System Overclocked 2 -ch24- (Patreon)

Wrench let out a sigh and leaned back against the duct wall.

It’d been two weeks or so since they’d gotten onto this rebel ship.

At least that’s what Wrench guessed given that they didn’t have a clock. Without a clock, calendar, or a Hab system, he had no idea how long they’d been here.

For all he knew, it’d been one week, or three months.

All he knew was that his days were spent hanging out with Tickaht, watching the Tongsta, breaking things, and a great deal of sex. So much sex that they were now at the point that they weren’t having sex every night.

Sometimes they just fell asleep next to one another

It reminded him of his marriage in his past life.

“I’m so tired of the Tongsta food. My rear end feels bloody and raw anymore,” complained Tickaht in a whisper. She laid her helmeted head against his shoulder and then scooted closer.

Lifting his arm up he put it around Tickaht and pulled her up against his side.

They were watching the cargo bay at the moment.

It was somewhere they could make sure that they were ready if something happened, could talk, but also not be on alert. Unlike the “bridge” as they called it where they couldn’t talk much.

In fact they’d almost been caught once when Wrench had an unexpected sneeze creep up on him.

“Yeah, I know. Mine, too. It’s pretty… it’s awful,” murmured Wrench with a laugh. He put his gloved hand on top of Tickaht’s helmet and patted it. “Better than dying to starvation though. At least it’s everything we need to stay healthy.

“I admit I was kinda nervous about you. Grae supposedly have slightly different nutritional needs than a Hume but you seem fine.”

Tickaht honked, huffed, then pulled her knees up to her chest. Only to force his legs out flat and craw up into his lap.

He hadn’t expected Tickaht to be an invasive snuggler, but she was. On top of that, he had no idea if that was Tickaht herself, or Grae as a whole. He knew less about her species than he wanted to admit about the Grae.

“I’m fine. I do feel a little off. A little… wrong. Nothing terrible though,” admitted Tickaht with a hiss. She sounded frustrated and annoyed. Then she groaned. “I’m lying. I feel sick often. Sick, tired, and just… wrong. I feel wrong.”

Wrench took in a short breath, then out it out sharply. He put his arms around Tickaht and held to her.

“Yeah, as I said, I was nervous about you. We’ll do what we have to to get you better once we’re out of here,” Wrench promised. “Until then… at least you won’t starve. You’re just lacking something in your diet. I just wish I knew what it was.”

“Don’t know. I’m okay just… grouchy,” grumbled Tickaht. “Sex helps but also makes me grouchy after the good feelings fade.”

Several Tongsta came into the cargo area suddenly, causing Wrench and Tickaht to both fall silent.

“— get it ready. We’ll need to get a number of things while we’re there,” said a voice.

“Alright. Once we get permission we’ll need to move into the yard to get the repairs under-way. We’ll need to put in a rather large bribe,” said a second Tongsta.

Wrench grinned, smiling from ear to ear.

This was exactly what he’d wanted to hear.

They were apparently putting into a port. The rebel ship was going to get into a port and then start in with repairs to the damage caused by Tickaht making their gun controls a toilet.

“This is it, isn’t it?” asked Tickaht after touching her helmet to his in a whisper. When their helmets were touching, they could whisper at a very low volume.

“Yes. It is. I think you should sneak aboard on the transport. I’ll remain here and then damage the engine once they put into dock,” suggested Wrench. “I’ll damage the engine so they’re not going anywhere. Goodie is probably looking for you and I both. If she gets the system scan signal from your implant, she’ll come straight here. I just need to make sure this rebel ship doesn’t go anywhere.”

“Wait, why? I thought we just wanted to get off and escape.”

“Because I want this stupidity to end. I want to show Tongsta what Hume and Grae are capable of. If we can knock this Rebel ship out, communicate where we are, and give it to Goodie on a platter.

“And if we do that… if we do that, do you think the Tongsta can deny we’re sentient anymore, Tickaht? Do you think they can sit there and say ‘Hume and Grae’ aren’t sentient?

“I mean, you heard Talker. Even he had to admit we were sentient and was talking to us like Tongsta.”

Tickaht hissed, sighed, honked gutturally several times, then sunk into him.

“I’m nervous that if we separate we won’t see each other again,” warned Tickaht. As if it were something she was prophesying in a strange way. “Either I’ll get lost on the port, or you’ll be here and the ship will take off, or… or… something.”

For some reason, Tickaht sounded angry. So angry that it felt extremely out of character in fact.

He half expected her to be nervous or concerned, not angry.

Wrench had no idea why she’d feel like that either.

He wanted to know.

In this moment he was willing to admit ignorance.

“Errr, why’re you angry?”

“Grae don’t pair for long. Every child is often with a different parent. Maybe it’s because we can’t have children, but I’m very… very angry… at us being separated.

“Me being mad at being separated made me mad. Now I’m mad at being mad at being mad.”

Tickaht was spitting out her words in angry hisses and broken clicks.

“Oh, well, alright. I don’t want to be separated either. Now… go. We need to get this moving,” Wrench ordered. “I’ll head off to make sure I’m ready for when we put into port.”

“Alright,” grunted Tickaht. Her fingers tightened against him. “Alright, I’ll go. Be safe, Wrench.”

“Of course. Likewise, Tickaht. Keep yourself safe. I can’t make you angry about wanting to stay with me otherwise.”

Tickaht honked rudely at that and smacked him on the shoulder.

Then hugged him tightly.

***

Staring mindlessly at the Tongsta working quietly, Wrench felt odd.

He’d quite literally brought his body down to the point of what would probably be concluded as hibernation. While he had assumed it would be quick, he only now realized that he’d assumed such a thing based on time in the way a Hume does.

Tongsta time always felt two or three times as long to him.

Now he was actually nervous about Tickaht running out of oxygen in her suit, food, or water. That having sent her off like that was a great way to get her killed since she wouldn’t know where to go.

Which led him to quite literally bringing his systems down to the point that he was a living corpse. Only his sense of hearing was heightened to the point that it’d shock him out of his self-induced comatose-like state.

Whenever the Tongsta spoke, it woke him.

Enough for him to listen in, wait for them to go silent again, then sleep once more.

Idling with his thoughts was painful.

He thought of Goodie, Seventh, Tickaht, and Stripe. Of everyone back at the Hab that depended on him as well.

Being here at this moment felt as if he were living for others once again, but also for himself. Because it was here that he really could demonstrate some of the usefullness of the Hume and Grae.

“Put it into position xxhht. Sooner we finish this the better. Bad enough we had to wait for xxhht and xxhht. Damned xxhht,” ordered a Tongsta.

Wrench blinked as he “woke up” once more. He quickly dialed his Systems to a point where he was once more a normal living person.

I guess this is it.

Finally?

Maybe?

They wouldn’t be moving the ship into position otherwise… right?

They haven’t said anything else about moving the ship at all. This is the only thing it could be. There’s been nothing about the transport coming back or anything else either.

“Done,” said a Tongsta.

“Alright. Get to the forward battery and get the damn repairs done,” grumbled a Tongsta. “The sooner we’re out of here the better. Got a report that a Heavy Cruiser started moving in this direction on a patrol, I don’t want to linger.”

A heavy cruiser?

Ha.

Captain boyfriend to the rescue?

Well. Let’s make sure this stupid rebel ship doesn’t go anywhere then. Time to get a move on.

Wrench had a plan for this moment. In Tickaht’s and his time here they’d gone ahead and checked most containers. They’d found a lot of weapons, unsurprisingly.

A number of weapons made kill Tongsta.

Even a tunneler just like the one he’d used to kill a Tongsta in front of Captain boyfriend previously. It looked to be the same object, though a different model. As if it had the same fuction, but not manufactured in the same way.

Perhaps even having different uses.

These were larger than the ones he’d used previously as well. Almost to the point that he could probably fit into the hollow tube of it.

If it didn’t have the hooks and insertion points there, that is.

Getting up, Wrench shot off down the pipe. Reaching the turn and gliding through it with much more grace than he had when he first started doing this.

While he’d never be as graceful and predatory as Tickaht in weightless space, but he was better than he used to be.

The casual thought of her left him with a heavy feeling in his guts. A dread that made his hands break out in a sweat and down his spine.

No sooner than he reached the armory access than he bumped out the latch. Having grabbed it without looking, tucking, and rolling as he went, Wrench literally spun out of the duct and sped down to the crates he wanted.

Slipping into a crack that he’d turned into a hole he shot inside of it. Grabbing a tunneler type he’d practiced holding, he shot back out of the crate.

It was so large that it felt unwieldy to fly with it, but he didn’t want to miss the opportunity of bringing one along with him.

Through the compartment he shot and back into the access point.

Pulling it shut he put on the speed again. Shooting down the toward the engine room now. If there was an engineer working in it, he’d tunnel them out.

Then attack the engine directly.

“Alright Captain boyfriend. It’s your chance to shine,” murmured Wrench as he drew closer to his goal. “Show up, save the day, rescue Goodie’s babies. I just… I just have to hope that you and Goodie are watching the system for Hume locations as closely as I think you would be.”

Stopping in front of the access point Wrench hesitated. Next to it were several other tunneler weapons.

Looking into the compartment, he could only see a portion of the engine room.

From what he could see, there wasn’t anyone here.

There was no Tongsta that was within view of where he was.

Chewing at his lip, he contemplated what to do. There were a number of corners that he couldn’t see into from here.

A number of locations a Tongsta could be quietly lounging around as if waiting for something to happen. Lurking in some area and just oozing about in space.

You know… they really do seem lazy and slow more often than not.

Deciding that this was the time and moment, Wrench reached up and pulled the clasp. The access grate popped open and he eased out of the pipe and quickly looked around.

“What?” asked a voice as second before Wrench spotted a Tongsta.

They were in the corner and working on some type of Tongsta-like machine.

Holding tight to the tunneler, Wrench shot toward them. He had one chance to completely catch them off guard.

“What do you-what?” demanded the Tongsta before the tunneler was rammed into them. It immediately fired off given the force it was inserted with and activated.

In seconds Tongsta goop was being ejected out onto the ground below them.

“No! NO! I need-no,” complained the Tongsta even as they began to die.

While Wrench had never seen it, he was sure that a Tongsta could recover from such a wound with immediate treatment. Or some sort of Tongsta Mender being right on hand.

Given they were on a rebel ship in the engine room, that wasn’t going to happen.

Writing them off as already being dead, Wrench looked over the tools the Tongsta had. Spotting nothing that would do him any good on interfacing with any of components, he instead did as he had done last time.

Picking up something that looked big and heavy and almost like a wrench, he started whipping it around with as much force as he could generate. Making sure to slap anything that looked like a button, flipping any switch there, or generally causing as much mischief as he could.

One particularly solid blow slammed into the corner of a panel and knocked the cover-plate off it. It clattered loudly and began floating away all on it’s own.

Looking at the panel, than the Tongsta, Wrench realized this might just work.

Rushing over to the whimpering and dying Tongsta, Wrench flew into the stream of Tongsta goop falling out of the tunneler. A tentacle was weakly attempting to stem the ever-flowing tide as it babbled onward.

This was a rebel who had no qualms about killing others not long ago. If they were willing to kill people, they needed to be killed themselves.

Tickaht would say something like that herself, wouldn’t she.

Now covered in the equivalent of Tongsta blood, or guts really, Wrench flew straight back into the now open machine. The internals of it were wide open after the panel had been knocked free.

No sooner than he got into it, then he realized he had no idea what he was looking at.

What he did know was that it would unlikely be conducive to have Tongsta goop spread all over it. There was a reason certain machines were mechanical, some were Tongsta-like, and some were both.

They probably didn’t play well together with each other. A Tongsta-like machine hopefully had a similar composition to Tongsta blood.

Smearing himself against everything he could, he spread the strange gel all over. Wiping it into every nook and cranny that he could get some of it off into.

Spinning in place he felt a great deal of it simply come off him due to the weightlessness of the space. The lack of gravity made it easy to spray it around.

Shooting back out of the machine, Wrench flew under the spray of Tongsta blood one more time. It was considerably less of a stream at this point and they weren’t talking anymore either.

Right back into th emachine he went and spun like a top inside of it. Flinging and hurling the goop in every direction.

Coming back out he grabbed the wrench-like object that was ever slowly floating away and went back to hammering away at everything he could.

Every dial, every control, every switch, was hit, smashed, or smacked.

Waiting for him to flutter by and absolutely wreck it. To just let his inner “gremlin” free and cause a great deal of damage.

The only real issue is he didn’t have that much time.

That and the engine room could probably explode at any time or if he screwed up something delicate. Slamming his impromptu club down several times into a multitude of very much needed readouts Wrench paused. He’d heard the Tongsta version of an intercom turn on.

“Hey! What the hell is going on? I’ve got an entire light-show going on up here for engine controls!” shouted a voice.

Smirking, Wrench lifted his weapon up and smashed it into the last display that’d looked operational, then stomped on a button. Throwing the item to the side he shot up to the access point.

It seemed his time was up and the fun was over.

Entering it quickly he pulled it shut behind himself and threw the latch. He hunkered down into himself and sat there.

Listening.

Watching.

Chances were, someone would be around shortly to see what was going on.

Smiling to himself, Wrench looked to the other three tunnelers he had nearby. If they came in ones, he could easily put down another three.

Three less rebels was three less that Captain boyfriend would have to deal with. Three less Tongsta to fight back when they showed up.

Alright… we’ll wait.

I’ll play the resistance Hume role again today.

Though… I should go get a few more tunnelers while I wait. Shouldn’t I?

No.

We’ll just wait.

I wouldn’t want to miss someone showing up. If I let one of them report in on the situation, then they might do something different.

Sitting there, Wrench stared at the dead Tongsta.

“Gremlins… that should be our military moniker. Gremlins. All we have to do is get onto a ship and into the systems… after that… after that we can take it apart from the inside,” mused Wrench.

Smiling to himself, he waited.