The next few hours actually passed uneventfully, either because their new owners were busy about the ship, or because they wanted the girls to have time enough to realize the depths of their helplessness. They might think time in here'll make us more pliable or somethin' Ranma thought to herself shaking her head. Sure as hell wouldn't work on me, but its working on some of these other girls.
Indeed Ranma could tell that a lot of the women around them who had seemed to be trying to keep their courage going were now down on their knees or were leaning against the bulkheads, their eyes vacant. Several of them were openly crying. There were a few exceptions though, including the one with the two long head tentacles. She seemed more resigned than anything.
Ranma frowned, concentrating on her face, which was not an easy task given his newfound hormones and the woman's clothing, trying to figure out what she was seeing there. His/her ability to read expressions wasn't the best, but if human facial expressions carried over, it looked as if the green-skinned girl was used to feeling helpless, or as if this kind of thing was nothing new to her.
Not good. I am definitely not getting a nice fuzzy feeling from this new galaxy, universe, dimension or wherever the hell I am now. Great…I coulda at least tried ta just run first, made my decision when I had a clear head, but no! I had to be fuckin' dramatic! Would it've been so hard having 'em follow me around for the rest of my life on earth?
Yes, yes it would. Ranma decided a moment later shaking her head with a small smirk. Besides, once I get outta here, I'll have a whole galaxy to explore! Just think of the number of marital art styles out there!
Then she shook herself. Come on Ranma, ya need to think of a plan. You can either breakout and cause some havoc, sneak out an' look fer a specific target, or wait and see who's first to come and sample the goods. The redheads' lips formed into a small snarl at the thought, but she went on, her thoughts a little cold now, though not quite on the level of the Soul of Ice. She had not been able to enter that technique's mental state since undoing the Youthful Mind, which she had mixed feelings about.
The first few will obviously be the officers, rank having its privileges an' all, so that could be a way to cut the head off the snake. That wasn't really a viable plan however since Ranma had no idea if the leader had competent underlings, or if it would be the real leader at all rather than one of his favored underlings or whoever was in charge of breaking the slaves. He also couldn't take them hostage, the attackers, slavers or whatever they were had far more hostages then he would in that sort of situation. And I can't pump 'em for information because I don't understand what they're sayin'. So breaking out it is.
Ranma moved back to the door, testing it for a moment and looking at its hinges before looking out the grate that would allow a guard to look inside. One of the two orange-scaled aliens was out there, possibly the same one that had pulled her hair earlier. Then she looked around, making certain there weren't any video cameras or anything in the hold their work. There was one up top on a swivel mount, but it seemed to be stuck in position, banging back and forth in a small arc rather than rotating the entire way. Shoddy maintenance, possibly the only good sign I've seen so far.
Thankfully Ranma hadn't noticed any other video cameras out in the corridor either. Good. With that in mind Ranma looked at the lock on the door then shrugged. It was an electronic one, and there didn't seem to be any way to input anything into it on this side of the door. Still, that doesn't mean I can't break it somehow. Either it'll break and open, or break and stay shut. Either way works for me. I can get out another way though the door would be much quieter.
The portion of the lock on this side of the door had only a small panel to it, but Ranma was able to pull it out of the rest of the door, using her nails to remove the small bolts. He paused a moment looking at the bolts in amusement. An entirely different world with so many different alien races, and bolts still look the same. That's actually kind of cool when I think about it.
By this time a few of the other slaves who were more aware of their surroundings at this point were noticing what she was doing, and a few were already moving come to whisper urgently at her but Ranma again couldn't understand them. "Stop it you fool! If you make trouble for them don't you see they'll take it out on all of us not just you! I won't have my child…."
"Oh hush, if she's got some kind of plan, maybe she'll succeed, it's worth a try." Said another voice.
"Better to live a slave than to die and have our body ejected into hyperspace!" Said another voice.
"I've got a younger brother aboard this ship, and I'll do whatever I can to get him out of here." Said a fourth hotly, her voice a near snarl.
Ranma ignored them all which was quite easy considering their voices were simply background noise. When he reached into his ki space to pull out his bottle of water again however all of them looked on in shock. "What?" One stammered, "Howl?"
Hearing the shock in the voices around her Ranma looked back at them winking at the one who had stammered, one of the good looking human-type aliens with the odd skin colors. She then dumped the water into the electronics of the door, which immediately caused sparks and a fritzing sound. To Ranma's surprise the door opened rather than simply stayed shut, and the orange-scaled alien on the other side turned his three eyes widening while one hand fell to the gun at his hip.
Before that hand could finish its journey however Ranma had him by the throat with one hand and the other gripping his gun hand hard. She broke his wrist with a single twitch of her hand while the other hand crushed the alien's trachea stopping him from being able to scream. The last thing the aliens saw was two bright blue eyes staring into his.
Ranma shuddered, before reflexively throwing the dead alien into the prison cell behind him as she realized she just killed for the first time. Ranma hugged herself for a moment then shook her head angrily. Enough, I'll worry about that later, we've got more important things to concentrate on now. Quickly moving back into the cell she forced the door closed through brute strength, a feat that had many of the girls whispering though Ranma found it ridiculously easy. The door wasn't very thick after all.
Then Ranma moved over to the dead body, plucking out the alien's blaster. Holding it up in her hand she waved her other hand around at the crowd of women who were now much more aware of their surroundings. Half of them had been woken up by the sound of the door opening, and now all of the women in the cell were looking on, their faces showing the full gamut of emotions from horrified and worried to hope.
One of them, one of the long-necked ones came forward, taking the gun from her. Ranma motioned to the doorway and then stood as if standing guard to show what she wanted the aliens do and the alien nodded in reply. "I don't know why you can't seem to speak Galactic Standard, or even where you came from really. I don't think I ever saw you around town. But if you think we have a chance of breaking out of here, I'm all for helping."
Ranma nodded with a smile, not able to pick out many of the words though she thought she'd figured out which word meant 'you' in that speech. Then she knocked on the door twice in quick succession then paused then knocked three more times in a slow beat. She stared at the guard earnestly, then did it again before nodding as she opened the door and left.
Once in the corridor Ranma covered herself once more in the Umi-Sen-Ken as she moved down the corridor, very grateful that there were no other guards or surveillance equipment here. It looked as if only the pretty girls and women were worth putting a permanent guard on. She quickly found the hangar bay they had been brought in by, which was teeming with work being done on what looked like some kind of equipment or other.
That stuff looks like mining robots or something. So is this some kind of rival mining group, or pure slavers that're gonna put the miners to work for 'em? I read stories about how people would get all, what was it, fuedin' and a'fightin', if someone was trying to work their claim in the American Old West, and in Japanese history the same sort of thing happened between feudal lords. But in space? If you can get ta other planets, what the hell could be worth so much that you'd want to round up your competitors like this?
Shrugging that minor mystery off Ranma continued to move around, making a mental map of the ship. The corridors were uniform, and were all about 15 feet tall, probably to accommodate the height of different aliens though only the long-necked ones that were among the prisoners needed it on the ship right now. There were elevators here and there, and when Ranma entered one he saw that there were at least four levels or as many as six in most of them, though two of them in the direct center of the ship had seven.
It must have been the ships nights time because Ranma didn't run into that many aliens, only a few walking the corridors here and there and some in what was obviously a cafeteria which he entered with the help of one of the aliens coming out at just the time he reached the doorway. Squeezing between the orc and the wall had been difficult without touching them, but Ranma had done it, not that she got anything out of the effort.
He'd hoped that some of the alien's food would at least look like something he could try, but that was not the case. Ranma wasn't willing to try 'nameless meat soup', especially not 'nameless meat soup' cooked for aliens that look so much like orcs. Still, he was able to steal some hot water to change back to his male body at least. While parts of his mind was busy making a map of the ship and making notes of the two alien types cataloging what could possibly be weak points and other things like that the rest of Ranma's mind was trying to come up with a plan of action.
Problem one, while a lot of the miners look the type that'll be good in a fight, the pirates or whatever seem ta be better equipped, and they might have more numbers. Problem two, would the miners know how to work this ship if we could take it over? And problem three, this ship was one of five, and those four other ships were guard ships. That might mean they've got better weapons and armor than this one. And I got no idea what their reactions would be if this ship started to break away or whatever.
Ranma had just decided to see if he could find an armory of some kind when he began to notice that the area he was now in, which was on the fourth floor of the ship near the center of it, looked much better kept up in the rest of the ship. Officer's country? He was at the outside of the ship as well rather than the center, which was proven when he walked down the corridor and noticed that it actually had small portholes allowing someone to look out into space. The view though stopped his feet for a moment.
It wasn't stars, it wasn't even just blank darkness. Instead there were uncounted billions of lines of color, all mixing up in a way to make the greatest rainbow ever imagined look tame in comparison. After only a second of staring Ranma had to turn away, his eyes watering. Holy fuck, what the hell?
A stray thought or memory struck him of a book that Nabiki had red once, a science fiction book, something about the way ships traveled. Hyperspace? For a moment Ranma stood there trying to remember what Nabiki had said about it, but then a small evil little smile appeared on his face. I wonder what would happen if this ship suddenly lost its hyperdrive or whatever you call it…
OOOOOOO
It took Ranma another thirty minutes to find what he hoped was the engine room. It was a large room at the back of the ship encompassing four, maybe even five stories of the ship and was filled with computers, pipes, what looked like some kind of generator and a lot of other junk that Ranma didn't understand the purpose of. That's alright though, Ranma thought to himself cheerfully. I don't have to understand what it does ta break it.
Any normal space-fairer who had the ability to hear Ranma's thoughts at that moment would've been horrified. Messing around with hyperdrive engines was not recommended at the best of times, there were few more horrifying ways for a spacer to die than for his ship to disintegrate around him in hyperspace, or just to go off course. While many of the main hyperspace lanes were so because they were clear of obstacles, those lanes didn't extend to the sides, above or below very far. So if you came out of hyperspace in the wrong place you could find yourself coming out into the center of a star, already in the grips of a black hole, or bouncing off the edge of some other gravity well.
Ranma didn't know any of that, of course. All he was interested in was the idea that maybe messing with the engines would drop them out of hyperspace into realspace, while the rest of the ships in the convoy or whatever kept on going.
From his perch up on top of one of the large pipes, Ranma looked around, clinging there with ease, out of the Umi-Sen-Ken for now. He couldn't use his ki sense when in the Umi-Sen-Ken very well for some reason. Now however he could sense seven aliens all around the room. They radiated to his senses somewhat oddly, but Ranma put that down to the fact that they were aliens rather than anything else.
He noticed that three of the aliens were of a new type he hadn't seen before. They looked like menial labor and were being treated almost like slaves by the orange scaled aliens too, though they didn't seem to have collars or anything on them. They were squat somewhat ungainly creature that would only come up to his chest if that. They seemed to walk on all fours for preference, with long back legs and somewhat shorter forelegs with three large fingers on the front hands, but with very dexterous toes.
One of the orange-scaled aliens seemed to be in charge here. He wasn't really doing much, simply sitting in one of the chairs at a console with his feet up and some kind of magazine open in his hands. Curious Ranma jumped down entering the Umi-Sen-Ken in midair to land lightly behind the alien. He stared over the aliens shoulder at the magazine before blushing hotly, moving away quickly while shaking his head. Should've expected that, porn magazines exist even in space, what a revelation, not!
He very carefully ignored how good looking the white skinned alien on the page had looked, or how enticing certain… parts had been, needing to concentrate on the here and now. And besides, remember Ranma you're a boy again, ya can't go perving on girls like that.
Frowning thoughtfully Ranma simply looked around the engine room trying to decide what the weakest point was and what could most easily be broken before realizing that he had really no idea. Shrugging, he grinned. When in doubt blow stuff up. First though, let's see if I can find the armory.
That was actually quite easy. The armory was at the center of the ship on the other side from the hangar bay. They were connected by a short corridor moving sideways across the ship which Ranma had bypassed because he had seen what looked like some kind of heavy gun turret stuck in the ceiling set on a pintle mount. It wasn't moving thankfully, which Ranma put down to either shoddy maintenance or someone trying to save a little bit of energy or something.
The armory wasn't as impressive as Ranma had hoped. None of the orc's pikes were here, which made Ranma think that maybe they were personal weapons. But there were a hundred plus blasters there, large two handed weapons that Ranma supposed were the sci-fi equivalent of rifles. There was also a camera on a working swivel scanning the room, which made Ranma curse.
While the Umi-Sen-Ken covered him and anything he was touching, he couldn't hide the fact that a weapon had disappeared if he picked it up. The 'not interesting' or 'not my problem' field of the Umi-Sen-Ken could not match up against something like that. Maybe if somethin; else was happening in the room ta trick their minds into concentratin' on, but as it is, no.
Frowning thoughtfully Ranma made his way out of the room, bypassing several of the orc types who were walking the corridor grunting occasionally and pushing one another by leaping up and sticking to the ceiling for a moment. Scared Spider maneuver, one o' the most useful martial arts techniques I've ever learned Ranma thought to himself rather happily. Akane had laughed at him when he had decided to create that technique after reading a few American comic books about a hero named Spiderman. But it certainly came in handy.
Ranma leapt down after the two orcs had passed, racing down the corridor in a hurry now. He had to finish this tonight, he couldn't let the night cycle of the ship pass him by. Nor was he willing to try this against at some later date, not if it meant leaving the slaves, in particular the women, in their captors' hands.
I've been lucky so far that none of these bastards have tried to go and 'sample the goods'. If they had, an alarm would've already been raised, and I would've faced a tough choice. That choice would have been to fall back and help protect the women giving up his primary advantages, his mobility and ability to stay hidden, or leave them to their own devices with only a single gun to protect them.
Soon after that, Ranma came upon where the male prisoners on the ship had been imprisoned. It was a smaller area then the ones devoted to the females, and guarded by not one orange-scaled alien but two orcs directly outside the doorway carrying those weird pikes of theirs. Luckily there wasn't any kind of camera or whatever watching the doorway. The two orcs were leaning against the wall on either side of the doorway, which allowed Ranma to move between them to stare through the bars of the cell into the interior, though he had to stand on his tiptoes to do it.
Here again he ran into a problem. There was some kind of recorder set in the ceiling of the room, and this one was moving around just like the one in the armory. That definitely limited his options.
Frowning thoughtfully, Ranma moved away from the door again, staring at the two aliens on guard, both of whom were asleep slumping against the walls. It was tempting to start the party here, but Ranma decided against it. No, best to give the crew something else to concentrate on before I raid the weapons locker, then come back here.
With that in mind and knowing he was running out of time Ranma raced back to the engine room, nearly colliding with two of the orange-scaled aliens as they moved down the corridor. However he reached the engine room without further incident then looked around trying to figure out what to break and how to do it.
Finally he decided on a series of large pipes and energy runs coming out of the generator and into the wall directly behind it. Several of them looked rusted, and Ranma figured that was a good indicator that maybe this was a natural weakness of the engine. With that in mind, Ranma leapt up onto the top most pipe staring down at it then came out of the Umi-Sen-Ken. He paused for a moment, then blasted straight down with a ki shot. "Moko Takabasha."
The Fierce Lion's Roar's blue sphere cut through the pipe cleanly, and immediately some kind of extremely cold liquid began to gush out, some of it splashing on Ranma and causing him/her to change forms. But the big surprise happened when the ki blast bore through the bottom of the pipe and then into the energy runs. The explosion picked Ranma up and threw her up into the air to slam her back into the ceiling of the engine room, throwing shrapnel and everything else every which way.
Even though Ranma had been ready for something to happen the explosion caught him/her by surprise. She grimaced as several bits of shrapnel cut into her skin here and there while she raised her arms to protect her face. One in particular nicked the redhead's side, causing her to wince irritably, but Ranma could feel her ki healing already going to work. Ranma continued to cling to the ceiling, pulling the Umi-Sen-Ken technique around him again.
Below her the aliens began to scramble around in a panic. "What in the universe just happened?! Why did we lose containment?" The one in charge threw aside his porn magazine, rushing over to stare up at the damage before turning quickly to slam his palm down on a large flat area on the side of the generator. Another panel popped up next to it after a bare flicker of an instant, and his other hand shot out to slam a large red button. "Emergency shutdown!"
The hum of the generator, which after Ranma's bit of sabotage had become more of a high-pitched whine, suddenly stopped. Alarms began to blare now, and from some kind of intercom a voice began to shout angrily. "What the hell is going on down there?! We're still six hours out from our destination, why did we come out of hyperspace, and why are the alarms blaring!?"
While the three-eyed alien that had apparently hit the emergency stop tried to explain matters into the intercom to whoever was on the other end, the other aliens grabbed up some emergency gear and began to deal with the fire that Ranma had caused. He winced guiltily however as he noticed that one of the menial aliens had been hit by a bit of the shrapnel. It wasn't badly hurt, but it was noticeably limping, one of its back legs cut in a few places near its foot.
One of the other orange-scaled aliens was down, holding his gut where a piece of shrapnel had embedded itself. But seeing as he was part of a slaving group and obviously there by his own choice unlike the menials, Ranma wasn't prepared to waste any sympathy on him.
Quickly Ranma made his way over to the hatchway into the engine room, then from there made his way along the ceiling using the Scared Spider technique until she was by the armory. She waited there as several dozen of the orange skinned aliens raced down the corridor towards the engine room shouting to one another. Ranma noticed that none of the orcs seemed to have been roused to help deal with the crisis, which was another sign that maybe they were simply dumb muscle.
She opened the door to the weapons locker immediately coming out of the Umi-Sen-Ken to fire a Moko Takabashi at the camera, destroying it before racing into the room and gathering up as many of the weapons as he could stuffing them into his ki space before racing back out. She then paused, firing off another ki blast destroying the heavy gun in the corridor moving across the ship just in case.
With that done Ranma raced along not caring that she slammed unseen into one of the orange-scaled aliens, sending it tumbling with a squawk of surprise to the corridor floor. Ranma was out of sight down the corridor before the alien could do more than shout in shock.
Ranma swiftly came to the holding area for the male prisoners. Dropping out of the Umi-Sen-Ken as he was moving forward she noticed that the two orcs were now awake and grumbling to one another, shifting uneasily on their feet as the alarm continued to blare and the voice shouted through the intercoms. Neither orc had time to bring their pikes down to bear on him before Ranma jumped up, her fists lashing out to either side. Ranma's punches slammed into the orc's noses at far faster speeds than most humans (or aliens) could hit, throwing them backwards against the walls with their faces smashed in, dead or unconscious.
With that done Ranma moved forward two steps to the jail's door. Grabbing the bars of the door's small viewing flap, Ranma ripped the door off its hinges, tossing it behind him down the corridor.
Inside the male prisoners had woken when the alarm went off and were milling about uncertainly. Several of them near the doorway trying to hear what was going on before Ranma had ripped the door off its hinges. Now they all stared at Ranma in shock. "Does anyone know who this girl is?" asked one of the more alien looking miners, a huge slow moving creature, that had long hair and tusks, looking around at the others. "And… um, where did the door go?"
"Noooo… I'd remember those… I mean her…" said one of the human-looking aliens, leering at the redheads breasts.
Ranma didn't notice the man's look, instead staring all around at the miners. She smirked at them then waved her hands, as if she was a magician about to perform a conjuring trick. Then without further ado Ranma began to pull out weapons from her ki space to exclamations of shocked surprise. "Hey all, hope you like know how to use these."
One of the miners, another young male from the race that most looked like humans with odd skin colors, in this case light purple, moved forward hesitantly picking up one of the guns. Inspecting it, he nodded at the girl who seemingly had some kind of weird power to hide things. "Who cares who she is, or what the hell she's doing." he said turning to the others with a fierce grin "For my part, I'm suddenly feeling a lot more confident now without ships overhead threatening to bombard us into wreckage. How about it, who's ready to skrog these kriffers up!?"
He was answered with a roar as the miners all moved forward quickly grabbing up weapons.
Ranma nodded her head rapidly. "I'll show you where the girls are being kept, we don't want these bastards to be able to take them hostage against you all." None of them seems to understand and Ranma rolled her eyes before pointing down the corridor then at herself. The blank looks continued even while some of the miners began to move rather uneasily around her, one of them stopping to put some laser rounds into the orc's heads.
Shuddering a little at that Ranma made motions to her breasts. Then she pointed at the prisoners before pointing back down the corridor. "I think she wants to show us where the rest of the women are." Said one of the older prisoners. "Is that it?"
Ranma looked at him blankly then did the same motions again, saying aloud. "I can't understand you, but the women are that way, that way? God I'm sounding like an American tourist just speaking loudly and clearly in Enlgish, as if that'll help. Ughh…" Ranma shook his head before turning and moving off.
"I think that's it!" Said another miner, one of the aliens with longer necks. "Those of you with family go with her and guard the women. The rest of us let's raise some hell!"
A moment later Ranma was gratified to notice that several dozen of the male miners were following her. The redhead raced across the hangar bay, stopping halfway to knock out several of the orc aliens that had gathered there, possibly as a first response in trying to retain control of the prisoners. Ranma barreled into them like a bowling ball hitting ninepins, scattering the orcs easily their best efforts to hack at her with their pikes. They might be strong in comparison to most aliens but they've got nothing on a martial artist, she thought to himself grimly.
Leaping up Ranma dodged a pike that an orc tried to hack at her with, grabbing the orc by the head and flipping over it. Using it as a handstand, she kicked out at two others before twisting its neck with an audible 'Crack'. Ranma winced in revulsion at having killed again, almost automatically reaching mentally for the Soul of Ice, but she fought the instinctual reaction off. That kind of thing could get to be a habit, and Ranma wasn't willing to fall into it.
Ranma raced on, coming upon two of the orange scaled aliens about to head down the corridor towards where the women were being kept. Attacking them from behind, Ranma slammed their heads together before they even knew she was there, tossing them to the side before racing on. Arriving at the door into the women's cell Ranma did the knock he had shown them before he left.
The women must've been on edge already from the sirens and the shouts through the intercom because the door was opened a second after Ranma finished the special knock. Over a dozen of them stared out at her then over Ranma's head towards the running men. The men in turn shouted gleefully when they saw wives, daughters or more often than not simply significant others. Some of them stopped at the other two doors on this corridor, opening it to reunite with the women who hadn't made the cut to be among the best looking bunch, and there were shouts of joy all around.
While the families were reunited Ranma grabbed two of the younger, tougher looking miners that had followed him. They looked at one another in shock as the girl carried them back towards the start of the corridor, their feet not even touching the ground like they were small packs of food. Once there, Ranma pointed down at the floor and then at them emphatically. "Hold here, guard here, understand?"
"I think she's trying to tell us to guard this position. " said one of them to the other, shrugging his shoulders. " It's a good idea too, since this is the only entrance to the women's areas."
"I wonder why she can't speak Galactic Standard." said the second looking at the redheaded human girl. "And where the hell she came from. Coffec was right, she's damn memorable for such a short thing. Plus there weren't any true humans among us except for old man Dufty, and he was gunned down before we boarded the ship."
"Worry about that later, if it's really something to worry about at all considering this crap we've found ourselves in." The first man muttered, going to one knee and siting along the top of his blaster rifle down the corridor at one of the orcs Ranma had knocked around in the hangar bay. A second later blaster bolts raced down, catching the orc in the chest and face. He nodded at the young girl, who nodded back then raced off leaving them behind to their surprise, having thought that she would stay with the other women now that the men were armed and moving around the ship.
They watched astonished as the redhead leaped over two more orcs entering the corridor, kicking out to their heads as she went. The two orcs flew to the sides, slamming with enough force to shatter some of their bones against the sides of the corridor despite their layers of fat. "I'm not certain what race she is, but with strength like that, I don't think she's fully human whatever she looks like."
"You think?" The other miner scoffed. "I don't kriffing care what she is or where she came from! Whatever she is, we owe our lives to her. I just hope that the kriffing retrofitted corvettes keep right on going. We can't take those gunboats." The miners had figured out that they had fallen out of hyperspace, but had no idea why and no idea if the gunboats had kept on going or not.
The rest of the battle against the slavers was actually anti-climactic. Miners were a belligerent sort at the best of times and all of them were used to looking after themselves. Moreover the ship's crew was actually much smaller than Ranma had thought. The men alone among the prisoners outnumbered them two to one. And the orcs were useless at range, which meant the miners could cut them down with relative ease so long as they saw the orcs coming, even on the ship. They seemed to be able to absorb a lot of blaster bolts, but not enough to make a difference when the miners had their blasters on full auto.
Realizing this Ranma took the time to hit up the commissary in search of hot water. The redhead poured water over her head transforming into his male form with a sigh of relief. Then he joined the battle occurring elsewhere on the ship.