Starbound: A Space Odyssey

"Fujiwara Saito..." Lenny mumbled the name of the invaders's target while he stripped two soldiers with black tactical armor he just killed.

Lenny lowered his head and glanced at the chestplate of both soldiers.

There was a huge opening at it and the hole was drenched in blood. [These pieces are useless now...I should have used another weapon.] Lenny glanced at them one more time before throwing away since he had no use for them.

It was of no surprise the amount of damage it those pieces of armors since Lenny used of Oscar's shotgun that had blown off Lenny's arm previously at the BSS's Outpost.

It was previously a Tier 3 weapon, but after some modifications, Lenny made it a lot more powerful, close to a Tier 4 generic weaponry.

Even with the soldiers' Durasteel Tier 4 armors would never block his modified shotgun at close range.

Just like that, his weapon blasted their armor open while also opening a hole in the Apexes's bodies.

And so they died right at the emergency stairs with a surprise attack by Lenny.

But before dying, Lenny heard their conversation and got to know some information, such as the name of their target, and a little of what they are planning to do.

While Lenny was occupied stripping everything useful from the soldiers, Forge was by the side while staring at the ground, refusing to take a single glance at the dead bodies by her side.

She always hated the sight of dead bodies, that's also one of the main reasons why she fled the Miniknog.

Unfortunately, she fled without her younger sister that decided to stay behind. Different from her, Forge's younger sister was way more emotionally stronger than herself, which more often than not, the sister would always comfort and be by Forge's side when she had to deal with the terrible experiments the Miniknog forced her to do and watch.

"Githa...I miss you..." Forge mumbled the name of her sister and covered her eyes as she silently sobbed.

Hearing the low sob, Lenny cast a side-glance at Forge before ignoring it going back to take everything useful from the bodies.

[Fujiwara...] Lenny frowned as he thought about the family name of the Miniknog's target, [If I'm not mistaken, Fujiwara is the head family of the Pacifist Sea Faction. Everybody knows about the infighting in the Hylotl Government and Letheia Corporation, but I never expected that it would reach this bad that they would kidnap family members of their rivals...]

Lenny was sure about the involvement of one of the other two factions, Ocean or Reef, because the Miniknog would never dare to do such action without a backing within the Hylotl Government or the Corporation, and also because both factions have dealings with the Miniknog while the Sea Faction would never make any deal with the Miniknog.

No, the Sea Faction would rather condemn the other two factions for having deals with the Miniknog and would make everything I'm their power to stop them, like they have done in the past and enraged the Miniknog.

So, one can say that between the Miniknog and the Sea Faction there is only enmity, and the Miniknog would be more than happy to get rid of this faction that have entered in their way so many times in the past.

If the Ocean, or Reef Faction, were willing to help them to get rid of the Sea Faction, the Miniknog wouldn't hesitate a second to grab the opportunity.

Also, for the Miniknog to be willing to take the risk of offending even more the Independent Scientific Union to capture this person, it means it's identity was rather high inside the faction.

As he thought about the possible identity of the target, his mind went back a few hours earlier, when he was by the reception hall.

[Could it be...that blue Hylotl child?] Lenny was almost sure about his hypothesis.

Soon enough Lenny was shook awaken by the static noise coming from one of the Apex's radio.

Lenny took it and brought it near to his face to listen it better.

"Target is at the floor 23th. We need reinforcements!"

Hearing what the voice at radio said, Lenny lowered his hand and stared deeply at the radio in his hand.

[To go or not to go...]

He was hesitating on whatever or not he should risk his life to save the Miniknog's target or just go towards their goal while the soldiers were focused in something else, this way they might have better chance of escaping.

"Floor 23th?" Forge suddenly spoke, "That's just beneath the broadcast center of the station."

Lenny lifted his head and looked at Forge, "What do you mean?"

"Well...they want their target alive. So, if we use him as a shield we might be save from being shot down when we board a escape pods or spaceship." She said with an honest expression on her face, "Also, it's almost on our way, the floor. We are in the 29th floor.

"You are correct..." Lenny took the radio and attached it to his clothes so that he could easily hear the updates on the operation...

"You didn't need to speak so much just because you want to save someone." Lenny said to Forge as they hastily went down the stairs.

Forge's face changed slightly and she almost tripped on the stairs after hearing Lenny's comment, "I-I-I don't know what you are talking about."

"You don't really want to use Saito as a shield or whatever you were saying." Lenny said without showing any emotion, "You just wanted to convince me to save someone completely unrelated to us."

Hearing what Lenny said, Forge knew that he had already figure it all.

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Yes, she wasn't really intending to use a person as a shield, but rather save the person from the Miniknog's clutches.

She only don't want people to die.

If Forge hadn't come up with such idea, Lenny wouldn't risk his life to save Fujiwara Saito.

Lenny was, in his roots, an selfish person, and not at all selfless.

Everything he does is for his own good.

While if he sees someone in distress and he can help, he will certainly help, but everything would change as long as his life is at risk.

Before meeting John, Lenny would never have accepted Forge's suggestion as the risks of him dying were way too big.

While he may appear to outsiders as a jokester, casual and lazy, he's in fact more serious and cold-blooded than he appears to be, but still somewhat lazy.

Unbeknownst to him, he had been influenced one way or another by John in their little time together.

The rest of the time they spent running down the stairs at full speed was in silence. Neither Forge or Lenny spoke.