Pride Goeth

[Amy West]

Tijuana Freeport, Vespucci
Afternoon

---

A lone Rhino sporting a Legion moniker departed from the station, its course marked as somewhere within the cloud to the south. West was technically at the helm, though she left much of the actual piloting to her VI assistant, MELS.
Officially logged as an emissions reading flight, West had the ship's vector plotted for the Leniex Cloud, bright and orange, looming to the south. Apart from her aboard the vessel was a Zoner, an expert navigator named Scott McBride. He wasn't part of Prometheus, and had no intention either. Since the days of the Remnant, West had relied on him to provide course data, supply maps, jump hole prediction readings, phase alignment charts, and even some mathematical calculations for some of the Insurgency's wayward vessels, each of these instilling while not a true friendship, a trusting bond instead. He may not have been of the Legion, but each took the word of the other at face value.

The trip from Tijuana had been quiet, both outside the ship and within, until Scott finally broke the silence.
"Y'know, I don't think I've ever actually asked what your deal with this thing is."
He looked away from the small electrical board he was working on, turning towards her.

West was back down, wedged under a small probe she'd brought along for the flight, going through wiring. She shifted her head to the side just enough to eye him.
"Is that supposed to be a question?" she asked, curt as usual.

"You keep saying this thing, whatever we're out here looking for is 'it', this 'Arcturus', but I've never actually gotten a clear answer for why we're out here looking for it."
He put his tools down, a look of rather deep curiosity about his face. He'd get these from time to time, but this was the first with regards to one of West's ships.

She let out a sigh. "Because I put a fuckload of work into her, and I'll be damned if I'm gonna have all that time wasted."
She shifted back over to working on the probe, continuing. "Besides, if it's going after random civvy bases, it's a public hazard, and I don't need my name plastered onto a public hazard."

Scott chuckled.
"Oh, of course. Your image is too important to let a bucket of bolts go around ruining it."

"Exactly."

"If you were so invested in this thing, then why are we chasing it? Why wasn't it part of your little gang in Coronado?"

"Ask myself that every day. Couldn't take command of her during Duskstorm; Had to make sure the grand ol' girl made it out lest some people have a shitfit. Just had to hope she made the rendezvous."

As they neared the Leniex Cloud, Scott became more and more uneasy.
"Cloud's getting pretty close. Not so sure going in there's too smart."
West practically leaped to her feet at mention of the cloud's proximity, clamping the probe's port closed before taking her seat at the ship's controls. Scott, caught somewhat off guard, reeled in his seat.
"Jesus. Amy, I hope you know what you're doing here. I'm not taking any of the blame if that thing spaces us."

West scoffed, flicking several switches on the control panel.
"Relax, and get your damn EV suit on," she said, reaching for her own.

As the two donned their protective gear, the cloud's feedback lashed out, signs of an unusually strong magnetic storm within its walls. While the dampeners did their job to an extent, the two were still jostled around like cans in a camping cooler. Turbulence from the storm rattled the ship as West took the controls again, Scott manning his station at the cabin's perpendicular station.
"Strong feedback. Cloud's not happy today. MELS, you still there?"

Confirmed.

"Good. Start compiling readings. Scott," she said, looking back at him, "See if you can't find something in all this shit."

"Right."
The turbulence was strong, but nothing unusual for the Leniex Cloud. This was all part of the defense system, brought to the Legion of old entirely free of charge by Mother Nature. None of this would have phased any of the Legion's ships in the day, but a lone freighter? Night and day.
"Think I've got something," Scott said, trying to keep to his seat as the ship kept rattling. "Large contact, might be an asteroid, though that profile is making me question."

"Lemme see," West said, pulling his readings onto one of her smaller dash screens. "Definitely not a 'roid, and this kind of storm would be perfect to mask itself."
She flicked a switch on her dash, turning a small dial far to the right and inputting some commands into her console.

ping.accessuser
initiate:syslocal.deepscan
code.transfer:daylily.outback
request:status.confirm?..

Scott looked over to her, eyes perplexed behind his EV suit's helmet glass.
"Are you seriously pinging inside a magnetic storm? You realize that's not going anywhere with all this going on?"

West kept checking her instrumentation, eyeing the feed. After a moment, Scott took a breath, but she interjected before he could get a word off.
"Some of the most advanced sensor equipment I had on Leniex was on that ship. If she's here, she'll pick it up," she retorted, ".. just gotta get lucky.."

The storm appeared to begin dialing back in severity, the jostling subsiding somewhat as the storm started passing on. Her ping into the cloud kept chiming out every few seconds, however, and not without feedback. After the fifth drop, West noticed movement in the cloud's electrical flashes.
"There," she said, pointing out the cockpit window at an object in the distance. It was large, but so were the 'roids floating all around them. A closer look betrayed the fact that this one was moving.
Towards them.

West's eyes opened fully, her heart dropping somewhat.
"Fuck.."

Scott barked from behind her. "That thing's coming at us! Kick the engines over and book it!" West did no such thing, perhaps enamored by prospects fully enclosed within her own mind.

After a moment, she came back.
"MELS, open a channel. Get me a backdoor, authorization AARDVARK."

Scott reached over, grabbing her shoulder and turning her towards him.
"Are you fucking crazy?! Big ass thing heading our way, and you wanna hack it?" He threw his hand in the air, "Fuckin' techies, man. Wanna probe every line they can get."
She eyed him for a brief moment before turning back towards the window.

"MELS, what've you got?"

Access granted. Awaiting Input.

West did a sort of jerk with her arm, muttering an audibly cocky 'yes'.
"Request docking maneuver. Try and establish link with CRANE. See if it's still there."

Affirmed. Submitting input.

Scott had effectively become a backseat driver to this, knowing West's ambition had taken over.
"That another one of your intelligences?"

"Something I cooked up back in the day to alleviate some of the administrative strain. Managed internal computational issues, scanning, cyberwarfare, the works." She turned her head towards him, though not enough to look back at him. "Nothing as good as what I have now. MELS would tear CRANE a new asshole with the upgrades I got from Rev's gang, but good enough for back then."

Docking request granted. Link to central system unconfirmed. Verified Asset CRANE still operational.

The ship lurched forward, still jangling from the storm, which was steadily dissipating. As the ship moved to land aboard the ship they'd found, it became clear that this was indeed the once venerable Arcturus. Hull blasted in countless locations, an entire section of the ship's central mass missing, exposing decks to the void of space.
West and Scott watched from the cockpit, her mouth agape at the sight. To think her once cherished ship now sulked the waves of space like this, her crew probably long since dead or gone.

"How the hell is this thing still functioning?" Scott remarked, taken aback by the sheer amount of damage the vessel had taken.

"They didn't call this thing Invincible for nothing. There," she said, pointing to the exterior near Decks 7-9. Visible were sealant fields, used to prevent the loss of atmosphere to hull ruptures, "The fields are still active, which means her reactor must still be going. That's definitely promising."

Scott quipped. "Not the word I'd use.."
Both were snapped back to the situation at hand as they neared the docking bay. As they eased in, the ship didn't appear to slow, the tractor beam dragging them careening into the hangar bay.
"Why aren't we slowing down?!"

"I don't know! Grab something, this shit'll be r-"

---

"The truth's always harder to swallow than a simple white lie.."
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