Dread Citizens: A Den of Ghouls
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License
A Star Citizen inspired novelette by Brian ‘kinshadow’ Murray
- Jump to Part 2 (TBD)
- Jump to Part 3 (TBD)
- Jump to Part 4 (TBD)
- Notes from the Author
This is the second "book" in the Dread Citizens series of short stories. This is an completely separate story from the first book (Savior of the Damned) and you do not need to read the first to enjoy the second, but the stories do have some intertwining events.
Part 1 - Winter Comes
Snow drifts blanketed the Terran Trans-corporate New DeGaul Spaceport in a layer of white that softened its modern feel and obscured its over thought, flowing architectural features. An array of twisted, egg-shaped buildings were connected by swirls of plaz-steel and dotted with landing pads and ship conveyors. The complex was a testament to the philosophy of form over function.
Of course, that was a large part of the idea since very few ships ever actually landed here. On top of the fact that beautiful sub-tropical cities and trade centers existed to the south, the landing fees here were astronomical, the space was limited, and copious smaller landing centers dotted the surrounding area. No, the real purpose of the TTNGS was high-end trade. Every major trans-solar commodity market, trade guild, and freelance shipping job center on Terra was represented here. Many high-end black markets were also lurking here if you knew where to look.
Melesandra cared nothing for all of that. She hated the architecture, the furniture was uncomfortable, and the decor was torturing her very soul. But she was here to make money. A lot of money. Money that she needed.
Mel paced the open longue, casually scanning passerbys. The traffic in this part of the complex was light, but she kept a wary eye. She knew she stuck out from the business types walking to the offices and consulates that lined the concourse. Each of them in trim suits with synth-sculpted bodies and wreathed in the holo-lights of their wrist-comms and heads-ups. Most had designer OptiGlass tablets clutched in the manicured hands or peaking from their stylish satchels. Her skinny form, bagging dark clothes, and lank, purple-metallic hair weighed on her insecurities. She needed to be out of here.
She swore under her breathe as she checked the time her wrist-comm again. Half an hour late. Where the frell was he?!
As if summoned by ill thoughts, her contact stepped out the sliding doors of the Xi’an science consulate. The well-dressed Tevarin swept his gaze through the waiting area and began walking toward her. Tall, thin, and grey skinned he looked more like a corporate monster than your run-of–the mill alien. The thing oozed confidence and walked with a smooth grace; a predator that ate companies and gobbled up money.
“You’re late”, Mel stated in a flat tone.
The Tevarin cocked his head and looked her over. “And I presume you are the one they call...umm.. Sneaky M?”
Mel winced. She hated that nickname. “Yeah, well, is that it?” Mel gestured at the Tevarin’s briefcase.
“Yes”, the Tevarin showed some teeth through his puckered mouth and set the case on the ground and began walking away.
“Wait!”, Mel said waving the wrist-comm over the case. Red holographics floated around her hand; Warnings and data glyphs pointing ominously at the case. “This has level 4 emissions! I was promised 3 or below. I haven’t got the equipment to transport this!” Mel hissed, trying not draw attention.
The Tevarin stopped and turned around. “Not my problem, Ms. M. I am not privy to the promises made before nor do I care. My role is done.”
Mel thought furiously. This was supposed to be quick, easy cash, not some nail-biting Advocacy-dodging gamble. “I’m recording this! If I get caught I’ll turn you over!”
The Tevarin shook in what Mel could only guess was laughter. “I doubt that, but I guess your success would benefit my reputation.” He cocked his head again in thought. “Go to Crash’s Garage in Lido City on the outskirts of Quasi. Tell him Sullivan sent you and he’ll help you out. Now, leave me alone!”
Mel stared at the Tevarin as he walked away, merging into the light traffic of the concourse. She stared down at the briefcase. Black, inconspicuous, and apparently carrying something dangerous enough to have level 4 emissions. Deep breathes. Resolve.
Mel picked up the case and walked toward the city conveyors. She wiped the sweat from her brow and eyed the people around her. Casual. Look casual. Her wrist-strapped MobiGlas chimed as it found the directions to this mysterious garage. Several conveyors and a cab ride later through the frozen streets of Quasi ended with Mel stepping up to a building that looked deserving of the name “Crash”.
The shop sat in a less-than-desirable area of town. Shady second-hand shops and dark vendor stalls were dotted among darkened industrial fronts. The only business on the street that looked remotely reputable was a Kel-to Constore on the corner and even that looked like it had seen better days.
Steel beams supported a series of articulated platforms suspended hundreds of meters into the air, each occupied by an array of piecemeal starships. Spare parts littered the work areas between the platforms, sparks cascaded from spider droids crawling over the ships, and rough talk filtered down from the repair crews supervising the work. Below the moving platforms, a relatively small, dingy, snow-covered building served as the storefront. Beside the corrugated metal door, a garishly red holo-sign exclaimed Crash’s Garage, Cheaper than you’d expect!
Mel sighed and pushed the door open, nearly slipping on the built up ice. A couple of empty HydoFrozz cans skidded across the floor. That frelling Tav better not have shazzed me.
Behind the desk sat a human man that was easily the ugliest she had ever seen. Fat, pockmarked, and grizzled by scrum-knows how many accidents, the man and a small vid-terminal filled the area behind a metal counter. A faded, neon-colored name-tag said Crash on his overalls. Mel tried to throw him a grin to lighten the mood. He looked like he smiled back, but it was hard to tell.
Mel gripped the suitcase tightly. She sure wasn’t going to set it down here. .”Hello. Umm... Sullivan sent me?”, she said half expectantly. She hated dealing with unfamiliar modders.
The man stopped grinning and grunted. “So, what does ‘Sullivan’ want?”, the man said making a set of chubby-fingered air quotations to accompany the sentence.
“Something to mask a level 4 emission.”, Mel said trying to put more backbone into her request.
Crash grunted again. “What kind of budget you got?”, he said while punching up some lists on his terminal.
“Yeah, I was thinking Sullivan had some form of tab?”, Mel wasn’t budgeting for something like this. She needed this cash.
Again, a grunt. “Sullivan gets access and a discount. There sure as frell is no tab. Now, what have you got to spend.”
Mel gritted her teeth. She was going to have to talk the money out of the other end of the delivery. “Yeah, um, 10K.”
Crash raised a lop-sided eyebrow.
“OK, 12, but that’s all I got.”
Crash smirked. “Well, if it’s for Sullivan... I’ll cut you a deal. Don’t go spreading it around.” He hit a couple more buttons and square meter section of floor began lowering to expose an impenetrable blackness. Mel edged away from the hole.
Minutes passed. Crash seemed to fill the small room with his presence and his heavy breath. With a sudden relief, Mel heard the motors whirring again as the platform rose into the office.
A smallish spider-bot scampered off the platform and dropped a metal tube onto the desk. The non-descript device looked like a simple meter-long steel tube with hoses connected to each end and a series of small holes in the middle.
Crash smiled much wider this time. “Ah, my own invention. This baby will mask almost any signature up to level 5. Yeah, I said it. Level 5! And all you need to do is hook this baby between you primary exhausts and voila, no Advocacy issues.” His greasy hands fluttered in the air with a flourish like he fashioned himself some great salesman.
Mel grimaced at the device and looked closer. The contraption looked like a metal pipe with some hoses glued on it, not the high-tech device worth 12,000 credits she was expecting. “This … ‘thing’ better not frell my ship!” She had some more choice words on the tip of her tongue, but she held back. Her options were severely limited.
The smile slid off Crash’s face. “You better blast those illusions out of your head! You won’t find anything else giving you level 4 or 5 coverage anywhere near this price bracket. My little invention is full-proof! Just muddles your engine’s core emissions and makes you look like you’ve got bad shielding without causing you too much damage. Of course, if you don’t want my help …” Crash waved his arm and the robot picked up the rod and began to move back to the elevator.
“NO… no, I’ll take it.” Mel said with a start. She needed the cash from this run and she was desperate. With resignation, she slapped the bills on the counter. Their plaz-wozen shine of the Imperials a stark contrast to the beaten, dirty metal.
Crash’s grin sprang back to life and he waved the bot back. “Hard currency! How considerate of you.” The chubby had swiped the bills from the counter in a smooth, practiced, motion. Most of his transactions were likely the less traceable kind.
The spider-bot proffered the pipe-thing and Mel and the wrenched it from its grasp with an angry tug. “Good doing business with you”, she heard as she slammed the door behind her. The smile sounded like it had gotten even bigger.
Another quick cab ride and she was across town at the cut-rate and discreet pad she had her ship stored at. She walked up stairs and across a series storage zones dotted with old, outmoded starships. Just as her legs started to get sore, she turned a corner to set her eyes on her only true accomplishment in life: her ship.
To her, the Frost was the most beautiful ship in all of the ‘verse. An Origin Jumpworks 300i, lightly dusted in new fallen snow made her seem like a spaceship sized avatar of her namesake and the casual passerby might agree she was a thing of splendor. Of course, those smooth lines of snow masked the hodge-podge of salvaged parts she was pieced together from. Frost was a 300i in the sense that most of her parts were from that class of ship and that was what she most closely resembled. Closer examination would reveal a ship whose components had already seen much of the galaxy before being pieced together by some space-born Dr. Frankenstein. Mel loved her none-the-less and cared little for the impression the ship made on others. Frost was at first a means to a livelihood, but now she was destined to be the instrument that Mel would use to save a life.
Mel punched her wrist-comm and the landing ramp swung down. The soreness of her legs forgotten, she sprinted and hopped into ship to get out of the cold and into warm, familiar surroundings.
“First things first”, Mel thought as she made her way down the cramped short corridor to the cramped cargo access. Several containers already lined the hold, filled with common food synthesizer parts. Everyone needed these, so they were an easy cover cargo to have on hand when trying to look legit. Another quick sequence on her comm revealed a hidden compartment below the containers where she slipped in the case. Lights blinked red in the hold as the emission shielding signaled it couldn’t compensate for the new cargo.
“I know, I know”, Mel mumbled as she closed up the containers and began working on the engine. Crash’s invention was as easy to install as he said, but the engine sensors immediately started warning her of a radiation leak. With a grimace, she closed everything up and hoped for the best. She wasn’t really looking to have kids anyway.
As Mel started slipping into her worn flight suit, she took a pause and sighed. Step one was over and she had survived. Unfortunately, step one was ‘supposed’ to be the easy step. Now, the hard part started.
Almost on muscle memory alone she plopped into the flight chair, pulled up a clean tag, and fired up her thrusters. Terran planetary landing control in New Austin gave her authorization and Frost blasted free of the planet’s surface. The ugly mess of the frozen Quasi port quickly dwindled as Frost glided over the sparkling oceans and gorgeous beach-laden resort towns that made up the more popular of the planet’s destinations.
As she neared the edge of atmo, Mel took over and directed the ship towards a lesser used jump point. It had the least Advocacy traffic and reduced her chances of getting scanned or stopped for an engine radiation leak or the emissions she was covering up. Fifteen minutes of sweating and scanning later and she was approaching the point. Frost’s J-Scan detected and bracketed the spacial anomaly in her HUD well before she could see the tell-tale shimmer with her naked eyes. Traffic in general had been light during the transit and none of the Advocacy cruisers had taken an interest. Her luck was looking up.
Mel hit the auto-nav for the point and sat back to watch. Her engine readouts flared as they poked the space-time fracture with exotic energies and manipulator fields. With a jolt, she was pulled into Interspace and moving though its hazy reality of energy tunnels and anomalies.
Mel eased back; she’d seen this hundreds of times in the past several years making similar runs. In a couple minutes, she’d pop out in another system and do it all again at another point. She lost herself in the ships auto-correction for anomalies and watched the transit in a day-dream haze.
Suddenly, she realized something was wrong. Frost was cutting the turns too shallow and having trouble compensating. Warnings erupted across her heads-up-display showing low thruster output. “What the Frell!”, Mell cursed as she grabbed the manual controls trying to get her back on track. Radiation spike warnings shrilled from her console and an unusual hyper-colored aura began to shroud the ship. Even the jump tunnel itself seemed to move in lazy waves.
Nausea gripped her stomach and black spots began to swim across her vision. Wait .. did that anomaly change shape? Mel shook her head and squinted. A face began to form in the tunnel. Not a human face, but one with large eyes and no discernible mouth. A face that held no emotion, but was obviously weighing her. Watching her.
Then Mel knew what the face was. Knew what it meant. This was the face of death and it had come for her.
Mel screamed.
Snow drifts blanketed the Terran Trans-corporate New DeGaul Spaceport in a layer of white that softened its modern feel and obscured its over thought, flowing architectural features. An array of twisted, egg-shaped buildings were connected by swirls of plaz-steel and dotted with landing pads and ship conveyors. The complex was a testament to the philosophy of form over function.
Of course, that was a large part of the idea since very few ships ever actually landed here. On top of the fact that beautiful sub-tropical cities and trade centers existed to the south, the landing fees here were astronomical, the space was limited, and copious smaller landing centers dotted the surrounding area. No, the real purpose of the TTNGS was high-end trade. Every major trans-solar commodity market, trade guild, and freelance shipping job center on Terra was represented here. Many high-end black markets were also lurking here if you knew where to look.
Melesandra cared nothing for all of that. She hated the architecture, the furniture was uncomfortable, and the decor was torturing her very soul. But she was here to make money. A lot of money. Money that she needed.
Mel paced the open longue, casually scanning passerbys. The traffic in this part of the complex was light, but she kept a wary eye. She knew she stuck out from the business types walking to the offices and consulates that lined the concourse. Each of them in trim suits with synth-sculpted bodies and wreathed in the holo-lights of their wrist-comms and heads-ups. Most had designer OptiGlass tablets clutched in the manicured hands or peaking from their stylish satchels. Her skinny form, bagging dark clothes, and lank, purple-metallic hair weighed on her insecurities. She needed to be out of here.
She swore under her breathe as she checked the time her wrist-comm again. Half an hour late. Where the frell was he?!
As if summoned by ill thoughts, her contact stepped out the sliding doors of the Xi’an science consulate. The well-dressed Tevarin swept his gaze through the waiting area and began walking toward her. Tall, thin, and grey skinned he looked more like a corporate monster than your run-of–the mill alien. The thing oozed confidence and walked with a smooth grace; a predator that ate companies and gobbled up money.
“You’re late”, Mel stated in a flat tone.
The Tevarin cocked his head and looked her over. “And I presume you are the one they call...umm.. Sneaky M?”
Mel winced. She hated that nickname. “Yeah, well, is that it?” Mel gestured at the Tevarin’s briefcase.
“Yes”, the Tevarin showed some teeth through his puckered mouth and set the case on the ground and began walking away.
“Wait!”, Mel said waving the wrist-comm over the case. Red holographics floated around her hand; Warnings and data glyphs pointing ominously at the case. “This has level 4 emissions! I was promised 3 or below. I haven’t got the equipment to transport this!” Mel hissed, trying not draw attention.
The Tevarin stopped and turned around. “Not my problem, Ms. M. I am not privy to the promises made before nor do I care. My role is done.”
Mel thought furiously. This was supposed to be quick, easy cash, not some nail-biting Advocacy-dodging gamble. “I’m recording this! If I get caught I’ll turn you over!”
The Tevarin shook in what Mel could only guess was laughter. “I doubt that, but I guess your success would benefit my reputation.” He cocked his head again in thought. “Go to Crash’s Garage in Lido City on the outskirts of Quasi. Tell him Sullivan sent you and he’ll help you out. Now, leave me alone!”
Mel stared at the Tevarin as he walked away, merging into the light traffic of the concourse. She stared down at the briefcase. Black, inconspicuous, and apparently carrying something dangerous enough to have level 4 emissions. Deep breathes. Resolve.
Mel picked up the case and walked toward the city conveyors. She wiped the sweat from her brow and eyed the people around her. Casual. Look casual. Her wrist-strapped MobiGlas chimed as it found the directions to this mysterious garage. Several conveyors and a cab ride later through the frozen streets of Quasi ended with Mel stepping up to a building that looked deserving of the name “Crash”.
The shop sat in a less-than-desirable area of town. Shady second-hand shops and dark vendor stalls were dotted among darkened industrial fronts. The only business on the street that looked remotely reputable was a Kel-to Constore on the corner and even that looked like it had seen better days.
Steel beams supported a series of articulated platforms suspended hundreds of meters into the air, each occupied by an array of piecemeal starships. Spare parts littered the work areas between the platforms, sparks cascaded from spider droids crawling over the ships, and rough talk filtered down from the repair crews supervising the work. Below the moving platforms, a relatively small, dingy, snow-covered building served as the storefront. Beside the corrugated metal door, a garishly red holo-sign exclaimed Crash’s Garage, Cheaper than you’d expect!
Mel sighed and pushed the door open, nearly slipping on the built up ice. A couple of empty HydoFrozz cans skidded across the floor. That frelling Tav better not have shazzed me.
Behind the desk sat a human man that was easily the ugliest she had ever seen. Fat, pockmarked, and grizzled by scrum-knows how many accidents, the man and a small vid-terminal filled the area behind a metal counter. A faded, neon-colored name-tag said Crash on his overalls. Mel tried to throw him a grin to lighten the mood. He looked like he smiled back, but it was hard to tell.
Mel gripped the suitcase tightly. She sure wasn’t going to set it down here. .”Hello. Umm... Sullivan sent me?”, she said half expectantly. She hated dealing with unfamiliar modders.
The man stopped grinning and grunted. “So, what does ‘Sullivan’ want?”, the man said making a set of chubby-fingered air quotations to accompany the sentence.
“Something to mask a level 4 emission.”, Mel said trying to put more backbone into her request.
Crash grunted again. “What kind of budget you got?”, he said while punching up some lists on his terminal.
“Yeah, I was thinking Sullivan had some form of tab?”, Mel wasn’t budgeting for something like this. She needed this cash.
Again, a grunt. “Sullivan gets access and a discount. There sure as frell is no tab. Now, what have you got to spend.”
Mel gritted her teeth. She was going to have to talk the money out of the other end of the delivery. “Yeah, um, 10K.”
Crash raised a lop-sided eyebrow.
“OK, 12, but that’s all I got.”
Crash smirked. “Well, if it’s for Sullivan... I’ll cut you a deal. Don’t go spreading it around.” He hit a couple more buttons and square meter section of floor began lowering to expose an impenetrable blackness. Mel edged away from the hole.
Minutes passed. Crash seemed to fill the small room with his presence and his heavy breath. With a sudden relief, Mel heard the motors whirring again as the platform rose into the office.
A smallish spider-bot scampered off the platform and dropped a metal tube onto the desk. The non-descript device looked like a simple meter-long steel tube with hoses connected to each end and a series of small holes in the middle.
Crash smiled much wider this time. “Ah, my own invention. This baby will mask almost any signature up to level 5. Yeah, I said it. Level 5! And all you need to do is hook this baby between you primary exhausts and voila, no Advocacy issues.” His greasy hands fluttered in the air with a flourish like he fashioned himself some great salesman.
Mel grimaced at the device and looked closer. The contraption looked like a metal pipe with some hoses glued on it, not the high-tech device worth 12,000 credits she was expecting. “This … ‘thing’ better not frell my ship!” She had some more choice words on the tip of her tongue, but she held back. Her options were severely limited.
The smile slid off Crash’s face. “You better blast those illusions out of your head! You won’t find anything else giving you level 4 or 5 coverage anywhere near this price bracket. My little invention is full-proof! Just muddles your engine’s core emissions and makes you look like you’ve got bad shielding without causing you too much damage. Of course, if you don’t want my help …” Crash waved his arm and the robot picked up the rod and began to move back to the elevator.
“NO… no, I’ll take it.” Mel said with a start. She needed the cash from this run and she was desperate. With resignation, she slapped the bills on the counter. Their plaz-wozen shine of the Imperials a stark contrast to the beaten, dirty metal.
Crash’s grin sprang back to life and he waved the bot back. “Hard currency! How considerate of you.” The chubby had swiped the bills from the counter in a smooth, practiced, motion. Most of his transactions were likely the less traceable kind.
The spider-bot proffered the pipe-thing and Mel and the wrenched it from its grasp with an angry tug. “Good doing business with you”, she heard as she slammed the door behind her. The smile sounded like it had gotten even bigger.
Another quick cab ride and she was across town at the cut-rate and discreet pad she had her ship stored at. She walked up stairs and across a series storage zones dotted with old, outmoded starships. Just as her legs started to get sore, she turned a corner to set her eyes on her only true accomplishment in life: her ship.
To her, the Frost was the most beautiful ship in all of the ‘verse. An Origin Jumpworks 300i, lightly dusted in new fallen snow made her seem like a spaceship sized avatar of her namesake and the casual passerby might agree she was a thing of splendor. Of course, those smooth lines of snow masked the hodge-podge of salvaged parts she was pieced together from. Frost was a 300i in the sense that most of her parts were from that class of ship and that was what she most closely resembled. Closer examination would reveal a ship whose components had already seen much of the galaxy before being pieced together by some space-born Dr. Frankenstein. Mel loved her none-the-less and cared little for the impression the ship made on others. Frost was at first a means to a livelihood, but now she was destined to be the instrument that Mel would use to save a life.
Mel punched her wrist-comm and the landing ramp swung down. The soreness of her legs forgotten, she sprinted and hopped into ship to get out of the cold and into warm, familiar surroundings.
“First things first”, Mel thought as she made her way down the cramped short corridor to the cramped cargo access. Several containers already lined the hold, filled with common food synthesizer parts. Everyone needed these, so they were an easy cover cargo to have on hand when trying to look legit. Another quick sequence on her comm revealed a hidden compartment below the containers where she slipped in the case. Lights blinked red in the hold as the emission shielding signaled it couldn’t compensate for the new cargo.
“I know, I know”, Mel mumbled as she closed up the containers and began working on the engine. Crash’s invention was as easy to install as he said, but the engine sensors immediately started warning her of a radiation leak. With a grimace, she closed everything up and hoped for the best. She wasn’t really looking to have kids anyway.
As Mel started slipping into her worn flight suit, she took a pause and sighed. Step one was over and she had survived. Unfortunately, step one was ‘supposed’ to be the easy step. Now, the hard part started.
Almost on muscle memory alone she plopped into the flight chair, pulled up a clean tag, and fired up her thrusters. Terran planetary landing control in New Austin gave her authorization and Frost blasted free of the planet’s surface. The ugly mess of the frozen Quasi port quickly dwindled as Frost glided over the sparkling oceans and gorgeous beach-laden resort towns that made up the more popular of the planet’s destinations.
As she neared the edge of atmo, Mel took over and directed the ship towards a lesser used jump point. It had the least Advocacy traffic and reduced her chances of getting scanned or stopped for an engine radiation leak or the emissions she was covering up. Fifteen minutes of sweating and scanning later and she was approaching the point. Frost’s J-Scan detected and bracketed the spacial anomaly in her HUD well before she could see the tell-tale shimmer with her naked eyes. Traffic in general had been light during the transit and none of the Advocacy cruisers had taken an interest. Her luck was looking up.
Mel hit the auto-nav for the point and sat back to watch. Her engine readouts flared as they poked the space-time fracture with exotic energies and manipulator fields. With a jolt, she was pulled into Interspace and moving though its hazy reality of energy tunnels and anomalies.
Mel eased back; she’d seen this hundreds of times in the past several years making similar runs. In a couple minutes, she’d pop out in another system and do it all again at another point. She lost herself in the ships auto-correction for anomalies and watched the transit in a day-dream haze.
Suddenly, she realized something was wrong. Frost was cutting the turns too shallow and having trouble compensating. Warnings erupted across her heads-up-display showing low thruster output. “What the Frell!”, Mell cursed as she grabbed the manual controls trying to get her back on track. Radiation spike warnings shrilled from her console and an unusual hyper-colored aura began to shroud the ship. Even the jump tunnel itself seemed to move in lazy waves.
Nausea gripped her stomach and black spots began to swim across her vision. Wait .. did that anomaly change shape? Mel shook her head and squinted. A face began to form in the tunnel. Not a human face, but one with large eyes and no discernible mouth. A face that held no emotion, but was obviously weighing her. Watching her.
Then Mel knew what the face was. Knew what it meant. This was the face of death and it had come for her.
Mel screamed.
Part 2 - Something Wicked This Way Comes
Mel floated in the black, but she was not cold. A warmth filled her, like a mother hugging her child. Liquid emotion flowing in a stream of contentment. I’m home.
The black ended abruptly as Mel began to breathe. Her eyes shot open and were filled with angry looking red glyphs filling here holographic heads-up displays and scrolled across her windows. Through a haze of pain, Mel squinted past the warnings to look into the space beyond. Stars shone back at her instead of the mind-bending environment of Interspace. Mel sighed a breath of relief.
“Silence alarms! Primary status!”, Mel shouted over the warnings and the cabin grew blessedly silent. Only the drum of pain banging in her head kept going.
“Engine Failure. Primary energy output offline. Backups engaged. 30% remaining.”
Mel gritted her teeth. She must have been out for a while. “Diagnose engine failure:”
“Blockage in exhaust caused reverse flow of thermal dissipation systems. Fission reactions halted.”
Mel slammed her hand on a nearby panel. Frellling CRASH! Anger swathed her vision with even more red. Closing her eyes, she forced herself to breathe more calmly. She had to solve this or she was dead.
First thing first. Mel grabbed her tools and levered herself out of her flight chair. Spots floated in her vision and she grabbed the bulkhead to steady herself. Slowly, Mel made her way back to the cargo hold. The exhaust service panel was warped by excessive heat and it took a good 10 minutes of prying to open it.
Crash’s ‘invention’ was a discolored and bent under the heat stress. The whole thing had to be cut out and the connections retooled. By the time the engine was restarted, her backup battery was down to five percent and life support was steadily chiming a warning.
With under exhaustion, Mel sank into her chair and pulled up her Nav. One small piece of fortune was that she appeared to be roughly where she was supposed to be. The ship must have been able to get to the jump exit before the engine completely failed. If she had somehow been dumped out too early, her chances of survival would have been next to nill. Tears, wet and happy, flowed down her face.
It took her last ounce of will to key in the auto-nav points before grabbing a pain-suppressing hypo and crashing in her cramped bunk.
---
The auto-nav chimes woke Mel from her hibernation. Her mind jolted to alertness, but her muscles failed to move. Every inch of her body felt like it had been beaten by a hammer.
Slowly, Mel forced herself through the molasses of pain that seemed to fill the interior of her ship. Getting into the pilot seat took a bit of levering and grasping both of the chair arms in an awkward dance.
The next jump point hovered in space before Frost as a wavering shimmer in the black, bracketed in display vectors. Luckily, the area was currently free of other ships. Of course, you don’t usually see too many Advocacy cruisers trying to go through jumps to the Cathcart system.
Frost began maneuvering into the jump point while Mel pulled up the ship’s comm menu. With some summoned courage, she fought the urge to look over her shoulder at the engine that had failed her on the last jump. The bent form of Crash’s contraption still lay on the decking. Just looking at it again gave Mel a shiver down her spine. With a deft kick, Mel launched the thing into an equipment cabinet and slammed the door.
A burst of light flooded the area as the drive ripped reality and pushed the ship back into Interspace without a hitch. The dance fell back into its long practiced rhythm.
With a sigh, Mel loaded up the transponder protocol she’d gotten when she took the job. It should keep unfriendlies on the other side of the transit from gutting her on sight. Getting your codes squared away in advance is always a good thing to do when venturing to a pirate’s warren.
The shapes and twists of the Interspace tunnel again twisted outside of her view port. Despite checking the nav system a hundred times, the short trip was uneventful. Mel’s hands hovered above the manual controls, sweating steadily with nervous tension and ready to take the reins at a moment’s notice. The ghostly face hovered in the forefront of her mind eye’s, scratching like an animal on her imagination.
With another burst of light Frost slipped into the existence of the Cathcart system. Immediately her systems lit up with dozens of warnings. Active scans and comm pings barraged her ship and the sensors highlighted enough ships near the jump point to make a capital cruiser nervous. Her ID and protocols must have checked out as none of the obviously pirates opened fire or moved to intercept, but the scans didn’t stop until she was well clear of the jump point.
Before her, a dense forest of twisted, interconnected metal stretched. Pockets of impromptu space stations consisting of connected starship hulls and cargo containers harbored the points of civilization with the space between dotted by the remains that had not yet been salvaged. Corridors between the stations and the jump points formed relatively clear travel routes for those navigating the system, but pilots were forced to a state of constant vigilance to keep their ships intact.
Dark dangers twinkled all around in Frosts running lights, occasionally eclipsing starlight or revealing smaller, lurking vessels. Shadowy ghosts existed between the lights of the smaller stations and good intentions were nowhere to be found.
Minutes crawled by as Mel weaved her ship through the metal jungle, slowly making her way toward the looming mass in the center of the debris cloud. Spider, the Tortuga of galactic piracy; A hive of scum and villainy not to be matched anywhere else in the ‘verse, the massive station was a collection of centuries old hulls welded together in web of creaking metal. It looked like a graveyard of ships lit with the souls of lost sailors.
A renewed barrage of pings hit Frost as she closed in on the station. Nervously, Mel keyed in the comm knock: 3 landing requests, no more. Long moments passed. If the knock was out of date, she'd be locked out of landing for weeks.
Mel let out a relieved sigh as the landing confirmation was returned. Just one more gauntlet to pass and the delivery was done.
The debris cleared a bit before she entered Spider proper, but the corridors closed in fast. Frost slowly twisted and shifted her way through the metal beams, utility hoses, and catwalks to reach a landing platform nestled in the tangled mass. The entrance to the Shining Blade bar was a rough and ragged mass of metal that jutted out like an extended lower jaw of some wild beast. Even the serrated, saw-toothed pattern of the metal’s edge gave the impression of massive fangs. Mostly devoid of other visitors, the large platform held only a Constellation yacht and a couple Cutlass fighters that all looked in fairly good condition. Those must be my clients.
Again, Mel signaled a password to the platform as Frost came in for a landing. ‘BrokenLamp’ was the phrase she was given for the delivery, but she had no idea how often it changed. Either way, no one opened fire as her ship touched down and deployed its umbilical to the stations services.
The urge to just pass out again threatened to overwhelm her. Smuggling is never stress free, but the physical strain from Crash’s failed contraption was new. With a shake of her head, Mel restored her resolve and slapped on her helmet. Napping in a den of unfamiliar pirates is not a formula for success.
Keying open her hidden compartment, Mel grabbed the suitcase and headed out into the vacuum. The artificial gravity of the converted tanker (now pirate bar) barely extended to the platform, so she bunny hopped over the vacuum-degraded metal flooring. The rotting, spiked edges looked even more like giant teeth when close up, causing her to edge away and not risk a suit puncture.
The only signal that this was the right place was large a holographic dagger over the airlock. The airlock itself had no buttons inside or out, but it shut and started cycling the moment she stepped in. It must be monitored.
The inside of the bar was more impressive than Mel had imagined. The liquid fuel tanker drum had been converted into one big room with four maze-like levels of porous decking welded to the walls. Despite the rusted and degraded outside, the inside sparkled with a semi-reflective finish, giving the bar its name. Likely the byproduct of whatever the original tanker had to line its hull with for transport.
Counter to the fact she could see through most of the bar decking, the Blade gave off a rather intimate feel, bordering on cramped. A motely of multi-colored lights and translucent curtains hanging from the ceilings added to the effect and also added surreal quality. On busier days, Mel imagined this place threw some pretty wild parties.
Auto-vendors lined the bottom level’s walls serving everything from beverages to artificial limbs. A heavily armored machine at the end carried black-market SLAM respirators and WiDoW hypos; not the your typical tourist fare. The dive even had an old fashion bar at one end of the room, complete with a human bartender. Of course, he was likely there more as an underground InfoAgent than an actual drink seller.
Much of the area was crammed with an assortment of salvaged metal tables and padded benches welded to the decking in close proximity, but the handful of patrons, mostly human, kept well away from each other. A group of three sat along the wall next to a stack of three meter long cases. They were waving her over.
Mel walked slowly among the tables, awkwardly pulling off her helmet with one hand and clipping it to her belt in imitation of the other patrons. They all still wore their pressure suits and had their helmets clipped or on the tables next them. Even the bartender looked to be wearing a pressure suit decorated to look otherwise. I guess they don’t have too much confidence in the construction around here. The only people not wearing bulky suits were hanging around the privacy rooms on the higher floors of the bar and she could easily guess the reasons behind their difference in attire.
The three pilots stood up while pushing away plates of waffles, a specialty of the house and a favored dish of those native to Spider. Each was dressed in a nondescript black pressure suit that looked fairly well armored, possibly military. A tall, lithe woman with long dark hair stepped forwards and held out her hand. “The package?”, she said. Mel tried to look her in the eyes, but she was wearing completely enclosed mirrored goggles of some fashion.
“Yeah”, Mel said. She wasn’t really in a position to haggle or anything.
The woman took the case and keyed a code into her comm. The case popped open and revealed a set of six small cylinders nestled in suspension foam. “The loo’ is gen, but you’re off by a tick.”, the woman said with a frown.
It took Mel a second to realize she was talking about the long delivery time. Getting the hang of Spider dialects took a while. “Well, you can blame that on the fact you never said this thing had lev’ 4 emissions. I had to use some 2 bit kit from the shazz named Crash. It nearly cost me my ship.”
The woman grimaced. “Ah, well, at least you ain’t ghosted. Crash isn’t known for repeat customers.” She slid the case over to a counterpart who took one of the cylinders and walked over to the long cases behind them and began opening one.
They turned out to be torpedo cases storing some unusual ordinance. The pilot’s MobiGlass sprang to life with charts as he inserted the cylinder. “Three greens, 5 by 5. Let’s lock ‘em and drift!”
More black-suited pilots drifted over from the other tables and began loading the torpedoes on metal grav sleds. The goggle-woman pulled a stack of credits from her a suit pocket and then added a couple of bills. “For your trouble with Crash. I wouldn’t normally, but you showed your worth in surviving. We may need you again.”
Mel snatched up the bills and pocketed them in one quick motion, intentionally not counting them. She didn’t know how many of these patrons were with the Blades, but she wasn’t taking chances on a mugging when she was this close to her goal. “I was promised an introduction as part of the payment.”
The woman’s frown deepened. “Right, you wanted an introduction to The Chain. You don’t really strike me as the slaver type.”
“Well, I’m not …”
“Nevermind”, the woman interrupted. “I don’t want to know or get involved.” She pulled a MobiGlass out of a suit pouch and keyed something in. After a few minutes of poking, the woman said, “Here, that’ll get you in. The coordinates are in the message.”
Mel’s comm buzzed with a locally-sent message. She mumbled “Thanks” and began walking briskly to the airlock while locking-on her helmet.
Sitting in her ship, Mel pulled out the cash and counted the bills. It was all there. Almost done. She pushed the message to her main display. It contained a password and coordinates in Cathcart. It looked to be one of the outlier stations, well outside of Spider proper.
As she pulled off the landing pad, she could see the black-suited pilots loading the torpedoes into the cargo bay of the Constellation she saw earlier.
Mel floated in the black, but she was not cold. A warmth filled her, like a mother hugging her child. Liquid emotion flowing in a stream of contentment. I’m home.
The black ended abruptly as Mel began to breathe. Her eyes shot open and were filled with angry looking red glyphs filling here holographic heads-up displays and scrolled across her windows. Through a haze of pain, Mel squinted past the warnings to look into the space beyond. Stars shone back at her instead of the mind-bending environment of Interspace. Mel sighed a breath of relief.
“Silence alarms! Primary status!”, Mel shouted over the warnings and the cabin grew blessedly silent. Only the drum of pain banging in her head kept going.
“Engine Failure. Primary energy output offline. Backups engaged. 30% remaining.”
Mel gritted her teeth. She must have been out for a while. “Diagnose engine failure:”
“Blockage in exhaust caused reverse flow of thermal dissipation systems. Fission reactions halted.”
Mel slammed her hand on a nearby panel. Frellling CRASH! Anger swathed her vision with even more red. Closing her eyes, she forced herself to breathe more calmly. She had to solve this or she was dead.
First thing first. Mel grabbed her tools and levered herself out of her flight chair. Spots floated in her vision and she grabbed the bulkhead to steady herself. Slowly, Mel made her way back to the cargo hold. The exhaust service panel was warped by excessive heat and it took a good 10 minutes of prying to open it.
Crash’s ‘invention’ was a discolored and bent under the heat stress. The whole thing had to be cut out and the connections retooled. By the time the engine was restarted, her backup battery was down to five percent and life support was steadily chiming a warning.
With under exhaustion, Mel sank into her chair and pulled up her Nav. One small piece of fortune was that she appeared to be roughly where she was supposed to be. The ship must have been able to get to the jump exit before the engine completely failed. If she had somehow been dumped out too early, her chances of survival would have been next to nill. Tears, wet and happy, flowed down her face.
It took her last ounce of will to key in the auto-nav points before grabbing a pain-suppressing hypo and crashing in her cramped bunk.
---
The auto-nav chimes woke Mel from her hibernation. Her mind jolted to alertness, but her muscles failed to move. Every inch of her body felt like it had been beaten by a hammer.
Slowly, Mel forced herself through the molasses of pain that seemed to fill the interior of her ship. Getting into the pilot seat took a bit of levering and grasping both of the chair arms in an awkward dance.
The next jump point hovered in space before Frost as a wavering shimmer in the black, bracketed in display vectors. Luckily, the area was currently free of other ships. Of course, you don’t usually see too many Advocacy cruisers trying to go through jumps to the Cathcart system.
Frost began maneuvering into the jump point while Mel pulled up the ship’s comm menu. With some summoned courage, she fought the urge to look over her shoulder at the engine that had failed her on the last jump. The bent form of Crash’s contraption still lay on the decking. Just looking at it again gave Mel a shiver down her spine. With a deft kick, Mel launched the thing into an equipment cabinet and slammed the door.
A burst of light flooded the area as the drive ripped reality and pushed the ship back into Interspace without a hitch. The dance fell back into its long practiced rhythm.
With a sigh, Mel loaded up the transponder protocol she’d gotten when she took the job. It should keep unfriendlies on the other side of the transit from gutting her on sight. Getting your codes squared away in advance is always a good thing to do when venturing to a pirate’s warren.
The shapes and twists of the Interspace tunnel again twisted outside of her view port. Despite checking the nav system a hundred times, the short trip was uneventful. Mel’s hands hovered above the manual controls, sweating steadily with nervous tension and ready to take the reins at a moment’s notice. The ghostly face hovered in the forefront of her mind eye’s, scratching like an animal on her imagination.
With another burst of light Frost slipped into the existence of the Cathcart system. Immediately her systems lit up with dozens of warnings. Active scans and comm pings barraged her ship and the sensors highlighted enough ships near the jump point to make a capital cruiser nervous. Her ID and protocols must have checked out as none of the obviously pirates opened fire or moved to intercept, but the scans didn’t stop until she was well clear of the jump point.
Before her, a dense forest of twisted, interconnected metal stretched. Pockets of impromptu space stations consisting of connected starship hulls and cargo containers harbored the points of civilization with the space between dotted by the remains that had not yet been salvaged. Corridors between the stations and the jump points formed relatively clear travel routes for those navigating the system, but pilots were forced to a state of constant vigilance to keep their ships intact.
Dark dangers twinkled all around in Frosts running lights, occasionally eclipsing starlight or revealing smaller, lurking vessels. Shadowy ghosts existed between the lights of the smaller stations and good intentions were nowhere to be found.
Minutes crawled by as Mel weaved her ship through the metal jungle, slowly making her way toward the looming mass in the center of the debris cloud. Spider, the Tortuga of galactic piracy; A hive of scum and villainy not to be matched anywhere else in the ‘verse, the massive station was a collection of centuries old hulls welded together in web of creaking metal. It looked like a graveyard of ships lit with the souls of lost sailors.
A renewed barrage of pings hit Frost as she closed in on the station. Nervously, Mel keyed in the comm knock: 3 landing requests, no more. Long moments passed. If the knock was out of date, she'd be locked out of landing for weeks.
Mel let out a relieved sigh as the landing confirmation was returned. Just one more gauntlet to pass and the delivery was done.
The debris cleared a bit before she entered Spider proper, but the corridors closed in fast. Frost slowly twisted and shifted her way through the metal beams, utility hoses, and catwalks to reach a landing platform nestled in the tangled mass. The entrance to the Shining Blade bar was a rough and ragged mass of metal that jutted out like an extended lower jaw of some wild beast. Even the serrated, saw-toothed pattern of the metal’s edge gave the impression of massive fangs. Mostly devoid of other visitors, the large platform held only a Constellation yacht and a couple Cutlass fighters that all looked in fairly good condition. Those must be my clients.
Again, Mel signaled a password to the platform as Frost came in for a landing. ‘BrokenLamp’ was the phrase she was given for the delivery, but she had no idea how often it changed. Either way, no one opened fire as her ship touched down and deployed its umbilical to the stations services.
The urge to just pass out again threatened to overwhelm her. Smuggling is never stress free, but the physical strain from Crash’s failed contraption was new. With a shake of her head, Mel restored her resolve and slapped on her helmet. Napping in a den of unfamiliar pirates is not a formula for success.
Keying open her hidden compartment, Mel grabbed the suitcase and headed out into the vacuum. The artificial gravity of the converted tanker (now pirate bar) barely extended to the platform, so she bunny hopped over the vacuum-degraded metal flooring. The rotting, spiked edges looked even more like giant teeth when close up, causing her to edge away and not risk a suit puncture.
The only signal that this was the right place was large a holographic dagger over the airlock. The airlock itself had no buttons inside or out, but it shut and started cycling the moment she stepped in. It must be monitored.
The inside of the bar was more impressive than Mel had imagined. The liquid fuel tanker drum had been converted into one big room with four maze-like levels of porous decking welded to the walls. Despite the rusted and degraded outside, the inside sparkled with a semi-reflective finish, giving the bar its name. Likely the byproduct of whatever the original tanker had to line its hull with for transport.
Counter to the fact she could see through most of the bar decking, the Blade gave off a rather intimate feel, bordering on cramped. A motely of multi-colored lights and translucent curtains hanging from the ceilings added to the effect and also added surreal quality. On busier days, Mel imagined this place threw some pretty wild parties.
Auto-vendors lined the bottom level’s walls serving everything from beverages to artificial limbs. A heavily armored machine at the end carried black-market SLAM respirators and WiDoW hypos; not the your typical tourist fare. The dive even had an old fashion bar at one end of the room, complete with a human bartender. Of course, he was likely there more as an underground InfoAgent than an actual drink seller.
Much of the area was crammed with an assortment of salvaged metal tables and padded benches welded to the decking in close proximity, but the handful of patrons, mostly human, kept well away from each other. A group of three sat along the wall next to a stack of three meter long cases. They were waving her over.
Mel walked slowly among the tables, awkwardly pulling off her helmet with one hand and clipping it to her belt in imitation of the other patrons. They all still wore their pressure suits and had their helmets clipped or on the tables next them. Even the bartender looked to be wearing a pressure suit decorated to look otherwise. I guess they don’t have too much confidence in the construction around here. The only people not wearing bulky suits were hanging around the privacy rooms on the higher floors of the bar and she could easily guess the reasons behind their difference in attire.
The three pilots stood up while pushing away plates of waffles, a specialty of the house and a favored dish of those native to Spider. Each was dressed in a nondescript black pressure suit that looked fairly well armored, possibly military. A tall, lithe woman with long dark hair stepped forwards and held out her hand. “The package?”, she said. Mel tried to look her in the eyes, but she was wearing completely enclosed mirrored goggles of some fashion.
“Yeah”, Mel said. She wasn’t really in a position to haggle or anything.
The woman took the case and keyed a code into her comm. The case popped open and revealed a set of six small cylinders nestled in suspension foam. “The loo’ is gen, but you’re off by a tick.”, the woman said with a frown.
It took Mel a second to realize she was talking about the long delivery time. Getting the hang of Spider dialects took a while. “Well, you can blame that on the fact you never said this thing had lev’ 4 emissions. I had to use some 2 bit kit from the shazz named Crash. It nearly cost me my ship.”
The woman grimaced. “Ah, well, at least you ain’t ghosted. Crash isn’t known for repeat customers.” She slid the case over to a counterpart who took one of the cylinders and walked over to the long cases behind them and began opening one.
They turned out to be torpedo cases storing some unusual ordinance. The pilot’s MobiGlass sprang to life with charts as he inserted the cylinder. “Three greens, 5 by 5. Let’s lock ‘em and drift!”
More black-suited pilots drifted over from the other tables and began loading the torpedoes on metal grav sleds. The goggle-woman pulled a stack of credits from her a suit pocket and then added a couple of bills. “For your trouble with Crash. I wouldn’t normally, but you showed your worth in surviving. We may need you again.”
Mel snatched up the bills and pocketed them in one quick motion, intentionally not counting them. She didn’t know how many of these patrons were with the Blades, but she wasn’t taking chances on a mugging when she was this close to her goal. “I was promised an introduction as part of the payment.”
The woman’s frown deepened. “Right, you wanted an introduction to The Chain. You don’t really strike me as the slaver type.”
“Well, I’m not …”
“Nevermind”, the woman interrupted. “I don’t want to know or get involved.” She pulled a MobiGlass out of a suit pouch and keyed something in. After a few minutes of poking, the woman said, “Here, that’ll get you in. The coordinates are in the message.”
Mel’s comm buzzed with a locally-sent message. She mumbled “Thanks” and began walking briskly to the airlock while locking-on her helmet.
Sitting in her ship, Mel pulled out the cash and counted the bills. It was all there. Almost done. She pushed the message to her main display. It contained a password and coordinates in Cathcart. It looked to be one of the outlier stations, well outside of Spider proper.
As she pulled off the landing pad, she could see the black-suited pilots loading the torpedoes into the cargo bay of the Constellation she saw earlier.
Part 3 In the Forests of the Night
The coordinates led her to a largish station that was given a generous clearance by everything else in the system. Out her ship’s window, Mel caught glimpses of two powered down Cutlasses in a slow wide orbit of the station. If she saw two fighters running a low signature, the area must be swarming with them.
The station itself was huge compared to most pirate constructs. A rough, half-kilometer cube, it looked to be made of a large collection of expertly connected cargo vessels surrounding what used to be a largish military vessel, probably originally Tevarin from the hull lines. While mixing tech like this would normally be recipe for disaster, the whole construction looked pretty high quality by Cathcart standards. They even painted the thing a uniform black matte.
The station had almost no lights beyond some softly glowing scanners and a largish docking bay. The bay itself had a good gravity well and shield-contained atmosphere. Empty cages and tech-laden suspension coffins lined the walls, giving a good reason for the well-tended facilities of the landing area.
Mel shivered as she stepped off the Frost. Luckily there were no cargo ships here. She wasn’t quite sure she could take the sight of a delivery.
“Dropping off or picking up?”, said a Tevarin in a Class IX load lifter suit. He was dressed in blue coveralls and had the front half of the large robot open and was sitting on the edge, tapping on a largish OptiGlass tablet tethered to the machine.
“Uh, I’m here to talk to the local Chain rep. I have a special request.”
The Tevarin looked up and stared at her. His face was scarred in a strange pattern that was hard to tell if it was intentional or the result of a horrifying accident. After a few seconds, he shrugged and put down the Glass. “Sure, I’ll take you. It’s on your skin”, he muttered as he hopped down and motioned her to follow. The smirk on his face pulled the scar lines in a way that was somehow both off-putting and endearing.
Don’t screw this up, Mel thought as she followed the slaver out of the landing bay and into the twisting hallways of the station. With a steady gait and no pauses, the worker began weaving through an endless series of wide cargo hallways. Luckily, he was rather short for a Tevarin being only average human sized, so she didn’t need to run to catch up.
The construction quality seemed pretty sound throughout and the other workers, mostly Tevarin and human, seemed to not be wearing environment suits. If not for the regular coloring of blood on the walls or the sleds of ominous coffin containers, she might have been able to forget what kind of station she was on.
“Oi, flacks the burn!” a human worker yelled coming through a pair of wide side doors. A large hover sled packed high with coffins came directly after him, following like a faithful pet elephant. Incomprehensibly large racks of boxes and suspension coffins stretched into the wide void he came from. The warehouse of stored flesh was pack so tightly that likely meant the station’s slave capacity eclipsed the population of many of the known galaxy’s metropolitan urban centers.
The man stopped short, looked over to the Tevarin slaver and then at Mel with narrowing eyes. No one here look particularly intimidating in Mel’s book, but all of them carried full military grade K&W FlexRifles on their back and some minor toys on the belts. Lethal or nonlethal, they were very well covered. If something went south, nothing would keep them from adding Mel to one of those boxes.
The Tevarin slaver gave the man a tired look. “Drift off Yorrel. You flippin the cred flow?”, hooking his thumb back at Mel.
“Nah, just chaw”, the human smirked and began walking down the corridor in which they had just come. The floating cargo container made a slight sighing sound and began following him.
“Don’t mind him.”, the scarred Tevarin said walking forward again. “He’s just sore he has to work off his last Laz dept here in The Box. Frelling scrum is lucky he ain’t in a coffin himself.”
Moments later they approached another metal door. Aside from the fact that it wasn’t a cargo door, no markings indicated it as anything special. Only the relatively large number of sensors in the immediate proximity gave it away as anything special.
The scarred Tevarin turned and said, “If you have credentials to show the rep, now is the time.”
“Oh, uh, sure.” Mel pulled up her comm and squirted the introduction letter she’d gotten from the Jump Blade pirates at the door.
Nothing happened for a long 10 seconds and then the door slid open. “After you”, the slaver said through his odd smirk and a waved hand,
Inside the door was such a stark contrast to the rest of the complex that Mel hand to look back at the hallway to get her bearings. She quickly took in a pristine white floor, tastefully modern furnishings, and fully immersive OptiGlass walls that would not have looked out of place in the Terran consulates and guild halls that she had left just hours before. Before now she would not have imagined such a room could exist aboard a covert slave warehouse in the Cathcart system.
Behind a pearlescent desk on one side of the room sat a pale, trim man in what looked to be a very expensive suit. He was swiping in grand gestures at his OptiGlass desk pulling up a variety of charts and pushing them to a large Tevarin, equally well dressed, standing to his right viewing the graphs on the wall. Images of warehouses, pallets of coffins, and cargo ship registries zipped by as scrolling secondary data.
After a few moments, the human man paused to look up at Mel and put on a wide smile. “You come bearing a nice letter of recommendation. Ms …?”, he said as he unconsciously patted his half-shaved head and pony-tail that fell over his left shoulder.
“Just call me ‘M’. And, thank you. Earning a good rep isn’t easy.”
“M”, the well-dressed Tevarin said without turning around. “That wouldn’t be Sneaky M by chance?”, the curiosity in his clearly feigned.
“It seems you have me at a disadvantage. What should I call you for the purposes of our business?”, Mel said in a flatter tone than she intended. Civility was important here, but she couldn’t stomach being nice.
“Xane Artosk, the Cathcart magistrate for The Chain.”, the human said as he stood proffering his hand across the desk. Mel shook it as quickly as possible.
“Kilron, Force Executive for The Black Hand”, said the Tevarin as he turned around. He looked similar to the Tevarin she met on Terra, but he was larger and … hungrier looking.
Mel’s blood ran cold as the Tevarin had likely expected it to. Her trepidation must have been plain as the Tevarin began to chuckle. “The Black Hand has entered into a long term alliance with The Chain. Do not worry; it is not a secret worth killing you over.”
With a half-smile and grimace, Mel returned the chuckle while storms of acid and bile made menacing threats in the pit of her stomach. “Yes, um, thank … err … nice to meet you.”, she stammered before turning back to Xane. “I have a special request that I heard you have the means to grant.”
“Oh, yes, business. Please,” the slaver waved at the desk in front of him. “Please fill us in on the details.”
Mel shot a glance at the two Tevarins as she pulled a MobiGlass from her pocket. The scarred dock loader was sitting on the couch and Kilron had turned back to his wall screen, but both were obviously paying attention. So much for private meeting.
“Ah, yes, let me check our database.”, said Xane as he received the DNA profile on his desktop. “Yes, yes, we have someone with this profile in stock. Lot 4B.”
Mel feared she would swoon as the relief was almost too much to contain. “I assume the standard request fee and …”, she started to say as she keyed up he MobiGlass again.
“That lot can’t be broken”, said Killion as he turned around; mock sympathy etched on his alien features. “I am sorry, but that block was pre-purchased. Perhaps you would consider broadening the profile beyond your ... very specific profile request.”
They had her and she knew it. She only had enough money for the standard Chain special fees and negotiating wasn’t going to work in her favor. They knew she wanted a specific person and were going to milk her for whatever they wanted.
Ten years ago, when she was first starting out on her own at the utterly corruptible age of fifteen, Mel met an old pirate named Billy on a worthless backwater asteroid colony. Billy was in some ways the stupidest pirate she had ever met, but he helped in every way he could she had adored him for it. His advice always seemed to come in handy even to this. If you’ve no room to dance, don’t keep shuffling yer feet. Drift or rip. Getter done.
“Spit it out. Name the price.”
“Things are not so simple. We can’t break promises to customers that ..”
“The scrum you can’t. You’ve had me pegged since I landed. You probably even know how much money I have and yet you are still talking to me. I have no more patience for this, so tell me what you want.”, Mel spat the words at the slavers, but she felt a mostly cool anger. This was always a possibility and she was more angry at herself for underestimating some of the ‘verse’s top slavers.
“Fair enough”, said Killian. Xane looked to be somewhat perplexed by the whole thing and it was obvious who had the upper hand in their syndicate partnership. “Your reputation as a smuggler and thief precedes you and it so happens we need something … delivered. I propose an even swap; your requested slave once the job as been confirmed completed.”
She had expected worse, but there was no way she would trust these guys. “And the job would be ..”
“We need a small case delivered to the engine room of a UEE freighter. The freighter has no escort, a light crew, and we know it will be docking with a Covalex shipping hub in Crowshaw in 5 days. A fairly simple job for you … if your references are to be believed.”
The job did sound within her means. “I’ll need a DNA confirmation you even have the slave before taking on any work.”
“Done.”
Mel punched her thrusters a little harder than necessary as she left the bay of The Box and had to weave hard to avoid random Cathcart debris before slipping into the corridor to the jump point.
The blood sample the slavers had given her sat like talisman on Frost’s console. Her on-board analyzer had confirmed its legitimacy. Fresh, no cloning, perfect match. So close, yet so far.
The trip was quick and uneventful to the Conavex CR6 shipping hub, but she couldn’t simply dock with the station and wait for the freighter. She needed a reason to be there that wouldn’t raise suspicion and she needed to be docked at the same time as the freighter.
Normally, this would be an easy proposition on any major trade station. Find a trade contract that worked for the timeline and deliver it to the station on the right schedule. Unfortunately, this hub only saw approved, security vetted commercial or military contracts and saw no trade directly on the station. CR6 mostly just cargo transfers, refueling, and crew swaps.
So, what was needed most was expertise and intel and she currently only had the former. Just out of comm range from the station, Mel cut Frost’s main power draw, engaged the ship’s heat sinks and EM spreader, and drifted into position to sit and monitor the station traffic. It took 2 days of monitoring the traffic and hacking secure requests to get what she needed : a no questions, black box cargo shipping request that would require a refueling stop over in the time range she needed. She just had to forge the job ID and ship tag of the request and get there before the real courier. “No sweat”, Mel thought and then laughed out loud. She was down to her underwear and sweating profusely as Frost strove to keep all of her energy emissions from leaking. The heat sinks had already neared capacity and she needed to start the forging soon. It was either this job or nothing.
A quick burst of her thrusters pushed her out of senor range on a slow drift. Six hours later, she was able to heat dump and spin up her ship’s computer to full for the forging process. High security encrypts were tricky and very chancy, but Mel had a serious data forge and knew what to look out for.
Even so, she ended up cutting the timeline pretty close as making her final approach to CR6 a couple days later. The freighter was already docked and fully engaged by the station. An older vessel, with obviously superficial damage on the sides partially obscuring its name: Snow Gambit. A good omen and, luckily, the courier she was impersonating didn’t look to be in the landing bay.
First impressions made the vessel seem unimpressive, but Mel noticed the thing was well armed for a simple cargo freighter and the damage looked to actually be covering up thicker than normal platting. Whatever this thing was shipping, the UEE was using stealth and trying to keep it low key.
The forged codes seemed to work. Most of the station was automated, including the docking. There was no challenge to her code and Frost was able to land unimpeded. Mel smirked when she realized the fuel hookups were billing the shipping contract holder of the ID she was using.
There was no telling how long the freighter would be here, so she couldn’t afford to wait around. Mel grabbed her helmet and a kit she had pre-packed and jumped down to the decking. There were a couple of haulers walking around, but she didn’t get more than a glance as she strode into the bowels of the station. Walking with purpose, she strode a circuit around the complex, surveying the airlocks, docks, and storage areas.
When she came to the station’s bar / mess hall, she stopped for moment, thought, and went in. She needed to be seen and have a purpose in case the systems were monitoring her. She also needed to give the computer in her bag a little more time to crack the internal surveillance network.
“What can I get you?”, the auto-barman asked as she walked up.
“Terran scotch. Something at least fifty years old. Bill my berth account.”, Mel couldn’t help smirking again.
“Certainly. Coming right up.”, said the robot as it spun to fetch a bottle from the shelf.
The other patrons at the bar looked to be long haulers and kept to themselves. A couple of military types sat at a table in the back eating a meal and talking, but some Banu wind-song playing over the bar’s sound system covered up what they were saying.
Hmm.. that must be the freighter’s crew.
“Your drink ma’am.”
Mel turned and grabbed her drink, keeping an eye on the UEE military table. With a single pull, she down the glass, stood up, and grabbed her stuff. Walking from the bar, she checked her wrist comm; the computer was almost done getting access codes. Time to get to the freighter.
She couldn’t go directly to the ship and board it like the rest of the crew. That way would be too heavily monitored by the ship itself. No, she had to use a less common access point the station controlled.
Her comm chimed the hack completion as she passed up the dock that the freighter was hooked to and turned down the corridor next to it. This one was empty and unused, too close to the massive freighter for another ship to dock. Mel pulled her MobiGlass from her pocket and accessed the station’s security system, virtually pushing her presence back to the bar and deleting herself from the corridor. Slapping her helmet on, she started up the airlock’s exit cycle and walked into the void.
The coordinates led her to a largish station that was given a generous clearance by everything else in the system. Out her ship’s window, Mel caught glimpses of two powered down Cutlasses in a slow wide orbit of the station. If she saw two fighters running a low signature, the area must be swarming with them.
The station itself was huge compared to most pirate constructs. A rough, half-kilometer cube, it looked to be made of a large collection of expertly connected cargo vessels surrounding what used to be a largish military vessel, probably originally Tevarin from the hull lines. While mixing tech like this would normally be recipe for disaster, the whole construction looked pretty high quality by Cathcart standards. They even painted the thing a uniform black matte.
The station had almost no lights beyond some softly glowing scanners and a largish docking bay. The bay itself had a good gravity well and shield-contained atmosphere. Empty cages and tech-laden suspension coffins lined the walls, giving a good reason for the well-tended facilities of the landing area.
Mel shivered as she stepped off the Frost. Luckily there were no cargo ships here. She wasn’t quite sure she could take the sight of a delivery.
“Dropping off or picking up?”, said a Tevarin in a Class IX load lifter suit. He was dressed in blue coveralls and had the front half of the large robot open and was sitting on the edge, tapping on a largish OptiGlass tablet tethered to the machine.
“Uh, I’m here to talk to the local Chain rep. I have a special request.”
The Tevarin looked up and stared at her. His face was scarred in a strange pattern that was hard to tell if it was intentional or the result of a horrifying accident. After a few seconds, he shrugged and put down the Glass. “Sure, I’ll take you. It’s on your skin”, he muttered as he hopped down and motioned her to follow. The smirk on his face pulled the scar lines in a way that was somehow both off-putting and endearing.
Don’t screw this up, Mel thought as she followed the slaver out of the landing bay and into the twisting hallways of the station. With a steady gait and no pauses, the worker began weaving through an endless series of wide cargo hallways. Luckily, he was rather short for a Tevarin being only average human sized, so she didn’t need to run to catch up.
The construction quality seemed pretty sound throughout and the other workers, mostly Tevarin and human, seemed to not be wearing environment suits. If not for the regular coloring of blood on the walls or the sleds of ominous coffin containers, she might have been able to forget what kind of station she was on.
“Oi, flacks the burn!” a human worker yelled coming through a pair of wide side doors. A large hover sled packed high with coffins came directly after him, following like a faithful pet elephant. Incomprehensibly large racks of boxes and suspension coffins stretched into the wide void he came from. The warehouse of stored flesh was pack so tightly that likely meant the station’s slave capacity eclipsed the population of many of the known galaxy’s metropolitan urban centers.
The man stopped short, looked over to the Tevarin slaver and then at Mel with narrowing eyes. No one here look particularly intimidating in Mel’s book, but all of them carried full military grade K&W FlexRifles on their back and some minor toys on the belts. Lethal or nonlethal, they were very well covered. If something went south, nothing would keep them from adding Mel to one of those boxes.
The Tevarin slaver gave the man a tired look. “Drift off Yorrel. You flippin the cred flow?”, hooking his thumb back at Mel.
“Nah, just chaw”, the human smirked and began walking down the corridor in which they had just come. The floating cargo container made a slight sighing sound and began following him.
“Don’t mind him.”, the scarred Tevarin said walking forward again. “He’s just sore he has to work off his last Laz dept here in The Box. Frelling scrum is lucky he ain’t in a coffin himself.”
Moments later they approached another metal door. Aside from the fact that it wasn’t a cargo door, no markings indicated it as anything special. Only the relatively large number of sensors in the immediate proximity gave it away as anything special.
The scarred Tevarin turned and said, “If you have credentials to show the rep, now is the time.”
“Oh, uh, sure.” Mel pulled up her comm and squirted the introduction letter she’d gotten from the Jump Blade pirates at the door.
Nothing happened for a long 10 seconds and then the door slid open. “After you”, the slaver said through his odd smirk and a waved hand,
Inside the door was such a stark contrast to the rest of the complex that Mel hand to look back at the hallway to get her bearings. She quickly took in a pristine white floor, tastefully modern furnishings, and fully immersive OptiGlass walls that would not have looked out of place in the Terran consulates and guild halls that she had left just hours before. Before now she would not have imagined such a room could exist aboard a covert slave warehouse in the Cathcart system.
Behind a pearlescent desk on one side of the room sat a pale, trim man in what looked to be a very expensive suit. He was swiping in grand gestures at his OptiGlass desk pulling up a variety of charts and pushing them to a large Tevarin, equally well dressed, standing to his right viewing the graphs on the wall. Images of warehouses, pallets of coffins, and cargo ship registries zipped by as scrolling secondary data.
After a few moments, the human man paused to look up at Mel and put on a wide smile. “You come bearing a nice letter of recommendation. Ms …?”, he said as he unconsciously patted his half-shaved head and pony-tail that fell over his left shoulder.
“Just call me ‘M’. And, thank you. Earning a good rep isn’t easy.”
“M”, the well-dressed Tevarin said without turning around. “That wouldn’t be Sneaky M by chance?”, the curiosity in his clearly feigned.
“It seems you have me at a disadvantage. What should I call you for the purposes of our business?”, Mel said in a flatter tone than she intended. Civility was important here, but she couldn’t stomach being nice.
“Xane Artosk, the Cathcart magistrate for The Chain.”, the human said as he stood proffering his hand across the desk. Mel shook it as quickly as possible.
“Kilron, Force Executive for The Black Hand”, said the Tevarin as he turned around. He looked similar to the Tevarin she met on Terra, but he was larger and … hungrier looking.
Mel’s blood ran cold as the Tevarin had likely expected it to. Her trepidation must have been plain as the Tevarin began to chuckle. “The Black Hand has entered into a long term alliance with The Chain. Do not worry; it is not a secret worth killing you over.”
With a half-smile and grimace, Mel returned the chuckle while storms of acid and bile made menacing threats in the pit of her stomach. “Yes, um, thank … err … nice to meet you.”, she stammered before turning back to Xane. “I have a special request that I heard you have the means to grant.”
“Oh, yes, business. Please,” the slaver waved at the desk in front of him. “Please fill us in on the details.”
Mel shot a glance at the two Tevarins as she pulled a MobiGlass from her pocket. The scarred dock loader was sitting on the couch and Kilron had turned back to his wall screen, but both were obviously paying attention. So much for private meeting.
“Ah, yes, let me check our database.”, said Xane as he received the DNA profile on his desktop. “Yes, yes, we have someone with this profile in stock. Lot 4B.”
Mel feared she would swoon as the relief was almost too much to contain. “I assume the standard request fee and …”, she started to say as she keyed up he MobiGlass again.
“That lot can’t be broken”, said Killion as he turned around; mock sympathy etched on his alien features. “I am sorry, but that block was pre-purchased. Perhaps you would consider broadening the profile beyond your ... very specific profile request.”
They had her and she knew it. She only had enough money for the standard Chain special fees and negotiating wasn’t going to work in her favor. They knew she wanted a specific person and were going to milk her for whatever they wanted.
Ten years ago, when she was first starting out on her own at the utterly corruptible age of fifteen, Mel met an old pirate named Billy on a worthless backwater asteroid colony. Billy was in some ways the stupidest pirate she had ever met, but he helped in every way he could she had adored him for it. His advice always seemed to come in handy even to this. If you’ve no room to dance, don’t keep shuffling yer feet. Drift or rip. Getter done.
“Spit it out. Name the price.”
“Things are not so simple. We can’t break promises to customers that ..”
“The scrum you can’t. You’ve had me pegged since I landed. You probably even know how much money I have and yet you are still talking to me. I have no more patience for this, so tell me what you want.”, Mel spat the words at the slavers, but she felt a mostly cool anger. This was always a possibility and she was more angry at herself for underestimating some of the ‘verse’s top slavers.
“Fair enough”, said Killian. Xane looked to be somewhat perplexed by the whole thing and it was obvious who had the upper hand in their syndicate partnership. “Your reputation as a smuggler and thief precedes you and it so happens we need something … delivered. I propose an even swap; your requested slave once the job as been confirmed completed.”
She had expected worse, but there was no way she would trust these guys. “And the job would be ..”
“We need a small case delivered to the engine room of a UEE freighter. The freighter has no escort, a light crew, and we know it will be docking with a Covalex shipping hub in Crowshaw in 5 days. A fairly simple job for you … if your references are to be believed.”
The job did sound within her means. “I’ll need a DNA confirmation you even have the slave before taking on any work.”
“Done.”
Mel punched her thrusters a little harder than necessary as she left the bay of The Box and had to weave hard to avoid random Cathcart debris before slipping into the corridor to the jump point.
The blood sample the slavers had given her sat like talisman on Frost’s console. Her on-board analyzer had confirmed its legitimacy. Fresh, no cloning, perfect match. So close, yet so far.
The trip was quick and uneventful to the Conavex CR6 shipping hub, but she couldn’t simply dock with the station and wait for the freighter. She needed a reason to be there that wouldn’t raise suspicion and she needed to be docked at the same time as the freighter.
Normally, this would be an easy proposition on any major trade station. Find a trade contract that worked for the timeline and deliver it to the station on the right schedule. Unfortunately, this hub only saw approved, security vetted commercial or military contracts and saw no trade directly on the station. CR6 mostly just cargo transfers, refueling, and crew swaps.
So, what was needed most was expertise and intel and she currently only had the former. Just out of comm range from the station, Mel cut Frost’s main power draw, engaged the ship’s heat sinks and EM spreader, and drifted into position to sit and monitor the station traffic. It took 2 days of monitoring the traffic and hacking secure requests to get what she needed : a no questions, black box cargo shipping request that would require a refueling stop over in the time range she needed. She just had to forge the job ID and ship tag of the request and get there before the real courier. “No sweat”, Mel thought and then laughed out loud. She was down to her underwear and sweating profusely as Frost strove to keep all of her energy emissions from leaking. The heat sinks had already neared capacity and she needed to start the forging soon. It was either this job or nothing.
A quick burst of her thrusters pushed her out of senor range on a slow drift. Six hours later, she was able to heat dump and spin up her ship’s computer to full for the forging process. High security encrypts were tricky and very chancy, but Mel had a serious data forge and knew what to look out for.
Even so, she ended up cutting the timeline pretty close as making her final approach to CR6 a couple days later. The freighter was already docked and fully engaged by the station. An older vessel, with obviously superficial damage on the sides partially obscuring its name: Snow Gambit. A good omen and, luckily, the courier she was impersonating didn’t look to be in the landing bay.
First impressions made the vessel seem unimpressive, but Mel noticed the thing was well armed for a simple cargo freighter and the damage looked to actually be covering up thicker than normal platting. Whatever this thing was shipping, the UEE was using stealth and trying to keep it low key.
The forged codes seemed to work. Most of the station was automated, including the docking. There was no challenge to her code and Frost was able to land unimpeded. Mel smirked when she realized the fuel hookups were billing the shipping contract holder of the ID she was using.
There was no telling how long the freighter would be here, so she couldn’t afford to wait around. Mel grabbed her helmet and a kit she had pre-packed and jumped down to the decking. There were a couple of haulers walking around, but she didn’t get more than a glance as she strode into the bowels of the station. Walking with purpose, she strode a circuit around the complex, surveying the airlocks, docks, and storage areas.
When she came to the station’s bar / mess hall, she stopped for moment, thought, and went in. She needed to be seen and have a purpose in case the systems were monitoring her. She also needed to give the computer in her bag a little more time to crack the internal surveillance network.
“What can I get you?”, the auto-barman asked as she walked up.
“Terran scotch. Something at least fifty years old. Bill my berth account.”, Mel couldn’t help smirking again.
“Certainly. Coming right up.”, said the robot as it spun to fetch a bottle from the shelf.
The other patrons at the bar looked to be long haulers and kept to themselves. A couple of military types sat at a table in the back eating a meal and talking, but some Banu wind-song playing over the bar’s sound system covered up what they were saying.
Hmm.. that must be the freighter’s crew.
“Your drink ma’am.”
Mel turned and grabbed her drink, keeping an eye on the UEE military table. With a single pull, she down the glass, stood up, and grabbed her stuff. Walking from the bar, she checked her wrist comm; the computer was almost done getting access codes. Time to get to the freighter.
She couldn’t go directly to the ship and board it like the rest of the crew. That way would be too heavily monitored by the ship itself. No, she had to use a less common access point the station controlled.
Her comm chimed the hack completion as she passed up the dock that the freighter was hooked to and turned down the corridor next to it. This one was empty and unused, too close to the massive freighter for another ship to dock. Mel pulled her MobiGlass from her pocket and accessed the station’s security system, virtually pushing her presence back to the bar and deleting herself from the corridor. Slapping her helmet on, she started up the airlock’s exit cycle and walked into the void.
Part 4: Cat on a Cold Steel Roof
The freighter hovered in front of her and CR6 behind. With a slow scan of the immediate area, it took Mel a moment to find what she needed. 20 meters away sat a beaten and pot-marked hatch with a mesh-like symbol on it. Mel keyed a pre-programmed script on her comm that forced the station to signal an air-scrubber maintenance event and pulled her hand-thruster from her pack. A quick pivot and thrust later and she slapped the hull next to the service arm that had extended from the station. Out popped the hatched and in popped Mel. Hopefully the service would last long enough for her to get out of here.
The air scrubber was a tight area, but it was a common system to have major issues on old ships. So, engineers typically made the system oversized to make it easy to repair by hand. The whole life-support system itself had major arteries throughout the ship, so it was a great way to get where you needed to covertly. Unfortunately small spaces and the need for a spacesuit being the primary drawbacks.
Ten minutes and a couple of leg cramps later, Mel cycled a maintenance airlock in the Snow Gambit engineering bay. Her computer had only managed a very light infiltration into the freighter’s systems so far, but waiting around much longer seemed dangerous. The engine room was dark, but she waited, listened, and scanned a minute before pulling off her helmet and starting her walk around the room.
The massive softly glowing hulks of twin anti-matter reactors dominated the large space. Consoles embedded on the walls and some small work stations were the only other furnishings, giving her no obvious place to hide the “delivery package”.
Mel sighed and reached into her pack to get a set of maintenance tools. The wall platting around the reactor’s cooling manifold came away with relative ease and she slipped the package in. Just as she secure the paneling again, her comm chimmed. The station security monitor was detecting activity on the gangway.
“Dingo frelling scrum-nugget”, Mel swore.
She needed another way out. If the crew was coming on board they’d likely be waiting on the scrubber service and keeping an eye on it. She also needed to get out of this room fast in case they decided to prep the engine.
Mel grabbed her kit, pulled out her MobiGlass and jogged to the room exit. Flipping through a map of the ship with one hand, she cautiously skulked into the hallway. Footsteps could be heard from farther down the ship and they were steadily getting louder.
OK, first things first; away from the crew areas, Mel thought as she keyed the MobiGlass to direct her to a cargo area. Since most of the ship was a series of holds, that didn’t take long. Inside the first she came across were long rows of neatly stacked-and-webbed non-descript crates.
Looking around, she first searched for any other service systems that could provide a way out. There was nothing.
I need another option. Mel thought as she paced between the crates.
In frustration she kicked a nearby stack the whole thing trembled and moved a bit.
What the ..
She walked over to the stack and unlatched the container. Empty. Mel grabbed another. Empty.
Why would they have a ship of empty containers?
Pulling out her MobiGlass, she pulled up Frost’s sensor controls. She ran a mass area sweep of the freighter and, sure enough, the thing was mostly empty. It seemed that only one of the freighters seven holds was actually loaded with cargo.
The curiosity was too much. Her employers didn’t want this ship, they wanted that cargo. Compact and likely very valuable cargo.
Out in the cargo corridor, the silence reigned. The footsteps she heard earlier had stopped. As slowly and quietly as she could in her class 2 fightsuit, Mel snuck toward the one hold with significant mass. Every couple of steps she would stop for a moment to listen. With a wary eye, she slipped into the hold.
It too was filled with the same containers, but they weren’t empty. Each was filled with smaller form-fitted boxes that held fist-sized checkered metal spheres. Each sphere was stamped with a small “HD” logo. Must be Hurston Dynamics, a UEEN arms manufacturer... military hardware
Mel ‘s brow crinkled in thought as she pulled a hand-held scanning system from her bag. She had no idea what these could be and why they would be worth so much. “Level 5 asset controlled emissions detected”, the scanner read. Realization dawned and Mel almost dropped the sphere.
High-yield capital weapon cores … the explosive power in this room could likely crack a planet! They aren’t just using the freighter as a cover for the transport, it’s bulk must mask the emissions., raced in her thoughts. Possibilities and profit, it was no wonder the slavers wanted this cargo.
“HEY YOU! BACK AWAY FROM THE CARGO!”, yelled an armored crewman holding a very large rifle.
Mel dropped the sphere into her bag and dove into the nearest aisle, sliding between stacks of crates.
“STOP”, the crewman yelled, the rifle trembling in his hands. Fear was etched plain on his face as would be prudent when waving a gun around in a room full of potential fiery death many times over.
Mel scrambled down the aisle, deeper into the hold trying to draw the crewman from the door. Pulling her pistol from its chest bound holster, she fired at the ceiling to startle him. He jumped and ducked behind a box as she weaved through the containers.
Jabbing her comm, she panted “Plan B, 10 second delay, EXECUTE!” and ran straight for the room’s exit while slapping her helmet back on. Rifle fire pinged off the wall and bulkhead as the crewman saw she was clear of the cargo. The shots were wild and scattershot, but she ducked and tensed as she ran; half expecting the metal slugs to punch through her flightsuit any moment.
Suddenly, a roar of deafening sound ripped through the corridor. The closest docking hatch had just opened all the way without an airlock cycle and the ship was venting its atmosphere. Mel flew along the corridor bouncing off the walls and out into the vacuum.
As soon as she was clear, her computer started closing the airlock door, leaving her to float among the debris that had flushed out with her on a vector away from the station. Looking back towards CR6, Mel could see small explosions as Frost ripped free of its service umbilicals in the landing bay and blasted the stations closest defenses on its way out.
Within moments, the ship had matched her velocity and she was sliding into the airlock. Fighters could be seen burning hard out of the station’s bay.
“Alright baby”, Mel said to her ship. “Let’s make these skags eat our wake.”
“Warning! Level 5 emissions could interfere with jump transit”, Frost’s computer barked as it slipped into the jump point.
Mel looked around startled. She was perplexed for a moment as she grabbed the controls and nervously tapped them. Her mind’s eye saw the face jumping out at her and her fear drenched her in sweat. Death hung in the air and she a pair of eyes in every anomaly. They watched her. They judged her.
Fine time for a warning you hunk of junk. What kept you frelling quite last time?!
After what seemed an eternity, Frost slipped into known space in the Cathcart system. Mel was flooded her with the relief of safe jump and the tension of pirate space. She keyed in The Box to her nav, she closed her eyes for a second.
A wave of renewal hit her as she realized the computer was talking about the weapon core. She had dropped it in her bag and almost forgotten the thing completely in the days since blasting she blasted her way out of CR6. It had taken her days to lose the Conavex security forces and back track her way to Cathcart. Little sleep and close calls had frayed her nerves raw.
The job was done, but getting paid may end up being the more difficult part. She needed insurance. She needed leverage. Mel looked over at the equipment cabinet and bit her lip.
It took The Box a little while to clear her for landing. She was told to wait and she ended up circling the place a couple times in anticipation of the landing permission. The stealthed fighters were still there, guard duty for a place that is kept off the maps.
When she finally landed, the hanger wasn’t empty this time. Several ships were in various stages of loading or unloading and several sets of crew filled the place. If not for the unusually large size, the place would have been packed to capacity on any other station.
As she stepped off Frost, Mel could see a load lifter offloading coffin stacks from a MISC Freelancer and several slavers were roughly pushing startled pilots out of a red Cutlass’s cargo hold. Likely some unlucky pilots who had gotten picked up after ejecting during a pirate raid.
“Spoils to ta’victor.”, said the same blue suited Tevarin slaver she talked to last time. Again, he casually sat in his load lifter messing with the diagnostics with a smirk on his scarred face. “So, you got the job done?”
“Yeah, package delivered. Easier than a drift.”
The slaver grunted. “I doubt that. Alright, come on.”, he said as he jumped down and started walking. “By the way, you know your engine’s got some serious leakage? Control almost didn’t let you land because of it.”
“Yeah, I know. I keep meaning to get that fixed.”
The slaver looked at her askance as they walked, but didn’t say anything more. Instead of taking her to the office this time, he started toward what looked like a control center off of the landing bay. Large Plexi windows showed an array of consoles and a large holo-table in the center. A large space battle battle was playing out in shimmering graphics on almost every surface.
Kilron, the Black Hand Tevarin, was gesturing wildly and yelling at a group of pilots. Each of their eyes followed the large sidearm in his right hand that he repeatedly waved it ominously at the group. As Mel approached, he kept hitting the holo controls, replaying the scene. Xane could be seen standing in the corner, the right half of his face was a recently bruised.
“Wait a sec”, said the blue suited slaver. Nervousness saturated his voice. “Let’s let him finish first.”
Several moments later, the pilots began exiting the room in a rushed shuffle. The down cast eyes started to lift as they got farther from Kilron. Shame and hate burned in waves off them.
The blue-suited slaver opened the door and grunted. A pilot’s corpse was sprawled in the floor. Its fresh plasma wounds still steamed.
“Get in here!” Kilron shouted, waving the pistol at them.
“Lady’s first”, the slaver mumbled as he stepped aside. Mel noted that he didn’t actually enter the room when he let the door close.
Kilron glared at her then started smirking. “At least someone here gets the job done.”, he said as he threw the pistol on the table and rekeyed the holo-table’s controls.
A new scene began playing out. The Snow Gambit freighter took up most of the display with smaller Cutlass fighters and Caterpillar boarding ships harrying the vessel. The freighter seemed crippled and it took only a handful of second before the boarding ships began attaching themselves.
Kilron was smiling a hideous Tevarin smile. “Ms. Sneaky, you have done well. You not only got the goods, but you also helped us exact some revenge.”, he said.
The time indicator jumped ten minutes and then the boarders began leaving, new fighters began engaging them and the original as they fled off the bounds of the holo. The new ships began boarding the freighter the same as the first group, but moments later the Snow Gambit exploded taking its new boarders with it.
“Good, I guess that means you’ll have no problem paying me promptly then.”, Mel said as she casually began thumbing her MobiGlas.
The Tevarin began pacing across the room and Xane tried to back farther into the corner he occupied. “Well, payments of these sorts can tricky and have sudden expenses. You see we had to pay off the original …”
“STOP”, Mel shouted and Kilron jumped a little. His smile was gone. “Do you think I’m stupid enough to come back without leverage?”, Mel said as she finished keying her comm. Warnings began to fare across some of the room’s panels as Frost rerouted its exhaust flow around Crash’s device. She grudging gave Crash some due. Even half-melted, the thing still worked enough to mask level 5 signatures. Even high-end military ordinance.
“What have you done?!” Kevlin roared as stared at the Level 5 weapon emission signature surrounding a holo of her ship.
“I just brought back some of the booty to share.”, Mel smirked and waved her MobiGlas at him. “And I’ll detonate it if I don’t get what I want. I’m sure you’ve heard of my ‘past exploits’ enough to know I don’t bluff.”, she said as she strolled across the room and picked up the pistol off the holo table with her spare hand. Backups are bets you always want to make, Billy said in her head.
Confusion flickered across his face. His familiarity with her work history had obviously been feigned, but it was too late to check. Kilron pressed a comm button on the holo table and took a step back. A moment later, the scarred worker opened the door and stuck his head in.
“Merek, please bring X7994 up to the bay. Put it by the … uh … well-worn 300i.”
Merek nodded and took off jogging across the hangar. Kevlin turned back to her and said, “This won’t be forgotten. I’m not going to let you make a fool of me and just drift.”
“I’m only getting my just payment for work rendered. If you want a piece of me, you’ll have to get in line behind all the other scrum I didn’t let push me around. Now, get out in the bay! You’re walking with me”, Mel said waving the MobiGlas and pistol for dramatic effect.
The Tevarin gritted his teeth and walked out of the control room with her. She glanced back at Xane as she left and was surprised to see him grinning wildly and silently chuckling in the corner.
By the time they walked back across the bay, Merek and a couple of workmen were approaching with a coffin on a hover sled. “Wake him up.”, Mel ordered while waving the pistol and giving the her “serious” face. They waited a second for Kevlin to nod before keying the hibernation unit’s controls.
The lid popped open and there laid a naked teenage boy. It had been over a year since Mel had seen her brother. It was shortly before the Vanduul raid that had killed their parents and then the slaver raid that had picked over the easily taken Vanduul leavings. She’d been off world when it happened and spent every waking moment since working toward this point.
The boy sat up with a jolt and gasped for air. His wide eyes stared forward for several moments as he focused on the enormous effort of breathing again. Slowly, he began looking around, “Mel!”, he shouted. “Where am I .. the last I …”
“Jack, I need you to tell me if you can walk.” Each of the slavers eyes began to shift back and forth, looking for something to act on.
“I think so ..”, Jack began to slowly get out of the crate, pulling connectors from his skin and making his way over to his sister.
It was only then did she realize the flaw in her plan. If the bomb was on her ship when they took off, the stealth guard ships outside would blow her away as soon as she was clear. She needed another way off this station.
“Alright, here’s how it’s going to burn. We’re taking that ship over there.”, Mel waved her comm at a rather nice looking newer model MISC Freelancer that had just been offloaded and was still sitting with her cargo bay wide open. “If I see any twitchy flashes from your low sig boys drifting outside, I’ll light this place up. I reckon I can trigger this nearly any place in-system, so you’re all safe once I jump.”
“How do we know you won’t a-laz this place once your clear.”, Kevlin growled.
“I guess you’ll have to trust me”, Mel smirked.
---
The stealthed fighters didn’t engage them when they left, but they did follow. They were clever, shadowing her outside of the traffic lane, darting between hulks and refuse.
Mel kept her eyes on the shadows, half expecting them to light her up at any moment. By the time they hit the jump point she was shaking and sweating. On top of the constant threat of attack, piloting a new ship made her extra uncomfortable. She missed Frost.
Luckily, the Freelancer was kitted out for courier runs. Both stealth and speed were her specialty and it wasn’t long before she left her pursuers chasing sensor phantoms and wondering where she went.
“So, why didn’t you just blow them up.”, Jack said. He was in the copilot’s seat and dressed in oversized coveralls he had found in the back. The previous owner must have been portly and he looked ridiculous.
“Two reasons”, Mel said, flipping through the ship’s tag identification catalog. She still needed to name this thing. The current Swanky Lady didn’t really meet her tastes. “Killing a bunch of innocent slaves isn’t my style. A core detonation like that would have taken out most of the station.”
“And the other ..”
Mel smiled. “I have no idea how to even detonate a torpedo warhead. The thing was just sitting on my chair.”
They both laughed as Mel keyed in the ship’s new name: BIlly’s Bluff
The freighter hovered in front of her and CR6 behind. With a slow scan of the immediate area, it took Mel a moment to find what she needed. 20 meters away sat a beaten and pot-marked hatch with a mesh-like symbol on it. Mel keyed a pre-programmed script on her comm that forced the station to signal an air-scrubber maintenance event and pulled her hand-thruster from her pack. A quick pivot and thrust later and she slapped the hull next to the service arm that had extended from the station. Out popped the hatched and in popped Mel. Hopefully the service would last long enough for her to get out of here.
The air scrubber was a tight area, but it was a common system to have major issues on old ships. So, engineers typically made the system oversized to make it easy to repair by hand. The whole life-support system itself had major arteries throughout the ship, so it was a great way to get where you needed to covertly. Unfortunately small spaces and the need for a spacesuit being the primary drawbacks.
Ten minutes and a couple of leg cramps later, Mel cycled a maintenance airlock in the Snow Gambit engineering bay. Her computer had only managed a very light infiltration into the freighter’s systems so far, but waiting around much longer seemed dangerous. The engine room was dark, but she waited, listened, and scanned a minute before pulling off her helmet and starting her walk around the room.
The massive softly glowing hulks of twin anti-matter reactors dominated the large space. Consoles embedded on the walls and some small work stations were the only other furnishings, giving her no obvious place to hide the “delivery package”.
Mel sighed and reached into her pack to get a set of maintenance tools. The wall platting around the reactor’s cooling manifold came away with relative ease and she slipped the package in. Just as she secure the paneling again, her comm chimmed. The station security monitor was detecting activity on the gangway.
“Dingo frelling scrum-nugget”, Mel swore.
She needed another way out. If the crew was coming on board they’d likely be waiting on the scrubber service and keeping an eye on it. She also needed to get out of this room fast in case they decided to prep the engine.
Mel grabbed her kit, pulled out her MobiGlass and jogged to the room exit. Flipping through a map of the ship with one hand, she cautiously skulked into the hallway. Footsteps could be heard from farther down the ship and they were steadily getting louder.
OK, first things first; away from the crew areas, Mel thought as she keyed the MobiGlass to direct her to a cargo area. Since most of the ship was a series of holds, that didn’t take long. Inside the first she came across were long rows of neatly stacked-and-webbed non-descript crates.
Looking around, she first searched for any other service systems that could provide a way out. There was nothing.
I need another option. Mel thought as she paced between the crates.
In frustration she kicked a nearby stack the whole thing trembled and moved a bit.
What the ..
She walked over to the stack and unlatched the container. Empty. Mel grabbed another. Empty.
Why would they have a ship of empty containers?
Pulling out her MobiGlass, she pulled up Frost’s sensor controls. She ran a mass area sweep of the freighter and, sure enough, the thing was mostly empty. It seemed that only one of the freighters seven holds was actually loaded with cargo.
The curiosity was too much. Her employers didn’t want this ship, they wanted that cargo. Compact and likely very valuable cargo.
Out in the cargo corridor, the silence reigned. The footsteps she heard earlier had stopped. As slowly and quietly as she could in her class 2 fightsuit, Mel snuck toward the one hold with significant mass. Every couple of steps she would stop for a moment to listen. With a wary eye, she slipped into the hold.
It too was filled with the same containers, but they weren’t empty. Each was filled with smaller form-fitted boxes that held fist-sized checkered metal spheres. Each sphere was stamped with a small “HD” logo. Must be Hurston Dynamics, a UEEN arms manufacturer... military hardware
Mel ‘s brow crinkled in thought as she pulled a hand-held scanning system from her bag. She had no idea what these could be and why they would be worth so much. “Level 5 asset controlled emissions detected”, the scanner read. Realization dawned and Mel almost dropped the sphere.
High-yield capital weapon cores … the explosive power in this room could likely crack a planet! They aren’t just using the freighter as a cover for the transport, it’s bulk must mask the emissions., raced in her thoughts. Possibilities and profit, it was no wonder the slavers wanted this cargo.
“HEY YOU! BACK AWAY FROM THE CARGO!”, yelled an armored crewman holding a very large rifle.
Mel dropped the sphere into her bag and dove into the nearest aisle, sliding between stacks of crates.
“STOP”, the crewman yelled, the rifle trembling in his hands. Fear was etched plain on his face as would be prudent when waving a gun around in a room full of potential fiery death many times over.
Mel scrambled down the aisle, deeper into the hold trying to draw the crewman from the door. Pulling her pistol from its chest bound holster, she fired at the ceiling to startle him. He jumped and ducked behind a box as she weaved through the containers.
Jabbing her comm, she panted “Plan B, 10 second delay, EXECUTE!” and ran straight for the room’s exit while slapping her helmet back on. Rifle fire pinged off the wall and bulkhead as the crewman saw she was clear of the cargo. The shots were wild and scattershot, but she ducked and tensed as she ran; half expecting the metal slugs to punch through her flightsuit any moment.
Suddenly, a roar of deafening sound ripped through the corridor. The closest docking hatch had just opened all the way without an airlock cycle and the ship was venting its atmosphere. Mel flew along the corridor bouncing off the walls and out into the vacuum.
As soon as she was clear, her computer started closing the airlock door, leaving her to float among the debris that had flushed out with her on a vector away from the station. Looking back towards CR6, Mel could see small explosions as Frost ripped free of its service umbilicals in the landing bay and blasted the stations closest defenses on its way out.
Within moments, the ship had matched her velocity and she was sliding into the airlock. Fighters could be seen burning hard out of the station’s bay.
“Alright baby”, Mel said to her ship. “Let’s make these skags eat our wake.”
“Warning! Level 5 emissions could interfere with jump transit”, Frost’s computer barked as it slipped into the jump point.
Mel looked around startled. She was perplexed for a moment as she grabbed the controls and nervously tapped them. Her mind’s eye saw the face jumping out at her and her fear drenched her in sweat. Death hung in the air and she a pair of eyes in every anomaly. They watched her. They judged her.
Fine time for a warning you hunk of junk. What kept you frelling quite last time?!
After what seemed an eternity, Frost slipped into known space in the Cathcart system. Mel was flooded her with the relief of safe jump and the tension of pirate space. She keyed in The Box to her nav, she closed her eyes for a second.
A wave of renewal hit her as she realized the computer was talking about the weapon core. She had dropped it in her bag and almost forgotten the thing completely in the days since blasting she blasted her way out of CR6. It had taken her days to lose the Conavex security forces and back track her way to Cathcart. Little sleep and close calls had frayed her nerves raw.
The job was done, but getting paid may end up being the more difficult part. She needed insurance. She needed leverage. Mel looked over at the equipment cabinet and bit her lip.
It took The Box a little while to clear her for landing. She was told to wait and she ended up circling the place a couple times in anticipation of the landing permission. The stealthed fighters were still there, guard duty for a place that is kept off the maps.
When she finally landed, the hanger wasn’t empty this time. Several ships were in various stages of loading or unloading and several sets of crew filled the place. If not for the unusually large size, the place would have been packed to capacity on any other station.
As she stepped off Frost, Mel could see a load lifter offloading coffin stacks from a MISC Freelancer and several slavers were roughly pushing startled pilots out of a red Cutlass’s cargo hold. Likely some unlucky pilots who had gotten picked up after ejecting during a pirate raid.
“Spoils to ta’victor.”, said the same blue suited Tevarin slaver she talked to last time. Again, he casually sat in his load lifter messing with the diagnostics with a smirk on his scarred face. “So, you got the job done?”
“Yeah, package delivered. Easier than a drift.”
The slaver grunted. “I doubt that. Alright, come on.”, he said as he jumped down and started walking. “By the way, you know your engine’s got some serious leakage? Control almost didn’t let you land because of it.”
“Yeah, I know. I keep meaning to get that fixed.”
The slaver looked at her askance as they walked, but didn’t say anything more. Instead of taking her to the office this time, he started toward what looked like a control center off of the landing bay. Large Plexi windows showed an array of consoles and a large holo-table in the center. A large space battle battle was playing out in shimmering graphics on almost every surface.
Kilron, the Black Hand Tevarin, was gesturing wildly and yelling at a group of pilots. Each of their eyes followed the large sidearm in his right hand that he repeatedly waved it ominously at the group. As Mel approached, he kept hitting the holo controls, replaying the scene. Xane could be seen standing in the corner, the right half of his face was a recently bruised.
“Wait a sec”, said the blue suited slaver. Nervousness saturated his voice. “Let’s let him finish first.”
Several moments later, the pilots began exiting the room in a rushed shuffle. The down cast eyes started to lift as they got farther from Kilron. Shame and hate burned in waves off them.
The blue-suited slaver opened the door and grunted. A pilot’s corpse was sprawled in the floor. Its fresh plasma wounds still steamed.
“Get in here!” Kilron shouted, waving the pistol at them.
“Lady’s first”, the slaver mumbled as he stepped aside. Mel noted that he didn’t actually enter the room when he let the door close.
Kilron glared at her then started smirking. “At least someone here gets the job done.”, he said as he threw the pistol on the table and rekeyed the holo-table’s controls.
A new scene began playing out. The Snow Gambit freighter took up most of the display with smaller Cutlass fighters and Caterpillar boarding ships harrying the vessel. The freighter seemed crippled and it took only a handful of second before the boarding ships began attaching themselves.
Kilron was smiling a hideous Tevarin smile. “Ms. Sneaky, you have done well. You not only got the goods, but you also helped us exact some revenge.”, he said.
The time indicator jumped ten minutes and then the boarders began leaving, new fighters began engaging them and the original as they fled off the bounds of the holo. The new ships began boarding the freighter the same as the first group, but moments later the Snow Gambit exploded taking its new boarders with it.
“Good, I guess that means you’ll have no problem paying me promptly then.”, Mel said as she casually began thumbing her MobiGlas.
The Tevarin began pacing across the room and Xane tried to back farther into the corner he occupied. “Well, payments of these sorts can tricky and have sudden expenses. You see we had to pay off the original …”
“STOP”, Mel shouted and Kilron jumped a little. His smile was gone. “Do you think I’m stupid enough to come back without leverage?”, Mel said as she finished keying her comm. Warnings began to fare across some of the room’s panels as Frost rerouted its exhaust flow around Crash’s device. She grudging gave Crash some due. Even half-melted, the thing still worked enough to mask level 5 signatures. Even high-end military ordinance.
“What have you done?!” Kevlin roared as stared at the Level 5 weapon emission signature surrounding a holo of her ship.
“I just brought back some of the booty to share.”, Mel smirked and waved her MobiGlas at him. “And I’ll detonate it if I don’t get what I want. I’m sure you’ve heard of my ‘past exploits’ enough to know I don’t bluff.”, she said as she strolled across the room and picked up the pistol off the holo table with her spare hand. Backups are bets you always want to make, Billy said in her head.
Confusion flickered across his face. His familiarity with her work history had obviously been feigned, but it was too late to check. Kilron pressed a comm button on the holo table and took a step back. A moment later, the scarred worker opened the door and stuck his head in.
“Merek, please bring X7994 up to the bay. Put it by the … uh … well-worn 300i.”
Merek nodded and took off jogging across the hangar. Kevlin turned back to her and said, “This won’t be forgotten. I’m not going to let you make a fool of me and just drift.”
“I’m only getting my just payment for work rendered. If you want a piece of me, you’ll have to get in line behind all the other scrum I didn’t let push me around. Now, get out in the bay! You’re walking with me”, Mel said waving the MobiGlas and pistol for dramatic effect.
The Tevarin gritted his teeth and walked out of the control room with her. She glanced back at Xane as she left and was surprised to see him grinning wildly and silently chuckling in the corner.
By the time they walked back across the bay, Merek and a couple of workmen were approaching with a coffin on a hover sled. “Wake him up.”, Mel ordered while waving the pistol and giving the her “serious” face. They waited a second for Kevlin to nod before keying the hibernation unit’s controls.
The lid popped open and there laid a naked teenage boy. It had been over a year since Mel had seen her brother. It was shortly before the Vanduul raid that had killed their parents and then the slaver raid that had picked over the easily taken Vanduul leavings. She’d been off world when it happened and spent every waking moment since working toward this point.
The boy sat up with a jolt and gasped for air. His wide eyes stared forward for several moments as he focused on the enormous effort of breathing again. Slowly, he began looking around, “Mel!”, he shouted. “Where am I .. the last I …”
“Jack, I need you to tell me if you can walk.” Each of the slavers eyes began to shift back and forth, looking for something to act on.
“I think so ..”, Jack began to slowly get out of the crate, pulling connectors from his skin and making his way over to his sister.
It was only then did she realize the flaw in her plan. If the bomb was on her ship when they took off, the stealth guard ships outside would blow her away as soon as she was clear. She needed another way off this station.
“Alright, here’s how it’s going to burn. We’re taking that ship over there.”, Mel waved her comm at a rather nice looking newer model MISC Freelancer that had just been offloaded and was still sitting with her cargo bay wide open. “If I see any twitchy flashes from your low sig boys drifting outside, I’ll light this place up. I reckon I can trigger this nearly any place in-system, so you’re all safe once I jump.”
“How do we know you won’t a-laz this place once your clear.”, Kevlin growled.
“I guess you’ll have to trust me”, Mel smirked.
---
The stealthed fighters didn’t engage them when they left, but they did follow. They were clever, shadowing her outside of the traffic lane, darting between hulks and refuse.
Mel kept her eyes on the shadows, half expecting them to light her up at any moment. By the time they hit the jump point she was shaking and sweating. On top of the constant threat of attack, piloting a new ship made her extra uncomfortable. She missed Frost.
Luckily, the Freelancer was kitted out for courier runs. Both stealth and speed were her specialty and it wasn’t long before she left her pursuers chasing sensor phantoms and wondering where she went.
“So, why didn’t you just blow them up.”, Jack said. He was in the copilot’s seat and dressed in oversized coveralls he had found in the back. The previous owner must have been portly and he looked ridiculous.
“Two reasons”, Mel said, flipping through the ship’s tag identification catalog. She still needed to name this thing. The current Swanky Lady didn’t really meet her tastes. “Killing a bunch of innocent slaves isn’t my style. A core detonation like that would have taken out most of the station.”
“And the other ..”
Mel smiled. “I have no idea how to even detonate a torpedo warhead. The thing was just sitting on my chair.”
They both laughed as Mel keyed in the ship’s new name: BIlly’s Bluff
Notes from the author:
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