Trahho Station's hangar bay was a roiling mass of confusion, pilots of both fighter craft and mech alike scrambling to respond to the Priority Una alert. As such, Cpl. Killzar had no difficulty at all in slipping into an unoccupied mech, foregoing a space suit and the standard pre-flight checks in her haste to come to Sgt. vel-Ahllan's aid. Her mech was moved to the launch rail and hurled out into space before any of the thalatte officers could even bark an order at her.
Bringing up her long range sensors the moment she cleared the electronic interference of the station, she did a quick scan of the situation ahead of her. The Egni was coming in hot, full power to engines and real shields in a bid to get into friendly space as quickly as possible. It was being swarmed by smaller Meleten fighters, most single person, but more than a few were larger craft with bigger weapons. While the smaller fighters were drawing all of the Egni's weapons fire, the larger craft were boosting engines in a bid to get in front of the Egni and take out its unprotected cockpit.
Killzar was not about to let that happen.
Kicking on her mech's afterburners, she rocketed into the fray, taking harrying potshots the entire way in. A few fighters peeled off to try and take her out as she neared, but she threw her mech into steep angles in order to evade their fire, and three single-person craft exploded under her concentrated fire.
Within her mech, Killzar could taste blood at the back of her throat, the patch over her wound wrenched partially off thanks to her evasive maneuvers, but she was too focused on the task at hand to pay any mind to the pain.
In melee distance in short order, she swapped her rifle for her energy sabre, and more enemy craft were scattered to the void.
"Egni, maintain course to Trahho," Killzar radioed out, entirely against protocol, "Help is en route."
"Confirmed." Was all vel-Ahllan responded with, as clipped and monotone as Thalatte military regulation demanded, but Killzar had known her long enough to pick up on the note of gratitude in the Sergeant's voice.
Pushing aside the lightheadedness that had her vision darkening around the edges, and the worry for her friend, Killzar was a blur through the airspace, enemy weapons fire trailing in her wake, unable to lock on and score a hit against her at the speed her mech was moving. Again and again her blade lashed out, and again and again Meleten ships were obliterated before her.
Soon enough, Thalatte forces reached the Egni, finishing off whatever ships Killzar hadn't gotten to yet. With the station in sight, the Corporal latched onto one of the many mech emergency docks that ran along the tops of most Thalatte craft.
With the threat passed and her friend safe, Killzar could fight off the pull of unconsciousness any longer. The blood loss had her out before the Egni entered Trahho's orbit.
When Dr. Marinos heard Sgt. vel-Ahllan's distress call, her eyes had immediately gone to the cot where she'd left Cpl. Killzar, but the deupazing was already gone. Biting back the curse that sat heavy on her tongue, she instead turned back to her staff, shouting orders to prepare them for influx of patients they were about to receive, pulling a handful of her team with her as they grabbed supplies and headed off to the hangar bay.
By the time they and their equipment arrived, the TNF Egni was slipping through the energy field that kept the hangar separate from the hard vacuum of space. Dr. Marinos wasted no time, activating the thrusters on the exosuit she wore, landing on the Egni's upper deck as the station's clamps secured it into place.
She'd barely made it halfway to the mech latched to the Egni's hull when a hatch opened up aft of the cockpit, and Sgt. vel-Ahllan came scrambling out.
"She just came from the front at Sector 5," vel-Ahllan hissed as she caught up to Marinos, "Assure me that her injuries were not grievous."
"Of course I couldn't," Marinos growled as they reached the mech, "She insisted I take care of the rest of her squad first."
The Sergeant said nothing, but hung onto the Doctor's exosuit as the human boosted the both of them up onto one of the legs of the kneeling mech. Between the two of them, they had the cockpit of the mech opened in seconds, and the first thing that greeted them was a trickle of blood as the hatch came open. Inside, Cpl. Killzar was slumped over, her normally navy skin ashy in comparison to the dark violet blood that stained her middle.
"Still alive," Marinos breathed, the scanners on her Longan Unit flashing as she assessed the woman before her. Sgt. vel-Ahllan couldn't suppress the gasp of relief that burst out of her.
The Doctor turned to her, her voice professional, but her gaze soft. "I'll have her sorted, you should return to your station before someone accuses you of dereliction."
Her Longan Unit flashed once more, and vel-Ahllan knew that Marinos was checking to make sure that the wound across the left side of her face - courtesy of a stray shot causing a power surge strong enough to cause one of her flight consoles to explosively cease operations - wasn't as bad as it looked. She herself didn't register it as anything more than a distant, ignorable throb.
But then Marinos' eyes widened, and against protocol, she gripped vel-Ahllan's shoulder.
"Is it worse than I suspected?" She couldn't help but ask.
Marinos stared at her for a long beat, eyes wide as she visibly tried to find the words. Eventually, she pulled up a mask of professionalism and said, "Thankfully no, it's just bleeding profusely. Tend to your crew, the triage team will be there shortly. And after… we'll have to debrief."
Debrief. She wasn't sure when the word acquired the meaning, but among those in the Thalatte armed forces not thalatte born, to debrief was to plan escape. Their little group had been trying to work out an escape plan for years, with little success, but even still, the conviction in Marinos' eyes had a frisson of hope setting vel-Ahllan's synapses alight.
But in the middle of an open hangar with their friend bleeding out in front of them was no place to indulge in such hope, so with a steadying breath, and a nod to the Doctor, the Sergeant turned and made her way back to her crew.
Later, she'd explain away her shaking to the medic as being a side effect of the comedown from the firefight she'd been in, and not the promise of freedom that had her all but vibrating out of her carapace.
Hours later, and the chaos caused by the TNF Egni's unexpected arrival had been finally sorted.
The ship's surviving crew had been patched up and sent to the station's barracks to wait it out while their ship was repaired in dry dock. Of Sgt. vel-Ahllan's exemplar piloting skills, the sole reason the Egni had made it not only out of Meleten space, but to Trahho Station itself, no comment or commendation was made. The Thalatte rarely deigned to hand out complements to anyone but their own, and in the dark of the barracks that night, vel-Ahllan couldn't even pretend to be surprised by that.
So too did Cpl. Killzar's prowess on the battlefield go unremarked. Despite the fact that she had risked her life to respond to a Priority Una distress call before anyone else, she received no recognition beyond a noting of her quick response time in her military records. Even if she hadn't been halfway out of it that night, the painkillers and sedatives just beginning to work their way out of her system after surgery, Killzar wouldn't have expected anything less than nothing.
It was fully into the middle of the night cycle on the station by the time Dr. Marinos had dealt with the last of her patients, the next shift coming in to look after things while she got some much needed sleep. The fact that she and her team had managed to not lose anyone who came through the doors of the medbay that day wasn't even so much as commented upon, with with how long she'd been forced to serve the Thalatte, Marinos knew that was par for the course.
Too wired to sleep, her mind reeling from the day's events, she instead made her way to one of the mess halls on the station. It was the furthest one away from both her quarters and the medbay itself, bothersome to get to from her side of the station, but it was an inconvenience she was willing to put up with.
"Good morning, Chief." She said as she slid into the empty seat next to one of the deorviran mechanics on staff, setting her tray of nutritiously bland food and drink on the table before digging in.
Chief Khari, her name on record butchered for the sake of Thalatte efficiency, spared her a glance and a nod, which quickly turned into a double take when she got an actual look at the human.
"I heard Sgt. vel-Ahllan's Priority Una alert over the comms." Khari said, her tone offhand while her gaze was searching.
"Thankfully Cpl. Killzar was able to intercept the enemy before they could destroy the Egni," Marinos said casually, though she returned Khari's intent stare, "She was stable after surgery, and should recover in no time."
Chief Khari nodded, returning to her meal, but below the table, out of sight, her tail untucked from where it lay curled around her middle underneath her uniform jacket, and she looped it around one of Marinos' knees.
Staring ahead as she continued her own meal, Doctor Marinos very briefly nudged that knee against Khari's, and then added on, "The Sergeant only had superficial wounds, nothing that a Regen Table couldn't handle. I don't have any details, of course, but I'm sure whatever the Egni was carrying will be coming through to your team today."
It was an open secret that vel-Ahllan was part of one of the many expeditions the Thalatte had going on, ever in search of Hyttan tech as they were. Priority Una could therefore mean only one thing - they'd found Odazaen.
And as part of the team in charge of maintaining the few Odazaen that the units stationed on this particular front had, Chief Khari would no doubt have her hands full preparing the ancient mechs for deployment as soon as her breakfast ended.
"If it's not too much trouble," Marinos said offhandedly, while the trembling in the leg Khari had her tail wrapped around painted an entirely different picture as to the human's mental state, "Could you keep an eye out for some specific Hyttan tech? Medical stuff, so you should be able to transfer it over to one of the medbays on station no problem."
"Of course," Khari replied, carefully casual, "Do you have a schematic of what I should look out for?"
Marinos nodded, still focused on eating her dinner, but thankfully the Longan Units responded to thought instead of touch. As a security measure, people could only communicate through their Longan Units at short range, the signal encrypted and quick enough that not even the Thalatte monitoring systems that kept tabs on everything their indentured soldiers did could pick up on what was being sent person to person.
It would take some serious tampering to hack into a Longan Unit, as shielded as all of its systems were, partially to prevent information leaks, but mostly to prevent the slaves who had them bolted to their skulls from trying to wrest free of their proverbial shackles.
So when the complete schematics of vel-Ahllan's Longan Unit came through - damaged enough in the attack to have the shielding systems short circuiting enough for Marinos to get a scan of the device, but not so damaged that it would trigger the bomb implanted in the thing - instead of the Hyttan blueprints Khari expected, it was all she could do to maintain her carefully neutral expression.
Beneath the table, her tail gripped Marinos' knee tighter. With these schematics, Khari may have just been handed to mould needed to forge the key that would set them free.
"I'll debrief you if I find anything like that." Chief Khari said coolly, finishing off her meal. With one last fond squeeze, she curled her tail back under her uniform and prepared to stand.
But breaking regulations for the second time that day, Marinos touched a fellow soldier, looping her pinky finger around Khari's as she disguised it by placing her cup down a little too close to where the other woman had her hand.
"I'm sure Sgt. vel-Ahllan and Cpl. Killzar will appreciate it if you find anything. They should both be out of the medbay by tomorrow."
Chief Khari nodded once more, picking up her tray and walking off once Doctor Marinos moved her hand away.
Over the course of her shift, if any of her team noticed she was distracted, they blamed it on the mystery before them - a handful of Odazaen, all of them in working order, except for one. With as responsive as all the other known Odazaen had been when it came to the people trying to pilot them, this behaviour out of a Hyttan mech was something to get lost in thought about.
None of them, not the thalatte officers or the aliens they enslaved, could guess at what was really running through Khari's mind.