Salem set up one of the walls to replay its tracking of Rathien since he'd left the ship last time, with emphasis on the battle that'd just taken place. He half-watched as he changed clothes and switched out his equipment, and turned his full attention to it as he watched the recording of the battle. Rathien was as agile and threatening as ever. Salem didn't exactly fancy the idea of trying to go up against him in hand-to-hand combat- but then, if he did his job right, it would never come to that. If he could avoid Rathien's weapon-fire, he'd be fine.
A short buzz followed by the silence in his head indicated that his ship had lost track of Rathien. Salem's heart skipped a beat- he immediately skipped the recording ahead and watched as Rathien entered what looked like his own ship. Nothing to worry about, then- just too far away to see the hunter through the hull. Salem breathed a momentary sigh of relief and switched the viewer back to its standard mode, so that the ships and beings in and around the bar showed up in a variety of neon colors indicative of various qualities.
As a matter of curiosity, he zoomed in on Parker inside the bar and called up a readout- maybe he could work something out about Parker's suit, which seemed more advanced each time he encountered it. He began to draw his cloak on around him, but stopped with it partway around his shoulders and did a double-take. "Seriously?" he muttered aloud. Parker's suit was composed primarily of titanium, it seemed- the element hadn't been used in military applications for centuries. Salem's EM patches worked by issuing forth a dual field of force- one in normal space and one in another realm of force, causing the electromagnetic waves from the patch to oscillate between the two planes and allowing them to penetrate the standard EM shielding of most equipment. Titanium and a few other standard real-space stable elements, thanks to their atomic and nuclear structures, naturally absorbed the otherdimensional field that would cause the electromagnetic waves to revert to existence in real space- all of the patch's EM radiation within Parker's suit would have simply been forced out of existence by the field in real space. The same property, however, meant that a similar field could be used to simply force the titanium itself out of phase in real space. In alloy form, this effect would cause the trace elements left behind to become exceedingly agitated, often releasing an explosive amount of heat.
Salem shook his head. Amazing how things you'd never think about seem to crop up here. Al and someone else were approaching the ship- non-human, but humanoid. Salem quickly switched to a visual display and frowned- it was Ewa. She didn't look completely normal, but he'd taken her for human. One could never tell in this place, it seemed.
The ship and his communicator trilled simultaneously as he clipped his holster back on- it had found a pattern in the systems the Skimmer had used to contact the rebel base. Salem should be able to communicate with the rebels. For the moment, he'd only be able to send messages that would appear to originate from the Skimmer, but it was something.
Salem grinned and slid his antigravity gun back into its slot on the right of his holster, the holster itself widening as he did so to allow the weapon to fit. His arm was still burning and his ankle was still throbbing, and he seemed to be getting a headache again, but at least things seemed to be going right.
