Blacklash: The pod and its contents

Chapter 4: Transport

(Before we begin, I would like everyone's feedback on this chap and if you would like me to always do a notification when I upload another chapter? anyway onto the story!)

Up outside of the gravitational pull from the planet, I turned the ship around so I could gaze one last time at the beautiful world that had been my home for the previous 15 years. Then, sighing, 

I turned the ship back around outwards, space priming the hyperdrive.

"Coordinates?" The ship asked?

"Blacklash HQ," I responded with a flat voice.

"Accepted, prepare for the jump to hyperspeed."

The stars bent and distorted as the hyperdrive activated, shooting us to light speed.

"We will reach the target destination in four hours." The onboard AI chimed at me,

I stood up from the cockpit chair and lumbered over to the bedrooms to get some sleep before arriving at the HQ. I laid down in the bed and pulled the blanket up over my shoulders, covering the entirety of my body. I stared up at the ceiling feeling myself slowly lose the feeling of adrenaline from getting chased. My eyelids felt heavier and heavier as my body worked at repairing the wound on my hand from the plasma rifle bolt. Finally, I let myself succumb to sleep and fell into a void of blackness till the onboard computer roused me from my sleep.

"We will arrive at the destination in thirty minutes."

"Yeah Yeah," I grumbled to myself, grumpy at being woken up, " I'm up."

I stood up, gave a slight stretch, and wandered through the ship, getting myself ready. I was getting up from breakfast when the computer alerted me to an incoming transmission. I sat down in the pilot chair, putting on the transmission headphones.

"Incoming craft, please identify yourself." a voice spoke over the radio interference of space.

"My name is Gibalh V. Yid, I am a retired mercenary of the group Blacklash, and I wish to land at headquarters."

"Hold position."

"Roger." I sat waiting inside the cockpit, looking out at the asteroid belt that Hq is located inside of.

"You are cleared for landing. Prepare to receive the course through the asteroids to HQ."

"Roger that."

The navigation display light up, and I set my hands down on the controls of the ship. The engines started to fire up when I heard another voice come over the radio.

"Giblah, is that you!?" the voice proclaimed mystified.

"Hello, Colonel," I responded in a dead flat voice," years been treating you well?"

"you have a lot to answer for once you get here," he bellowed through the radio" you left, and we lost one of our best operators!"

"Well, maybe not shove me immediately onto another team and into a hot drop zone!'

"What were we supposed to do! Commissions were coming in, and we try to get as many done as fast as possible with the same level of cleanness! the only way for that team to meet the requirements was to put you on it, And you abandoned them on the drop zone and let them be slaughtered!"

I slammed my fist down onto the armrest to avoid saying something I might regret.

"Listen, we can talk later. Right now, I'm coming in, and I want the best engineers out on the runway to help with something."

"What makes you have the right to do something like that?"

"go get the head and tell them this. 'You want me to come back, get the techs on the runway by the time I land, and I will now run along."

I cut the radio off before he could say anything else and set my hands down on the controls, throttling the engine up. I maneuvered around asteroids, broken ship debris, and dodging trash collector drones.

Within 30 minutes, the asteroid formations started to look similar, and there it was, Blacklash 

Hq.

The headquarters is a full-size military installment dug into a
monumentally sized asteroid with bits sticking out inside a cave where the runway was located behind a magnetic shielding barrier. I could see people out on the runway buzzing about. I pulled the joystick and throttle back so I could land on the runway. I stood up from my chair and walked into the cargo hold where the pod was sitting. Hitting the button on the side of the 

carrier, I turned and opened the cargo bay doors.

As soon as the doors finished opening, the techs rushed in, and I stood there. Then, looking at the Head of Blacklash, Miss Mariana lee smith, I came to attention and saluted her. She returned my salute, and her scowl turned into a smile with a wicked gleam in her eyes.

"Good to have you back, soldier. I hope you have a good reason for abandoning them and then coming back 15 years later." She remarked."

"At ease, soldier."

"Mam, I have no excuse for my actions. I know it cost the lives of my allies and that I cannot make that up no matter what I do. " I reported to her. "But I do believe I have found a successor."

"And who would that be, Soldier?"

"The protogen in that pod if their programming allows it."

The Captain's face grew white for a second before she reclaimed her composure.

"I only know of them from the scavengers on Shee who managed to get a database up and running, and thankfully it was in basic, though fragmented and mixed with an unknown language."

"You can finish your report in R&D now come." I turned and looked out into space. Before following, I had a feeling its the last time I would see space for a while.