Chapter Text
The ship appeared on Aurora’s radar one uneventful morning. Brian raised the alert of the potential for some good violence and looting. It didn’t take long for the Aurora to get within hailing distance as the crew known as the Mechanisms got ready to board, intent on murdering everyone on board and stealing whatever was useful, the Aurora always had a raft of repair works that needed doing given the ‘boisterous’ manner in which the crew conducted themselves on a daily basis and it was always handy to have extra parts.
As they drew alongside it Brian’s voice crackled over the intercom again, “uh, this looks more like a wreck there’s heavy damage on the port side, looks like they’ve already been raided.”
“Aww what?” There were other assorted grumbling noises.
“That’s decidedly disappointing.” Remarked Raphaella. She’d been looking forward to trying out a new bio-chemical compound.
“Still, its hull will be good for parts at least.” Ashes, ever the quartermaster, keen to add to inventories.
“And hopefully there’s a few people left to kill.” Tim flashed a feral grin, he had new and untested weaponry.
The Aurora docked smoothly.
Jonny got hold of the comms, “Open up, we can’t die and you are about to be horribly murdered!” he barked gleefully.
Silence, then a crackle of static as the airlock was already opening, a high-pitched, piping voice spilled out through the speakers, “This is MY ship! Go away!”
Jonny was already charging forwards, laughing wildly.
Marius was shouting back, “It’s our ship now!” as the voice’s timber registered for Nastya.
“Jonny,” she began, a note of warning clear, “I think that’s a—”
The bay door opened to reveal a tiny child, grubby, ragged and blood-stained wearing a helmet that looked four times too big for her. The kid looked equal parts terrified and furious, standing firm, feet planted both hands around a gun that matched the size of the helmet. She let out a full-bloodied battle-shriek ‘”I SAID GO AWAY!” shooting Jonny squarely in the chest as he barrelled through hollering, “Surrender and DIE!” The momentum was lost as something that felt very much like a quantum round punched through his chest.
The recoil sent her reeling but she recovered quickly stomping her feet back down again, raising the gun with shaking arms, squeezing the trigger with panicked fingers.
Nothing happened.
She tried again as the rest of the Mechs halted where the first mate had fallen just staring at the scene, all of them too astonished to move.
Nothing continued to happen. The child drew herself up to her full height which was not all that much and, shaking like a leaf, determination and terror burning in her eyes declared, “This is MY ship! GO AWAY!”
There was a beat before someone started to laugh. Which spread almost instantaneously across the entire boarding party.
“Jonny! You got killed by a murder gremlin!” Roared Tim, “That is priceless!”
Ivy sighed, “Jonny, get up already, stop pretending you’re still dead.”
Tears began to fill the child’s eyes at them thinking this was funny but she had to defend the ship. She was the last one. It was her job. She was just debating with herself if she should run away to the corridor or try to fight as she was when the wild man she shot sat up.
He fixed her with a stare that quickly turned approving, taking in her defiant stance and hands still holding the gun.
“Good shot” commented Tim from behind him, giving the child a thumbs up.
“Well played, kid.” He grinned at her looking genuinely impressed.
The little girl took in the laughing grown-ups and the one she shot, the one she knew she’d shot. She saw the blood and him fall and when you fall like that you don’t get back up but he did and he was there and not shot and no one ever got up again but he did and he was alive and smiling and —
She gave a short cry and threw herself at Jonny her helmet flying off as the force nearly knocked him backwards as she wrapped herself around him clinging on desperately, tiny body trembling and beginning to sob in earnest.
His grin morphed to panic but even as he had no conscious idea what to do his arms did. Seemingly of their own accord they wrapped around the quaking creature and held her tight.
He could just about make out the whimpered “You came back! You came back!”
Jonny threw a desperate look to the rest of the crew. Usually when he got back up from being shot people ran away from him, not towards him, and they certainly did not limpet to him like some sort of octokitten.
Nastya stood considering, remembering that fear, “I believe we may be the first people she has seen in a while.” She commented quietly.
The others, having stopped laughing as soon as the kid had hurled themselves at Jonny, they had no idea what to make of that, Jonny didn’t shoot them on instinct so the kid was probably fine for the next five minutes so used the moment instead to move and spread out, Raphaella crouched near to Jonny to take a better look at the little creature whilst the rest took in more details of the ship, Tim sniffed, taking in the air, the faint residuals of gunfire and the underlying scent of Armageddon. “Raiders, 3 weeks ago I reckon.”
“You can tell that by sniffing?” Marius was incredulous.
“Yes,” Tim gave a mirthless smile that was straight out of the tunnels, “that’s about three weeks’ worth of rot. Don’t you think?”
The others nodded grimly, they didn’t make a habit of sticking around long enough for decomp to set in but they were familiar enough with it know.
Marius, Ivy, Ashes and Tim spread out to see what had happened and what would be salvageable. It was pretty obvious what had happened, raiding party had swept through and the kid had somehow been missed in the slaughter. It was unlikely there were any more survivors but it wouldn’t hurt to check. They moved off with a dulled step, the excitement of their hunt curtailed somewhat. The mechanisms were a wild violent lot but the drew the line at children, they should have known something was up with the freighter class, it was more often used as civilian transport. They targeted military vessels or bandits, it was far more fun or sporting as the Toy Soldier would say. Tim paused. He had no idea where the wooden man had got to, thinking about it must have been a few weeks at least. He sighed. Jonny had probably thrown it out of the airlock again.
Raphaella carefully pulled back the dirty hair to try and get a better look at the face beneath it. The face is pressed harder into Jonny’s shoulder with a determined ‘mrphm’ noise which the science officer interpreted as ‘No, leave me alone, I want to stay with the insane first mate.’ Well, each to their own she supposed. Kid’s brain was probably all messed up.
Jonny made to let the little one go but she clung harder with a choked sob of protest. There was brief flash of terror that Raphaella caught on his face before it settled into something that looked a lot like resolve.
For Jonny something inside him twisted at the sound she made, tightening his grip instead of putting her down. He couldn’t even bring himself to be annoyed at the damp that was rapidly soaking into his collar.
Getting to your feet with an armful of small child was tricky but no different to trying to stand with loot/explosives/other general weaponry occupying limbs so he managed to stand with his usual grace.
Raphaella got up with him, nodded before heading off to join the others on their hunt.
“Three weeks?”
“It seems so.” Nastya had a closed off face, clearly considering things she would rather not.
“That’s long.” Jonny clarified, his grip on time wasn’t the best, it didn’t really register when you were immortal, “Longer than she should have managed right?”
“Most likely.”
“Kid’s got some steel.” He added, half impressed and half trying to add some levity, he didn’t like it when Nastya shut down like this.
“Quite so it seems.”
There was an impressive explosion. Jonny wasn’t entirely sure how he went from holding the child in both arms to having one arm securely around her and one arm fully extending, pistol drawn.
Several more followed.
Jonny clicked the safety off. Behind him he heard Nastya do the same moving to put her back to his covering both possible routes of approach. Heavy footsteps followed by some coughing and muffled chuckles.
“What the fuc—”
The others returned, Marius looking slightly more singed than before. They all froze at the sight of Jonny, flanked by Nastya, pistol held in one hand, their tiny lethal welcome party hoisted onto his hip, arm wrapped protectively around them. It was one of the most incongruous images they’d collectively ever seen. Raphaella wasn’t kidding when she said the kid had latched on to Jonny and he was tolerating it. None of them had believed it till they rounded the corner.
Jonny cocked an eyebrow, daring them to comment, “What happened to you?”
Deciding now was not the moment to rise to Jonny’s challenge Ashes pushed on with the previous amusement, “Someone,” smirked the quartermaster, “walked into a pint-sized trap.”
The others started to laugh once more, “Hey!” Protested Marius, “it was really close to the floor!”
“What?”
“Someone, elaborated Ashes, “and I am assuming that someone is currently attached to you set up a fairly impressive tripwire hazard, she must have found left over magnesium grenades. It was fairly impressive, like a corridor of flame.” There was actual admiration in their voice.
“Yeah” huffed Marius, “well I only got a bit burned, and I didn’t get a water canister to the face.”
“It was an impressive display of an understanding of physics.” replied Raphaella coolly, refusing to nurse the fading bruise on her cheek.
“So limpet here set some traps? Nice.” Jonny sounded oddly proud. He tone turned a little more sombre, “I take it your nose was right Tim?”
“Looks that way.” Tim’s expression softened when looking at the little girl still clinging to Jonny as though he’d disappear if she let go, face buried in his neck. Interestingly the first mate didn’t look the slightest bit put out. It was kind of weird now naturally the kid fit against him. The master at arms felt like he should be mocking Jonny mercilessly he couldn’t quite bring himself to tease when the raggedy scrap was still trembling.
“Ivy you get the recorder?” Jonny turned his attention to the archivist, they should probably find out what happened, figure out which people the kid belongs to, someone would probably want her back right?
“Yes, I’ll examine the details later.” Ivy looked almost concerned, the tell-tale slight tilt of the head told him she was calculating the odds of the child’s survival. Probably ongoing chance of survival too. Something clenched in his gut but he had no idea what that was about. He decided to ignore that for the time being.
She was also calculating a barrage of other variables but no one needed to know about them yet.
“We should leave, well, those of us with small children attached to them.” Marius stared pointedly at Jonny.
“Why?”
“Because we are ankle deep in her people around the corner. And she could probably do with not being here anymore.” Came a surprisingly serious Marius.
Jonny huffed. He had been hoping for some good violence, it had been a while. You could do good violence one handed too. He knew from experience. But he had not expected to suddenly be some sort of comfort, anchor, thing for a tiny mortal. His arm tightened involuntarily around the kid anyway. He decided not to examine that instinct too closely. He was just impressed the little thing tried to kill them all. That earned them a brief reprieve from being shot at. Yeah. He turned his attention to the engineer to distract from his own thoughts. “Nastya, you okay to look for good parts?” He caught her eye, quirking an eyebrow to check in. This had bothered her far more than any of their previous jaunts.
She gave him a curt nod, “it shouldn’t take me more than a few hours if there is anything useful.”
Jonny grinned covering his concern, resolving to find her later instead. He knew well enough she’d just want to get the job done and make sure the journey wasn’t wasted.
“Right well, um, back to the Aurora then. The rest of you see what you can find and help Nastya.”
He holstered his gun to the sounds of ‘fuck off Jonny.” As was customary whenever he tried to give orders. Jonny flipped the bird to the salvage party before moving to hold the tiny thing in both arms once again. He finally looked down to address the raggedy bundle, “this is the first time I’ve brought someone on board, normally we just get stowaways turn up.” His voice was softer than he intended, he’d sounded gruffer and put up on in his head. To his surprise, large eyes were both open and looking back at him, eyes that were too young to have seen the things reflected in them. “Going somewhere safe?” came the small voice, tentative, hopeful.
“Yes,” Jonny found himself answering sincerely before his brain could catch up with his mouth. “Somewhere safe.”