Waiting Shapeless

Chapter 9. Space, unknown location.

Hud: Pardos

Hud stretched.

Or tried to. One day of travel in the small cockpit of his Cito ship had easily cramped him, and he had been in here for three days now.

After meeting with Gaunth, Hud's head was filled with doubts about escaping the grasp of the Rhaa.

Nobody could leave the Rhaa. It would be especially impossible for Hud to leave with Natilliea. To the Rhaa, Natilliea was just another piece of technology they created and now legally owned. And Hud was their puppet.

Gaunth was right about this new job. Hud had seen it on the map; the route he had to take to get to his target went directly through Rapiki territory.

He had been flying through it for a few hours now without any trouble, but his scanner was displaying an increasing amount of patrol stations and he feared his luck wouldn't last him much longer.

He gently touched Natilliea as she lay peacefully vibrating against his chest.

"You're right." He said with a sigh. "We'll be okay."

Suddenly his ship's systems shut down.

Hud frowned and tried to reboot, but it refused to start up.

The ship continued to glide through space, slowly turning in towards a distant Rapiki station.

Hud knew exactly what was happening. They had finally spotted him and turned off his systems. And now they were reeling him in.

Hud wasn't surprised. In fact he would have been surprised if the Rapiki hadn't grabbed him.

It took a good while for Hud's small Cito ship to get to the large Rapiki station.

Hud almost fell asleep along the way, but anxiety kept him stirring. It wasn't long before the heavy doors to the station's docking bay opened, welcoming the arrival of its new prey into its gaping jaws.

The massive station of dark metal loomed over him and his little ship.

Hud's ship was engulfed and the large doors to the bay locked shut behind him.

Hud eyed his surroundings cautiously. The Rapiki bay was filled with large guns, many of them aiming at his small Cito ship. Hud guessed that most of them weren't even on.

As Hud's ship landed, a group of armed Rapiki filed into the room, each of their weapons aimed at Hud.

The Rapiki were interesting creatures. On average they were about the same height as Hud with four arms and two legs.

They were made of a solid, chunky rock like substance, but only if they were cold. The Rapiki came from a frozen planet in the Otacke universe, and would melt into a gooey blob if the temperature went much above what they were accustomed to.

Hud had used this major weakness to his advantage in the past, raising the temperature in an area to defeat large groups of Rapiki all at once.

But now that tactic was basically unavailable. It would be near impossible to change the temperature of the entire Rapiki station, or even just a single room of the ship.

For all Hud knew, it didn't even have the option of getting warmer than the temperature it already was. Why would it?

"What do we have here?" Cackled the gravely voice of what looked like the head Rapiki. He was standing on a raised platform on the far side of the dock, a safe distance away from Hud and the ship.