Seth Karlo

[Seth Karlo]

Violence, torture in this one.

The Liberty Dreadnought San Francisco was waiting.

After Seth docked, he was whisked away to a medical facility on board. Scanned, probed, poked, had needles stuck into.

It was very quick, and Seth quickly forgot about what was happening. He just let the nurses continue with their work.

After the were done, the chip was taken off of him, he was bundled into a transport and left by the spaceport back on Manhattan with the quick muttered warning of "Don't tell anyone."

He had been left with his swords, blasters an an envelope containing a sirius credit card for 10 million.

He went to the nearest bank and set up a neural net account that day, depositing the 10 million.

Then he went home.

The front of the house had been repaired, but the inside was still black and burned. Seth walked slowly up the stairs, the smell of burned wood strong throughout his home. Then flesh. He could smell burned flesh.

The door to his mothers bedroom was open, and he slowly entered, the metal of the door cold as space to his touch. His eyes roamed, sliding from one end of the room to the other. The body was gone, but the smell lingered.

Seth's mind was in turmoil. Thoughts and emotions tumbled over each other, making acrobatics, creating stars.

He spent 2 weeks at that house. Sorting out things to sell, things to keep, things to put in storage, things to keep with him.

The house slowly got cleaned. The smell refused to leave though, it planted it's feet in the ground and stayed, through cleaners, replacing the wood and finally just covering it up.

After the second group of people refused to enter the house from the smell, Seth gave up on selling it. Deciding it would be a nice thing that he could come back to one day he locked up the house, and walked to the spaceport, where he had bought a ship and a small hangar. The Hawk sat on the landing pad gracefully, and he walked up to it, and opened the cargo hold, inserting the things he had decided to keep, and what he had bought: a large amount of food went in first, mainly frozen (That went in the refrigerator storage section) but some dried meat. Then he placed the 2 suitcases full of clothes into the storage racks, before topping up the water tanks and filling up the fuel.

He slowly walked to the edge of the hangar, and took one last look at Chrysler. His home.

Then he shut the hangar door, and bolted it from the inside.

Looking around, the walls were full of parts, tools for his Hawk, and he gathered up most of them and put them into the hold, then he entered the cockpit. The engine switch was begging to be pressed, it wanted to fly.

Sadness engulfed Seth as he reached for it, but excitement was also there. And it hurt to press that switch.

But press it he did.

With a roar the engines started, and the roof of the hangar opened with a smooth gesture. The sky beckoned to him.

Seth never saw himself as a good pilot, but he was an explorer, and that is what he was going to do.

First stop. Kusari.

The trip to Colorado went without a hitch.
The trip to Kepler didn't go so well.

Xenos attacked at Ames research station. Seth's hawk shook, and he didn't know what was happening until he saw laser blasts flying past the window.

His hand's shook as he grabbed the flight stick, and pulled his Hawk around. Bringing his 2 civilian Flashpoints online, he started firing back. The xeno's must have been surprised at the firepower, as one of the Starblazers used his nanobots, before swining around again to fire his weapons upon Seth.

Seth started to dodge, strafing left and right using the foot pedals, and launched a moonstalker missile as he approached the Xeno again, dropping a Tadpole mine behind him as they passed.

It worked perfectly, the Moonstalker caused enough damage for the already weakened shields to fail, and the Tadpole blew off half of his guns with explosive damage.

The Xeno's moved away slightly, wondering where this Hawk cam from.

Seth didn't hang around, he pointed his nose towards the trade lane to the Shikoku Jump gate and activated it, shooting towards the Jump Gate at close to 1000 m/s.

As he arrived, he noticed a change in the technology used around him. He was entering Kusari.

It took him another day to reach New Tokyo, where he was told that there was "No way in hell" he was allowed into the Museum to see the curator.

Typical.

Seth proceeded to Shingawa, and collapsed at a table with a strong drink, munching on some of the local delicasies. He failed to realise that brining a sword into a station bar, especially stolen ones, might draw some attention.

They grabbed him as he left the bar, 3 of them. He was bundled into the cargo hold of a small ship, and flown for close to 2 hours. He felt them jump twice.

When the cargo hold was reopened, he was pulled out by several sets of hands, had his Swords and Blaster's taken off of him, and strapped down to a chair.

Pure red hot fear coursed through him. His breath shook like a tree in high wind.

One man stepped forward.

"I am Commander Ichawa of the Blood Dragons. You are in possession of stolen artifacts. they were stolen from us. You will tell us how you stole them. Now!"

Seth looked the man in the eye, and saw fanatiscm. The man was almost senile. Crazy for his cause.

"I was given them, they were a present."

The man scoffed. "A present? Really."

He lifted his right hand, and the chair became electrified. Seth screamed as the electricity coursed through his veins.

His heart skipped a beat.

"TELL ME NOW. How did you steal these?"

"I didn't! My mother did!"

The chair erupted again, and people the other side of Kyoto looked round with mild curiousity.

"Don't worry my little friend, we can keep this going all night."

The screams didn't stop.

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Signature by Sleipnir.