Red lights flashed in the corridors.  Alarms buzzed their concern.  A lone hooded figure raced through it all, clutching a small satchel to his chest.  The goal had been to escape without incident with the prize, but not everything went to plan.  It wasn’t like these places posted status updates on their security systems.<br/><br/>Ilion had been doing this kind of thing for years.  He’d earned himself quite a reputation for being dangerous, a professional with plenty of experience under his belt and very few missteps.  Very few even knew what he looked like, thanks to the habit he’d picked up of wearing a lion face mask.  It was white, as were the strands of hair that stuck out from between the mask and his dark hood.  No one could remember as much, but the name White Lion came well before the mask.<br/><br/>“I hope you’ve hacked an opening!” the man shouted to the band around his wrist, a com link back to his ship.<br/><br/>«You aren’t in trouble, are you?» a voice came back.  It was deep and had an upper class accent with a perpetual condescending tone.<br/><br/>“Of course not,” Ilion insisted.  “Everything’s going according to plan.”<br/><br/>«I see.  Then the loud sounds and flashing lights…?»<br/><br/>“Just the locals being festive.”<br/><br/>«Are you taking any of this seriously?  They<i>are</i>aiming to kill you once they catch up.»<br/><br/>“That’s assuming they catch up,” Ilion gasped out as he skidded to a stop, slamming a hand down on a biometric scanner for the docking bay containing his ship.  It wasn’t his own, of course, but one he’d relieved from someone with the distinction of being able to open everything at the space station he had infiltrated.  The gate opened and he stepped inside, waving the stumpy hand he carried at his beautiful vessel before throwing it aside.  “Give me some credit.  I can outrun anybody, Seraph.”<br/><br/>«Will you stop showing off and get on the bloody ship?»<br/><br/>“Awww… are you worried about me?  That’s sweet.”<br/><br/>«I just don’t want to be stuck here in this dump.  Or worse, dissected by some handsy engineer!»<br/><br/>There was a commotion from behind the closed gate, and that got Ilion moving again.  A ramp opened up under his ship and he scurried inside.  Seraph, as expected, had arranged their departure.  The bay opened.  The ship, Sidriel, had already been impressive when he’d stolen her.  After all the years of improvements and black market upgrades, there was hardly anything out there in the vast reaches of space that could catch her.  Knowing that, once they had cleared the territory surrounding the space station, Ilion felt relaxed enough to slump in his seat and start opening up the satchel.<br/><br/>«What is it?»  Seraph’s voice was louder, but it still held an electronic quality.  It had taken a long time to get his speech patterns to mimic a living voice to such a degree, but there was nothing compared to fleshy vocals.<br/><br/>“Another stupid rock,” the mercenary sighed, lifting out the palm sized gemstone and holding it up to the light.  “Unimaginative.  But hey, Chancellor Briggon wants to woo that princess from Omikron 5, and girls like that love shiny things.”<br/><br/>«Is this another sex thing?  I don’t think I’ll ever understand your kind, Ili.»<br/><br/>“Mm.  Me neither.”<br/><br/>Of course, Seraph meant all fleshy beings, not necessarily Ilion or his heritage.  As different as they all were, he had to admit that down at the root of it all, everyone was basically the same.  The need for survival, the continuation of the species…  It was all primal instincts, just with other layers of societal intricacies and wayward religions on top.  He sat there and thought about that for a moment, then stuffed the large gem back into the satchel.<br/><br/>“Set a course for the nearest SS.  We need to restock before making that long trip, and I need a few hours of sleep.”