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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ankh-Morpork Guard" data-source="post: 3758126" data-attributes="member: 10079">Chapter 513: Just Late...“Wouldn’t it be dangerous to fight in a place like this?” Adria asked anyone that was willing to answer as she looked around the scorch-marked cargo bay of the Lambda shuttle. She sighed when she noticed that Commodore Nok was looking in one of the smaller compartments against the wall and Rea was moving towards the cockpit.    “Its worse in here,” Rea called back, her voice as quiet as it usually was. Standing in the doorway to the cockpit of the shuttle, the Twi’lek pilot turned around to face Adria and shrugged, her arms raising and her head tails both twitching slightly, “There’s no way this thing’s going to fly anymore.”    Deciding to have a look for herself, the Coruscanti pilot walked over to Rea and the cockpit to see just how bad it was. As she went past, the sound of Commodore Nok stepping out of the compartment was easy to hear, and his calm, cool, but slightly accented voice followed her, “There is still a distinct smell in the air reminiscent of blaster fire...that wouldn’t linger long.”    Adria stopped just as she was beginning to walk around the boarding ramp to head to the cockpit. She then turned around to see the Duros Commodore standing behind her, his two large, red eyes looking at her curiously. Reminding herself that they were military and had a job to do, Adria nodded to him instead of pointing and started it off formally, “Sir...may I ask you something?”    “Of course,” Commodore Nok nodded his large, blue, and bald head.    First, she bit her lip, unsure of how to say it without offending him. Then, deciding that offending people was something she was good at anyway, Adria just let out a breath and pointed to his face, “You don’t have a nose, sir. How the hell do you smell things?”    There was an odd silence after she spoke, with only the soft humming that told them all the ship still had power. Then, from behind Adria, Rea started to laugh. She was obviously fighting it, but a moment later Rulae’s small mouth formed into a smile and he simply shrugged, “I do it very carefully, Cadet Harken.”    And then he stepped around her, heading over to the cockpit and past the giggling Twi’lek who was finally composing herself. Of course, that answer had done Adria no good. She couldn’t smell anything out of the ordinary in the air...anymore than things could be out of the ordinary with the boarding ramp open and letting the natural air of Thyferra flow in to mix with the filtered air of the shuttle. Why was it that, of the three of them, it was the one without a nose that noticed a damned smell?!    But she was doing her thinking while walking to come up to the other two and look into the cockpit. The four chairs were there...mostly. Two of the back ones were on the deck, sliced into multiple pieces, while the co-pilot’s chair was missing a large portion of its side. Most all of the consoles and controls were destroyed, some still smoking slightly. Long cut marks arced up from control panel to the ceiling plating in multiple spots. The few sections of the cockpit that had functioning consoles didn’t look like they’d be functioning for long...sparks and even tiny little fires pocketed most all of it.    “Is it inappropriate to ask, again, why someone would fight in a place like this?” Adria asked quickly, looking between the two others.    Both of them glanced back at her, but it was Rulae who said, after he’d stepped into the cockpit to get a closer look, “I doubt it was planned.”    “More of the same,” Rea said quietly as she moved in, looking at what once would have been the sensor station...but now was a series of cuts, burns, and destroyed hunks of durasteel, “What did we miss?”    “One hell of a fight,” Adria mumbled. She slipped in behind Rea, stepping over one of the destroyed chairs to look at the flight controls. Most of them were intact...as was most of the center consoles and controls. Though there was a dark red...looking over her shoulder to Commodore Nok, Adria spoke up again, “Sir...blood.”    That got both of the other pilots’ attentions. In a moment the two were on either side of her, looking at the deep, red splatter across the hyperdrive levers, nav computer, and comm system. They all looked at it for a moment, and then Commodore Nok did what neither of the other two wished to. He reached to one of the larger spots and placed a long finger on it very gently...“It is not dry,” he said, quickly pulling back his hand and cleaning the small amount of blood from his black glove. The Duros then turned and looked over the rest of the ship from the view of the cockpit and added, “The smell is in the air, the consoles are still smoking, the blood isn’t even dry, and there’s no one here...”    Rea stood up straight, turning to look out the viewport and into the darkness of the Thyferran night outside, “We must have just missed them.”    “Them?” Adria asked, her eyes still on the blood for some reason.    “Well,” Rea started, then stopped a moment. When Adria looked up, she saw one of the Twi’lek’s head tails twitch and shift slightly as the woman thought, “I doubt this was someone destroying the place for fun.”    At that, Adria could only nod, a clump of her red hair getting in her eyes in the process, “Good point.”    “They could not have gone far,” Commodore Nok spoke in a firm voice that he always used when being...well, when being a good officer. Blaster still in hand, he motioned for them to follow as he headed out of the cockpit and to the boarding ramp, “Glowrods out. We need to search this entire area. Whatever happened here didn’t end here.”</blockquote>

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