Empyrean Iris Story Collection

Cannon

"Take the day off, Sunny, You deserve it." Adam said snapping her a sharp salute before turning swiftly away to step through the automatic doors and into the official white room, and its official looking table and official looking chairs, matched only by its official looking people. An official crowd that he managed to, not only blend into, but look comfortable in standing at the head of the table in his sharp grey uniform and captain's cap.

He was a different man on days like this, polished to a shine like a newly sharpened blade, done up with buttons and ribbons, and fake appendages that didn't really belong to him. He traded in his smile too, replaced it with an official frown and brows furrowed in concentration. He looked like a commander on days like this, ten years older and ten years wiser.....

She much preferred her version of him. Not polished, not refined, but realistic, a crooked smile, an undying optimism, a trusting nature, and a single eye filled with the glee of their ever continuing mission.

The man in that room was a politician, the human she knew was soldier.

The automatic doors hissed closed with a metallic snick obstructing her vision and muffling the sound of human conversation coming from inside. Leaders of the UNSC and GA had come to be appraised of the current mission status. After the destabilization of the Tesraki tectonic structure, things across the universe seemed to have responded, like the snapping of a rubber band slowed down to a millionth of the time frame, slow, but violent none the less. She knew that the crack on the Tesraki homeward wasn't likely to have anything to do with the ever destabilizing nature of the rest of the galaxy, but she couldn't help but group it together. It had stared with the Drev, and her mother's strange device capable of pulling a ship out of warp, and then it had been the riots, the Tesraki disaster, and the strange cult. Now ships were going missing. Of course there were bound to be accidents, but Vrul scientists had detected a statistically relevant upsurge in the amount of disappearing ships, some, which had included civilian transports, in the center of habitable space..... Unlikely places to go missing.

She turned her back on the door and sighed leaning against the wall to her right and staring up at the florescent lights till her eyes grew soar.

"Missing your friend."

She jumped a bit against the sound of the voice and turned her head to look finding a familiar face towering above her, "Cannon" She said stepping forward to nudge him playfully with one of her armored shoulders. To anyone else the gesture may have looked aggressive, but that was a common way of showing affection with family members on her planet.

Cannon responded by nearly toppling her to the floor with the power of his push, and she had to leap away to regain her balance. As big as he was she didn't really have much against him in the strength department. She lifted her head to look up at him as he dropped a hand onto her shoulder and lead her away from the closed doors and the murmuring voices within. He was silent for a long moment leaving nothing but the whirring of the bionic skeleton that supported his crippled leg, "He would have made a good Drev I think."

Sunny tilted her head giving her brother a confused side-eye as they continued down the hall.

He turned to look back up the hall and shrugged, a very human gesture, "Fights as well as any Drev I know... yes.... I think he MAKES a pretty good Drev.... Without the extra limbs anyway."

"There supposed to be a point to this?" She wondered as they made their way out of the hallway and into the crew lounge. It was mostly deserted this time of day, even more so seeing as they were docked at one of the only human outposts this far into the system. She would be out there too, taking in the sights, experiencing the human things, but she felt bad doing it while Adam was locked up on the ship. Krill was gone, of course, dragged away by the new female doctor and a group of marines. She wondered what he was out doing.