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May 2023 It's been hectic this last year, but we are alive and celebrating our fifth year of adventure and tales. A lot has been worked on to help make the Monoverse one that everyone can enjoy and explore their story while becoming a part of the greater cosmos. All of you, new and long time players, stay safe, and see you in the Sea of Stars!
Responsible for numerous acts of theft, sabotage, industrial espionage, property damage and suspected of numerous counts of murder both within and outside of Federation space, one Marin Ramsey has managed to elude Federation Police and bounty hunters for years. A former special forces operator during the Kromus War, Ramsey left active service to pursue a lucrative career as a mercenary in the years afterwards with several jobs placing him on the wrong side of the law during that time - after five short years, however, the man would seemingly disappear without a trace. Roughly seven months ago, however, several sightings would confirm the man's survival towards the edge of Federation space, and on attempting to claim the outstanding bounty on his head numerous less experienced bounty hunters would be killed in the ensuing firefight. Intel from that incident has allowed other private contractors to track Ramsey's departure to an ice world several systems away, presumably hiding within a recently discovered outpost pulling double duty as a smugglers' and pirates' nest that seemingly developed overnight.
Caution is advised. Ramsey's own considerable skillset includes pilot training, and he is unlikely to be alone on the surface. While most ships seen entering or leaving the world have been transports or smaller jumpcraft without considerable armament the target remains a considerable flight risk. The outpost itself is liable to have tracking and scanning equipment, making direct approaches risky in addition to the planet's often extreme ice storms.
Rainbow prismatic cascades of light streaked around the lithe and tiny gunship as it raced through the realm known to the Chozo as the Quantum Slipstream. Not exactly slipspace, it was none-the-less a realm of higher dimension that transcended the concepts of space and time as perceived by those in the plane considered by its native denizens to be "realspace".
And seated in that compact vessel was the young blonde woman with blue-green eyes and a clawed scar over her left eye and cheek. She was watching her navigation charts carefully; despite a well plotted course, any unexpected quantum echo of a substantial sized gravitational mass in realspace could cause a fatalistic disaster for her within the slipstream. And while normally she could trust the Navcom to handle any such piloting calculations as they were detected, Samus now and then just felt the need to handle things herself.
At the same time, she had the Bounty information pulled up on a secondary monitor. Marin Ramsey. Ex-Confederation Special Forces, a Kromus War veteran who had turned mercenary following the Vog'l declared "victory" just over eighteen years prior. Crossed the line too many times for Galfed to let slide under the radar after five years into his career, and then disappeared from sight until about seven months ago.
It was not, she had already decided, a coincidence with the Spur in a state of War again, and he just happened to reappear.
Enough zealous idiots had apparently tried to claim a rather substantial price put on his head and not done their homework. If they had, there was a chance the mark wouldn't still be there now for her to put a claim on. Open bounty or not, this guy was not alpha category hunter material. His combat record alone from the war, or rather, that which Confleet had seen fit to declassify, was enough to match many veteran bounty hunters, and even give the Star Hunters of the Federation a run for their money.
So why did she take it? Simple.
She'd been asked by someone back in Sol with an expressed interest in seeing him removed from any kind of attention, but brought back alive. That was the only reason she'd been shown the mark to begin with. Even with the major boost to her reputation the discovery and rescue of the Euclid's Anvil and its stasis preserved crew had been, she was still only Iota category. Competent, but not an unquestionable expert...not yet.
But this was something she could handle. She wasn't well known, and at about a thousand or so parsecs from Sol Sector, she definitely wasn't going to be too much of a sore thumb, so long as she kept her base armor hidden well enough. Something Samus had learned on a few previous jobs; her base suit was light and flexible, and protected well enough when she didn't need her full suit, but it was ill suited for more subtle infiltration work. Something she had asked her father about. A second base suit, one more designed for being worn under other attire, would be in order if she was going to continue her work as a bounty hunter.
Especially for that element is surprise when she called her armor in.
About two hours now before she arrived. She had left Daiban just under a standard Terran rotation cycle ago, give or take, and considering the distance, she had decided against pushing the flux drive at full speeds. It gave her time to review and re-review everything she could find on Ramsey and the system he had been tracked to. A pirate den. Not Kromus per say, though it was possible some of them might frequent the kind of renegade pit of outcasts and degenerates that this place was reputed to be.
Still didn't make it any less of a burning dumpster.
Arne was not new to being a gun for hire. His time in the Wild Hunt had taught him well how being paid for violence worked. He'd say he was more experienced at nineteen than many were in their twenties, but then most didn't start at age thirteen and even fewer were trained since they were three. But moral quibblings about the virtues of child soldiers aside, it had given him skills that were useful to pursuing quarry. Patience, of the sort needed to wait for days just for the right opportunity. The value of reconnaisance and acquiring every last scrap of data practical to get one's hands on before moving. The intuition needed to guess at what was the best opportunity to take when there wasn't enough time to sit down and think things through. And of course, how to fight. He wasn't a born warrior, there really no such thing as one when you get down to it. Not for humans anyway, warriors are made, not born; he was proof of that. And he was made with...not care but definitely a lot of work.
He also knew however, the valour of discretion. Knowing when to pick a fight and when to keep low. And so he had decided to avoid big scale jobs for a while after Sentus Primaris. The Shadow Men whom he had foiled the plans of before had laid low after the loss of everything on that world. They couldn’t afford to out themselves by demanding recompense for what he had done, and he had to wait for them to resurface before he could find out more about the people who had killed his family. Yet he couldn’t remain idle, there was too much work to be done. Too many irons in too many fires and his body ached with ennui the longer he didn't do anything that felt useful.
The price paid to him for claiming the weregild on Viper’s Dead Hand for their roles in the deaths of Gyda and Erik Skjoldr had entitled him to a great bounty and also made him rather notorious straight out the gate in some circles, especially corewards. Nobody in the frontier or Clanspace ever expected General Winter themselves to ever be humbled. This had given him options and contacts, but it also made the job of sussing out leads against a secretive foe difficult. Notoriety made it hard to poke his nose into Shadow Men affairs, at least as Sylux anyway. He'd need to let them think he was done with them while secretly fishing around for any details.
So to keep himself busy, and to perhaps work his way up to contacts who might have had run ins with the Shadow Men he had been going through both impromptu mercenary and bounty hunting work. Ramsay had been in the Confederacy’s special forces, that meant he knew things most were not privy to. He may have had answers to questions he had burning in his chest. Doubtlessly a lot of his intel would be old news, especially given the Federation’s loose structure, but he might know people with fresher info. This to Arne, mattered perhaps more than the money ever did. It was certainly tantalising enough to draw him all the way out here in the outskirts of Federation space in the oddly coloured realms accessed by the infinity drive. He checked on all the systems and nodded to himself when the suit informed him that all systems were green. They were green the last few times he'd checked, but he was still working out all the kinks of reprogramming and modifying the fightercraft to fit his needs.
His planned cover for being here was that he was interested in work. It was a pretty good cover, nobody really knew who Sylux was. His motivations and goals were a mystery, Nobody knew his species, his homeland, or to be honest his gender. The crackpot theories on his identity by some speculators amused him dearly and he got a kick out of seeing all the guesses people made. He made sure to never answer people’s questions about who he was as long as he was wearing the suit, and most people learned to accept that. As long as he got the job done, he could be a bug eyed lizardman, a ten year old girl piloting a small mech, or a robot for all most employers cared. And that suited him just fine, it left his options for infiltration open. He could either stroll in as Sylux and look around for “work” to get close to his quarry or he could appear as “Volsungr” and get close through being inconspicuous. The only thing he rejected out of hand from his ship computer’s suggestions was seducing his way in. Even if Ramsay was confirmed to swing that way there were some lines he wasn’t about to cross.
The primary difficulty he could see was getting his target back to the Delano 7 alive. He was rather short on equipment suited for that beyond setting the Shock Coil or Tesla Pistol to taser mode which admittedly quickly changed the minds of most people. But exfiltrating them out alive could be an issue if things turned violent. They were likely to take injuries in the process and Ramsay was of no use to Arne dead. So once he’d arrived he’d need to quickly stake out an exit strategy. Preferably without having to gun down every lowlife in the way too. He wasn’t being paid by the kill so there was no real point in going for maximum violence. Besides, he didn't have his old crew with him, and that was making him a bit less keen on shooting his way in and out.
The other complication he surmised, would be other Bounty Hunters. He figured that some would arrive here as well. If he was willing to take this job there was no way that others wouldn’t. While some would doubtlessly screw up along the way, others would pose a viable threat to his plans. Ordinarily he’d be more happy to cut people a deal, but he couldn’t be sure on who might be connected with the Shadow Men here, and he was hoping for the chance to interrogate them before turning them in. Preferably with the aid of Elmorni’s telepathy. And he wasn't hugely keen on the idea of letting anyone else eavesdrop on the questions he was intending to ask. But if things came down to it, he'd reluctantly give them up to someone else if it meant avoiding a fight with another hunter. He didn't need to mark his first year with having already made a rival for life.
He was still about two hours out, and he was still planning out just how he'd do this. In a way having to bring Ramsay in alive made things much more complicated than just being able to kill him. He was constantly checking over every detail that had been gathered of the Outpost. Particularly its engineering, layout, and any confirmed regulars. Information was scarce and a bit sketchy, but even tall tales usually had a grain of truth to them if you were willing to dig through the sand to find it.
The world was not a pleasant place. It was a fact that almost everyone learned at some point in their lives, but it was rarely more apparent than it was to those cast out by society - the misfits, the outlaws, the outcasts who didn't belong anywhere. More often than not the only places left for them were those that nobody else wanted, and that truth was a fairly obvious one for anyone unlucky enough to find themselves so far gone that the Hole was their only refuge. The world it was on was a cold, desolate place, only receiving enough sunlight to keep its surface temperature along the equator somewhere just above subarctic. But it had an oxygen atmosphere thick enough to prevent decompression problems, it had gravity, it had water and a big brother gas giant it orbited providing a magnetic field to compensate for a lack of a metal core. Were it not for the gas giant eclipses lasting for weeks at a time and dropping surface temperatures below anything survivable the moon probably would've been a prime candidate for colonization.
That said, the fact that it suffered from those exact problems despite having so many pluses made the Hole everything that pirates, smugglers and other outlaws could've possibly asked for, and worth the investment of making it habitable. As a result it had become something of a hub for those who didn't want to be found or deal with legitimate governments, supporting a thriving black market economy in the carved out tunnels than ran under the world's frozen surface. Aside from a number of shuttered hangers and a select few exits from the tunnels out onto the surface there was little to give away the location of the settlement... that, and the bevy of inbound and departing transports, some legitimate, some not.
None of that, however, was anything that concerned one man. Sitting by himself in one corner of a reserved hanger and clad in a dark gray flightsuit, the older man immediately stood out from the others working inside of the room due to his age alone. Despite being ex-military his hair had been allowed to grow out a bit, and both it and the scraggy beard that adorned his face were peppered with streaks of gray. Despite his age and apparent lax attitude when compared to the other younger men and woman in the hanger, however, what little of his physique that could be discerned through his flightsuit bespoke a physically powerful and well trained man - as did the single bullet that he turned over between his thumbs and index fingers, a weary gaze settled on the gleaming bronze. The bullet, however, was not meant for anyone in particular - at least no one besides, perhaps, himself, a line of thought that had never quite left Marin's mind within the last several years.
How long had it been?
Twenty two? Twenty four years?
When the Kromus War had started with the glassing of Beacon it had been a distant problem. One worthy of concern but ultimately on the other side of the world and beyond his reach, metaphorically speaking. Back then Marin had been little more than a freighter pilot making runs between the outermost colonies within the Confederation, and he'd been content with that life. It wasn't until the world he had made a life on had gotten hit that it seemed real, worthy of action. Not until the life he'd built there, the family he'd made was gone that the fight became his, and by then it was a fight he'd all too willingly devoted himself to. Too much so, as he'd discovered in later years. While it might have been justified vengeance was like a drug - it was something you craved but could never get enough of, and if you were ever unlucky enough to somehow sate that hunger it left a man hollow, with nothing else left to fill that void. By the time Marin had realized that it had been too late. No amount of killing would ever bring his family back, but after twelve years of giving himself so completely to that life all Marin knew how to do was fight, even if there was no longer any reason to it. So when the war had ended that's what he had continued to do, only with no goal to work towards it no longer mattered who he had fought or why. But fighting nameless, soulless monsters was not the same as fighting and killing other people.
He had no idea where it had all gone wrong. Where he'd made the critical mistakes and choices that could've changed it all, how he had fallen so far into the pit with no discernible way to climb back up out of it. There was no atoning for the things he'd done in the last decade alone, and the knowledge of that cost him more sleep than he would've liked to admit. Even now the firefight two weeks back had only served as a fresh reminder of that, and the memory of killing those hunters - many of whom had been kids, barely older than his own would have been - had nearly driven him back to the bottle in an effort to wipe those memories clean or at least bury them.
But he hadn't. Marin had resisted that temptation for the same reason he resisted this one now.
"Hey, old man. We need some help moving that gear, we want outta here in a couple of days. Can't find your buddy so you'll have to do." A voice called out from the other side of the hanger, a poorly shaven man maybe half Marin's age waving the old soldier over. Ramsey resisted a grimace - while Barker may've been a hell of a pilot, debatably one of the best Marin had seen in his long career, fact was that the man reeked of booze more often than not and that was the last thing he needed with his state of mind. Pocketing the bullet in his flight suit, the old soldier would give a grunt of exertion as he hauled himself up from the hanger deck and onto his feet.
The navigation proximity alert woke her from her catnap. After a few moments to reassert her bearings, Samus sat up in the pilot's seat, eyes shifting around while she began preparing to drop the gunship back into realspace. Minutes remaining, her left hand touched the crystalline sphere floating at the center of the console, then drifted to one side and caused a shift in the ship as the deep throbbing hum from the rear began to ebb. Within moments, the prismatic cascade withdrew and flared to return her ship to the normal starscape of realspace.
About two hundred megameters ahead was the massive gas giant and its frozen ball of a moon, home to a single settlement known as the Hole. A vagabond's refuge and black market hideaway from all accounts. The fact she had to research it based on the bounty information to know it even existed said plenty. The perfect place for a rogue special forces operative to hide themselves away.
And being what it was, asking permission to land was more of a give away than not. She queued an automated inquiry protocol, letting the ship's AI inform them that she was seeking a landing zone. She was under ten minutes out from the surface at cruising speed, giving her time to get her cover attire and ready her paralyzer.
Her ID chip had been loaded with an overlay that should sufficiently cover her while here. Unregistered hunters with a penchant for the darker side of the business would be common here. An alias name of 'Skesis', a planted record of some dubious jobs and references, and she should pass well enough for the typical exile from Galfed looking for a good mark.
It paid, Samus reflected as she ran some grime in her hair and tousled the ponytail a bit to look far more disheveled, to know people in intelligence and flag command in the Confederation. Saved her a few thousand seguru on a more questionable slicer.
And with her ship now brought around to the designated landing pad, making a soft landing and expelling the engine waste, she took a deep breath and stepped onto the lift platform.
He was in a bit of a damned if he did, damned if he didn't situation. The Delano 7 was a quite distinctive craft with a pattern that made it clear it had the same origins as his Sylux armour. If he got out without his armour he'd give more people than he was comfortable with clues to just who exactly he was. He'd eliminate a number of theories straight off the bat. So he was just going to roll with the ideas that he was someone who physically could not be separated from his suit. Nearly everyone just nodded their heads and accepted when he told them that and left it alone. People usually gave him his space if he asked for it. And once there, he could use his Volsungr identity to go where Sylux couldn't before using his armour as was necessary.
While Sylux would doubtlessly draw attention, his actual allegiances were as much of a mystery as his actual identity. All that anyone really knew was that he was reasonably familiar with coreward region cultures, vocally disliked the Federal government, and never removed even the smallest piece of his armour in public nor made any indication he ever removed any of it in private.
He took a look at the moon and its parent planet with the zoom function of his sensors while his ship read out the relevant data. It was just south of the temperatures that humans found livable, but clearly livable enough to have the plant life to produce an atmosphere that organic creatures could breathe. His craft deccelerated from its infinity drive speeds and began to slow down for its final approach.
He thought about the planet briefly. The way it was being used reminded him somewhat of his base on Cylosis. He briefly allowed himself to feel sorry for him. Nobody who hid out in a place like this was in anything but a rough patch in their life. But he pushed those thoughts aside. He had a job to do regardless of his sympathies for someone on the run like this. His parents wouldn't be proud of him, and he muttered an apology to them in hopes that they would hear his beseechment in the afterlife to forgive him for this act of dishonour.
He pinged his request to find a landing zone, nodding pleasedly to himself while the ship's A.I intoned in a masculine voice. Originally it had sounded like some ancient dead president of some North American country he never intended to visit. He had that changed about as soon as he figured out how to, this sounded much better to his ears. He made a final diagnostic of all systems as the ship prepared to make its landing. He was unregistered, and he intended to stay that way as the idea of being a formalised agent of Federal law made him physically ill, so most would assume he was looking for some shady work. People who lived here would also generally not think much of carrying weaponry around; trust was a rare enough commodity at the fringes of society.
His craft extended its wings to assume a more aerodynamic configuration within the air to make the maneuvres somewhat easier until the craft entered VTOL mode to make the final approach. Once he landed, he would emerge from the cockpit of his fighter and step down onto the ground, making a quick sweep of the area before stepping onto the nearest lift platform.
With their ships being directed to two of the smaller landing bays, Samus and Sylux would be given a relatively good look at the settlement as they came in - or at least as good a look as one could get from above ground. The surface, for the most part, was little more than frozen wasteland punctuated by the occasional small ice mountain and frozen lake flat. The settlement itself, at least from the air, looked like next to nothing - a series of metal shutters scattered across a handful of kilometers, the portals sealing off the landing zones from the frigid outside air. As both ships came in their respective landing zones would have their metal shutters retract back to reveal the hangers beneath, utilitarian affairs where simply concrete had been used to shore up weaker sections of rock wall and smooth out the floor into flat, level surfaces. With the ships finally landing the shutters above would begin to rattle closed again, an interior view revealing industrial grade insulation and heating units on the underside of the metal slats as they once again sealed off the hanger from the moon's brutally cold surface. Most importantly, however, neither ship would be alone as the entrance to each hanger would be occupied by numerous individuals, all of them armed - although, noticeably, their weapons would be lowered and held at ease. As each ship powered down and began to open their respective hatches, however, a single individual from each group would begin to approach their respective visitor and begin speaking even before they'd fully exited the ship in varying tones of boredom and weariness.
"Alright, welcome to the Hole in the Wall. While you're here we expect you to follow a few of our rules. First and foremost, weapons are not permitted outside of hanger areas without an escort, the last thing we need is someone getting drunk or angry with a gun. Sidearms are the exception but only for the purpose of self defense, if you're found to have started trouble with one you can consider your ship and gear forfeit to cover potential damages and repairs. Second, you're to stay inside the tunnels at all times while you're here. Keeping this place heated costs a fortune, especially during the eclipses. Rest of the rules are common sense, you can figure them out for yourself or ask security if that's too much to expect. Enjoy your stay." A woman started, clad in fairly basic gray clothing with a white protective vest. As Samus exited the ship, however, the initial introduction would be left at that, the security guard taking one look at her holstered pistol for a moment in consideration before nodding to herself and stepping aside to offer a clear path further inside the tunnels beyond.
Sylux, however, would receive a slightly less than lukewarm welcome by comparison as he stepped off the Delano 7's lift, completely clad in armor and met with numerous murmurs and sideways looks from the security team in his hanger - most significantly, their hands were on their weapons and more than a little tense, although none of them had yet raised their guns into a ready position. As with the first hanger a single individual would step forward from the group, although noticeably more relaxed. Relaxed, however, did not mean happy as he started a similar spiel to the first hanger's security chief.
"Welcome to the Hole in the Wall. I'm going to keep this brief. Sidearms only outside of the hanger, we've had enough dumbasses trying to start fights that anything bigger or more dangerous is no longer tolerated. You get caught with something bigger you get the boot. You start shit and we get your ship. You open any of the doors leading outside and you can expect to be left there." The man began, adjusting his cap as he looked Sylux dead in what he could only assume to be the armor's visor as the armored individual stepped off the ship. Chewing the inside of his cheek for a few moments, however, the security chief would not step aside as his coworker had in the other hanger after the initial greeting. Rather, the same look of consideration that she had given Samus' sidearm was applied to all of Sylux himself as well as the ship behind him - both fairly unique but new enough and bearing enough similarities to a handful of other designs floating about, none of them particularly welcome within the Hole. Mercs were a dime a dozen, but very few of them had gear that clean looking and the vast majority didn't wear it everywhere. Not unless they were expecting trouble, and that always left the other possibility which, while not explicitly banned within the Hole, certainly wasn't welcome without a number of strings attached.
"Have I made myself clear? Don't really care if you're a merc, but we don't much like Hunters here. Wouldn't be the first one thinking they could just roll in and claim a mark who happens to be here and you won't be the last, but I can guarantee it'll be more trouble than it's worth if that's why you're here. Whatever the reason, take it off planet or wait for them to move on if my guess is on the money. It'd be a shame if that ship had to get scrapped to cover the damages."
He nodded and let his vocoders give a reptilian vocalization as he nodded in affirmation. Sometimes he liked to leave people guessing as to whether he was even capable of speaking coherently. Mostly just to mess with others, but to ensure that he was understood he gave a thumbs up. He had of course detached the arm gun to return it to its place in his ship and showed both hands to demonstrate that he was unarmed before speaking in an entirely artificial voice. Simply letting his suit vocoders generate sound based on the mental commands he was inputting into them.
"We are of course, in agreement. Forgive the impressions of hostility. But I cannot be parted from this armour. It sustains me and I am forever bound to it. I am sure you understand." His voice was reptilian, like some sort of movie monster. He had mentally prepared the backstory he would use this time. This far away, he doubted many would catch any inconsistencies from the dozen other vague and plausible enough sounding backstories and personas he had used to ward off the inevitable questions of what he was. There were more than enough people who were confined to life support or extremely heavy duty cybernetics for this particular story to sound reasonable.
"I am here to find work. It is difficult for me to operate in Federation space when I am not unionised. I hear that many here have knowledge that may be of help to me. Knowledge that may hurt the Federation." Easy enough for him to get away with, none of what he was saying was untrue per se. "If I can find those with such information, I will be glad to pay for it." He still had a good deal of leftover funds from claiming the weregild on the Dead Hand even after all his repair and refitting work and even after splitting it with those who helped him on Sentus Primaris. A bit of grease in the wheels of exchange could get him quite far, enough so that he liked to keep some of his assets liquid just for this purpose.
"As for the fighter, I'm sure you would if I caused trouble. It's only fair after all, I am your guest and it would be dishonourable for me to make a mess of your home while I enjoy your hospitality." He added calmly, letting the remark roll off him. "Call me a creature of their customs." He added, rather explicitly avoiding gendering himself in any way, shape or form. "Does this satisfy you?" He asked.
As the woman across from her gave Samus the rundown of how things operated in the Hole, she merely gave the understanding now that would normally come from much more experience than she really had put in the seedier areas of Federation territory. To be fair, she'd gotten more in the habit of slowing down and paying better attention to her surroundings ever since the mishaps on the Euclid's Anvil. ConFleet upper leadership had been more than happy to recover a ship that was lost during the time before the Confederation had been formed, and the revelation of still living Spartans had no doubt made the Department of Advanced Warfare very happy.
But she had gotten an earful on her end. Regardless that she had been assigned the mission on by Kea'ton himself, Samus still had gone very much outside what she had been instructed to do and had caused enough issues with the Banished, who had been silent since the Machine War, that Secretary Holdon was warning there would likely be a reprisal. Why there was a preference to have let the Banished have a ship full of cryostasised humans who had already lost the era they knew...It bothered her. But at least Kea'ton had maintained it as her following his orders.
But she still had learned. As the woman greeting her finished the speech that was no doubt standard around the Hole, Samus gave one last affirming nod before heading into the tunnels. First thing first was finding a central location to start her search from. She needed to be subtle in this, because she wasn't going to have any back-up, or a far more experienced four centuries old super soldier, to cover her screw ups this time.
It was also a matter of getting something to eat, blend in, and see what else she could find out about Ramsey that could help track him down. Preferably alive. After all, she was asked to put him out of the galactic scene, not put him underground.
From the moment the blue armored mercenary started to talk the security chief would find the corners of his mouth tugging downward in displeasure. This was going to be one of those conversations. He hadn't asked the mercenary for his life story, it was a simple question with a "yes" or "no" answer, and the merc's prolonged prattling told the security chief two things about the problem standing in front of him in very short order. First, he'd need to be watched. The chief hadn't given a damn about the merc's armor, and Sylux's focus on that along with his long winded answer told the man that the mercenary either didn't listen to what others told him or was used to ignoring them.
The second was that he clearly didn't know how the world worked. The vast majority in the Hole didn't give a damn about the Federation one way or the other. The management, however, quite liked them... provided they kept their distance. It was precisely because of the Federation's law enforcement system and its reliance on Hunters that the Hole was able to operate as a safe haven and make a tidy profit while doing so between docking fees and the not insignificant black market it fostered. The fact that they were so good at cracking down on illegal activity within their borders made the few safe havens able to operate in spite of that worth their weight in gold, and the last thing anyone wanted was to piss off the government in a way that would make them seriously evaluate the Hole as a threat.
For what it was worth, however, the security chief held his tongue, although the irritation he felt would be visibly growing the longer Sylux spoke - it was only on the mercenary finally finishing that the chief's own mouth would open again.
"Good luck with that, then, because you won't. You don't understa- no. Whatever, it's not my problem. Enjoy your stay." The security chief finished, finally stepping aside to allow Sylux an open path to the hanger's exit.
As Samus exited the hanger the underground settlement would be made open to her, at least for the most part. While the tunnels were occupied they were spacious enough to allow for a variety of different species, leaving more than enough room for most to comfortably navigate them without ever coming more than a meter or two of each other. Talking within those spaces was kept to a minimum, although echoes of speech and laughter could be heard over the trickle of icemelt keeping the walls moist, the air warm and humid between the settlement's internal heating and the constant presence of water. Adorning certain sections of the wall would be numerous crude metal plaques, many denoting hanger numbers and which pathways led to specific ones - a handful, however, would point in the direction of the louder voices echoing down the tunnels, making the path to the common messhall and bars an easy one to follow.
While many of the hangers would be guarded by the port security staff much as Samus and Sylux's own ships were, however, a handful would stand out for having their own independent security details, often most notable for their differing species - including one hanger occupied by a number of Kig-yar, although several would have human guards merely wearing different uniforms or simple casual work attire.
Arne was never a good liar so his usual option was to instead leave people thinking of him as being an airheaded brute or some overconfident rich boy or otherwise write him off. Rambling at length helped with the impression of not being all there so that when he decided to get serious and stop talking he'd already have been written off. It was easy enough to slip into, coming off as awkward was second nature to him. The somewhat flippant double thumbs up he gave was meant to further solidify that. As if this was all part of some bizarre alien custom that he was very pleased they had accidentally followed.
Of course in reality he was making careful note of every response to his best effort to come off as a mostly harmless obnoxious moron. His empathic senses as well as years of studying cold reading were quite good at replacing the instinctual cues allistic people used to gauge the responses they had to what they said. Quite valuable given that nearly all of his personas were in large part improvised.
Once he was convinced what he was selling was bought, he moved on. "Thank you for your time, you do your people great honour." He said. Of course, someone might have caught on to how he wasn't as dumb as he seemed to present. The act was too much of a...platonic ideal. Too perfectly idiotic, too willing to let slip with vague personal details for someone as mysterious as he was supposed to be. Too...ineffectual for someone with the gear he had. That is, if he let them hear his act for long enough. As long as he kept it in snippets the mask would hold.
Now the issue was more keeping at this act at the messhall. People here would talk to each other and likely compare inconsistencies. Should he play them up and give the impression of being a complete weirdo, stick to his act, or conjure up another one? Decisions, decisions he thought as he stepped in. He resisted the desire to make a hand gesture as he thought, obviously. Such would overly humanise his current persona and he'd rather them all keep guessing.
Familiar sounds of the messhall could be heard even as she noted the directional marker so helpfully mounted in the wall. A meal and a hard drink were what she needed right now. Blend in, and start looking for Ramsey.
The group of Kig-yar caught her eye as she passed the various bay entryways, the patch of micro feathers on the back of her neck tickling for some reason. With a wary gaze, she continued on her way, nearing the sounds of the messhall and coming to the open doorway that gave way to the large chamber. She could smell the food being prepped, alcohol from the bar mounted and stocked to one side. So long there was something with some serious kick, Samus would be satisfied. But first, food. Then the booze, and then to work. If she was lucky, she might even make some extra side money while she was here. Not everything in the Hole was black market or underworld syndicates...though making some connections with either that she could get information from, she mentally noted as she awaited ordering something, would be invaluable. Even the underbelly of the Federation liked to keep order to their illegal operations. Samus was an optimist, but she was hardly naive, even after less than a year in the business. Order and chaos in the Federation was a careful balance played by the law keepers and the law breakers. And even a rookie hunter knew that sometimes you had to bend the law to preserve it. That was why their system existed and worked.
Finally, after waiting, her food was readied. A nod of thanks, a few seguru scanned to the tip fund, and she was finding a place to sit and eat. And to keep an eye out for her mark.
And, minutes later, he was finally gone. As Sylux made his way out of the hanger and the security staff seemed to finally relax somewhat after a firefight had failed to break out, however, the security chief would remain where he was halfway between the room's exit and the ship held inside. As the blue armored mercenary left the room, however, the chief's gaze would shift back towards the ship behind him, and after a moment the man would bring a finger up to his earpiece with the individual in question well beyond earshot or line of sight.
"Control, Lancaster. No, no problem. Not yet, at least. We've a potential- yeah. He's either a clueless hustler or a born idiot, money's on the former. Keep an eye on him, big blue armored bastard who just left hanger 1-24. Lancaster out."
As the Kig-yar halted their internal bickering and saurian squawking to return the wary gaze that Samus offered them as she passed their hanger, another handful of minutes spent continuing forward would deliver the woman to the common messhall. Hollowed out from what had originally appeared to be a sizable cavern created by erosion and icemelt cutting through limestone, the space was hundreds of meters long and wide, the ceiling supported by multiple load bearing columns scattered throughout the space. As with the tunnels the air was humid, albeit even heavier and warmer with the amount of living being of roughly a dozen different species cramming themselves into the space. It wasn't merely food an alcohol offered, either. A careful eye would pick out numerous stalls scattered around the edge of the common space marketing and selling a wide range of goods and services, not all of them legal within Federation space but brazenly on display where the government had no presence or power. Also scattered throughout the crowd and positioned largely near the reinforced columns or the edge of the cavern were the occasional security guards wearing the same uniform that the hanger teams had been.
Two mugs of the local brew and her meal polished up, the blonde woman breathed in and tapped at her wristcom. Finding her mark was not going to be as simple as just asking some random person for him by name. Even the greenest Alpha ranked hunter knew that. She would likely need to use her cover and find work while running her search. On the upside, it was extra money in her pocket and a few less costs to worry about while she was at the Hole.
Up from the otherwise empty table, her plate taken to the return spot, and Samus was making her way across the common area, heading toward the various stalls and shops arranged here. Likely she could find details on any jobs that were looking for a quick hand, maybe scope out the local black market just to maintain appearances, and get a better feel for the smugglers' sanctuary. It was going to likely be a few days at the least. The faster she fit in, the faster this job would get taken care of.
During the time Samus spent finishing off her meal a number of observations could be made regarding her surroundings. The relatively illegal nature of the Hole's business practices aside, the port wasn't much different from any of the others she had likely set anchor in since taking up the role of a freelance mercenary and bounty hunter. The communal space was alive, constantly moving as individuals bought, traded, ate and spoke to one another, the rumbling undercurrent of sound much louder than most originally believed on entering the space - would one want to speak to someone not within a meter or less they would find themselves raising their voices quite a bit just to be heard clearly. Further inspection of the various stalls and booths further along the edge of the cavern would likewise reveal a curious piece of information. While many of the wares displayed were illegal or restricted within Federation space, virtually nothing was what one would consider to be a weapon. More importantly a number of the vendors wouldn't appear to be selling physical wares at all, with clients merely speaking before exchanging credit chits if even that much before leaving.
As Samus got up to leave her table the movement would catch the attention of several nearby individuals, although most would simply ignore the commotion as just another part of the cavern's heartbeat. Some, however, would not, instead sizing the woman up as any soldier or mercenary would have a new arrival or addition to a unit - not that any would say or act upon their observations. It wasn't their business... and what happened in the Hole tended to stay in the Hole.