First’s jaw flexed involuntarily. “Because I wanted to be as far away from home as possible. And that’s as much as I want to say about it to any of you just now.”
Hashin nodded, then slipped the VR display back over his eyes and fell silent again. The rest of the trip passed without any additional interruptions to her preparations. Jrill and Hashin slept through most of the flight. First had to shoo Jrill’s bony, crested head off of her shoulder several times before the final approach announcement stirred everyone from their naps.
Despite the best efforts of the Kaper Tourism Bureau and their informational videos on all the exciting things to do on its wind-scoured glaciers, the system’s two marginally habitable planets didn’t have much to recommend them to anyone who wasn’t an extremophile biologist. It was dirty, dull, and dangerous.
It was, however, a mining boomtown. A lithium discovery had sent three different mining consortiums into a flurry of construction that had attracted the usual round of transient laborers chasing jobs that were as dangerous and temporary as they were well paying. Chasing them came the customary retinue of gambling dens, drug dealers, drinking halls, and damsels of discretion from across the galaxy to profit off the good fortunes of the laborers.
Kaper Station was a Wild West frontier town orbiting an ice cube at thirty thousand kilometers an hour, and in another five or ten cycles, it would be a ghost, left to slowly decay until it spiraled into its parent planet in a final fireball that would cleanse the universe of all the impropriety, vice, and debauchery that had taken place here.
But that was the future. In the now, business was booming.
“Time to go to work,” Jrill said as the station’s All-Seal suctioned itself onto the transport’s skin. They disembarked and met Sheer by the gate, then grabbed Fenax from baggage claim, skipped the duty-free shops, and headed right for the private slips and docks.
“Pay to Prey isn’t showing up in the directory,” Hashin said from a public inquiry terminal.
“So our fake Vel either paid extra to be unlisted or is running under a forged ID,” Jrill said. “Either way, it means he knows somebody’s coming for his baby.”
“Well, then, let’s really hope baby’s teeth haven’t come in,” First said.
“We’ll have to inspect each slip visually,” Jrill said, then caught herself as she glanced at Fenax floating in their tank. “Or by other means. There’s three docking arms. Sheer, put Fenax on top of your carapace and snip anyone who gives you too much trouble.”
“You know I hate this thing,” Sheer said, lifting her huge claw.
“I’ll trade you. It could come in handy.”
“Is that an appendage joke?”
“It wasn’t, but it is now. First and Hashin, you’re both small and fast enough to get out of the way if things get slick. I can bluster or bust my way out of trouble by myself if needed. Each team pick an arm and meet back here when you’re done with your inspection.”
“What if we find the bounty before then?” First asked.
“Send ‘I feel like Ish for dinner’ over the group chat, and we’ll all break off and return.”
“Ish cuisine,” Sheer said. “I assume you meant.”
“Depends on if you and the gas bladder find that ship first,” Jrill cut back. “Let’s get to it.”
The crew split up. Sheer and Fenax scuttled down the middle corridor, while First and Hashin picked the last docking arm and started the search.
They made it all of four slips before stopping.
“That look like a Turemok destroyer to you?” First said to her partner as she looked over the arachnid nightmare.
“By process of elimination,” Hashin said. “I can’t imagine anything else is that ugly.”
First opened the team link first. “I feel like Ish for dinner.”
“Already?” Jrill said.
“I’m a teenager. We’re always hungry.”
“I thought you were almost an adult.”
“You thought you had Earth in the bag, too.”
“Just get back here.” Jrill cut the connection.
First pulled her hacking deck from her purse and looked at Hashin. “You go. I’ll get started.”
“We shouldn’t split up.”
“I’ll be fine. We need to do this quick, remember?”
Hashin nodded and walked briskly down the corridor. Not a run; that might draw attention. Just the sort of hurried, impatient gait of someone trying not to miss a connection.
“Okay, sweetie,” First said to the station interface challenging her credentials on the screen of her deck. “Let’s play peekaboo.” She touched off a blink cracker program that hit the interface’s credentialing system with hundreds of thousands of log-in attempts per second. With each attempt, the program watched to see how long it took before the rejection command was sent. The longer it took, the more log-in characters in the sequence were correct.
Any competent IT admin would have security measures in place to recognize the sudden, impossibly high spike in log-in attempts, but her program had a clever, and expensive, caveat. It reset the log-in counter with each hit. The system didn’t remember from one attempt to the next until it was too late. Her cracker repeated the process more than three million times until it worked out the correct sequence and granted her access.
“Peekaboo!” First said just as the rest of the crew arrived.
“I told you to stay together,” Jrill said.
“Did you?”
“It was strongly implied. It’s not safe for you to be alone.”
“Your concern is touching, buzzard.”
“Not safe for us, I meant. You could’ve gotten caught and exposed the rest of your team.”
“Well I didn’t, and”—First wiggled her deck at Jrill’s face—“I’m already in.”
“Great. You want a corgi?”
“I think you mean cookie.”
“Just call up the All-Seal so we can get on with it.”
Smiling to herself, First went through the interface’s menu until she found the controls for the slip in question and hit the command to extend the All-Seal.
Nothing happened.
“Er…”
“Yes?” Jrill said tauntingly.
“Hang on.” First tried the command again with no success. Then, an error message appeared. “The All-Seal has been disabled.”
“So? You said you were in their system. Override the lockout.”
“No, it’s not a lockout; I mean it’s physically disabled.” She held up the deck to show the schematic of the docking tube and exactly which components had thrown malfunction codes. Sheer leaned in an eyestalk to get a better look.
“Two servos and the dilator are offline,” she said. “That never happens. This was deliberate sabotage.”
“He sabotaged the All-Seal to his own ship?” Hashin said. “Paranoid bastard.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Jrill said.
“Why?”
Jrill swept her arms around to encompass the five of them.
“Well, okay, yes,” Hashin granted. “But he doesn’t know we’re here to take his ship.”
“So just because people are really after him doesn’t mean he’s not paranoid.”
“Exactly.”
“Fine, whatever.” Jrill rubbed the back of her neck. “So how do we fix the All-Seal?”
“Can’t from here,” First said. “And I didn’t think to pack a hard-suit.”
Everyone else’s eyes turned to Sheer.
“Well?” Jrill said.
Sheer reached up and grabbed Fenax’s tank from the top of her carapace and gently set them down on the deck. “Maybe?” she said at last.
“Try it. First, open the airlock for her.”
First looked back and forth between Sheer and Jrill disbelievingly. “You’re not serious. Where’s her hard-suit?”
Sheer knocked her small claw against her carapace. “I’m wearing it.”
“But ho
w will you breathe?”
“Cold-blooded. Ish can hold our breath a long time. Open the door and let me work.”
First tilted her head at Sheer’s big claw. “With one arm tied behind your back?”
“Just do it.”
First sighed heavily and found the necessary command prompts and overrides with a flourish of her fingers. The inner airlock door opened.
“Swoosh,” First said ironically. No one got it.
Sheer pulled a handful of tools out of her baggage and moved into the airlock chamber, then signaled for First to shut the door.
“This is insane,” First said.
“Sheer knows her limits,” Hashin said. “Better than you do, at any rate. Just do as she asks. No one will blame you.”
“I don’t care about the blame!” First shouted.
The rest of her crew looked at each other with confused expressions. Sheer tapped a leg tip against the deck impatiently.
“Whatever,” First said as she keyed a command to slam the inner airlock door shut. “Her funeral.”
In the airlock chamber, Sheer’s carapace swelled and constricted rapidly.
“What’s she doing?” First asked.
“Hyperventilating. Saturating her bloodstream with oxygen,” Hashin said. “Ish have a more primitive set of lungs than the rest of us. Except Fenax, obviously. They’re passive, stacked lungs, like a dozen layers of gills, not as efficient. But”—Hashin held up a finger—“it means they don’t have any internal air chambers.”
“So nothing to pop in zero pressure.”
“Precisely. And their shells constrict their innards hard enough to keep their blood from boiling off.”
First’s hands relaxed against the holds on the side of her hacker deck. “So this isn’t as dumb a plan as I thought.”
“Oh, it’s still dumb as glot,” Jrill said. “But it’s not entirely suicidal as it would be for any of the rest of us. So long as she’s fast. Excuse me.” Jrill took her considerable frame and positioned it near the entry to the docking arm in a way that would dissuade all but the most intent passengers from entering.
Sheer waved from inside the chamber, signaling readiness.
“Okay,” Hashin said. “Evacuate the airlock.”
“Give me a second,” First said. “There’s five different safety interlocks in the way, because this is a stupid idea.” First’s fingers pounded and slid across her deck while Sheer tapped a toe tip impatiently against the floor of the airlock.
“There,” First said as the air began to hiss out of the chamber. Moments later, the sound died away entirely as the outer door opened to space. Sheer scurried out of the airlock and began work on the All-Seal.
“Won’t she freeze out there?” First asked.
“Common misconception,” Hashin answered. “Space is cold, but without any air to conduct heat away from your body, it’s actually the perfect insulator. She’ll run out of blood oxygen long before she even feels a chill.”
“Oh, that’s so much better.”
Through the viewing gallery, the rest of the team watched Sheer as she furiously moved from one sabotaged component to the next. First watched in stunned admiration as the All-Seal error codes on her display moved from red to green one after another before clearing out of the repair queue entirely.
“Damn. She might actually do it. How long can she hold her breath like that?”
“No idea,” Hashin said. “Guess we’re finding out.”
“She dead yet?” Jrill called from the intersection.
“Trying her best!” First shouted back.
“Don’t let the meat spoil if she does.”
First looked at Hashin and stuck a thumb in Jrill’s direction. “Is she joking?”
“Turemok humor is … difficult to pin down.”
The last error code flipped red to green on First’s deck, and the All-Seal control menu unlocked itself. “She’s done. Cycling the airlock. Let’s get her back.”
“She’s waving us forward,” Hashin said. “She wants you to link up the All-Seal.”
First looked up and saw he was right. Sheer had moved to the dilating aperture at the end of the seal. She shook her head but keyed the seal to dock with their quarry anyway. The fleshy translucent proboscis reached out to the ship like a length of intestine, probing for the Pay to Prey’s outer hatch before finding purchase and latching on. Its segmented sides pillowed out as air rushed in to equalize the pressure with the inside of the station.
“Boss!” Hashin shouted to Jrill. “We’re moving. First, grab Fenax.”
First shoved her deck back in her purse and snagged Fenax’s tank, which would be impossible if not for a counter-grav coil built into the base.
“Please don’t jostle my container. I am easily concussed,” Fenax said.
“Sorry.”
The four of them ran down the tunnel to reach Sheer. She stood resolute while a thin layer of frost formed on the surface of her shell.
“With one arm tied behind my back,” Sheer said between heavy breaths.
First set Fenax down and rubbed Sheer’s smaller claw. “I’m glad you’re safe.”
“Why? Your share would go up by a fifth if I’d died.”
“Make way,” Jrill said as she pushed through them to get to the retasked destroyer’s outer hull.
“It won’t open,” Sheer said.
“It won’t open for you,” Jrill responded. She flicked out a claw and deftly popped open an access panel below the main keypad.
“What’s that?” First asked.
“Maintenance and emergency override panel. All Turemok ships have one. It’s like a master key for dockyard workers and recovery crews. And unless the refit was very thorough”—the hatch whirred from the inside, then sank in and irised open like a flower—“it’s easy to miss.”
The five of them walked into the Pay to Prey like champions.
“Sheer,” First said. “How did you repair the All-Seal so fast? There were half a dozen faults.”
Sheer wiggled her small claw. “The debtor pulled all the fuses and breakers, so I bypassed them with small-gauge conduit.”
“But doesn’t that leave them vulnerable to—”
Behind them, a shower of sparks burst out of the lining of the All-Seal and burned a thousand tiny holes in the membrane. An emergency decompression alarm sounded, automatically slamming the pressure door closed like a camera shutter.
“—power surges,” First finished.
Hashin leaned into the portal. “All-Seal is fried. We’re not getting back onto the station.”
“Good thing we’re leaving on this ship, then,” Jrill said.
“Also, the security alarm has been tripped.”
Just then, an awful sound like hammers striking the hull rang through the ship, accompanied by a terrible series of tremors.
“And the docking clamps have engaged. We’re locked down.”
“Hmm,” Jrill said. “Now that’s a challenge.”
CHAPTER 8
First looked out the portal to the viewing gallery on the far side of the open space between the Pay to Prey and Kaper Station in growing horror as an ever-increasing cadre of security officers and progressively heavier equipment responded to the alarms.
“Guys, they have some really big guns over there.”
“Quiet, First!” Jrill snapped.
“Why don’t we just tell them it’s a legal repossession?” First pressed.
“Because out here, ‘legal’ is defined by whomever paid the biggest bribe to the local security office,” Hashin said. “It appears that wasn’t us.”
“What are we doing, boss?” Sheer asked.
Jrill snuck her own quick look out the portal, then turned to face the rest of her team, crests held high over her scalp. Or as high as a Turemok female’s crests went, at least. “We are in legal possession of this ship as of right now. No one else. That being said, I don’t trust anyone at any level of this station not to be bough
t and paid for. So we’re preparing for war. Sheer, get down to the engine room and make sure I have power and thrust the instant I need it.”
Sheer saluted with her small claw and chittered down the hallway at a sprint.
“Sheer!” Jrill called, then pointed down the hall’s other direction.
“Just testing you,” Sheer said as she scuttled past.
“The rest of us are going to the command cave. First, do they know you’re inside the station’s interface yet?”
“I don’t think so, but it’s just a matter of time before someone puts down a gun long enough to check.”
“Hand Fenax off to Hashin and get to work on those docking clamps.”
“Gladly.”
Jrill moved to the core of the ship where the lifters would be and called a car for the command cave. There was more than enough room for the four of them in a car designed for six Turemok at a time.
“Docking clamps are off the grid,” First said, huddled over her deck in a corner of the car. “They’re under local, physical control. Nothing I can do from here.”
“Then let’s hope this baby still has teeth after all.”
The lifter doors slid open as they arrived at the command cave, straight onto a scene from juvenile Jrill’s nightmares.
“Dar’s glot,” Jrill said as she reflexively pressed against the back of the lifter car, staring down the hungry, snarling maw of a monster of ages.
“What’s wrong?” First said, pointing at the beast perched on the command chair at the center of the cave. “It’s somebody’s pet.”
“It’s not a pet,” Jrill spat out. “It’s a Gomeltic.”
“Is it carnivorous?”
“It’s not picky about what it puts in its mouth, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Aww, c’mon. It’s cute.”
“Cute?” Jrill’s crests went flat against her scalp. “It’s got six legs, thirty claws, sixty teeth, and four thousand generations of deliberately bred rage! Stand down!”
But First was already halfway out of the lifter, crouched down and holding one of her hands out to the vicious creature. For its part, the adolescent Gomeltic snarled a warning at the human’s approach, but it went unheeded.
“Close the doors,” Jrill said to Hashin, still plastered to the back of the lifter car.
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