Icosagon had been busy... very busy. Bits and pieces, staying low-key for the most part. The Alien Defense Directorate was simply not 'in his interest'... perhaps he was a coward (which was true), but he didn't like the thought of having to deal with their agents, bounty-hunters, and lord knows what else coming after him.

Unfortunately, it began to happen anyway. First an agent or two, flowers that he had admittedly enjoyed the company of very much... but too hot to handle. Eventually, carefully sold away to slave markets, or otherwise left where they wouldn't be burning his hands anymore. Mostly. A few still entertained, lost in his clutches...

But soon his little home away from Shokushu, the hidden space station he carefully repaired and developed, had been stumbled upon. Not just once, but several times, and even with the lengths he went to erase the information, it was just too much. Eventually they'd send someone, even with the few he kept not easily tied to him, just to clean up a small problem...

And so, he brought his station to a new location. Floating in the rubble of the Perservius system's gas giant ring, the old thing wasn't completely hidden. But it wasn't the only rubble there... and for now, that would do...


There were times to be inconspicuous. But there were also times to be conspicuous. This was the latter. The spinning blue gas giant was the eighth planet from the sun, and of the others in the system, the fifth was a large world filled with forests and oceans... a world of life. And the location of his next home, an installation made from the last large ADD space ship to find him, one who's systems were disabled by an electronic trap left in space.

But this was a ship that the ADD would surely track down. He had disabled the systems, but they would send a search party, or an agent, or more. Their scans would lead them right to it. And instead of simply disposing it and trying to move his space station far away as quickly and quietly as he could... he had moved it here, and waited for whomever or whatever the ADD would send to deal with this unknown factor... him.

And with any luck, it would be something he could actually handle... because this time, the stakes would be high. Not merely explorers, investigators, or random agents, but something sent to find and kill whatever was out there. If he wasn't thought to be a major threat, however... he would handle it. By hook or by crook, it would happen.


A twist in space. Was something coming? A pair of old satellites spun lazily around the unnamed world, Perservius VI (as it was the fifth planet from the sun)... watching, waiting. They looked untouched for some time, but on an untouched world they were still a calling card. Perhaps floated in as junk, but in reality there to draw attention from his old wreck of a space station, and to bring whoever would come to where he was waiting to meet them...

Bridget was in the small bay of the shuttle that quickly slided trough the space. It was far from battle vessel, mostly specialized to stealthy and quick aproach to drop its bomb. Only instead of more conventional bomb it was something quite different, it was herself.

She went on with her preparations, her blade struck within the holster of a small pod, fastening laces of her dress, rather odd clothing for an assault trooper, but then again, she was far from normal in any aspect, and for some reason preferred the dress she wore over regular armors or such. Reasons were never asked or given.

Finally she herself took her position in the small pod with rather simplistic use, and in few moments it got loaded in muzzle of the magnetic propulsor, the systems engaging. Few short transmissions made it clear to her that her launch would be in no less than 15 seconds. She took deep breath, she had done this before, not a big deal. Just another day as human missile.

The launch was quiet, the magnets simply throwing the pod towards the locked target as the ship swooped past it, deadly precision vital, and it never had failed her before, and like all the times before, it didn't now either. With a crashing sound the pod made simply to penetrate the hull and survive the impact broke into the ships hull. Few seconds later the pods casing blew open, and she climbed out, unharmed, yanking her blade out.

As she set her boots on the ships steel floor she knew her mission was simple from here on... Find the culprit, then arrest, or more likely eliminate the thing and secure the ship for extraction team to salvage. That sole goal guided her steps as she started to walk along the ship, marching striding guiding her as she made her way to the command center, regaining the control of the ships systems high priority and good way to find the assailant.

The sky erupted in fire as the female missile cut through the sky, plunging towards its target. The metal pod cut through the planet's atmosphere, its surface igniting as it rocketed to the world below.

WHAM!

The downed ship, laying at the base of a rocky cliff, shook with the impact of the dangerous missile. The pod pierced the bulkheads... but stopped. It wasn't meant to destroy the ship, merely to deliver a package.


His eyes flickered, catching sight of a true beauty stepping onto the metal-grated floor. The damage had not taken out the security cameras, and he slowly leans back as inquisitive eyes roved over the shapely profile on display...

But only for a moment. She was already moving quickly, pulling forth a simply huge blade.

"Well now..." His head tilted as she strode on, unconcerned, unafraid. She was heading to the command, the front of the ship. One of the few places he expected her to zero in on...

It wouldn't do not to meet her. It was what she expected... and there was only two things he could do in that situation! And he was going with... 'meet her'.



Long, dark, endless corridors lined with white, familiar bulkheads. She saw active panels and controls as she walks, security cameras located periodically, despite the lack of light this place was alive and working. Soon, she might be able to get this ship into the air... and, although it'd be risky if it wasn't airtight, into space.

The type of ship was familiar, a small cruiser used for exploration, maintenance, and other long-term but non-combative tasks. Some specially-designed ones were used for transport or combat, and even a similar ship might have been used once or twice to send her out to fight.

Probably why it's interior was familiar, without being completely recognizable. She had been on ships like this before, once or twice. Enough to know, even without her review of the schematics where she was going. A steady pace lead her inevitably, like death itself, to that place. Where that monster would surely meet it's untimely end...

Stella was not aware that she was being observed as she determinedly paced towards her first goal, the ships command center. Then again she wasn't expecting to go completely unnoticed, it was not what she was for. She was sent when things were expected to get ugly, and if it was up to her, they propably would, the filthy alien bastards messing with ADD deserved no better.

While the ship wasn't really that huge, it still had enough size for her to spend good 15 minutes while navigating towards the ships front, now and then checking out some terminals, but only briefly, the technical crew would be sent after she had secured the area.

Finally she reached the last corridor, the huge blast door infront of her only thing separating her from the command center. She looked at its controls, quickly entering the override code to open it up, and should that fail, well she was carrying her big good old key along her. Simply enough, if the door wouldn't open, she'd open it herself with brute force.

She types in the code to open the heavy, secure doors of the command center. When boarders hit the ship, they would attack the key areas... engineering, the command center, and other such places. Here is where ADD agents would take their last stand against slavers, to fight desperately against alien intrusions... before the intrusions really started as the filthy monsters showed their true nature.

This one would be no different, she was sure.


The doors, unsurprisingly, did not open. That was no surprise. He changed the codes, or simply had the door locked or sealed. No matter.

She SMASHES through the old-fashioned way, shattering metal harder than steel and tearing through bulkheads stronger than a castle! The room beyond was dark, filled with computers shining dim screens of cameras, glimpses throughout of the old ship's interior. Dozens of blinking lights showed machines working, churning away, some humming quietly, others faintly beeping...

And not all of it was ADD. She couldn't call the technology 'alien'... it was more that it was 'jury-rigged'. Someone's been spending a lot of time rewiring the command center, changing it, using parts from other ships, or other parts of the ship. Electronics remade, but for what purpose? It was a tangled mess... and the room was thick and filled with machines, consoles, and more.

She wasn't sure if the room was occupied. There could be something in here... if so, it could be hiding in any number of locations. Nothing was known about this monster, this thing that captured so many. It could be tiny, a shapeshifter, a magician or something that could turn invisible. Stella had to be ready... but... she should be capable of finding it, eventually. It was inevitable.

Using force to gain enterance was not anyhow foreign to her, and with few brutish rams of her blade the door was made to yield, bending in under her power as she used her implant enchanted strenght sparingly as possible, finally pushing trough. She stepped trough the thick door that had bent like tinfoil, entering that dimlit room.

Her eyes were quick to adapt, implants making her capable at seeing dimly lit, even totally dark areas well enough to operate, she was rigged up to fight in different situations as well as possible, just as shock trooper should. Now, she was no tech expert, but the fact that the machinery was rigged heavily was so obvious, even a child would have noticed, and she started to doubt that retaking the command centers controls by herself would succeed.

She took good while just standing there, listening, looking, smelling, all senses working on detecting the anomalities in the room before she moved onward. She walked straight to the main computer. She'd atleast give a try at gaining access to ships network, and if there was a trap... well she'd just show the opportunistic assailant that she was not that easy to trap.

So she proceeded to computer, starting to work on it, trying the basic stuff covered to every agent while looking around now and then, ears perked up to pick anything even distantly alarming.

Brute force. It worked. The doors was bent and broken inwards, her blade cutting and breaking the heavy metal thing with surprising ease.


But in a heavily rigged room like this, breaking things might be very dangerous indeed. Straining her senses for a few very long moments, she finds nothing... if it's waiting, it's not moving at all. Logging into the computer, she finds the system has been completely changed! She can access it, but someone's been using this for all sorts of things. Who knows what new equipment and hardware might be in this large room.

And it was a large room. It was something like a semi-circle, wrapping around a layered ampitheater with computers at each step. Huge monitors laid on the lower floor at the center of the flat wall, but they were dark, off.

Deeper in the ship, she hears something. A door opening. Something is approaching, heading down a hall that leads into the large room. Then, the door into the room on the far end of the curve slid open... she saw nothing. No one entered? She couldn't help but feel something was wrong... amiss...

Stella accessed the computer, starting to browse trough logs and other easy to comprehend parts of the system, mainly checking how operational the ship was and what changes there had been. From what she could understand, the ships infrastructure had gone trough quite a lot of changes during its time missing already, someone having gone to great efforts to do... well whatever they were doing, she couldn't tell.

Then the door opened, and she took instantly quick step back, readying her weapon as she turned to face whatever was coming from behind the blastdoor. Still no matter how she looked, she saw nothing, as if the door had opened by itself. Ofcourse such thing happening without reason wasn't that likely, and she was trained to expect the worst, in this case an enemy she was unable to spot. She focused more, her implants focusing on enhancing her senses.

She then did rather unexpected maneuver, closing her eyes, starting to tap her weapon on the floor for few times, for most lookers that would look simply odd. The truth however was that she was using the sound to as radar to scan the room, listening to echoes to see if she could spot something unseen to eye, all the time ready to act.

His progress froze as he heard the strange noise from the dangerous woman.

Sounding! To anyone normal, it was just a loud clanging, perhaps a signal being sent. But he knew enough of his station to know where anyone intruding was around him... and 'sounding' was a trick he himself used on occasion.


The deadly woman zeroed in on something amiss. It was not large, but a strange 'thing' that changed the resonance of the room, further up by the door. It was low... perhaps even under the floor! But it stopped, just as quickly, and the changing sound distortion became regular...

He was keeping still, or moving very slowly. That way, she couldn't read the 'changes' in the noise to pinpoint his location. Still, she was able to get an approximate position... some kind of tiny servitor or beast, perhaps. A guard, sentry, or even a small robot used for maintenance... but since it froze, it had to know she was here, and looking for it...

Stella listened carefully, focus painted all over her face as she listened to the sounds echoing, her implants enhancing her hearing to point where she was actually able to read those signals. After few moments of doing so the results already paid, as she found that little moving thing, few more taps given to get more precise location.

She never pinpointed it, the thing, whatever it was, stopped moving, seemingly realizing what she was up to. This ofcourse also meant that whatever it was, it was trying to avoid her attention, making it that much more suspectible.

She wasted no time at this point, suddenly starting a quick, marching walk towards the zone she had managed to narrow, the huge blade brought up once again, her implants enhancing kept on steady level, not too straining, but enough for her to slam that blade on the thick floor plates, starting to wrench them up, quickly stripping the floor open to find whatever was in there. When she'd find it, she'd had lots of questions, either to be asked by her lips, or more likely by her weapon.

Silence... it was a powerful weapon. But even then, it only got the thing so far.

Stella had zeroed in on it enough; swiftly, she closed in on the location! It didn't move, perhaps hoping beyond hope she wouldn't find it, or that she was merely changing the venue. But then the random, wanton destruction started... the mighty, oversized blade plunged into heavy flooring, tearing up plates and revealing the space below. Stabbing brutally through metal again and again, Stella literally began to rip the room apart!

There. A white, serpentine thing darted quickly out, trying to slip around one of the computers. The tentacle darted and weaved, not attached to anything, but slithering about like a snake, trying to avoid the dangerous woman... it was small. Perhaps too much so to be the monster that had caused all this trouble? But if not, surely it's a servant, or even a portion of the thing that lurked in this place. It continued to flee, not wanting to fight the horrifying foe...

Futile. It was fast, but not as fast as her... the only difficulty was how it used the terrain effectively, making it hard for her to maneuver. A white blur, slipping around corners and darting across the paneled floor. She catches up to it just as it reaches a covered vent set in the floor...