by M. D. Cooper
“Then what do you propose?” Bes asked. “I would hate to report that you did not discharge your orders to the best of your abilities. And right now, it appears to me as though you are not.”
Admiral Krissy walked ahead of him, turning toward the docking bay where the Sabrina rested.
“I’m trying to make lemonade out of the lemons you’ve given me—while not killing the former crew of our president’s daughter while I’m at it. Or his brother. Or a member of the most powerful group of people in the galaxy. Maybe it’s you who is not acting in a fashion that aligns with the Transcend’s goals.”
Bes didn’t respond as he followed her down the corridor, his reticent silence speaking volumes. She was starting to give more and more credit to the idea of a stealthed ship being to blame for the attack on Gisha. Bes appeared to be willing to do whatever it took to secure his prize—as quickly as possible.
She wished for a moment that Finaeus had never come here, that he had found some other jump gate in the Inner Stars.
But then…then he may have been taken already and subjected to who knows what the Grey Division had in mind for him.
A NEW OUTFIT
STELLAR DATE: 07.22.8938 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Command Deck, Gisha Station
REGION: DSM Ring, Grey Wolf System
“I can’t believe that they’re using this armor,” Jessica said. “It’s based on a model the Jovian Combine’s police forces discontinued in forty-first century. I mean, it’s had some upgrades, but still the same software that STR-RV models used back in Sol. It’s nuts.”
“Advantageous, though,” Cargo said. “Glad you spotted it. I’d rather not have tried walking to their space traffic control center without it. This station is loaded with Sendy Soldiers.”
“Let’s go with Scenders, can’t you here the C? I think it works better”
“Jess, you always get to name everyone. But you got us into this mess, so this time I get to give the bad guys their nickname.”
Jessica walked her armor around a corner and spied the entrance to the station’s STC a hundred meters down the hall. A pair of guards stood at attention outside the entrance.
“I did not get us into this! You could have said ‘no’ to Finaeus’s crazy plan to come here. You’re the captain, after all.”
“Not that,” Cargo replied. “This whole idea to get captured to get the hackit into their STC.”
“You came along, didn’t you?” Jessica asked, glancing over at him.
Cargo snorted. “Only because you’d have gotten killed without me. That Bes guy would have mopped the floor with you.”
“Hardly!” Jessica barked. “I would have worn him down.”
“Sure, sure,” Cargo replied. “So, are we going to do this, or what?”
“Yeah, but just use pulse rifles on low. No need to kill any of these folks. Just have to drop the hackit in there.”
“On three. One, two, three!”
They kicked the armor into a full speed, charging down the corridor at sixty kilometers per hour toward the station’s STC. Expressions of surprise, then terror filled the faces of the guards before they regained some composure and fired their pulse rifles at the onrushing threat. It wasn’t enough to slow their attackers down, and the guards dove out of the way at the last minute.
The powered armor made short work of the door, smashing through into a wide room filled with consoles and holotanks. Jessica and Cargo fired at everyone and everything in the STC, creating the biggest distraction they could manage as the hackit dropped from Jessica’s armor and rolled under a console where it spread nanofilaments into the system.
“Halt! Stop! What the hell are you doing?” A voice called out over the station’s audible address systems, issuing orders which Jessica and Cargo gleefully ignored as they fired concussive pulse shots with wild abandon.
A few holdouts were crouched behind consoles at either end of the STC, and the pair split up, advancing on the final targets. Just as they reached the last pockets of station personnel, automated turrets dropped from the ceiling and opened fire.
The voice over the audible address system called out “You’ve had your warning!”
Armor-piercing kinetic rounds slammed into the purloined suits and cracked the ablative plating before beams sliced through the underlying layers.
First Jessica’s armor ceased moving, followed a moment later by Cargo’s.
“Well,” Jessica said, sitting up and removing the hard-Link patch that ran from her head to the unconscious soldier next to her. “That’s that. We’d better get a move on, they’re going to renew their search when they see that those things were on remote pilot.”
Cargo nodded as he removed the hard-Link cable from the base of his spine. “Hate using that thing. Makes me feel like a damn robot.”
“I bet it felt better for you than him,” Jessica said, giving a nod to the unconscious soldier on the ground. “He’ll probably have nightmares for a week. I hear remote piloting through someone’s Link messes shit up when it comes to body dysphoria.”
“Yeah…probably why it’s illegal everywhere,” Cargo replied.
“I don’t even know what legal means anymore,” Jessica said as she slid open the door and peered out into the passageway. Across the way was the door to the conference room where they had secured Admiral Krissy and Bes. The door was open, and the room appeared empty. Which meant that the Admiral and Colonel were likely headed to the same place Jessica and Cargo needed to get to: Sabrina.
She glanced back down at woman she had jacked into, and the tight, purple shipsuit the soldier wore. It bore a corporal’s markings, and would fly under the radar a lot better than Admiral Krissy’s uniform.
Not to mention that it matched her hair perfectly.
“I’m going to change,” she said to Cargo, “You should too, Bes’s uniform will stand out a lot more than that guy’s.”
“This isn’t a fashion show,” Cargo grunted. “How many more wardrobe changes you going to make?”
“First off,” Jessica said with a grin as she stripped down. “It’s always a fashion show—you’ve flown with us women for far too long not to realize that.”
“Plus Trevor,” Cargo said as he began to undress. “That guy has a wardrobe to match Cheeky’s—in volume of clothing, not the amount it covers.”
Jessica laughed, and quickly covered her mouth. “Sorry, I just imagined Trevor trying to cover his bits in one of Cheeky’s outfits. He’s really well—”
“Please!” Cargo whispered. “I get the picture, OK? I sail with the crew of the SS Fuck, this isn’t news to me.”
Jessica chuckled. Cargo really was out of place when it came to that. Even Nance looked positively lascivious next to him. She had to admit that it made the brooding man rather alluring.
“I prefer the SS Sexy. Fuck is a bit too on the nose. I wonder if Sabrina would consider that for a name change some time.”
“You bring it up and you’re on galley duty for a year. I’m not docking anywhere as the captain of the SS Sexy—even if it is a ruse for some job.”
Cargo covered his mouth to muffle a laugh, and Jessica couldn’t help but smile.
Jessica scowled at Iris in her mind,
Jessica had to admit Iris was right there, and switched to the group’s net and addressed the AIs.
Hank added, as Jessica and Cargo began working their way back toward the ship.
Cargo laughed.
Jessica turned the corner to find a temporary security checkpoint set up fifty meters down the corridor.
Cargo gave short laugh.
SPIDER-BOT SAVIOR
STELLAR DATE: 07.22.8938 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Repair & Storage Area, Gisha Station
REGION: DSM Ring, Grey Wolf System
Cheeky asked, looking down at the strange, three meter-long robot resting on the deck.
The thing looked a bit like a spider with engines instead of an abdomen. It must have been an automatic crawler that would move across the surface of a ship’s Ford-Svaiter mirror and repair the surface of the mirror.
Cheeky decided to check over the rear of the storage area as Finaeus worked. She saw that an airlock lay around a corner at the back of the room. It must be how the service crews got the broken mirror plates in, and where the bot went out—though it was strange that it was here in such a low-security area.
Maybe a repair crew just left it here when the station sector cleared out for Sabrina. It would explain why the inner door on the lock was still open.
She walked back around to see Finaeus still fighting with the canister containing the mirror material.
She bent over to help Finaeus up, when she heard the door at the entrance slide open, and a voice call out. “You two, check in here. Make sure the airlock’s secured.”
Finaeus nodded wordlessly and lifted two of the spider-robot’s legs while Cheeky grabbed another pair and thanked the stars that the armor augmented her strength. The thing was heavy.
They moved as quietly as possible, but Finaeus caught one of the legs on the airlock’s door and it made a terrible scraping sound.
Cheeky slammed a fist into the panel to cycle the airlock, but nothing happened.
She sent a probe out that was almost immediately destroyed by their electronic warfare. However, it did feed a brief image of two soldiers moving down the rows of mirror fragments. She shifted further back into the airlock, doing her best to make sure they couldn’t see her before she could fire on them.
Cheeky spotted one soldier’s leg through one of the racks. She blew out her breath, took aim, and mentally pulled the trigger on her rifle.
It fired off a three-round burst of kinetic slugs, which slammed into the soldier’s shin-plate with a resounding CRACK. He danced back, and a beat of pulse blasts hit the airlock’s door in response.
Another series of blasts hit the airlock’s entrance, and Cheeky fired a half-magazine into the racks of mirror parts, hoping to make the enemy fall back.
Instead she heard more boots pounding down the rows.
Cheeky shrieked as they drifted away from the hub of Gisha Station at an alarming rate.
Somehow, she managed to grasp one of the spider-bot’s limbs and then grab onto Finaeus’s leg, pulling him close. She swung him toward the bot, and she pulled herself onto its body.
Cheeky carefully worked her way around the bot, holding on with all her might.
Normally she loved space, loved the black, but it wasn’t black here. Ships were flying all around them, oblivious to the partially stealthed bot she clung to. Dust pinged off her armor, and above them, the baleful eye of the Grey Wolf Star loomed—its dark band of black holes tearing the star apart, atom by atom.
No, this wasn’t the black, this was some sort of space hell, and she was floating around in it with a crazy ancient scientist who may or may not manage to get a stupid spider robot to fly them back to a station where everyone wanted to kill them!
Sure enough, the spider bot began to move, and a moment later, its grav drive activated, turning it back toward Gisha Station’s hub.
Cheeky wanted to berate Finaeus, to ask him how long they were supposed to wait outside the station, but she
bit her tongue and tried to calm herself down. He was right, this was under control. One of the crazier things she had ever been involved in, but under control.
Then the spider-bot’s grav engine went haywire.
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH
STELLAR DATE: 07.22.8938 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Docking Bay F34A, Gisha Station
REGION: DSM Ring, Grey Wolf System
“What do you mean by, ‘they escaped the station’?” Admiral Krissy asked.
“Well,” Major Michaels began, “we had cornered them in a service bay, one filled with broken mirror bits. We engaged them, and they got out the airlock.”
“Shit!” Colonel Bes swore. “They could be anywhere now, probably headed across the station’s surface to their bay.”
“Yes, sir, I have crews heading out after them, and patrol craft scouring the station.”
“This doesn’t make any sense,” Krissy shook her head. “Did they get EVA suits somewhere? Did anyone check the emergency locker at that airlock?”
“I’m on it,” Major Michaels replied and stepped away to address a pair of lieutenants.
“You don’t think they killed themselves by accident?” Bes asked.
“I think that’s less likely than you killing yourself by accident,” Krissy said, earning a dark look from Bes. “No, they wouldn’t have died by accident or on purpose. They’re too smart for that.”
Krissy looked up at the ship, its invisible stasis shield continuing to protect it from the soldiers surrounding it.
You’d better not be that stupid, Krissy thought. Finaeus is going to need you back on that ship if he’s to get out of this mess.
She considered the hack job Jessica—it must have been Jessica, with her TBI training—had performed on the two guards. It was a brilliant move, one that surprised even Krissy. That armor wasn’t supposed to be vulnerable to any attack like that.
She was fast learning that nothing was as it seemed with this crew.
“Then what are they playing at?” Bes asked. “If their mission is just to escape, why hit the STC? Why did they come out of their ship in the first place?”