"See? Ya see?" Neil asked, pointing to Tilda before tapping his head. "I know how to pick 'em, she's super smart." 

The men put Skit in the groundcar in short order, strapping him down in the back as Orm and Zaile squished themselves in with the ratling to keep him steady. Neil hopped in the driver's seat, which left Tilda to take the front passenger's side. Neil cranked the vehicle, and its engine roared to life, the light snapping on to illuminate the seemingly endless tunnel before them. "Everyone strapped in? Remember, keep your hands and feet inside the vehicle at all times, and don't unbuckle yourself until the vehicle comes to a complete stop. The tires cannot be used as flotation devices, my administratum litigate bade me make that clear before every excursion, you understand." 

Bullets and lasbolts began to ping off the walls and bathe the shadows in red flashes as shouting arbites began to fill the chamber behind them, fanning out in an encirclement formation. Orm yelped and Zail looked somewhat perturbed, while Skit moaned in fear. Neil merely put his tinted glasses on, something that seemed ill advised for driving in the dark, but he had good headlights and it looked cool. Tilda glanced at him with an incredulous look, likely asking herself what she had gotten into. Neil just grinned at her, before smacking his head as if he forgot to buy a certain kind of cheese at the market. 

"Oh, that's right! You can always trust the judges to keep you on your toes, I almost did not remember..." 

A lasbolt pinged off the back of the vehicle, singeing the steel. The crewmen began to cry for Neil to move, but instead he punched the glove compartment, and a small device rolled into his waiting palm. Anyone with any military or paramilitary experience knew it was a detonator, and Tilda promptly held her fingers to her ears as Neil primed it with a flick of his fingers, before pressing the crimson button at the top. There was a concussive force and a sudden gout of flame, and a noise as loud as an autogun gunshot inches away from their ears. 

Whoever had entered the room was immediately paste, and the walls began to crumble as Neil put the vehicle in gear and sped off into the darkness, laughing like he had just pulled a funny prank.  

An hour later... 

Neil had left the vehicle in the service tunnels, the group having climbed a utility ladder fifty feet up, feeding into a passageway that led into the underside of the hanger. Tilda glanced back down at the vehicle, before it beeped twice and the lights flashed. The others were hauling the ratling down the grating, but Neil had the keys in his hands. He saw her eyeing him, and he winked. "It's a rental, they'll come pick it up." 

He dropped the keys, the instrument falling the fifty feet to bounce onto the front chair cushion. He motioned for Tilda to follow, and they arrived at one last service ladder, just a dozen feet in height. To Neil's credit, he ascended first to check the coast was clear, as a captain should, and helped each member out of the small portal in the rockcrete. Skit was strapped to Zail's back, the ratling gagged so he wouldn't moan. Tilda was last, and Neil took her hand and helped her onto the landing. She moved well in the slim dress, he decided. She was fascinating to him, and not just because he had a thing for blondes that could shoot well. 

"Where to?" She asked him softly. The landing port was fairly rudimentary, as it was made for orbital ships with sub-light engines, generally without warp capability of their own. There were numerous small, general purpose, surface-to-orbit cargo shuttles like the arvus-lighters sitting next to larger merchant-class yachts meant for meandering through a system at comfortable speeds for extended vacations or parties, just beside more civilian mercantile crafts for enterprising unions with vested interests in the starport above the planet. There were a few mechanical servitors whirring across the rockcrete in the distance, and a strobing yellow light above the rafters along the walls ensconcing the large sequestered area. Neil lifted his hand and pointed past a Heraldus-class shuttle to an even larger landing craft. It was twice as large, actually, but sleek, with twin engines. Tilda gave a small, disbelieving gasp at the bulk of the sloop. Hell of a planet-side shuttle. It looked like it could hold at least two hundred people, maybe more. 

"I-I thought..." She stammered, and then admitted: "I'm actually impressed." 

Neil didn't like to wink too often because it was something you needed to do when cool moments occurred, and cool moments didn't happen too often. If they did, then they wouldn't be as cool, and the ratio would be off. But since it was her first day, he gave her another wink. "Thanks, she's my baby. We call her the [i]Rogue[/i]." 

"It's not much," Orm said sheepishly. "It took awhile to rig the warp-drive to it. But Neil and Lazarus are good mechanics."