by M. D. Cooper
Jessica said.
“I’m just going to take a peek out into the hall,” Cargo said. “Something tells me that unless we can hack into their network and fool their sensors, nothing we pull off is going to work.”
Cargo walked to the door and waved his hand over the control panel.
To their surprise it opened. Jessica sent a few nanoprobes out into the corridor and saw the guards standing at attention; neither looked toward the open door.
She glanced at Cargo, shrugged, and stepped out into the hall. The guards remained stock still, and she picked up a wireless signal from the hackit.
“The thing made it after all,” she said. “Its onboard NSAI has a backdoor into their public network. Good thing this place is a civilian station, or I bet that it wouldn’t have managed.”
“Or the Transcend doesn’t have as much of an edge over you colonists as you’d feared.”
“Maybe,” Jessica mused. “But it’s been almost five thousand years. How is it that they are still at a level remotely close to 42nd century Sol?”
“The place was a crucible,” Cargo offered. “You’ve told stories about how cutthroat and scheming everyone was.”
“True…. Anyway, we’ve got to find their traffic control center and plant a trigger in the gate control system.”
“What?” Jessica asked.
Jessica nodded with relief while looking at Iris’s proposed route to the STC. Then she glanced at the two stock-still soldiers in the corridor.
“I may have an idea.”
A LITTLE OUTING
STELLAR DATE: 07.22.8938 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Sabrina, Docking Bay F34A, Gisha Station
REGION: DSM Ring, Grey Wolf System
“That was the exact opposite of fun. I’ve never seen shit used as a weapon quite like that,” Cheeky said as she leaned against a bulkhead. “You sure we’re clear, Sabs?”
“Man…it really stinks down here,” Trevor said.
“At least they were nice enough to take their dead and wounded with them,” Nance replied. “Corpses in the mix would really take a while to clean up.”
“I need to get off this deck before I throw up,” Cheeky said, taking slow, shallow breaths as she walked to the ladder.
“Get cleaned up and get in some light armor, Cheeky,” Finaeus said. “You and I are going out there.”
“Out where?” Cheeky asked.
“There,” Finaeus said, gesturing at the hull.
“In environmental?”
“No, stop being dense. Outside the ship.”
Cheeky laughed, and in doing so took a deep breath. “Oh stars, oh, I’m going to hurl.”
“Don’t!” Nance called out from the entrance to environmental. “I’ve got enough to clean up.”
“In related news,” Finaeus began, “I think I have an idea about how we can use your ship’s stasis shields to mount a film of the material we use for the Ford-Svaiter mirrors. If it will work, then we won’t have to mount a physical mirror on the ship. We can deploy it with a grav field, and then support it with the stasis shield.”
“Seriously?” Trevor asked as he approached. “Aren’t we more worried about getting Jessica and Cargo back and getting out of here? Are you really still this fixated on using the jump gate?”
“If we try to fly through the dark layer, stopping for fuel at predictable jump points, the Grey Division will be all over us like flies on feces.”
“Seriously?” Cheeky asked as she reached the top of the ladder. “Didn’t you see how I almost tossed my cookies down there?”
Finaeus grinned. “Sorry, it was just front of mind.”
“Really, though,” Cheeky said aloud. “Won’t we be leaving the ship vulnerable if we go?”
“At this point they’re going to try to use Cargo and Jessica as leverage. So, as long as neither of them show up with a gun to their head out there, Trevor can hold down the fort on his own,” Finaeus replied.
“Good point,” Cheeky nodded.
“OK, so where’s your armory?” Finaeus asked.
Cheeky led him to the forward weapons lockup, which was hidden behind a panel in one of the cargo bays. Inside lay enough weapons, armor, and gear to start a minor war.
“Seriously, you’re pirates,” Finaeus said.
“We’ve only ever attacked and boarded one other ship,” Cheeky said. “And they were most certainly pirates.”
Sabrina said.
“Yeah, but those were all back before we met Tanis and got a letter of marque. In fact, we still have that; we’re just operating on behalf of the Silstrand Alliance here.”
“Good grief,” Finaeus muttered.
“Here,” Cheeky gestured to a rack of light, stealth-capable armor sets. “They won’t have the tech to fool these folks here, but they should do give us an edge.”
“Who, me?” Trevor replied, an innocent grin on his face.
“They’re little mines; like wee ones, shaped charges, very non-destructive to the ship.”
Cheeky tuned out Trevor and Sabrina’s conversation as she stripped out of the clothing Jessica had talked her into wearing, and wiped the sweat and grime off her face.
She slid into the armor’s base layer, which provided additional kinetic energy dispersal and heat management. Then Cheeky backed toward the rack, which wrapped the armor’s protective plates around her body before it attached the helmet.
She saw Finaeus doing the same out of the corner of her eye, and smiled while he squirmed uncomfortably as the armor folded itself around him.
Her eyes were covered by the helmet and her vision went dark for a moment, as the gear initialized and fed its optics into her mind via the armor’s hard-Link.
Cheeky grabbed enough mags to shoot her way clear out of Gisha Station, and slipped a flechette pistol and a ballistic pistol into the armor’s holsters.
Cheeky thought about it for a moment.
Cheeky led Finaeus toward the aft end of the cargo level, down a ladder to the engineering deck, and down one more into the service passages that ran under the auxiliary reactor—which was thrumming quietly, but menacingly, above them.
They reached the access port and cycled open the inner airlock. Cheeky slipped in and got ready to cycle the outer one. They’d have to leave both doors open at once. She barely fit in the airlock—which was meant for bots, not people—there was no way they both would.
Cheeky saw the count and took a deep breath, triggering the outer lock to open at three. Then, when the number hit zero, she leapt down and landed behind a strut and moved over, making room for Finaeus who came down a moment later.
Sixty meters away, she saw a bit of slop, and one of the long tubers fall to the deck.
Nance replied.
However, by some miracle, none of the Transcend soldiers noticed them. Most were dealing with their wounded, or strengthening their positions, now that Sabrina had powered up the point defense systems.
Cheeky looked to Finaeus, who pointed to a narrow space behind one of the cradle’s struts where fueling lines rose out of the deck. She could see another level down there, and nodded.
Finaeus sent a pair of microscopic probes down into the lower level, and the feed on their HUDs showed only two soldiers.
She prayed to whatever stars were listening that the stealth features on their armor would be enough to hide them. They didn’t have full-EM invisibility capabilities, but it should be enough to avoid notice by anything other than an active sensor sweep.
Cheeky slipped through the narrow space around the fuel lines first and looked back up at Finaeus. It would be a tight fit for him, and he passed his rifle down to her before carefully lowering himself down.
The level was filled with tanks, fuel lines, power systems, and the grav emitters that moved the docking cradle’s arms. She could see one of the guards walking past a row of SC Batts a few dozen meters away, but the other wasn’t visible from her position.
Finaeus led the way toward wherever he thought he could get his special material for the jump gate mirror, while Cheeky kept her eyes peeled—praying she spotted the guard first.
By some miracle, their luck held; she eventually saw the second guard on the probe’s feed, moving away from them, barely paying attention to his surroundings.
They reached a hatch, and Finaeus began to work at the access panel while Cheeky crouched behind some equipment, keeping watch.
She felt the beginnings of butterflies in her stomach—her least favorite part about action like this. Before, when they were on the ship, there had been no time for nerves; barely enough to see the threat and respond.
But now, away from Sabrina, anything could happen. They could be separated from the ship; the ship was safety, it was home. Even when they docked at stations, Cheeky never really strayed far from Sabrina. She knew it was foolish, but even after all these years, there was still a little fear in the back of her mind that she might get left behind.
Before long, Finaeus completed his work and the panel slid aside, revealing a narrow passageway that appeared to branch out at regular intervals.
Tools and equipment lay on the deck in several places, and Cheeky suspected that when there wasn’t a looming battle, workers frequented these lower corridors.
Perhaps Finaeus would find what he was looking for without having to go too far.
Cheeky shook her head at the thought. Finaeus made Tanis and the Intrepid look like recent history. To think that this man left Sol centuries before the first Sentience War was mind-boggling.
And here they were skulking through service corridors like a pair of thieves.
Cheeky said with a laugh.
Cheeky saw that Finaeus had stopped ahead, and was looking up and down a cross corridor. He put a hand to his chin, and then jerked his head back in surprise. She wondered if he had forgotten that he was wearing a helmet. After a moment he nodded to himself and turned left.
If she hadn’t had her HUD showing a map of the path they took, she would have been lost in minutes with all the turns he took. However, it did seem like he wasn’t wandering aimlessly. They hadn’t backtracked, or crossed their previous route.
They still hadn’t run into anyone, and Cheeky was beginning to wonder if they’d walk clear across Gisha and not see a soul, when her armor’s advanced sensors picked up voices.
Finaeus seemed blissfully unaware of their impending detection, and she reached out to touch his shoulder. He turned his head back to look at her.
Finaeus began moving again. Cheeky pulled out her sidearm and followed, sending several drones ahead and behind, watching for movement.
The voices ahead were getting louder, and Cheeky was ready to duck behind a tool chest and engage who ever showed up, when Finaeus stopped at a door, quickly punched in a series of numbers, and ushered her inside as the door opened.
Once inside, Cheeky was surprised to see that they were in some sort of room filed with spare parts…used spare parts. Long racks lined the walls and ran down the length of the room. They were littered with small silver plates haphazardly tossed onto any flat surface, as well as some larger pieces stacked up in corners.
Finaeus picked up one of the broken plates from a shelf.
Finaeus cocked his head to the side, and held a hand in the air a
s he worked out the answer.
Piya replied.
Finaeus was searching through the shelves, and glanced back at Cheeky.
Finaeus didn’t reply as he walked to the far end of the room. Then he gave a laugh.
HEADACHE
STELLAR DATE: 07.22.8938 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Interrogation Room, Gisha Station
REGION: DSM Ring, Grey Wolf System
Admiral Krissy felt consciousness slowly return. It took a moment to recall what had happened, and then worry flooded her. Those two had better get Finaeus off Gisha safely.
She heard a groan, and looked over to see Bes slowly lift his head off the table. Relief came and she resisted sighing. Jessica and Cargo had done it; taken down Bes, and escaped. Now would come the hard part.
He was wearing Cargo’s uniform, and she glanced down to see that she was wearing Jessica’s outfit. It was really tight on the waist, but the feeling of discomfort was suppressed by the deep-seated joy she felt at seeing Bes in pain. Bes’s ever-present scowl deepened, and Krissy couldn’t help but give a soft laugh.
“I appreciate that look of frustration,” she said and Bes glanced at her.
“How long?” Bes asked, still sounding disoriented.
“Just fifteen minutes. Someone should be along shortly.”
“How is it that they got the best of you, Admiral?”