A Corsair Among the Stars (WIP, looking for possible edits)
Mar 11, 2023 2:53:51 GMT -5
Stephanie (swordlilly) likes this
Post by zennistrad on Mar 11, 2023 2:53:51 GMT -5
My latest series submission got passed over again. I'm not sure if they just had too many good competing entries, or if there was something they decided wasn't suitable for the NT. (Only thing I can think of is that I used too many italicized bits with the bbcode tag, which I was told the NT supports in submissions.)
In any case, since I don't want to let my work go to waste, here's the full story. Let me know what you think, and if there are any changes you'd suggest making before the next regular NT issue, etc.
Chapter 1:
Chapter 2
Chapter 3:
Chapter 4:
Chapter 5:
Doubt gnawed at Korzara’s insides as she stood before her destination.
She had recovered the Resistance’s defense system blueprints, just like Doctor Sloth wanted. Now she had left her ship to idle in orbit over the asteroid housing Sloth’s base, close enough to the minor planet to avoid collisions with any of the other objects in the Asteroid Belt.
In her hand was the thumb drive containing everything Sloth wanted, and probably all that he needed to win. If Korzara gave that information over, what would become of the Space Station? What would become of Neopia, or the rest of the galaxy? Sure, she would finally be able to feed herself properly for the first time in months. But at what cost?
She wished there was a better way. As it was, she was caught between a meteorite and a hard place.
Her eyes drifted over to the sensor display on the flight deck. As usual, it showed a readout of the energy signature of Sloth’s base... the weirdly specific energy signature, now that she thought about it. Where had she seen it before?
There was something here, and it was something that could be important. And she was willing to take any chance she had to get out of this situation. She could already feel the gears turning in her brain.
“Computer,” she said, “give me a closer reading of Sloth’s base. Try to isolate that energy signature you’re getting, and see if you can identify the source.”
“Affirmative,” the computer beeped. “Analyzing energy signature...”
After what felt like an eternity, the results of the analysis popped up on the ship’s sensor display. Korzara’s eye went wide at the sight of it. “Wait! This is... It’s not shielded! So that means...!”
Already, an idea began formulating in her mind. This could be her big break.
Her eye glanced to the floor of the flight deck, towards the tiny metal crate she had pilfered from the freighter ship in her previous job.
“Computer, warm up the teleporter. I have a plan.”
----------------
Once the plan was set in motion, Korzara docked with the outpost and briskly walked through the corridor, her newfound sense of assurance carried with every step against the dirty metallic floor. Before long, she was once again standing face-to-face with the holographic image of Sloth himself.
“Good, You’ve returned.” said Sloth, grinning wildly as he sat behind his desk. “Then I assume this means you have the blueprint data?”
“I do,” said Korzara. Before the fearsome visage of Sloth, she had almost forgotten her previous courage, but the thought of her plan ensured that her confidence remained. She reached into her pockets and pulled out the thumb drive, holding it between her fingers. “I have it right here.”
Sloth raised an eyebrow. He could clearly sense something was off, but he didn’t quite appear to know what. “Then give it to me,” he said, extending a holographic hand.
“Yeah. About that.” Before Sloth could even react, Korzara roughly threw the thumb drive against the ground. Then, before either of them could even blink, she brought a heavy armored foot down against the storage device, crushing it into thousands of tiny pieces.
“Deal’s off,” Korzara said. “You’re not getting a single blasted thing from me.”
For several moments, Sloth could only stare, wide-eyed and slack-jawed, at the bits of plastic and silicon that used to be the data drive. Slowly, his face morphed into a visage of pure wrath that sent a sharp chill down Korzara’s spine.
“...I see. In your infinite arrogance, you’ve decided to betray me,” Sloth sneered. “Then you will be rewarded exactly as a traitor deserves.”
As if the entire outpost had read Sloth’s mind, panels in the walls of the room opened to reveal a dozen different blaster cannons, all of them aimed squarely at Korzara.
“Do you have any last words, little Neopet?”
Korzara had to fight as hard as she could to push down the fear that had swelled within her chest. Truth be told, she was utterly terrified. But she couldn’t show it. Not now, not when her plan was so close to going off without a hitch.
And so she forced the corners of her lips upward, into a devious smirk.
“Yeah. Checkmate.”
“Wha—”
BOOOOOOOOOOOM!
All at once, the floors shook with the force of an earthquake, while an explosion ripped through the outpost’s artificial atmosphere, nearly deafening Korzara with its force. The computer monitors in the station flickered on and off, while an automated voice blared over the intercom.
“Alert! Alert! Reactor core has gone critical! Evacuate immediately! Repeat! Evacuate immediately!”
Sloth slammed his holographic hands against his desk, his eyes burning with a fury that outshone the flame of a thousand different suns.
“You! Explain! NOW!”
Despite facing the greatest and most terrifying villain in the galaxy, Korzara couldn’t help but laugh. “Ha! You think I wouldn’t notice that you’ve fallen onto just as many hard times as I have? Look at yourself. Trapped in this dingy old base, without any of the armies you once commanded.”
Sloth grit his teeth, and gave a vicious growl that caused his body to flicker and pulse.
“Without access to your previous supply lines, you couldn’t power your reactor core with Kreludite. You had to use much more unstable Neotonium instead. Not only that, you didn’t have the resources to give your core proper teleport shielding! All I had to do was send in a chunk of my own Neotonium, attach it to a mine, and set it to blow.”
“You... You... YOU...!” Sloth shouted incoherently as the entire facility rumbled and shook. “YOU HORRID LITTLE NEOPET! DESTROY HER! DESTROY HER NOW!”
“Unable to comply,” the automated voice of the outpost replied. “Weapons systems have been taken offline. All auxiliary power diverted to life support. Destruction of base from reactor meltdown imminent. Evacuate immediately! Repeat! Evacuate immediately!”
“Well, it’s been fun,” said Korzara. “But I gotta get out of here. See you around, Sloth. Or hopefully not.”
“No! NO! NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”
As Sloth’s howls echoed through the crumbling chamber, Korzara spared no time in making her escape. She sprinted as fast as her legs could carry her, bolting through the corridor as the outpost crumbled and shook beneath her feet.
When she made it back to her ship, Korzara’s heart was pounding so intensely that she could feel her veins throbbing in her head. She undocked from the outpost and shut the airlock, before sitting down at the flight deck and gripping the yoke as tightly as she could.
The thrusters of the Liberada soon engaged, but just as it began to lift off of the ground, another explosion ripped through her eardrums. The spacecraft shook with violent force as it was subsequently launched upwards, beyond the orbit of the asteroid.
Korzara fought wildly with the yoke to get her ship under control as it sped through the cosmos, towards the inner rings of the solar system. By the time she was able to stop her ship from spinning, she realized that she hadn’t slowed down. She moved to disengage the thrusters, only to find that the throttle of the ship wouldn’t move.
“Computer! What’s going on here!? Why can’t I slow down!?”
“Information. Thruster control has been disabled by damage to the engines,” the computer replied. “Unable to slow down. In their current state, thrusters will remain active until all fuel is spent.”
“What!? You’ve gotta be kidding! What am I supposed to—”
“Alert,” the computer interrupted. “Approaching the planet of Neopia at dangerous velocity. Estimated time to collision: T-minus fifteen seconds.”
“WHAT!?”
Korzara turned to look back at the viewscreen, and sure enough, she could see Neopia very clearly in the center, rapidly growing larger, growing closer. For the longest ten seconds of her life, she fought with the controls to steer the Liberada away, but by then it was already too late. The planet’s gravitational pull had only added to the ship’s existing momentum, causing it to plummet towards the earth. Multiple alerts beeped loudly as the atmosphere began burning away at the already-damaged hull, and the ship began to spin wildly as it fell.
“MAYDAY! MAYDAY! ABANDON SHIP! ABANDON—”
The Liberada crashed into the soil, and Korzara’s entire world was engulfed in an explosion of light and fire.
----------------
Korzara didn’t know how she was still alive.
When she crawled out of the remains of her starship, it was nothing more than a smoldering wreck, completely beyond any hope of repair. Even if she could salvage any of its machinery, she wasn’t sure what she would even do with it at this point.
And then there was the pain. The burning agony that engulfed her entire body as she dragged herself to her feet, and forced herself to walk one excruciating step at a time. She didn’t know where she was going. She didn’t know if she even had anywhere to go. But she refused to fall over, refused to succumb. If she lost consciousness, she wasn’t sure if she would ever wake up again.
Her thoughts turned to her life, and everything that had happened to bring her to this point. Ever since childhood, she had only ever known adversity. It was a constant throughout her every waking moment so far.
She was born on Scurvy Island, that much she knew. But who her parents were was a mystery, and she didn’t know if they’d died or simply abandoned her. Her formative years were spent begging on the streets, scrounging for scraps, and sleeping against the cold, hard cobblestone of the port.
It would seem only natural that she’d take to piracy, but it wasn’t really her choice. She was discovered by the leader of a large pirate ship, a Grarrl by the name of Captain Sharktooth. He promised Korzara food and shelter on their ship, as long as she worked to make herself ‘useful.’
How naive she was, to think that this was a fair deal. The only food she was given was deemed too inedible to give to anyone else. Maggot-infested hardtack and rotten gruel was the bulk of her diet. It was a wonder she ever found a way to stomach it all.
And the less that was said about the way that the other pirates treated her, the better.
Keep scrubbing! And ye’d best not leave a single SPOT on that deck, or I’ll make ye regret ever being BORN!
As the memory of Captain Sharktooth’s voice echoed in her mind, Korzara felt a strange wet sensation running down her good eye. She was...
...no, she wasn’t crying. She couldn’t be. She was better than that. She’d overcome so many hardships, survived against so many impossible odds, made a name for herself with nothing more than her own sweat and ingenuity.
As Korzara continued wandering aimlessly, she eventually crossed a hill. Her ragged footsteps brought her to its peak, where she stopped to see what was on the other side.
It was a city. A small kingdom of dirt roads, lush green trees, vibrant fruit orchards, and stained glass windows. In the center, a shining castle of brilliant green and white, standing before a horizon of great mountainous peaks.
“B... Brightvale?”
The pain finally became too much for her body to bear, and Korzara collapsed onto the hill’s grassy soil.
To be continued...
Chapter 6:
In any case, since I don't want to let my work go to waste, here's the full story. Let me know what you think, and if there are any changes you'd suggest making before the next regular NT issue, etc.
Chapter 1:
For nearly as long as she could remember being alive, Korzara had yearned for freedom.
Certainly, most people would say that they would prefer freedom to the alternative. But most people also didn’t realize what freedom truly was, or how much they were being denied it.
Sure, there were the usual aspiring tyrants of Neopia who tried to bring everyone under their heel. Sloth, Captain Scarblade, Lord Kass, all rightfully recognized as villains. But there were many other, more subtle tyrants that Neopians accepted, even loved.
Fyora was the worst of them, revered by all who spoke her name, despite the power that she commanded over others as the Queen of Faeries. But she was far from the only one. Everywhere you looked in Neopia, there were kings and generals and leaders. Even the pirates of Krawk Island had such positions, with captains and admirals who commanded their entire respective crews. And to say nothing of those weird, magic-less, wing-less faeries who called themselves ‘owners,’ a word that made Korzara’s skin crawl.
The point was, no matter who and what they were, there were people who spent their lives telling others what to do. There was nothing that Korzara found more repulsive than that. She lived her life for herself, and she wasn’t going to be limited by the rules and customs of anyone else.
It was precisely that desire that brought her to her current position. Most who saw her grey scales and deep scowl would call her a Pirate Techo, though she was quite unlike most of the pirates Neopia knew. Korzara was a space pirate, for it was in the lawless expanses of space that she found her true freedom.
...Freedom didn’t always pay well, mind. She had made quite a fortune for herself in her early career, even managing to snag a privateer’s license to exempt her from being charged with piracy by the Space Station authorities. But she had far too quickly thrown that opportunity away, as much as she tried to tell herself it was for a good reason.
Korzara sighed, and stared through the glass of her spaceship’s flight deck, trying to shake the woes of her past off her mind. Her reflection showed a scarred and permanently blinded right eye, while the pitch-black sheen of her Space Trooper armor matched the blackness of space just outside.
But trying to avoid dwelling on the past had only brought attention to the problems she was presently facing. Her heists had gotten progressively more and more dangerous and less rewarding, while the bounty on her name had skyrocketed. Fewer and fewer outposts in the Neopian solar system were safe for her to dock in, and she didn’t have the food stores to travel too far out into the Galactic Alpha Quadrant.
Thankfully, she had managed to snag a promising job just before she ran out of supplies. There was a shipment of valuable ore due to pass by a nearby trade route, and if Korzara could rob the cargo and carry it back to her employer, she’d have enough Neopoints to eat well for the next several months.
It was fortunate that she had one of the best-equipped starships in the entire Galaxy for such a task. Her spacecraft, the Liberada, was a Moltenore-class gunship with a grade 1.5 hyperdrive, medium range sensors, twin rotating mana cannons, thaumatic torpedos, phlogiston mines, a disjunction pulse cannon, a tractor beam projector, and a cloaking device. Thanks to Korzara’s modifications, it had traded its passenger capacity for an expanded one hundred metric tons of storage space, as well as state-of-the-art teleportation systems for loading and unloading cargo.
Sure enough, the sensor displays in the flight deck began to beep, alerting Korzara to a light freighter ship approaching her position at sub-light speed. Preliminary readings showed that it held seventy metric tons of cargo, and that the cargo had a... strange energy signature. She couldn’t quite figure out what it was, but it emitted a constant and intense magical radiation.
More importantly though, the freighter’s cargo load was small enough for her to fit the entire shipment within the Liberada’s hold.
Her eye narrowed as her ship’s computers locked on to her target. Through the viewscreen, she could see it. An Eyrie-class freighter, armed with a massive and powerful-looking turret gun on top. One look at it, however, and Korzara could tell that it was used mainly for intimidation, not for combat. To man such a weapon would require more crew than was typically seen on such a small cargo ship.
Moving into intercept, Korzara disabled her ship’s cloaking device. The freighter’s pilot was clearly astonished by her sudden appearance and radically swerved out of the way to avoid her — but not before her ship fired its disjunction cannon. A panel opened up on the top of Korzara’s ship, revealing a massive gun barrel. A blast of bright blue magic fired from the end of the barrel, and the freighter’s hull was enveloped in a burst of freezing energy.
Then, just as quickly as it had been struck, the freighter went silent. Against such a powerful disjunction, the reactive core of the cargo ship’s engine was separated into its base components, rendering it inert. It was now running entirely on auxiliary power, with its life support and communication systems still active.
Grabbing the yoke and steering closer, Korzara slowly moved herself towards the freighter, within teleport distance. She flipped on the radio and sent a message through her communicator, addressing the helpless freighter pilot.
“This is the gunship Liberada! Your engines have been taken offline! Stand down and prepare for boarding!”
Korzara grabbed her weapon, and slung it over her shoulder. It was a heavily modified Slime Gun, its slime tank converted into a massive battery, attached by a power cord to the blaster rifle holstered on the battery’s side. While the backpack battery made the weapon far more unwieldy to operate than most hand-size blasters, the massive increase in raw power it offered made it more than worth it, and it could go for up to three months without ever needing recharging. She flipped open a wrist panel on her armor, and signaled the teleporter systems of her ship to beam her away.
A familiar light enveloped Korzara, and the surroundings of her ship faded away as she jumped through subspace, into the awaiting freighter craft.
----------------
As usual, the crew of the freighter had offered no resistance. They were a small shipment team of three Grundos, all of them green except their leader, who was yellow with black spots. All Korzara had to do to earn their compliance was stick her blaster in their general direction.
And so, the captain of the ship brought her to the cargo hold, where the shipment was kept. The other two crew members followed, as Korzara insisted that they stay within her sights at all times.
As the thick metal cargo bay doors opened, Korzara stepped inside to observe her quarry, with the captain and his subordinates following close behind. Inside it were rows upon rows of thick metal crates of various sizes, with yellow warning signs written all across them.
A smile crossed Korzara’s face. “Bingo.”
She turned to face her hostages, and looked the captain straight in the eye. “Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to have my teleporter move your cargo onto my ship. You three are not going to move from this spot until everything is gone. Do we have an understanding?”
The three Grundos shared a look with each other. They all seemed to have the same question in mind, but it was the captain who spoke up.
“What about our engines? You’re not just going to leave us stranded here, are you?”
“Not my problem,” said Korzara. “You have escape pods, don’t you?”
The Grundo captain flinched away at Korzara’s response, as though he had been slapped in the face. He shared another glance with the other two, then turned to speak again.
“You’re not really going to take everything, are you? We can’t get paid if we have nothing to ship! We could even lose our jobs!”
“Again, not my problem,” Korzara bluntly replied. “Let me guess, next you’re going to try to grovel, and ask me to let you go out of the goodness of my heart.”
The captain flashed a sheepish grin. “...Maybe?”
“Well, tough luck! I have a job too. You have what I’m after, and I’m not about to let anything stand in my way!”
It was then that fate heard itself being tempted, and decided to respond in kind.
The sound of a sudden, shrill beep came from Korzara’s communicator. She flipped open the panel on her wrist, and her eye went wide at what she saw.
It was another ship, which had rapidly decloaked and was now hovering just outside both the freighter and the Liberada. Worse, it was a ship that Korzara recognized.
The air several meters away from Korzara began to glow with the characteristic light of a subspace signal. It quickly materialized into a corporeal form... a bipedal blue Acara of slender build, wearing bronze-colored plasteel armor, and carrying a distinctive blaster pistol in her hand. Tattered strips of striped cloth were affixed to her waist and shoulders, and they fluttered in the wind as the Acara displaced the air around her.
Korzara’s eye narrowed at the new arrival, meeting her with a glare that could pierce through the hull of a capital ship.
Her name was Ylana Skyfire, and it was a name that had gone down in infamy among space pirates.
“Drop your weapon,” she said, brandishing her blaster. “You’re coming with me.”
To be continued...
Certainly, most people would say that they would prefer freedom to the alternative. But most people also didn’t realize what freedom truly was, or how much they were being denied it.
Sure, there were the usual aspiring tyrants of Neopia who tried to bring everyone under their heel. Sloth, Captain Scarblade, Lord Kass, all rightfully recognized as villains. But there were many other, more subtle tyrants that Neopians accepted, even loved.
Fyora was the worst of them, revered by all who spoke her name, despite the power that she commanded over others as the Queen of Faeries. But she was far from the only one. Everywhere you looked in Neopia, there were kings and generals and leaders. Even the pirates of Krawk Island had such positions, with captains and admirals who commanded their entire respective crews. And to say nothing of those weird, magic-less, wing-less faeries who called themselves ‘owners,’ a word that made Korzara’s skin crawl.
The point was, no matter who and what they were, there were people who spent their lives telling others what to do. There was nothing that Korzara found more repulsive than that. She lived her life for herself, and she wasn’t going to be limited by the rules and customs of anyone else.
It was precisely that desire that brought her to her current position. Most who saw her grey scales and deep scowl would call her a Pirate Techo, though she was quite unlike most of the pirates Neopia knew. Korzara was a space pirate, for it was in the lawless expanses of space that she found her true freedom.
...Freedom didn’t always pay well, mind. She had made quite a fortune for herself in her early career, even managing to snag a privateer’s license to exempt her from being charged with piracy by the Space Station authorities. But she had far too quickly thrown that opportunity away, as much as she tried to tell herself it was for a good reason.
Korzara sighed, and stared through the glass of her spaceship’s flight deck, trying to shake the woes of her past off her mind. Her reflection showed a scarred and permanently blinded right eye, while the pitch-black sheen of her Space Trooper armor matched the blackness of space just outside.
But trying to avoid dwelling on the past had only brought attention to the problems she was presently facing. Her heists had gotten progressively more and more dangerous and less rewarding, while the bounty on her name had skyrocketed. Fewer and fewer outposts in the Neopian solar system were safe for her to dock in, and she didn’t have the food stores to travel too far out into the Galactic Alpha Quadrant.
Thankfully, she had managed to snag a promising job just before she ran out of supplies. There was a shipment of valuable ore due to pass by a nearby trade route, and if Korzara could rob the cargo and carry it back to her employer, she’d have enough Neopoints to eat well for the next several months.
It was fortunate that she had one of the best-equipped starships in the entire Galaxy for such a task. Her spacecraft, the Liberada, was a Moltenore-class gunship with a grade 1.5 hyperdrive, medium range sensors, twin rotating mana cannons, thaumatic torpedos, phlogiston mines, a disjunction pulse cannon, a tractor beam projector, and a cloaking device. Thanks to Korzara’s modifications, it had traded its passenger capacity for an expanded one hundred metric tons of storage space, as well as state-of-the-art teleportation systems for loading and unloading cargo.
Sure enough, the sensor displays in the flight deck began to beep, alerting Korzara to a light freighter ship approaching her position at sub-light speed. Preliminary readings showed that it held seventy metric tons of cargo, and that the cargo had a... strange energy signature. She couldn’t quite figure out what it was, but it emitted a constant and intense magical radiation.
More importantly though, the freighter’s cargo load was small enough for her to fit the entire shipment within the Liberada’s hold.
Her eye narrowed as her ship’s computers locked on to her target. Through the viewscreen, she could see it. An Eyrie-class freighter, armed with a massive and powerful-looking turret gun on top. One look at it, however, and Korzara could tell that it was used mainly for intimidation, not for combat. To man such a weapon would require more crew than was typically seen on such a small cargo ship.
Moving into intercept, Korzara disabled her ship’s cloaking device. The freighter’s pilot was clearly astonished by her sudden appearance and radically swerved out of the way to avoid her — but not before her ship fired its disjunction cannon. A panel opened up on the top of Korzara’s ship, revealing a massive gun barrel. A blast of bright blue magic fired from the end of the barrel, and the freighter’s hull was enveloped in a burst of freezing energy.
Then, just as quickly as it had been struck, the freighter went silent. Against such a powerful disjunction, the reactive core of the cargo ship’s engine was separated into its base components, rendering it inert. It was now running entirely on auxiliary power, with its life support and communication systems still active.
Grabbing the yoke and steering closer, Korzara slowly moved herself towards the freighter, within teleport distance. She flipped on the radio and sent a message through her communicator, addressing the helpless freighter pilot.
“This is the gunship Liberada! Your engines have been taken offline! Stand down and prepare for boarding!”
Korzara grabbed her weapon, and slung it over her shoulder. It was a heavily modified Slime Gun, its slime tank converted into a massive battery, attached by a power cord to the blaster rifle holstered on the battery’s side. While the backpack battery made the weapon far more unwieldy to operate than most hand-size blasters, the massive increase in raw power it offered made it more than worth it, and it could go for up to three months without ever needing recharging. She flipped open a wrist panel on her armor, and signaled the teleporter systems of her ship to beam her away.
A familiar light enveloped Korzara, and the surroundings of her ship faded away as she jumped through subspace, into the awaiting freighter craft.
----------------
As usual, the crew of the freighter had offered no resistance. They were a small shipment team of three Grundos, all of them green except their leader, who was yellow with black spots. All Korzara had to do to earn their compliance was stick her blaster in their general direction.
And so, the captain of the ship brought her to the cargo hold, where the shipment was kept. The other two crew members followed, as Korzara insisted that they stay within her sights at all times.
As the thick metal cargo bay doors opened, Korzara stepped inside to observe her quarry, with the captain and his subordinates following close behind. Inside it were rows upon rows of thick metal crates of various sizes, with yellow warning signs written all across them.
A smile crossed Korzara’s face. “Bingo.”
She turned to face her hostages, and looked the captain straight in the eye. “Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to have my teleporter move your cargo onto my ship. You three are not going to move from this spot until everything is gone. Do we have an understanding?”
The three Grundos shared a look with each other. They all seemed to have the same question in mind, but it was the captain who spoke up.
“What about our engines? You’re not just going to leave us stranded here, are you?”
“Not my problem,” said Korzara. “You have escape pods, don’t you?”
The Grundo captain flinched away at Korzara’s response, as though he had been slapped in the face. He shared another glance with the other two, then turned to speak again.
“You’re not really going to take everything, are you? We can’t get paid if we have nothing to ship! We could even lose our jobs!”
“Again, not my problem,” Korzara bluntly replied. “Let me guess, next you’re going to try to grovel, and ask me to let you go out of the goodness of my heart.”
The captain flashed a sheepish grin. “...Maybe?”
“Well, tough luck! I have a job too. You have what I’m after, and I’m not about to let anything stand in my way!”
It was then that fate heard itself being tempted, and decided to respond in kind.
The sound of a sudden, shrill beep came from Korzara’s communicator. She flipped open the panel on her wrist, and her eye went wide at what she saw.
It was another ship, which had rapidly decloaked and was now hovering just outside both the freighter and the Liberada. Worse, it was a ship that Korzara recognized.
The air several meters away from Korzara began to glow with the characteristic light of a subspace signal. It quickly materialized into a corporeal form... a bipedal blue Acara of slender build, wearing bronze-colored plasteel armor, and carrying a distinctive blaster pistol in her hand. Tattered strips of striped cloth were affixed to her waist and shoulders, and they fluttered in the wind as the Acara displaced the air around her.
Korzara’s eye narrowed at the new arrival, meeting her with a glare that could pierce through the hull of a capital ship.
Her name was Ylana Skyfire, and it was a name that had gone down in infamy among space pirates.
“Drop your weapon,” she said, brandishing her blaster. “You’re coming with me.”
To be continued...
Chapter 2
To say that tensions were high would have been an understatement.
Korzara had successfully boarded the freighter ship, and it had looked for a moment like she would finally complete a job without a hitch. Given her luck, it was only inevitable that it would all go horribly wrong.
Now, Korzara stood face-to-face with a rival outlaw. Ylana Skyfire, one of the most notorious of all space bounty hunters, now stood at the scene with her weapon pointed straight at Korzara’s face. The three Grundo crew members stood behind them both, trembling in fear as they watched the encounter play out before them.
“I should have known you would show your face,” Korzara said. “I’m surprised I didn’t recognize your smell from a lightyear away, you quisling.”
Ylana raised an eyebrow. “Quisling?” She hesitated for a moment, and Korzara could see the gears turning behind her eyes. “Oh, right. You mean when I worked for Sloth. You do know that was fifteen years ago, right?”
“You worked for a man who would put me in shackles if he ever got the chance,” Korzara growled. “You expect me to just forget about that?”
“No, actually,” Ylana deadpanned. “I expect you to come quietly, so I can claim the fifteen million neopoint bounty on your head.” She gestured with her pistol to the large blaster slung across Korzara’s back. “Now take that thing off before I zap you into a heap of molten slag. If I see your hand move even a little bit towards that trigger, you’re as good as dead.”
Korzara glowered, but otherwise did not say a word. The built-in battery backpack made her weapon much too unwieldy to draw quickly. If she tried to pull the trigger, she would likely end up as a smear of black soot on the floor.
Slowly, Korzara began to pry off the weapon’s shoulder straps, gently lowering it to the floor.
“That’s more like it,” said Ylana. She lowered her pistol, and gave Korzara an infuriating smirk. “And now that I have you exactly where I want you—”
Ylana didn’t get to finish her sentence. As she lowered her guard, however briefly, Korzara immediately took advantage of the opening. She grabbed the backpack off of the floor, and in one single motion, threw it with as much force as she could muster towards Ylana.
It was a risky gambit, but it proved immediately to be a success. Korzara’s back-mounted blaster soared through the air, the battery pack striking Ylana square in the center of the head with an audible clonk!
The impact sent her flying backwards, landing against the wall. She grimaced as she stood up, and rubbed her head right where the impact had struck. “Why, you...”
Ylana reached for her pistol, but this time Korzara was prepared. She ducked and rolled as a burst of energy from Ylana’s blaster shot straight past her, leaving the scent of burning air across her nostril. Korzara tucked herself into a roll, grabbing her own backpack and slinging it over her shoulder as she carried her momentum forward.
“N-no! Stop!” The Grundo captain begged. “You can’t fight here!”
Korzara ignored the captain’s pleas, and stood to her feet. Turning around to face Ylana, she let loose a blast of searing green energy from her barrel. Ylana swiftly dodged to the side, and the blast impacted harmlessly against one of the metal crates.
Everything fell silent. Korzara and her would-be captor simply stared at each other, breaths heavy as each of them aimed their weapons at the other’s head. Her hand twitched as she carefully watched Ylana’s trigger finger, and Ylana did the same.
They never had a chance to resolve their standoff. Before either of them could fire their weapon, one of the nearby crates began to glow, illuminating the cargo hold with searing red.
A cacophonous explosion rocked the cargo hold, nearly knocking Korzara off her feet. When her vision adjusted, she saw the three Grundo crew members running around in panicked circles. A klaxon blared, and an automated alert sounded across the freighter ship’s interior.
“Warning! Warning! Unstable reaction in cargo hold detected! Evacuate immediately! Repeat! Evacuate immediately!”
Another smaller crate began to glow bright red, and Korzara winced as an explosion rocked the cargo hold, forcing her to shield her eye with an arm. Though the blast wasn’t powerful enough to hurt her, she could see several other crates beginning to glow with the same volatile energy.
She turned towards the Grundo captain, glaring daggers with her good eye and brandishing her weapon. “You! Explain!”
The captain flinched, but did not offer any resistance. “O-our cargo is a shipment of highly unstable Neotonium ore! If energy weapons are fired anywhere near them, it’ll...!”
Another explosion rocked the cargo bay, and this time it was a little bit too close, as its smoke sent Korzara into a brief fit of coughing. Another alert shouted across the ship’s speakers.
“Alert! Alert! Destruction of spacecraft imminent! Seek escape pods immediately!”
“We’ve gotta get out of here!” said one of the Grundo crewman. He and the other two rapidly fled from the cargo hold, out of sight. Korzara turned towards Ylana, who stared at her with an exasperated, half-lidded stare.
“Ugh. Well, so much for the bounty. I don’t want to be anywhere near this place when it blows up.” She opened a panel on her wrist, and was enveloped by light as she teleported away.
Not wanting to waste any time, Korzara followed suit, and the Liberada quickly beamed her aboard. She grabbed the yoke of her ship and hit the thrusters to maximum, moving as fast as she could away from the site of the expected blast.
Not long after, her sensors detected a massive explosion in the direction she had come from. Three escape pods had also been jettisoned, no doubt carrying the crew, while Ylana’s ship had long since made the jump to hyperspace.
It was a small blessing that Ylana didn’t seem to have pursued her. Maybe she was too preoccupied with escaping, or maybe she decided the bounty wasn’t worth the trouble. Either way, Korzara had long since learned to be grateful for such things.
Once she was in the clear, Korzara let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding. With the adrenaline rush having faded, she engaged the cloaking device and left the ship to idle, standing up to assess her situation.
A quick stretch of her arms, legs, and tail confirmed she was uninjured, which was good. With how little money she had, it would have gone very badly if she was seriously hurt. She gave a quick glance around the flight deck for any other signs of damage, and anything else that might be unusual.
A soft thunk crossed Korzara’s ears as she felt her foot tap against an object on the floor. She looked down, and saw a tiny metal crate beneath her. It was the same as the many other crates that were aboard the freighter ship, but this one was small enough that she could easily carry it in her arms.
“Must’ve been teleported along with me,” Korzara muttered to herself. Thankfully, the neotonium ore it carried didn’t seem to have gone critical like the rest of the shipment.
Still... this left her in a predicament. Her client certainly wouldn’t accept a single tiny crate, which meant the job was a bust. Given how temperamental said client was, it would probably be best not to show her face around him again.
A sigh escaped her lips. “So that’s another Outer Belt outpost I won’t be welcome in. What now?”
----------------
When all else failed, there was one place Korzara could go back to. It was a space station — not the Space Station, but a much smaller one located on the Outer Belt. A run-down and seedy establishment, quite far out of the way of most trade routes, but it had proven to be a decently popular stop among the solar system’s underworld.
After docking at the station (and making sure her ship’s anti-theft system was active), Korzara made her way through the dirty halls and unkempt bazaar spaces, steadily making her way towards her destination.
Deep within the station was a single, run-down smoothie bar. A dingy old establishment with dilapidated seats and perpetually-flickering overhead lights. Many would find such a place disgusting, but to Korzara, it was a beacon of familiarity and comfort in a hostile universe.
The owner of the smoothie bar, a large mutant Grundo named Gnib, was tending to a smoothie machine, pouring a thick yellow sludge into a cup and passing it to a grimy-looking Hissi.
Gnib’s eyes lit up as he saw Korzara approach. “Well fry me ears and serve ‘em with a side o’ chips! Been quite a while since I saw you around. ‘Ow’ve you been?”
“Terrible,” Korzara muttered. She sat down on the center stool at the countertop, leading her head against her elbow. “Gimme the usual. I need some sweets to take my mind off of things.”
Gnib’s brow furrowed, and his lips creased into a frown. “That bad, eh? Hold on right there.” He walked over to the smoothie machine, and poured a thick black sludge into a plastic cup, before sliding it down the counter to Korzara. “There you go! One large voidberry squirp, with extra syrup. Don’t worry about payin’, it’s on the ‘ouse.”
Despite how badly things had gone, and despite her rough and bitter exterior, Korzara couldn’t help but crack a smile. Across her entire life, Gnib was the one person she knew she could always trust. “Thanks Gnib. You’re too kind.”
Korzara sipped through the straw, letting the impossibly sweet taste of hyper-processed sugar and artificial flavors wash away her stress.
“So, what brings a Neopet like you over to a dingy old place like this? Given the size o’ the bounty on your ‘ead lately, I’d imagine you’d be runnin’ a criminal empire by now.”
Korzara jolted upright from her slouch, and shot Gnib a glare. “Hey! Ix-nay on the ounty-bay! And you know I hate being called that!”
For a moment, Gnib looked confused. He scratched the back of his head, pushing his elongated ears aside. “What are you... Ah, right. ‘Pologies, I’d forgotten you ‘ave a weird problem with bein’ called a Neopet.”
“Because I’m not a pet! I’m my own person!”
“Can’t say I understand what you’re on about, but fair enough,” Gnib said with a shrug. “Anyway, I ‘eard you’d been runnin’ into some trouble lately? Care to talk about it?”
Korzara sighed. She might as well. If there was one person in the entire galaxy she could open up to, it would be Gnib. And so she explained her situation. Her rapidly draining bank account, her heist gone wrong, and her dwindling supplies of food and fuel. Gnib listened intently to all of it, sympathy apparent in his deep red eyes.
“Surprised you’re ’aving such difficulty,” said Gnib. “The way you used to talk, you made bein’ a tea leaf out to be a lucrative business.”
“Being a thief used to be a lucrative business,” said Korzara. “But you know how my you-know-what recently skyrocketed?”
“You mean your bounty?”
Korzara shot Gnib a wordless glare.
“...Right, sorry. Won’t mention it again.”
“Anyway,” said Korzara, “because of that, it’s not safe for me to look for work in most places. I can’t even show my face in half the solar system anymore.”
“Sorry to ‘ear about that,” said Gnib. “Anything I can do to ‘elp?”
“I was wondering if you knew of any jobs available for me around here, actually.”
For a moment, Gnib hesitated, deep in thought. “Hmm. No, can’t say I ‘ave anything.”
“Are you sure? Please, Gnib, I need this.”
“Well... actually, ‘ang on a moment,” said Gnib. “I think I do ‘ave somethin’ for you. I, erm, don’t know if you’d want to take this job, though.”
“Gnib, I’m kind of desperate here,” said Korzara. “Whatever it is, it has to be better than nothing.”
“Well, that’s just the thing,” Gnib replied. “It’s an anonymous job post I received over the radio, askin’ specifically for your name. They want you to meet somewhere deep in the Asteroid Belt, far from any safe travel routes. That’s mighty suspicious if you ask me.”
The problem with taking such a job became immediately apparent. “You’re worried I’d be flying right into a trap.”
“Well, I’m no expert in the matter. But it sure sounds like it, don’t it?”
Korzara paused for a moment. It was a risk. Even if it wasn’t a trap, clients who asked to remain anonymous in job postings were notoriously unreliable, and had a habit of stiffing anyone they hired.
Still... Korzara didn’t have a whole lot of options at this point. More and more, it was looking like the choice was either take the job, or starve.
“You know what?” she said. “Maybe it is. But I’ll do it anyway. What are the coordinates?”
To be continued...
Korzara had successfully boarded the freighter ship, and it had looked for a moment like she would finally complete a job without a hitch. Given her luck, it was only inevitable that it would all go horribly wrong.
Now, Korzara stood face-to-face with a rival outlaw. Ylana Skyfire, one of the most notorious of all space bounty hunters, now stood at the scene with her weapon pointed straight at Korzara’s face. The three Grundo crew members stood behind them both, trembling in fear as they watched the encounter play out before them.
“I should have known you would show your face,” Korzara said. “I’m surprised I didn’t recognize your smell from a lightyear away, you quisling.”
Ylana raised an eyebrow. “Quisling?” She hesitated for a moment, and Korzara could see the gears turning behind her eyes. “Oh, right. You mean when I worked for Sloth. You do know that was fifteen years ago, right?”
“You worked for a man who would put me in shackles if he ever got the chance,” Korzara growled. “You expect me to just forget about that?”
“No, actually,” Ylana deadpanned. “I expect you to come quietly, so I can claim the fifteen million neopoint bounty on your head.” She gestured with her pistol to the large blaster slung across Korzara’s back. “Now take that thing off before I zap you into a heap of molten slag. If I see your hand move even a little bit towards that trigger, you’re as good as dead.”
Korzara glowered, but otherwise did not say a word. The built-in battery backpack made her weapon much too unwieldy to draw quickly. If she tried to pull the trigger, she would likely end up as a smear of black soot on the floor.
Slowly, Korzara began to pry off the weapon’s shoulder straps, gently lowering it to the floor.
“That’s more like it,” said Ylana. She lowered her pistol, and gave Korzara an infuriating smirk. “And now that I have you exactly where I want you—”
Ylana didn’t get to finish her sentence. As she lowered her guard, however briefly, Korzara immediately took advantage of the opening. She grabbed the backpack off of the floor, and in one single motion, threw it with as much force as she could muster towards Ylana.
It was a risky gambit, but it proved immediately to be a success. Korzara’s back-mounted blaster soared through the air, the battery pack striking Ylana square in the center of the head with an audible clonk!
The impact sent her flying backwards, landing against the wall. She grimaced as she stood up, and rubbed her head right where the impact had struck. “Why, you...”
Ylana reached for her pistol, but this time Korzara was prepared. She ducked and rolled as a burst of energy from Ylana’s blaster shot straight past her, leaving the scent of burning air across her nostril. Korzara tucked herself into a roll, grabbing her own backpack and slinging it over her shoulder as she carried her momentum forward.
“N-no! Stop!” The Grundo captain begged. “You can’t fight here!”
Korzara ignored the captain’s pleas, and stood to her feet. Turning around to face Ylana, she let loose a blast of searing green energy from her barrel. Ylana swiftly dodged to the side, and the blast impacted harmlessly against one of the metal crates.
Everything fell silent. Korzara and her would-be captor simply stared at each other, breaths heavy as each of them aimed their weapons at the other’s head. Her hand twitched as she carefully watched Ylana’s trigger finger, and Ylana did the same.
They never had a chance to resolve their standoff. Before either of them could fire their weapon, one of the nearby crates began to glow, illuminating the cargo hold with searing red.
A cacophonous explosion rocked the cargo hold, nearly knocking Korzara off her feet. When her vision adjusted, she saw the three Grundo crew members running around in panicked circles. A klaxon blared, and an automated alert sounded across the freighter ship’s interior.
“Warning! Warning! Unstable reaction in cargo hold detected! Evacuate immediately! Repeat! Evacuate immediately!”
Another smaller crate began to glow bright red, and Korzara winced as an explosion rocked the cargo hold, forcing her to shield her eye with an arm. Though the blast wasn’t powerful enough to hurt her, she could see several other crates beginning to glow with the same volatile energy.
She turned towards the Grundo captain, glaring daggers with her good eye and brandishing her weapon. “You! Explain!”
The captain flinched, but did not offer any resistance. “O-our cargo is a shipment of highly unstable Neotonium ore! If energy weapons are fired anywhere near them, it’ll...!”
Another explosion rocked the cargo bay, and this time it was a little bit too close, as its smoke sent Korzara into a brief fit of coughing. Another alert shouted across the ship’s speakers.
“Alert! Alert! Destruction of spacecraft imminent! Seek escape pods immediately!”
“We’ve gotta get out of here!” said one of the Grundo crewman. He and the other two rapidly fled from the cargo hold, out of sight. Korzara turned towards Ylana, who stared at her with an exasperated, half-lidded stare.
“Ugh. Well, so much for the bounty. I don’t want to be anywhere near this place when it blows up.” She opened a panel on her wrist, and was enveloped by light as she teleported away.
Not wanting to waste any time, Korzara followed suit, and the Liberada quickly beamed her aboard. She grabbed the yoke of her ship and hit the thrusters to maximum, moving as fast as she could away from the site of the expected blast.
Not long after, her sensors detected a massive explosion in the direction she had come from. Three escape pods had also been jettisoned, no doubt carrying the crew, while Ylana’s ship had long since made the jump to hyperspace.
It was a small blessing that Ylana didn’t seem to have pursued her. Maybe she was too preoccupied with escaping, or maybe she decided the bounty wasn’t worth the trouble. Either way, Korzara had long since learned to be grateful for such things.
Once she was in the clear, Korzara let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding. With the adrenaline rush having faded, she engaged the cloaking device and left the ship to idle, standing up to assess her situation.
A quick stretch of her arms, legs, and tail confirmed she was uninjured, which was good. With how little money she had, it would have gone very badly if she was seriously hurt. She gave a quick glance around the flight deck for any other signs of damage, and anything else that might be unusual.
A soft thunk crossed Korzara’s ears as she felt her foot tap against an object on the floor. She looked down, and saw a tiny metal crate beneath her. It was the same as the many other crates that were aboard the freighter ship, but this one was small enough that she could easily carry it in her arms.
“Must’ve been teleported along with me,” Korzara muttered to herself. Thankfully, the neotonium ore it carried didn’t seem to have gone critical like the rest of the shipment.
Still... this left her in a predicament. Her client certainly wouldn’t accept a single tiny crate, which meant the job was a bust. Given how temperamental said client was, it would probably be best not to show her face around him again.
A sigh escaped her lips. “So that’s another Outer Belt outpost I won’t be welcome in. What now?”
----------------
When all else failed, there was one place Korzara could go back to. It was a space station — not the Space Station, but a much smaller one located on the Outer Belt. A run-down and seedy establishment, quite far out of the way of most trade routes, but it had proven to be a decently popular stop among the solar system’s underworld.
After docking at the station (and making sure her ship’s anti-theft system was active), Korzara made her way through the dirty halls and unkempt bazaar spaces, steadily making her way towards her destination.
Deep within the station was a single, run-down smoothie bar. A dingy old establishment with dilapidated seats and perpetually-flickering overhead lights. Many would find such a place disgusting, but to Korzara, it was a beacon of familiarity and comfort in a hostile universe.
The owner of the smoothie bar, a large mutant Grundo named Gnib, was tending to a smoothie machine, pouring a thick yellow sludge into a cup and passing it to a grimy-looking Hissi.
Gnib’s eyes lit up as he saw Korzara approach. “Well fry me ears and serve ‘em with a side o’ chips! Been quite a while since I saw you around. ‘Ow’ve you been?”
“Terrible,” Korzara muttered. She sat down on the center stool at the countertop, leading her head against her elbow. “Gimme the usual. I need some sweets to take my mind off of things.”
Gnib’s brow furrowed, and his lips creased into a frown. “That bad, eh? Hold on right there.” He walked over to the smoothie machine, and poured a thick black sludge into a plastic cup, before sliding it down the counter to Korzara. “There you go! One large voidberry squirp, with extra syrup. Don’t worry about payin’, it’s on the ‘ouse.”
Despite how badly things had gone, and despite her rough and bitter exterior, Korzara couldn’t help but crack a smile. Across her entire life, Gnib was the one person she knew she could always trust. “Thanks Gnib. You’re too kind.”
Korzara sipped through the straw, letting the impossibly sweet taste of hyper-processed sugar and artificial flavors wash away her stress.
“So, what brings a Neopet like you over to a dingy old place like this? Given the size o’ the bounty on your ‘ead lately, I’d imagine you’d be runnin’ a criminal empire by now.”
Korzara jolted upright from her slouch, and shot Gnib a glare. “Hey! Ix-nay on the ounty-bay! And you know I hate being called that!”
For a moment, Gnib looked confused. He scratched the back of his head, pushing his elongated ears aside. “What are you... Ah, right. ‘Pologies, I’d forgotten you ‘ave a weird problem with bein’ called a Neopet.”
“Because I’m not a pet! I’m my own person!”
“Can’t say I understand what you’re on about, but fair enough,” Gnib said with a shrug. “Anyway, I ‘eard you’d been runnin’ into some trouble lately? Care to talk about it?”
Korzara sighed. She might as well. If there was one person in the entire galaxy she could open up to, it would be Gnib. And so she explained her situation. Her rapidly draining bank account, her heist gone wrong, and her dwindling supplies of food and fuel. Gnib listened intently to all of it, sympathy apparent in his deep red eyes.
“Surprised you’re ’aving such difficulty,” said Gnib. “The way you used to talk, you made bein’ a tea leaf out to be a lucrative business.”
“Being a thief used to be a lucrative business,” said Korzara. “But you know how my you-know-what recently skyrocketed?”
“You mean your bounty?”
Korzara shot Gnib a wordless glare.
“...Right, sorry. Won’t mention it again.”
“Anyway,” said Korzara, “because of that, it’s not safe for me to look for work in most places. I can’t even show my face in half the solar system anymore.”
“Sorry to ‘ear about that,” said Gnib. “Anything I can do to ‘elp?”
“I was wondering if you knew of any jobs available for me around here, actually.”
For a moment, Gnib hesitated, deep in thought. “Hmm. No, can’t say I ‘ave anything.”
“Are you sure? Please, Gnib, I need this.”
“Well... actually, ‘ang on a moment,” said Gnib. “I think I do ‘ave somethin’ for you. I, erm, don’t know if you’d want to take this job, though.”
“Gnib, I’m kind of desperate here,” said Korzara. “Whatever it is, it has to be better than nothing.”
“Well, that’s just the thing,” Gnib replied. “It’s an anonymous job post I received over the radio, askin’ specifically for your name. They want you to meet somewhere deep in the Asteroid Belt, far from any safe travel routes. That’s mighty suspicious if you ask me.”
The problem with taking such a job became immediately apparent. “You’re worried I’d be flying right into a trap.”
“Well, I’m no expert in the matter. But it sure sounds like it, don’t it?”
Korzara paused for a moment. It was a risk. Even if it wasn’t a trap, clients who asked to remain anonymous in job postings were notoriously unreliable, and had a habit of stiffing anyone they hired.
Still... Korzara didn’t have a whole lot of options at this point. More and more, it was looking like the choice was either take the job, or starve.
“You know what?” she said. “Maybe it is. But I’ll do it anyway. What are the coordinates?”
To be continued...
Chapter 3:
Fifteen years ago...
Korzara coughed nervously. Ever since she had been called to the Resistance headquarters, she had felt an unscratched itch just beneath her scales. It was a subtle but irritating twinge of unease, one that ran down the length of her back and crawled to the end of her tail.
Being hired as a privateer for the Resistance was the first big break she’d ever had. She could do what she was good at — robbing supply ships blind — and not risk getting in trouble with Kreludan or Space Station authorities. It was the most freedom she’d ever had, and it was all in the service of defeating the dread Doctor Sloth, who embodied the very antithesis of freedom.
It also helped that the pay was good, too. Not that Korzara was doing it for the money, since Sloth could probably offer an even higher salary. But it certainly didn’t hurt.
And that made it all the more worrying that Commander Valka was so upset with her, and made it clear when he demanded she report to him in person. She wasn’t sure what it was that she had done wrong, but the anger in his voice was enough to pierce through even the sheer silence of space.
Following the winding paths of secret corridors and walkways through the Space Station, eventually Korzara found her way to the well-concealed door to the Resistance headquarters. She had to fight to keep herself from wincing as the retinal scanner projected a beam of red light right into her eye. It was hard to explain why it bothered her so much, but the very concept behind a retinal scanner felt… invasive, for lack of a better word.
The mechanical doors swung open, and Korzara was immediately faced with the sight of the Resistance headquarters, a metallic room bathed in green light and the hum of the computer monitors and holographic displays.
A tall green Ixi, dressed in shielded plasteel armor, turned to face her. If the Commander’s shouting voice transmission from earlier that day made him seem angry, the quiet wrinkle on his forehead now made him furious. It was a much more subtle anger, betrayed only by the hint of embers burning beneath his eyes, and the gentle twitch of his lips as they folded into a frown.
When Valka spoke, his voice was steady. Like the still air in the eye of a hurricane.
“You have a lot of explaining to do.”
Korzara gulped. “Commander, I’m afraid I don’t know what—”
“I did not say you could speak,” Valka interrupted. “Tell me, Privateer Korzara, do you recall what it is that I hired you to do?”
Korzara hesitated. It felt like a trick question. “To raid Sloth’s cargo ships. To disrupt his supply lines, by any means necessary.” She paused again, her mind desperately trying to puzzle out what was happening. “Just what are you trying to get at here, Commander? That’s exactly what I’ve been doing.”
“No. It isn’t. We asked you specifically to raid Sloths’s cargo ships.” Valka’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “And at zero six hundred hours today, Scout gave us a report to the contrary. Your vessel, the Liberada, had been spotted raiding a civilian cargo ship.”
Korzara bristled. On some level, she knew this might happen, yet she still found herself desperately grasping for any means to defend herself. “Now hold on just a minute here! Our deal was that you’d pardon me for any crimes of piracy I’d committed!”
Valka pressed his fingertips to his temples, and groaned. “No, I meant the crimes that you committed before you joined the Resistance.”
“You gave me a license for space piracy!” Korzara shot back. “Why would you even give me permission to do something if you’re just going to chew me out for it anyway!?”
“Because you’re missing the point!”
Valka’s sudden shouting made Korzara’s heart jump, and she instinctively backed away.
“We are fighting this war to protect the innocent! You can’t be robbing the very same innocents we are meant to protect!”
Korzara felt her fists clench tightly, her arms held straight against her sides. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she sniped, “I thought we were fighting this war for freedom. My bad, turns out this whole time I've been fighting for the right to be a useless goody two-shoes.”
It was then that something behind Commander Valka’s eyes visibly snapped.
“Out,” he spoke. His voice was calm, but it hit with the force of a falling star.
“What?”
“Turn in your license and get out,” Valka growled. “You’re through.”
“Wait! Hold on, you can’t!”
“There will be no arguments. Turn in your license or I’ll have you thrown in a holding cell. The Resistance is no place for a pirate.”
----------------
“Alert. Alert. Approaching Asteroid Belt. Manual ship controls required to proceed.”
The droning voice of her ship’s on-board computer system jolted Korzara awake, sending her dream of her past tumbling into oblivion. She had set the Liberada on autopilot while she took the time to sleep in the on-board bunk. As usual, it wasn’t anywhere close to a full night’s sleep — as much as a ‘night’ even meant anything in but space — but it did give her just enough rest to ensure she wouldn’t be falling asleep at the wheel.
Korzara climbed out of her bed, then grabbed a canned energy drink from the small bedside desk. It had been left open from the morning prior, which was made readily apparent by its warm, flat taste as she chugged what remained of it.
“Warning. Warning. Approaching Asteroid Belt. Autopilot thrusters disengaging. Assume manual control immediately.”
“Yeah, yeah, I heard you,” Korzara complained. Silently grumbling to herself, she donned her armor and climbed up the ladder hanging to the side of her room. The hatch on the ceiling opened, and she wearily crawled through it, entering the flight deck of her ship.
The ship’s autopilot thrusters slowed down, and eventually brought the Liberada to a halt as Korzara took her seat at the controls. There was a subtle whirr as a panel in the front of the flight deck slid open, and the ship’s steering yoke popped out and unfolded.
With a yawn, Korzara rubbed her one good eye. Through the viewscreen she could see a massive, dense field of asteroids in front of her. Passing through such a field would normally pose no issue, but the coordinates Gnib had given her indicated that the contact point was within the Asteroid Belt. That would require much more careful navigation, and a lesser pilot could easily be smashed upon the asteroid they were attempting to land on.
Thankfully, Korzara was not a lesser pilot. After checking and re-checking her destination coordinates, and making sure that all of her navigation systems were properly calibrated, she grabbed the yoke and engaged the Liberada’s thrusters.
What followed was a tense, but brief, excursion through the densest segment of the Asteroid Belt. After narrowly dodging one of the smaller obstacles, she was eventually brought face-to-face with her destination.
To the undiscerning eye, it looked like no more than a large minor planet, with a mean radius of two hundred kilometers. But the sensor arrays on Korzara’s ship rapidly picked up on something else.
It was an outpost located on the Asteroid’s surface, with a docking station for small and medium-sized spacecraft and a fully-functioning life support system. Notably, it also had a strange energy signature at its core... a constant magical radiation that Korzara could have sworn she had seen before.
“Bingo,” Korzara muttered to herself. Carefully maneuvering the Liberada, she eventually managed to land on the surface of the asteroid, the airlock slowly joining and locking in place with the outpost’s docking station.
Who had built such an outpost, and for what purpose, she could only begin to imagine. But a job was a job, and Korzara was desperate. She grabbed her blaster, and slung its energy pack across her back, and set out to disembark.
As the doors of the airlock pulled open, Korzara stepped out, past the boundaries of her ship and into the outpost proper. Inside was a dark, dank, slimy corridor, deathly silent save for the sound of her own footsteps against the metallic floor, and the nearly-inaudible hum of some unknown machinery.
A sharp tingle of dread ran up Korzara’s spine, her every single footstep measured and exact. She kept her hand close to the blaster barrel holstered to her backpack, ready to draw her weapon at a moment’s notice.
Eventually, the corridor came to an end. What was there was a single room, filled with a number of monitors and sickly green holographic screen displays, though their presence did little to illuminate the chamber. At the end was a single desk, sparsely decorated, save for a single swivel chair on the other end. The chair was massive and imposing, with an angular black leather seat that stood imposingly high — meaning that whoever sat in such a grandiose seat must have been nearly two meters tall.
Suddenly, Korzara had the sickening feeling that taking this job was a terrible, terrible idea. And her fears were instantly validated when the chair swiveled around to face her.
At first, there appeared to be no one sitting on it, but then there was a sudden thrum, and instantly a holographic image appeared before her, showing an image that every spacefaring Neopian both knew and feared. Black cloak, piercing red eyes, yellow teeth, sickly green skin…
“You! But… but how!?”
The hologram grinned. “To borrow an old phrase,” said Doctor Sloth, “reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated.”
To be continued...
Korzara coughed nervously. Ever since she had been called to the Resistance headquarters, she had felt an unscratched itch just beneath her scales. It was a subtle but irritating twinge of unease, one that ran down the length of her back and crawled to the end of her tail.
Being hired as a privateer for the Resistance was the first big break she’d ever had. She could do what she was good at — robbing supply ships blind — and not risk getting in trouble with Kreludan or Space Station authorities. It was the most freedom she’d ever had, and it was all in the service of defeating the dread Doctor Sloth, who embodied the very antithesis of freedom.
It also helped that the pay was good, too. Not that Korzara was doing it for the money, since Sloth could probably offer an even higher salary. But it certainly didn’t hurt.
And that made it all the more worrying that Commander Valka was so upset with her, and made it clear when he demanded she report to him in person. She wasn’t sure what it was that she had done wrong, but the anger in his voice was enough to pierce through even the sheer silence of space.
Following the winding paths of secret corridors and walkways through the Space Station, eventually Korzara found her way to the well-concealed door to the Resistance headquarters. She had to fight to keep herself from wincing as the retinal scanner projected a beam of red light right into her eye. It was hard to explain why it bothered her so much, but the very concept behind a retinal scanner felt… invasive, for lack of a better word.
The mechanical doors swung open, and Korzara was immediately faced with the sight of the Resistance headquarters, a metallic room bathed in green light and the hum of the computer monitors and holographic displays.
A tall green Ixi, dressed in shielded plasteel armor, turned to face her. If the Commander’s shouting voice transmission from earlier that day made him seem angry, the quiet wrinkle on his forehead now made him furious. It was a much more subtle anger, betrayed only by the hint of embers burning beneath his eyes, and the gentle twitch of his lips as they folded into a frown.
When Valka spoke, his voice was steady. Like the still air in the eye of a hurricane.
“You have a lot of explaining to do.”
Korzara gulped. “Commander, I’m afraid I don’t know what—”
“I did not say you could speak,” Valka interrupted. “Tell me, Privateer Korzara, do you recall what it is that I hired you to do?”
Korzara hesitated. It felt like a trick question. “To raid Sloth’s cargo ships. To disrupt his supply lines, by any means necessary.” She paused again, her mind desperately trying to puzzle out what was happening. “Just what are you trying to get at here, Commander? That’s exactly what I’ve been doing.”
“No. It isn’t. We asked you specifically to raid Sloths’s cargo ships.” Valka’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “And at zero six hundred hours today, Scout gave us a report to the contrary. Your vessel, the Liberada, had been spotted raiding a civilian cargo ship.”
Korzara bristled. On some level, she knew this might happen, yet she still found herself desperately grasping for any means to defend herself. “Now hold on just a minute here! Our deal was that you’d pardon me for any crimes of piracy I’d committed!”
Valka pressed his fingertips to his temples, and groaned. “No, I meant the crimes that you committed before you joined the Resistance.”
“You gave me a license for space piracy!” Korzara shot back. “Why would you even give me permission to do something if you’re just going to chew me out for it anyway!?”
“Because you’re missing the point!”
Valka’s sudden shouting made Korzara’s heart jump, and she instinctively backed away.
“We are fighting this war to protect the innocent! You can’t be robbing the very same innocents we are meant to protect!”
Korzara felt her fists clench tightly, her arms held straight against her sides. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she sniped, “I thought we were fighting this war for freedom. My bad, turns out this whole time I've been fighting for the right to be a useless goody two-shoes.”
It was then that something behind Commander Valka’s eyes visibly snapped.
“Out,” he spoke. His voice was calm, but it hit with the force of a falling star.
“What?”
“Turn in your license and get out,” Valka growled. “You’re through.”
“Wait! Hold on, you can’t!”
“There will be no arguments. Turn in your license or I’ll have you thrown in a holding cell. The Resistance is no place for a pirate.”
----------------
“Alert. Alert. Approaching Asteroid Belt. Manual ship controls required to proceed.”
The droning voice of her ship’s on-board computer system jolted Korzara awake, sending her dream of her past tumbling into oblivion. She had set the Liberada on autopilot while she took the time to sleep in the on-board bunk. As usual, it wasn’t anywhere close to a full night’s sleep — as much as a ‘night’ even meant anything in but space — but it did give her just enough rest to ensure she wouldn’t be falling asleep at the wheel.
Korzara climbed out of her bed, then grabbed a canned energy drink from the small bedside desk. It had been left open from the morning prior, which was made readily apparent by its warm, flat taste as she chugged what remained of it.
“Warning. Warning. Approaching Asteroid Belt. Autopilot thrusters disengaging. Assume manual control immediately.”
“Yeah, yeah, I heard you,” Korzara complained. Silently grumbling to herself, she donned her armor and climbed up the ladder hanging to the side of her room. The hatch on the ceiling opened, and she wearily crawled through it, entering the flight deck of her ship.
The ship’s autopilot thrusters slowed down, and eventually brought the Liberada to a halt as Korzara took her seat at the controls. There was a subtle whirr as a panel in the front of the flight deck slid open, and the ship’s steering yoke popped out and unfolded.
With a yawn, Korzara rubbed her one good eye. Through the viewscreen she could see a massive, dense field of asteroids in front of her. Passing through such a field would normally pose no issue, but the coordinates Gnib had given her indicated that the contact point was within the Asteroid Belt. That would require much more careful navigation, and a lesser pilot could easily be smashed upon the asteroid they were attempting to land on.
Thankfully, Korzara was not a lesser pilot. After checking and re-checking her destination coordinates, and making sure that all of her navigation systems were properly calibrated, she grabbed the yoke and engaged the Liberada’s thrusters.
What followed was a tense, but brief, excursion through the densest segment of the Asteroid Belt. After narrowly dodging one of the smaller obstacles, she was eventually brought face-to-face with her destination.
To the undiscerning eye, it looked like no more than a large minor planet, with a mean radius of two hundred kilometers. But the sensor arrays on Korzara’s ship rapidly picked up on something else.
It was an outpost located on the Asteroid’s surface, with a docking station for small and medium-sized spacecraft and a fully-functioning life support system. Notably, it also had a strange energy signature at its core... a constant magical radiation that Korzara could have sworn she had seen before.
“Bingo,” Korzara muttered to herself. Carefully maneuvering the Liberada, she eventually managed to land on the surface of the asteroid, the airlock slowly joining and locking in place with the outpost’s docking station.
Who had built such an outpost, and for what purpose, she could only begin to imagine. But a job was a job, and Korzara was desperate. She grabbed her blaster, and slung its energy pack across her back, and set out to disembark.
As the doors of the airlock pulled open, Korzara stepped out, past the boundaries of her ship and into the outpost proper. Inside was a dark, dank, slimy corridor, deathly silent save for the sound of her own footsteps against the metallic floor, and the nearly-inaudible hum of some unknown machinery.
A sharp tingle of dread ran up Korzara’s spine, her every single footstep measured and exact. She kept her hand close to the blaster barrel holstered to her backpack, ready to draw her weapon at a moment’s notice.
Eventually, the corridor came to an end. What was there was a single room, filled with a number of monitors and sickly green holographic screen displays, though their presence did little to illuminate the chamber. At the end was a single desk, sparsely decorated, save for a single swivel chair on the other end. The chair was massive and imposing, with an angular black leather seat that stood imposingly high — meaning that whoever sat in such a grandiose seat must have been nearly two meters tall.
Suddenly, Korzara had the sickening feeling that taking this job was a terrible, terrible idea. And her fears were instantly validated when the chair swiveled around to face her.
At first, there appeared to be no one sitting on it, but then there was a sudden thrum, and instantly a holographic image appeared before her, showing an image that every spacefaring Neopian both knew and feared. Black cloak, piercing red eyes, yellow teeth, sickly green skin…
“You! But… but how!?”
The hologram grinned. “To borrow an old phrase,” said Doctor Sloth, “reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated.”
To be continued...
Chapter 4:
Standing before Korzara was everything that she had ever feared.
Doctor Sloth was a tyrant, and anyone else would be wise to fear him too. But Sloth also represented something much greater than a mere conqueror. He was the antithesis of everything that Korzara valued, the erosion of freedom, the looming threat of a life lived only in shackles.
And now here he was, right in front of Korzara’s eye. He appeared as no more than a hologram, but he commanded a raw power in his presence that could only have come from the real thing.
“What’s the matter?” Sloth taunted. “Have you been struck speechless by my magnificent presence?”
“This... this isn’t happening,” Korzara stammered. “How are you still around? I thought you were defeated years ago!”
“Merely a temporary setback. I was sealed away by that meddling Space Faerie, that much is true. However, I’d already foreseen that possibility.” Sloth steepled his fingers, a smirk crossing his lips and his holographic body flickered. “Prior to my imprisonment, I had developed an advanced technique to harness the power of Mira’s little token. I call it the Sigma Protocol, and it is perhaps my greatest accomplishment to date.”
Fear still remained on the edge of Korzara’s voice, but now she was also morbidly curious. “Sigma Protocol?”
“A method of shedding my corporeal body,” Sloth explained. “Using the very same magic that contained me, I converted myself into a being of pure data, and escaped into the cosmos. Currently I exist within the central supercomputer of this base, but I am by no means restricted to it. You’ve no doubt heard of my many replicate androids.”
“...You mean the Sloth Clones?” Korzara said hesitantly. “Those robots that look like you?”
“Correct,” said Sloth. “Apart from the occasional maverick, they have proven to be reliable minions. They now serve as a sort of backup hardware for myself. Should the system I inhabit fail, my consciousness will escape via hyperspace signal, and assume control of another body. In effect, I have become a living computer virus, one that can be uploaded into any of my machines.”
A swath of emotions swirled in Korzara’s gut, ranging from dread to utter confusion. “So you’re like… a digital ghost. But why tell me this? Wouldn’t this information be crucial to defeating you for good?”
“That’s impossible, I’m afraid. And I think you already know why.” Sloth grinned a nasty grin, his yellowed holographic teeth gleaming under the dim lights of the outpost. “I no longer have a body to destroy. I have surpassed all of my physical limitations, and become a being that will endure until the heat death of the universe. Simply put, little Neopet, I cannot be defeated.”
The words that Sloth spoke struck terror into the deepest reaches of Korzara’s heart. Despite her years as a hardened pirate, she had become overwhelmed with fear, every cell in her body screaming at her to turn around and flee. Yet at the same time, she also could not move. Her feet were frozen to the floor, and as much as her emotions compelled her to run, her body would not obey.
“But enough about my own brilliant accomplishments,” said Sloth. “Right now, you are no doubt wondering why I’ve called you here. The answer is that I have a job for you.”
“A... a job? But why? Why hire me, of all people?”
“Quite simple,” said Sloth. “You have a history with the Resistance. You are familiar with their security, and their operations. Yet you also have no loyalty to them. With the right motivation, you could easily be convinced to turn against them. Needless to say, that makes you uniquely valuable to me.”
The fear in Korzara’s chest began to give way, slowly, to an entirely new emotion. It burned deep within her, and each word she spoke carried its flame.
“Now hold on a moment! Why would I ever do anything to help you with your schemes!? Just who do you think I am!?”
“A Neopet who doesn’t have a choice in the matter,” Sloth replied calmly. “You’ve had trouble finding work lately, I assume? The price on your head ensures any bounty hunter worth their blaster will be going after you. I imagine few other clients would risk associating with you.”
“H-huh? Wait! H-how did you...?”
“The point being, that those who are desperate will do anything to keep their mouths fed. And you, Korzara, are desperate. You will work for me. Or you will starve. Your choice.”
The anger that was bubbling up within Korzara reached a boiling point. And yet, just as quickly as it threatened to burst out with explosive force, it died down and retreated into wear acceptance.
Sloth was right. She was desperate, and if she didn’t take this job, she might not be able to afford her own survival.
The words that came out of her mouth next made Korzara sick to her stomach. Everything she was about to say, she hated with every bone in her body.
“Alright. Fine. What’s the job?”
Sloth’s grin flashed once again, sending a shiver down Korzara’s spine.
“I’m glad that you asked. I’ve received intelligence that the Resistance is developing a new defense system for the Space Station. I want you to infiltrate their headquarters, find the blueprints for this system, and relay it to me. How you accomplish this is not my concern. Finish the job, and I guarantee you will be greatly rewarded.”
----------------
Korzara could not stop sweating as she returned to her ship. Everything that had happened within the past fifteen minutes had made her heart race, her fear-addled thoughts constantly twisting in on themselves to make sense of everything she had just seen, heard, and agreed to.
As she punched her ship’s thrusters and lifted off of the asteroid, her body relaxed somewhat, finally allowing her the peace to review what had happened and what she had gotten herself into.
“Somehow, Sloth returned,” Korzara said with a sigh. “And for some reason the universe has decided it’s my problem.”
It was difficult to wrap her mind around. Never in all her life did Korzara expect she would be working for Sloth. She hated being under anyone’s thrall, and under any other circumstances she would have never even considered the possibility of working for an interstellar conqueror.
Which, now that she thought about it, raised another uncomfortable point. Somehow, Sloth knew that Korzara was struggling to make ends meet, and counted on this to force her to accept the job.
Was Sloth the one responsible for posting such an absurdly high bounty on her in the first place? Was her desperation all part of his plan?
There was no way she could know for sure. And maybe it was best that she didn’t find out the answer.
...No point dwelling on that now. She had a job to do. She didn’t like that she had to do it. But she had to do it.
Steeling her nerves, Korzara began loading her armor’s subspace pockets with weapons. She would need more than just her blaster if she wanted to pull the job off. Once everything was prepared, she engaged her ship’s thrusters, and charted a course for her target.
----------------
Ordinarily, Korzara wouldn’t dare approach the Virtupets Space Station. With so many crafts patrolling nearby, and so many scanners that could detect the Liberada even through its cloaking device, going so close with such a bounty on her head would be a death warrant.
Still, there were ways to minimize the risks. She wouldn’t dare try to land her ship onto the main hangar, with so many prying eyes. But there were plenty of smaller docks across the Space Station’s hull, many of them abandoned ever since Sloth lost control of the facility in Year 2. She had to maneuver quickly in order to avoid crossing paths with any ships that might recognize her, and hope to the stars that the sensors would not alert anyone on deck who knew who she was.
Her plan had proven fruitful when she found a neglected and disused docking station, meant for small maintenance ships. This was exactly what she needed.
And so, carefully, she maneuvered the Liberada onto the dock. With the ship’s airlock properly locked onto the entrance, she carefully made her way into the bowels of the Space Station.
The inner tunnels were exactly as she had last seen them, fifteen years ago. Most of them were covered in years of accumulated grime, but the tunnels that led to her destination were kept noticeably free of dust, indicating that they were well-traveled.
Good. That meant the Resistance base was still in the same place it had always been.
Taking cover behind a tangled mass of nearby water pipes, Korzara kept her eye closely on the base’s entrance. Assuming they still had the same security, she would need to be clever if she wanted to get in.
Thankfully, she found her opportunity when a red Grundo approached the doors. Before he could even suspect what was happening, Korzara pounced and swiftly delivered a chop to the back of his neck. The Grundo fell unconscious instantly, his body collapsing limply onto the floor.
Next, Korzara carefully hoisted the Grundo’s body up, pressing his thumb against the biometric reader by the doors. She then pried his eye open and held it up to the scanner, holding him steady as a crimson light read the Grundo’s retinal pattern.
“Retinal scan accepted,” an automated voice bleeped.
Then, as the entrance began to unlock, Korzara reached into her armor’s pockets and pulled out the key to her plan’s first step. It was a Thick Smoke Bomb, imported from Mystery Island and smuggled across the solar system. While the technology it used was far from advanced, it was perfect for her purposes.
The doors swung open, and Korzara maneuvered herself behind one of the double-doors to avoid being seen by those in the base. She lit the bomb’s fuse, and tossed it around the corner. With a bang and a subsequent hiss, the bomb exploded into a cloud of impenetrable smoke.
“W-what’s going on!?” someone in the base said through an intense coughing fit.
“We’re under attack!”
Korzara took the panicked voices as her cue to move. She had to be quick, if she wanted to escape with her prize.
And so she bolted as fast as she could into the base, her presence concealed by the massive cloud of fumes. And while she didn’t know exactly where the new defense system blueprints were kept, she had a hunch where she might find them.
Acting swiftly yet silently, Korzara glided across the command room, until she was standing face-to-face with the main computer in the center. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a thumb-sized hard drive. She stuck it into the computer’s access port, watching as the display bleeped to life through the smoke. With a few taps of the keyboard, she hacked into the systems and began copying the blueprint files onto her drive.
“Come on, come on,” Korzara muttered under her breath while her heart raced. She couldn’t afford to be held up by a sluggish file transfer.
As the smoke began to thin, Korzara’s eye suddenly met with a familiar face. A bipedal Cybunny with brown fur and a light orange ruff, dressed in a lightweight orange jumpsuit. No longer the teenage girl that Korzara had met so long ago, the Cybunny’s age and experience over the past fifteen years were apparent in her hardened eyes.
For several moments, the two simply stared at each other.
“Scout?”
“Korzara?”
The computer console let out a soft beep, indicating that the download was complete.
“Ugh, finally,” Korzara groaned. She popped the thumb drive out of the computer, shoved it back into her pocket, and immediately bolted towards the exit. “Gotta go!”
“Wait!” Scout cried over the lingering smoke. “What are you doing!? Someone stop her!”
“Sorry, kid!” Korzara shouted back. “Nothing personal!”
“What do you mean, kid!? I’m thirty-one years old! Get back here!”
Korzara didn’t stick around long enough to argue the point. Just when everyone in the base was starting to catch onto her, she rushed out the door and sprinted into the Space Station’s winding system of corridors and tunnels.
But the sound of several pairs of footsteps behind her proved she wasn’t in the clear yet. Korzara turned her head to glance behind her, and her eye caught a group of several soldiers pursuing her.
Fortunately, she had accounted for that possibility. She reached into her pockets again, and pulled out another item imported from Neopia — this time, an ice blue bottle containing a Slippery Floor Potion.
She then tossed the potion over her shoulder. There was the sound of shattering glass, followed by a sudden chill in the air, as the floor behind her was turned to ice. Korzara didn’t bother to look back long enough to see the results, but judging by the panicked shouts and crashes, her plan worked perfectly.
From there, it was smooth sailing getting back to her ship. She had lost her pursuers in the chaos of the chase and the winding tunnels of the Station, and before long she was back in the flight deck of the Liberada.
As the ship took off from the maintenance dock, Korzara breathed a sigh of relief, and charted a course back to the Asteroid Belt. As the autopilot took over, she reached into her pocket, her gaze fixed on the data drive held between her fingers.
“Alright... just one more thing left to do.”
She only hoped that she wouldn’t regret doing it.
To be continued...
Doctor Sloth was a tyrant, and anyone else would be wise to fear him too. But Sloth also represented something much greater than a mere conqueror. He was the antithesis of everything that Korzara valued, the erosion of freedom, the looming threat of a life lived only in shackles.
And now here he was, right in front of Korzara’s eye. He appeared as no more than a hologram, but he commanded a raw power in his presence that could only have come from the real thing.
“What’s the matter?” Sloth taunted. “Have you been struck speechless by my magnificent presence?”
“This... this isn’t happening,” Korzara stammered. “How are you still around? I thought you were defeated years ago!”
“Merely a temporary setback. I was sealed away by that meddling Space Faerie, that much is true. However, I’d already foreseen that possibility.” Sloth steepled his fingers, a smirk crossing his lips and his holographic body flickered. “Prior to my imprisonment, I had developed an advanced technique to harness the power of Mira’s little token. I call it the Sigma Protocol, and it is perhaps my greatest accomplishment to date.”
Fear still remained on the edge of Korzara’s voice, but now she was also morbidly curious. “Sigma Protocol?”
“A method of shedding my corporeal body,” Sloth explained. “Using the very same magic that contained me, I converted myself into a being of pure data, and escaped into the cosmos. Currently I exist within the central supercomputer of this base, but I am by no means restricted to it. You’ve no doubt heard of my many replicate androids.”
“...You mean the Sloth Clones?” Korzara said hesitantly. “Those robots that look like you?”
“Correct,” said Sloth. “Apart from the occasional maverick, they have proven to be reliable minions. They now serve as a sort of backup hardware for myself. Should the system I inhabit fail, my consciousness will escape via hyperspace signal, and assume control of another body. In effect, I have become a living computer virus, one that can be uploaded into any of my machines.”
A swath of emotions swirled in Korzara’s gut, ranging from dread to utter confusion. “So you’re like… a digital ghost. But why tell me this? Wouldn’t this information be crucial to defeating you for good?”
“That’s impossible, I’m afraid. And I think you already know why.” Sloth grinned a nasty grin, his yellowed holographic teeth gleaming under the dim lights of the outpost. “I no longer have a body to destroy. I have surpassed all of my physical limitations, and become a being that will endure until the heat death of the universe. Simply put, little Neopet, I cannot be defeated.”
The words that Sloth spoke struck terror into the deepest reaches of Korzara’s heart. Despite her years as a hardened pirate, she had become overwhelmed with fear, every cell in her body screaming at her to turn around and flee. Yet at the same time, she also could not move. Her feet were frozen to the floor, and as much as her emotions compelled her to run, her body would not obey.
“But enough about my own brilliant accomplishments,” said Sloth. “Right now, you are no doubt wondering why I’ve called you here. The answer is that I have a job for you.”
“A... a job? But why? Why hire me, of all people?”
“Quite simple,” said Sloth. “You have a history with the Resistance. You are familiar with their security, and their operations. Yet you also have no loyalty to them. With the right motivation, you could easily be convinced to turn against them. Needless to say, that makes you uniquely valuable to me.”
The fear in Korzara’s chest began to give way, slowly, to an entirely new emotion. It burned deep within her, and each word she spoke carried its flame.
“Now hold on a moment! Why would I ever do anything to help you with your schemes!? Just who do you think I am!?”
“A Neopet who doesn’t have a choice in the matter,” Sloth replied calmly. “You’ve had trouble finding work lately, I assume? The price on your head ensures any bounty hunter worth their blaster will be going after you. I imagine few other clients would risk associating with you.”
“H-huh? Wait! H-how did you...?”
“The point being, that those who are desperate will do anything to keep their mouths fed. And you, Korzara, are desperate. You will work for me. Or you will starve. Your choice.”
The anger that was bubbling up within Korzara reached a boiling point. And yet, just as quickly as it threatened to burst out with explosive force, it died down and retreated into wear acceptance.
Sloth was right. She was desperate, and if she didn’t take this job, she might not be able to afford her own survival.
The words that came out of her mouth next made Korzara sick to her stomach. Everything she was about to say, she hated with every bone in her body.
“Alright. Fine. What’s the job?”
Sloth’s grin flashed once again, sending a shiver down Korzara’s spine.
“I’m glad that you asked. I’ve received intelligence that the Resistance is developing a new defense system for the Space Station. I want you to infiltrate their headquarters, find the blueprints for this system, and relay it to me. How you accomplish this is not my concern. Finish the job, and I guarantee you will be greatly rewarded.”
----------------
Korzara could not stop sweating as she returned to her ship. Everything that had happened within the past fifteen minutes had made her heart race, her fear-addled thoughts constantly twisting in on themselves to make sense of everything she had just seen, heard, and agreed to.
As she punched her ship’s thrusters and lifted off of the asteroid, her body relaxed somewhat, finally allowing her the peace to review what had happened and what she had gotten herself into.
“Somehow, Sloth returned,” Korzara said with a sigh. “And for some reason the universe has decided it’s my problem.”
It was difficult to wrap her mind around. Never in all her life did Korzara expect she would be working for Sloth. She hated being under anyone’s thrall, and under any other circumstances she would have never even considered the possibility of working for an interstellar conqueror.
Which, now that she thought about it, raised another uncomfortable point. Somehow, Sloth knew that Korzara was struggling to make ends meet, and counted on this to force her to accept the job.
Was Sloth the one responsible for posting such an absurdly high bounty on her in the first place? Was her desperation all part of his plan?
There was no way she could know for sure. And maybe it was best that she didn’t find out the answer.
...No point dwelling on that now. She had a job to do. She didn’t like that she had to do it. But she had to do it.
Steeling her nerves, Korzara began loading her armor’s subspace pockets with weapons. She would need more than just her blaster if she wanted to pull the job off. Once everything was prepared, she engaged her ship’s thrusters, and charted a course for her target.
----------------
Ordinarily, Korzara wouldn’t dare approach the Virtupets Space Station. With so many crafts patrolling nearby, and so many scanners that could detect the Liberada even through its cloaking device, going so close with such a bounty on her head would be a death warrant.
Still, there were ways to minimize the risks. She wouldn’t dare try to land her ship onto the main hangar, with so many prying eyes. But there were plenty of smaller docks across the Space Station’s hull, many of them abandoned ever since Sloth lost control of the facility in Year 2. She had to maneuver quickly in order to avoid crossing paths with any ships that might recognize her, and hope to the stars that the sensors would not alert anyone on deck who knew who she was.
Her plan had proven fruitful when she found a neglected and disused docking station, meant for small maintenance ships. This was exactly what she needed.
And so, carefully, she maneuvered the Liberada onto the dock. With the ship’s airlock properly locked onto the entrance, she carefully made her way into the bowels of the Space Station.
The inner tunnels were exactly as she had last seen them, fifteen years ago. Most of them were covered in years of accumulated grime, but the tunnels that led to her destination were kept noticeably free of dust, indicating that they were well-traveled.
Good. That meant the Resistance base was still in the same place it had always been.
Taking cover behind a tangled mass of nearby water pipes, Korzara kept her eye closely on the base’s entrance. Assuming they still had the same security, she would need to be clever if she wanted to get in.
Thankfully, she found her opportunity when a red Grundo approached the doors. Before he could even suspect what was happening, Korzara pounced and swiftly delivered a chop to the back of his neck. The Grundo fell unconscious instantly, his body collapsing limply onto the floor.
Next, Korzara carefully hoisted the Grundo’s body up, pressing his thumb against the biometric reader by the doors. She then pried his eye open and held it up to the scanner, holding him steady as a crimson light read the Grundo’s retinal pattern.
“Retinal scan accepted,” an automated voice bleeped.
Then, as the entrance began to unlock, Korzara reached into her armor’s pockets and pulled out the key to her plan’s first step. It was a Thick Smoke Bomb, imported from Mystery Island and smuggled across the solar system. While the technology it used was far from advanced, it was perfect for her purposes.
The doors swung open, and Korzara maneuvered herself behind one of the double-doors to avoid being seen by those in the base. She lit the bomb’s fuse, and tossed it around the corner. With a bang and a subsequent hiss, the bomb exploded into a cloud of impenetrable smoke.
“W-what’s going on!?” someone in the base said through an intense coughing fit.
“We’re under attack!”
Korzara took the panicked voices as her cue to move. She had to be quick, if she wanted to escape with her prize.
And so she bolted as fast as she could into the base, her presence concealed by the massive cloud of fumes. And while she didn’t know exactly where the new defense system blueprints were kept, she had a hunch where she might find them.
Acting swiftly yet silently, Korzara glided across the command room, until she was standing face-to-face with the main computer in the center. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a thumb-sized hard drive. She stuck it into the computer’s access port, watching as the display bleeped to life through the smoke. With a few taps of the keyboard, she hacked into the systems and began copying the blueprint files onto her drive.
“Come on, come on,” Korzara muttered under her breath while her heart raced. She couldn’t afford to be held up by a sluggish file transfer.
As the smoke began to thin, Korzara’s eye suddenly met with a familiar face. A bipedal Cybunny with brown fur and a light orange ruff, dressed in a lightweight orange jumpsuit. No longer the teenage girl that Korzara had met so long ago, the Cybunny’s age and experience over the past fifteen years were apparent in her hardened eyes.
For several moments, the two simply stared at each other.
“Scout?”
“Korzara?”
The computer console let out a soft beep, indicating that the download was complete.
“Ugh, finally,” Korzara groaned. She popped the thumb drive out of the computer, shoved it back into her pocket, and immediately bolted towards the exit. “Gotta go!”
“Wait!” Scout cried over the lingering smoke. “What are you doing!? Someone stop her!”
“Sorry, kid!” Korzara shouted back. “Nothing personal!”
“What do you mean, kid!? I’m thirty-one years old! Get back here!”
Korzara didn’t stick around long enough to argue the point. Just when everyone in the base was starting to catch onto her, she rushed out the door and sprinted into the Space Station’s winding system of corridors and tunnels.
But the sound of several pairs of footsteps behind her proved she wasn’t in the clear yet. Korzara turned her head to glance behind her, and her eye caught a group of several soldiers pursuing her.
Fortunately, she had accounted for that possibility. She reached into her pockets again, and pulled out another item imported from Neopia — this time, an ice blue bottle containing a Slippery Floor Potion.
She then tossed the potion over her shoulder. There was the sound of shattering glass, followed by a sudden chill in the air, as the floor behind her was turned to ice. Korzara didn’t bother to look back long enough to see the results, but judging by the panicked shouts and crashes, her plan worked perfectly.
From there, it was smooth sailing getting back to her ship. She had lost her pursuers in the chaos of the chase and the winding tunnels of the Station, and before long she was back in the flight deck of the Liberada.
As the ship took off from the maintenance dock, Korzara breathed a sigh of relief, and charted a course back to the Asteroid Belt. As the autopilot took over, she reached into her pocket, her gaze fixed on the data drive held between her fingers.
“Alright... just one more thing left to do.”
She only hoped that she wouldn’t regret doing it.
To be continued...
Chapter 5:
Doubt gnawed at Korzara’s insides as she stood before her destination.
She had recovered the Resistance’s defense system blueprints, just like Doctor Sloth wanted. Now she had left her ship to idle in orbit over the asteroid housing Sloth’s base, close enough to the minor planet to avoid collisions with any of the other objects in the Asteroid Belt.
In her hand was the thumb drive containing everything Sloth wanted, and probably all that he needed to win. If Korzara gave that information over, what would become of the Space Station? What would become of Neopia, or the rest of the galaxy? Sure, she would finally be able to feed herself properly for the first time in months. But at what cost?
She wished there was a better way. As it was, she was caught between a meteorite and a hard place.
Her eyes drifted over to the sensor display on the flight deck. As usual, it showed a readout of the energy signature of Sloth’s base... the weirdly specific energy signature, now that she thought about it. Where had she seen it before?
There was something here, and it was something that could be important. And she was willing to take any chance she had to get out of this situation. She could already feel the gears turning in her brain.
“Computer,” she said, “give me a closer reading of Sloth’s base. Try to isolate that energy signature you’re getting, and see if you can identify the source.”
“Affirmative,” the computer beeped. “Analyzing energy signature...”
After what felt like an eternity, the results of the analysis popped up on the ship’s sensor display. Korzara’s eye went wide at the sight of it. “Wait! This is... It’s not shielded! So that means...!”
Already, an idea began formulating in her mind. This could be her big break.
Her eye glanced to the floor of the flight deck, towards the tiny metal crate she had pilfered from the freighter ship in her previous job.
“Computer, warm up the teleporter. I have a plan.”
----------------
Once the plan was set in motion, Korzara docked with the outpost and briskly walked through the corridor, her newfound sense of assurance carried with every step against the dirty metallic floor. Before long, she was once again standing face-to-face with the holographic image of Sloth himself.
“Good, You’ve returned.” said Sloth, grinning wildly as he sat behind his desk. “Then I assume this means you have the blueprint data?”
“I do,” said Korzara. Before the fearsome visage of Sloth, she had almost forgotten her previous courage, but the thought of her plan ensured that her confidence remained. She reached into her pockets and pulled out the thumb drive, holding it between her fingers. “I have it right here.”
Sloth raised an eyebrow. He could clearly sense something was off, but he didn’t quite appear to know what. “Then give it to me,” he said, extending a holographic hand.
“Yeah. About that.” Before Sloth could even react, Korzara roughly threw the thumb drive against the ground. Then, before either of them could even blink, she brought a heavy armored foot down against the storage device, crushing it into thousands of tiny pieces.
“Deal’s off,” Korzara said. “You’re not getting a single blasted thing from me.”
For several moments, Sloth could only stare, wide-eyed and slack-jawed, at the bits of plastic and silicon that used to be the data drive. Slowly, his face morphed into a visage of pure wrath that sent a sharp chill down Korzara’s spine.
“...I see. In your infinite arrogance, you’ve decided to betray me,” Sloth sneered. “Then you will be rewarded exactly as a traitor deserves.”
As if the entire outpost had read Sloth’s mind, panels in the walls of the room opened to reveal a dozen different blaster cannons, all of them aimed squarely at Korzara.
“Do you have any last words, little Neopet?”
Korzara had to fight as hard as she could to push down the fear that had swelled within her chest. Truth be told, she was utterly terrified. But she couldn’t show it. Not now, not when her plan was so close to going off without a hitch.
And so she forced the corners of her lips upward, into a devious smirk.
“Yeah. Checkmate.”
“Wha—”
BOOOOOOOOOOOM!
All at once, the floors shook with the force of an earthquake, while an explosion ripped through the outpost’s artificial atmosphere, nearly deafening Korzara with its force. The computer monitors in the station flickered on and off, while an automated voice blared over the intercom.
“Alert! Alert! Reactor core has gone critical! Evacuate immediately! Repeat! Evacuate immediately!”
Sloth slammed his holographic hands against his desk, his eyes burning with a fury that outshone the flame of a thousand different suns.
“You! Explain! NOW!”
Despite facing the greatest and most terrifying villain in the galaxy, Korzara couldn’t help but laugh. “Ha! You think I wouldn’t notice that you’ve fallen onto just as many hard times as I have? Look at yourself. Trapped in this dingy old base, without any of the armies you once commanded.”
Sloth grit his teeth, and gave a vicious growl that caused his body to flicker and pulse.
“Without access to your previous supply lines, you couldn’t power your reactor core with Kreludite. You had to use much more unstable Neotonium instead. Not only that, you didn’t have the resources to give your core proper teleport shielding! All I had to do was send in a chunk of my own Neotonium, attach it to a mine, and set it to blow.”
“You... You... YOU...!” Sloth shouted incoherently as the entire facility rumbled and shook. “YOU HORRID LITTLE NEOPET! DESTROY HER! DESTROY HER NOW!”
“Unable to comply,” the automated voice of the outpost replied. “Weapons systems have been taken offline. All auxiliary power diverted to life support. Destruction of base from reactor meltdown imminent. Evacuate immediately! Repeat! Evacuate immediately!”
“Well, it’s been fun,” said Korzara. “But I gotta get out of here. See you around, Sloth. Or hopefully not.”
“No! NO! NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”
As Sloth’s howls echoed through the crumbling chamber, Korzara spared no time in making her escape. She sprinted as fast as her legs could carry her, bolting through the corridor as the outpost crumbled and shook beneath her feet.
When she made it back to her ship, Korzara’s heart was pounding so intensely that she could feel her veins throbbing in her head. She undocked from the outpost and shut the airlock, before sitting down at the flight deck and gripping the yoke as tightly as she could.
The thrusters of the Liberada soon engaged, but just as it began to lift off of the ground, another explosion ripped through her eardrums. The spacecraft shook with violent force as it was subsequently launched upwards, beyond the orbit of the asteroid.
Korzara fought wildly with the yoke to get her ship under control as it sped through the cosmos, towards the inner rings of the solar system. By the time she was able to stop her ship from spinning, she realized that she hadn’t slowed down. She moved to disengage the thrusters, only to find that the throttle of the ship wouldn’t move.
“Computer! What’s going on here!? Why can’t I slow down!?”
“Information. Thruster control has been disabled by damage to the engines,” the computer replied. “Unable to slow down. In their current state, thrusters will remain active until all fuel is spent.”
“What!? You’ve gotta be kidding! What am I supposed to—”
“Alert,” the computer interrupted. “Approaching the planet of Neopia at dangerous velocity. Estimated time to collision: T-minus fifteen seconds.”
“WHAT!?”
Korzara turned to look back at the viewscreen, and sure enough, she could see Neopia very clearly in the center, rapidly growing larger, growing closer. For the longest ten seconds of her life, she fought with the controls to steer the Liberada away, but by then it was already too late. The planet’s gravitational pull had only added to the ship’s existing momentum, causing it to plummet towards the earth. Multiple alerts beeped loudly as the atmosphere began burning away at the already-damaged hull, and the ship began to spin wildly as it fell.
“MAYDAY! MAYDAY! ABANDON SHIP! ABANDON—”
The Liberada crashed into the soil, and Korzara’s entire world was engulfed in an explosion of light and fire.
----------------
Korzara didn’t know how she was still alive.
When she crawled out of the remains of her starship, it was nothing more than a smoldering wreck, completely beyond any hope of repair. Even if she could salvage any of its machinery, she wasn’t sure what she would even do with it at this point.
And then there was the pain. The burning agony that engulfed her entire body as she dragged herself to her feet, and forced herself to walk one excruciating step at a time. She didn’t know where she was going. She didn’t know if she even had anywhere to go. But she refused to fall over, refused to succumb. If she lost consciousness, she wasn’t sure if she would ever wake up again.
Her thoughts turned to her life, and everything that had happened to bring her to this point. Ever since childhood, she had only ever known adversity. It was a constant throughout her every waking moment so far.
She was born on Scurvy Island, that much she knew. But who her parents were was a mystery, and she didn’t know if they’d died or simply abandoned her. Her formative years were spent begging on the streets, scrounging for scraps, and sleeping against the cold, hard cobblestone of the port.
It would seem only natural that she’d take to piracy, but it wasn’t really her choice. She was discovered by the leader of a large pirate ship, a Grarrl by the name of Captain Sharktooth. He promised Korzara food and shelter on their ship, as long as she worked to make herself ‘useful.’
How naive she was, to think that this was a fair deal. The only food she was given was deemed too inedible to give to anyone else. Maggot-infested hardtack and rotten gruel was the bulk of her diet. It was a wonder she ever found a way to stomach it all.
And the less that was said about the way that the other pirates treated her, the better.
Keep scrubbing! And ye’d best not leave a single SPOT on that deck, or I’ll make ye regret ever being BORN!
As the memory of Captain Sharktooth’s voice echoed in her mind, Korzara felt a strange wet sensation running down her good eye. She was...
...no, she wasn’t crying. She couldn’t be. She was better than that. She’d overcome so many hardships, survived against so many impossible odds, made a name for herself with nothing more than her own sweat and ingenuity.
As Korzara continued wandering aimlessly, she eventually crossed a hill. Her ragged footsteps brought her to its peak, where she stopped to see what was on the other side.
It was a city. A small kingdom of dirt roads, lush green trees, vibrant fruit orchards, and stained glass windows. In the center, a shining castle of brilliant green and white, standing before a horizon of great mountainous peaks.
“B... Brightvale?”
The pain finally became too much for her body to bear, and Korzara collapsed onto the hill’s grassy soil.
To be continued...
Chapter 6:
Korzara soon found herself standing in a place that shouldn’t exist. It was... it resembled outer space, an infinite black void lit by a backdrop of stars and nebulae.
But it couldn’t have been outer space, because she was there without a ship, and without a suit to breathe.
She was... standing, somehow, even though there was nothing beneath her feet. As though she was held up by an invisible floor. Tentatively, Korzara looked down at her feet and took a step forward. She could walk, it seemed, as though she were standing on solid ground.
When she looked up again, Korzara saw something that wasn’t there before.
It was a round tea table, with two chairs on either side, and a ceramic tea set with two cups in the center. The chair closest to Korzara was empty, and on the opposite was a face she recognized, but had never seen in person. A face that every spacefaring Neopian would recognize instantly.
“Hello, Korzara,” said the Space Faerie. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“You,” Korzara said breathlessly. She rubbed her eye, to make sure she was seeing correctly. “I... I don’t believe it. What’s going on? Am I...?”
“Don’t worry, you’re not dead,” said the Space Faerie. “Your body just needs some time to rest, that’s all.”
“That’s a relief,” Korzara exhaled. “But if I’m not dead, then what is this place?”
“A dream,” the Space Faerie answered. “Like I said, your body needs time to sleep off its injuries. You’re lucky you weren’t hurt much more badly.”
“But if this is a dream, then what are you doing here?” said Korzara. “I didn’t think that the Space Faerie could visit dreams.”
“Well, how do you know I’m really the Space Faerie?” she replied with a grin. “I could be Mira. But I could also be just a figment of your imagination. In a dream, who’s to say what’s real and what isn’t?” She gestured to the seat across from her. “Come, sit down. I’m sure you have a lot on your mind.”
Korzara considered refusing, but thought better of it. It’s not like she had anything better to do. As she sat down at the table, the Space Faerie poured herself a cup of tea, while Korzara declined to have any.
“So,” said the Space Faerie. “Why don’t you start by telling me what’s wrong?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Korzara insisted. “There’s nothing wrong with me.”
The Space Faerie took a sip of her tea. “There’s no need to deny it. Even ignoring how badly injured you are, you’ve been dealing with a lot of stress and hardship, haven’t you?”
A deep, heavy sigh escaped from Korzara’s lips. “Not gonna let anything get past you, huh? Fine. I’ll admit it. My life’s been horrible lately. It’s been rough ever since I got kicked out of the Resistance, but lately everything’s been just getting worse and worse for me.”
The Space Faerie nodded, listening intently.
“And I just... don’t understand it, you know?” Korzara continued. “I thought being a space pirate would make my life easy. And for a while, it did. But everything I’ve built for myself has come crashing down. I’ve run into trouble in ways I didn’t even think were possible. I have no money, my ship’s been totaled, I haven’t had a full three meals per day in months, and... I just... I...”
Another deep sigh. There was a tension building in Korzara’s chest, one that had been present ever since she sat down with the Space Faerie, but now it was growing so thick and suffocating that it stifled any attempt to express her feelings in words. Another trail of moisture fell down her left cheek. This time, she didn’t make any attempt to hide it.
“...I just don’t know where I went wrong.”
Mira looked Korzara straight in the eye. The faerie’s expression was soft, the gleam in her red eyes full of compassion and understanding.
“I’m sorry for everything you’ve been through,” she said. “You don’t deserve to suffer as you have.” The faerie closed her eyes, and her lips pursed together, folded into a sorrowful frown. “But... I also think you’re deceiving yourself. I think you know exactly where it all went wrong.”
“What...?” The Space Faerie’s words stung, but at the same time, some part of Korzara knew that they were true. She had been denying it for so long, forcing the truth into the back of her mind.
But she couldn’t deny it any longer.
“You mean... when I betrayed the Resistance,” said Korzara. “Not Sloth’s job, I mean. Fifteen years ago. When I... I went against my own mission. When I hurt the people I was supposed to protect.”
Mira looked into Korzara’s eye once again. It was difficult to read her emotions. She looked equal parts disappointed, sympathetic, and stern.
“You’ve always valued your freedom. That is an admirable trait. But I think you know that freedom doesn’t give you the license to hurt other people. Did the traders you stole from not deserve freedom, too? The freedom to live their lives, without fear of losing what they have?”
“I... I just...” The tears were freely flowing down Korzara’s eye now. It had been so long since she’d felt so exposed, so vulnerable. “I didn’t want to hurt anyone! I-I mean, I guess I sort of did, but... I just thought... I-I really didn’t...”
She closed her eyes, trying to shut it out, trying to hold back the feelings that were overflowing from within her, that had been building up inside of her for so long.
It was then that Korzara felt a soft hand across her shoulder. She opened her eyes, and saw Mira gazing into her with deep, gentle eyes.
“It’s only natural to harden your heart, when the universe is cruel to you,” the Space Faerie said. “But that doesn’t mean you should let the good in your heart be suffocated. And just as much as there is cruelty in the universe, there is also kindness. I know that one day you will find the good within you, and the kindness in the world around you.”
“You... you really think so?” Korzara sniffled.
The Space Faerie smiled warmly.
“I know so.”
----------------
Korzara’s eye opened to an unfamiliar sight, and to the soft mattress of a warm bed.
She wasn’t sure where she was. The last place she had been was on a hill overlooking Brightvale, and then...
Before she could even think about where she was, Korzara felt her heart jump inside her chest. Sitting on a chair beside the bed was something she had never expected to see.
It was a human. One of those strange beings who called themselves ‘owners,’ whatever that even meant. He was a man, by the looks of it, with pale skin, a short tangle of blonde and curly hair atop his head, and stubbly facial hair.
“Oh?” he said. “You’re awake! That’s good. Given how badly you were hurt, I was worried you’d be out for much longer.”
Korzara jolted upright in her bed, and rapidly glanced around the room. It was a small bedroom with simple furnishings, decorated in the characteristic green-and-white colors of Brightvale. She could see her blaster tucked away in the corner. Thankfully, she seemed to still be wearing her Space Trooper armor, as gross as she felt sleeping in it.
“Ugh, I’m gonna smell so nasty when I take this off,” she muttered to herself. Putting that aside, she shot the human a vicious glare. “Who are you? Where am I? And what do you want with me?”
“Hey, take it easy! I promise I’m not gonna hurt you, okay?”
Korzara glowered at the human. She didn’t fully believe it, but... he did have every opportunity to hurt her while she was asleep, and he didn’t. That had to count for something, at least.
“My name’s Zenn,” said the human. “I found you on the outskirts of town. I’m not sure how you got so badly injured with a blaster that strong, but I wasn’t about to just leave you there. Are you feeling okay? Can you walk?”
Tentatively, Korzara stretched out her arms, then flexed the muscles in her legs and tail. There was still a dull, throbbing ache across her entire body, but the intense and searing pain following the crash had vanished.
“Yeah, I... I think so,” she said. “I think I just needed to sleep it off. I should be good.”
Before Zenn could ask any further questions, a very loud growl came from Korzara’s gut. She felt her face flush in embarrassment, while the human simply smiled.
“You sound hungry. Why don’t you come and join us for dinner? There’s more than enough food to go around.”
“Um... sure?” Truthfully, Korzara didn’t know how to respond. But she wasn’t about to turn down a free meal in her state. “Wait, who’s us?”
“You’ll see,” said Zenn.
----------------
‘Us,’ as it turned out, was quite a lot of people. Zenn took her to a very large dining room, where she counted six other Neopians helping set the table. Among them was a Brown Shoyru, a Faerie Hissi, a Mutant Ruki, a Desert Kau, a Royal Girl Lutari, and an Orange Kougra.
It was such an unusual group of Neopians to see under one roof, that it could only raise Korzara’s suspicions. She could think of only one reason they would all be together, and it wasn’t a reason she liked.
Were they the human’s... pets?
No. She didn’t want to think about that. It was too repulsive to even consider.
But thankfully, she didn’t have to think about that for long, as what followed was one of the best meals she’d eaten in a long time. A full roast turkey, large enough for everyone to share, with sides of succulent Brightvale fruits, soft loaves of bread, and even a wheel of cheese.
And when it was all finished, Korzara had felt more nourished than she could even remember. Months of strict rationing, of living on energy drinks and sugary smoothies, had left her feeling like a hollowed-out husk of a Techo. And she had been running on fumes for so long that she hadn’t even realized just how bad it was for her.
So many new emotions swelled up within her, a warmth that filled her heart and spread to every other part of her body. She didn’t know what to say, or think about it. She’d simply never imagined having anything this good before.
But it wasn’t long afterwards that she found herself yearning to leave. She couldn’t stay in one place, in a single house. Why she couldn’t stay in one place, she didn’t really know. But she couldn’t.
Making sure to grab her blaster and sling it across her back, Korzara headed for the door. As she reached for the doorknob, she heard a familiar voice call out to her.
“Hey, where are you going? Leaving already?”
Korzara turned around, and saw Zenn staring straight down at her. There was a gleam of worry in his eye, matching the deep crease in his brow.
“I dunno. Somewhere else,” Korzara muttered. “I don’t stay put. It’s not what I do.”
The worry in the human’s eyes intensified. The next question he asked pierced through Korzara’s armor more easily than any weapon could.
“Do you have a home?”
It was a simple question. And the answer was simple, yet at the same time infinitely complicated.
For now, Korzara decided to go with the simple answer.
“Well, um... no. Not really.”
The human knelt down, and placed a soft hand on Korzara’s shoulder. His soft gaze pierced straight into Korzara’s soul as he looked her in the eye.
“Listen. I can’t pretend to know what it is you’ve been through, or what kind of life you’ve lived. But why don’t you stay with us for a while?”
“St-tay with... you?” Korzara felt her heart begin to race.
“Well, yeah,” said Zenn. “I don’t know if you know this, but most of the Neopets here didn’t have a home before I found them. So why don’t you stay with us?”
Almost by instinct, Korzara smacked the human’s hand away. “I’m not a pet! I don’t belong to you! I can take care of myself!”
The human frowned deeply. He held Korzara in his gaze. There was no malice in his eye, nor any sign of anger. And for several seconds, the two simply stared at each other.
“Well,” Zenn finally spoke up, “if you don’t want to be a pet, then why not stay as a friend?”
Korzara was left stunned by the response. It was so far out of left field, so far out of the realm of anything she expected, that she didn’t even know what to say. “A... friend?”
“Of course. We’re all part of a family here,” said the human. “I don’t want you to think you’re less than me, or anyone else. We all help each other, because we all care for each other.”
Once again, Korzara felt the same warmth from before swell up within her. It was such a strange feeling, such an alien feeling to her. How many people did she know who she could truly call her friend? There was... Gnib, maybe. And that was about it. And she only ever visited him when she needed a job.
For as long as she could remember, Korzara never really had anyone else but herself.
It was a lot to consider. There were so many things about this that didn’t make sense.
“I’ll let you think about it,” said Zenn. “If you’re going to leave, then don’t feel bad about coming back, okay? My home is a place for anyone who doesn’t have a place of their own.”
“Right. Thanks,” said Korzara. “I guess I'll just... go.”
“Don’t be a stranger, alright?”
“Sure,” Korzara muttered.
As Korzara turned around to leave, however, a thought popped into her head. As he admitted, the human had no idea what she had just been through. And as far as she could tell, nobody else in the house knew either.
She had personally encountered, and defeated, the most feared villain in all of Neopia. She was a former Resistance mercenary, now turned into one of the most wanted criminals in the solar system.
Most importantly, she had information on Doctor Sloth that no one else in the universe knew, information that would be crucial to the Resistance were they to face him again. But she couldn’t just give that information to the Resistance. Not after she burned all her bridges, and seemingly stabbed them in the back.
But this human... he could have given her exactly the answer she needed.
“Wait,” said Korzara. “This is... Brightvale, right? Are you a Brightvale citizen?”
“Yeah. Of course. Why?”
“Good. That’s exactly what I need. When can I sign the adoption papers?”
----------------
Several days later...
Korzara stood in front of the remains of her ship, exactly where she had agreed to meet the others. While the wrecked Liberada could no longer serve as a functioning space vessel, its communications systems and auxiliary power thankfully remained intact. With this, Korzara was able to transmit a message to the Virtupets Space Station.
Now, all she had to do was wait. Thankfully, the response that she expected didn’t take long.
A large falling star appeared in the sky above her, growing larger and larger as it descended onto the earth. Soon enough, it revealed itself to not be a falling star, but a spaceship.
Korzara’s eye narrowed as the ship came into view. It was a green Resistance vessel, and judging by its size, it was likely a personnel transport that could carry an entire squad of soldiers at once.
The ship rotated its thrusters towards the ground, kicking up a cloud of smoke and dust as it slowed its descent. Korzara winced from the debris as the ship finally achieved touchdown.
There was a hiss of hydraulics as the troop transport’s main door opened, becoming a ramp that led from the main hold onto the ground. Korzara’s eye narrowed as she saw who it had carried inside.
A large group of soldiers descended the ramp, and at the front of it was none other than Commander Valka himself. He was an old man now, or something close to it, as evidenced by the significant graying of his facial fur and wrinkled forehead. Nevertheless, he carried himself with the poise and confidence of an experienced veteran. Following closely behind him was Scout, and behind her was a squad of about a dozen Resistance fighters.
Commander Valka looked Korzara over, an anger beneath his eyes that was nearly as strong as the one he had shown fifteen years ago.
“You have a lot of nerve contacting us after the little stunt you pulled. Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t have you taken prisoner here and now.”
Korzara flashed the commander a grin. This was exactly the moment she had been preparing for.
“Easy. My owner is a Brightvale citizen.” She had to fight to stop herself from gagging at the word ‘owner.’ Some things about her, it seemed, would never change.
“Own— come on, be serious,” the Commander balked. “You don’t really expect me to believe you let a human adopt you?”
“I did. And I’ll tell you why,” said Korzara. “See, because my... guardian is a Brightvale citizen, that means I’m now a Brightvale citizen too. And given the Resistance operates mostly in secret, I expect you’ll have a lot of explaining to do to King Hagan if you detain me here.”
The Commander’s eyes went wide with dawning comprehension.
“Clever girl,” he said, stroking the fur on his chin. “You’ve made sure we can’t hold you accountable for your crimes without risking a diplomatic incident.”
Scout, meanwhile, crossed her arms and glared daggers at Korzara. “But that still doesn’t explain why you called us here. Just what are you planning now?”
Korzara took a deep breath, then exhaled through her nostrils. This would be a lot to explain.
“...Okay. Where to start. So, uh, you know that little heist I pulled on your Headquarters?”
“It’d be hard for us to forget,” Scout deadpanned.
“Well, see, here’s what really happened...”
And so Korzara relayed her story to the Resistance.
It didn’t take long for her to have their full attention, and by the end of it, every single person present was left utterly dumbstruck.
Scout looked towards Valka, her entire body visibly tense.
“Commander, do you think this is...? I mean, could Sloth really be...?”
Valka, meanwhile, held a hand to his chin, his brow furrowed in deep contemplation. He hesitated to answer, but the answer was a shock to both Korzara and Scout.
“She’s telling the truth. I’m certain of it.”
Korzara breathed a sigh of relief. “Oh, thank the stars, I was terrified you’d think I was crazy.”
“Of course I believe you,” said Valka. “You may be a scoundrel and a pirate, but you’ve never once lied to us. You made armed robbery honest work, as much as that doesn’t make sense.”
“Um... thanks? I think?”
“Don’t let it go to your head,” said the Commander. “Either way, I’m glad that you destroyed your copy of the blueprint data before Sloth could get his hands on it. That said, now that we know what Sloth is really up to, our plans for upgrading the Station’s defenses will likely prove insufficient.”
“Well that’s just great,” said Scout. “What exactly do we do now, then?”
“It won’t be easy,” the Commander answered. “If Sloth is a being of pure data now, he won’t wage war on a conventional battlefield. He could infect the Station’s computer network and assume direct control of it that way. We’ll have to refocus our efforts on cybersecurity. We should also split the network into several different partitions, so that no one computer can ever have control over the entire Station. And Korzara?”
“Yes?”
The Commander paused for a moment. The anger in his eyes was gone, but there was still a grudge visible in his frown.
“...As much as it pains me to admit it, you have my sincerest thanks. The information you’ve just relayed to us may very well have saved all of Neopia.”
“Wait, really? I mean, I guess that makes sense, but...”
“Just to be clear, this doesn’t make us allies yet,” the Commander clarified. “Given your reputation in space, it’s in our best interest that we pretend this meeting never happened. But I’ll see what I can do to get that bounty of yours pardoned.”
Korzara could almost feel her heart skip a beat. “You’d do that for me!?”
“It’s the least I can do,” said Valka. “But in the meantime, I would advise that you lay low on Neopia for a while. I’d imagine Sloth has a personal vendetta against you now, and Brightvale’s medieval technology level means he’s unlikely to look here.”
“Works well enough for me. It’s not like I can leave the planet with my ship totaled anyway.”
“Excellent,” said the Commander. “If we have any need for your skills again, we’ll find a way to contact you. Just stay out of trouble. And don’t rob any more civilians.”
“Understood,” said Korzara. “And... thank you.”
Commander Valka gave a nod to the other soldiers, and one by one they each boarded the personnel craft. With a roar of the thrusters, the ship soon rose into the stratosphere, before disappearing into the horizon and rocketing into space.
Once the Resistance craft was gone, Korzara was left with a moment of peace to reflect on everything that had happened. Through all of her suffering, through all of the stress and pain she had been put through, it had somehow managed to all work out in the end.
A smile crept along the edges of her lips. She took a deep breath, letting the cool, crisp air of Neopia fill her lungs.
What Korzara’s life held in store for her next, she had no idea. There was no guessing what sort of danger she’d find herself in, or what hardships she would endure.
But maybe, despite everything, it would turn out okay after all.
THE END
But it couldn’t have been outer space, because she was there without a ship, and without a suit to breathe.
She was... standing, somehow, even though there was nothing beneath her feet. As though she was held up by an invisible floor. Tentatively, Korzara looked down at her feet and took a step forward. She could walk, it seemed, as though she were standing on solid ground.
When she looked up again, Korzara saw something that wasn’t there before.
It was a round tea table, with two chairs on either side, and a ceramic tea set with two cups in the center. The chair closest to Korzara was empty, and on the opposite was a face she recognized, but had never seen in person. A face that every spacefaring Neopian would recognize instantly.
“Hello, Korzara,” said the Space Faerie. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“You,” Korzara said breathlessly. She rubbed her eye, to make sure she was seeing correctly. “I... I don’t believe it. What’s going on? Am I...?”
“Don’t worry, you’re not dead,” said the Space Faerie. “Your body just needs some time to rest, that’s all.”
“That’s a relief,” Korzara exhaled. “But if I’m not dead, then what is this place?”
“A dream,” the Space Faerie answered. “Like I said, your body needs time to sleep off its injuries. You’re lucky you weren’t hurt much more badly.”
“But if this is a dream, then what are you doing here?” said Korzara. “I didn’t think that the Space Faerie could visit dreams.”
“Well, how do you know I’m really the Space Faerie?” she replied with a grin. “I could be Mira. But I could also be just a figment of your imagination. In a dream, who’s to say what’s real and what isn’t?” She gestured to the seat across from her. “Come, sit down. I’m sure you have a lot on your mind.”
Korzara considered refusing, but thought better of it. It’s not like she had anything better to do. As she sat down at the table, the Space Faerie poured herself a cup of tea, while Korzara declined to have any.
“So,” said the Space Faerie. “Why don’t you start by telling me what’s wrong?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Korzara insisted. “There’s nothing wrong with me.”
The Space Faerie took a sip of her tea. “There’s no need to deny it. Even ignoring how badly injured you are, you’ve been dealing with a lot of stress and hardship, haven’t you?”
A deep, heavy sigh escaped from Korzara’s lips. “Not gonna let anything get past you, huh? Fine. I’ll admit it. My life’s been horrible lately. It’s been rough ever since I got kicked out of the Resistance, but lately everything’s been just getting worse and worse for me.”
The Space Faerie nodded, listening intently.
“And I just... don’t understand it, you know?” Korzara continued. “I thought being a space pirate would make my life easy. And for a while, it did. But everything I’ve built for myself has come crashing down. I’ve run into trouble in ways I didn’t even think were possible. I have no money, my ship’s been totaled, I haven’t had a full three meals per day in months, and... I just... I...”
Another deep sigh. There was a tension building in Korzara’s chest, one that had been present ever since she sat down with the Space Faerie, but now it was growing so thick and suffocating that it stifled any attempt to express her feelings in words. Another trail of moisture fell down her left cheek. This time, she didn’t make any attempt to hide it.
“...I just don’t know where I went wrong.”
Mira looked Korzara straight in the eye. The faerie’s expression was soft, the gleam in her red eyes full of compassion and understanding.
“I’m sorry for everything you’ve been through,” she said. “You don’t deserve to suffer as you have.” The faerie closed her eyes, and her lips pursed together, folded into a sorrowful frown. “But... I also think you’re deceiving yourself. I think you know exactly where it all went wrong.”
“What...?” The Space Faerie’s words stung, but at the same time, some part of Korzara knew that they were true. She had been denying it for so long, forcing the truth into the back of her mind.
But she couldn’t deny it any longer.
“You mean... when I betrayed the Resistance,” said Korzara. “Not Sloth’s job, I mean. Fifteen years ago. When I... I went against my own mission. When I hurt the people I was supposed to protect.”
Mira looked into Korzara’s eye once again. It was difficult to read her emotions. She looked equal parts disappointed, sympathetic, and stern.
“You’ve always valued your freedom. That is an admirable trait. But I think you know that freedom doesn’t give you the license to hurt other people. Did the traders you stole from not deserve freedom, too? The freedom to live their lives, without fear of losing what they have?”
“I... I just...” The tears were freely flowing down Korzara’s eye now. It had been so long since she’d felt so exposed, so vulnerable. “I didn’t want to hurt anyone! I-I mean, I guess I sort of did, but... I just thought... I-I really didn’t...”
She closed her eyes, trying to shut it out, trying to hold back the feelings that were overflowing from within her, that had been building up inside of her for so long.
It was then that Korzara felt a soft hand across her shoulder. She opened her eyes, and saw Mira gazing into her with deep, gentle eyes.
“It’s only natural to harden your heart, when the universe is cruel to you,” the Space Faerie said. “But that doesn’t mean you should let the good in your heart be suffocated. And just as much as there is cruelty in the universe, there is also kindness. I know that one day you will find the good within you, and the kindness in the world around you.”
“You... you really think so?” Korzara sniffled.
The Space Faerie smiled warmly.
“I know so.”
----------------
Korzara’s eye opened to an unfamiliar sight, and to the soft mattress of a warm bed.
She wasn’t sure where she was. The last place she had been was on a hill overlooking Brightvale, and then...
Before she could even think about where she was, Korzara felt her heart jump inside her chest. Sitting on a chair beside the bed was something she had never expected to see.
It was a human. One of those strange beings who called themselves ‘owners,’ whatever that even meant. He was a man, by the looks of it, with pale skin, a short tangle of blonde and curly hair atop his head, and stubbly facial hair.
“Oh?” he said. “You’re awake! That’s good. Given how badly you were hurt, I was worried you’d be out for much longer.”
Korzara jolted upright in her bed, and rapidly glanced around the room. It was a small bedroom with simple furnishings, decorated in the characteristic green-and-white colors of Brightvale. She could see her blaster tucked away in the corner. Thankfully, she seemed to still be wearing her Space Trooper armor, as gross as she felt sleeping in it.
“Ugh, I’m gonna smell so nasty when I take this off,” she muttered to herself. Putting that aside, she shot the human a vicious glare. “Who are you? Where am I? And what do you want with me?”
“Hey, take it easy! I promise I’m not gonna hurt you, okay?”
Korzara glowered at the human. She didn’t fully believe it, but... he did have every opportunity to hurt her while she was asleep, and he didn’t. That had to count for something, at least.
“My name’s Zenn,” said the human. “I found you on the outskirts of town. I’m not sure how you got so badly injured with a blaster that strong, but I wasn’t about to just leave you there. Are you feeling okay? Can you walk?”
Tentatively, Korzara stretched out her arms, then flexed the muscles in her legs and tail. There was still a dull, throbbing ache across her entire body, but the intense and searing pain following the crash had vanished.
“Yeah, I... I think so,” she said. “I think I just needed to sleep it off. I should be good.”
Before Zenn could ask any further questions, a very loud growl came from Korzara’s gut. She felt her face flush in embarrassment, while the human simply smiled.
“You sound hungry. Why don’t you come and join us for dinner? There’s more than enough food to go around.”
“Um... sure?” Truthfully, Korzara didn’t know how to respond. But she wasn’t about to turn down a free meal in her state. “Wait, who’s us?”
“You’ll see,” said Zenn.
----------------
‘Us,’ as it turned out, was quite a lot of people. Zenn took her to a very large dining room, where she counted six other Neopians helping set the table. Among them was a Brown Shoyru, a Faerie Hissi, a Mutant Ruki, a Desert Kau, a Royal Girl Lutari, and an Orange Kougra.
It was such an unusual group of Neopians to see under one roof, that it could only raise Korzara’s suspicions. She could think of only one reason they would all be together, and it wasn’t a reason she liked.
Were they the human’s... pets?
No. She didn’t want to think about that. It was too repulsive to even consider.
But thankfully, she didn’t have to think about that for long, as what followed was one of the best meals she’d eaten in a long time. A full roast turkey, large enough for everyone to share, with sides of succulent Brightvale fruits, soft loaves of bread, and even a wheel of cheese.
And when it was all finished, Korzara had felt more nourished than she could even remember. Months of strict rationing, of living on energy drinks and sugary smoothies, had left her feeling like a hollowed-out husk of a Techo. And she had been running on fumes for so long that she hadn’t even realized just how bad it was for her.
So many new emotions swelled up within her, a warmth that filled her heart and spread to every other part of her body. She didn’t know what to say, or think about it. She’d simply never imagined having anything this good before.
But it wasn’t long afterwards that she found herself yearning to leave. She couldn’t stay in one place, in a single house. Why she couldn’t stay in one place, she didn’t really know. But she couldn’t.
Making sure to grab her blaster and sling it across her back, Korzara headed for the door. As she reached for the doorknob, she heard a familiar voice call out to her.
“Hey, where are you going? Leaving already?”
Korzara turned around, and saw Zenn staring straight down at her. There was a gleam of worry in his eye, matching the deep crease in his brow.
“I dunno. Somewhere else,” Korzara muttered. “I don’t stay put. It’s not what I do.”
The worry in the human’s eyes intensified. The next question he asked pierced through Korzara’s armor more easily than any weapon could.
“Do you have a home?”
It was a simple question. And the answer was simple, yet at the same time infinitely complicated.
For now, Korzara decided to go with the simple answer.
“Well, um... no. Not really.”
The human knelt down, and placed a soft hand on Korzara’s shoulder. His soft gaze pierced straight into Korzara’s soul as he looked her in the eye.
“Listen. I can’t pretend to know what it is you’ve been through, or what kind of life you’ve lived. But why don’t you stay with us for a while?”
“St-tay with... you?” Korzara felt her heart begin to race.
“Well, yeah,” said Zenn. “I don’t know if you know this, but most of the Neopets here didn’t have a home before I found them. So why don’t you stay with us?”
Almost by instinct, Korzara smacked the human’s hand away. “I’m not a pet! I don’t belong to you! I can take care of myself!”
The human frowned deeply. He held Korzara in his gaze. There was no malice in his eye, nor any sign of anger. And for several seconds, the two simply stared at each other.
“Well,” Zenn finally spoke up, “if you don’t want to be a pet, then why not stay as a friend?”
Korzara was left stunned by the response. It was so far out of left field, so far out of the realm of anything she expected, that she didn’t even know what to say. “A... friend?”
“Of course. We’re all part of a family here,” said the human. “I don’t want you to think you’re less than me, or anyone else. We all help each other, because we all care for each other.”
Once again, Korzara felt the same warmth from before swell up within her. It was such a strange feeling, such an alien feeling to her. How many people did she know who she could truly call her friend? There was... Gnib, maybe. And that was about it. And she only ever visited him when she needed a job.
For as long as she could remember, Korzara never really had anyone else but herself.
It was a lot to consider. There were so many things about this that didn’t make sense.
“I’ll let you think about it,” said Zenn. “If you’re going to leave, then don’t feel bad about coming back, okay? My home is a place for anyone who doesn’t have a place of their own.”
“Right. Thanks,” said Korzara. “I guess I'll just... go.”
“Don’t be a stranger, alright?”
“Sure,” Korzara muttered.
As Korzara turned around to leave, however, a thought popped into her head. As he admitted, the human had no idea what she had just been through. And as far as she could tell, nobody else in the house knew either.
She had personally encountered, and defeated, the most feared villain in all of Neopia. She was a former Resistance mercenary, now turned into one of the most wanted criminals in the solar system.
Most importantly, she had information on Doctor Sloth that no one else in the universe knew, information that would be crucial to the Resistance were they to face him again. But she couldn’t just give that information to the Resistance. Not after she burned all her bridges, and seemingly stabbed them in the back.
But this human... he could have given her exactly the answer she needed.
“Wait,” said Korzara. “This is... Brightvale, right? Are you a Brightvale citizen?”
“Yeah. Of course. Why?”
“Good. That’s exactly what I need. When can I sign the adoption papers?”
----------------
Several days later...
Korzara stood in front of the remains of her ship, exactly where she had agreed to meet the others. While the wrecked Liberada could no longer serve as a functioning space vessel, its communications systems and auxiliary power thankfully remained intact. With this, Korzara was able to transmit a message to the Virtupets Space Station.
Now, all she had to do was wait. Thankfully, the response that she expected didn’t take long.
A large falling star appeared in the sky above her, growing larger and larger as it descended onto the earth. Soon enough, it revealed itself to not be a falling star, but a spaceship.
Korzara’s eye narrowed as the ship came into view. It was a green Resistance vessel, and judging by its size, it was likely a personnel transport that could carry an entire squad of soldiers at once.
The ship rotated its thrusters towards the ground, kicking up a cloud of smoke and dust as it slowed its descent. Korzara winced from the debris as the ship finally achieved touchdown.
There was a hiss of hydraulics as the troop transport’s main door opened, becoming a ramp that led from the main hold onto the ground. Korzara’s eye narrowed as she saw who it had carried inside.
A large group of soldiers descended the ramp, and at the front of it was none other than Commander Valka himself. He was an old man now, or something close to it, as evidenced by the significant graying of his facial fur and wrinkled forehead. Nevertheless, he carried himself with the poise and confidence of an experienced veteran. Following closely behind him was Scout, and behind her was a squad of about a dozen Resistance fighters.
Commander Valka looked Korzara over, an anger beneath his eyes that was nearly as strong as the one he had shown fifteen years ago.
“You have a lot of nerve contacting us after the little stunt you pulled. Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t have you taken prisoner here and now.”
Korzara flashed the commander a grin. This was exactly the moment she had been preparing for.
“Easy. My owner is a Brightvale citizen.” She had to fight to stop herself from gagging at the word ‘owner.’ Some things about her, it seemed, would never change.
“Own— come on, be serious,” the Commander balked. “You don’t really expect me to believe you let a human adopt you?”
“I did. And I’ll tell you why,” said Korzara. “See, because my... guardian is a Brightvale citizen, that means I’m now a Brightvale citizen too. And given the Resistance operates mostly in secret, I expect you’ll have a lot of explaining to do to King Hagan if you detain me here.”
The Commander’s eyes went wide with dawning comprehension.
“Clever girl,” he said, stroking the fur on his chin. “You’ve made sure we can’t hold you accountable for your crimes without risking a diplomatic incident.”
Scout, meanwhile, crossed her arms and glared daggers at Korzara. “But that still doesn’t explain why you called us here. Just what are you planning now?”
Korzara took a deep breath, then exhaled through her nostrils. This would be a lot to explain.
“...Okay. Where to start. So, uh, you know that little heist I pulled on your Headquarters?”
“It’d be hard for us to forget,” Scout deadpanned.
“Well, see, here’s what really happened...”
And so Korzara relayed her story to the Resistance.
It didn’t take long for her to have their full attention, and by the end of it, every single person present was left utterly dumbstruck.
Scout looked towards Valka, her entire body visibly tense.
“Commander, do you think this is...? I mean, could Sloth really be...?”
Valka, meanwhile, held a hand to his chin, his brow furrowed in deep contemplation. He hesitated to answer, but the answer was a shock to both Korzara and Scout.
“She’s telling the truth. I’m certain of it.”
Korzara breathed a sigh of relief. “Oh, thank the stars, I was terrified you’d think I was crazy.”
“Of course I believe you,” said Valka. “You may be a scoundrel and a pirate, but you’ve never once lied to us. You made armed robbery honest work, as much as that doesn’t make sense.”
“Um... thanks? I think?”
“Don’t let it go to your head,” said the Commander. “Either way, I’m glad that you destroyed your copy of the blueprint data before Sloth could get his hands on it. That said, now that we know what Sloth is really up to, our plans for upgrading the Station’s defenses will likely prove insufficient.”
“Well that’s just great,” said Scout. “What exactly do we do now, then?”
“It won’t be easy,” the Commander answered. “If Sloth is a being of pure data now, he won’t wage war on a conventional battlefield. He could infect the Station’s computer network and assume direct control of it that way. We’ll have to refocus our efforts on cybersecurity. We should also split the network into several different partitions, so that no one computer can ever have control over the entire Station. And Korzara?”
“Yes?”
The Commander paused for a moment. The anger in his eyes was gone, but there was still a grudge visible in his frown.
“...As much as it pains me to admit it, you have my sincerest thanks. The information you’ve just relayed to us may very well have saved all of Neopia.”
“Wait, really? I mean, I guess that makes sense, but...”
“Just to be clear, this doesn’t make us allies yet,” the Commander clarified. “Given your reputation in space, it’s in our best interest that we pretend this meeting never happened. But I’ll see what I can do to get that bounty of yours pardoned.”
Korzara could almost feel her heart skip a beat. “You’d do that for me!?”
“It’s the least I can do,” said Valka. “But in the meantime, I would advise that you lay low on Neopia for a while. I’d imagine Sloth has a personal vendetta against you now, and Brightvale’s medieval technology level means he’s unlikely to look here.”
“Works well enough for me. It’s not like I can leave the planet with my ship totaled anyway.”
“Excellent,” said the Commander. “If we have any need for your skills again, we’ll find a way to contact you. Just stay out of trouble. And don’t rob any more civilians.”
“Understood,” said Korzara. “And... thank you.”
Commander Valka gave a nod to the other soldiers, and one by one they each boarded the personnel craft. With a roar of the thrusters, the ship soon rose into the stratosphere, before disappearing into the horizon and rocketing into space.
Once the Resistance craft was gone, Korzara was left with a moment of peace to reflect on everything that had happened. Through all of her suffering, through all of the stress and pain she had been put through, it had somehow managed to all work out in the end.
A smile crept along the edges of her lips. She took a deep breath, letting the cool, crisp air of Neopia fill her lungs.
What Korzara’s life held in store for her next, she had no idea. There was no guessing what sort of danger she’d find herself in, or what hardships she would endure.
But maybe, despite everything, it would turn out okay after all.
THE END
