggest sponsors of terrorists and pirates... and the ASU to be a terrorist group. It wouldn't be helpful, especially since she'd be joining them soon. "...Well. Maybe we should be quiet, for now... just in case they're looking over the wreckage?" No amount of insulation could protect them from some drone just hearing them, after all.

  James nodded in acceptance... and then whispered. "Fine. I'll set a two-hour timer. When its up... we break the hell out of here."