The last attack had gone…as well as could have been expected, Nicole supposed, taking a deep sigh. She hated hunting from space and resolved to steal or hijack a larger ship when the next opportunity arose. It was impossible to rescue the slaves in her current outfit; she’d ended up having to settle for killing the ship’s meagre crew. The slaves had then been freed but they were on their own…she figured it was a week before someone recaptured or killed them. As much righteousness she found in her work it all too often struck her heart as a futile effort. Most, if not all, of the slaves she freed ended up being recaptured, and another street criminal or sleazy businessman was ready to step up to be the new slave master. A second sigh pressed past her lips as her eyes travelled up from the console out towards the depths of space. It was hauntingly beautiful, when she really took the time to appreciate it. Even from this dark planet everything seemed so peaceful. A cynic would have said it only masked the true horrors it contained and if she wasn’t feeling so depressed than she might have agreed. Nicole had seen too many of this universes horrors first hand; and she had shed many tears at their expense as well. Still…what was the quote? You may have cried over your lack of power, but once you have the power, you become the one who makes others cry. Something like that, she thought, wondering silently if that was true here. Did the creatures she killed shed tears? Did they have families and friends who lamented their loss? Sometimes she hated when this philosophical side seized her mind, it often drove her to near self-destructive depression. Her mind had wandered for so long that she took no notice of the approaching object.

Nicole remained oblivious to the world outside her mind’s musings. Her past, her present, and the course of her future all weighed heavily upon her being. The ship’s sensors however, snapped her attention back to reality. “Something hit the ship’s exterior?” she raised an eyebrow, that in and of itself was not unusual considering her proximity to the planet’s rings. Stray ice and rock particles were bound to occasionally impact her vessel, but this was different. The ship’s sensors repeated its warning, whatever the unknown object was it hadn’t just bounced off. While she pondered what to do however, it was acting on its own. As she’d reached for the ship’s throttle, the warning shifted suddenly warning about hull integrity.
Before Nicole even had the chance to consider that one, a sharp force impacted the ship, rocking it’s from its course. The planet was abruptly filling her screen’s view and growing alarmingly quickly. A quick choice ran through her mind. She could nose dive and burn whatever was on the hull off at the expense of damaging the ship or she could enter the atmosphere normally and deal with it afterwards. Considering this was the only vessel she had, and no one would come looking if she fucked up the landing she opted for the latter. Her hands danced across the control boards raising the ship’s nose with its thrusters in time to start surfing the planet’s atmosphere. Was it habitable? The new question would have to wait until she was down safely at least.
Crossing the atmosphere was uneventful enough, though the air resistance she began to encounter was making the craft more difficult to control. With no tail plane to stabilize its flight the craft was notoriously difficult to handle in an atmosphere. It was fairly aerodynamic though, giving her time to warm up the ground repulsors and landing thrusters. Her hands tapped across the screen, transferring weapons power into the ship’s inertial aides. “See how you like this…” she muttered as the ground neared, her hands throttled the ship back and engaged both the hovering engines and landing thrusters simultaneously. Nearly one hundred Gs of force made the craft groan under the sudden deceleration, and though Nicole was spared the worst by the inertial dampening system, her ‘passenger’ would get the full force.